REVIEW | Horto, Rudding Park

There are very few reasons that I - a young, metropolitan man in his twenties - would set foot on a golf course. Living out David Beckham fantasies (football-related ones, calm down) and trying to score a hole in one/sixty-yard screamer hybrid in a round of Footgolf is one. Being able, no, being encouraged to make sartorial choices that only Andre 3000 would normally get away with is another. Horto has just become the third.

At last, we’ve got a fine dining restaurant that isn’t afraid to have a bit of fun with the format as well as with the food.

Officially billed as a pop-up, Horto “popped up” to little fanfare in June of this year, occupying a first-floor space above the pro shop on Rudding Park Hotel’s golf course, just outside of Harrogate.

The team behind it is steered by Murray Wilson, the former head chef at Harrogate’s unofficial Copenhagen embassy, Norse. Comparisons - lazy as they are - are unavoidable; both restaurants offer a set tasting menu, as well as sharing the ethos of making hay while the sun shines. Herbs and vegetables are foraged (from the Rudding Park hotel’s kitchen garden) while they’re in season, and preserved, both for posterity so they can be used in unseasonal months, and also as a culinary device.

Before words like “foraged” and “preserved” conjure mental images of austere dishes consisting of pickled radish with stinging nettle salad, don’t panic. Premium ingredients like Norwegian King Crab and 100 Day-Aged Beef find their way into courses - dependent on seasonality - without a suggestion of a supplement.

When they’re able to put Nidderdale Grouse as one of the five courses (not including the snacks, compulsory in 2016, or their excellent homemade sourdough and flavoured butters) in the tasting menu and not alter the £55 asking price, you feel like they should have a crack at balancing the government’s budget come next March. That would mean dragging them out of the kitchen, though, so maybe not...

"Warm, buttered popcorn" - Norwegian King Crab, Garden Carrot, Burnt Cream

It’s the kitchen, not the accounts department, where they really excel. When you can take Very Serious Ingredients™ like the delicate, milky-sweet flesh of king crab, combine it with a foraged carrot and burnt cream, and turn it into a dish with the uncomplicated satisfaction of warm, buttered popcorn, you’re doing something very right.

Halibut bathes in a pool of crystal-clear, bronze chicken stock that entirely gilds each flake as it yields with the slightest persuasion; a walnut puree provides an almost-bitter retort to the sweet, early-season grouse.

Not everything is a hole-in-one though (groan), the second dessert (two of the five courses, not including snacks, are desserts, which itself seems a bit skewiff) lets diners watch the reconstruction of a deconstructed Eton mess. A chef stands at a dessert station putting together aerated skyr yoghurt, liquid-nitrogen “cooked” meringue, and a cardamom version of that freeze-dried “crisp” that looks like plasterboard - such a ubiquitous fine-dining trope that BBC’s Great British Menu could build a small shanty town with the leftovers at the end of each season.

"Gilded" - Halibut, Chicken, Tuscany Garlic

"Deconstructed" - Blueberries, Skyr Cheesecake, Cardamom

Mick Jagger once said there’s nothing wrong with letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back. This is the case with deconstructed dishes - deconstruct, dissect and decode dishes all you like, as long as the final interpretation is worth the journey.  In the case of this Eton Mess, it doesn’t quite equal the sum of its parts. It does make for great after-dinner entertainment, though.

Speaking of ageing rockers, an image of the Queen daubed in Bowie’s Aladdin Sane face paint is all over the menus, and the street-art theme continues with a heavily graffitied feature wall in the dining room; shorthand for sticking two fingers up to the status quo. It does err dangerously close to yer Dad trying to be cool and edgy, but then you the graffiti tag that says “Fennel” and breathe a sigh of relief at their self-awareness.

At last, we’ve got a fine dining restaurant that isn’t afraid to have a bit of fun with the format as well as with the food. It’s not a place to come for the kind of navel-gazing you’ve seen on Netflix’s Chef’s Table. Ponder into the distance for too long here, and you’ll be distracted by some bloke furiously trying to improve his putting handicap.

Despite the preserving shelves being full of elderflower vinegar and fermented nasturtium, the cocktail list contains the likes of “Tiffany & Co” - a Grey Goose Pear & Asti concoction so called because of the stripper-heel-turquoise hue given by “Hpnotiq” liqueur (as endorsed by Sean Diddy Combs and Cam’Ron). In terms of refinement and sophistication, it’s up there with a season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race - but it’s also every bit as ludicrously fun.

A few things about the restaurant might be divisive - chefs coming out of the kitchen to serve each course is very continental, what the average Harrogate hotel diner thinks of it remains to be seen. The food itself though is completely uncontentious.

As Horto the pop-up approaches the end of its run, we’re assured that it will live on at Rudding Park under a more permanent guise. There are still plenty of reasons for me to return to the golf course for the foreseeable future - thankfully, none of them involve playing golf.

Horto, Rudding Park Hotel, Follifoot, Harrogate, North Yorkshire HG3 1JH

Mackerel & Elderflower Vinegar

English Berries, Thai flavours

"Ludicrously fun" - Tiffany & Co.