Like pigs, badgers, dogs and chickens, I am an omnivore.
I eat all. I rejoice in my meals being created from a wide and varied list of ingredients and have never felt the need to restrict any food types from my diet. For this reason alone, you will not often find me dining at vegetarian eateries. Call me ignorant, and I’m sure many of you are. I have just had it with food fads, and although I understand and respect vegetarian and veganism as a lifestyle choice, I am sick with how it is being pushed as a fashion statement.
So when Caperberry was invited to review a purely vegan restaurant, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to get in there.
I became a little more interested when I learnt that this previously vegetarian restaurant, had turned vegan without announcing it. And allegedly, without anybody noticing! And more interested still, when I found it has a mention in this year’s Michelin Guide. The first vegan restaurant in the UK to achieve recommended status in the Michelin Guide 2019.
Ok. Get me a table! Acorn is located in the heart of Bath. We found ourselves seated in it’s pretty, Georgian dining room.
A tasting menu is always the way to experience a new restaurant, and 7 courses with a wine flight was the way we experienced Acorn. Our waiter is friendly, French and a fellow omnivore. He faultlessly guides us through our vegetable adventure.
Each dish is beautifully presented and I am immediately impressed with not only the flavours, but the attention to textures and temperatures. We are too used to the veg on our plates being an accompaniment to the main show. If you remove what we normally expect to be the centre piece, then you really have to impress.
This was the most striking thing. I was expecting something less, however was treated to so much more. Restricting a chief to a seriously limited ingredients list, allows a true talent to shine.
Acorn is a real celebration of vegetables and vegetables in their purest form. Head Chef Richard Buckley’s mission is “to serve the most interesting food we can make from plants.” I was also refreshed not to find one dish that was trying to masquerade as anything but itself.
The humble carrot was put through it’s culinary paces in a way I could hardly have previously imagined. I never thought cauliflower could be served in three totally different and imaginative ways on the same plate. And the beautifully whipped mushroom parfait was so exquisite it left me almost never wanting to torture a duck again!
I have to admit that I didn’t walk into Acorn with particularly high hopes. But I walked out with a new found love of plants and satisfied that in the right hands, they need not be adulterated by anything else.
– LBM
GO TO: acornrestaurant.co.uk
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Inspiration/Image Credits: thecaperberrycollective.com at acornrestaurant.co.uk
