Rafters
Rafters has an excellent reputation for cuisine and service and is recognised in all the major food guides. The menu changes every six weeks, sourcing seasonal and regional ingredients.
Rafters has an excellent reputation for cuisine and service and is recognised in all the major food guides. The menu changes every six weeks, sourcing seasonal and regional ingredients.
The style of food is Modern European influenced by the Chef Proprietors, Marcus Lane and Michael Sabin's cooking experience in London, New York and Sydney.
Rafters Dining area is an unusual hexagon shaped room with bricked walls and a modern contemporary curved bar, featuring hand blown lighting from Milan giving the restaurant a warm and relaxed feel. The service is friendly and professional creating a welcoming atmosphere.
Children are welcome above the age of five. Parties of up to 40 can be catered for with booking in advance.
We are open Monday - Saturday
You may bring your own wine Monday and Wednesday (£3.00 corkage) Rafters offers a fully licensed bar and an ever changing 50 strong Wine List.
We accept Visa, Amex, Mastercard, Switch, Cash and Cheque.
May we Respectfully suggest you consider other Diners when Smoking - No cigars or pipes
RECIPES
Rafters pan-fried cod with a soft herb crust and white wine sauce (serves four)
You will need
4x 6oz cod fillets
1Ooz mixed wild mushrooms
chervil (for garnish)
for the herb crust
3oz fresh breadcrumbs
1.5oz grated Gruyere cheese
1oz chopped parsley
Half teaspoon chopped thyme
2.5oz unsalted butter, softened
Salt & pepper
for the sauce
2 shallots, chopped
Half a bay leaf
Small sprig of thyme
1oz unsalted butter
14fl oz white wine
4OOml fish stock
4OOml double cream
What you do:
Pre-heat the oven to 2OOC (400F, gas mark 6). Make the herb crust by putting all the ingredients into a processor or blender and whizzing until thoroughly mixed. Season the cod and pan-fry both sides for about two minutes each.
Place cod on a greased baking tray and top with the herb crust. Place in oven and bake for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile make the sauce. Sweat the shallot, bay leaf and thyme in butter, add wine, boil and reduce to a quarter. Add fish stock and reduce again. Add the cream, bring to boil, and cook for 3-4 minutes, then pass through a sieve. Keep warm.
Fry the mushrooms in a little olive oil and butter for two minutes. Reheat the sauce.
To serve:
Place mushrooms on a plate, put the cod on top and drizzle the sauce around. Garnish with chervil.
Rafters is situated upstairs on the corner of Oakbrook Road, and Hangingwater Road at Nethergreen. There is always ample parking on the road.
REVIEWS
Yorkshire Post Magazine 2003
Full beam ahead
Does Marcus Lane make the best bread and butter pudding in Yorkshire? The North? Europe?
Certainly he makes the best seductive, layering rectangles of virgin bread with dried fruits, glazing the surface with toffee sauce and adding a blob of vanilla ice cream to make it yet more silky.
The poet Wordsworth, no slouch at the stove, once wrote: "A fine, fine thing is a bread and butter pudding. It marks out a chef who is 100 per cent budding." And who can deny it?
This luxurious construct effortlessly transcended its humdrum roots and title. More encouraging still, the creativity invested in it is emblematic of the general approach at this first-floor bistro.
In too many restaurants, inspiration dips at the pudding stage.
Pastry chefs are, like sommeliers, an endangered species, but restauranteurs who imagine that decent starters and main course will compensate for a mediocre pudding are up the wrong tree, and certainly barking.
At Rafters (study the ceiling, you`ll work it out) there is zest to a dessert menu which includes a mille feuille of mango and pawpaw with cassia sorbet, and a Valrona dark chocolate and Seville orange tart with pistachio ice cream.
They even programme an apple crumble, and we know what disasters they can be when they pass from domestic to professional hands.
Under the 1898 Rehabilitation of Crumbles Act, national standards were established for the ratio of fruit topping, and for the proportions of butter, flour and sugar.
Here rules are wilfully flouted as a waiter delivers a slice of cold apple pie with a flaky top and a circle of - how very yesterday - spun sugar. It looks like a dip-stick`s take on a classic, but as you`re about to head to the kitchen to shove it down the chef`s trousers, you try a forkful.
The pastry, crisp and sandy, is exemplary; the apple filling rich and caramelised but not over-sweet. The topping adds pleasing texture. Best of all, there`s some green apple ice cream whose startling intensity sets the whole thing dancing. Even the spun sugar is studded with almonds.
This chef has brains. He also has a restaurant. Marcus Lane arrived here in 1999 via America and Australia to run the kitchen. When owner Jamie Bosworth moved on to a new venture on Ecclesall Road last autumn, he took over the business.
The upstairs room - hexagonal in shape, informal-upmarket in tone - holds about 40. The only dissonant notes are sounded by the loudspeaker; the music is not merely intrusive but naff.
Although menu choice is restricted to six items at each stage, Lane sets himself a challenge with dishes that don`t shirk complexity.
Tatin of baked goats cheese, slow roasted garlic tomatoes, Kalamata tapenade, cress, endive and asparagus is, foe example, one dish, not three. It was a first rate-starter featuring fine ingredients, each offering some perspective on the whole.
Similarly a salad of wild rocket, crisp cabbage, quail eggs and candied aubergine with a honey orange sesame sauce might have been a dog`s dinner in less discriminating hands. Its freshness and clarity spoke further of thoughtful composition.
Other starters seek global inspiration: roast belly pork with staranise, soy and ginger with wok-fried bok choy; tagine of fried mullet and couscous with chorizo while mains tend more to the classical.
Char grilled beef is partnered with sauce choron; loin of pork with a sauce of puy lentils, mustard seeds and Madeira. Roasted Whitby cod, however, defies easy category. It carries a pistachio and herb crust and comes with a red wine butter sauce and roast sweet peppers filled with, ah yes, Stornoway black pudding.
The pork loin was from an aristocratic pig, the sauce subtle and considering its components refreshingly light. Its only error was the mousseline of mushrooms where the cream had been over worked, turning what should have been a light and delicate thing into the consistency of a tennis ball.
The - ready for this? - "rosemary roasted cannon of Derbyshire lamb rolled in herbs with a tart of puree parsnip and spring vegetables with sherry vinegar jus" was more of a puzzle.
Was it new season lamb? The young women taking the order said so. In that case it was big for its age and, although cooked pink, it showed remarkable maturity of colour and flavour. All that gambolling, no doubt. The sherry sauce was backed by a sound stock.
Finally, vegetables. Like pudding, too many kitchens disdain our greens and roots. Dishes at Rafters are busy enough without them, yet the chefs trouble to send out immaculate examples. Lovely green beans: cauliflower and broccoli cooked to retain texture, mint-boiled new potatoes, terrific carrots.
Service, by a trio of young women, matches in care and attitude the enthusiasm of the whole enterprise.
The wine list doesn`t loiter for long below £11, but it grows resourceful above that with representation from respectable producers. It contains a few halves, but a few more - and more wines by the glass - would be useful.
Sheffield as a dining city was once a poor relation to Leeds. How things have changed. It`s now an exciting destination for food and this little place stands as a beacon of what can be done with a little vision and great flair.Try the home made bread, you`ll see what I mean.
Three course dinner: £24.95.
The Good Food Guide 2000 edition
COOKING 4
COST £34-£43
An unobtrusive dark green door and a few steps announce the presence of the Bosworth`s unexpectedly spacious restaurant in an appealing residential sector of Sheffield. Italian designer lights, and a terracotta and pale yellow colour scheme, lend a hit of class, and the format is a simple one: fixed.price menus. dinners only.
There is no shortage of imagination in the kitchen, and few contemporary ingredients that don't find a home somewhere. A pizza starter has come topped with duck confit, Brie and plum sauce, for example, while loin of lamb has been accompanied by a burger of pork and apple, black pudding and a calvados sauce.
More straightforward dishes are well rendered too - chargrilled asparagus with shaved Parmesan, a poached egg and pesto - and accurate timing has made a success of olive~crusted cod in a well judged creamy herby broth strewn with broad beans. Presentation is carefully attended to throughout, and the generally earthy and hearty style does not preclude a delicate touch when required: in poached pear with champagne jelly and cinnamon ice cream, for instance, which rounded off a satisfying inspection meal.
Incidentals, including bread and petits fours, have got the thumbs up and a modestly serviceable wine list starts with house French at £8.90.
The Good Food Guide 2001 edition
COOKING 4
MODERN BRITISH
COST £34-£41
Despite the sad death of his brother and co-propietor Wayne in a car crash, Jamie Bosworth has resolved to carry on their eight-year-old business, helped out front by other members of the family, and in the kitchen by long-standing assistant Marcus Lane.
Pot plants, mock beams and a variety of bottles are part of the simple but effective decor, and a broadly based set-price menu offers three courses with half a dozen choices at each stage. Fresh ingredients and skilful timing are part of the appeal, along with thoughtful combinations and attractive presentation.
Beyond such ubiquitous Mediterranean ideas as baked goats' cheese on tomato and basil salad, or roast loin of lamb with ratatouille, may lie a grilled pork and leek sausage with creamed cabbage, and olive-stuffed chargrilled chicken served with pearl barley. Fish, meanwhile, has included seared salmon with bok choy and a parsley and caper salsa.
Desserts employ some popular themes and less familiar variations, such as baked apple bread and butter pudding with sticky toffee sauce or rhubarb creme brulee with coconut biscuits. Forty Plus wines aim mostly for everyday drinking including three French house wines under £10.
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Modern European Cuisine at Rafters