Carlisle Wine Bar

First a disclosure.
Carlisle Wine Bar is my local; I’ve been going there since it opened about 4 years ago. It’s one of those places to me “where everybody knows my name” as the jingle goes.
I had dinner there last week, as a have probably done, too many times to do the maths on. Actually, now I think about it I may have dined their over 30 times! Scary! Any way, so I was having dinner there and I have to say I had the best dish I had experienced there, it was braised ox cheek with parsnip mash and sugar snaps. The meat, perfectly cooked until it was all gelatinous and sticky and the parsnip puree was sweet and creamy and nutty, really just a classically well done dish.
Now, I wasn’t going to blog Carlisle, as I try to offer an unemotional view on my dining experiences that I share, yet it was my entrée that got me thinking that I wanted to tell you about something.
The evolution of a restaurant.
Back when Carlisle opened, I was doing a short writing course and had written as an assignment piece, a review on Carlisle. Even back then I loved it, I called it my third place (topical until Starbucks and Playstation started bastard-ising this term), but the interesting thing was that one of the dishes I reviewed at this time was a mascarpone stuffed fig dish wrapped in pancetta with vincotto dressing. I had a sense of déjà vu, when at Carlisle last week, I was ‘specialled’ the same dish. Of course I ordered it, it’s my kind of dish, and I have to say it was better than I had 4 years ago. More refined, smarter and I guess a bit grown-up. The first time I had this dish the vincotto was swamping the subtle flavours of the other bits and it was also quite homely looking (read: potentially tasty but a bit ugly looking, like your Mum would put together).
It got me thinking about the evolution of the restaurant, or perhaps any restaurant. The way a restaurant identity is defined and even perhaps redefined. Many restaurants would not even last as long as Carlisle, it’s a very competitive industry, but what I am getting at is that it has survived because it has an identity. This identity can be understood by the changes in this interesting delicious fig dish.
The new dish had two smaller figs and the pancetta was secured by a rosemary stem speared through into the fig, they were also lined up in a ‘restaurant-y manner’. I tell you now, I really dislike the idea of taking photos in restaurants, but I did say to PDC, I wish I could photograph this, it was my evidence… but since you are not panning down and seeing an image, you guessed it, no camera.

What do you think about long running restaurants and their ‘identities’?
Do you also have a favourite you’d like to share?

Jack