. Anyone can say Häagen-Dazs, but no one can spell it. As it is with Solo, who can't even agree the spelling on their own website. It's Solo, Sōlō, or sō-lō. You can take your pick according to your mood. It can be one of those nights when you want the whole hog, so you go for accents AND a hyphen. Perhaps that's how a wild night rocks in Aughton, West Lancashire, a gentrified village near Liverpool. Here, as befits a certain style of dining that comes with a Michelin star – and this is a brand new and sparkling one for 2023 – you'll find food of precision, neatness and exactitude. It comes at you in the evenings via a compulsory six-course tasting menu (with an optional cheese course) and is a nimble and accomplished dance of local ingredients cooked with a European flourish. The room is quiet; service is restrained, polite and measured. The dining spaces that wrap around the ground floor of this stone-clad terraced house are coloured muted cream with gentle green panelling. And you won't find fault with the cooking. Chef Tim Allen, who brings out the occasional course, has worked in a number of smart places over the years that glisten with stars and other gongs, and knows exactly how to nurture the best flavour from a Herdwick hogget or an Orkney scallop. He won't overcook the asparagus that accompanies the neat slice of turbot or let a speck of any jus be anywhere on the plate but in the jus. The starter was a couple of large, al dente agnolotti nestling under grilled onions under micro herbs – coriander, the unfortunate suckling pig of the herb collective – and next to a cloud of velouté froth. It was a gentle beginning,){kind=link}
You won’t find fault with Tim Allen’s cooking, but I needed some atmosphere
I was solo in sō-lō, wondering what it means and thinking it might be like Häagen-Dazs (an American ice cream with a made-up name to make you think it was crafted by an eminent Danish family whose fortune came from the invention of a chocolate-chip pistachio ice cream and whose marital, ultra-blonde escapades would duly appear in Hello! magazine).
Anyone can say Häagen-Dazs, but no one can spell it. As it is with Solo, who can’t even agree the spelling on their own website. It’s Solo, Sōlō, or sō-lō. You can take your pick according to your mood. It can be one of those nights when you want the whole hog, so you go for accents AND a hyphen.
Perhaps that’s how a wild night rocks in Aughton, West Lancashire, a gentrified village near Liverpool. Here, as befits a certain style of dining that comes with a Michelin star – and this is a brand new and sparkling one for 2023 – you’ll find food of precision, neatness and exactitude. It comes at you in the evenings via a compulsory six-course tasting menu (with an optional cheese course) and is a nimble and accomplished dance of local ingredients cooked with a European flourish.
The room is quiet; service is restrained, polite and measured. The dining spaces that wrap around the ground floor of this stone-clad terraced house are coloured muted cream with gentle green panelling.