With its plastic grass and brazen simplicity, it could have been so easy to hate ‘Dip Your Own’. It could have been so easy to rant about the (ironic) marking-up of seasonal produce on smug account of its ‘exclusivity’, about being flogged a dish that can be whipped up at home under the veil of ‘letting the ingredients speak for themselves’.
But it wasn’t. It was absolutely delicious: a triumph of recipe preceding marketable concept. A little gaggle of asparagus, cooked and finished thoughtfully so that every fibre is plumped with butter. Hollandaise, delicately flavoured, the joyous texture of condensed milk – yielding the satisfying cling of Winnie The Pooh’s paw in the honey jar. A parmesan and egg mixture whose moist lightness makes it too good for the label of ‘powder’.
It’s cheekily and utterly moreish, building into a happy rhythmic frenzy of dipping and munching. My companion arrived a hollandaisophobe; she ate the leftovers out the pot with a spoon.
‘Dip Your Own’ can be found on the specials menu of The High Field (22 Highfield Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 3DP, call 0121 227 7068) for the rest of the month. Go order it and take a blow to your own cynicism.
