Ajé review: Ilkley restaurant gets full marks for cocktails and lamb that's a 'minor masterpiece'

One Ilkley Old Fashioned in, and there’s a shift, not just in my brain, which is bathing in the warm glow of the early stages of a dopamine hit, but also in the choice of the designated driver. Hey ho. If ever there was a call to book an overnight and surrender to the wonders of cocktails, this is it.

For the aficionados, this Old Fashioned is made up of ‘cherry, blossom, Bulleit bourbon, Rittenhouse 100, orange, and smoke’, and it does indeed arrive covered with a cute glass dome under which there is smoke. Then there’s a Night Shift: ‘North Star infused chairman’s reserve rum, morello cherry, cherry eau de vie’, and the other standout is a sesame martini involving Ketel One vodka, Lillet and Chartreuse. The man responsible for these, along with the food that follows, is Luke Downing, who tells me that these cocktails were invented during prohibition, which goes some way to explain why the 1920s were roaring.

The last time I had a really good dinner in Ilkley was in Joel Monkman’s lovely restaurant, Host, which shone brightly for too short a time before it disappeared.

There are plenty of good cafes (Toast House and Thirty Nine Coffee Company specifically) and Friends of Ham for fab charcuterie and great wines – but a really memorable dinner? Downing and his partner Laura MacLeod have stepped in, and that gap has been filled more than ably.

The short menu is as interesting as the cocktail one, with just five choices in the starters and mains – featuring the likes of duck pate, croissant and sorrel, and bacalao hake, but there’s a black pudding dish which will always be chosen. It’s homemade and stunning, served with poached Williams pear, a blob of sweet Medjool date and scattered with chervil, an underused herb in my mind.

Salt-aged onglet arrives with confit tomato, anchovy and cured yolk, and it’s a real looker. Onglet used to be known as ‘skirt’ when I was a girl and thought of as a cheap cut of beef – not so much today: it’s got a great texture and bursts with flavour.

My lamb shoulder plate is a minor masterpiece, a riot of colour worthy of a late Hockney: what in tarnation is this pink pool that the soft, shredded salt-aged lamb is sitting in? I have to ask – it’s actual powdered rose petals with beetroot for added colour plus a touch of crème fraiche and lemon: wow. Anchoring the whole thing together is Delicia pumpkin and a quenelle of gribiche. The sides, by the way, are great. We share a completely unnecessary pot of beef dripping chips with a Roscoff onion dip and some braised kohlrabi zippy with thyme and hazelnut rubble. There are heritage carrots and goat cheese too.

Coley is rarely seen on any kind of menu, let alone in a place like this. Here it’s teamed with fermented hispi cabbage, which has a real kick, pickled sea greens and sauce Choron, a classic French relative of bearnaise, and spiked with tomato and chilli; it really punches through. The fish sits perkily in the dish – it’s sustainable, flavoursome and as versatile as cod or hake. There are a couple of meat-free options: Wensleydale doughnuts with black garlic, green walnuts and truffled honey, and salt-baked celeriac with pistachio and smoked Wensleydale.

Luke Downing has run a number of well-regarded and successful restaurants down the years. He started as a pot washer at Leodis, then took jobs – some of them unpaid – before he opened his own place, Dough, in 2007. Feed in Pudsey, then Vice & Virtue in Leeds followed. Then it was time for a ‘sabbatical’, and the couple spent a couple of years wine tasting and eating round the world before landing in Cape Town, where they ran a guest house and restaurant. Fortunately for us, they got homesick and, ready to bring their experiences back, relocated to Ilkley and less than a month ago opened Ajé. To say they’ve hit the ground running is an understatement.

There are three desserts: two involving chocolate, but the one that beckons is sticky toffee: duck fat, Earl Grey, vanilla and orange. The finer flavours eluded me slightly, but the beast itself was very good indeed.

The wine list has been carefully and imaginatively put together, as befits a couple who spent two years roaming the world tasting it: a glass of Puglian Primitivo, rich with blackberry, plum and dark cherry, is exceptional and pairs perfectly with the lamb. It’s a kind list too, not too spendy at all, with a number by the glass.

This is fine dining, but not the painfully fancy sort with foams and deconstructions that have you wondering when some actual food is going to show up.

You’re in a lovely room with a relaxed vibe (there are people in jeans – in Ilkley – imagine). It’s a wholly gorgeous experience; lovely staff, a smooth operation and a deft, interesting, inventive menu.

During the day they run a movement studio alongside a café which offers the likes of tortilla, shakshuka, mortadella tartine and chicken schnitzel. There’s a kids’ menu too. Look out for the opening soon of a Tabanco, an Andalucian-style wine and sherry bar. You can be sure I won’t lose the driving coin-toss for this one.

Dinner for two with a cocktail, wine and a pint of Chairman Miaow: £158.40

Ratings:

Welcome – 5/5

Food – 5/5

Atmosphere – 5/5

Prices – 5/5

Ajé, 3–5 Cunliffe Road, Ilkley, West Yorkshire, LS29 9DZ www.ajecafe.co.uk