Nibbled to death: A Michelin Guide-approved multi course tasting meal leaves us wanting more...
David Lloyd visits one of the UK's self-declared 'most progressive dining experiences': 8 by Andrew Sheridan
By David Lloyd
“Where are you from?” enquires the woman in hot pants and a cream bolero next to us.
“New Brighton,” we tell her. She shrugs. “Never heard of it.”
“What about you?” we ask, only because we’re fairly sure this is the point of the exchange.
“Oh,” she purrs, “I divide my time between London and New York.”
We wonder what Liverpool has to do with the appalling situation in which she finds herself. But, before we can ask, she’s off again — our interrogator is also dividing her time between sipping champagne in this dimly lit antechamber, and nipping outside for a fag.
We are in 8 by Andrew Sheridan, a place that proclaims itself to be ‘one of the UK’s most progressive dining experiences’. Which is to say it only offers a tasting menu, and likes nothing better than to ‘deconstruct’ a Mr Whippy cone into a miniature Abigail’s Party-esque cheesy pineapple starter.
Sheridan, whose family is from Liverpool, relocated the venue here from Birmingham last April, where it has since become one of the city’s most-highly-praised restaurants. It even received an encouraging nod from Michelin when they included it in their Guide last year.
Michelin’s inspectors specifically praised Sheridan’s ‘precisely made snacks.’ There’s nothing I like more than a precisely made snack. No careless crackers or poorly-aimed cheese footballs scurrying over the post for me, thank you. So that’s why I’m here, in this black-and-gold ’80s nightclub VIP area, sitting beneath the sort of art you can only buy in a gallery in a Dubai shopping mall – all distressed shards of metal bent into spray painted Union Jacks. Behind us, shelves lined with row upon row of neatly ordered Michelin guides act like an escape room clue, foreshadowing the challenges to come.
The venue’s still in the guide – but, when the tyre people drove up to Manchester last week to announce this year’s new stars, 8 left empty-handed. Still, it remains one of just a thousand ’selected’ recommendations in the UK. No small achievement.
8’s soundtrack, a key part of tonight’s “immersive and exciting” experience (according to its website), is deafening. I’m not sure there is much excitement left to be mined from “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, “Summer of ‘69” and “Freedom! ’90”, but I’m prepared to be persuaded otherwise.
The volume is borderline unpleasant. So much so that, when we’re offered an upgrade of shaved truffle and caviar, I nod, because I couldn’t hear the “It’s £30 each” bit over Cindy Lauper screeching “What you gonna do with your life?”
Sheridan’s also the man behind the OXA restaurant – which has settled comfortably into the dearly-departed home of Fraiche in Oxton Village (or, as Liverpool Confidential calls it, “the quaint little village of Oxton”) – not to mention other brands in the Midlands. If he were here now, he could tell our inquisitive fellow diner that he divides his time between Worcestershire and the Wirral, to see what sized shrug that would elicit. But he’s not. So he can’t. It’s 8 by Andrew Sheridan, not 8 with Andrew Sheridan.
A pair of thick black curtains opens to reveal a brigade of earnest young men carrying out keyhole surgery on microgreens with tweezers. Behold! The precisely made snacks cometh. They announce their precisely-made credentials by being presented on beds of decorative grains and miniature mossy rock gardens, cupped in beseeching pairs of clay hands.
That’s Michelin rule number one: never, ever, present a precisely made snack on a plate. Or, if you do, make sure you offer it up on some freshly sourced farmyard hay, before setting it alight and covering it with a cloche.
Michelin rule number two is swiftly ticked off. Ladies and gentlemen, I can confirm – there was a broth in a tiny pan.
The snacks were not only precise, they were amazing. I will dream about the mushroom tartlet for many weeks to come.
At 8 o’clock, we’re ushered downstairs for the main event – a tasting menu aimed to showcase Sheridan and team’s bravura and bold, globe-trotting flavours. 8 sweats its numerology schtick to breaking point. Eight diners perch along the edge of a black altar, (times two: there are two serving stations).
We’re actually propped up on the edge of the cooker – the sleek monolith doubles as an induction hob. Chef and commis chef set to work, pressing pin-sized probes to their lips, checking, double checking, glazing and blow torching. I feel oddly anxious where, I imagine, I’m supposed to feel awed.
The evening is less about the delicate farm-to-table finery of two-Michelin-starred Moor Hall in Aughton, we’re told, and more of a collision of gastronomic-tectonic plates: Orkney scallops with Asian tikka, Japanese Hamachi fish with Mexican jalapeño emulsion. It’s comfortably punchy, like The Strokes, who are currently blaring out “Last Nite” as we slice into a perky pebble of cod served with Thai green sauce and chimichurri. The New York-London woman has popped out for another ciggie. “I’m not a spy, honestly,” her dining partner tells us. “I’d make a terrible spy.”
He’s clearly a spy.
If a tasting menu is a festival of food’s current A-listers (which it kind of is. Remember cauliflower and quinoa? They were the Razorlight and The Kooks of their day, but they can’t get a gig anywhere now), then 8’s headline act would be Umami. Teriyaki glazes, truffle foam and wagyu fat set our saliva glands to stun.
Not all of it works, but most of it does. Yet, frustratingly, the better it works, the harder it fails. Like the duck ragu on a mini crumpet – one bite isn’t enough. It confirms why, despite the theatrical show of skill and fervent intensity unfolding right in front of us, this is a night bound to leave me wanting.
I know, I’ve come here willingly. No one has forced me at gun-point to spend hundreds of pounds on a table-top firework display of finely-tooled flavours, paired with robust and exotic wines. If there is a first-world problem more horrific than a feeling of ennui midway through a tasting menu, I’ve yet to find it.
I shouldn’t worry. Because, however our genial hosts may protest, tonight isn’t about me. Tonight is for the validation of the mysterious Michelin men (and women). Every last itsy bitsy teeny weeny dish of it.
Menus de dégustation are hardly new. They became unstoppable after the Michelin inspectors fell for the multi-course molecular gastronomy championed by Catalan chef Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli in the early 2000s. From that moment on diners became merely bystanders as wannabe chef superstars embarked on an ever-escalating arms race, delivering microscopic plates of conspicuous non-consumption. The chemistry lessons might have gone out of favour, but there’s still a whiff of the classroom about it all.
Fine dining morphed into a volley of clever little wisecracks that force you to sit with a rictus grin of admiration: what else can you do when the chef’s 18 inches away with a fully loaded blowtorch? At least in Sapporo Teppanyaki he’d throw an egg into his hat to break the ice. Dining became a stand-up routine that cut straight to the punchlines.
I get it, of course. Tasting menus are a clockwork model of efficiency. They offer close to zero food waste, a firmer hold on the finances (we’re all paying £110 for the ten courses), and a razor-sharp attention to detail. They’re the ultimate expression of a restaurant being in complete control.
But complete control requires unwavering acquiescence. We’re told what to eat. Told how to eat it. How long the duck was hung for, and at what temperature it was cooked. Stopping, starting, tucking into something lovely, then feeling oddly robbed of joy when, after a mouthful, it’s gone. Never, ever, getting anything that even comes close to an actual meal: merely hints and whispers of what a meal might, possibly, theoretically taste like. Don’t ask for more. Just be grateful your Instagram grid has been fed.
All the while, we’re not really relaxing or enjoying time with our dining partners – robbed of the leisure and intimacy that dining out promises. Instead we’re forced to ask panicky questions about sous vide, filling the silence with conversation as substantial as a citrus foam.
I suppose, by turning up the LCD soundsystem soundtrack, it’s Sheridan’s way of saying, hey, we’re really cool about all of this. And, to a point, that’s fair: our host and our chefs couldn't be sweeter. But there is an odd, unresolved tension blanketing every mini course, and every mini lesson. A sense that we’re less of a guest and more of a witness.
I won't be back. The evening left me wanting both less, and more. And the most depressing thing? These people can really cook.
Love this
Bravo, bravo! This is a joyful and wonderfully cynical piece of writing that surely, should be up there with the best. Well done. That's showbiz!