Can’t afford to escape to the South of France this Christmas? Côte can bring a French Christmas to you.
(Image: Phoebe Hobbs)
When you’re a kid, your favourite part of Christmas is probably getting presents. When you’re an adult, your favourite part of Christmas is probably giving presents to the people you love.
Your favourite part except for the food, that is. Regardless of age, everyone loves the food. Maybe the centrepiece for you growing up was roast goose. Or turkey. Or chicken. Or a nut roast.
Personally, my favourite bit was always the humble Yorkshire pudding. You can place tiny portions of every other element of Christmas dinner inside the pudding – stuffing, peas, carrots, gravy, potatoes – and experience the whole spectacle in one bite. Genius.
The Côte Brasserie in Bath has its own take on Christmas dinner with their new seasonal menu, taking inspiration not from Yorkshire but from France. So, how do they like their roast on the continent?
As a starter, I ordered the smoked salmon rillettes with beetroot and sourdough bread. Time for a confession: I did not know what a rillette was.
I was not stupendously good at French back in school (I opted to take German for GCSE instead), and I wasn’t much of a prodigy in food tech either. I’m not even sure I pronounced the word right to the waitress. If I did butcher it, she was too kind to correct me.
For those as linguistically and culinarily clueless as me, a salmon rillette involves cooking the fish in its own fat for a few hours before cutting it into delicate strips. At Côte the beetroot was also shredded and placed in a dinky little jar.
With one layer of vividly purple beetroot topped with a second layer of salmon, it looked more like a dessert than a savoury starter. As I spooned the cold rillette onto the warm sourdough, I wondered where rillette had been all my life (and again, how to pronounce it).
The salmon was lovely, but the real star of the show was the beetroot. Its subtle flavour balanced out both the salmon and the sourdough. If this is what French people regularly slather on their bread, I’m a little embarrassed about beans on toast!
Onto the main course. I ordered the roast turkey ballotin, filled with stuffing and wrapped like a present with smoked bacon. When the dish arrived, I was struck by the continental reinterpretations of classic roast dinner foods. Instead of roast potatoes, we were treated to potatoes confit, finely shredded and deep fried in what I later discovered was duck fat.
(Image: Bonnie Yeung)
After tucking into the confit, I came to two realizations. One: French people really love cutting things into tiny little strips. Two: they do it because it’s delicious! The confit added a textural depth to a vegetable I’m more used to seeing simply mashed or boiled.
By the time I finished the main course, I was well and truly sated. With generous portion sizes, you probably don’t need to order a side at Côte.
I feared I might have no room for pudding, but along came an option that seemed tailor-made for people like me. In a holy trinity of bite-sized desserts, you can order a fruity macaroon, sweet profiterole and buttery madeleine with a coffee of your choice. Three bites of pudding which all provide a different flavour for a perfectly balanced end to your time at Côte.
So this is Christmas French-style. I missed the Yorkshire puddings a bit, but overall us Brits might have something to learn from our neighbours when it comes to the most important feast of the year! Côte Bath’s Christmas menu expertly plays with texture and depth to create something truly creative, sumptuous and above all satisfying.
At the end of the meal, I had to take home a lot of leftovers and left feeling very full. But frankly, is it really Christmas if you don’t?
Côte Bath is open seven days a week at 27 Milsom Place. Their Christmas menu is available up until Tuesday, December 31.
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Dining and Cooking