Restaurant Review: Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham

Oct 22 2010 With Richard McComb

Le Champignon Sauvage
24-26 Suffolk Road, Cheltenham, T: 01242 573449

Dining out should be pleasurable or you might as well stay home with a Pot Noodle. On occasions, depending on your budget, the experience may be educational. An imaginative, technically gifted chef might introduce you to something you have never come across before.

And so it was for me with sewin.

Yes, sewin.

Do you know what it is? I hadn’t a clue.

Hint: it is not Walsall diction for a popular litigious action – as in “I’m sewin (suing) the council.”

Sewin is, in fact, a fish, known more prosaically as sea trout but so-called, apparently, by the Welsh.

I know this because it featured as a starter at David and Helen Everitt-Matthias’s Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham. But what I don’t know is whether the fact I didn’t know what it was is a good thing or a bad thing.

Now, if sewin had been an exotic fish, or a rare jungle beast, with no known British equivalent, I wouldn’t mention it. But sewin is sea trout and I know what sea trout is. So why call it sewin?

Is it because chef and forager extraordinaire David E-M, who likes nothing better than trekking through the Forest of Dean for mushrooms, is celebrating a threatened linguistic culture?

Or is it because he’s too clever by half? Guests at another table – it was lunchtime and five were occupied – also queried the nature of sewin.

E-M can certainly afford to be too clever by half because his cooking has touches of brilliance.

I met him later in the kitchen and he clearly knows the gastronomic repertoire – and some. He has also got exceedingly large biceps and is therefore capable of inflicting heavy-duty pummelling on cocky reviewers.

This chef inhabits rarefied culinary territory. Le Champignon Sauvage, which E-M set up with his wife in 1987, is celebrating a decade of double Michelin starriness. In any dining terms, but particularly in English dining terms, having two red stars represents a huge achievement.

There are only 13 such establishments in England, six of them outside London. Le Champ also merits 8/10 in the Good Food Guide and was placed 16th in Britain in the National Restaurant Awards last week.

As the quail flies, Le Champ is by far the nearest double-starred restaurant to Brum. Cheltenham is only 40 minutes’ away by train and if you board at Birmingham University you don’t have to go near the horror of New Street Station.

Travelling by train means you can, of course, indulge in a tipple with your meal.

My companion, Mr T, and I hadn’t counted on the swiftness of Cross Country Trains and, arriving early, we found few options for a pre-lunch snifter in the spa town.

We therefore became one of the few parties to precede a meal at one of the country’s finest dining rooms with a drink at a Wetherspoon’s. It was 11.45am and I thought we were early, but judging by the demeanour of the clientele we were late. (Christmas lunch here is £6.99, including seven pints of Tuborg and complimentary Frazzles. No sewin.)

Fortified, we passed on the offer of £1.49 Oriental noodles and we were driven through a Cotswolds monsoon to Suffolk Road.

“Is that it?” I said to Mr T, pointing at what appeared to be a provincial solicitors’ office.

“That’s it,” he said. I’d been told Le Champ was unassuming but this was unassumingly unassuming and I rather like that.

Inside, Helen E-M is a welcoming host, especially when proffering Champagne. She should give classes to the clueless ninnies who often greet customers at restaurants.

It’s not difficult: you just treat them like humans, and smile.

Helen is very good at this. Her waitress less so. When I gave a wine order and asked if it was okay she said “Yes,” snapped the book shut and walked off. Maybe I smelled of Wetherspoon’s.

Thanks to Helen, Le Champ doesn’t lack for a friendly spirit and E-M’s food doesn’t lack for flavour and passion.

It’s why the lunchtime atmosphere was confounding.