Single diners can finally earn their stripes
Clever duo include one-person gourmet dinners on unique menu
Is it bad to order a meal based on the graphic design of the box that it comes in? If it is, I don’t care – Bad Seeds, a pop-up collaboration between two Edinburgh chefs, had me at their green and black geometrics. Their branding looks like a cross between a wallpaper sampler book and the doodles on my notepads.
Surely, my thinking went, two guys who like these patterns will put something amazing on my plate for dinner.
The two guys in question, Tomas Gormley and Sam Yorke, have put in time in some serious kitchens. Between them they’ve cooked in Andrew Fairlie, the Bonnie Badger, The Lookout and Castle Terrace. Bad Seeds, their lockdown side hustle, not only has great graphics but offers single-person gourmet dinners in their beautifully presented boxes.
This is an important service for foodies who live alone, carnivores who are married to veggies, single parents whose friends want to send them an adult treat for their birthday… they all deserve stripy ravioli as much as any couple who can order a more standard box for two.
So what was in my beautiful package? The menus change every week, and are a cross between a tasting menu and a small plates arrangement where a table of diners orders multiple dishes to share.
The snack – that’s a canape in old money – was a feuille de bric case, to be filled with piperade and a slice of brie. Feuille de bric is filo pastry’s more substantial sibling, just solid enough to stand up in a single layer.
With its sweetly roasted pepper and melty cheese filling, this reminded me of the vegetarian food restaurants served in the 1990s when it was all about the Mediterranean. Happy days. I wolfed it down in a bite.
The next course was one of the strangest combinations I’ve eaten since a student chef made me a vegetable pie that included mixed peel. A single pasta parcel, green and black to match the rest of Bad Seeds’ corporate branding, was filled with lobster and ginger. An individual claw underlined the
crustacean nature of the dish. Did the Bad Seeds put this with some seafood broth, or a foamy butter sauce? Hell no. They saw a lobster raviolo and thought, ‘What that really needs to set it off is a chunk of stew’. Beef brisket to be precise, in a deeply flavoured gravy, pressed into a rectangle.
It was a weird one to eat. I could tell that all the individual elements were very good. I just couldn’t figure out what they were all doing on the same plate.
After that the menu changed gear, from individual courses to sharing plates. With no actual sharing involved.
The central dish was a spiced lamb and apricot pithiver – a fat pastry dome containing melty meat with just a whisper of sweet fruit. This emerged from the oven looking so burnished and magnificent I felt a swell of pride even though all I did was transfer it from a box to a baking tray.
It was really good, with the perfect level of moisture to make a succulent pie that stays together when sliced. Impressive work. It came with aubergine puree which looked grey on the plate and could have taken a heavier hand with the spicing to play up the Middle Eastern ingredients.
Two vegetable dishes were accompaniments rather than courses in their own right. A handful of chicory spears, with a gutsy anchovy and garlic dressing, had the poke the aubergine lacked. A healthy mound of broccoli not only upped the health quotient of the meal but another wallop of favours with a crunchy porcini and pine nut topping.
When ordering my meal, the Bad Seeds website gave me the option to add Ian Mellis cheese. Had they met me? Of course I wanted to add Ian Mellis cheese. Especially as it came with Millers Buttermilk Crackers. These are well named – they are addictive without a wodge of aged gouda or gorgonzola. Top them with some of Mr Mellis’s best work and I am powerless to resist. The cheese, unlike the rest of the meal, was portioned for two, making the £18 supplement a bit more bearable and leaving loads for the next day.
Dessert was a restrained classic, a slice of wobbly custard tart with a poached pear, the kind of unflashy pud that’s overlooked on a restaurant menu in favour of something more flouncy. It was a reminder that gentle spicing and technical accuracy are just as good as chocolate or salted caramel.
The capital’s single diners should get on to Bad Seeds right away. You’ve nothing to lose, bar your beans on toast.