06-03-2025
Osip, Bruton: ‘A successful tasting menu experience is like watching a brilliant piece of theatre'
If bookends were made out of pastry, I'd have an excellent matching pair. Exactly 10 years ago, when I was reviewing restaurants for another newspaper, I visited a just-opened London spot that had major buzz about its 24-year-old chef and a dish that was quickly shaping up to be the talk of the town.
Portland, its young chef Merlin Labron-Johnson and the dish, a game pithivier, quickly gained a Michelin star. I loved everything about it and went often.
A few years later the chef upped sticks to Bruton in Somerset and opened Osip – a restaurant with an elegant, restrained tasting menu (of the kind not everyone has the patience to enjoy). It, too, won acclaim – one Michelin star and a green star – and a loyal following. Now, a decade on from Portland, Labron-Johnson has moved again, this time to a radically rural location in the fields outside Bruton, for Osip 2.0. And there's a pithivier (domed puff-pastry pie) on the menu.
The new Osip is tricky to find on a dour Friday in February, but aim for the staggeringly beautiful National Trust properties of Stourhead and Alfred's Tower and it's the western point of a skinny triangle it forms. Its fresh white-painted exterior and austere signage let you know you're not in a standard country 'gastropub'. Inside, past the leather curtain at the door created by local interiors star Bill Amberg, a bar/sitting room awaits, with wood-burning stove and a menu of English ciders, aperitifs and sparkling wines.
On hand is Felicity, a sparky and charming host whose knowledge of the menu is matched by her intel on the starry locals (Bruton has quite a few these days). After a dazzlingly fresh trout and apple roll and earthy mushroom and hazelnut cookie snack (they are far more chic than that billing), we're walked through to the dining room – although it is less a room than one side of a space, on the other side of which is a pristine, hi-tech kitchen and vast glass wall looking out across the fields.
Labron-Johnson has found his perfect digs, where all of the produce for his seasonal tasting menu is within a few miles and where expensive craftsmanship shows in everything from the art to the hobs to the tablecloths, and even a timeless but somehow very modish playlist.
And oh the food. Much of it is served on white clay plinths, which might look like affectation if the dishes weren't so accomplished. Celeriac soup with shiitake marmalade and winter truffle was a blissful thing more substantial and rich than its description; a beetroot taco with fallow deer, smoked quince and grilled radicchio was a ruby-hued delight; and lobster over charcoal (there's a grill in the garden, of course) with salted egg yolk and sorrel was a flavour explosion of the best kind.
The new iteration of the pithivier is borne on a silver salver, garlanded in spruce and pine cones. It contains Devon Gold chicken and Périgord truffles with a sauce made with Banyuls Grand Cru. Oof. A dream to look at, and to eat.
When I catch up with Labron-Johnson after service (over an insanely moreish pistachio and nori macaron), we discuss the evolution of the pie, and of his ambition. The pride with which he describes the farm on which the produce is grown, and his love of a hard-carved counter for diners who want to be even closer to the chefs, is palpable, but I sense it's been a tough journey. He deserves the reward of more acclaim, more awards, more customers.
To visit Osip requires an investment but it is very much worth it – and when its four bedrooms open in April, a proper treat weekend.
With snacks and petits fours, we had 11 courses. For me, a really successful tasting menu experience is like watching a brilliant piece of theatre – something to be savoured and admired, something you've put time (and money) aside for.
So if you think occasionally whiling away three hours being looked after delightfully in a chic restaurant, having a procession of creative and beautiful dishes brought to you, takes too long and is not filling enough, may I direct you to the nearest McDonald's?
