I quite like Pasture, but can’t for the life of me understand why it is so ridiculously popular. I mean it is good, but not so good that you need to book your retirement party there on your first day of work if you want it on a Friday night. Boy does eating there require some serious forward planning and why not just go to Asador 44 (which I personally think is better and is way easier to get a table at, why the latter is the case I really don’t know)?

The greater availability of tables at its baby brother restaurant, Parallel, and pretty uniformly positive reviews meant it has been on the list for a while and it was well past time for (always ahead of the game) me to visit the place. As such, it was chosen as the venue for an evening out with friends and a first weekend night out in Gotham Central for a while.

Having said table available is better, we were only able to get a table at 17.00 on a Friday night. Whilst I am getting on a bit, I am not quite in Florida old timer (stewed prunes and apple juice) dinner time territory (just yet).

Inside it is fair to say it is set up for couples rather than our group of four, with tables for four few and far between amongst the preponderance of two and one person options. Our party of four luckily knew each other quite well, as we were jemmied into our seats and pinned to our diminutive table.

Whilst the main menu looked interesting, with a mix of small and bigger plates, we were feeling lazy.

We therefore opted for the chef menu, which looked on the face of it very reasonable at £45

First up were flat breads. The menu item one was doused in beef fat (I mean oh yes)

and was a fine thing with a crisp charred crust, which the copious amount of animal fat didn’t compromise. Nice hit of chilli heat (but not excessive) and a good thwack of seasoning. Didn’t really discern the shallots, but enjoyed this (beef fat makes everything better).

A derivation on the menu offer was less successful. Mrs. SF requested no shallots (as it happened the lack of discernable  shallot on the beef fat one negated the need for a substitute) and what we got in its stead was no beef fat and an unadorned flatbread, with a chimichurri sauce on the side.

Perfectly nice, but a touch dry as it lacked the lubrication provided (in spades) by the beef fat.

Padron peppers has a nice blister to them (still not had a hot one)

and sat on a bed of pureed cashew (do they call it butter, paste or puree these days), with the latter not 100% needed in my view.  Copious amounts of zingy citrus infused salt did, on the other hand, add nicely to the mix. Properly blistered padrons need loads of salt and little else, in my opinion.

Leek croquettes has a thin, crispy shell,

and a gooey smooth interior. Nice mild alium hit from the leeks and a more robust tangy burst of flavour from the smoked Caerphilly cheese.

Not the prettiest looking dish with the scattering of crispy leeks looking a wee bit haphazard (which could have been pointless frippery, but were actually very nice), but who cares when it tastes this good.

The next dish had a lovely freshness to it with a intense consommé spiked with fragant citrussy ponzu and sweet tomatoes.

The dish was, however, marred somewhat by the key mackerel element. The flesh was very nice with that rich oiliness, but the skin had been left on and not torched enough to make it edible.

Crispy fish skin is a joy to eat, but here it was a bit leathery and not particularly pleasant. Also, I thought the portion size a bit (well, actually, very) mean for sharing between 2. A potentially very good dish marred by its execution (also tricky to share, with a big element being soupy).

Fried chicken (the much better flavoured thigh, thankfully, used), was excellent.

Good crisp coating, with nice craggy bits and a good flavour  The kaffir lime really came through and worked very well as against the richness of the fried chicken, as did the pickled ginger and cucumber (the latter two very much cleansing the palate). Enjoyed this dish and could have eaten a lot more of it.

At this point, dishes were coming thick and fast, to an extent whereby we hadn’t finished multiple dishes on the table before the next lot arrived. I asked one of the waiting staff if they could (thereon in) perhaps slow it all down a bit as it seemed we were in danger of being done and dusted (with an 11 course dinner) in about 30 minutes.

This request was initially met with a look of surprise and then a “That is the way the chef does it“, to which I said that may be so but any more and there will be no room on the table unless you start taking away plates we haven’t finished (which you aren’t, I assume, intending to do). We were already struggling with space due to multiple plates of food, side plates, wine bottles, water bottle, various glasses et al and it was all getting a bit ridiculous (with the diminutive table not helping).

It was like eating on the basis of a 60-metre dash rather than the more elongated (1500 metres at least) experience that I like a tasting menu to bring. I know they have to turn tables, but the initial pace was bordering on a competitive eating contest.

Thankfully, the request was heeded and the breakneck pace abated somewhat.

The next dish was, to me, the clear dish of the night.

A good quantity of sweet, refreshing,  white crab meat sat on a crispy brioche baton floating on a slick of intense and richly flavoured shellfish bisque (split with a herb oil). I can’t say I discerned the dashi in the brioche baton, but the other component elements of this dish all worked very well together (although it was again not a dish that well suited to sharing).

Cod had a good caramelised exterior and a nicely cooked (just past translucent) interior.

It sat in a good, well flavoured, veggie ragu (always associate a ragu with meat to be honest), with plump, meaty, mussels and courgette balls.  The latter operated as little flavour sponges belying the dullness of your standard courgette (my brother in law describes them as “bags of distilled dispair” – I blame my Sister’s cooking).

Again, quite a tricky dish to share and as such an odd addition, I thought, to a tasting menu for two.

A rather fine veggie dish was next, elevating the humble (here also jumbo) carrot to majestic heights

The slow cooked carrot had a nice earthy sweetness to it that was ramped up by being finished on the grill and the addition of smoked maple syrup, with a nutty tahini, cashew puree (could have done without the duplication of cashew with the padron – would skip it with the padron personally) and crisp chickpeas keeping the sweetness all in check. Cut into bite size chunks this was much easier to share.

Nice dish this, which showcased how good veggie dishes can be when a bit of thought is applied rather than just defaulting to the ultra processed fake meat bollocks (“plant based” is one of biggest bait and switch scams around, in my opinion).

Talking of meat, beef was next up and very nice it was too with two rounds cooked to a pleasing ruby red.

Not 100% sure of the cut (shape of fillet but not with the fat cap – picanha maybe?), but regardless it had a good flavour to it (so definitely not fillet – the religous data entry worker of beef cuts).

The billed crying tiger dipping sauce seemed more akin to a chimichurri, being much more heavy on the fragrant herbs than the sweet, sour and  heat that I generally expect from a Thai dipping sauce (it tasted pretty much identical to the chimchurri we got with the substitute flat bread)

The desert was billed as a baked lemon Alaska (very much doubt it saw the inside of an oven, rather than a blow torch being applied, so techically not baked),

which had a tooth achingly sweet Italian meringue overcoat drenched in more sweetness in the form of smoked maple syrup.

Thankfully the interior sponge and ice-cream had enough sour lemon in them to ameliorate the sugar rush/impending diabetic coma. Still a tad too sweet for my tastes, with the maple taking it over the edge

Nice petit fours (included)

and a rather indifferent cortado (not included) finished off proceeding.

On the drinks front, this place’s elder sibling (Pasture) has a rather interesting list (more on that below), with generally pretty fair markups. As such, the brevity of the list here was a little disappointing (not sure why they can’t just tap into the list next door). I was, however, pleasing to see all wines offered by the glass (should be standard these days with Coravin tech. available).

For a tasting menu a riesling is always a good option in my book, as it works with pretty much  all savoury foods, with the exception of perhaps the reddest of red meats (and even then…).

This Alsace number from Michel Leon had nice acidity and a good citrus kick to it.

Very refreshing, such that it operated well in cutting through the richness of many of the dishes and aced the Asian spice elements prominent is a number of dishes. On the list here at £36, it retails at about £12-£14. A touch below your standard UK mark up (that would get you lynched in a provincial Spanish town).

For the steak we decided to add a bottle of red, with this Barossa GSM (grenache, Shiraz and mouvrdre)

Nice enough, with decent fruit, if a bit rough around the edge. We were fortunate that the crying tiger sauce was a quite tame affair as I think any substantial heat would have clashed with the high ABV here. On the list at £36, with a retail price of about £16 so a pretty fair mark up by UK standards.

We went across to Pasture and down stairs to their cocktail bar after, for a night cap (it was still ludicrously early due to our 17.00 kick off time).

Some interesting high-end wines here, that (comparatively speaking and for those with deep pockets) offer quite good value.

The Vega Sicilia Unico (arguably the pinnacle of Ribera del Duero, if not Spanish, wines) 2012 retails at around the £380 mark and is on the list here for that price.  None of the wines on the top end page had substantial mark ups on them, and some have none, but here is the thing that puzzles me about this list (in a bar). 

The Mystere Wine Club had a recent Ribera del Duero tasting including a Vega Sicilia 2006 and that wine was stood up 3 days (to settle any sediment) before the tasting, double decanted using an aerator 8 hours before the tasting and left to breath.  Even after all that, arguably, it still needed longer to breath in order to show its true colours (i e. the next day).

Vega Sicilia (as well as most of the wines on that page with it) is not a wine to buy on a whim no matter how much cash you have.

To me you would need to order it, so that it can be stood up (the 2006 when I decanted throw a bucket load of sediment and I very much doubt the 2012 would be any different), at least 24 -36 hours (if not longer) prior to it  being opened. Once opened, it would need time to breath and I would say that should be for at least 8 hours if not overnight.  That means if you want to drink this wine on a Friday night (to do it justice) you should probably tell the place on Tuesday (so they can properly prep it). For the restaurant, once it is opened it has little value unless consumed pretty quickly (days max), so I would expect them to require payment up front.

Also on a cursory look, most of these wines have barely (if at all) entering their drinking windows and it is a crying shame to drink such stellar wines too young.

The other thing is these high end wines (in my view) really benefit from being drunk with food (nothing too fancy pants, with simply done top quality lamb or beef ideal for the Vega Sicilia I would say) and it is a bit of a waste/shame to drink a whole bottle of these wines sans food in my view.

So even if I could afford (which I most certainly can’t) the Vega Sicilia here, I wouldn’t be inclined to buy it to drink in a cocktail bar. Maybe with a steak in the restaurant, but not with my shallow pockets.

We (against my better judgement) had cocktails. Can’t say I am much of a fan, but when in Rome…

Quite enjoyed my piso sour, but initially questioned the value and likely mark up level, so I did some rudimentary maths (I am really fun at parties🥳).

A 75 cl bottle of pisco cost about £30 and you get 15 50ml measures out of that. On that basis, that is £2 a pop. A pisco sour has a (so the internet leads me to believe) a 50 ml shot of pisco (so £2) + lime juice (50ml, so say 3 limes at a quid in toto), an egg white (1 egg = 25p) and a couple of drops of angostura bitters (200ml bottle is £10 and a dash is 1ml so talking 5p).  So add it all up and you come to £3.30 and a mark up as against the £12 price tag of just over × 3.5  This is on the key assumption of a 50ml pour of the spirit, which going by the size of my glass I am not 100% sure was the case here. If it was a mere 25ml pour, then you are talking a very hefty mark up of well in excess of x 5 (high by comparison of all but the most gougey of wine list).

Bottles of spirits (I assume) last a hell of a lot longer (especially once opened) than most wines so wastage costs are lower, but then you need to keep a bazillion ingredients and glass formats to hand in a cocktail bar so it probably all evens out (not sure as to respective salaries of sommeliers and mixologists to be honest).

Each to their own I suppose, but they are not really my thing as they seem to take bloody ages to make and, the only ones I seem to like at least, are gone in a couple of sips.

The verdict

I wonder if we erred in being lazy and  going for the chef’s menu. Some good dishes, some not so good and some pretty unsuitable for sharing, but the thing that really put me off was the pace. It was just too relentless for me (really felt like they wanted the table back and tried to boost everything out at Aldi check out pace to get us done and dusted and out the door ASAP), as I like to savour my food rather than having to wolf it down at breakneck speed.

I think if you are going to do a tasting style menu, they don’t expect diners to be in and out based on a high speed gallop through the menu. Having said all of that, it did get a little less frenetic after we requested some respite from the initial frenetic pace.

Also for a menu intended to be shared, some of the dishes weren’t really that conducive to that style of eating, being tricky to split equitably (Mrs  SF was positively fuming at some of my apportionments).

Next time I go, I will do so as a number of dishes were very good, I will order on an ad hoc basis (two dishes max. at a time).

Value wise, I think the £70 tasting menu at Gorse (which I had the day after this meal) offered a considerably better bang for your buck, despite it being £25 per head more expensive.

So nice enough, but it didn’t have the wow factor I had hoped for based on reviews I have read (albeit none of them related to the chef’s menu option).

The details

Address: 11 High St. Cardiff, CF10 1AW.

Website: https://pasturerestaurant.com/locations/parallel-cardiff/