Bread and oil
Warm loaf, new-season oil, smoked salt.
Manzanilla, Sanlúcar.
Our story
A Cretan kitchen, a Bristol oven.
Elena Marou and her brother Tom opened Olive & Ash in 2019, after years of cooking in other people’s rooms. The recipes are not a museum of their grandparents’ house in Chania. They are what happens when that pantry meets the vegetables sold down the hill on a Tuesday.
The oven was built by a local mason. It is the only one. If it is out, we do not pretend otherwise.
There is no prize wall in the corridor. The cooking has to hold the room by itself.
The chef
Elena Marou
Elena runs the pass. Tom runs the floor. She cooks with a short menu on purpose: fewer dishes, more attention, and a tasting menu that changes when the quince runs out.
If you need the kitchen to avoid an allergen, say so when you book. The menu can be rewritten for a table. It cannot be rewritten in the last five minutes for twelve people.
The journey
Course by course
£68
Seven courses, a guest.
Pairing takes the menu to £110 a guest. Glasses are about 100ml.
Raw bream
Citrus, fennel pollen, a little chilli.
Assyrtiko, cold.
Beetroot
Walnut, labneh and dill.
Skin-contact ribolla.
Prawn
From the oven, chilli butter, lemon.
Etna rosato.
Lamb
Aubergine, pomegranate, the soft fat.
A Cretan red.
Quince
Brown butter, before the cake.
A small moscatel.
Olive oil cake
Citrus, mascarpone, and then coffee if you want it.
Finish the moscatel, or stop.