Mini Bar, 85 Junction Road, Sheffield
WHAT does a fiver buy you these days? A couple of pints, a gallon of petrol or a cinema ticket.
Or a Cary Brown mini meal.
You can have any dish you want at his new Hunters Bar eaterie, called,
suitably, Mini Bar, and it'll cost you a fiver.
He doesn't bother with a menu, just a mirror with a dozen dishes crayoned on and you pick a slate of them as you would tapas.
Now Mr Brown has never been reluctant to broadcast his own talents. He talks a good menu, as they say in the trade, and he's the nearest thing we've got to a celebrity chef.
But he usually delivers with flair, imagination and taste. That's taste as in flavour because he's had a strange fixation with leopardskin at his Barnsley restaurant, The Limes.
These fiver dishes are takes on more complete dishes, twists on others and, inevitably, there's a smattering of Cary's Great Hits here and there.
The old Pot Noodle from Brown's on Abbeydale Road South (I'm not going to list all his restaurants) comes back as chicken noodle broth. The deep-fried monkfish reprises in yet another version.
There's chicken in the basket, lamb koftas with aubergine salsa, steak, egg and chips, tandoori king prawns, and so on.
And while some might be a bit difficult to eat at times they're great fun, put together wittily and taste great.
The premises are in the old Blue Fin, set up as a homage to Cary's failed Slammers, so there's an irony there. The bar, with a couple of tables, is downstairs with the main eating area, half a dozen tall tables with high stool seating, is on the first floor, up a gold painted staircase. Apart from that splash of colour the decor is a bit minimalist and stark.
It's quiet to start off on our Wednesday night so we trade them turning down the heat (a previous customer felt cold) for turning down the music. Cary, prowling around mostly front of house, still thinks he's 25.
His head chef is Chris Willmot, last seen at the Ivory piano. Cary says the Mini Bar is not all Cary but that Chris has an input as well.
So let's start with one from Chris, a version of Caesar salad that had white anchovies in the wispiest of tempura batter and made this classic dish sublime.
Confit of pork belly comes in decent sized, porky cubes in a box with a dish of excellent salt and pepper squid on the side. They are linked by a shot glass full of lime and sesame dip. With the tandoori prawns, the spicing sidles up like an Indian waiter trying to sell you another drink.
That monkfish dish, still the most popular order, comes on a board with one ball cut into three, each segment sitting on a dab of chilli jam, separated by blobs of creme fraiche and decorated with fried capers. It's still good but it has lost its novelty for me.
Chicken in the basket, two strips of battered breast with chips in a wooden basket, promised well but Cary has failed to add any excitement to this one.
When I said that everything cost a fiver I fibbed. One dish costs 7.50, a trio of fruits de mer: a seared scallop with a divine spoonful of risotto, slightly dull potted crab in a tiny Kilner jar with Melba toast, and a piece of hot gingered mackerel.
If you want even more fun you could order three ice cream cornets in a kiddie's seaside bucket. Instead, we shared a lovely chocolate brioche version of Cary's bread and butter pudding.
Of course, it all adds up and we paid 37.50 for food, 9 for two of glasses of wine and another 3 for coffees, making the bill just under 50. You have got to hand it to Cary, he does make eating fun. And these dishes work, rather than being just ingredients bunged together.
He's not doing a lot of cooking - "I'm waiting until I get a bigger place" - so I do hope he's going to tour the tables and tell people exactly what they're eating.
Unmissable.
- 85 Junction Road, Sheffield S11 8XA. Tel 0114 266 7736.
- Open Tues-Sat 6-10pm. House wine 12.95 (glass 3.20). Credit cards. Disabled toilet. Street parking.
My star ratings (out of five):
Food HHHHH
Atmosphere HHH
Service HHHH
Value HHHHH
Bistro Category
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Weather for Sheffield
Friday 10 February 2012
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Temperature: -6 C to 0 C
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