Exile on Mean Street

‘Pigsy’ - a title derived from his own and not, disappointingly, from his tendency to lip-sync and carry a sharpened hoe - moves in circles and is a player in an industry that I will never begin to understand. Happily for the Hymnal, the bloke’s aptitude for business is matched if not exceeded by a propensity to climb on one at the drop of a hat. Just last weekend he diverted 100 miles out of his way to tag on to a low-key soiree that snowballed into a 3am poker tournament sponsored by Maker’s Mark. He was in Stoke Poges by 9am that same morning having a breakfast of bhajis at a Sikh-Hindu wedding. And somehow, although he sponsored this evening - one where I not only got to pick a venue, the food and the wine, stay over and come out the other side with a new laptop - he retains a capacity to convince it’s you that’s done him a turn, as if loafing around his palatial Bermondsey bolt-hole waiting for a cross-trainer to be delivered is a worthy trade-off. He’s priceless. No, literally - he is priceless.

Ahead of our reservation we meet for cocktails at the Mayfair Bar, part of the Mayfair hotel. Typically, Pigsy knows the General Manager and credits him with every superior aesthetic detail. The toilets are a must-see, apparently, and it’s true they’re so lavishly appointed that despite an increasing urge I haven’t the heart to ‘go’. Two expertly-crafted mojitos down and suitably demoralised by the ethereal beauty of all around us, we slalom up Shaftesbury towards dinner.

As I’ve intimated, and as you might have seen, there’s not a prevalent publication that hasn’t had a snout at Dean Street Townhouse in the last month. The concept as far as the food is concerned is indisputably British and the menu is mostly and reassuringly wholesome and earthy. While also a hotel the dining room has a distinct and deliberate feel of a pub about it, it’s Georgian features really nicely enhanced by the checkerboard tiling and red leather, and it’s rammed almost to the point it looks untidy. Our feted concierge having failed miserably to secure us the booking discussed in the previous entry – Pigsy’s on the warpath – and after a couple of slightly uncomfortable minutes while she checked and checked again, our hostess nevertheless confidently assured us this wouldn’t be a problem and we were seated within five. Tables are close to one another but, arranged in rows as they are in parts, this affords the management to be flexible with their layout and in this instance, to create space for two more.

Truth be told, what we ate wasn’t up to much. Scallops in the half shell with wild boar and ramsons (£10.50 for a pair) were, in context, affected, and ever so slightly overcooked. Wild rabbit, black pudding and scotch quail egg salad (£9.75) was tasty but as thin on the ground as the scallops when it came to value. Pigsy’s pie (£14), a Chicken Leek and Wild Mushroom number, came with a novelty blackbird funneling steam out the top and nothing else bar a boat of buttery sauce. Blythburgh pork t-bone, champ and buttered carrots was £18 and, given where we were, went just about far enough to justify it but the side of buttered greens, at £3.75, took the piss. It took until dessert for them to excel themselves; Trinity burnt cream (£5.25) was outstanding. You would, however, expect nothing less of place specialising in the classics.

Butcombe bitter was the ale of choice and drank well out of a jug. Lager in a similar receptacle, to me, isn’t right. Service, after the polite efficiency of the lady on the door, was fine if so-so in terms of personality. Granted, it was getting late, but if you’re going to push on through you need the stamina, or to rota ergonomically, in order to account for it. I read somewhere, I forget where, in regard to the service that ’these boys don’t make mistakes’. It’s as well because they were dour, uncommunicative and devoid of a charm that would deflect attention from any cause you might have for complaint.

More than just a nostalgic riposte to a recession, the food model is an extension of a definite current trend to take it home in terms of style. An old-school, no frills formula set to remind us that the old ones are the best and that British food, while it’s not pretty, is gutsy and has balls. In this spirit its incarnation at Dean Street, where appropriately utilitarian in content, represents shoddy value for money.  Rib Steak at £27? Too much. Mince and Potatoes, by comparison, far too little not to doubt that at these margins its constituents will be even more base than they appear. Portions, with the exception of the burnt cream -..yes, I gather it’s a creme brulee but if you feel compelled to confirm it even after I’ve ordered, you should probably just relax your theme and stipulate as much - are modest. Pigsy was happy with the bill, but then he entertains clients at Nobu.

We repaired to the subterranean havoc of The Arts Theatre Club to digest. What a find. If I have it right, and going on the intermittent quality of the karaoke, this is where the bit-parters come once they’ve scraped the stage make-up off their face. By turns, it’s like seeing a west-end show for free. There’s also the spectacle of CBBC’s ‘Little Cook’ making a hash of ‘The Power of Love’ while leathered teenagers stumble over my shoes and look up, cross-eyed, to apologise. And there’s carpet on the ceiling. If you go to any of these places, go here; it’s class.

BarnYard, you’re a diamond, son. Here’s to the first of many…

www.deanstreettownhouse.com www.themayfairhotel.co.uk

The Arts Theatre Club, 50 Frith Street, London W1D 4SQ  020 7287 9236

A Room with a View and a Table for Two

If I may, a moment of your time.

The Women’s Room is a highly cosmopolitan online community and a feed so consistently pre-emptive of cultural and sartorial trends that if you’re someone, especially a female, with even the remotest discernment for what’s current you need only bookmark it to ensure you’re among the first to hear about them. Fashion, film, books, blogs, music, art, food and drink, current affairs - you won’t miss a trick.  For the Hymnal to be recognised, as it has been, as a source of relative substance by such down and directional dandy-lionesses is a terrific compliment and gratifying to say the least.

I’ll be straight, mind; in the subsequent glare of an educated, informed and, I hope, captive new audience - and that’s all I mean by it - I feel like I’m about to meet the parents. A chance to wear a smart-looking suit and ace ‘em.

Destination Dean Street Townhouse, then. They’ve all been here in the last month or so. High time to chime in, I’d say, whether or not it’s by means of a reservation secured at short-notice for the graveyard-end of a Wednesday night. Still, a post-theatre slant on the usual table for two, and one arranged courtesy of a concierge who seemingly convinced a busy operator that the Hymnal was a hungry Holy Man with a penchant for eating late.

And if, when reading about our experience your body’s sympathetically pained by the prospective weight of a massive dinner slept-on, you can tweet me an alka-seltzer. 

Thanks, Amanda x Thanks, Jane x

Stag Do

‘Torino? It’s between Turin and Modena’. So said the nob in candy stripes as he passed, clearly replete enough of his recourse that he indulged himself of one more audible, splendidly ill-informed barf of hot air before tossing his sweater, hopping back in the Jag, and wending back up his own orifice. Between Turin..? ’ Is it?’, I thought out-loud as I unlatched the  front door, about 80% sure I could roughly translate place names, even in Italian. ‘That’s a gift, that’, said Benson, chucking in the remaining 20%. Knowing full well that our subsequent experience was bound to appear here over the coming days, I think we both knew right then I already had my opening. We’d barely parked the car.

So began the fiesta of soundbites that was lunch at The Stag at Offchurch, newly crowned by The Publican Magazine as their (national) Food Pub of the Year for 2010. When we set out we were heading for somewhere else altogether. But for an opportune incoming call that tipped us off to the Stag’s very recent accomplishment we might not only have passed on some woefully yet gloriously unqualified lessons in language and European geography, but also the chance of a superior lunch. It was good. In essence it wasn’t sexy but, man, it had teeth.

It was, to all intents and purposes, the first day of Summer and I wondered given the notice, the hour (knocking on 2pm), and the relative furore surrounding our revised destination whether we mightn’t be disappointed. There was loads of room, though, inside and out, and we were shown, by way of a marvellously and hairily unkempt young barman, via a terrifically bright waitress, to a table in the restaurant. The decor, to my eye, was not terribly understanding of the building. The antlers and the stag pictures deployed throughout left you in no danger of forgetting where you were, but not even my wingman’s nod to a taffeta pelmet had me convinced that, for a venue with such in-built period character, they hadn’t leant too far toward the wine-bar contemporary.

For the third site-visit in succession I ‘stayed home’ in terms of a food choice. No reflection on the broad, modestly priced Anglo-French menu, more so on (my even more modest) budgetary considerations and the weather outside. The keenly selected steak choices (from £13.50 for an 8oz rump) looked particularly good, even if there was rather a song and dance made over the ageing of the meat. Coq au Vin (£11.50) and an original take on a Lamb Mixed Grill (£14) would have provided a dilemma had I been placed to think outside the box. Decision made not to deviate then, our server showed a fresh aptitude for improv as she guided my hand in building my own Ploughman’s. The pork pie, she agreed, was “ a given” and was jovially supportive when I went for the mackerel pate as my other optional; “go crazy”, she said. It arrived arranged rustically on a cross-section of tree trunk, complemented with coleslaw, homemade chutney, pickled onion and dill, a perfectly boiled egg and a warm demi-baguette. An absolute treat for £7, even if, as Benson observed, I lost some of my slaw down a “fissure”. He had a Club. With the exception of one minor misjudgment whereby the bottom layer of one quadrant turned out to have been the top of another, he was otherwise and, after some dexterous reconfiguration, unequivocally chuffed. Chuffed too, to be able to ‘gift’ me another for the feed by christening the miniature metal tub his chips came in as a “tin bath”. “You can have that…”, he said by way of an hilarious  ’go on, take it…it’s yours’.

As I’ve said I’m not awfully fussy for industry accreditations achieved via a direct application. There’s tempered glory, I think, in having had to ask for them. It’s reassuring, however, and on this evidence deserved, that the selection and delivery of quality product has been recognized here. Ciders and real ales are both local although the beers, while clear enough, weren’t in prime condition. But this can be worked on. The toilets are dated and need attention before long, and I’d personally have preferred a more robustly presented outside space, in the same way, I suppose, that the aesthetic of the interior is perhaps slightly incongruous with its canvas. It was clearly a well organised garden, though, marshalled and serviced exclusively by one person.

There are touches, such as the availability of dog biscuits in the pub (50p a bowl) which, before you sat down to eat, would already have elevated this place above the ordinary. The wine list has plenty of interest across a sensible price range and the service is first-rate; enthusiastic and professional whilst endearingly and appropriately laid back.  It’s blatantly the food, though, as The Publican award more than subtly suggests, that is its real strength. Priced competitively and presented with style, while these simpler dishes felt somewhat at odds with an ever so slightly affected environment, it represents a real coup for a business reinvigorated to acclaim in just a year.

www.thestagatoffchurch.com

The G-G-G-Granville

‘Triple-Cooked Chips’. ’Thrice cooked’, they’re calling them at the Swan at Southrop, where one assumes they’re delivered by a tit with bells on his shoes bidding you ’good ‘morro’. Even the girl at the Kingham Plough, the one place I’ve visited recently that had a better than tenuous link to their brainchild, fell over her words trying to explain them away to a chap blissfully innocent of a need to distinguish them at all beyond your everyday French fry. At least once she’d brought them everything became clear as to the method behind their creation; beautifully coloured and crispy on the outside, fondant in the middle. There was goose fat involved somewhere, I think she said.

The Granville in Barford have ‘Triple-Cooked Chips’ on their menu too. This village is full of houses that look like the ones you drew as a kid and took for granted you’d probably end up living in one day. You know the ones? A door, probably blue, four windows, a chimney. Mirrored, save for the fact that in reality the pitch of the roof is probably less sheer than in your artistic dreams and the people outside have marginally smaller hands. The pub is one such building – albeit it has nine windows - and, for a sunny midweek lunchtime and going on what I’ve heard, is quieter than I’d anticipated. Maybe people, having been fluffed to a fervour by the billing of these revelatory pommes-frites, are getting wise to the fact that, actually, they are just chips.

Once, Twice, Thr...

Now, if they’d have said ‘chips’, rather than ’triple-cooked chips’ – I know, it grates after a while, doesn’t it? – it would have been fine. Seemingly though, not all of mine had even had a proper once over, let alone a second or third. They were pale, and one or two were ever so slightly firmer than I’d hoped. Certainly firmer than I’d expected for being cooked three times. If I was a broadsheet supplement ponce I might have pulled one of my two servers (both of whom I totally fancied by the way, therein giving more than reasonable cause for the Hymnal to return) to one side and suggested they be given a fourth go for good measure. And I refuse to re-word that just because I know what you’re thinking. You dirty b*stards. My point, so as it’s not lost in all the excessive claptrap is, once again, that if you call an egg an egg and it turns out to have the biggest, deepest yellow yolk you’ve ever seen it’s going to come as a modest, relatively pleasant surprise. Especially if you produce it from your mouth like one of those wide-eyed Pierrots in a top hat. By all means triple or thrice cook your chips but just call them chips. Do them well and people will be going, ‘Hey, how do you do your chips?’. Not, ‘I can’t tell the difference…’.

The Minute-Steak sandwich these came with was decent. At £7.50 I got my money’s worth with regard to quantity – oddly, I could have trousered a glass of champagne to ‘go with it’ for a combined £11.50 -  if not entirely for quality. The steak was a tad thick, although my initial fears that one bite would drag the whole thing from between my granary happily weren’t realised since the meat had been cooked pretty much to the pink letter. For about sixty seconds, I suppose. Between that, however, the overly generous chutney filling and the doorstep bread, it was all a bit, well, ugly. With regard to the ramekin of purple slaw I got with it, for all the employment of red cabbage leant a flash of colour, I’d have stuck with a conventional ‘cole’ . I’m normally ‘balls-out’ for a twist on a classic but remain slightly unconvinced this one wasn’t aesthetically misjudged. I don’t want to be rude about it, though; for what I  paid the food was fine.

The Granville’s a nice venue too, if not quite maximizing its visual potential. More could be made of its generous outside space and inside is something of an amalgam of tastes. Part traditional country pub, part wine bar – one of the walls is kind of carpeted and the blackboard writing is in hot pink or lime - it doesn’t quite feel settled. The signage is a bit young for the  building too.

You can tell this place aspires to be really something and it has garnered some good recognition locally. The service is up to it, beyond my finding it physically attractive, and the main a la carte dishes looked both wholesome and stylish. There’s local beer, too. It falls down on things like its coffee, which comes from one of those self-contained machines that can never seem to match the guts of a manually produced espresso or americano. There is a reassuring and professional theatre about their make-up and that of a latte, say, which is too straight-forward not to include as part of your offer if you’re even remotely serious about it. Also the choice of  music here is quite simply too inoffensive to be acceptable. A playlist comprised of Gabrielle, Simply Red and Eva Cassidy smacks of trying to pull a Radio 2 in covering all [customer] bases. There was a more diverse and well-to-do mix at another very recently attended pub, and they were dropping in Kings of Leon and Ian Brown. But these are details on a list of priorities a few below refining a certain standard of food and drink output. Something which, if you nail on the head first, would probably entitle you to play Judas Priest if you wanted. So long as it was at a reasonable volume and you only laid carpet on the floors.

www.granvillebarford.co.uk

Over-Gill

The man delights and degrades in equal measure which is, I suppose, what makes him such a good journalist. The capacity to wax contentiously lyrical over two or three superfluous introductory paragraphs, alienating a diverse demography on the way, while still retaining a readership that’s patient and loyal enough to persevere through to the crux of his experience.  But even a vocabulary of unrivalled intelligence and colour, particularly when it comes to invective, as well as an unfailingly cultured palate, still can’t prevent a blatantly private agenda giving genuine cause for a latter review to be stricken from the record.

Trust me when I say I’m as sick of the sight of Gordon Ramsay as anybody. But A.A. Gill’s overview of the reincarnated Petrus this weekend was nothing more constructive than a calculated and brutal  assault on the bloke. That he was compelled to take his mate Giles Coren along for moral support – I take it Marco was busy -  given his defamatory objectives, hints at an unimpressive contingency that there would at least be strength in numbers.

Beginning with an unbridled, albeit probably warranted, attack on American snack culture, he segues tenuously to dig at Petrus’ policy of providing complimentary, if ’unasked-for’, incremental amuses-bouche. Obviously, and I think honestly, designed to enhance the experience – although doubtless subsidised by the premium paid for the one-off or occasional privilege that is visiting a restaurant of this ilk –  these are mercilessly ripped to shreds. First as a concept, for being dated, and then as unwanted appetite spoilers. Each a ‘morsel of self-congratulation’, comparing his enjoyment of a juicy onion soup to that of siphoning liposuction is, I would guess - having sat through seven courses of Ramsay’s food - biased, barbed and way over the top.

And so it goes. Mackerel that tastes like ‘the fishmonger’s wife’s bike seat’ (lovely), the prize metaphor actually comes from Coren who likens his experience of the rare pigeon breast to ‘sucking his own cut’. (True or not, I have to say that’s genius). Coren’s other half, Esther, is given a special mention for her ‘intriguing’ contention that ‘all the best, really sophisticated, great epicurean flavours have a hint of bottom about them’. Being as close to Giles as she is, and to someone therefore with a distinct taste for Adrian’s arse - he did coat-tail Gill to this ambush after all - she, as much as anyone, would know.

It’s excessively and deliberately scathing in a pre-determined, entirely anti-Hymnal way. Very faint and reluctant praise for the straight-forward dishes, absolutely none for the others. No surprise given Gill and Ramsay’s colourful history, but the insight here errs frequently between the spiteful, the hypocritical and the totally ignorant. In reclaiming the Petrus concept, title and all, to relaunch at an alternate location, far from a ‘fit of chefly pique’, could just be Ramsay demonstrating an assurance, particularly in light of Gill purporting the restaurant’s halcyon days to have been under Marcus Wareing, of his ability to set the record straight. The assertion that this is childish and ‘pathetically confrontational’ is just too rich to be taken seriously; ‘as a customer, do I really want my dinner to be the ingredient in some foodie vendetta?’. Please. As someone with a famously firm grasp on the workings of an industry he rarely seems to enjoy in the eating, why then choose a Bank Holiday Monday to come here, of all places, to order fish he knows full well will have been landed as long ago as Friday? 

My own experience of Gordon Ramsay – at Claridge’s, while it was Mark Sargeant’s food - was pretty sensational. Food, service, atmosphere, everything - bar the wine, which retailed at about 250% over the odds - lived up to and beyond expectation. Ramsay himself was there and mingled sociably and with real charm from table to table, with not a whiff of the marauding TV chef or the blue air that normally hangs around him. And I know Claridge’s three years ago is not Petrus today. But I also know Gill was once physically ejected from one of Ramsay’s premises. Well, he was dining with that slag Alexis Colby. And with his Holdings company rumoured to have had its financial difficulties, I reckon it’s safe to reasonably assume new ventures are unlikely to be entered into without consideration and appropriately close attention to detail.

I’m disappointed because essentially I like him. When he and Clarkson get together they’re a hoot. But concluding, and in the process only thinly veiling a literal, personal jibe, that ‘everything about [Gordon's latest]..is utterly has-been’ ? I mean, that’s just rubbish isn’t it? ‘This service is,’ he claims, ‘defunctly dead’, his chief complaint, not a bit ironically, being that staff were ’assiduous with their interruptions of conversation…simply for the sake of an anecdote’. Are you getting this? ‘It’s sad’, he continues, ‘that anybody could still want to…offer an evening that implies such an utter lack of sensitivity or understanding or contemporary awareness’. No, it’s clumsily considered, begrudging and belligerent displays of petulance like this which I think are sad. And low. Particularly when you consider the height of Gill’s brow. I think we’ve all come to expect better. For him to aim higher. And shoot baboon…

www.timesonline.co.uk

Falling Starbucks

I had to clear my own table before I sat down. It was only when I did so I noticed the dirty watermarks all down the side of my mug. It could be that I’m still only running at about 80% (tickly cough, pathetically husky voice) or that I’m simply a fool for a twenty ounce vessel of frothy coffee with vanilla shit in it. Truth is, though, that I was about as inclined to draw this to anyone’s attention, let alone complain or have it replaced, as Starbucks’ baristas seemed to be to step out from behind the counter and clear the hell up. Neither of us could be arsed.

As a consumer I’m a pacifist. Always have been. Which is odd because as a catering professional I was totally anal. In a good way, I think. Service was paramount, presentation and manners, everything. Something of an anomaly, yes? Perhaps not. Perhaps, as someone who identifies with their lot, I have an ingrained empathy with wait staff when the boot’s on the other foot. I did always try to stay mindful of this whenever I found myself apologising profusely to a 9pm booking faced with a ten minute wait for their table. If it were me, I thought, this would be the best news I’d have had all week;- ’What, we can have a drink first? F**king A. Why didn’t I think of that? Where’s the bar..?’. As it was, I’m not sure I didn’t always make such a polite fuss of them I only succeeded in convincing these people that any delay might actually be unacceptable.

It’s weird. Had they been answerable to me today, I would naturally have been challenging every one of these kids as to their preference when they eat or drink out to sit at a clean table or a dirty one. Would they be happy sharing theirs, say, with some lipstick stained cups containing the tepid remnants of the table before – at least one of which will have a distressed wasp bouncing hysterically off the sides – two dirty plates, a used stirrer, a soiled wet-wipe and a half-finished yoghurt? No? Right, then look lively. Perhaps I’ve expended so much past energy pre-occupying myself with this sort of thing that, unless it’s my reputation at stake, I’m just too tired to object.

As you might tell from recent experiences regaled here, professional apathy normally frustrates the shit out of me. I’m writing now without being entirely sure, bar those suggestions I’ve already made, why I settled for less on this occasion. I think it’s probably to do with having an acute awareness of the job that is recruiting, motivating and managing the staff of a standalone establishment, and therefore having proportionately modest or no expectations of those who have thousands. You’d like to think there were systems in place that it would simply be a question of transposing the flagship to a new venue. It doesn’t work like that.

My Table Before I Cleared It

As a pacifist, I’d normally opt simply to go elsewhere next time. As someone who reacts to proper coffee not unlike that poor disorientated wasp, I might just ashamedly need to hold my hands up and admit that I find clearing my own table and drinking out of grubby crockery a small price to pay for a sugary shot of Seattle that, three hours later, still has me shivering like a ‘banny’.

And you’ll need to drive to Lock Lomond to find out how they go.

Fussy Hussy#2

With a rapidly diminishing budget on which to continue a physical reconnaissance, and any odds of being able to get down the pub before Friday resting almost entirely on Wigan shipping 4 this afternoon (I can tell you, actually, they’re 25-1), one need only look to the weekend’s papers as ammo for counter-content.

First a foolscap journo with two first names showed himself  to be no more savvy to the state of the union than LamBert but who, on the company, nevertheless regularly gets to wolf ’thrice’ cooked chips amid rural splendour with Trigger Happy TV. Assuming of course the big lad’s a sharer. Then, this morning, there’s the Fussy Eater. I have to confess that when I read her first column I was dubious as to the scope for someone equally deprived and disinclined, with voluntary and involuntary dietary peccadilloes, to write terribly widely for a food magazine. I mean, I think I can appreciate it’s an alternate angle. I’m also confident I’m not alone in asking myself what is to be learnt from a vegetarian’s ruminations on Texan barbecue.

She is, she says, ‘delighted to find a cucumber salad’ on a ‘special’ menu at this Manhattan ‘Barbecue Market’. With her numerous considerations I’d be surprised if that’s not all she ever finds to suit her. I guess she ought to be congratulated for putting a brave face on it. Her cynicism and resentment of other people’s enjoyment of an unrestricted diet is, however, terribly un-spirited. ‘Eating vast quantities of barbecued meat is the ultimate alpha male excuse to be out of control in an environment where it’s not only permitted, but encouraged’, she surmises, playing increasingly to type. She’d deny anybody, it seems, taking outward pleasure in the basic human right to eat meat with their hands because she can’t. Or won’t. You’re a ‘wheat-free vegetarian’ at an industrial-size burger joint. We’re Barbarians. Deal with it.

The morning after what I must say sounds like it could have been a splendid night out, her friends all have ‘food hangovers’. With only a demure Marc Jacobs-scented belch to show for her own particular excesses, her smugness is now off the radar. As an apparent ‘alpha male’ I’ve overdone it on ‘dinosaur rib’ before and know all too well the discomfort involved in gestating a ”food baby”. Our girl’s drive to control and maintain her food regime would be commendable, then, but for her admission that ‘hanging around people who eat barbecue, I feel like Kate Moss’.

Oh. I thought you just had a chip on your shoulder. Why didn’t you just say you had an inferiority complex…?

www.observer.co.uk

He’s Telegraphed That

‘Your Table is Ready’, Weekend, 17th April 2010

‘This is good cooking for a pub’. Yeah? That’s charitable of you. At £108 for a three course lunch for two, I should think it wants to be good cooking period. Whether you’re in a celebrity-infested chocolate box or not. Tell you what, why not pop into the kitchen on your way out, give the chef a condescending pat on the head, nonchalantly toss the company plastic at your waitress and invite her to ‘let it rip’?

In the same breath as observing that ’the lamb was fatty’, I’m not sure this concession isn’t more than a touch obtuse. It’ll have even the most tolerant chef rolling his eyes. Lord knows I’m no butcher, but most cuts used in this environment tend to be selected for their flavour. A bit like Rib-Eye, which our man would likely have found not only to be fatty, but also a bit sinewy. No, really..?

Something pertinent he does go on to say is that ‘restaurants now seem to think local sourcing short-circuits any discussion about whether the food is good’, and that ‘it doesn’t quite’. I agree. I’ve said this already though - see ‘Locally Sauced’ – and this guy’s getting paid for this.

Just know, if he’s creaming off this feed and passing it off as his own I’m going to burn his bloody house down. And if his appreciation of the ‘Persian rugs and log fires’ of this ‘faultlessly tasteful’ Gloucestershire pub is any reflection on his own tastes, it’s going to go up lovely.

www.theswanatsouthrop.co.uk

Ely-e Span

‘Fingers’ is like a Doc Holliday for the touchscreen quiz generation. He’s lightning. No matter how many bodies surround the console, give him a glimmer of daylight and he’ll pierce the crowd with a tautly extended index digit faster than you can say, ‘…Stop! Harare’s in Zimbabwe, you fanny..’.  He can throw a cricket ball with his left arm further than you can drive in an hour, and his Dad’s got two sheds.

He and I are on Fenland and, resplendent in crushed red velveteen, West End House is like Ely’s answer to the Dagmar. Separated into four rooms and with leather wing-backs at every turn, it’s as homely a provincial side-street boozer as you could hope to stumble upon. There’s a jar of pickles on the counter, a good pint of Sharp’s DoomBar, and the loos are so pristine they look like they’ve been blitzed by the sturdier one of Kim and Aggie. It’s a find. The only thing missing, I guess, is (Farrow & Ball colour-in-waiting) Wilmot Brown pulling pints before then doing the same to Kathy Beale (poor cow). An impression made as a good honest local, I followed up the visit with one to its website where there is a facility to leave your own comments as to the fist Steve and Kim (licencees since 2003) are making of running it . Google it yourself and I’ve no doubt you’ll find equally odd the owners’ overly democratic reluctance to edit those that have been left to date. To say they vary is to put it mildly and one can only assume their hope is that you hit their bar before their domain name lest you should be put off going altogether. The picture painted is unflattering and I must say, on this evidence at least, wholly inaccurate.

Bang in the centre of town and in the shadow of the Cathedral, the Minster Tavern’s a cavernous, 2 meals for £5 sort of place, perfect for an on-the-turn pint of Pedigree before you slope off for a Ruby. A bizarre Chinese stand-off preceded our getting a drink, our server stood staring vacantly at her colleague whilst clutching a dripping piece of rubber mesh used to stop upturned glasses welding themselves to the shelves. A Carlsberg plus mine came eventually to a superbly arbitrary £4.44, and I have to confess disappointment as well as a little surprise not to get £6.66 change from a tenner.

Montaz is an upscale curry house with one of the most luxuriously piled carpets I’ve ever had the pleasure to set foot on, and that presents its dishes on white porcelain. This, I always feel, is a refreshingly refined alternative to those stainless steel ones that begin to sizzle and then char so soon after they’ve been set over the tea candles that you’re uncannily impelled not only to empty their entire contents untidily over your plate, but then hurriedly trough them as if your life depended on it. The vast timbales of pilau that arrived with our mains implied that the kitchen thought our lives must have depended on it. And I wasn’t sure the way our waiter then distractedly dumped them, ‘pot-pot-pie’ style, on to our plates had more to do with a slow evening’s business, a wider vocational disenchantment, or that from where he was standing he could watch the Spurs-Arsenal game through the window of the pub next door. 

No matter. We happily chewed the ghee, laughed heartily as we overheard some pissed cockney voluminously recount the misdemeanours by which he incurred all of the penalties on his driving licence, and in the process of catching up at length, I contrived to talk myself via every octave on the keyboard into the bronchial discomfort which now has me supping a hot manuka honey preparation and sounding like Lina Lamont.

Brilliant to see you, Hambel. Easily the most tastefully appointed guest room this side of Witcham Toll. Now I know how the Don sleeps… Go easy, son

www.westendhouseely.co.uk www.greatvaluepubs.co.uk www.montaz.co.uk

Bravo, Afropavo

Just goes to show, doesn’t it, how appearances can be deceptive? Reading down the right it says that Yvonne and Pam viewed a number of prospective properties before they bought the Peacock at Oxhill. You’d be forgiven for thinking, if the unassuming exterior of the winner is anything to go by, there must have been some complete shit-holes among them. Which isn’t to say that it’s an entirely unpleasant building. It has a rustic charm, I suppose, but it would be dead easy to miss, even accounting for the sign over the door. Having put my tracking out going over the mother of all pot-holes en route to parking the chariot, I was likewise nonplussed by its unprepossessing rear.

Step inside, though. When I highlight the importance of judging things on merit, this place is almost exactly what I’m talking about. Monday lunchtime and it’s heaving. The atmosphere is as relaxed as the staff who, in knackered jeans and t-shirts, are justifiably confident that whether their tops are tucked in or their shoes buffed, cooking and charisma will see them through. This isn’t, they emphasise, a gastropub. It’s a pub that does food. A no-nonsense philosophy echoed in the traditionally spare decor and the product on sale.  

There are three ales, two of which are relatively local – Wadworth and Wye Valley – and all of which are crystal clear and drinking. I’ve checked and I’m not sure the former make a Peacock bitter. I had one though, and whether it’s brewed especially or else they’ve just stuck a doctored pump climp on a barrel of the same brewery’s ’Strong in the Arm’ (at 4.0% abv.), I couldn’t care less. It was bloody lovely. So were the staff, who informed me comprehensively of one or two alterations to the food choices and that a slight delay in receiving any was likely in light of their being quite busy. I’ll always take this news on the chin, regardless of whether I’ve called ahead or not, but I could see for myself more tables than not had cutlery but no food and so went about making friends with the Pub dog.

Just now the Peacock is running a suicidal two course lunch at £12.50 a go. While I decided on a sarnie, thinking I’d play to their simple strengths, an old duffer over my right shoulder was attempting to come to terms with what startling value this represented. He’d got his Mozzarella Salad starter for free, effectively, because his Brie-Stuffed, Pancetta-Wrapped Chicken Breast came with enough ruffage and involuntary sides to nourish a family of four. It wasn’t gratuitous – you could see how much love had gone into putting it together – but there was loads of it . Every now and again he would audibly congratulate himself on having opted to go prix-fixe. Opposite, there was an actual family of four whose plummy patriarch – a man with a face as red as his slacks -  surmised in loudly round tones that the benchmark of any pub should be how well they executed their Fish and Chips. He was suitably gushing in his eventual praise. The prat.

It’s hard to screw up a baguette but my Bacon, Brie and Cranberry (£6 or so with chips) was disproportionately satisfying. Perhaps my enjoyment was heightened by the pleasant surprise that lies behind the facade of this outwardly unremarkable, as it turns out, award-winning village boozer.  That their sponsored accolades need be applied for – a bit like paying for your Cask Marque inspection – should not begin to take away from what’s being achieved here. On every level it just feels right. And I’m not championing the doling out of rosettes to every pub that can make a bacon sandwich, but in the spirit of the Hymnal, this place gave me exactly what I wanted and then some where I expected nothing more.

As I settled up I was sure to remonstrate at the preposterous generosity of the set lunch menu, lest the Peacock’s windows be boarded up the next time I came out this way. I was reassured that the charges are sensible over the weekend, and that they’d sat 12o on both Saturday night and Sunday Lunch. For a 60 cover restaurant that won’t consent to structured sittings this, more than anything, goes to show how efficiently and accessibly they operate. That people are prepared to patiently wait their turn and will happily compromise on when they eat, so long as it’s right there, tells you everything you need to know.

www.thepeacockoxhill.co.uk