Millie Hayward, a pupil at Ipswich High School, eats out - and does a bit of cooking - at Ice Lunch Bar, an innovative restaurant and cook school at Rougham
Ice Lunch Bar is a discovery. The whole time I was there I felt I was discovering new things - new ingredients, it's a restaurant like no other and the actual location is different. How often do you go to a high-quality restaurant on an industrial estate?
The Lunch Bar has a chilled, industrial vibe which fits with the setting. There's lots of colour, with metal for contrast, which gives the room a cool feeling. A mural of Freddy Mercury and other musicians, beloved of Ice owners John and Lou Jackaman, fills the walls in both the main Ice restaurant and Lunch Bar.
The Lunch Bar seats just 15 people, and is available Fridays only, alternating between lunch and evening service, so it gets booked up quickly. Everyone sits on high stools at an L-shaped counter around the kitchen, where John and head chef Barney O’Connell cook. You can also sit outside. The outdoor seating area is in a car park, which may not sound very inviting, but is actually colourful, homely and relaxing. Sheltered by an awning, diners sit on metal chairs at tables made from old cable drums. There are fairy lights and a 1960s Airstream caravan called Bessie, which served wood-fired pizzas to go during lockdown and is reopening for takeaway or to eat in.
As they cook, John talks about the individual courses - each has a story. While Barney prepared our dish of seared rabbit loin, John explained that it's young rabbit that is the “gold standard”. Barney's dish came with vodka damsons, burnt honey and bee pollen. The damson flavour was quite strong, the burnt honey amazing, while bee pollen was a first for me. It is the most complete food on earth, John told us. It’s clear how passionate he is, and it makes the experience even more interesting if you know what you are eating. You appreciate it more.
The Lunch Bar experience is eight to ten courses. Some are challenging and some are more comforting - John and Barney understand that not everyone will like everything. I really enjoyed the first course, which looked amazing on the plate, a freshly baked focaccia with wild garlic gremolata and smoked salmon pastrami, with Japanese vegan caviar on top. The salmon was peppery - the result of a rub - while the vegan caviar popped in my mouth, tasting like crunchy seawater with added saltiness. The vegan caviar, John explained, is called ‘umibudo’ in Japanese. He discovered it only recently at a workshop held at Ice during the Passion to Inspire chef competition. “Umibudo is a vegan alternative to caviar and gives a minerally flavour, just like caviar." Even John and his team never stop learning.
One of my favourite dishes was line-caught seabass, beautifully soft, on wild garlic linguine with a beautiful beurre blanc sauce. The flavour of the sauce was enriched by roasting the mackerel bones from the previous dish of cured mackerel, making it delicious and darker in colour. There were seared tiger prawns too and I enjoyed the garlic flavours.
The course I found most challenging was the venison tartare. Shallots and gherkins are chopped into the venison mixture, which is topped with a slow-cooked egg yolk covered in breadcrumbs. The venison stock is made into a jelly – John calls it a venison ‘gummie’ – giving it a delicious explosion of flavour. Never having eaten tartare before, I found the texture challenging, but with the egg, cooked perfectly so that when pierced it ran out over the meat, it was so tasty.
I got to help make one of the desserts which I loved, stirring the cream and sourdough crumbs while John poured liquid nitrogen into the bowl so it would become instant sourdough ice cream. Not many restaurants are this interactive, making it even more special. The ice cream was served with white chocolate Chantilly cream, English truffle honey and grated English truffle, which tasted almost savoury. Ice scholar Erin Rawlinson made our other dessert, a dark chocolate cup filled with vanilla panna cotta, drizzled with basil syrup, with summer berries macerated in balsamic vinegar on the side. Delicious!
Ice was an amazing experience. Everyone was very kind and welcoming - they told me they love working there because it feels like a ‘family’. I could really see that. “Barney is the chef I’d been looking for years,” says John. “He has zero ego, and we bounce ideas around all the time. It’s a brilliant partnership.” Erin, who completed Level 3 in professional cookery at West Suffolk College in 2021, before joining Ice, is one of their best ever scholars, he says, and has just been promoted to demi chef de partie. It was good to see young chefs having responsibility for dishes and being supported at the start of their career by experienced chefs.
Another thing John said struck me. “We’re in the entertainment industry. It’s about theatre, showbiz. People come for a meal, and sometimes they’ve saved up and want to be entertained. They want to leave their troubles at the door. We’re not like many other restaurants. We have this cool space, we interact with guests, it’s fun and different.”
Millie Hayward, 15, is a pupil at Ipswich High School and wrote this piece after a day’s work experience with Tessa Allingham.
Ice Lunch Bar - icecookschool.co.uk or 01359 270102.
The experience alternates between lunch (£60) and dinner (£65) and is always on a Friday. Four times a year a Seasons menu (£150 including paired drinks) celebrates the best seasonal ingredients. All tips in 2022 go to MyWiSH charity supporting the West Suffolk Hospital.
Ice Restaurant/Cook School, Rougham Industrial Estate, Bury St Edmunds IP30 9ND
From the menu
Focaccia, gremolata, salmon pastrami and vegan caviar
Cured mackerel, yellow tomatoes, lambs’ leaf, pickled fennel, kohlrabi, gooseberries and elderflower dressing
Rabbit loin, vodka damsons, rosemary oil, bunt honey, bee pollen, jus.
Venison tartare, venison gummies, pickled girolles, crispy 62° egg yolk, lovage oil
Seabass, wild garlic pesto linguine, beurre blanc, tiger prawns
White chocolate Chantilly, sourdough ice cream, sourdough icing sugar
Vanilla panna cotta, macerated strawberries, fresh strawberries, basil syrup
Rose, pistachio, and chocolate truffles. Nitro iced coffee
Twenty years on
By Tessa Allingham
It was back in 2002 that John and Lou Jackaman opened Infusions, relying on loans – money from the bank, a van from friends – and a belief in their idea of creating a business supplying specialist dry-store goods to the hospitality trade.
Their belief was well-founded. The business grew, despite what John calls the “jacket potato years” when he and Lou did all the product sourcing, marketing, selling, deliveries, admin themselves. “Eventually we got another driver, then another, and we bought Unit 4, then Unit 3 [on the Rougham Industrial Estate].” John is proud that Infusions supplies Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK and overseas, its liveried vehicles often to be spotted around East Anglia. The Ice Cook School and Lunch Bar opened in 2017, the restaurant in 2019.
The catastrophic fire of March 21, 2020, as lockdown was beginning, forced an eight-week closure, including of the click-and-collect grocery service just launched in response to the pandemic. “I wondered if we could ever rebuild,” says John. Ice reopened a year later – still at first under Covid restrictions – with a canopied outdoor space, and remodelled interior. The lively, industrial vibe of the restaurant with its striking mural carries through to the Lunch Bar and Cook School where BB King, Jimi Hendrix, and Steve Tyler preside from the back wall. The whole space is music-filled, fun and – as a neon sign suggests – ‘breaks the rules’. Next stop? The ambition is to open Ice in cities such as Cambridge and Norwich.
“We’ve been through a lot together as a team,” John says, “but that has strengthened us. We’re in a really good place now.”
