Lunch at Ember at No.5, Pontcanna, Cardiff: restaurant review

Ember at No. 5. Dave Killick, Tommy Heaney. You know the deal by now, I’m sure. Pontcanna, nose to tail eating, pasta, frequently changing menus. It’s an eye-catching an opening as Cardiff has had for some time.

With Uisce and Heaney’s, Ember At No. 5 forms the third point of The Tommy Triangle, a mystical Pontcanna zone from which you may never emerge. Or at least, not without eating extremely well. And, possibly, emerging with Lucy & Yak dungarees and your little dog in a chi-chi gilet. I think that’s how it goes, anyway.

This is pretty much as safe a (couple of) pairs of hands as you can find locally. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, not much, as it turns out.

Opening was delayed, due to some unavoidable and well- documented refit issues here. A Christmas opening is counterintuitive, perhaps, and January a famously difficult time for hospitality, but time waits for no man and some considerable resources have gone into making the former ‘Bullys unrecognsiable. Instead of that famously busy interior, Ember is all light tones and gleaming tiles: the kind of place unlikely to open in any other part of the city.

Don’t come here for the Japanese-tinged cooking you know from Heaney’s though. The menu font will be familiar: its more rugged content, less so. Types who get hot and bothered Six By Nico’s radical strategy of switching every six weeks (Six! geddit?) would go swivel-eyed at the thought of a chef changing menus between lunch and dinner on the same day. Yet that’s exactly what Dave Killick has been doing for years just down the road in Llandaff. Ox tongue and black pudding: British with an Italian inflection. ‘Pasta and plates’, indeed. Be in no doubt: this is his food.

We are here for the lunch set menu- a simple proposition to get January bums on daytime seats and build a following: three courses for £25, with two choices for each. If you’re in more expansive mood, the à la carte runs alongside it. As a bonus, we spot Nordik Kitchen’s Shane Davies Nilsson in the kitchen and that is always going to be a good thing in my book.

Negronis (the classic version, rather than the proffered sbagliato) and oysters, for what is a proper weekday catch up without both? An initial misstep, though: there is far too heavy a hand with the fermented chilli, and it means that delicate flesh is less dominated than obliterated. It’s nine pounds’ worth of disappointment in a few seconds, and it’s tempting to think of the faultless examples over the road, although others- awash with brown butter- work much better. 

That wobble is righted with the arrival of the set menu.

Rabbit has become something of a Killick calling card (no, you try saying that quickly after lunchtime cocktails) over the years. At The Heathcock, his papardelle was something of a local classic, and once again it’s the combination of braised rabbit and bacon which is such a winner  A tangle of braised meat stippled with little nubs of crisp bacon is piled onto Jerusalem artichokes: a neat touch and instantly moreish. We are firmly back on track.

A risotto, laced with vividly-shaded parsley oil and studded with beautifully plump mussels. It’s a striking thing, a pretty bowl of happy forkfuls, that rice impeccably finished to a silky finish and the shellfish positively pouting at you.

The rigatoni with romanesco may go down as the greenest thing since Lord Percy Percy believed he had discovered the secrets of alchemy. What makes the dish- apart from counsumately-made pasta- is the clever textural contrasts, the breadcrumbs, the bite of pine nuts, and sultanas bringing little touches of welcome sweetness. It’s a clever combination.

Even better? The venison ragù with strozzapreti. If you’re in Pontcanna and you find yourself needing to strangle a priest, this is the place to come: the pasta’s name may have sinister origins but you’d banish any such violently anticlerical thoughts in the face of a wonderfully accomplished dish. Glossy, robust, expertly seasoned- a sauce of true depth and heart is exactly the kind of thing you want in this weather. In a word, glorious. Oh go on, have ‘boldly compelling’ too. A tip of the hat to the kitchen. It is as hearty and satisfying a plate of pasta ragù as I’ve had this side of London.

Desserts round off a good lunch very nicely. A panna cotta is a minx of a thing, expertly-made, vanilla-speckled and with just enough sway in its hips, and a frangipane is a feather-light finish.

The Ember set lunch is clearly pitched as a good value way to build momentum during the usual January doldrums. There is much to enjoy here: The bill will climb sharply with extras- our £25 a head quickly becomes over fifty- but if cooking of this quality doesn’t convince you, nothing will.

5 Romilly Cres, Pontcanna, Cardiff CF11 9NP

https://www.embercardiff.co.uk/