The Pantry X White Pheasant collaboration

One of Newmarket’s favourites, The Pantry, recently teamed up with The White Pheasant, in nearby Fordham, to host a fantastic collaboration dinner. This is my take on the evening.

Collaboration events are the chance for different ideas to come together. Sometimes they work, other times they come across as trying too hard. When Vince and Calvin came up with the menu for the collaboration between The Pantry and The White Pheasant, they nailed it.

A Monday evening, in the middle of the month seems a bold time to stage something like this. And yet, it worked. In fact, it’s a meal that will live long in the memory. It was outstanding.

Now I could just end it there. I’ve just told you how good it was. It’s an open and shut case. I’d do it again.

Snacks

The snacks presented as the first dishes were a chance for the chefs to show off two dishes each. My favourite here was the buttermilk fried oyster with kimchi slaw. Loved that. The brawn fritter was also good. The meat from a pig’s head left to slow cook for a few hours, pulled apart and then compressed together to make a brawn loaf which was then cubed up for the dish.

The Pantry
Snapped. Getting an Instagram worthy image of the buttermilk fried oyster & kimchi slaw. Image: Miss Marvellous Photography

The Main Events

On to the menu proper and the first dish sent out was a shoulder pork bon-bon with burnt apple and accompanied by a cider cream. Anyone who knows anything about food will tell you that pork and apples are the perfect marriage of flavours.

What followed was a fantastic piece of sea trout with a smoked spinach puree and herb gnocchi. This was wonderful and had I not been driving would definitely have been accompanied by a glass of white wine. Sadly I’d reached my quota of a single gin and tonic earlier in the evening.

The main course for evening was beef short rib which was complimented by an oxtail and potato terrine, parsley puree and calcots. I had to ask what the last part of the description was. Turns out calcots are a type of onion and they’ve got a sweeter taste to them. They were great with the beef. The beef was melt in your mouth stuff. Slow cooked to perfection. Forget the knife, the fork simply sliced through the tender meat.

 

Afters

By the time dessert arrived there was hardly any space left for it. But it was necessary to give it a try. It always is. Pineapple and rum tarte tatin  with stem ginger ice-cream. Amazing.

The Pantry do these types of events often with their wine dinners also proving really popular as well as their regular Pudding Night. If ever you’re after somewhere for dinner in Newmarket go here.

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The Pantry
Vince Woolley and Calvin Holland work their magic behind the pass at The Pantry X White Pheastant collaboration. Image: Miss Marvellous Photography

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