The Tudor Pass (*)

The former hunting lodge of Henry VIII dates from before 1550, this historic building houses the Great Fosters hotel and The Tudor Pass restaurant. The hotel is an SLH member.

The entrance is spectacular, you come through a very small door, the door is narrow and low. The narrowness is because people used to have to take off their armor outside to fit through the door. This was a form of courtesy (and probably safety).

We are greeted enthusiastically and shortly after we sit down the first appetizers are served. We start with a tartelette filled with lobster and lime, wonderfully fresh. A thin layer of potato filled with cheese and truffle is also served. Very crunchy, good truffle flavor, a bit cheesy at the end

Then a Jammie Dodger is served. This is an English biscuit. This version is made from chicken skin and stuffed with chicken liver. The dodger normally has a heart of raspberry or strawberry jam and now the heart was filled with cranberry. Nice idea, strong flavors.

The last amuse is sweetbreads glazed with kimchi. The bite is a bit softer; when I think of sweetbreads I think of the fried version because it is different, it takes some switching, but the amuse is very tasty.

We are not shown a menu. This can be given, but people prefer to serve a surprise menu, taking into account allergies and ingredients that are not eaten.

We start with smoked eel. A piece of eel is covered with an eel jelly. Under the eel are small squares of eel and kohlraab with nashi pear. There is caviar on top of the eel. An sauce made of oyster is served at the table and onion oil is dripped into it. Wonderful to get various preparations of eel with oyster. The caviar and oyster provide a salty taste. Very good.

I drink a chardonnay with this. I chose not to take a wine arrangement, but it is served because we are traveling by car and because people drive on the left in England, I wanted to take a maximum of 2 wines and I also wanted to drive back.

Then we get a completely vegetarian dish, namely various preparations of tomato. A tomato tartelette filled with tomato mousse and dried tomatoes, neatly piped with red and green tomato mousse on the plate. We also get a tomato and cheese cracker and a scoop of tomato ice cream in Tomato Consume.

What a great chef is here in the kitchen, making as many dishes as possible from 1 ingredient. The tartelette is wonderfully crunchy, the cracker is crispy and because it is baked bread, cheese and tomato, it brings back the taste of the past when I regularly ate a ham-cheese sandwich. The consume is made completely tomato flavor. All very tasty.

The third dish is pork. Pork is cooked in the sous vide at 64 degrees for 24 hours and then baked. The pork is tender, the fat is very soft. Traditional black pudding is served with the pork, but made with sage. The sauce that comes on the plate is also made from sage. Even though I don’t like pork as much, the dish is very good.

Then comes turbot fried in butter with morels and large shrimps. The turbot is nicely browned and well cooked. The morels are very tasty, they are fresh and filled with a mousse that contains asceto basamico, which gives them that typical taste. A nice addition to the fish. The shrimp is cut into small pieces and placed next to the mushrooms.

My second wine is Gabrielskloof. This goes well with the turbot.

The main course is lamb with a sauce made from lamb heart, lamb liver, and lamb tongue. It is a typical English countryside dish. Again, a lot of the main ingredient is used. Also capers in the sauce. The meat is served with green asparagus surrounded by wild garlic in two colors.

The main course also comes with several preparations of lamb. We get lamb belly slowly cooked for 48 hours and then covered with a sweeter dressing. A nice piece of belly.

And a pie filled with lamb shoulder, an excellent pie that is richly filled. It’s amazing how you can use the main ingredient so explicitly.

We get two desserts. The first is strawberry with white chocolate, elderflower and lees. Strawberry mousse with white chocolate and a strawberry crisp are on the plate with strawberry granite on top. What a fresh dish. Delicious I lick my fingers.

Finally, we get a bonbon of 65% dark chocolate with a tuile of Armagnac and ice cream. The tuile tastes completely like Armagnac, how this is done is a mystery. Wow. The ice cream is nice and creamy. The chocolate with hazelnut is bitter and firm.

The friandises are a parody of the amuses. For example, a tartelette is served with lemon curd, pineapple with coconut as a sweetbread appetizer, a spiral filled with ricotta and of course the Jammie Dodger, but made in-house.

Chef Alex Payne even has a tattoo of a Jammie Doger. He loves this cookie.

The nice thing is that every dish is served by the kitchen staff. You don’t see this often, so you can have a short chat with the chef and sous chef and ask questions about the dishes they have prepared themselves. The service is hospitable, the host regularly has a short chat.

The interior is classic as you would expect here. A great location, the food is good and worthy of a star. Below is some impressions of the building.