Fire and ice
A warm welcome on a freezing night… Dave Lee samples the wood-fired kitchen cooking at Embers in Scarborough and finds skill and enthusiasm that could light up dining options in the resort.
WE all love a bit of Scarborough. Even on a freezing cold January night, with a brisk easterly wind blowing off the North Sea, under the Cliff Bridge and straight up your kilt, we all love a bit of Scarborough. Shorn of tourists and populated – visibly at least – only by the hardiest locals, the town still radiates Victorian charm despite temperatures that would give brass monkeys concern for the health of their valuables.
What’s required on such an evening is a cosy restaurant with a menu of intriguing and appealing dishes to warm your cockles back to something approaching room temperature. How fortunate, then, that I had booked a table at “wood-fired kitchen” Embers on Victoria Road.
Opened a year-and-a-bit ago by local lad
Dan Hargreaves, the restaurant inhabits the same building that used to be the marvellous and utterly under-sung Green Room. Little has changed since we lost that gem. It’s still a small dining space with a small kitchen and even smaller toilets. Dan has worked at several decent places in and around the town and clearly knows his onions. This is his first restaurant of his own, though. Time to see what he’s come up with.
The menu offers nine small plates and nine mains, with a couple of specials dangling on clipboards from a nearby shelf. There are an admirable number of local drink options but there are few nearby locations named on the food menu. The theme of Embers (if there is one) seems solely to be the wood-fired element. Dish names include words like “fire roast”, “charcoal” and “wood fired”, so the presumption is that most are cooked in a pizza oven. Before opening Embers, Dan had been running a pop-up catering firm and some of the dishes – dirty mac and cheese and “pit tray”, for instance – appear to be hangovers from the days when the food had to appeal to as many people as possible. Other options are presented more subtly so we stuck to those rather than the obvious public-pleasing offerings.
Wood-fired goat’s cheese was my favourite starter. A decent dollop of toasted cheese served with slices of toast and walnuts and
– the best bit – pickled pears. Tasty, light and surprising, with the pear emerging as the ingredient that tipped it over the edge. It caused a little fight about who was getting the last bit. Wood-fired patatas bravas also proved popular. Served salad style with tomatoes on a layer of aioli, there was more flavour on the plate than suggested by the listing on the menu.
Another starter of salt and pepper Whitby scampi (served with chilli and spring onion) was less successful, appearing not so much a gourmet dish as something you’d find in the freezer aisle of the supermarket.
My main of home cured maple glazed pork rump was okay. Served with skin on fries, warm yolk mayonnaise and fire roast pineapple, it was a tad underwhelming. Nothing wrong with any of the elements but they amounted to less than anticipated. The small chunk of pineapple aside, it felt a little like something you’d get for Sunday lunch at a decent pub.
The fire roast Tuscan chicken was somewhat more adventurous – it came with a Parma ham crisp, cream, spinach and tomato – but didn’t quite deliver either. As with the pork, everything was well constructed and the intention behind the dish was fine, it just didn’t zing on the fork. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing to make you shout with joy either.
We tried a couple of sides. The nutty greens that night were sprouts and broccoli – perfectly valid options but, again, they had a somewhat Sunday lunch vibe – and wood-fired roast potatoes, which were unfortunately mostly burnt. Tricky blighters them wood-fired ovens, leave something 20 seconds too long and you risk a cremation.
Puds were good. I went for sticky toffee pudding, which seems like a blandly obvious choice, but I wanted to see if they handled an old classic in a new way – and they certainly
did. The slice of cake came topped with salted walnuts, a caramel sauce and ice cream. It was lighter and crunchier than a usual STP but no less delicious than the best I’ve ever had.
Likewise, dark chocolate brownie with chocolate cream, cherry ice cream, chocolate sauce and toasted marshmallow was better than anticipated. The large marshmallow was served on its own stick, which caused a mini row when I stole it to mop up the sauce on my dish.
The bill came in at a wallet-pleasing £110. I was expecting it to be at least 20 or 30 quid more than that. This may be a deliberate tactic to ensure bums aren’t repelled from landing on seats for budgetary reasons. It may also suggest that there is room for prices to be tweaked upwards slightly, as long as there’s a commensurate increase in quality.
The restaurant was busy despite it being January (I’d suggest booking is essential), so Dan and his team clearly know what they’re doing, but I think Embers can be better. There’s enough skill in the kitchen and enthusiasm throughout the operation to easily raise the cuisine up a notch. There is always a trade-off between offering popular and more adventurous dishes but Scarborough isn’t short of bog-standard burger and BBQ options – what it needs is more intriguing and experimental cooking. Despite a couple of dishes in need of tightening, I saw enough potential in the food at Embers to suggest – should they decide to go that way – this could be the place to find the right balance and become a regular haunt for the more refined diners of the North Yorkshire coast. In the meantime, refined or otherwise, the good folk of Scarborough should be battling to get through the door.
Embers, 138 Victoria Road, Scarborough, YO12 1SL. www.embers.restaurant