Restaurant review: Luke's Dining Room, Cookham Dean, Berkshire

Barely out of short trousers, Luke Thomas is a rare talent in the kitchen. But how did he get so good so quick?Sanctum on the Green, Cookham Dean, Berkshire (01628 482638). Meal for two, including wine and service, �120I am only human. If you prick me I will bleed. If you offer me pork scratchings I will say yes. And if you serve me dinner in a restaurant where the head chef is a distressingly talented, smooth-cheeked man-child of 18 I will fall upon faults in his cooking like a devout atheist woken from rapturous dreams of angels by news of atrocity and carnage on the Today programme and the associated assurance that there really is no God. I needed my world view restored ? the one that says someone so young can't head up an ambitious kitchen without making a total arse of themselves. A slightly overcooked tranche of trout, the crisped skin too heavily salted, the flesh a little past done, did that. Praise be. Luke Thomas is fallible.But only just. When Mark Fuller, owner of the Sanctum on the Green boutique hotel, announced that he had installed at the pass a chap barely out of puberty, many of us sniffed a publicity stunt. I asked Fuller about it. He shrugged, said they'd been introduced, that he'd eaten his food, that it was good and he'd given him a job. Simple as that. The circumstances were controlled. There were veterans out front running the dining room, and it was limited to just five services a week. But Thomas was cooking his food.He is, and it's astonishingly good. Remove the age factor and the restaurant, housed in the handsome space of what feels like a gussied-up rectory, seems like a safe, almost domestic environment in which to nurture a talent. Service has a warm, avuncular feel. When I questioned the chef's age, our waiter came back with: "And he's nice, too." That was me warned.Put that trout aside. The tian of crushed new potatoes spun through with white crab which came with it, alongside the sauce vierge and a few spears of asparagus, was a fine assemblage. Better still was a main course of lamb rump, with a jus that had depth without being back-of-a-stamp sticky. The quality lay in the details: the chargrilled strips of courgette, pepper and fennel that slapped you with the flavour of themselves, the silky sauce underneath, the dollop of sprightly tapenade on top.However, he really shines at starters. A salad of crispy duck with the kick of grapefruit was made to sing by the careful addition of soused red onions. Even better was an extraordinary dish of huge seared scallops, cooked to the right side of translucent inside, on a light Indian-spiced cream with the crunch of almond, the sweet burst of mango and breaded, deep-fried mussels. Underneath, just wilting in the heat of the sauce, were strands of coriander. That makes it sound overwrought, but it really wasn't. It was about the gentle interplay of flavour and texture, about pitch-perfect harmony and melody. When I start typing poncey things like that, you know it's serious. (At �8.50 it was also a bargain.) But perhaps the clearest evidence of smarts lay in the simplicity of a smooth-soft asparagus velout�, with ribbons of the star ingredient, and at its heart a lightly breaded deep-fried egg, which leaked its yolk into the soup as you cut into it. Oh my. It was of those dishes which makes you stare at the empty bowl forlornly when you've finished. Thomas understands the word "enough".There are curiosities to his cooking. He's overly fond of the slap and astringency of white pepper. And he doesn't seem that thrilled by the notion of desserts, which are of the cr�me br�l�e/ panna cotta variety. That said, his cr�me br�l�e, the sugar shell hiding a berry compote, was about as good as it gets.How he learned to do all this so young is a mystery. His biography talks of starting at 12, and work experience at the Chester Grosvenor, Rhodes W1 and the Fat Duck, among other places. He clearly learns fast. At the risk of sounding like a patronising uncle, I just hope he resists the lure of playing head chef for ever; that, after this gig, he finds himself a mentor and takes a senior position in someone else's kitchen. Whatever he does, I am certain we have not heard the last of Luke Thomas.Jay Rayner's eBook My Dining Hell is available from Amazon and all eBook retailers at �1.99Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one placeFood & drinkRestaurantsRestaurantsJay Raynerguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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