Röski
Liverpool, Merseyside
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In modestly sized premises on the northern side of the Georgian quarter, Anton Piotrowski's Röski is one of Liverpool's premier venues for exciting contemporary food. It manages both to push many populist food buttons, and also confer the gleam of burnished professionalism on their various presentations. The small room is largely unadorned, but for the neutral-hued wall padding, and it's run by staff who are flawlessly well versed in the kitchen's output – as well as the drinks that optionally accompany the multi-course tasters. There's a condensed version at lunch, essentially four courses but lacking nothing in culinary dazzlement. An early-autumn repertoire began with a fried Burford Brown egg concealed under a freightload of paprika-fired sobrasada, green onion and wafers of black truffle – a dish redolent of breakfast in a rocking-good hotel in the Balearics. Following that, a great, hulking scallop drops in from Orkney, topped with sesame toast and fennel jam, anointed with an elysian Thai-seasoned broth to elicit encores (in fact, the pan is left on the table for finishing up as soup). A full-sized main dish might be truffle-stuffed breast of guinea fowl with charred corn, roasted celeriac, pak choi and velveteen butternut squash purée, before a performance dessert dish of raspberries, meringue and rhubarb ice cream arrives, its coulis already crepitating with popping candy that detonates thrillingly all over the immaculate table linen. The drinks pairing is bold and imaginative, the young sommelier in full mastery of the art of combining, with skin-contact Chilean Muscat and Ata Rangi's oak-powered Martinborough Pinot Noir among the peaks at our visit. In context, and for the sheer quality on offer, the whole deal looks like exemplary value.
