Visit: 22 January 2023, dinner for two
Price: **
Website: https://www.upstairs.restaurant/
Award: 1 Michelin Star, 3 AA Rosettes
The Review:
Tom Shepherd’s restaurant Upstairs was awarded its first Michelin star in the Michelin Guide Great Britain and Ireland 2022, and it is the first and only Michelin starred restaurant in Staffordshire. I have visited on a number of previous occasions, and you can see my reviews and an introduction to the restaurant here:
The cost of the 7-course tasting menu is £115 per head, which is very good value for food of this quality and with such excellent service. There are also optional wine pairings at £75 or £125 per head, and a wine list if you prefer to choose your own.
We started with canapes of a tostada (deep fried tortilla) of Herefordshire beef tartare with Dijon mustard dressing, English wasabi (from Dorset) and edamame puree (immature soybeans in the pod); a pecorino sablée with Tunworth cheese, onion gel, and fresh thyme; a warm polenta fritter with truffle mayonnaise, tapioca crackers, mushroom powder and a dried herb powder; and finally, a beetroot croustade with smoked goats cheese mousse, blackberry ketchup, and smoked dehydrated beef heart grated on top. All of these were very tasty.
The bread course was a Parker house roll with cultured butters, a Marmite butter and a salted butter, and wild boar charcuterie. The bread was well made and the Marmite butter as good as ever.
Next was the Orkney scallop, with peanut satay sauce, radish, roasted sesame and sunflower seeds, and coriander oil. The scallop was naturally sweet and was cooked perfectly. This was a great combination of tastes and textures.
The Cornish stone bass was served with black garlic ketchup, shavings of winter truffle, mushrooms, mussels, and an excellent, rich champagne velouté. This was a fabulous dish. The fish was precisely cooked, and the velouté was sensational. For me, this was my favourite course of the night.
There was a choice of main courses. I chose the roasted wild halibut with native roasted lobster, served with a lobster and cabbage roll, crispy kale, a kale and broccoli puree, fennel jam, a Hollandaise sauce made from the lobster shells, and chervil. This was superb. The halibut and lobster were perfectly cooked, with great flavours complimented by the rich Hollandaise sauce. The other main course choice was loin of fallow deer, served with a venison pork sausage, a venison tartare, smoked mayonnaise, baby beetroot, a beetroot and blackberry ketchup, a celeriac puree with celeriac ash, and a celeriac terrine with black pudding topped off with pumpkin seeds.
The transition course was a palate cleanser moving you from the savoury to sweet courses. This was a very enjoyable take on Thai green curry, with a rice pudding base enriched with coconut, fresh mango and mango sorbet, a sweet and spicy Thai style foam, topped with puffed wild rice and fresh coriander.
There was a choice of desserts. I chose the 72% Araguani dark chocolate mousse with a caramel and pecan filling, a caramel namelaka (a velvety, slightly firm style of ganache) on top, Pedro Ximenez gel, Horlicks ice cream, and a hot chocolate and Horlicks crisp. Pedro Ximenez is an intensely sweet, dark, Spanish dessert sherry and the gel in this dessert complimented the chocolate and namelaka perfectly.
The other dessert was “No Ordinary School Boy” which was Tom’s dessert entry in The Great British Menu 2023. It was given four 10s by the judges, the only dish to receive the full 40 points in this series. The dessert is a mock banana, made from a banana mousse, with chocolate and popping candy inside, and then dipped in chocolate to give it a crisp outer coating. This was served with a separate bowl of rum soaked banana sponge, banana ice cream drizzled with caramel, on a sweet granola.
The service was superb and the staff were friendly and extremely knowledgeable. Upstairs goes from strength to strength, and Tom is on his journey to a second Michelin star. The success and the popularity of the restaurant mean that it’s very difficult to get a table, but I recommend persevering as it’s really very good!
The Menus:
