DESTINATION EATS

Novelty dining

Is your idea of destination dining supper in a circus ring, surrounded by clowns? Or perhaps a glass-panelled dining dome with a view of the city will suffice? Melissa Blease debates the food experiences that could be ahead...

Here’s a little game of spot the odd one out. Is it a dinner delivered to a table on the wing of a grounded plane? Or might it be a Michelin-starred menu delivered straight to the driving seat of your car, alongside 600 other carbound diners? What about a picnic supper served in a circus ring, delivered by clowns? The answer is... none of them are.

In these strange, upside-down days, all three options are being served up as post-Covid ‘dining experiences’ in Singapore, Los Angeles and Germany – and others could be offered at a treetop, food recycling facility or supermarket car park near you any day now.

While Bath hasn’t jumped on the headline-grabbing novelty dining bandwagon yet (let’s face it, most of us are delighted to bag ourselves an alfresco table on a sunny day), might it only be a matter of time before we too are weighing up whether we want to take our fish and chips home with us or eat them in a tank surrounded by an aquarium? Taking an overview of Bath’s restaurant scene right now, I reckon it’s unlikely. While the road out of lockdown (let alone the implications of the current hospitality industry staffing crisis) remains unclear, one thing is certain: the Bath restaurant scene is powered by a robust army of entrepreneurs who refuse to lie low.

Affordable fine dining

As our finest going-out clothes gathered dust in our wardrobes, our incomes dwindled. But an opportunity to take stock taught us that that we can’t take eating out in the company of family and friends for granted, nor should we save the pleasure for special occasions only as many of us embraced an increased awareness that the longterm emotional sustenance we digest from eating with others offers us far, far more than we’ll ever gain from splashing out on costly, ostentatious experiences. As a result, traditional fine dining (as in, don your best bib and tucker and prepare to flex your credit card) may have lost its shine for good.

Some of the south west’s most stellar five-star hotel kitchens such as The Bath Priory have introduced flexible, realistically priced menus that offer a casual or brasserie-style approach to dishes that represent very fine dining indeed, all available to enjoy in picturesque gardens or on stylish hotel terraces formerly reserved for residents or high rollers.

Lucknam Park has gone one step further by offering diners the unique opportunity to enjoy a chef-prepared barbecue or picnic hamper in a secluded area of the hotel’s private estate, while No. 15 Great Pulteney’s picnic hampers have swiftly garnered iconic status around these parts –and, if you choose to enjoy your No. 15 alfresco feast in leafy, secluded Henrietta Park, you can order your basket for direct delivery.

Meanwhile, The Gainsborough Bath Spa Hotel is poised to introduce Bathonians to a brand new “contemporary British brasserie” this summer.

Takeaway turnaround

The enduring success of home delivery and meal kit boxes has proved that home is still very much where it’s at. But new look eat-in home delivery services are pushing the “curry or pizza?” boundaries to the max.

The Mint Room’s @Home selection includes carefully selected, fullon feasts, sharing platters and even Tiffin Boxes that make the very best choices for you, Yak Yeti Yak can deliver an array of authentic Nepalese classics chilled and ready to finish at home. Several ambitious new DIY Dining Kit ventures, meanwhile, are poised to deliver all the ingredients/components for a full-on, five-course Tasting Menu to your doorstep fully prepped, portioned out and ready to roll – the only thing that isn't included in such boxes is a set of professional chef whites.

Elsewhere, hybrid or flexible operations (for example, restaurants that also offer pop-up Food Truck services away from their main site, such as The Scallop Shell’s wonderful fish and chip van) and small, independent ‘ghost’ or ‘dark’ kitchens that only operate home delivery services are trending across the UK, with Bath’s A:ROAM:A being a tried-and-tested case in point.

Adapting to the great outdoors

From unique dining domes and pavilions in the gardens of both Homewood (near Freshford) and The Bird/Plate (Pulteney Road) to the upper-level terrace at The Scallop Shell (Monmouth Place) and a whole host of new alfresco merrymaking zones on Kingsmead Square and more, Bath restaurateurs have – and continue to – prove themselves as a distinctly imaginative bunch when it comes to adapting and thriving.

Pub gardens have undergone major revamps, pavement tables have popped up on pavements that you didn’t even know existed and fire pits, heaters, gazebos, huts, marquees and huge umbrellas are battling the elements everywhere – and it looks as though alfresco is a trend that’s here to stay.

According to a recent survey conducted by hospitality industry resource BigHospitality, 48% of 4,000 people who eat out regularly say that not only are they embracing the new alfresco environment, but they would continue to eat outdoors even when both options are freely available. Will those people feel the same way in January? Many restaurants in Bath are already establishing permanent, fully efficient heating systems in operation in readiness for the big chill.

So Singapore, Los Angeles and Germany have their flightless planes, drive-in diners and circus ring picnics to look forward to. Legendary double Michelin-starred Copenhagen restaurant Noma has opened a ‘burger outpost’; Parisian hotel Les Bains has drained its 19th-century swimming pool and repurposed it as a restaurant; super-chic luxury London hotel The Berkeley has introduced seaside-inspired Beach Huts where diners can enjoy a five-star twist on fish and chips. And in Bath? We don’t need the shock of the new to remind us how lucky we are to have all the good stuff we need on our doorsteps, all of the time. n

... dinner delivered to a table on the wing of a grounded plane? ❝