Osip
Bruton, Somerset
It may be pitched in the middle of a Somerset market town, but everything about this remarkable ‘micro’ restaurant speaks of a fondly imagined bolthole deep in the countryside. The bijou dining room creates its own cool vibe with pale handmade Moroccan tiles, dramatic artwork and posies of dried flowers adding to the mood of civilised calm, while much of the produce is grown on two plots managed by chef Merlin Labron-Johnson and his team. The farm-to-table ethos is writ large here and readers have been quick to applaud the focus on vegetables, be they roots pulled from the earth or leaves plucked from the allotment. The chef’s vision is astonishing as he applies consummate technical finesse to the humblest of raw materials. Consider the beetroot: it might appear as a tartlet with ‘chewy beets’ and kosho or be fashioned into a taco with a savoury mole and smoked crème fraîche. Or how about a single, perfectly cooked stem of asparagus stippled with droplets of intensely rich cured egg yolk and just a hint of elderflower? Veg-based snacks open proceedings, while bread might be crusty treacle and ale sourdough with delectable hay-smoked butter. Something soupy generally follows, say a bowl of bright green nettle broth and frothy smoked whey with little flavour bombs of Parmesan and potato. Meat or fish? They play a minor role: sweet morsels of local trout brilliantly offset by bone jelly and radishes or fallow deer (‘culled by Matt the hunter’), the meat cured in spices, cooked in a bath of fat overnight, then barbecued and served with a sauce of last year’s fermented blackcurrants. Everything is of the highest order, fabulous to savour and equally fabulous to look at, with not a bite out of place – even Labron-Johnson’s egg custard tart is a marvel to behold. If you don’t opt for the surprisingly reasonable wine flights, there’s a short list of low-intervention bottles from small producers, plus an impressive array of local ciders. Labron-Johnson’s dream has always been to run an English ‘auberge’ and he is moving to a remote location in the Somerset countryside in 2024, where he will open his new project complete with guest rooms and a kitchen garden. Watch for news of his progress.
