The Balcony

10-12 Dunford Road, Holmfirth

Rating

Venue: The Balcony

Tel: 01484 683007

Website: www.balconyholmfirth.co.uk

Opening hours: Wednesday to Saturday 12 noon to 10pm, Sundays 12 noon to 6pm.

Children: Yes

Disabled access: No

The bill: £56.20

Rating: 8/10

WHATEVER you do at the Balcony restaurant in Holmfirth don’t eat what look like giant mints in a small dish on your table.

I’ll be back to that later, but these two mysterious white round objects puzzled us throughout the evening – yet all will be revealed at the end.

The Balcony used to be a Chinese restaurant, but is now English with, it has to be said, European and Asian influences coming strongly to the fore. It has been run by head chef Patrick Joyce and co-owner Simon Pickup since February – and has balconies at the back which overlook the River Holme.

You have to walk through the Y-bar wine bar to get to it, but once upstairs it has a warm, cosy feel with cream and deep red walls, exposed brickwork, modern artwork and upholstered chairs.

There’s a hub to the place caused by the wine bar and even though the drinkers got louder as the evening wore on, it was never intrusive. After all, you can’t see them.

It’s a menu that immediately posed us with problems. We wanted just about everything on it.

I’d not had scallops for a while so thought I’d give them a whirl. They can be a tad rubbery, but the chef had an ace up his sleeve here – he’d carefully rested them on roundlets of chorizo sausage and then treated it all to a mustard vinaigrette dressing. It was combination that worked.

After all, opposites attract.

Ruth’s grilled goat’s cheese crostini with wood-roasted peppers and red onion marmalade was a fat chunk of goat’s cheese designed to send fans of the genre into culinary overdose.

Other starters included wild mushrooms in a creamy garlic sauce on a toasted ciabatta with a lavender balsamic reduction and a warm salad of locally-shot wood pigeon, black pudding, herb croutons and a honey mustard dressing or Yorkshire duck spring rolls with ginger and mango dressing. If we’d had that last one, the kids would have gone mad. The only ducks they like are ones still alive and eager for bread. Eating one would be an unforgivable sin in their young eyes.

Moving on to the mains and the choice didn’t get any easier.

How do you choose between crispy pork belly on an apple mash with a Calvados sauce and grilled salmon fillet and a lobster and crayfish thermadore – and that’s before you start talking pan-seared duck breast, seabass fillets and Yorkshire fillet steak. You don’t, so we both opted for lamb, but done differently. Mine was roast rump of lamb, puy lentil and broad bean casserole with a red wine and rosemary jus.

Ruth’s was pot-roasted lamb shank, smashed root vegetables, creamed potatoes and minted gravy. Minted gravy? It must be rich.

Both came in large dishes. We looked around. It wasn’t just us. Everyone had a large dish in front of them. Phew.

The roast lamb was pink, tender and succulent on tiny lentils and well-done small broad beans with the red wine and rosemary jus lasting to the end – and that’s not often the case with jus.

Ruth’s was a large lamb shank with the meat easily parted from the bone with a casual flip of the fork, but she felt short on the mash front. She asked for more and was kept fully informed of the timescale for its arrival – twice. So, plenty of top quality meat, but we could have done with more vegetables.

Still, that left something of a silver lining that turned to pure gold when it came to afters. The sticky toffee pudding served with butterscotch sauce and crème Anglaise proved irresistible and, as second choice, we selected the baked white chocolate and ginger cheesecake with fresh raspberries and crème Chantilly.

Oh yes! The sticky toffee was better than fine and the cheesecake was a solid slab of pure pudding perfection. I’m still arguing with myself that it’s the best pudding I’ve ever had.

And as for the mystery of the mints.

Right at the end the waitress turned up with a kettle and poured boiling water over them. Was she mad or some kind of magician?

Certainly the letter as they expanded with the water and turned into hot hand towels.