Michelin-starred chef Matt Weedon tells Richard McComb that rabbit is off the menu at Lords of the Manor.
It’s a bombshell but Matt Weedon hits me with it just the same and sends my heart sinking.
“I’ve taken the rabbit off the menu,” he says.
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That’s it. The rabbit’s gone, hopped off. It’s not the end of the world, you might think. But if you think that you can’t have eaten Weedon’s miraculous plate of rabbit. I have, twice, though not on the same day. I went to Lords of the Manor, where Weedon is head chef, towards the end of 2008. I had to have the rabbit then. It just leapt off the menu.
When I returned to the 17th century former rectory in Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire, a few weeks back, there were lots of other main courses I could have devoured, not least the steamed fillet of Cornish brill with grilled Scottish langoustine, braised chicken wings and a cep risotto.
And what of sirloin of Cotswold Longhorn beef with a fricassee of Hereford snails and broad beans?
But when it came to ordering time, I just couldn’t help myself: “Rabbit, please.”
When it arrived, it was as fine as I remembered, a feast for the eyes, the mouth and tummy: sweetly-flavoured, teeny-weeny rabbit ribs, offally bits, wholesome braised shoulder and a delicate tortellini of leg confit, served with Beatrix Potter lettuce – culinary joy and a dash of dry English wit, all on one plate. Talk about pulling a rabbit from a hat.
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Actually, there was one major difference between the rabbit of 2008 and the 2009 incarnation. In the intervening months Lords of the Manor acquired a Michelin star. The hotel had held one in the past, lost it and brought in Weedon, from Glenapp Castle in Ayrshire, to win it back. That he achieved his goal, and kept his sanity, in just 11 months is a remarkable achievement.
How did the 34-year-old chef pull it off? Weedon talks how he addressed sourcing of produce and a “change of attitude” he has helped to instil. He remains diplomatic and uses a succinct phrase that could have come from football coach Jose Mourinho: “Some people had to leave and some people had to come in.”
There has also been huge investment in the hotel, £1.5 million in the past year. It remains a beautiful setting in the heart of the Cotswolds. Supermodel Kate Moss has a pad in the area. It’s monied, but not ostentatious.
Dining at Lords of the Manor is a great occasion. The opportunity of winning lunch or dinner, cooked by Weedon, is a mouth-watering prospect. Envy is never an endearing quality but the fact that one Birmingham Post reader, and his/her guest, will win dinner not only here, but at two other Michelin-star restaurants – namely La Becasse, in Ludlow, and Mallory Court, near Leamington Spa – is to be envied in the extreme.
There is common lineage, too, linking two of the chefs. Weedon was the boss of Will Holland, now head chef at La Becasse, when they worked together at Alan Murchison’s L’Ortolan in Reading. Weedon also survived a stint at the Berkshire restaurant as pastry chef to the maverick John Burton Race, when the place had two stars. It was a relentless experience under Burton Race. “I knew if I was lying in my bed at 6.30 in the morning I would already be behind with my work,” recalls Weedon.
But back to Lords of the Manor and the mystery of the disappearing rabbit. The dish, quite simply, didn’t sell that well and in the short space of time between dining there and interviewing Weedon, it has been spiked from the menu. Its demise just goes to prove that if there’s nowt as strange as folk, there’s nowt stranger than folk who frequent Michelin-starred restaurants. You or I might be distraught, but good chefs, really good chefs, refuse to be beaten. So the bunny got the boot, demoted by a duck. Hare, if you like, today; gone tomorrow.
Inevitably, the duck isn’t pedestrian; it’s got creative wings.
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“I am stripping the bird down and serving the heart, liver, legs and breast and making sauce from the bones,” says Weedon. The delivery chap suggested he might use the tongue. It’s very now, apparently, very nose-to-tail-to-tongue. But Weedon gave the upstart a lashing.
“I am not going to serve duck tongue to people in an English country house,” says the chef. It’s not that he’s squeamish; he just knows his audience.
“We will put the duck gizzard on the dish and confit it. The hearts are in pancetta, the liver is classically fried, pink. There’s also some foie gras,” he adds.
Which should satisfy the weekly protein intake of the average grizzly bear. But my, oh my, what a happy bear he would be.
As with the rabbit before it, and many of the dishes painstakingly prepared by Weedon and his brigade, much of the skill is in the preparation.
The chef says: “The easy part is the cooking. The hard part is taking the animal apart.”
He is being slightly disingenuous. Take a main course of pan-fried John Dory, caramelised sweetbreads, carrots, gingerbread and chicken jus, or a dessert of blood orange marshmallow, lemon parfait and blood orange soup. They require brow-furrowing amounts of work and a great deal of skill.
The effort would be pointless without the quality of the produce Weedon is able to get his hands on, much of it within a radius of a few miles. Take the beef. It is free range, from rare breed Longhorn cattle, and comes from Martin Gilder’s farm at Toddington, five miles away. Dry-matured for at least 28 days, it is “like eating butter,” says Weedon.
The gastropods served with the beef come from L’Escargot Anglais at Credenhill, Herefordshire, also known as the National Snail Farming Centre. The English snails are far superior to their French cousins, says Weedon, succulent not chewy. “They come in vacuum bags and we cook them slowly in veal stock for four hours with garlic,” he adds.
Local Kelmscott pork comes from near Burford, the flour used for breads and pastry is from Shipton-under-Wychwood and rapeseed oil, for cooking, is from Bourton on the Water. “We use local strawberries, raspberries, asparagus ...” says Weedon.
It must be hard getting such great produce all the time. Weedon disagrees. “You find the cream rises to the top,” he says. Rather like outstanding chefs.
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