When I pull into the car park at The Boat, just outside Lichfield, chef owner Liam Dillon is lovingly watering plants. Hose in hand, chef whites on, it could easily be a set up. A stunt to remind us that this isn’t just a restaurant, it’s also a micro farm, following in the footsteps of the likes of Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir or Tommy Banks’ Black Swan, reducing food miles to a matter of feet.
A few hours later, it’s clear it’s no marketing ploy. Dillon is obviously obsessed with his farm, enjoying pottering through rows of vegetables or feeding his pigs as much as he does cooking.
If he does, it’s completely understandable. He’s more than done his time, working in restaurants including Marcus Wareing and La Becasse, even Noma. He competed on Great British Menu and is not only chef owner of The Boat in Lichfield, which he’s had since 2017, but now also The Two Pigs pub down the road in Barton-under-Needwood. With all that in mind, who could blame someone who’s been flat out working in or running restaurants for his whole life for wanting a bit of quiet time?
But it’s not just a distraction – the micro farm adds a personal element to what is a unique place in this neck of the woods. The menu outlines Dillon and The Boat’s approach, with most of the dishes on the tasting menu including ingredients that have come from just outside the front door. Not just that, but he’s somehow encouraged his team to buy into it too, with everyone from chefs to waiting staff doing their bit, whether it’s weeding, watering or fetching ingredients when they’re needed.
There may be a farm feel outside, but inside The Boat is an elegant restaurant, shrugging off its history as a pub and transporting you to the world of luxurious decor, special stools for your handbag, and two fine dining tasting menus – one shorter, one longer – that will have you settling in for a night of precision cooking, and slick service befitting of a Michelin Star experience.
As they so often are in very good places, the snacks are a rollercoaster of ‘wow’ followed by a fear that nothing else that follows will be quite as good. A Staffordshire cheese tart is a savoury hit of cheese custard combined with sweet, crunchy pickled walnut, while a Cod’s roe pillow is just that. A thin crunch that gives way to a melt-in-the-mouth pillow of joy. We order the fried chicken because why wouldn’t you, and these little cubes of KFC-on-crack live up to their promise, again leaving us wondering if this is the peak of the meal already.
It’s not. Though the joyful party of beer soaked spelt bread, along with the most beautiful shell-moulded chicken butter, an incredibly sexy liver parfait and garden pickles, could possibly be.
We’re in the era of nobody putting bread and butter in the corner, and this course is an epitome of reminding us that life is simply too short to eat rubbish versions when you could be enjoying homemade loaves and the kind of butter that needs to be layered on thick because it’s too good not to.
For the next course, whipped goat’s cheese is stacked with small cubes of eel, tomatoes that have been dehydrated then rehydrated with tomato water to produce a transformed texture and a concentrated tomato flavour like no other, then drenched in dashi broth. It’s light but intense and suits the season, not to mention perfectly constructed.
Halibut is a meaty, buttery chunk of fish, topped by a crispy fried St Austell mussel, and served with a thin slice of a stuffed courgette flower, its filling studded with pops of colour and flavour. It gets my mum’s vote as the dish of the night – a view she sticks with even after trying the following elements of the menu.
A duck course enters the party next, with bold richness, sweeping the delicate fish out of the way with guest appearances from a heart and a croustade filled with hoisin and offal ragu, their gamey notes sweeping in and hitting the palate hard.
A glass of Pinot Noir from nearby Pattingham vineyard is a good pairing, as well as a nod to local suppliers that’s done well here, whether it’s Packington chicken or cutlery from Arthur Price in Lichfield.
Its richness is a lot, but is tamed by a parfait made from Amalfi lemons, its creaminess countered by a hit of gooseberry as well as the slightly sour creme fraiche sorbet it’s paired with. There’s are light cubes of cake, and honey from the bees kept in hives in the farm is drizzled over at the table – another final reminder that so much of the elements of these dishes is far more personal than some places.
The service is excellent – impressive given the team is relatively young. There’s a feeling of a well-oiled machine, with the younger members clearly looking up to those among them with more experience and following their lead.
At £75 for the shorter tasting menu and £110 for the longer option, it’s not unreasonable for a dining experience of this sort, and given the restaurant is full when we visit, it seems Dillon’s decision to take the food to a more fine dining style has clearly paid off.
As we leave, the sun’s setting over the long polytunnel, various greenhouses and vegetable beds. And while I can’t hear his pigs snuffling around, I’m fairly sure I can hear the chickens gently cooing. Perhaps this was what he dreamed of when he decided to turn his grounds into a farm. Or maybe he just fancied somewhere to escape and grow some veg. Either way, he’s created something special.
