Yorkshire Post Magazine, Saturday March 29th 2003
Full beam ahead
Does Marcus Lane make the best bread and butter pudding in Yorkshire? The North? Europe?
Certainly he makes the best seductive, layering rectangles of virgin bread with dried fruits, glazing the surface with toffee sauce and adding a blob of vanilla ice cream to make it yet more silky.
The poet Wordsworth, no slouch at the stove, once wrote: "A fine, fine thing is a bread and butter pudding. It marks out a chef who is 100 per cent budding." And who can deny it?
This luxurious construct effortlessly transcended its humdrum roots and title. More encouraging still, the creativity invested in it is emblematic of the general approach at this first-floor bistro.
In too many restaurants, inspiration dips at the pudding stage.
Pastry chefs are, like sommeliers, an endangered species, but restaurateurs who imagine that decent starters and main course will compensate for a mediocre pudding are up the wrong tree, and certainly barking.
At Rafters (study the ceiling, you`ll work it out) there is zest to a dessert menu which includes a mille feuille of mango and pawpaw with cassia sorbet, and a Valrona dark chocolate and Seville orange tart with pistachio ice cream. They even programme an apple crumble, and we know what disasters they can be when they pass from domestic to professional hands.
Under the 1898 Rehabilitation of Crumbles Act, national standards were established for the ratio of fruit topping, and for the proportions of butter, flour and sugar.
Here rules are wilfully flouted as a waiter delivers a slice of cold apple pie with a flaky top and a circle of - how very yesterday - spun sugar. It looks like a dip-stick`s take on a classic, but as you`re about to head to the kitchen to shove it down the chef`s trousers, you try a forkful.
The pastry, crisp and sandy, is exemplary; the apple filling rich and caramelised but not over-sweet. The topping adds pleasing texture. Best of all, there`s some green apple ice cream whose startling intensity sets the whole thing dancing. Even the spun sugar is studded with almonds.
This chef has brains. He also has a restaurant. Marcus Lane arrived here in 1999 via America and Australia to run the kitchen. When owner Jamie Bosworth moved on to a new venture on Ecclesall Road last autumn, he took over the business.
The upstairs room - hexagonal in shape, informal-upmarket in tone - holds about 40. The only dissonant notes are sounded by the loudspeaker; the music is not merely intrusive but naff.
Although menu choice is restricted to six items at each stage, Lane sets himself a challenge with dishes that don`t shirk complexity.
Tatin of baked goats cheese, slow roasted garlic tomatoes, Kalamata tapenade, cress, endive and asparagus is, foe example, one dish, not three. It was a first rate-starter featuring fine ingredients, each offering some perspective on the whole.
Similarly a salad of wild rocket, crisp cabbage, quail eggs and candied aubergine with a honey orange sesame sauce might have been a dog`s dinner in less discriminating hands. Its freshness and clarity spoke further of thoughtful composition.
Other starters seek global inspiration: roast belly pork with staranise, soy and ginger with wok-fried bok choy; tagine of fried mullet and couscous with chorizo while mains tend more to the classical.
Char grilled beef is partnered with sauce choron; loin of pork with a sauce of puy lentils, mustard seeds and Madeira. Roasted Whitby cod, however, defies easy category. It carries a pistachio and herb crust and comes with a red wine butter sauce and roast sweet peppers filled with, ah yes, Stornoway black pudding.
The pork loin was from an aristocratic pig, the sauce subtle and considering its components refreshingly light. Its only error was the mousseline of mushrooms where the cream had been over worked, turning what should have been a light and delicate thing into the consistency of a tennis ball.
The - ready for this? - "rosemary roasted cannon of Derbyshire lamb rolled in herbs with a tart of puree parsnip and spring vegetables with sherry vinegar jus" was more of a puzzle.
Was it new season lamb? The young women taking the order said so. In that case it was big for its age and, although cooked pink, it showed remarkable maturity of colour and flavour. All that gambolling, no doubt. The sherry sauce was backed by a sound stock.
Finally, vegetables. Like pudding, too many kitchens disdain our greens and roots. Dishes at Rafters are busy enough without them, yet the chefs trouble to send out immaculate examples. Lovely green beans: cauliflower and broccoli cooked to retain texture, mint-boiled new potatoes, terrific carrots.
Service, by a trio of young women, matches in care and attitude the enthusiasm of the whole enterprise.
The wine list doesn`t loiter for long below £13, but it grows resourceful above that with representation from respectable producers. It contains a few halves, but a few more - and more wines by the glass - would be useful.
Sheffield as a dining city was once a poor relation to Leeds. How things have changed. It`s now an exciting destination for food and this little place stands as a beacon of what can be done with a little vision and great flair.Try the home made bread, you`ll see what I mean.
Rafters 220, Oakbrook Road, Nethergreen, Sheffield S11 7ED. 0114 230 4819
