Wined, dined and rested.

Who’d have thought that we would find innovative and delicious – yet still unpretentious – food so close to home?!

For those who don’t know Wells, it’s England’s smallest cathedral city and is in Somerset not far from Bath. Its cathedral is beautifully photogenic, especially on the inside, but on this occasion it was a rainy spring evening and we had to kill a couple of hours before going home. We know many of the restaurants in Wells but none of them felt like somewhere we wanted to go when …. out of the dark, rather blustery and rainy night shone the lights of a restaurant new to us, right in the middle of town.

The blackboard outside intrigued us – “Veg forward – sharing plates”. Sharing plates we know (and love), but wow “veg forward” …… my brain immediately turned that into a rabble-rousing war cry, and my mind’s eye saw a flash of brave General Parsnip rallying courageous ranks of root vegetables to do or die. Wrenched from my vision by horizontal rain, of course we headed straight in.

Throwing the door open and dripping our way across the threshold, any idea of feeling sorry for ourselves pinged away like a drop of water on a hot plate as we were greeted by a broadly smiling lady who ushered us in sympathetically and guided us to a table, simultaneously magicking a menu and a bottle of water while never stopping smiling and making welcoming comments. Already we were sold – what a fabulous atmosphere.

The décor is modern minimalist with an industrial touch, which works better in situ than it sounds in writing. Perhaps we were influenced by our warm welcome, and the fact that we were no longer being rained on, but we felt at home.

Another lovely waitress explained to us the system, advising us to order 2 or maybe 3 ‘small plates’ each – this suits us fine, it’s a delightfully sociable way of eating. Julia then discovered the astonishingly comprehensive sherry list – 5 different ones from dry to sweet – and must have raved so loudly about this, that the gentleman in charge of wine came over, saying he’d heard us talking about the sherry and thought we might like to have a taste of this one, whereupon he handed us two glasses with a little of a very delicious Amontillado. The grape was Palomino, as you would expect, but produced by an exciting Anglo-Spanish team in Jerez, going by the name of Diatomists and who emphasise the importance of the soil in which the vines are grown and the single-celled algae that give it character.  (Sorry, I’m a linguist – I needed to understand that word….)    

So getting back to the gentleman who gave us the Amontillado to taste – gosh, this place is just detail upon detail of friendliness and focus.

This all promised well; what was the food going to be like?

You order your selection of dishes and they arrive in whatever order the kitchen prepares them in. Our first choice to arrive was wild mushroom skewers in peanut sauce and two scallops in truffle butter.

Wow. They looked amazing and they tasted superb. The scallops were perfectly, melt-in-the-mouth cooked and were matched by exactly the right shade of truffle in the creamy butter, and the mushrooms as a kind of mini satay were a revelation, with the satay sauce zinging not just with peanuts but with citrus notes, tomatoey background and just enough spice.

Next to arrive was a plate with Jerusalem artichoke, dolcelatte, radicchio, hazelnut and apple, and another with confit leeks, ajoblanco, golden raisins and  almond. Frankly I think the list of ingredients speaks for itself; it isn’t often that I think when I’m eating out “Wow, who thought of putting THOSE together in this way? This really works!”, but on this night I had that thought several times, including with both these dishes.

We weren’t going to have a pudding because our taste buds had been given such an outing, but in the end couldn’t resist the rhubarb cheesecake – and we were right. It was light, delicious and topped with the tenderest baby rhubarb…

We floated out of Root on a cloud of replete joy, telling each other of all the other people we needed to bring here.  In fact, in the few weeks after this first visit we came back twice with different people, and we’re due to take other friends again shortly.  The quality of the food and of the welcome has remained high.

Me, I’m right behind General Parsnip and his courageous vegetables….. “Veg forward, boys!”