Head chef Nathan Cornwell has brought a love of foraging and fermenting plus intense flavour combinations to a local London restaurant
The menu of neighbourhood restaurant the Silver Birch in London's Chiswick reads very simply: only four or five ingredients are listed for each of the eight courses on a brand-new tasting menu to pique the guest's interest. But for Nathan Cornwell, who moved from overseeing the kitchen at Moor Hall's the Barn to become Silver Birch head chef only a few months ago, it's all about the element of surprise when the hyperseasonal ingredients are paired together on the plate.
Take the cod dish, which he admits he "just put on the menu for the chicken butter sauce". "I love a combination of meat and fish," he says. "And this is a very intense chicken sauce with cream and butter, cut through with elderflower and chives, so you have this chicken, leeky savoury note with a lot of acid."
This love of acidity comes from his time in Scandinavia working at restaurants including three-star Geranium and two-star Kadeau in Copenhagen, as well as two-star Oaxen Krog in Stockholm. It's there his love of foraging and fermenting began, skills he built on during his stint with Mark Birchall at Moor Hall. "I like to use vinegars made from elderberry or elderflower to finish intense sauces," he says.
His CV also includes Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham and Kitchen W8 in London. During the four years he spent in Lancashire he turned the Barn into a one-star restaurant. His desire to have his own restaurant has brought him back south again to a fairly new restaurant in Chiswick where he has designed new à la carte and tasting menus.
"There are endless amounts of great restaurants in London, so you are pitting yourself against them – it's a competition at the end of the day," he says. "We do amazing British produce from fantastic suppliers, served really simply with as much care as I possibly can.
"I like to play around but keep it simple with pairings of flavour. My favourite flavours are lemon and verbena in desserts, paired with fruits like raspberries or strawberries, which are floral and intense at the same time."
The current lemon and verbena pairing is a mousse served with Oakchurch cherries which he blends into a sorbet that sits atop cherry jam mixed with an almond crumble, along with shards of almond nougatine. "It's fresh, light and intense, and super seasonal."
Another Cornwell favourite is cured trout and seaweed tart. He serves it as a snack ahead of the tasting menu, which changes – sometimes weekly – depending on what is available from his local suppliers.
For the tart, he makes a thin French pastry and bakes it until "super crispy". He then cures ChalkStream trout for four hours in sugar, salt, lime, lemon zest and chopped dill before dressing it with rapeseed oil and more lime zest. A seaweed mayonnaise using seaweed oil made from nori, parsley and chive, as well as a sharp note from pickled shallot, goes on top and the delicate, single bite is finished with trout roe.
"I'm a great lover of balancing things," he says. "There has to be a mixture of salt, seasoning, sour and texture, so the crunch of the pastry case, the buttery fish, the acidity and the pops from the trout roe give you that combination."
The main course of Aylesbury Peking duck is another surprise. "The funny thing is the whole dish came from going to my parents' house. They're keen veg growers and have bobby beans, broad beans and runner beans. I had the duck, so I just put two and two together."
The duck is aged for four weeks, then cooked on the bone slowly. For the sweetcorn purée, "all the juice is reduced down, you add butter and the natural starch is super intense. It's like nothing else you've ever tasted".
An apricot purée is made with elderflower vinegar, while the duck leg is marinated in Shaoxing wine and brined in 2.5% soy sauce for eight hours before being cooked for 16 hours at 58 degrees. "I make a little duck sauce from the carcass, which is usually quite heavy, so I cut it with elderflower vinegar and a bit of the rendered duck fat and honey. It's all a bit of a balancing act on rich, sour and sweet."
Only a couple of months into his new role as Silver Birch head chef, Cornwell's plan is to create an "amazing neighbourhood restaurant" without any restrictive set style. "I want the food to be amazing and how I'd like to eat."
From the menu
£90 per person
- Snacks: cured trout and seaweed tart, pig's head fritter, blue cheese sablé
- Sourdough focaccia, smoked bacon mousse, pea velouté, fresh pea salad, bacon crumble
- Ex-dairy beef tartare, mustard, kohlrabi, sea herbs, herb cracker
- Isle of Wight tomatoes, pickled cucumber, quinoa, consommé
- Butter-poached lemon sole, courgette flower, tartare roe sauce
- Aylesbury Peking duck, sweetcorn, bobby beans, apricot
- Oakchurch cherries, lemon verbena mousse, almond
- Brown butter chocolate délice, milk sorbet, caramelised white chocolate
£60 per person for wine pairings, which include Champagne, riesling and mocavero
The Silver Birch, 142 Chiswick High Road, London W4 1PU silverbirchchiswick.co.uk
