Our food reviewer Mark Heath and his wife Liz tried the heat at home offering from respected Bury St Edmunds pub The One Bull. Here's what they made of it...
Food
We are so close. A few more weeks cooped up inside, and then hopefully we'll be free to go forth and eat food once more at our favourite restaurants and pubs outside, with the beautiful Suffolk sun beating down on our happy faces.
That's the plan anyway - and we're surely due a sizzling summer after all this?
Until then, there's still plenty to enjoy from many Suffolk eateries, who've ramped up creativity levels to 11 in the face of the unprecedented threat to the industry posed by three nationwide lockdowns.
One such offering is the one bull @home (lower case branding, not me losing the caps lock key). The One Bull has long been one of our favourite pubs in Bury, so we were eager to give their takeaway menu a go.
First up, ordering. There's a different menu available every week for Friday and Saturday nights - including vegetarian options - so check the website for what takes your fancy.
Then, just e-mail your order across, plus contact details, and you'll get a call back to confirm and take payment. You can either arrange a collection time or, if you're also buying wine from their Vino Gusto shop, they'll even deliver your whole meal - within a certain radius, of course!
This was the route we went down, taking the wine recommendation and adding a bottle of plonk - more on that later - to our order, making it more of a special meal at home.
Anyway, our food duly arrived in stylish brown paper bags and boxes - delivered to our door - and we were ready to go.
All the food is packed in various well-labelled pots, bags and containers, and all you have to do is follow the instructions provided - they even provide plating advice, if you fancy getting all, well, fancy.
First up was a crispy hen egg, with purple sprouting broccoli, salad cream, parmesan crisp and seed granola.
Now, if you're like me, reading that list, you'd have gone 'egg, yes, broccoli, yes, salad cream, yes, parmesan crisp, yes, granola...what? It's not breakfast!'
Turns out though, that sprinkling the sweet, crunchy granola atop the egg and broccoli really brought the dish alive.
You've got the rich, runny egg yolk, the bite of the broccoli, the cheesy, salty snap of the crisp and the sharpness of the salad cream - and the granola worked superbly with it all.
Liz was terrified that the egg would end up hard-boiled, but it was spot on. All in all, an excellent start.
We washed it all down with the first glass of the aforementioned recommended wine, a 2019 Silex Blanc from Norfolk's Flint Vineyard.
At £19 a bottle it wasn't cheap, but it was worth the extra coin - sweet, floral and refreshing, it made the meal feel a touch more special, with the added smugness of knowing we were supporting another local producer.
Right, onto the main course, and what a belter it was. Individual pork and black pudding wellingtons, potato terrine, sprouts, roasted garlic puree, jus and crackling.
Following the instructions left our pork pink in the middle - I know some folks might be a bit uncomfortable about that, but this was a quality piece of meat, so we were more than happy to dig in.
And dig in we did. The pork was melt in the mouth, contrasted nicely with the savoury goodness of the black pudding which surrounded it, and the pastry was perfect - flaky and moist, with just that touch of crunch and texture as you cut into it.
Elsewhere, the deep, unctuous jus brought flavour in bundles, working well with the puree and veg, while the crackling added crackle to the dish.
A superb treat of a main course - the sort of thing few will either have the skill or patience to cook at home, and yet here we were, eating it at home.
All that was left was dessert - vanilla cheesecake, berry compote, creme fraiche and crumble.
This rounded out the meal nicely, even if it was, for us, the weakest of the courses.
Sweet, creamy cheesecake, with poached rhubarb slices on top, the compote adding sharp notes and the crumble bringing bite. It was tasty, but perhaps a touch too sweet for our tastes - though that's very a personal thing. My old man and his sweet tooth, for example, would have loved it!
And thus ended our one bull @home experience - it felt like we'd had a fine dining experience at Heath Towers, a special touch to an otherwise mundane Saturday night in lockdown.
Drinks
As mentioned, you also get wine recommendations with the menus, courtesy of the One Bull's excellent sommelier, Jake Bennett-Day.
During lockdown, they've set up a wine shop in the pub - Vino Gusto - which is well worth a look online, and in person, when we can do things like that again!
Value
Our meal, three courses for two, was £50. For food of that quality, that is excellent value.
The wine, as discussed, was £19, so definitely on the pricey side - but worth it, in our case.
Highlight
The first two courses were both stand-outs.
I think we'd both go for the main as the pick of the bunch though - a real treat, packed with quality and flavour.
Summary
A fine dining feel in your own home. Stylish, super value and special.
Rating: 8.5/10
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