My guest wasn't mincing her words.“This is the best food I've eaten in my entire life”, she saidWe were halfway through a dish of “Squid, chorizo, romanesco, ink”, the third course of seven on the tasting menu at OX, on Belfast's Oxford Street.
The dish was pure OX: visually arresting, tactile, ardently clever and seemingly able to push all the pleasure points with every bite. Just as clever, and just as tactile, was the decision to pair it with a red wine, a glass of Villa Wolf pinot noir from Germany, a red wine that drinks like a white wine.
Stephen Toman's cooking in OX is so good that it forces you to dig deep into the memory bank. Is the cooking as good as Paul Rankin's food in Roscoff in 1991? As good as Michael Deane's cooking in Helen's Bay in 1993? As good as Robbie Millar's cooking in Shank's in 1995?
It's only when you realise the sources to which you are comparing Mr Toman's cooking – the greatest chefs in the history of Northern Ireland at the very peak of their powers – that you realise the level to which OX has ascended after only 18 months in business.
OX was more than good when it opened, but it is twice as more than good now, and the confidence of Mr Toman and his partner, the sommelier Alain Kerloc'h, appears to be growing exponentially. You get the impression that they feel they can do anything, and then they put a plate of hay-baked celeriac with black garlic and sorrel on the table, and pair it with a glass of Pouilly-Fuissé and you realise that, yes, sure enough, they can do anything.
There are antecedents for what the team at OX are doing – L'Arpege, The Ledbury, Noma, Mugarritz – but it's the fact that these antecedents have been learned and then formed into the distinctive and creative identity of OX that makes eating here so exciting.
Like the best modern chefs, Mr Toman makes no distinction between the commonplace and the costly – the smoked potato is as important as the piece of chateaubriand; the fermented kohlrabi as vital as the smoked veal; the onion ravioli as pertinent as the autumn truffle, the polenta cake as much of a headliner as the Valrhona chocolate.
His sense of democracy means that every dish is through-composed – everything needs to be on the plate to complete the tone poem the chef wants you to enjoy.And just as important as the ingredients are the array of wines M. Kerloc'h finds to pair with the food.
Domaine Fiumicicoli from Corsica with the smoked veal; that Villa Wolf pinot which is such a thrill with the squid; the Beneventano Aglianico from Campania with the chateaubriand; a Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh with polenta cake. I have to join with my guest in saying that the selection of wines with the seven courses was the best-judged flight of wines with food I have ever enjoyed.Best food. Best wines. That's OX, Belfast, 2014, up there with Roscoff, Deane's on the Square, and Shank's.
Up there with the very best.
John McKenna
