Ember Yard
BASTA PASTA
My go to restaurant choice in London is mostly Italian. It gives me no pleasure to say this but Birmingham has no Italian restaurant that I’d recommend. They’re certainly not all bad but there’s not one that strays away from the identikit tourist menus you’ll find in Florence, Venice or Rome. Of course there are many of these in London too but also plenty that are every bit as good as my favourites in Italy.
Italian restaurants hold an even stronger hand if you’ve a vegetarian in the mix, as there’ll usually be some decent pasta options. But our daughter has headed off to university with more pasta recipes than textbooks. It’s our first meet up since dropping her off a few weeks ago and the downside of this is it makes my list of the next five restaurants—all Italian—completely redundant. My online trawl eventually nets Ember Yard, with mostly small plates inspired by the ‘wood fired grills of Spain and Italy.’ I send her a link to the menu and get an almost instant reply of ‘YUM! x’.
Walking in it’s an elegant room, fully on-trend with a mix of classy comfort and ‘industrial’ with gunmetal grey, exposed girders, parquet floor, bare filament bulbs, antique-style copper pendants and an open kitchen.
Ember Yard - ground floor
We order a bottle of Torre del Falasco Valpolicella before agreeing on what appears to be a too good to be true lunch deal at £25 per person, with a choice of 3 tapas, finocchiona, padrón peppers plus a glass of wine, to which we add a flatbread.
Before long we’re pushing things around the table to make way for the plates arriving in waves from the kitcken. First up is a creamy burrata oozing into gazpacho, laden with sweet, slow roasted cherry tomatoes and shrouded in grated truffle manchego.
Burrata, gazpacho, marinated tomatoes and truffle manchego
Baby courgettes are perfectly al dente, coated in a tempura batter but the real magic lies in the flowers, full of soft, piquant and lemony Monte Enebro goats cheese with a generous drizzle of blossom honey amplifying the joy. Ordering two of these is undoubtedly one of the best decisions I’ve made all year.
Courgette flowers with Monte Enebro cheese and blossom honey (double portion)
The flatbread with a sheer of black garlic butter arrives bringing with it the gorgeous smell of the wood fired grill. It’s already the kind of start that has us all smiling and me confident about the decision to come here.
Chargrilled flatbread with black garlic butter
Meaty prawns bring with them more wood fire smokiness, an avocado puree with sass and crunch from fermented cucumber, radish and croutons.
Chargrilled prawns, fermented cucumber, avocado and radish
Five slices of finocchiona salami and small bowl of padrón peppers prove to be little more than stocking filler, although I do land one with searing heat that always feels like a raffle win.
Padrón peppers
As croquetas go there’s not much criticism you can level at these and I’ve been at plenty of places where these would’ve been the star of the show, but on a table bursting with so many wonderful textures and flavours—even with jamón, leek and manchego in the mix—they’re struggling to make much impression; with the bravas more cowardly than brave.
Jamón, leek & manchego croquetas with bravas sauce & aioli
The Ibérico presa is perfectly cooked medium rare and almost melt in the mouth. It’s everything you’d expect from this most glorious of cuts from the most glorious of pigs—the Pata Negra. There’s added joy from a rich jus and then WamBamPow! The generous dots of whipped jamón butter max the pork dial up to volume 11. Right now I’m deliberating refusing to eat any other type of butter ever again.
Ibérico presa with jamón butter
Then a vegetarian dish— barbecued hispi cabbage—momentarily challenges my carnivorous view that any plate without meat is incomplete. Maybe it’s just the seduction of more wood smoke enveloping its subtle crunch with its supporting cast of whipped goats cheese, the crunch of smoked almonds and the zing of the salsa verde. By now we’re all purring and me quite smug about the decision to come here.
Barbecued hispi cabbage, whipped caprino, salsa verde and smoked almonds
There’s more vegetarian delight with that already dream combination of sheep ricotta and figs with added crunch, tang and sweetness from a pickled walnut dressing and honeycomb.
Sheep ricotta, figs, pickled walnut dressing and honeycomb
The only disappointment lands last; the squid is cooked perfectly but it’s heavily seasoned and given the squid ink in the hummus as well as the samphire, it’s saltiness is overdone, leaving far too much work for the sharpness of the grapefruit to cut through.
Barbecued squid, squid ink hummus, grapefruit and samphire
It’s chucking down outside and we’re ill equipped for rain that wasn’t in any forecast I checked; it at least provides the silver lining of lingering over another glass of wine—pushing us all towards our full weekly alcohol units quota in a single lunchtime.
All that booze at least washes away any resistance to the temptations offered by the dessert list, although we demonstrate admirable restraint in only selecting just the one—the Basque cheesecake—and three spoons. It’s every bit as good as what’s come before it, the perfect side of sweet with caramelised crust in complete harmony with raspberry three ways—fresh, freeze-dried and a sweet and tart sorbet.
Basque cheesecake with raspberry sorbet
Despite what’s been an absolute bargain lunch deal, with a lot of wine, large sparkling water and three double espressos, we’ve managed to rack up a bill of £156 including tip, but it’s been worth every penny.
We’ve found a new direction for our meet ups that doesn’t involve pasta, whilst still with one foot firmly planted in Italy, especially with the vegetarian options. With three other restaurants in the Salt Yard group that at least gives me a fresh list to tick off.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Ember Yard, 60 Berwick Street, Soho, London W1F 8SU
