A fine dining home meal – Hame by Adam Handling

This month we found ourselves having to spend most of our annual two week holiday in lockdown. Where we would normally be away, exploring a new city or enjoying revisiting one, wining and dining and having fun, instead we found ourselves being confined to wherever we could feasibly walk to. Sure it was nice to just really relax (because there wasn’t really anything to do!), cook some lovely meals and enjoy the odd takeout, but what we were really missing was some quality dining. Enter Hame!

Hame is chef Adam Handling’s answer to restaurant quality dining, at home. And for those not familiar with Scottish colloquialism, Hame means ‘home’. We decided, since we couldn’t eat out on holiday, that we would order one of Hame’s Dine in Style menus, which consisted of:

• Sourdough with chicken butter and chicken skin
• Cheese doughnuts
• Lobster tagliatelle
• Lamb shoulder with couscous and courgette salad
• Tarte Tatin

The experience

We decided to really treat it as a ‘night out’ so we set the table and got dressed up (ok, so I wore a dress but I kept my slippers on!).

Everything is packaged up according to dish, with stickers so you don’t get confused! There are also helpful recipe cards, with a QR code on the back if you want to watch Adam in his own kitchen making the dish. I highly recommend watching the videos – Adam’s gorgeous dogs even make an appearance from time to time!

Everything is designed to make it as simple as possible for you to create a fabulous meal at home. The one dish I was concerned about messing up was the cheese doughnuts but actually it was super easy! Also, I’m really glad I read the recipe card in the afternoon because they need two hours to prove.

Once the sourdough and cheese doughnuts were ready, we sat down to enjoy our starters. The chicken butter with the crispy chicken skin to crumble over the top of the sourdough was just divine. I think Adam needs to sell this in supermarkets!

Adam recommends covering the doughnuts in the cheese sauce but we chose just to fill them as we thought it might be best given there were so many courses to get through! They were so good and look really impressive too.

So the next dish was supposed to be the lobster tagliatelle, however there was a mix-up and somehow we got the gluten-free version, which was not great… I did let Adam know the next day and he very kindly sent us what we should have received (and something extra!), which you can read about further down. I was seriously impressed by the level of service and care!

So, next was the whole lamb shoulder with couscous, courgette and feta salad and a delicious slightly curried granola. The lamb was so tender and the granola gave the dish the texture it needed, whilst the courgette salad added freshness. We served it as recommended, on a platter. It looked great and it was so tasty!

For dessert, Adam has chosen one of his favourites – Tarte Tatin with fresh custard. Top tip (from me), make sure you place the Tarte Tatin on a tray…. I didn’t and ended up with loads of caramel over the bottom of the oven! I blame the wine at that point!

The Tarte Tatin was wonderful with crispy pastry, slightly tart apple and the custard was sublime!

The food was delicious (apart from that pasta… but read on!) portions were really generous. In fact, there was enough lamb left over that I had it for lunch on Sunday.

Hame round two

So, remember I said we’d been sent the gluten-free pasta by mistake and we didn’t enjoy it? Well, not only did Adam send us the pasta we should’ve had, he also sent us some more sourdough with chicken butter (winning!) AND a white truffle stuffed whole chicken with mashed potato and a Caesar salad. Unbelievably generous!

So, we set the table up again – this time with more of a festive theme (and proper linen napkins) and got dressed up again, with some smooth jazz playing in the background.

Well the lobster tagliatelle was so damn good! My husband, who is Italian so always a tricky customer when it comes to pasta, declared it ‘delicious’ and said he would order it if it were on the menu in the restaurant – high praise indeed. Someone even licked the plate after but I won’t say who…

Again the portions were really generous; the pasta was unctuous, coated in a delicious bisque-like sauce with big pieces of succulent lobster. We were certainly happy customers!

Then it was on to the whole chicken, stuffed with white truffle (which smelt amazing!), creamy mashed potatoes and Caesar salad – oh and a yummy sauce for the chicken. Again, a stunningly good course.

I would never have thought to pair a salad with roast chicken but it worked so well. Top marks!

The verdict

I haven’t touched on the price of our meal. You can order both a la carte or the package menus, which we went for and it was £200 for two. This obviously is a lot of money for a home meal, however it was totally worth it. The food was exceptional and they really have made it as easy as possible to cook it whilst not feeling like you’re doing loads of cooking!

The portions were really generous – you will certainly not go hungry and from both main meals I manged to have enough left over for lunch the next day (just for me!).

I was hugely impressed with the care and level of service offered to us when we weren’t happy with one of the courses. It shows that this is more than just a business, it’s a passion.

We loved our restaurant quality home dining experience and we will certainly be booking a table at one of Adam’s restaurants when we are able to.

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