Piss & Googlies: Nelson – Birmingham, England, 27th/28th August 2011

“Nelson (Cricket) – The name, applied to team or individual scores of 111 or multiples thereof”.

Yes, it’s difficult, isn’t it, once we’re all grows up, to keep dates for what ought to be a regular ‘coming together’ of family? Life gets in the way. Prior engagements, responsibilities…I get it. I don’t have them, but I get it. What you need are some tenuous grounds – grounds too tenuous for anyone to object – to get a little crazy. A healthy period of notice is obviously useful, as is a Bank, or Labor Day Holiday; a crash mat onto which those with dependents can fall in the aftermath, either to have their hair stroked or to lick their wounds, to rest and rehydrate before resigning themselves to a host of pre-arranged, compensatory domestic chores. Foundation for such opportunity can be a little ‘chicken and egg’, of course, and the very reason why the brothers and I celebrating our Centenary (our cumulative 100th birthday) over a hot and sunny weekend next-the-sea a few years back was a masterstroke. It created a precedent. A table around which to conspire. Back in February, at Stow on the Wold’s Eagle & Child, the penny dropped. For the six months between May and November this year, we’d be 111. Hello Nelson, goodbye short-term memory.

The domestic TwentyTwenty finals day at Edgbaston provided the setting for Day1. Try as it might, while rain interrupted the cricket, it couldn’t stop play. An initial and misguided circumnavigation of the ground took in frogs, a chicken deep in conversation with a couple of rabbits, and a barely-released, blinking Beirut hostage with a tongue like a salamander. Six or seven plastic pots of black and amber piss were despatched through the covers before, having sat through two finely balanced semis and one mascot steeplechase, we threw over the final in favour of a change of scene. By now the all male cheerleader troupe fannying about on a nearby podium were starting to sour the taste of an otherwise sensational picnic, (among which, incidentally, the sweet stuffed bell peppers were the tits) and we were beginning to feel quite self-aware about the amount of exposure Sky television’s cameras had given us already.

Getting ourselves hence to a haughty Hotel du Vin we figured, in light of the occasion and the surroundings, that cocktails were in order. Sceptical one of two mojitos mightn’t have arrived sans rum, and mindful Big Bentz was mincing too much around his margarita, we yammed what was left of the laid-on salty snacks and went to Bacchus.

Buried in the vaults of the Burlington Hotel, Bacchus is a Nicholson joint and duly juxtaposes a reasonable beer selection with an atrocious carpet. Always a minor mystery to me why some pub operators will undermine the overall aesthetic of their often passable premises by laying any old shit on the floor. Never really got any further toward figuring out why, either, beyond the assumption garish colours and swirly patterns are low maintenance and disguise sick better than seagrass.

To Jamie’s Italian. First go at one of these and, I must say, it was pretty good. A beautifully appointed, rustic yet modern space serving very good, very keenly priced food. Delivered somewhat nonchalantly. Someone had obviously told our girl she was good at this, anyway, and she had believed them. She read us the day’s Specials in much the same way she might leave her number as part of an answerphone message. Didn’t hear a word. The food was really tasty though, as I say. I had a Buffalo Ricotta Ravioli (£7.25) to start, and a Tuscan Boar Sausage (£11.45) on lentils to follow. The lads called Mushroom Fritti (£3.95), Prawn linguine (£12.50) and a Burger Italiano (£11.25). All perfectly portioned save for the burger, the price of which should have included fries, but, all in, a really decent diffusion concept.

The following day can be catalogued more generally under ‘Misc.- Tear Up’. Lining our stomachs with a predictably sub-standard, over-priced and error-strewn breakfast  at Warwick’s Lazy Cow (we thought we’d give them a second crack of the whip. Doubt they’ll get a third…) by 12.30am we’d sought the more-than relative sanctuary of Stratford’s Church Street Townhouse. This place knows service even better than it knows how to sell you things. Pooh-poohing a more than reasonable offer of Bloody Marys in favour of a string of pints and steel buckets full of brilliantly dirty bar food, we capitalised on the charitable suggestion we leave our tab open for our inevitable return, and decamped to the louche upstairs of some big screen gaff to watch Man Utd rape Arsenal by 8 pots to 2. Bentz’ celebratory shuffle after ‘PARK!’ made it six or seven was an undoubted highpoint.

Trousering a Purity Gold, among other things, in the so-so One Elm, we returned to our open check and live piano at the Townhouse. Piri-Piri prawns, an edge-beckoning, pupil-dilating Muscadet, and a sing-a-long-a ‘Sweet Caroline’ provided the spirited setting for some healthy, inebriated, family-orientated chat. The kind that boys sometimes need beers to broach. A brief, ‘we okay?’ word in each other’s ear before congregating back at the coal face of a carve-up which, even if we do say so ourselves, and in spite of the white threatening temporarily to derail us (well, me), was paced to pleasantly-pissed perfection over its 11hour duration. 

Less a critique of the various venues visited, then, than an endorsement of the importance of weekends like this, spent in this environment. Family is and always will be fundamental to me. To get periodically FUBAR in their company, if that’s your wont – and it is indisputably ours – helps restore balance and banter where day-to-day shit and a circumstantial shortage of regular reco’s might threaten to muddy the waters. We had a fucking great time. None of which scratches the surface of the 5 point, chauffeured pub crawl a break-away faction of us failed to resist come that aforementioned, supposedly arse-ache alleviating Monday. No shame, some of us. No shame. No shame, no gain…

Beef Quirky

Previously a Thai restaurant, The Lazy Cow has had in excess of £1m thrown at its extended reinvention as Hotel, Steak and Ale House. Warwick needed this; Peach Pubs’ distracted expansion means The Rose & Crown (crude re-branding aside) proceeds to rest largely on its laurels, and the last time I put my head in The Tilted Wig it smelled pungently of sick. The degree to which the Cow plugs the gaping hole that exists here for a quality, balanced and well-presented offer to come clean up is more than vaguely questionable. What isn’t is that it at least represents an alternative for people not yet bored with this manner of makeover.

The concept’s decent, its name complements the product and offers an environment,  save for the fact they insist on showing Sky News on mute, in which one might genuinely relax. Rough and chunky wood tables, bright, stainless handpumps, cowhide cushions (obviously), and a fan of daily newspapers, I think, aptly echoes the decorative drill. The staff were pleasant enough, with one angry, Antipodean exception, and the food we ate we mostly enjoyed.

The tariff, when it comes to where their offer’s centred, is certifiable.  Why, for the love of Christ, if you’re content to send pork roasts out at £12, would you not seek to source steak that didn’t warrant an entry-level, meat only, MEAT ONLY, price point of £18? All in? Fine, if the product’s good. For just the steak? Fuck off. For 8oz? No, I mean it; Fuck Off. I’d perhaps protest less aggressively if I’d not been given such short shrift by said ‘Oztrarlian’ in my bid to get my head around whether or not this shit was for real. And this was before the same server poked the proverbial bear in the zoo by failing to fully explain to my sister-in-law the extent of options for kids. I really fell out with her then, and Lazy Cow took on a whole new, double meaning.

Something else that bothered me, on an entirely personal level, was the prat pouring drinks behind the bar. In two visits here over three days I only heard him push one beer, Warwickshire Beer Company‘s ‘Movember’ inspired “Moustache”, and only, it appeared, because he had one. Talking a good game about how you “look after the beers” is fine so long as when someone qualified (and I don’t mean me) comes in and orders one by brewery, you don’t stand, dumb-arsed, as if the question was in Swahili. The fact the management have their staff wear braces (no, not on their teeth), where it’s charming and quirky if they’re competent, just meant this literal clown looked even more stupid than he already did with a turd on his top lip. Yes, I can see you’ve grown a ‘stache. Well done. Now, get on with it.

I’d probably best not get started on the company literature. I’ll only get cross. What I will say is that if you’re intent on charging disproportionate dollar for a steak dinner the least you should be doing is taking a degree of care as to how you market yourself outwardly. Some hapless translation and a Christmas offer that includes a “bowel of spouts for the table”, frankly, creates an impression that’s as uneducated as it is unpleasant. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; if you can’t spell it, can you cook it?

I feel I’ve lost my thread rather. I’m not at all sure, you see, that I didn’t set out to compliment the Cow on a number of levels. It was harmless enough, I suppose. It’s always nice to be met on entry to a bar by six shiny handpumps. Shit, man, I’d find fun in an insurance seminar so long as the family was there. I just can’t get round the fact the attitude of one staff member almost single-handedly spoiled my brother’s birthday. For me at least. Tell you what, I’ll concede that “what’s the crack with the steak?” is a bit of an airy-fairy enquiry of someone who’s busy, so long as she’ll own up to being an impatient bitch who’s in the wrong job. There, that’s fair, isn’t it?

Sorry these things are so few and far between just now. I rather enjoyed that.

Belated Birthday wishes to Bentz x

‘Ardened Subliminals

Friday’s foray down Henley-in-Arden’s High Street was a modest triumph. For the life of me I can’t recall a provincial parade being so well stocked of locally laid-down ‘brown’ – three out of four venues visited were replete of at least one regional ale – , which is to say nothing of the range of reputable foreigners found to be on offer for those happier to drink outside the box. While this might sound unremarkable it’s quite rare. Rarer still to find they’re all in decent nick, and yet still, having taken one of these venues to task in a previous post based on its overly self-assured signage, that I was temporarily faced with eating the words that had bothered me so much about it.

I say temporarily because, having actually now tried and quite liked The Bluebell, as well had my heart broken by a member of their bar staff, I’d gone back to their website to reprehend that just how pleased they are with themselves and its content serves pretty effectively to nullify how capably they might operate. The truth is that virtually every building along this stretch of the town’s centre is possessed of such character charm that if you were lucky or canny enough to secure the lease on one for your business you’d have to try especially hard to make a horse’s arse of appointing it. Far from doing so, the Bluebell is a picture of palatial ostentatiousness. But then the proprietors’ sister company is an interior design firm whose values would appear, judging by the use of the word ‘swanky’ in the corporate copy to describe their newly refurbished ‘private’ dining area, to have been plucked from the same anatomical vicinity as the peacock feathers they’ve dotted about to bring the aesthetic home. Check out the ‘Gallery’ too. Rather than the expected virtual tour of an environment in which they take such pride, it’s a set of images revealing with which industry celebrities the owners have rubbed shoulders, and the society events they’ve got to ‘glam up’ for with their mates. That said there are some genuine touches, H was terrific to look at, and my Cuthbert’s, (Church End, 3.8%) went down all the better for it. Chugged a couple….

Prior to winding up here Benson and I had been pleasantly surprised to find that The White Swan, whose management have done their level best to balls-up a recent re-branding, isn’t entirely the batty bistro it’s been dressed up to resemble. Once past the fey glass frontage it looks and feels like a proper, if mildly poncey, pub. Of the five, yes five, beers on handpump, I overlooked the often ordinary Purity in favour of a really decent DoomBar (Sharp’s, 4%) and we talked futures on the terrace, intermittently scrutinizing the Cygnet Room signage and the fact that the hotel’s ‘Gastro Restaurant’ (what?) was stone dead at 8 o’clock on a Friday. Even if the logo does complement the feel of the place inside, one only needs to glance down the street at the numbers spilling on to the pavement outside the infinitely more modest Three Tuns to question whether, in terms of a public profile, they haven’t comprehensively ‘jeffed’ it.

Whether or not the White Swan needs the patronage of territorial twats like the one that belligerently stood between us and the Tuns’ entrance is another matter altogether. Still, once inside this presentable, unmistakably public house, there was plenty to suggest the local competition would have nothing to lose (and a few hundred quid more to gain of a weekend) if they didn’t look to appeal exclusively to demographic of customer that seems not to have come out tonight. It’s down to earth and Henley appears to dig that. Shakespeare’s County (Warwickshire Beer Co.) was tight if toothless, but then it does only pack 3.4%. Having made temporary work of that, I went back for and nailed an Old Hooky (gutsy, 4.6%) in the time Bentz had surmounted his tulip of gassy Belgian gold.

Matricardi’s is a shoddy drinking destination, its aesthetic all wrong in light of its structural framework, and even though it seemed to be relatively popular with diners – I could just about make out some people eating from one end of an inordinately long corridor – I’m not going again.

Retrospectively then, I wouldn’t say we’d been overwhelmed by any one venue. I remain unconvinced, mainly because of a series of botched frontages, any of them have a good enough handle on precisely who they’re catering to.  However, for my part, all but one redeemed themselves – The Bluebell more than most –  with a collective and common endorsement of locally manipulated malt, hops and barley. Over and above everything, though, it’s always good to get out with the family. Between us Benson and I made an admirable fist of accounting for a proposed tripod’s third leg being otherwise engaged. Best re-schedule, eh?

Middle of the Roadkill

I’ve had time to sleep on whether the Fox at Loxley (“The Foxley”) truly was, in every respect, as unremarkable as it seemed, or else the reasons I went there at all – escaping the reaches of a local power-cut while keeping within a radius small enough that diesel fumes would get me there and back – had combined to restrict my choice of destination sufficiently that I wasn’t at all enthused about making it. But it was, as it goes, and that’s being kind to it. It’s not unpleasant but it has few enough redeeming qualities that I’d hold it in higher regard if it was more obviously shit and knew it. As it stands, it’s aiming for good while registering just the wrong side of average.

The best bit was on the way there when a deer jumped in front of the car and anything not tethered down was sent careering into the foot-well. One wonders whether after that pint of musty Old Hooky my reactions would have been sharp enough that I wouldn’t now be nursing a crumpled front wing and a broken nose. In fact let’s say, just for the hell of it, that I am and that it wasn’t a deer, it was a wombat. No, let’s say for effect, and in view of the destination being so indescribably dull I’m struggling for worthwhile content, that it was a unicorn and that I was driving a sleigh.

The menu board has been written by someone either with massive eyes or tiny hands – as you’ll see if you get up close enough – and lists an off-the-wall 8oz rump steak with chips, button mushrooms and béarnaise (£15) among its ‘specials’. Being in a lethargic huff exacerbated by the lack of electricity back at the ranch – one which the normally resolute diplomat in me regrets is blatantly colouring the tone of the coverage here – I was inclined to suggest they might increase its appeal by including it and its predictably non-special make-up amongst the regular mains options the next time they do a reprint. As a starter, the availability of Black Pudding on Brioche with a Poached Egg (£4.50) – I couldn’t be sure but I think that’s what it said – at least offered something of relative interest. To me, anyway.

The pub’s interior is such a disgraceful amalgam of mince that, in actual fact and with hindsight, I think I might ‘like’ it. Wrought iron pedestal tables are topped with the sort of pale wood laminate that looks incomplete without glass marks, the carpet is a wildly unattractive leaf-print, and some local artist is utilising the ‘space’ to market the dreadful animal paintings which line the walls and that are available at a monumentally inflated £100 a go. By far the least suitable touch, above the bar, is one of those stained glass panels that would normally have the ‘Cheers’ logo embedded in it.

Of the five handpumps, two were in operation where all had clips attached. The Hook Norton, while it sported the Cask Marque, was decidedly off-colour. That left Black Sheep. Poor. There was nothing wrong with the sandwich I chose but at a fiver or so, not including the addition of a credible starch, the value of that which I’d trousered down the Bell the previous Friday – for those advocates of more modestly assembled pub fayre – was illustrated in a yet more favourable light. This thing arrived exactly as described but tasted cheap and looked cobbled together. Their ketchup was sharp and translucent – i.e. it was neither homemade nor Heinz – which, as an oversight in this realm, is about as cardinal as they come.

You can probably sense it was a half-hearted excursion this one, born out of boredom rather than a usually genuine curiosity or thirst. Becoming increasingly used to either beautifully bedecked boozers or gloriously shabby shitholes this, as a means of expanding my frame of reference, provided a usefully in-between reminder of the so-so, featureless hash people can make of this game. It’s probably fair to say, though, that I already knew everything I needed to know about gaffs like this and The Fox’s general demeanour was only ever about to rub me up the wrong way. Devoid of character and with service that’s as wobbly as it is well-meaning,  I’m pretty sure between you and I we’ve established I’d much rather be insulted by a rotund landlord and trough a greasy pie with pickle if it guaranteed me a decent pint in an environment with an ounce of inherent charm. The Fox has none.

Dead Ringers

I’ve resolved not to dwell on what a nice job the Alscot estate owners have made of rejuvenating The Bell at Alderminster. If nothing else it’ll preclude regurgitating adjectives I’ve hitherto exhausted via my pathetic attempts to pigeon-hole the design ethos of a number of its contemporaries. Let’s just say that as a venue it’s super, and that the atmosphere it has it within itself to cultivate, insipid soundtrack notwithstanding, is most inviting. The rest you can deduce from the accompanying photos.

There is a demographic of consumers, those that pop in/out for a bar snack rather than for lunch, that would balk at a menu that lists sandwiches (with chips, “triple cooked” or similar, and salad) for £7. I kind of get it. If you break it down it’s easy to see that it would be possible for any kitchen to ‘bring it in’ for less. (This is bound to apply across an entire menu, mind you, and if you’re someone for whom this is a genuine consideration the notion of whether you should eat out at all probably demands a re-think). Many people regard bar snacks – among which sandwiches will generally be expected to feature – as a lighter option. “We just want something light”, they’ll say, “we’re eating later”. What this normally means is that they’re dining out later, although I’m sure there are those so preoccupied with a fixed routine based around meals that they’d worry the wheels might come off if, God forbid, they indulged in anything more substantial between the hours of 12 and 2pm. Not being a diabetic myself – although I sympathise greatly with those who have like dietary restrictions, or are required to eat little and often for reasons outside of vanity – this is not, nor will ever be, an issue for me. On the contrary, in that this magnificently conceived, handsomely made-up club sandwich meant it would only have been greed that led me to partake of anything else yesterday, it strikes me that a lunch which, all told, came in at £12 including a pint and a tip, represents about as good a proposition – both in terms of quality and value – as one might generally expect to get. It’d be uneconomical to resist capitalizing right there on its scale and substance. You’ll see, if you link to its site, that the wider menu presents as cosmopolitan a choice as the surroundings demand. It is important to highlight, however, that places as pretty as this can do the basics just as well and then some.

Service at the Bell covered all bases. For all it was competent, however, it was pretty charmless. The girl that looked after me just fine was heard to deal pretty clumsily with a telephone enquiry from someone needing directions, and must be one of those people ill at ease with what she looks like when she smiles; she doesn’t do it much. The check-back on the food stood out as something that I encounter increasingly rarely, mind, and her choice of words in confirming all was in order is what really prompted a post. ”Everything ok for you?”, she asked.

I remember a former manager of mine objecting to the use of the term ‘ok’ in this scenario on the grounds that as a company we aspired to better. While I understand the mentality behind this I can also, as I’m sure you can, smell corporate bullshit from some distance away. To my mind, so long as the person asking the question knows how to talk to people, there’s no way that an informal approach here is going to be interpreted directly as a reflection of the desired impact of the food. It just isn’t. The more upbeat alternatives tend toward fishing for compliments and even smack of an over-confidence that I’m not sure wouldn’t be better illustrated by hanging back and letting diners tell you just how good it was when you return to clear their empty plates. Make no mistake – as a service industry bugger, I’m a check-back man. It demonstrates a conscientiousness that assures a customer their business is valued, an eagerness to put right anything that isn’t already, and acts as a barometer as to how well you’re doing what you do. It serves as a disclaimer, too, against anybody who may – and they’re out there – find cause for complaint a bit ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’. In this instance and in this environment – this is LamBert’s Hymnal, remember, and we’re dealing very largely with pubs here – it’s not what you say, it’s the manner in which you say it. This lass asked me because she knew she had to but it wasn’t her choice of words that gave her away.

In a similar vein – I had to get this in somewhere – I recall another ex-colleague of mine once telling me that he’d rated his server at a City steakhouse on the basis that when he’d asked for water, she came back very deliberately with the option of still or sparkling. Again, therein lies not only the difference between corporate and independent training, but also between individual and professional values. I’d encourage anyone on my team to sell-up where appropriate, to promote a premium product over pouring spirits on the grounds that it’s superior, or to suggest side-orders where necessary. But manipulating people to spend money on something that falls out of the sky, especially in times of such economic and ecological concerns, would betray my integrity and that of any business I represented. It doesn’t sit well and in this climate, as I say, they’ll see you coming a mile off.

It’s nice to see a commercial and residential property administration take hold of a site on its land and, on the face of it, execute it as well as this. They have the very decent Warwickshire Beer Company exclusively produce for them an Alscot ale and much of the produce comes otherwise from the estate grounds. The building and gardens have been beautifully done. There’s an air here, though, that from the point of view of personnel, the management of the place is rather being kept ‘in the family’. Senior front of house staff are a tad rigid, a bit – dare I say? – old for the concept they’ve created, and the overriding impression, whilst I struggle to put my finger on how I know, is that they’ve promoted somewhat short-sightedly from within. I mean, fine if you’re primarily a catering business, but not necessarily if your bread and butter comes from elsewhere. The overall package suffers as a result. They’ve consulted and spent money in good areas, but appear for all the world not to have looked very far for the individuals that ought to be its lifeblood, that give a place its energy. In my experience you can’t compromise here and properly distinguish yourself.

Is there a Doctor in the House?

I regularly refer back to the page here entitled Ethos. Not, I should point out, to congratulate myself on how eloquently I’ve laid down my philosophy, more to ensure that while the style of/approach to venue appraisals may vary, the principles upon which opinion is formed remain constant and true. Paramount to the method of assessing a business’ delivery is an appreciation of where it is coming from. We’ve covered this, I know, it’s just that before I condescend to criticise anyone’s approach I feel I should occasionally reiterate mine. I would love purely to be contentious for entertainment’s sake but it’s in my nature to rationalise. It’s what sets this thing apart. That and the fact it’s piss funny.

I made a specific visit to the Church Street Townhouse website ahead of mine and the Doc’s Stratford sortie on Thursday because I thought if it was open yet it would be a good place to take him. It’s a joint venture this although one assumes the lion’s share of the capital has been pumped in by Sue Gray, a lady with a pretty exceptional track record of acquiring freeholds in enviable locations, establishing them a reputation for good food, lavish interiors and particularly sweet service, and then selling them on for a large profit. The formula’s tried and tested, the set-up nothing if not professional. Which is why I was surprised, having made alternative dinner arrangements, to find it doing brisk business despite its homepage professing it still to be a work in progress. While this is hardly the end of the world – though it might teach me to pick up the fucking phone –  I just know if they sat and thought about it, for all that they’ve done an extraordinary job on the place cosmetically, the owners will feel it’s sold them short of creating the optimum outward impression. In the short-term they missed out on my business anyway, and if I have their attitude right that will bug the shit out of them.

Obviously, having confirmed in person that the place was trading already, we went back for breakfast. Its visual impact is quite stunning and, in that they invite you in the literature to have a poke around, they absolutely and quite rightly know it. I wouldn’t necessarily have called it what they’ve opted to call it, mind you; while it quite possibly used to be a house and is in a town, to me it ain’t a townhouse. I’m sure technically they don’t have to be but in my head townhouses are Georgian. Inside it applies very well, outside it just doesn’t fit. From one angle, in line with its immediate surroundings, there’s evidence of its Tudor beginnings. From the front it’s ugly, imposing and has battlements. I mean, I don’t suppose the Church Street Fort has quite the ring of the Townhouse but I’m certain there would have been some compromise that meant I didn’t keep coming back to the notion of them having lifted the name – and the food concept, which isn’t a million miles away – directly from Soho’s Dean Street version. Still, the interior decor and furnishings are ‘fabulous’, and touches such as the piano that’s been converted into a dumb-waiter, – there’s also a working one that’s played every day for an hour from 5.30pm – and the restored bread oven in the back ‘Library’ Bar give a design-led but homely feel.

The welcome was initially lukewarm although admittedly Doc and I were plainly hung over and fannying about wondering where best to sit. I did also hear our waitress confess to her associate that she too had a proper head on and since, particularly in this industry, turning up for work whilst still over the limit is a rolling rite of passage if you’re to retain any semblance of work-life balance, I’ll be arsed if I’m going to judge her too harshly for it. Said associate was as close to perfect as front of house staff get. Just delightful in her manner, warm and considerate, proficient in everything she did, and I would like very much to settle down with her if not just to buy her something really, really nice.

The food we enjoyed very much, Doc snaring a Smoked Salmon Omelette for £6.50 while I went Eggs Benedict at £7. If I had one minor gripe it would be that although both were textbook, neither were terribly interesting to look at. Visually, my dish was not so much Eggs Benedict as Eggs-Ham-Muffin-Hollandaise. A modest garnish would have provided some colour. If I had an issue with the guy who’d prepared it it would be that I could have done without his all-too-audible clever-dick comments and the way he publicly patronised his commis. If the decision is taken to leave a kitchen open to the dining room it’s to provide customers with a spectacle and to show their food being competently, cleanly, and lovingly prepared. Not to give Chef a stage on which to audition for the part of person I’d most like to smash square in the face with his own grill pan. Tosser.

The Church St. Townhouse is a much-needed addition to Stratford as a town not previously inundated with leisure facilities beyond the RSC and a Morrocan-themed wiggler bar. Those things I have alluded to that perhaps didn’t show it in its best light are easily addressed or accounted for. Keeping the website updated was probably secondary to getting the place operational within a July deadline. And it could be it’s Chef’s first senior position and that the kitchens he worked in previously were contained by a fourth wall. Either way he wants to pipe down but I’m certain the management will see to it. The food offer, being as straightforward and wholesome as it is, will take care of itself, the availability of a solid breakfast and an opulent looking Afternoon Tea takes its appeal right through from morning to night, and the splendidly appointed bar should make sure that as a destination, this place becomes the spot it deserves to be. And you can sleep here. Did I mention that? Yeah, there are rooms so you can stay if you want….

Much Ado About Scoffing

The Doc had stipulated a twin room – even though the canvas at Mar Estang was thin enough that we might just as well have top and tailed – I guess to preclude a hotel receptionist we’d never see again assuming we were Wendys. The room itself was kitted out for disabled occupants. Everything was within reach from a seated position and if we’d wanted we could have circumnavigated the bathroom without touching the floor. Like in the Crystal Maze, only marginally funnier.

We began with a pint in The Encore, Stratford upon Avon’s sister pub to Warwick’s monumental Saxon Mill. They don’t scrimp when they furnish a joint, these cats. It looks a million dollars although not unlike a million other places whose design ethos is something like ‘contemporary comfort’; a contrived blend of armchairs and fancy wallpaper and shit. We each necked a Pure UBU (Purity 4.5%) and the Doc ushered us off toward dinner, probably conscious I was completely out of my depth on the subject of Twitter and drawing attention to us in a negative way.

The last time I ate at the One Elm I got steadily FUBAR on a cumulative cocktail of Speckled Hen, liqueur coffees and champagne and then rolled around on the roof of Benson’s Audi before finally agreeing to make the journey home inside it. For posterity therefore, because, according to its homepage, the Church Street Townhouse‘s eagerly anticipated opening was still a few weeks away, and because we’d been warned off Bernadette’s roof terrace on the grounds that it was both “windy and fucking crap”, I thought we’d settle in here.

Snagging a pint of Purity’s Gold (3.8%) we were nonchalantly but politely pointed toward the restaurant and a big-arse, not terribly well-written specials board which yielded both eventual choices was propped on a spare seat at our table.  Onglet steak (£14 with chips etc ) was competently explained away as a cut and recommended rare due to its ‘fibrous’ constitution. Doc had that. I had Pork T-Bone with Caramelised Apples, Mash and a wine gravy (£13.50). We shared a Cold Cuts deli-board to start (£10.50 and a highpoint) and a decent bottle of Argentinian rouge (Malbec, £16).

Prices – excellent, Food – nice,  Service – suspect. What’s sticking in my throat is an entirely needless approach made mid-starter, over which the Doc and I were making up for lost time, to ask whether we’d be ready for our main courses soon. Although it was clear we’d not finished I gave our girl a window to qualify the enquiry, which I was in no doubt had been pre-empted by a chef keen to get off ( it was 9.30pm after all ). “Would it help you out if we had them now?”, I asked. Don’t forget it’s me; I know my hosts have considerations too and my offer was a genuine one. “No – no rush”, she said. (No? Sod off, then…) After someone came to check again on our progress I relented and insisted they carry on, bring out the dead, wary that the Doc’s Onglet might, as a result of having been resting since their first approach, be more toward medium by now. In fairness it arrived pretty much as ordered. Sure enough, though, while it was perfectly edible, my t-bone had begun to dry and the mash to stiffen, presumably as a result of a lengthy lie down under the heat lamps. It wasn’t a disaster, but they didn’t cover themselves in glory.

Back at the Encore, despite advertising midnight closing from Thursday to Saturday, they had called time. It was 11.15pm. Refusing point-blank to resort to Wethersoon’s we went, at Benson’s request, for a fly by of the aforementioned, soon to be operational Church Street Townhouse. Hang on a doggone minute, though; it is open. For business, anyway, not to us unfortunately, not at this hour (but do keep it here for details of their breakfast). Nothing for it then but to make for wanker-riddled thespian hangout and institute of post-theatre pomposity that is the still-serving Dirty Duck.

Buzzing though it was, two pints of an oddly palatable, normally unmentionable IPA followed by two large goblets of their house red were arguably four steps too far. Not least because, in the spirit of the high-jinx brought on by the accessibility of our accommodation, we’d now taken largely to slating the congregation – from the impossibly chiselled off-duty actor to the vertically challenged ligger lavishing him with attention -, and to letting our gazes linger for too long on this American girl’s thigh-length socks. Alright, my gaze – Doc’s married.

Bedtime reading was a Hungry Horse menu card. Priceless. Well, not quite priceless, but desserts go from 69p.

Cheers, MD. A more adept exporter of Peak District porcelain one could not wish to get smashed with. Take it from me, the future’s Qatar.

Altered State:The Case for the Defence

It’s distressing to me, the frequency with which internet enquiries about this venue or that throw up results and reviews delivered by Beer in the Evening. If this site is “Officially the UK’s biggest and busiest pub, bar and club Guide” then there’s such a precipitous canyon in the market that a genuine industry authority really should corner it. It’s not at all user-friendly, it’s backward in coming forwards with even the most basic information, it’s brown, and it looks like it was designed by Fred Quimby.

That said, having been directed there in an effort to establish the hours kept by The Case is Altered at Five Ways, I did have the good fortune to happen upon the ‘review’ below which, for all the wrong reasons as far its author is concerned, made me all the more inclined to go. What the hit didn’t provide me with, naturally, were the details I was looking for. Imagine my delight then, when re-routing to the relative safety of the Good Pub Guide’s page, to discover not only the required information regarding the pub’s opening times, but that the same tosspot had transplanted, word for word, his gale-force guff on here aswell. Drink it in (I’ve highlighted the best bits in bold);

Despite prior notification and arrangement that 16 Professional men, on a Golf Society meeting, would be turning up for 2 and a half hours responsible drinking, the rudeness and ignorance of the landlady had to be experienced to be believed! This woman is clearly only interested in her“regulars.” Early arrivers at the pub were met with a shout through the window “we open at 6.” One of our party who was driving was the first to arrive in the car park – the landlady required him to move as he was in a spot where her “regulars” parked. She tried to shoehorn the party into a small room off the main area which was clearly inadequate and then insisted that the party squeeze up in the main bar area so the “regulars” could move freely. A extremely poor pint of lager (the rest of us being on proper ale) was met with the response that she wasn’t used to pulling lager as her “regulars” all drank real ale. I could go on. Her attitude was such that we all left after 1/2pints instead of spending what we hoped would be a pleasant evening, and putting something like £400-500 across her bar. Avoid this place like the plague.

There’s no excuse for rudeness, nor any real place for bias in a ‘public’ house, but one can’t help feeling, reading between the lines, that this lot got exactly what was coming to them. There’s been a pub on this site for centuries and it’s obvious to me it’s no longer run for profit so much as it is out of a sense of public duty. While there’s little point in her putting herself through it if her patience or enthusiasm for the task is on the wane, the less the Landlady relies on the business’ income the less crap she’s going to be minded to take. If the tone of this fanny’s complaint is anything akin to that of his enquiry she’ll have been dreading the date coming around since she pencilled it reluctantly into her diary. Though you could argue she might have saved herself some bother and some negative press the moment she smelt a (pompous p)rat, I doubt anything could have prepared her for the righteous self-satisfaction with which these wankers went about setting out their stall. ‘Professional’ in this context is probably the male equivalent of pre-menstrual.

There’s actually a decent rebuff already on the B.I.T.E. site that very pertinently points out £500 between 16 is a far from reserved budget on which to drink ‘responsibly’. The initial argument might then have held some sway had it stipulated the intention was for them to descend in numbers, talk about sports and get completely twatted. As it is, it sounds to me quite simply as though a group of moneyed stiffs picked the wrong venue. It’s kind of what I’m getting at when I urge anyone in this arena not to expect of a place qualities that were never meant to be there.

It’s entirely without pretension, this pub. Tiny and traditional, the welcome I got was as warm as the August sun, the beer –  St George’s Brewery “Summer Breeze”, 3.7% (£2.90) was one of four that included Wye Valley’s highly thought-of four-fer, Butty Bach, 4.5% (£3.00) – as clear as a bell. They don’t do any food that isn’t available in 40g packets, they don’t do music or phones, and quite clearly they don’t do crocks of shit. I sat out on the patio amongst its well-tended window boxes flicking through a tome from the pub library wondering why, if you go to all that effort looking after the flowers, you wouldn’t sweep the floor and wipe the tables out here too. Not a minute later our hostess emerged, blinking in the brightness, with a damp flannel and a stiff brush.

I can quite see that this old girl could have her moments. I can also see how toiling daily to sustain a village institution must sometimes be pretty thankless – I doubt she turned over fifty quid yesterday lunchtime – and that having anyone other than your regulars in the bar must be like having a group of strangers in your living room. Running a pub on these terms is a two-way thing and she wouldn’t do it if, deep down, she didn’t get something out of it. Instinct suggests to me that all she really wants in return is some consideration, appreciation, and a level of understanding as to what it takes to keep place like this going. Tolerating pricks shouldn’t be one of them.

Eyes Peeled

Is it just that I’m shallow or do wait-staff, who as individuals in a social setting you’d only rate aesthetically as, say, a Six, all of a sudden become Eights and Nines when they start bringing you food and drink? Even discounting the obvious degree to which excessive consumption is likely to impair your judgement, they can be tremendously alluring, no? I should probably clarify that any sideways glances or suggestive comments I drew in my time seemed predictably to come at the bottom of the night and only, as I say, once enough booze had been consumed that Shane MacGowan might be deemed to scrub-up. But I was barely into my London Pride on Wednesday when I decided that, if we’d met under different circumstances, I’d have had this particular girl all wrong. Of course this could just have had something to do with those fantastic shorts she was wearing for work. What’s that? I’m just shallow? Yep, figured as much…

Lovely Pubs (parent company of Hymnal haunt The Boot at Lapworth and The Crabmill at Preston Bagot, among others) could be Really Lovely Pubs if, from a cosmetic standpoint, they only stopped trying so flipping hard. ‘Tick a Boot, Son’ will walk you through how the same food enjoyed amidst the handsome yet rustic simplicity of the Lapworth joint’s pub area can taste marginally if not wildly inferior when taken in its restaurant. With The Crabmill, which is conceived along very similar lines, they’ve taken an equally majestic, historic building as their canvas and crammed even more design elements into its overall make-up. Short of raping it entirely of its inherent structural charm it nonetheless comes over a bit mutton as lamb. At The Orange Tree here in Chadwick End, whilst the visual impact is not at all offensive, the impression is very much of a place appointed at the behest of someone with bottomless pockets by a design collective all with different ideas of how to make it ‘work’.  It is, of course, purely a matter of taste. There are touches, as far as I can see, that  succeed in their own right – the Italian style bread and deli presentation sits well alongside the wood-fired pizza oven featured in the half-open kitchen – but juxtaposed with an incongruous melange of old and new, of light and dark, it’s so much busier, opulent and contrived than it needs to be, and provides a backdrop against which the food struggles not so much to stand up – it was fine – but to distinguish itself.

Lovely Pubs are a really solid set-up, evidently a very profitable one, and are already renowned among a local if not national elite of purveyors of this kind. But consistency is key and god is in the detail when it comes keeping your noses out front. Service was quite lovely, although we were twice almost the recipients of items we’d not ordered. Bentz and George both had burgers (£10.95), both were asked how they’d like them cooked, neither got what they wanted. Neither seemed to mind a bunch, but then it’s us; we’re cool. Having gone with my gut in opting for the day’s Risotto – a Chicken, Porcini, Spinach and Blue Cheese affair, also £10.95 and very good – I was wary of being jealous of the other two. The yellowing leaves the burgers came with, however, added to their being cooked beyond the point to which they’d been ordered and their relatively slap-dash appearance on the (branded) plate, meant I needn’t have worried. As a whole lunch was perfectly enjoyable but I know, were the management to break it down, that they’d aspire to far better than we got from them today.

So much so that what I left thinking about is what I began by talking about. What I do like very much about LP venues is the relaxed approach to how their staff turn themselves out. I’ve never been one to ascribe much value to dress as a reflection of a place’s standards, so long as there’s a sense the individual is conscious that there are those that might. The better places let the product do the talking. As a server, if you’re allowed to relax around what you do and are comfortable in what you wear, you’ll be in the best possible position to compliment that. Just as I was in the  best possible position to compliment our waitress. Certainly, I was very comfortable with what she had on.

New Bull’s, Please

The energy driving the Bull’s Head in Wootton Wawen is palpable and reflective of a tenancy that’s still just eight weeks old. The effort invested by the new management in presenting themselves and their product is clear for all to see. So too are the reasons that two young lads would actively pursue the challenge of running this place, beyond the obvious prospect every now and again of getting shit-faced on the house and talking to girls. It’s a magnificent, sprawling old building in a commanding spot, set back from a road that carries more than enough passing traffic to take the onus off the immediate catchment. That it remains rural means it remains a destination, and the affluence of the community to which it looks to cater is no better illustrated than by the fact that the property for which I’m temporarily responsible (a brisk 400 yards up the road) is about to have a congestion-easing roundabout built into its driveway. And just yesterday I mowed the lawns. That’s lawns. Plural.

The pub’s location and propensity to thrive, therefore, is pretty much indisputable. What is open to question is whether these boys have quite got it right yet. I’m conscious I over-use words like “concept” and “delivery” but the applied consideration of either as part of a business philosophy are absolutely key. One imagines the money it cost these fellas to acquire and appoint the Bull’s Head means that for the short-term at least, and barring the odd cosmetic tweak, what you see is very largely what you’re going to get. Aesthetically, what you get is a total mis-match.

A pity, since at the time it came to the market there can have been few better blank canvases available to work with. From the outside, even when the pub was closed it looked open. Given how little external improvement was needed, I’m not sure even now it is open that people don’t still assume it’s closed. From a stealth marketing angle, this could just distinguish the Bull’s Head as Warwickshire’s worst best-kept secret.

The interior is crying out for a better trained, more sympathetic eye, the compliment, perhaps, of reclaimed dark wood tables and distressed-finish chairs. These high-backed bistro-types have no worldly business here. The odd armchair is cool, preferable even, but not in the leatherette waiting-room, tub-style they’ve opted for. Carpet has been laid where you’d love to know for sure there weren’t well-preserved flagstones or treatable boards, and there are unsightly, weathered areas of concrete that remain uncovered. Presuming they have thought about it, the distance by which they’ve arguably missed the mark is considerable. A plasma screen has been hung willy-nilly in the snug bar like an unwanted wedding present.

The food offer seems still to be finding its feet. It looked good, albeit on unduly angular crockery. My vegetable tart (£4.50) was colourful, sat atop a salad compactly corralled in shredded red onion. The marinated lamb main course (£14.50) was beautifully cooked, if rested to the degree that it was luke-warm  by the time I got it, and the “crispy” potatoes it came with were too few in number where there was surplus guacamole. The flavours, with the vine tomatoes, were all there but the plate as a whole felt unbalanced. Actually, the whole menu felt unbalanced. A continental approach included a Cajun pork fillet and a Thai Curry, but either sat uncomfortably alongside classic Fish and Chips (£9.95), steak dishes (from £14.95) and a conventionally assembled Sea Bass (£13.25). The eager-to-please Scallop starter (£6.95) was not the only example of a dish that duplicated an accompaniment and which subsequently narrowed your options. There were two chicken salad starters where a pea and mint risotto was listed only on a separate set-menu. Both substance and skill were in evidence, but more specific direction is needed in terms of style, be it from kitchen, front of house or, best of all, from a tighter collaboration of both.

Mindful that the project’s in its formative stages I’m loathe to get too stuck in. The prices are bang on and, regardless of its aesthetic incongruity, and so long as it proceeds to evolve, the Bull’s Head is very much worth the detour. Particularly now, its huge, well-maintained garden bathed in sunshine. The attitude and affability of the new owners and their staff is such that you’d excuse any tendency they might have to overbear or overlook anything and put it down to inexperience. They’ll quickly appreciate, I hope, a need periodically to blood capable new staff  as their own exuberance inevitably begins to wane. Which it will, not least because while being pleasant isn’t hard work in itself, putting a brave face on an often justifiably lousy mood is not only terribly demanding but utterly exhausting. Particularly if it’s your livelihood that’s riding on it and as much business is taken care of personally as is necessary for it to succeed. And you have to field the same enquiries with the sort of regularity that means you’re given to shouting ”horseradish and mustard” in your sleep.

Hang in there, boys. The road is long. Here as much as anywhere, there’s scope for it to be fruitful. Just give your chef some feedback and consult a designer.

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