L’Enclume review: Does three Michelin stars equal three hats?

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What’s it to be? Stay home for the much-anticipated second series of The Bear, or go out for the much-anticipated L’Enclume Residency at Bathers’ Pavilion? Both will be riveting expressions of the cut-and-thrust, boiling-point pressure and high stakes of the dining world.

But given that I pre-authorised $840 for L’Enclume back in February, The Bear can wait.

This is Big Deal dining, cooked up by Bathers’ owners, Ian Pagent and Jessica Shirvington, and L’Enclume’s Simon Rogan in 2019. Since then, the restaurant in Cartmel, Cumbria, has gained its third Michelin star, and was named best restaurant in the United Kingdom for the sixth time in its 20 years.

Potters have been turning bowls, woodworkers carving spoons and gardeners growing rock chives just for this event, and eight chefs and key senior staff are here from Britain. There hasn’t been a chef residency handled this rigorously since Noma Sydney in 2016.

Soon, I’m stepping through a specially commissioned hand-painted veil by Australian artist Janet Laurence and into the ever-handsome Bathers’ Pavilion dining room. L’Enclume is a long way from its 13th-century stone-walled blacksmith’s workshop home, but it is immediately warm, comfortable and welcoming. And just like that, dinner is off and running.

You begin with your fingers, picking up a tiny tartlet that’s sweet and salty with beetroot pastry and trout roe. A Faberge egg of a fritter is stuffed with confit Bundarra pork and smoked eel, covered in what look like (but aren’t) Rice Bubbles, and bejewelled with fermented corn kernels. Later, slender Cutipol cutlery lines up like surgical instruments.

The kitchen has that proper English way with seasoning, packing in the flavour. A seaweed custard is like silken umami, bearing a Royal Miyagi Pacific oyster and a turban of oscietra caviar. To then add a rich-but-not-too-rich beefy broth with bone marrow over the top is divine inspiration.

The kitchen has that proper English way with seasoning, packing in the flavour.

L’Enclume’s Valentin Mouillard brings energy and a wonderfully waxed moustache to the role of sommelier, never failing to point to how the wine relates to the dish in front of you. It’s something we should insist on from all our somms.

The pairings themselves are inspired. My eight-glass taster pairing ($190) sets off with a crisp Grosset Polish Hill riesling, moves on to an earthy, dry, Tengumai Kimoto Jikomi sake and ends with a chilled, honeyed Ridgeside Icewine Vidal from Canada.

Leopard rockcod (similar to coral trout) is a perfect disc of just-set fish seemingly floating in a foamy bisquey broth.

Dorper lamb loin is a right proper main course, pink from edge to edge under a lovely jus bubbled with tapioca. It comes accessorised with horseradish cream, tiny lamb-fat crumpets and a little pot of rich lamb ragu that’s like warm rillettes.

An earthy dish of Jerusalem artichokes and goat’s cheese feels a bit twiggy, and a bowl set with frozen Tunworth cheese leaves me cold.

There’s charm in the English references to rosehips, tapioca and crumpets, and petits fours that taste of Cumbria’s Kendal Mint cake. Desserts are floral riffs with strawberry leaves, camomile, calendula.

The signature “anvil” dessert (a reference to the smithy), is a soft miso caramel mousse, so don’t try to crack it with a spoon or you’ll end up wearing it.

Guest chef extravaganzas, we’ve had a few, from the “greatest hits” of Gordon Ramsay, to the vegan evangelism of Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park, and the poetic botanicals of Mauro Colagreco of Mirazur.

Contextually, this is more exciting than Ramsay, less visionary than Humm, and more cohesive than Colagreco. If a restaurant experience can ever be worth $420, this comes close.

The bits of L’Enclume I would like to snip off and keep in Australia are the confidence with seasoning, and the attention paid to wine pairing. And the staff. They’re young, lively, funny and quick to engage, working together like minnows in a pond. Despite 15-hour days and being half a world away from home, they look like they are having fun, which has a wonderful capacity to transmit itself to the diner.