Meating the needs

Over in the main kitchen of the 65-bedroom Lygon Arms, head chef Graeme Nesbitt and a brigade of as many as 15 chefs strive to fulfil the needs of the traditional Lygon guest as well as a newer audience. Consequently, the menu for the 100-seat Great Room restaurant is a compromise between experimental flavours and tried-and-true dishes.

On the appetisers and delicacies menu, pigeon salad with foie gras ravioli and a Muscat grape sauce has been a surprising hit. For this dish, Nesbitt uses squab pigeon combined with baked shallots, French beans and shiitake mushrooms. A foie gras ravioli is balanced on top, the whole thing being held together in a potato basket.

In a region where meat eaters dominate, it's difficult to break through with fish dishes, but Nesbitt says that he is slowly winning by offering tempting combinations of flavours. One of the more popular dishes has been braised sea bass on a shiitake mushroom, coriander and lemon grass broth with spinach dumplings. The sea bass is cooked for seven minutes before the mushrooms and dumplings are added. The whole thing is then braised in the coriander and lemon grass broth.

As well as traditional châteaubriand and herb-crusted rump of lamb, a dish of lightly smoked quail breasts on wild mushroom and asparagus risotto with fondant potatoes and lemon thyme sauce is vying for position. Quail breasts are presented on the risotto in the middle of the dish. Round the rim are dotted three potatoes, with different preparations of quail: a confit of quail leg, a quail-stuffed morel, and quail mousse.

On the pudding menu, hot raspberry soufflé with home-made pistachio nut cookies and tropical fruit sushi with poppy seed chopsticks are the current favourites. Nesbitt likes to include a soufflé but admits that this sometimes causes disappointment in the kitchen. "On the last menu," he recalls, "we had a hot treacle soufflé with chocolate chip ice-cream. It was so successful that the pastry chef nearly ran out screaming." The fruit sushi is made from cold rice pudding covered with fruit, moulded into a cylinder 1-2in across, then cut into sushi-sized pieces. Plates are finished off with Chinese script in chocolate, and the poppy seed chopsticks.

The cost for three courses is £39.50 and average spend for two works out at just over £100. Nesbitt, whose pedigree includes the Dorchester, the Savoy and Claridge's, all in London, aims to change the menu every two months. Like Pashley, he too is charged with making a 27% food cost and last month hit 28%.

Lygon Arms, Broadway, Worcestershire WR12 7DU. Tel: 01386 852255

Web site: www.savoy-group.co.uk