I love a pop up and you never know what may come of it. I remember not so long ago visiting the Gorse pop at Ground and look how that turned out.
I love even more a collaboration between two businesses that is an easy stroll from my house and thus was immediately drawn to the latest Bohemian x Moura event at Moura, with the deal very much sealed when I saw pig’s trotter “Pierre Koffman“, a true classic from one of the greats (Take 6 Cooks was one of the things that got me really interested in food) of the culinary world.
As Mrs. SF instantly turned her nose up at the very thing (the trotter) that really drew me to the menu I appealed to J as my back up.
J, whilst not entirely convinced by my sales patter as to the merits of a Koffman trotter, agreed to come and off we toddled down to Moura will not a little amount of anticipation (at least on my part – it is fair to say J was more into the non trotter elements of the menu, but I was hopeful she would be a cloven convert).
The food menu was complimented by a wine pairing,
which was excellent value at £20.
First up was lobster.
Good portion size this, with sweet lobster atop diced tomato (not sure why it is called a tartar, other than looking a bit like the beef one, as I always associate that term with finely diced raw meat and finely diced veg is well just that). Regardless, the tomato base has a good favour to it, bringing in a touch of acidity to the sweetness of the lobster. A tomato water/consume, spiked with tarragon oil, added nicely to the mix. Both J and I enjoyed this dish.
The wine pairing was a South African fizz from Graham Beck (retails at about £16.50).
Whilst I am not a big fizz drinker (tends to give me indigestion), this had a gentle mousse and nice bready nose with a touch of citrus. Very refreshing on the palate, it worked well with the lobster dish, which was not too rich in nature (would go more White Burgundy, or even white rioja, in such instances).
A salad of roasted beetroot bought a gentle earthiness from the beets, with this complimented by a tangy goat curd.
A gel provided a more intense earthiness, being a more concentrate beetroot flavour. Plentiful toasted pine nuts (which are hideously pricey these day) bought a rich, sweet butteriness on top of the expected nuttiness.
A good vinaigrette added welcome acidity. Again both J and I enjoyed this simple, but effective, dish.
Wine wise, the chosen pairing was a South African sauvignon blanc from Rustenberg (about £15 retail).
Found this quite savoury, without that gooseberry slap on the chops you sometimes get with a New World sauv blanc. Touch of oak evident, which gave it a fuller, richer feel. Still got gooseberry as well as passion fruit, but also some vegetal notes. Touch of pineapple at the end on the palate.
I would usually go light red (gamay) with beetroot, but the richer profile of this sauv blanc worked well.
Now if you put fruit (pineapple) on a pizza then in my view you should be jailed (indefinitely, at his Majesty’s pleasure as you are clearly not safe to be out in public), but with roasted, baked or stewed meat I am not adverse to the touch of sweetness or sharpness that fruit brings (tagines and dried fruits and pork and apple sauce being cases in point) to the equation.
Here caramelised figs adorned a venison dish and did an admirable job as an accompanying element to the meat, with the seeds adding a bit of textural contrast too.
The version had been slow cooked to spoon soft tenderness and had a good gaminess to it, complimented by a rich jus. A carrot puree was silky smooth and provided a nice hit of sweetness, with shitake mushrooms bringing an earthy umami flavour. It all sat on a crisp mille feuille infused with cocoa (an interesting combo with the gamey venison).
Wine wise, this robust dish needed a bigger hitter of a wine and a wine from Rhone producer Dauvergne Ranvier, in the form a La Voisin d’en Face syrah from Tavel in the Southern Rhone (retails at about £14-£15), was just the ticket.
Meaty and spicey (black pepper) on the nose, it had rich black fruits on the palate. Very nice with the venison.
J awaited the main trotter event with no little trepidation and her face when it arrived was a picture. I think “abject horror” at the non crisp pig skin (I mean every one loves crackling, dont they) would sum it up nicely. I, on the other hand, had no such qualms.
I enjoyed (twice, as J refused to eat it) the slow cooked gelentious texture of the trotter skin and the rather nice chicken mousse it encased. Meaty morels were a fine (and in keeping with Koffman) addition.
The mash (more mash than mousseline, I would say) was good, but I felt the sauce was a little thin and lacklustre. The sauce was far from the expected rich, glossy, number (and seem to have little of the maderia wine) that underpins the Koffman sauce for this dish.
Some good bits to this dish, J would disagree, but I felt it was let down a tad by the weedy sauce.
On the wine front, we move to the Southern Hemisphere (New Zealand) with a Jackson Estate Homestead pinot noir (around £15 retail)
Red berry fruits (think cherry and raspberry) with a touch of spice and a nice level of acidity. Worked well as against the gelantinous fattiness of the dish.
The first pud was a bit of a marmite dish (as described by the chef from Bohemian). When I had a chat with him afterwards, I described it as a little bit divisive.
I get the idea of chocolate (mousse) and coffee (jelly) and truffle (in the crumb/rubble) together, with the instruction to eat all elements in one spoonful,
but the truffle (never a shrinking violet flavour) massively dominated and (to me and J who was in rare agreement with me) pretty much bludgeoned the other flavours into total submission. All I had on my palate was the black truffle and salt and, to be honest, I didn’t like it much.
The situation wasn’t helped by the chocolate mousse being a bit too set and thus rubbery. The coffee jelly when eaten solo was, however, quite nice.
This dish needs a rethink to my mind, as to me it doesn’t work. I did have similar qualms as to a Gorse dessert when they did a pop up, so…
I did very much like the wine pairing here (and wonders of wonder I have found at last a sweet wine that J actually quite likes), being a Domini Ceneti, Recioto della Valpolicella (about £19 retail)
Lots of dark rich plum, sweet fig, vanilla and chocolate. Almost a dessert in its own right.
We were back in clover with the next dessert.
Nicely sweet, but still with a good sharpness, raspberries perched on a slightly gooey creme concoction which didn’t have too much sweetness and encased a floral elderflower ice-cream. Nice crisp pastry case, which looked just a tad too perfect to be homemade (I could be wrong, though).
Went very well with a sweetie from the Bordeaux Sainte-Croix-du-Mont made by Chateau La Rame (retails at around £12.50) from the Semillion grape.
Nice notes of mango and pineapple, with a line of lemoney citrus acidity making it refreshing rather than cloying.
Verdict
The meal cost us £60 each, with the wine pairing a mere £20, so £80 for 6 courses and 6 glasses of wine (san a well deserved tip, with service excellent). Personally, I think that was very good value.
I had been offered an “at cost‘ price previously, but had declined as I like to pay my way.
I run a small business and boy do I hate giving freebies/doing non chargeable work (pees me off how much time it takes me to do bills each month), with making a living hard enough as it is for any small business. That goes double for the hospitality industry, in these current trying times of fiscal punishment beatings (which will continue until GDP improves, oh how we laffer curved at that one).
I enjoyed the food, with the only real bum note the very weird chocolate, coffee and black truffle number.
I can see a few people baulking at the gelatinous trotter dish, but I ate both mine and J’s (do wish the sauce had been a bit more robust). I think J may have been less horrified if she had been served an iced monkey brain to be honest. It was very much a “Willie Jones at the Pankot Palace” (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) dish for her.
Kudos for Moura for putting it on this collaborative effort (was a full house) and for an excellent value wine pairing to accompany the food.
Bohemian have a variety of pop ups in the future with the next one at Moura having a perhaps more J friendly menu
Full details of all upcoming events (at Moura and elsewhere) are on Bohemian’s Insta feed (see below)
Details
Bohemian https://www.instagram.com/bohemienwales?igsh=MWg4NWo4dTlkbXlmbg==
Moura
Address: 6 Waungron Rd, Cardiff CF5 2JJ
Soliciting Flavours 