Between 1986 and 2012, Martin Dawes wrote more than 1,400 restaurant reviews for the Sheffield Star. In the 1980s and ‘90s, the paper was read by more than 100,000 people, meaning he wielded enormous power over the culinary life of the city. Once, he gave an Italian restaurant such a bad review that they reported him to the press council and demanded the editor send someone else to review them. Later, the same restaurant invited him back “so they could have the pleasure of throwing him out”. Nevertheless, in 26 years of brutal honesty, he takes responsibility for a single casualty. “I only shut down one place," he tells me. “And I think they were already on the way out.”
The restaurateurs of Sheffield must have breathed a collective sigh of relief when Dawes put down his poison pen for the last time. But for one day only, it is back. Why? Because I needed some help.
A few weeks ago, a foodie friend told me about a new restaurant in Neepsend. Norse, he told me, was the best meal he’d ever had in Sheffield. Intrigued, I thought it might make a good story for The Tribune. That feeling only grew as I looked at their website: Norse, I learned, was aiming to provide “Nordic-Asian” cuisine to the people of Sheffield. Not only were they opening at a time when almost everyone else in the higher-end restaurant arena seems to be closing (Tonco, VorV), they were offering their 14-course tasting menu for an astonishing £45. I wanted to find out why the owners think they can buck the trend — and perhaps have a meal I'd remember for years to come.
The only problem? I know nothing about food. And I’m vegan. So I called in Martin Dawes for his expertise.
We arrive at Norse’s shipping container — one of a group in the Steelyard Kelham development off Bardwell Road. At 7pm we’re the only people in there, but another couple shows up shortly after us. When they walk in, the wide-eyed looks on their faces tell me they weren’t quite prepared for Norse’s décor. On the corrugated iron walls, slogans and murals are painted in fluorescent graffiti, while Viking-style fur throws adorn the seating.
Martin tells me he’s studied the website but has come away none the wiser about what to expect. “14 courses! bloody hell,” he says as we sit down. But he likes the theme of the menu. Autumn is shooting season and so the dishes are heavy on game, including partridge, hare, guinea fowl, pigeon and mallard. “It’s like Watership Down,” he laughs.
As we settle in, Dawes faces the kitchen so he can see what’s going on. He accepts early on that Norse probably isn’t aimed at him. The low-light environment, the loud music, and the UV graffiti on the walls — ‘Fuck Em Up With Flavour’ being one choice example — aren’t his cup of tea, to put it mildly. But more than the vibe of Norse, he doesn’t really care for the multi-course tasting menus so beloved of chefs these days. He thinks not being able to choose what you eat robs you of agency. “I’m going to come across as a curmudgeon, but they know what they are going to do before you get there,” he says. “It’s lazy cheffing.”
He may be curmudgeonly, but he’s also great company. Full of stories of the glory days of the newspaper industry, he’s erudite, knowledgeable about food and acerbic when he wants to be. When he started doing restaurant reviews, he knew nothing about food and admits to using The Star’s “magic expense card” to educate himself. A word of advice from a former editor changed the way he thought about reviewing and made him realise that as well as describing the meals, he needed to be entertaining. “Food reviews are only about 40% about the food,” he says. “People want to hear your adjectives.”
Sadly, the passing of the newspaper industry’s heyday has meant the specialist food reviewer has all but died out, certainly at the local level. As The Tribune has written before, local newspapers losing specialist cultural reporters like restaurant critics and theatre reviewers represents a huge loss for cities like Sheffield. By the 2010s, when Martin retired, experienced and knowledgeable specialist journalists like him were not being replaced.
So, did I enjoy Norse as a vegan? Honestly, no. It was a fun experience, but I definitely wasn’t the target market for the food. To get the full experience, you really need to be an omnivore, which is why I’m glad I took Martin along with me. Of the 14 courses, he only actively dislikes one. Course number 10: the mallard (paired with a chilli sorbet, warm lemongrass milk and salted caramel) was, he said, “like eating something from an Anglo-Saxon dig.” Try as he might, he couldn't cut into it with his knife, meaning he had to chew at one end of the meat while the other dangled down his chin “like some Medieval peasant”.
Other courses came in for better reviews. The pork belly, melon and smoked eel hot sauce (course number 3) is particularly praised. “Very porky, with a bit of sweetness on the side; I would be happy for that to be one of my last meals on earth,” is his verdict, although he does add that he’d prefer to have it as a main course rather than merely one of 14. The hare, lychee, horseradish and bone marrow (course number 6) is also a big hit. “I like that a lot,” he tells me. “But again, it’s all gone within about 10 seconds.” And the final course, a “soft and slithery” Asian-inspired coconut and lemongrass sushi rice pudding is wolfed down with gusto. “Asian food is often as much about textures as flavours, and that dish was one where those influences really showed,” he says.
In terms of my food, the first course of focaccia was beautifully crisp and the second course of potato, wild garlic and yeast felt like it could well have been devised as a vegan meal from the outset (the only addition in Martin’s version was trout roe). But after the first few courses, the gamey meat on Martin’s plates was replaced on mine by an assortment of vegetables — carrot, fennel, red cabbage, onion — which felt like uncreative substitutes to meet a dietary requirement. That’s probably what they were. By the time the dessert courses came, I was wilting.
There’s always room for ice cream, though, isn’t there? Normally I’d agree, but maybe I just don’t have a sophisticated enough palate for the mushroom-flavoured variety. The sushi rice pudding which Dawes loved defeated me and remained largely uneaten in its beautiful handmade bowl.
Before our meal, I spoke to founders Ashley Bagshaw and Ryan Tromans about the ethos behind Norse. Both accept it’s an incredibly difficult time for the hospitality industry. Restaurants we have written about before have gone on to leave Sheffield city centre (JÖRO) or shut down entirely (Tonco). Hopefully it’s nothing to do with us, but if Norse flounders, then talk of a Tribune curse may gain currency. Other highly-regarded restaurants such as Juke and Loe struggled when they left Ecclesall Road and moved to Kelham Island, while there have been a regular stream of high-profile closures across the city, even including popular restaurants like VorV in Kelham Island.
Bagshaw and Tromans, who both previously worked at Silversmiths on Arundel Street, think they can escape the same fate by, firstly, providing a bit more value, keeping the price of their menu down to £45 during the week (it rises to £50 on the weekend). Bagshaw says that doing this can sometimes feel like they are undercutting themselves, but that ultimately they have to stay competitive for the Sheffield market. “You feel like you’ve worked hard, and you want to be able to charge what your food is worth, but in Sheffield at the moment, there just isn't the demographic for it,” he says. In other words, it’s hard to be a foodie place, when there aren’t enough foodies.
But they also hope to provide an experience people can’t get elsewhere, far removed from the more refined atmosphere of other restaurants. Things they couldn’t dream of doing at Silversmiths, like the graffiti on the wall and the loud music, create a very different kind of atmosphere which they hope will attract a different kind of clientele. “We wanted to create an atmosphere where it’s almost like a nightclub, but with food,” says Bagshaw. “We’ve had it on a Saturday night where we’ve put a song on and people have started dancing,” adds Tromans. “I’ve turned to Ash and just said, ‘What have we created?’”
They opened in April, and say things are going incredibly well so far. There has been a bit of a buzz around the restaurant since it opened, meaning that their 28 covers are fully booked more often than not. When I ask whether they have already outgrown their tiny shipping container, they tell me they’re happy where they are for the moment, pointing out that other restaurants in Sheffield have struggled when they have moved to larger premises. But one thing they do want to change is the number of courses. “In the New Year we want to do a 20-course menu,” says Bagshaw. (I keep this information from Martin for fear of causing him a coronary.)
At The Star, Martin Dawes used to rate restaurants out of five for their food, atmosphere, service and value for money, and out of 20 overall. Asking him to do the same for us, he gives Norse 4/5 for the food, 3/5 for atmosphere, 2/5 for service and 3/5 for value for money — a total of 12/20. He loves the food, despite its staccato delivery. His main gripes are the loud music, a lack of napkins and the low light (the ambience in turn affected the service mark, as it meant he couldn't hear what the waiter was saying or see what was on his plate). At one point he even gets up and tries to see what is on his plate using the light from a nearby fridge. “You eat with your eyes,” he admonishes Bagshaw as we leave.
The damage done to the magic Tribune expense card this time is £176, including two 14-course tasting menus at £45 each, two wine pairings at £40 each and a bottle of sparkling water. Way more than I’d ever spend on a meal but if you’re a foodie and want to treat yourself from time to time or for a special occasion, probably manageable enough. A classic bon viveur, Martin is definitely in the latter category. “I do enjoy restaurant life,” he says. “I like the theatre of it.”
The sweary decor, the abundance of courses — Norse definitely has theatricality. Whether that’s enough to entice Sheffielders through its door, or whether it will go the way of so much of the city’s fine dining, remains to be seen. The way eating out has changed since Covid, with customers looking for more value for money, has turned the industry upside down and seen even Michelin starred restaurants fall by the wayside. Bagshaw says he hopes he’s right to stick to his guns, but ultimately it’s a bit of a punt, albeit one that’s paying off at the moment. “The bottomless brunch has been good for some places but as an industry it’s fucking killing it,” he says. “All we want is to carry on doing what we want to do.”
Martin Dawes still writes about Sheffield’s food scene on his blog Another Helping. For more information about Norse, click here.
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