‘This is the work of a chef who seeks to perfect rather than innovate just for the sake of it’
Quite honestly, this is the best pannacotta I’ve ever eaten. I intend, as I usually do with dessert, to have a taste or two, then push it away. But I can’t, I just can’t. With the texture of clotted cream, only the teensiest shimmy of wobble, it’s thickly freckled with inky vanilla seeds and sits in a pool of sharp-sweet juice from its macerated raspberries and strawberries. It is, genuinely, sublime.
I know, I know: it’s only pudding. But turning something this simple – a dish that has become a stiff old jelly of a cliche – into this sigh-inducing showstopper takes serious chops. I’ve come back to Brawn on hearing that it’s now fully owned by Ed Wilson, formerly group chef of the little Terroirs collection of restaurants, which used to include this one (Wilson is “maintaining links to the wider group”, whatever that means) before it became entirely his baby. I’ve always loved the space, a high-ceilinged, many-windowed former workshop of two rooms, one with an open kitchen. And I’m a Wilson fangirl. Turns out it’s very good to be back.
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