Lark, Bury St Edmunds: “Smart, relaxed, and very interesting” – Restaurant Review | food

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Lark, 6A Angel Hill, Bury St Edmunds IP33 1UZ (larkrestaurant.co.uk). Snacks £2.50 – £7, dishes 11 – £28, desserts £10 – £12, wines from £25 a bottle

Some words are misused more than others. “Special” is one of those. Russia’s deadly war on Ukraine appears to be a “special military operation”. Royal Mail’s ‘Special Delivery’ service always means you’ll receive a card through your door from someone who, even though you’ve been in it, can’t ring the bell telling you to go and collect your parcel at the Post Office. Then there’s a special use in menus, which might indicate that the kitchen ordered too much of something no one wanted to eat, and now it’s been repurposed as soup that no one still wants to eat.

At Lark, a small restaurant in Bury St Edmunds, the restaurant is properly marked. The description, written on the chalkboard, is suggestive enough. It reads “Rabbit shank and black pudding pie, girolles, Madeira cream sauce”. Set aside the overlapping questions about whether rabbits have legs or whether there is enough meat between a rabbit’s knee and ankle to put a pie on. Leporin anatomy questions are not relevant here. Because the pie is on its way. Prepare to faint. Maybe take off your corset.

“Sexy”: Bunny and Black Candy Pie. Photograph: Chris Ridley/The Observer

Sitting on a mound of pea puree, amid a puddle of gleaming mahogany sauce speckled with herbs and studded with gyroles, is a golden pastry-topped thigh pie. There is a wonderful pastry net on top of the box. It’s been glazed over and over so white you can almost see your face in it. A bone emerging from one end. When you cut, you realize it’s a great piece of fixed bandage, because that bone doesn’t connect to anything. It was introduced to remind you of all things shank. Beneath that pastry is a layer of peeled cabbage leaves, acting as a barrier, which leads to a thick, peppery layer of black pudding crumbles with the occasional grain of fat. Which, in turn, leads to the crux of the matter, which is a generous mound of seasoned shredded rabbit.

It’s the love child of Wellington and a Scotch egg. Perhaps a ball of cabbage stuffed in the sack joined them for fun, too. I’m dining with food historian Dr. Annie Gray who sighs theatrically and says, “The nineteenth century would be very happy about that.” It’s a classic cooking master class that should take a few days to complete. And it, of course, is delicious: the outer pastry is crunchy. The black pudding is soft. The hare is bushy. Everything has been swept away in its outrageous way by proper old-school sauce. It costs £28, and if you think that’s too high in the current economic hurricane, stop reading. He made a serious effort to bring this to us and it is the most expensive thing on the list.

With jewels of roe, sliced ​​grapes and a quirk of ajo blanco: trout. Photograph: Chris Ridley/The Observer

The rabbit pie is the work of the eponymous Freddy Vaughter, who works with head chef James Karn. Both came from nearby Pea Porridge, the long-running Michelin-starred restaurant in Bury St Edmunds. The remainder of the Magnificent Brigade is called Iowan. He hasn’t graduated from a catering college for a long time. That’s it. Only the three of them then, when I was in the kitchen, gorging on rabbit shank pie as if it were all Harry’s food styles, asked if there had been any reaction from his former employer during the months-old opening. Absolutely not, they told me. They have been encouraged to do so. It is encouraging and proof, if necessary, that quality begets quality; that when the tide rises, it raises all the boats.

Lark is set in a solid building on the edge of the town square. It was once a bus shelter, then a police station and finally a florist. Therefore, the place, which seats only 20 people, was often frequented by floundering couples, then ill-behaved drunks and finally by pretty fragrant things. Now it’s a restaurant, all three of those could happen here again. The floor is polished concrete. The white walls are hung with tidy if mildly glowing abstracts. The menu is a small plate menu, the price of which goes up as you go up.

“Brilliant”: a little muntajek on a brown piece. Photograph: Chris Ridley/The Observer

The classic drift of sautéed rabbit pie is met in a deep, sticky lake of Café Paris butter with a few white beans. It is topped with fronds of bitter Frisian (or the pubic hair of the Jolly Green Giant, as it was once described to me. You’ll never look at it the same way again). Other things from a more modern playbook. Bright orange lozenges of sherry trout center vertical bands of kohlrabi, with gems of roe, grape wedges and a drizzle of ajo blanco. The zucchini flower, still attached to the zucchini, is stuffed with smoked baba ghanoush and then expertly roasted. We have crispy radishes with silky quenelles of whipped lardo, and spherical croquettes of hot shredded smoked mackerel. They also make a gorgeous, golden-brown streak with sharp edges, either topped with a layer of minjac and shiny radicchio leaves, or as a side dish with the garlic-smoked sweet chili sauce that is mojo rojo.

In the way of most former bus stops, this is not a glamorous space. It has been converted into a comfortable room. Instead, all magic is on the board. There is a strong sense of young chefs pushing themselves to the limits of what they can achieve in a small kitchen; of them make a self-contained first statement. As we work our way through our dishes, a chap in a sun hat and shorts comes by himself, gets a table for one and orders half of the lobster with lobster butter and seaweed. Obviously it was before. Obviously happy.

“That good balance of acid and cream”: mango and passion fruit trifle. Photograph: Chris Ridley/The Observer

To complete the deal, they have a list of matching desserts, which include Tarte Tatin apples. A trifle of mango and passion fruit, with beige flakes of caramelized white chocolate, is just the right balance of citrusy and creamy. Dig down and you will find a soft disc of foam. A scoop of dark chocolate mousse stacked with granulated pistachio ice cream. It is then topped, as if in a cheery hat, with a textured chocolate chip cookie, and covered with shavings of more chocolate. The wine list is compact and priced for the second bottle. The service, by only two people, is fast and foolproof. There are plenty of words you could use to describe Lark at Bury St Edmunds: ambitious, intelligent, laid-back and a great deal of fun. But I will pick just one word, used correctly. Like that bunny shank pie, it’s special.

News bites

The Crown Inn, a gastropub in Upton, Hampshire, has joined sister company The Charcuterie on Parsonage Farm, which produces a range of cured meats and has a cookery school. They are offering a strut of new courses to the guests. One in the craft of making charcuterie. The other is called Make Your Own Breakfast, and it will lead participants through butchering pork shoulders to make sausages and processing bellies to make bacon (parsonagefarmcharcuterie.com).

Very late night Chinese dining options have multiplied in central London. A year ago, Chinese restaurant group Four Seasons opened Chop Chop, a Cantonese restaurant on the lower ground floor of the Hippodrome Casino near Leicester Square. It is open until 4 am. Now, Empire Casino, just feet from the strip, has teamed up with Asian restaurateur Ellen Chew to launch 7th Cat. Also offers a Cantonese menu and is open until 4am (thecasinolsq.com).

Closing news. Le Pain Quotidien, the Belgian-born bakery group with operations in 20 countries including India, Brazil and Japan, has closed all but one of its British subsidiaries after the UK holding company went into administration. The only branch at St Pancras station remains open. Meanwhile, large restaurant group D&D London has quietly closed its longtime Canary Wharf location that was trading as Plateau. It is the sixth D&D restaurant to close this year.

Email Jay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1

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