THE ELDER
Bath’s newest hotel also boasts one of its most impressive restaurants, with a distinctive theme, real character, and top-notch talent in the kitchen. Game on! By Matt Bielby
A
utumn is here, and it’s time to start kicking through the leaves, breaking out the woolies, and reconsidering our relationship with wild animals: how bewitching and natural and bonny they are, and the best places to currently eat them. Bath hasn’t really had a game specialist before, but in The Elder – the restaurant offering at the vast, just-opened Hotel Indigo on South Parade – we now boast one to be proud of, a purveyor of out-of-the-ordinary meats which manages to be wholesome, comforting and downright delicious on the one hand, and on the other somewhat fancy. That it never veers into the fussy – fancy’s regular bedfellow – shows just how well judged an offering this is. Hotel dining isn’t always exciting – it’s too often a parody of itself, stuffy and generic – but things don’t have to be that way. Rather than some vast, impersonal dining room – which Hotel Indigo lacks, being built of endless Georgian terraces, each knocked through into the next – you eat in a series of more modest (though still impressive) rooms running along the front of the building. There are three main ones, each offering twenty covers or so – the entire restaurant has maybe 55 in all, at least in these socially distanced times – so you don’t need too many people to get it nicely buzzing. Much of what makes The Elder so good is that there’s a guiding intelligence behind the whole thing, from the
38 I BATH LIFE I www.mediaclash.co.uk
gentleman’s club leather banquets and stuffed pheasants on the walls to a game-heavy menu that dovetails with the look perfectly. Much of this is down to executive chef Mike Robinson, a proper outdoorsman with a true ‘field to fork’ sensibility – he’s a Saturday Kitchen regular, owns the Michelin starred Fulham gastro pub The Harwood Arms, and delivers venison to London’s best restaurants (some which he shoots himself). Also on hand, and more regularly in the kitchen here: group head chef Gavin Edney, who shares his time with sister restaurant The Woodsman in Stratford Upon Avon. You’ve got to be impressed by the fact that these guys manage the deer herds on local estates themselves, and grow their own herbs and veggies in a kitchen garden. Before dinner we enjoyed a pleasant half hour sampling the extensive cocktail menu at the bar, with its fancy light fittings and ’40s New York vibe. We took one classic (an Aviation, a gin slipper from the early 20th century) and another more recent invention (a Jalisco Picante), both of which were confidently put together but less punchy than we’d hoped for, the Aviation (for instance) lacking its traditional vibrant violet hue. From this point on, though, The Elder really upped its game, barely putting a foot wrong: everything was high quality, convivial and gently surprising, a true feast of foresty foods. The a la carte menu – constantly changing with the seasons and availability – offers two courses for £37.50
