Congratulations are due to Turnip and Enjoy. The Great Western Road restaurant has just been awarded its first AA Rosette.
According to the AA, these are given to restaurants which ‘achieve standards that stand out in their local area. They serve food prepared with care, understanding and skill, using good quality ingredients’.
The Guide adds that just 10% of the restaurants in the UK are good enough to make the grade.
Family-run restaurant
The family-run Turnip and Enjoy called it ‘an emotional day as we are awarded our first AA Rosette!’
We ran a Chewin’ the Fat blog with Enjoy, as it was called then, back in 2013. We noted that the warmth of welcome was a recurring theme in reviews of the restaurant.
That is still very much the case with the AA labelling Turnip as a ‘Welcoming restaurant with accomplished cooking’.
Last year, the kitchen at Turnip and Enjoy turned up the ambition dial and the menus switched from offering interesting bistro/café dishes to providing genuinely innovative, adventurous and creative ideas.
As a concrete example, that 2013 blog listed a Provencal daube or stew plus a crab, chilli and rocket linguine as menu items.
They were good, tried and tested dishes with a wide appeal but they would not have set the heather alight.
Glowing reviews
By contrast, the current a la carte menu at Turnip and Enjoy includes a starter of potted Ardgay venison served with salt bake celeriac, beetroot, watercress and juniper butter, rye and ale bread.
The change of tack worked and the restaurant picked up lots of glowing press attention; a visit from the Michelin people and fantastic 5pm reviews.
It currently has a tremendous 4.5/5 rating from 5pm diners – one of the highest on the site.
Chateaubriand Big Deal
If you want to see why Turnip and Enjoy is garnering so much attention then you should try today’s Big Deal from the restaurant.
There are two options. Option one is £32.50 for two people to share a Chateaubriand board.
A must for meat-lovers, this is a carved 450-500g fillet steak which is served with chips, smoked bone marrow ketchup and confit plum tomatoes.
Option two is £49 for two people to have the five course Turnip & Enjoy tasting menu.
Dishes on this include the blackened mackerel with crab, bergamot, fennel and a fennel pollen muffin followed by the rabbit loin and heritage carrot terrine with stinging nettles, young carrot jerky, liquorice root caramel and BBQ langoustine tail.
In her Sunday Herald review, Joanna Blythmann wrote that ‘the food shows care and effort. No dish has not had some thought and attention lavished on it.’