Food ✪✪✪✪✪✪ Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪✪✪
Summerhouse
Nr Darlington
Co Durham
DL2 3UD
01325 374 237
www.rabyhuntrestaurant.co.uk
Accessibility? Yes
Gluten free? Yes, but call in advance
[WINNER: North East Restaurant of the Year 2012/2013/2016]
The paradox of perfection is what makes high-end restaurant cooking such a unique challenge. Every day a chef has to turn up for work and plate up hundreds of dishes, aiming for flawlessness each time, yet knowing deep down that there is really no such thing. The chef is, in a sense, doomed to failure before he even ties his apron: yet it’s only in the trying, over and over again, for that mirage-like moment in which you know that a dish couldn’t be improved by a single grain of salt, that you can really succeed at the very highest level.
I had cause to reflect on all this as we left The Raby Hunt after a spectacular lunch, trying to figure out why this meal, which I’m happily and easily awarding 6 stars, was better than previous visits I had also pegged at that level (which is the maximum number of stars that will fit comfortably on my Secret Diner window sticker). Ultimately I concluded that chef James Close’s secret is the gentle evolution of dishes, the search for better raw materials and the slow but steady refining of techniques. It makes sitting down in his plush dining room a joy.
