Mayfair's Umu celebrates perfection in every element

Obsession is a necessity for Michelin-starred chefs. Nobody survives in a gruelling industry that robs you of your social life, rises above fierce competition and delivers perfection night after night without a bit of mania over what they do. In my reading about Japanese culture in advance of our trip later this year, I've seen something similar. The gardeners who groom every leaf on a tree to a painterly perfection, the generations of swordsmiths who hand down and hone their skills to create the ideal samurai blade, the calligraphers who strive for years to get a character just right ... there's plenty of obsession on display.

I began to suspect that fine dining and Japanese food would be an eminently logical match. An evening at Mayfair's Umu validates that suspicion.

Head Chef Yoshinori Ishii does more than deliver exceptional food. He matches a range of pottery (some of which he's designed) and lacquerware to the food and its position in the parade of dishes to make a visual statement. His biography tells us he's also a keen calligrapher, so no surprise that one of the courses is served on top of a poem, written in bold calligraphy by Yoshinori, illustrated by his own drawings. If that sashimi tastes fresher than any you've ever tasted, thank his love of fishing in the traditional Japanese style. Not only has he found his own Cornish suppliers; he's taught them the art of ikejime ... dispatching a fish quickly with a needle into the nervous system, curtailing the fright and struggle that releases meat-toughening hormones and acids. When that fish comes to you as a hand roll, it's presented by a Yoshinori-designed wire arm, symbolically from his touch direct to yours.

Umu specialises in kaiseki, the highly-ritualised, multi-course gourmet tradition of Kyoto. The biggest splurge during our upcoming trip involves an exclusive ryokan (inn) in the hills above the ancient capital where our courses will be brought to our rush-matted, paper-screen-walled room by our kimono-clad hosts. Before diving in at the deep end in a language we don't understand, I thought it made sense to get familiar with kaiseki on home turf. It was also my husband's birthday; a two-Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant was suitably celebratory. (And the price of a full kaiseki meal definitely needs to be reserved for a special occasion.)

Our eight course (but nine dish; one course had two parts) celebration started with "mukozuke." From what my post-meal research tells me, this is the word for a small, intriguing snack served in or on an interesting piece of pottery, often with a rough but beautiful finish and some kind of artful deformity. Here, a battleship grey bowl with a slightly pitted surface and a slightly shiny glaze would have been a perfect circle had the potter not bent one side in, forming a shape like an apostrophe. It was a quirky and beautiful piece that demanded inspection before you ever paid attention to the food. Inside was a lovely melange of gently-cured sea trout, wafer thin slices of turnip, pickles and caviar. Two generous bites or four dainty ones, it was an elegant foreshadowing of all to come.

"Nimonowan" is a simmered dish or soup cup, here titled "Ocean Breeze" and served in an exquisite lacquer bowl with lid that you remove to create your own little tabletop drama. Inside, a layered disc of Cornish lobster, abalone and nori seaweed sat in a broth so clear it almost disappeared. Later, we both agreed that the menu probably had one course more than it really needed, and this is the dish my husband would cut. He's never been a fan of lobster and thought the example here was slightly overcooked and too chewy. (Which is what he almost always says about any lobster.) I suspect the chewiness was the abalone. Whatever the truth, it was still one of the most exquisite interpretations of soup I've ever had and very tasty.

The next course was the double dish. "Tsukuri" is the set up to executing a Judo throw. One assumes that implies a partnership with the course to come, or maybe the first plate set up the second, but nobody told us. My only real complaint with Umu was that the serving staff (entirely European, heavy on Italians) doesn't really give you much information on your food beyond the basics, even though they knew we were interested. Many Michelin-starred places will go into detail about their supply chain, the inspiration behind the dish or even how you're supposed to eat something. We could have used more of that in this delightful, but very alien, environment. It seems that's simply not their style.

Tsukuri started with slices of raw turbot. People often claim "you can read through it" when describing  how thinly they've sliced something. Yoshinori plays with that idea by serving the slices on top of a poem he's written about the joy of food. Unless you can actually read Japanese characters, you can't test the "read through" claim completely, but it's a fun touch. Delicious as the turbot was, the highlight here was my first taste of real wasabi. The stuff you get in almost all sushi restaurants is an industrially-produced approximation made from horseradish, mustard and food colouring. Real wasabi is a root, notoriously difficult to grow, that releases a piquant kick when grated that fades within minutes. Obviously, most restaurants don't want to dabble with an ingredient with no shelf life after preparation, even if it doesn't cost £22 for a thumb-sized piece. The taste of the real thing, grated into a paste by moving in a circle on a piece of shark skin, is a mind-blowing blend of sweet and hot.

The sauces and the wasabi stayed around for part two: sashimi. This is probably the ultimate expression of the idea that the best ingredients don't need much done to them. Five pieces of top quality fish, incredibly fresh, taken from the best part of the fillet. I've had a lot of great sushi in my life, but the only time I've come close to this freshness was when we tried slivers of the fish we'd just caught off Puerto Rico before we left the boat. When fish is this fresh, it's almost a crime to cook it. And every kind tasted significantly different from the other. (Something, let's face it, you don't really get at Itsu.) The most fascinating morsels here were the back and belly tuna, side by side. Belly is a rare delicacy, and I've had it before ... but never this rich or pungent. We're talking the foie gras of the piscine world here. Honestly, the flavour was too much for me; I could have happily substituted another bite of back, but am glad I tried it.

Next came my dish of the day. "Agemono" means deep fried food in Japanese, and I suspect we were into the comfort food section of the menu. The description was sweetcorn three ways. I am from a corn state. I have an annual moan about the poor quality of the corn in the UK while I indulge in memories of buying sacks full fresh ears from the fields down the road from my childhood home and eating them before they'd been off the stalks for four hours. As glorious as those Missouri memories are, they couldn't touch the expressions of that noble vegetable here. There was a kernel-stuffed spring roll, a quarter of a grilled cob and a croquette I can only describe as deep fried creamed corn. We may have been in a Japanese restaurant, but it's as if the chef had distilled the essence of the best of an American midwestern summer onto a plate. I almost wept with joy. And if that wasn't enough, you unrolled the husk to find a line of perfectly popped and seasoned corn. Four ways! And each perfect.

"Hiyashimono" followed: smoked and cured mackerel with somen noodles and Japanese ginger. I couldn't find a translation for this title, but this was my husband's favourite dish. I suspect he was experiencing a similar cross-cultural childhood flashback, given how essential mackerel is to Danish cuisine. It is, however, the dish I would cut. Not that I didn't like it: the mash-up of sashimi and cold noodle salad would be a huge hit with me for a summer lunch. But at this point I'd reached satisfaction point on the raw fish and didn't need more.

"Yakimono" means grilled or pan fried and brought us out of the ocean for the first and only land-based meat dish: lamb two ways, with accompanying sweetbreads. Regular readers will know I'm not keen on lamb or offal, though I'll soldier through anything on a chef's tasting menu. (Which is how I got familiar with sweetbreads in the Loire Valley.) A benefit of the Japanese love of bite-sized morsels is that anything's tolerable this small. In fact, the rump and fillet were both rare and delicately spiced, avoiding the lamb-y flavours I dislike. This bit of sweetbread was more solid, chewy and unadorned than the heavily sauced French version. Not bad, but still not anything I'd order for myself.

Kaiseki traditionally ends with a bit of white rice, which explains the seemingly odd appearance of sushi hand rolls as the final savoury dish. The menu delivers up two per person which is, frankly, more than even the biggest appetites need at this point. But the options are so tempting it was a relief not to have to choose just between the smoked eel and the tuna. This was the dish that came out held aloft by the wire hand, or "gohan".

While I love Japanese food, I remain sceptical about the cuisine's ability to deliver on the dessert front. Umu didn't change my mind. Their offerings were beautiful ... we actually had two since my husband's tomato allergy precluded the dish included in the kaiseki ... but a bit too experimental for satisfaction. Both had vegetal elements, which I always find difficult in dessert. As a work of art, however, "ajisai", or hydrangea, was a wonder. Tiny cubes of blue and pink jelly, coloured naturally by butterfly pea flower and pink amber tomato, covered a mound of sweet white bean puree. This looked remarkably like a hydrangea flower head, with a smooth, creamy and mildly floral taste. Unfortunately the shiso sorbet beside it didn't work for me. Even though shiso is related to mint, it was too much like having a salad on the plate with my pudding.

I thought my husband's dish was more successful: mango with a panna cotta-like cream and a caramel sauce. The experimental element here came with more wasabi, served as a whole root as a side with the grater. You were supposed to grate your own and add it to the sweet for a flavour contrast. It was a bit like putting pepper with strawberries and worked to an extent, but my husband found it tough to get the wasabi / mango balance right.

As usual with a blow-out tasting menu, we went with the matching wine flight. Except that at Umu, a sake flight is an option. That seemed too experimental for my husband, so he stuck with the grapes while I threw caution to the wind with fermented rice. I was the clear winner.

By course three it was obvious that sake in your bog standard Japanese is restaurant is to the good stuff what a wino's rotgut is to Burgundy or Bordeaux. Every glass was balanced and nuanced, with a range of subtle tastes. Most, in a blind tasting, could easily have passed for wine. And unlike my husband's selections, mine came with a fascinating array of cups, from rough pottery to cut glass to fine porcelain that looked like a sea urchin. I learned from our sommelier (who got more chatty once we determined that he was from a Sicilian village in the same mountain range where my grandfather was born) that though rice has some aspect of "terroir", variations in sake flavour have much more to do with yeasts, fermenting processes and production decisions. The variety was exceptional, from a bone-dry, almost mushroomy offering to a slightly effervescent lemon treat that was like limoncello re-invented for sophisticated grown ups.

Most two-starred restaurants tend to steer everyone to the tasting menu, and if they have a la carte it's often more expensive than the chef's choice. That's actually not the case at Umu. You could pop in here at short notice, grab a seat at the sushi bar and get a couple of dishes and a glass or two of sake for something that approximates the cost of an average meal elsewhere in Mayfair. Not cheap, but a lot less than the full blow out.

Lime Wood lives up to the Angela Hartnett promise

There’s much hand-wringing these days about the effects of positive screening on social media. Because we only share the best of our lives, the idea goes, people are lured into a damaging, un-achieveable and unending cycle of keeping up with the proverbial Joneses. The hand-wringers seem to discount the possibility of any common sense that reasons posts are probably the best minute of an otherwise tough day, or understand those glamorous holiday photos as a reward earned after a year of earnest toil. Evidently we need to show our work to get credit on this exam.

Last week, I could have shared my disgruntlement with two consecutive commutes getting caught in train delays through Waterloo after days coping with London’s sticky heat. (The climate may be changing, but England’s ability to deal with a heat wave remains abysmal.) On the second, thinking I was being clever by re-routing through Paddington, I arrived at Reading to find the last train to Basingstoke cancelled. I could have done much better things with the £45 taxi fare it required to get home. Then there was the excessive tooth pain I was trying to mask all week with unwise levels of ibuprofen. Turns out a hairline fracture my dentist has had her eye on for years may finally be giving way. I’m not sure which will be more painful, the root canal to come or the bill that will equal 20% of my first job’s annual salary. Meanwhile, at work, a legal department’s excessive (IMHO) interpretation of data protection legislation just added a Herculean task to a project I thought concluded.

There was, in short, not a great deal worth celebrating last week. I could have Instagrammed a photo of my molar, but … really? Nobody likes a moaner. I suffered in silence. Thus I felt I was getting a bit of karmic reward when I discovered that the restaurant some friends were treating us to on Friday night was the Lime Wood Hotel. (That was on my Instagram feed before starters hit the table.)

Lime Wood is a country house hotel and restaurant sitting in classic Georgian splendour on the Northern edge of Hampshire’s New Forest. The restaurant here was my culinary hero Angela Hartnett’s first foray outside of London, with business partner and fellow chef Luke Holder. It had been on our “must try” list since she started her association in 2014, but we'd never managed it. To get there by unplanned serendipity was a treat.

This is a very different proposition from either Hartnett’s flagship Murano or her Murano Cafes, but her signature touches are there: tiny, succulent arancini as pre-meal snacks; traditional Italian four-course organisation (anti pasti, pasta, mains and dessert); and an Italian-style focus on simple dishes done well. But the menu (top photo) and décor take their inspiration from the house. There's no doubt you're in England here, with formal gardens and classic perennial borders on view outside, cozy upholstery, classic prints and warm wood inside.  The menu celebrates local ingredients:  Wooley Park Farm guinea fowl, Glenarm estate beef, catch of the day from the nearby coast. Everything was presented in a style that, like the room, balanced elegance and informality.

I started with an exquisite little deep-fried artichoke (above) served on a foundation of partially sun-dried tomatoes; they'd been dried enough to intensify their flavour and get a bit chewy, but still qualified as fresh produce. My veal chop main was succulent, pink and substantively different from beef ... something that, sadly, doesn't happen enough in this country. Italian-influenced cuisine typically isn't known for its sauces, but they made both my dishes. There were raves around the table for other choices: a barely-solid burrata on slices of fruit, the day's fresh-caught red mullet, that guinea fowl. Generous portions ... including refills on bread and arancini before the main meal ... left us too stuffed for desert.

We adjourned instead to the courtyard around which the square house was built. No doubt a service yard in its original creation, it's now a chic yet country-casual cocktail lounge with a glass roof that slides open on glorious days. Coffee came with little bowls of new season cherries, another nod to Hartnett's constant message that the finest ingredients need little embellishment. 

I was particularly impressed by the local nature of the place. Yes, there were obviously exceptionally well-heeled visitors staying in the hotel rooms. But our friends weren't the only regulars recognised and warmly welcomed by the staff. At a table near us, two such locals had popped in for a drink and a quick snack in the courtyard before heading off somewhere else. It's basically the local pub every foodie dreams of: Michelin-quality food in a laid-back atmosphere with a staff that remembers you and treats you as a beloved guest. It's a shame ... though probably a blessing for our wallets ... that Lime Wood is an hour away from our house. 

I wonder if Angela and Luke could be enticed to acquire one of Sherfield-on-Loddon's charming but deeply average pubs? Perhaps the power of positive thinking can influence them. I'd better get Instagramming.

Bold and thought-provoking, this Giovanni is worth experiencing. Once.

I've experienced a lot of powerful emotions in opera houses. But never shock. Not, that is, until about 10 minutes into Longborough Festival Opera's new production of Don Giovanni, when I was recoiling with it.

By that point, the Don had violently raped three women, driven the handle of a broken squash racket into an adversary's stomach and was easing his victim's bloody entrails out in an almost loving caress while singing his first aria. In English. (Which was almost as shocking as everything else.) The men in the locker room health club where this was all set were turning complicit blind eyes, casually loafing in their terrycloth dressing gowns while groping the professionally-dressed female assistants who kept popping in to try to get them to focus on some work.

Longborough, the little company that defied expectations to become a Wagnerian powerhouse, has always made the point that it's not the typical country house opera. But they really threw down the gauntlet with this highly topical interpretation steeped in gender politics and rebellion against the patriarchy. At first I thought we were slamming Harvey Weinstein and celebrating #MeToo, especially when the masqueraders covered their faces with giant emojis. And then Giovanni's servant Leporello (sung by Emyr Wyn Jones in probably the strongest performance of the ensemble) laid the table for the final banquet scene with hamburger and pizza boxes and we were in Donald Trump territory. The U.S. president did, after all, justify abusive things he'd said about women as "just locker room talk."

The whole thing seethed with so much hatred towards establishment men, you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I found out that the director was a bloke named Martin Constantine.

Giovanni is traditionally played as loveable rogue. He is a charming seducer, and it is usually implied that the women are complicit in his seductions. They only turn on him when he leaves them, breaking their hearts. In most versions I've seen, Giovanni's early murder of the Commandatore (a father who discovers and drives off Giovanni from seducing his daughter, Anna) is a mishap he would rather have avoided. Making him a sociopath is a bold move, and no doubt a taxing one for Ivan Ludlow, who not only has to sing this Giovanni (which he does well) but do far more acting than usual (successfully; this Don is hateful).

It's an audacious choice, well executed to make its political points. This is probably the bravest production Longborough has ever put on and the first I've thought the BBC might be interested in broadcasting for the way it updates a very old ... and supposedly elitist ... art form to take on critical modern issues. But it doesn't entirely work.

No matter how blackly they painted him in Act 1, too many plot elements of Act 2 hint at Giovanni's redeeming qualities to make him all bad. (His former lover Elivra's continuing devotion and belief she can bring him to a righteous life, Giovanni's impish refusal to become a monogamist because it wouldn't be fair to all the women he's yet to give pleasure to, and ... bluntly ... Ludlow's chiseled good looks.) The locker room set gets old and is less effective in later scenes. Most problematic is the ending, where the women grab microphones, karaoke style, and exult over their victory while the men resume the gym dressing gowns that had been discarded earlier and step to the front at the last minute, seeming to say they've given the women the impression of triumph but the abusive patriarchy embodied by the Don will continue.

Don Giovanni is usually a "feel good" opera. This interpretation sent me away angry and depressed, which I'm guessing was the director's intent.

The music, sadly, doesn't fare as well as the artistic impact. In Don Giovanni, Mozart gives us some of the most sublime and joyous music in the operatic repertoire. But, in much the same way your sense of taste goes when your sinuses are blocked up, the ears were deadened here by the political hijacking of the story and its translation into English. More than any other language, the musical nature of Italian makes the words themselves part of the score. Amanda Holden's translation is clever, at times funny and tells the story well. But it can't compare to the original. "Là ci darem la mano", probably the most exquisitely seductive duet ever written, becomes prosaic and clumsy when we understand the words as something closer to a teenager's fumbling attempts than beautiful love poetry. Leporello's attempt to dissuade Elvira with a catalogue of Giovanni's conquests "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" is a playful flight of fancy in Italian. Here, it's crude and coarse.

English, like all the director's other choices, makes the story ugly. As part of the overall political statement, it works. But, sadly, it also diminishes a great work of art.

I enjoyed how this production pushed me to think. Giovanni is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world; I've seen it live at least four times and I'd assume most people in the audience have consumed multiple productions. So it makes sense for companies to try something new. I applaud Longborough's innovation. As a "one off" it was stimulating, intriguing and provoked post-performance analysis far into the evening.

But would I ever want to see it again?  No. In giving the story modern political relevance, Longborough stripped the opera of its beauty. It was a worthy experiment, but I hope they don't make a habit of this kind of thing.

Hampton Court "Show" to "Festival": What's in a name?

The world's largest flower show celebrated its 26th birthday with a rebrand. The Royal Horticultural Society's Hampton Court Flower Show became a "Garden Festival". Why? We were a bit skeptical.

Three marketing professionals make up this "we". We used to work together, love gardening and have been using Hampton Court as our annual reunion for a decade. We've done the RHS Chelsea Flower Show as well, either together or as individuals, but we've always loved the more laid-back, sprawling nature of Hampton Court. And, of course, the plant sales. There's no place better to find specialist varieties of everything and anything you might want to grow. It covers more than 34 acres, attracts more than 140,000 visitors per year and sells more plants per square mile than any other place or event in the UK.

One statistic in the RHS' media pack suggests a reason for the change: the average age of RHS flower show attendees is 55. Though 86% of them occupy the desirably affluent "ABC1" niche, that average age suggests a shrinking market. So the RHS has brought the British summer festival treatment to their blockbuster event, with more music, more shopping, more places to eat, drink and relax, adventure trails for children and a welcome to dogs on leads.

The only thing that's suffered is the show gardens. If that was your primary reason for coming to

Hampton Court, you're going to be disappointed. The "Festival" features fewer gardens; the event map implies there are loads, but many shown as gardens turn out to be displays in front of grower's stands. The sponsored and judged gardens were, on the whole, less impressive than years past. The message seems to be that if you want display gardens, go to Chelsea. Hampton Court is now about something else.

And that something is a chilled, garden-themed day of R&R. In many ways, the transformation was subtle. The layout of the show ground is essentially the same, the floral marquee remains unchanged and many vendors are in the same spots from which you've been buying from them for years. But taken together the RHS has created a very different event in just one year's transformation. Other than a few pinch points for crowds that they need to resolve (the rose marquee in particular was a nightmare), it was beautifully produced and appeared wildly successful.

The most obvious change is the music.

Music has been a part of the flower shows but it was always a bit of entertainment thrown on while you paused, exhausted, to re-charge your batteries. At both Chelsea and Hampton Court, the entertainment area was often the only place you could find to sit down. There are now four stages with musical entertainment at Hampton Court, and these acts aren't an afterthought. They're fantastic. We heard folky, acoustic guitar near the Floral Marquee. Energising pop on a floating stage in the
canal that divides the show in two. Classical guitar at another venue in the very heart of the show, next to a cocktail-shaking pop-up van, a face-painting salon and an art installation where you walked down a tunnel beneath videos of oversized blooms going through their life cycle in time-lapsed glory. A covered amphitheatre at the back, near the rose festival, appeared the biggest of all but was taking a break as we wandered by. There is even now a pianist entertaining shoppers in the craft marquee (always a magnificent spot to get started on your Christmas shopping).

All of these venues are surrounded by a much-welcomed increase in food and drink vendors and places to sit down. For the first time ever, we found chairs every time we wanted a break, and never waited in an excessive queue to quench hunger or thirst. Someone has clearly worked to increase the variety, too. In addition to the inevitable hog roasts, burgers and fish and chips, there were exotic wraps, cocktail-flavoured ice pops, smoked salmon bagels and, for those who planned ahead, the ability to pick up a Fortnum & Mason's picnic hamper to consume while listening to the acts on the floating stage. There's even a large, multi-point bottle refill station sponsored by Thames Water that ... for the first time in my event-going experience in the UK ... offered plentiful water without ridiculous queues.

For the first time, we agreed, Hampton Court has become something our gardening-ambivalent partners might enjoy.

I suspect that parents were thinking the same thing about their children. Fantastical figures on stilts now wander the show. There are adventure trails full of instagrammable photo stations. (We had to restrain ourselves from taking a photo with the Very Hungry Caterpillar. There's been some sort of gardening-related contest for schools at Hampton Court for years, but this year's bug hotel challenge was not only just as good as many of the "professional" displays but located at the very centre of the show.

I'm less sure about the appeal for dog owners. Hampton Court is still very crowded, and most humans find it a challenge to avoid getting stepped on or rolled over by the ubiquitous plant trolleys containing shoppers' treasures. My dogs wouldn't do well; Datchet and Bruno, at least, are best left at home.

All these changes have been implemented by a team with a sharp sense of design. The festival has a colour scheme (orange, slate blue, plum and an avocado green) carried through the grounds in bunting, pennants and stripped deck chairs. The RHS has also installed its own pop-up gardens throughout to add to the look of the place.

Wisely, they haven't tinkered with the one thing that's always been Hampton Court's USP: plant sales.  In fact, there seem to be even more nurseries than before, with both a packed Floral Marquee and plant "villages" at both of the main show entrances. This is the place for people on specific horticultural missions, as I was this year. My main hosta bed had two gaps that needed filling. (Thank you, New Forest Hostas, for Morning Star and Christmas Island.) And I had a new, small bed to plant from scratch. Wanting something different from the rest of my garden, I had decided on a mix of grasses swaying around an anchor rose, all in shades of bronzes, oranges and deep reds ... a distinct contrast to my mostly purple and pink garden. Mission accomplished, with the striking Peter Beales rose La Villa Cotta and a bunch of exotic looking grasses. (New plants in their new bed below. Not yet a show garden!)

Our opinion was unanimous: the Garden Festival is a change for the better. We didn't mind the de-emphasis on show gardens. (And there were enough there to maintain interest, particularly the people's choice award-winning Cancer Research plot.) We loved the more relaxed pace and the expanded scope. The big question now: do we let the boys in on some of our fun when our 11th annual outing rolls around? Stay tuned...