Unique fine dining experience HIDDEN has launched its third season concept after consecutive sell-out runs at its Stoke-on-Trent chef’s table.
The new season, titled Chef Faux Pas, opens on 12 March and will run until 17 April.
The concept, developed by chef Cris Cohen, continues HIDDEN’s format of limited-run, immersive tasting menus served around one communal table.
Cris said the third season is built around revisiting culinary ideas that “never quite worked” and re-examining them through flavour, technique and context.
“This menu looks at moments where chefs and cooks fall on ideas that don’t deliver, or were just bad ideas in the first place,” Cris said.
“By using narrative, context and familiar flavours, we can make those ideas work in a completely different way.”
The menu features reinterpretations of well-known dishes and concepts, including savoury bread and butter pudding with raisin bread and spiced butter, a prawn cocktail with wasabi mayonnaise and burnt gem lettuce, and a parsnip waffle with egg and sausage, intriguingly titled Rate My Plate, after the social-media trend where home cooks post photos of their meals online and invite the internet to judge them—often brutally—on looks rather than taste.
Other courses include fried chicken with a “KFC essence” crumb, an updated Eton mess using panna cotta and miso, and a dessert inspired by chocolate fountains.
Cris said the season continued his wider focus on hospitality rather than just novelty dining. His sell-out services at his cosy base at a “hidden” location in the Potteries are gaining rave reviews online with an impressive 5.0 rating on Tripadvisor.
“Despite the constant search for new ideas, great hospitality is ultimately about how you make people feel,” he said. “This menu plays with things that have already been played with, but it keeps coming back to people, those around the table and those learning their craft in hospitality.”
HIDDEN’s third season follows two fully booked previous runs, cementing its reputation with diners for offering limited-period, concept-led menus.
Cris has launched a new membership model where members receive booking priority and lots of special perks.
Chef Faux Pas runs from 12 March to 17 April. Further information, including membership and bookings, is available at www.feasted.co.uk.
