HAAR is a fine dining restaurant in St. Andrews, run by ‘Masterchef The Professionals’ finalist Dean Banks.  I discovered that he’d formed a new company, HAAR at Home, to delivery make-away boxes across the UK, and, finding them to look good and offering good value, I ordered a 6 course tasting menu, planned in combination with up and coming London chef Ben Murphy, plus 2 additional courses, and a wine flight, for delivery on 19th March 2021, at a total price of £211.90.  The delivery arrived on schedule, in two well-chilled boxes, with all ingredients sealed and bagged into courses. There were copies of the menus and some service instructions, but I had to go online to find the instructions to go with the extra courses, and to get information on the wines.

Bread was an optional extra which I didn’t order, but upon seeing there would be some sauces to mop up I popped my own petit pains into the oven.  The first course of Tandoori cauliflower with Salsa Verde, Buttermilk and spiced seeds only needed the cauliflower to be reheated in an oven for 20 minutes, with the chilled ingredients added when plating up.  Overall I didn’t like this dish because it tasted too bitter. The dry spices on the cauliflower were just too astringent, but the salsa verde was good and sharp, and the buttermilk dressing had a lovely creamy acidity, and the spiced seeds were very moreish.  Mr A agreed with this view, so it wasn’t just because I had a chemotherapy induced sensitive tongue.  4/10

The second course looked much more appealing: “Miso baked scallop & Fresh spring onion salad”. There were two scallops in the half shell for each of us, which I washed, dried and drizzled with sesame oil before popping into the oven for 10 minutes. In a bowl I mixed the fresh spring onion salad with some miso dressing, and when the scallops came out of the oven I spooned the salad on top and drizzled more miso dressing.  The completed dish was lovely and fresh-tasting, with the classically well balanced flavours of miso and sesame. I’m not usually a fan of pan-fried scallop coral, but this was really nice baked in the oven, as it takes on a different texture. My only complaint was that the scallop had not been disconnected from the shell, and I hadn’t been instructed to disconnect it, so it was unnecessarily difficult to remove from the shell after cooking. 8.5/10

Next came the extra course of “Native lobster served with Mirin and seaweed butter”, comprising two halves of a small cooked lobster, which were heated in the oven for 8 minutes and then drenched with a heated and whisked emulsion of water and Japanese-flavoured butter. This was a simple and easy dish, with the lobster being perfectly cooked for tenderness, and the emulsified butter sauce not being too rich. It was one of those dishes which elicit a hidden olfactory memory; in this case of the back streets of Shinjuku. 8.5/10

Our third corse was called “Thai Green North Sea coley, sautéed seasonal vegetables, spicy coconut broth”. I drizzled oil over the two coley fillets, topped them with a ‘Thai green crumb’ and placed in the oven for 12 minutes. In a pan I heated some lemongrass and coriander oil and gently sautéed the cubes of vegetables, and in another pan I heated the coconut broth and gave it a little whisk to create a tiny froth.  The finished plate gave a good-sized portion and the coley was perfectly cooked, and still ‘flakey’ (a good choice of fish for this dish).  I loved the refinement of the oil in which the veggies were cooked, and overall this was a very well balanced, fragrant dish. Being on chemotherapy, I had some side effects, including a sore mouth and tongue, but to my relief this wasn’t a hot and spicy dish.  9/10

The main course was “Pork Belly & tamarind glaze, king oyster, kimchi, puffed crackling”.  I fried the pork for a minute on each side, coated it with the tamarind glaze and set it in the oven for 7 minutes.  In the same pan I sautéed the king oyster mushroom and then plated up.  Once again I was worried that the kimchi would be too spicy for my sore mouth, so I added my own element to the dish; pickled julienne of carrot, to add the acid I might miss of I wasn’t able to eat the kimchi.  But, like with the fish course, this was not a hot and spicy dish, and I was able to fully enjoy its balance and interesting flavours. The pork was terrific too, and I felt that this was a very healthy and nutritious plate of food. 9/10 And the “Gochujang” dressing splashed onto the plate, was very nice.

Dessert was called “chocolate ganache, popping oats, mango and chilli”.  There was no prep to do, as the dessert came in and was eaten from a small plastic pot. Consequently it looked rather boring, even lazy. It was very chocolatey, not very mangoey, and I didn’t encounter any ‘popping oats’. So, not that inspiring, but flavoursome nonetheless. 6/10

Overall, apart from the cauliflower starter, I enjoyed this make-away from HAAR at Home.  Whilst I found the dishes to be nicely balanced for flavour, there wasn’t a clear balance or consistency to the menu. Thai, Korean, Scottish and Japanese elements appeared seemingly at random. But I’ll still award it 8.5/10

BTW the wine flight was very enjoyable, and we had 3 full bottles between us. The Spanish wines were produced by a former El Bulli Sommelier, and they were very nice, and not what I might have chosen myself – which is the point of letting a Sommelier choose your wines!  But the pairing of the red wine with the dessert did not work!  My favourite was the rose Rioja, which went superbly with the scallops.