A meal with eel appeal

Smoked eel with blood orange

THERE’S a special bond between chef and diner when you’ve eaten his brains and so there is between John Parsons and me. Not that I’ve eaten his but the sheep’s brains he cooked for one of his legendary offal* evenings. They were crisp on the outside and creamy inside, if you’re interested.

So the news that he had left his berth at the Druid Inn, Birchover, for the inner city Beer Engine on Sheffield’s Cemetery Road, tucked in just behind Waitrose, got me scurrying down to try his new menu.

I’m ashamed to say I had not recently visited the Beer Engine, run by Tom Harrington (who opened on April 2, 2015, a day late because he thought people might suspect an April Fool) but it’s a delightful little pub. There are three rooms, two with carpets, the main bar with a scrubbed wooden floor, and it feels very welcoming. When the sun is shining there’s a beer garden cum smoking area.“People say it’s got good vibes,” says Tom and he could be right.

There are no one armed bandits, pool tables, slot machines or a telly but there is a bookshelf or two if you’re stuck for something to do. I should imagine that’s still many people’s idea of a proper pub.

I first came across John’s cooking at the predominantly fishy Terrace at the Millstone, in Hathersage, then followed him to Food and Fine Wine on Ecclesall Road, Fancy and the Druid.

People have praised the Beer Engine tapas in the past but John and Tom have upped the ante somewhat with more complex ‘small plates’ which you can match with the beer, lager, cider or wines on offer. With John, a thoughtful chef, expect the dishes to vary between the interesting to the downright exciting. As is the smoked eel with blood orange (£6), a favourite when he’s doing food and wine tastings, but one I hadn’t previously encountered. It’s sensational.

Artichokes any way you want!

The eel, delightfully smoky and crispy at the edges, rests on a bed of firm, toothsome lentils. There’s a cylinder of salsify, a vegetable you don’t always encounter, and the dish is garnished with salsify crisps. The eel and orange is a match made in heaven because you’ve got smoke and sweetness mingled with earthiness on your palate. “I can only do it for two months a year when the oranges are in season,” he says.

You may have met Tom at the Sheaf View, Blake or Hilsborough Hotels. Prior to the Beer Engine he worked for Thornbridge Brewery. Way back when he helped out at the old Beer Engine in his youth. Now he has resumed a partnership with John they had at a restaurant they worked at in exclusive Cheshire. Finding that John was ‘resting’ he offered him a month’s mutual trial on Cemetery Road.

It looks like it’s paying off. Food sales are on the up. For me, the second dish was a toss up between pig’s cheek and black pudding with ham, cabbage and pork liquor or pollock and squid with celeriac, kale, buckwheat, lemon and squid ink (this is one of those menus which list every ingredient) but in the end I had neither. Instead, for a fiver, I had a dish which could be listed as artichoke anyway you want and some ways you’ve never thought of.

The BeerEngine’s bar

The dish uses Jerusalem and globe artichokes, as a puree, roasted, crisps and as hearts, with the earthiness and sweetness riff replayed, this time with roast figs doing the honours. There was something labelled ‘tobacco’ which I didn’t quite register. It didn’t have the same knockout appeal as the eel but intrigued.

“I don’t want this to be my idea of a good pub but customers’ ideas,” explains Tom, who promises a series of beer and food tasting evenings. Mine, with a half of very decent Neepsend Blonde, was an impromptu mini lunch tasting.

“The menu won’t stay the same, it will keep changing,” says John. The motto in this kitchen is Everything fresh, cooked ‘til it’s gone. So get there before the Blood Orange season ends! For offal lovers, duck hearts are promised shortly.

The Beer Engine is at 17 Cemetery Road, Sheffield S11 8FJ. Tel 0114 272 1356. Web: http://www.beerenginesheffield.com Food served Mon – Thu 12–3pm and 5pm–8pm, Fri – Sat: 12pm–8pm, Sun: 12pm–5pm

John Parsons and Tom Harrington in the Beer Engine kitchen

* John’s adventures in offal http://wp.me/p5wFIX-2Q and here’s what happens to the humble sausage roll when it gets the Parsons’ treatment http://wp.me/p5wFIX-dh

Yankees – no longer Doodle Dandy

Yankees closed just before Christmas

(See Stop Press below: Yankees may become the road’s first Chinese eaterie for years)

IT only slowly dawned on me that Yankees, the burger place on Ecclesall Road, Sheffield, had closed down just before Christmas, after 37 years. That’s pretty good going in a business where the average life expectancy is three years. But many will be sad to see it go.

A sign on the door said they were closed for refurbishment but that’s the one thing you don’t do on the run up to Christmas! Now there’s a sign saying the place is for let.

I’d eaten there professionally and off duty over the years but hadn’t been in for quite some time. Well, that’s not entirely true. Tempted in by a new pulled pork and smoked ribs menu I found a table only to be told it wasn’t on that night – despite the banners on the railings outside promising otherwise. So, as I had a review to do, I upped and left.

Despite its age Yankees wasn’t the first American style burger restaurant in Sheffield. That honour went to Uncle Sam’s, further up the road towards town, opened by Ron Barton on July 4, 1971. It was quite a sensation at the time but it wasn’t until the other end of the decade that brothers Peter and Michael Freeman opened Yankees on the corner with Thompson Road in May, 1979.

Uncle Sam’s, still alive and kicking,  was the one with the overhead railway, Yankee’s the place with that cheeky poster of that girl tennis player with the bare bum. Both could tell tales of families where the parents had first eaten there as students and brought their own kids back.

I have no idea why Yankees closed but there is a lot of competition about these days. Chances are if a new place opens it’s either burgers or pizza, which is pretty depressing if you like your food and want a choice.

But Yankees helped to blaze a trail. Surprising as it might seem now, back then burgers, unless you had that uniquely British pattie at a Wimpy Bar, were rare. What Uncle Sam’s and Yankees were offering were bigger, tastier and (so it seemed) more American. It was no accident both were on Ecclesall Road, the city’s most upmarket street.

Then – don ‘t laugh – we called Ecclesall Road the ‘Bond Street of the North’ because there were so many boutiques. Now they have become takeaways and restaurants so, again, the two places were ahead of the curve.

STOP PRESS: The premises appear to have been sold (November, 2018) for a reported £525,000 and shopfitters have been busy. The word is that the place has been bought by a Hong Kong businessman (who also owns property at Banner Cross) and a Chinese or other oriental restaurant will open in the New Year. If so, it would be the first Chinese restaurant on Ecclesall Road for very many years, if not the first. Does anyone know differently?

That poster – it was Uncle Sam’s with the overhead railway

Dinner with Santa

Crabby Scotch egg at the Rising Sun

The candle is flickering on the table at the Rising Sun, Nether Green. The weatherman has warned of snow. And over the speakers comes Hark The Angels. Bliss. Hang on a minute! Isn’t it the first day of spring? Abbeydale Brewery’s Moonshine bitter must be pretty strong to lose me nine months . . .

Don’t blame the beer, blame Spotify. Restaurant manager Faith Nicholson dived behind the bar to select another track but the sound system seemed to go along all evening with Wizzard in wishing it could be Christmas every day. It raised a smile.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Moonshine, the Abbeydale’s flagship beer, but I’ve never been to the Rising Sun, the brewery tap. It had a makeover last year and the moment you walk into the big, comfy bar with its gleaming row of a dozen hand pumps you think ‘nice place, nice people, nice beer.’ Or as Google puts it: ‘Convivial boozer run by a local microbrewery.’

Along with the makeover went a revamp of the food, which I gather hadn’t risen much above the level of snacks. But when some patrons looked at the newly minted menu they spluttered into their beer. “Rabbit croquettes?” shrieked one as if they were the mark of Satan. “It’s situated in the middle of Nether Green, not the middle of Baslow,” he complained on TripAdvisor. Pie and peas or bangers and mash yes but was it all becoming a bit too gastro?

While some were protesting ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ others were moaning that eaters were taking tables from drinkers. Diners were unhappy sitting next to dogs licking their rear ends. The Rising Sun is dog friendly but there are limits.

There seems to have been a happy compromise. The pub had an unloved Tap Room which, with a help of some pots of Farrow & Ball pigeon blue, has been turned into the prosaically named 42-cover Dining Room where dogs do not go. There’s a new menu which caters for all and we had been invited as guests to try it out.

It looked pretty good to us. There’s fish and chips, pie, sausage and burgers but, whisper it softly, there’s also turbot: posh fish at a not so posh £15.95. The Rising Sun does well for fish as there’s also stonebass, that lurker of wrecks, with Lyonnaise potatoes, as well cod with an olive and bean cassoulet for starters.

I began with a spiced crab Scotch egg (£6.50) which I think is a dish from Galton Blakiston of Michelin-starred Morston Hall in Norfolk (good food, sniffy service) which I loved, the yolk runny, plenty of crabmeat, the chilli slowly arriving on the palate. My wife had a special, a lively salad of crisp squid, crayfish, loads of peashoots and most of the other things listed on the menu.

My main was braised beef cheek (£12.95), this decade’s cheffy answer to braised lamb shank. It could have been hotter but it was smashing: tasty, tender and juicy on a slick of a horseradish mash with little aniseedy notes which may have come from ‘textures of shallots.’ Now when I see that word on the menu I want to reach for a rolling pin to give the chef a good whacking, if only to stop the kitchen ‘anointing’ its salads or ‘enhancing’ sauces in future.

The Rising Sun’s turbot

But that would be unkind to joint head chef Ashley Bagshaw and chef de partie Rose Heggie because the cooking is light and bright. That turbot, from Mann’s of Sharrow Vale, wasn’t a big piece (it’s a luxury fish) but it was precisely cooked with lots of flavour and served on a bed of lettuce, peas, bacon and mushrooms, very French.

Service from Faith, who started 15 years ago as glass collector at the brewery’s other pub, the Devonshire Cat, was pleasant and swift although probably not as speedy as that day in May, 1891, when 50 members of the Engineers Volunteers marched up to Ranmoor Church on parade and rematerialised in the yard of the Rising Sun, where pints were handed through a window. Then landlord John Guest Taylor was fined £2 for serving out of hours. I wonder what those Tommy Atkins’ would have thought of rabbit croquettes?

They’d have liked the desserts. Co-head chef Luke Hanson  has built up a reputation for them. A whisky flavoured chocolate truffle with raspberry sorbet packed a high-octane cocoa punch while I was entranced by the firm, sponge-textured ‘custard cake’ in my rhubarb and custard ensemble. Both cost £5.95.

So there you have it. Good beer, good food (and more good wines promised when the wine list is updated by Starmore Boss of Sharrow Vale), good service and a good atmosphere. Not too sure about the music, though. We left shortly after the sound system played Santa Claus is Coming to Town.

“I’ll have to make a play list,” said Faith.

Rising Sun: 471 Fulwood Road, Sheffield S10 3QA. Tel: 0114 230 3855. Web www.risingsunsheffield.co.uk

Rhubarb and custard