On reflection, I’m glad I don’t live in the Cotswolds. It isn’t that I’d get
tired of the endless honey-coloured villages, or that I have any objection
to crawling behind horse lorries on winding country lanes. My problem would
be that there are just too many good places to eat.
Quite why is a mystery. In part, it must be that this is where the money is –
when you’ve got people like Liz Hurley, Kate Moss and Kate Winslet popping
into your pub, charging £10 for a starter is less likely to result in empty
tables than in some other parts of Britain.
But it’s also true that good chefs are attracted by good ingredients. Food
miles aren’t an issue here: superb examples of everything from meat to
cheese can be found locally, with fruit and vegetables from the Vale of
Evesham especially sought-after.
One of the first pubs with restaurants to make a name for itself was the Swan
at Southrop. This being the Cotswolds, of course, they try to confuse you by
pronouncing it “Sutherup”, though presumably Moss, being a good Croydon
girl, still says “Sowfrop” when she drops in from her country place nearby.
The Swan is a relaxed, ivy-covered 17th-century inn, big enough to house a
skittle alley as well as a succession of stone-flagged dining spaces. The
chef, Bob Parkinson, is ex-Bibendum, and though prices are fairly
restrained, this is sophisticated restaurant food – more sophisticated,
sometimes, than you might want in the country, although when you taste
dishes such as confit of guinea fowl and foie gras terrine with toasted
brioche, or mussel and tomato risotto, you realise the kitchen is working
well within its capabilities.
As with many places round here, there’s an Italian twist to the Swan’s
cooking. This is even more pronounced at Barnsley House, once the home of
the renowned gardener Rosemary Verey and now a beautiful hotel and spa in
the Babington House mode, an effortless mixture of modern funky and medieval
gothic.
It has only a handful of rooms, but each has been designed by someone who
knows what they’re doing – something that can also be said of the food.
Graham Grafton, another Bibendum graduate, has the luxury of working in
partnership with head gardener Richard Gatenby – everything from radicchio
to cavolo nero comes from the hotel’s own kitchen gardens.
On the night we ate there, a salad of heirloom tomatoes with peaches was
particularly good, while the vincigrassi – a kind of rich lasagne made with
ham, chicken offal and beef, and a speciality of the Le Marche region, in
Italy – was further flavoured with truffles from a nearby wood.
Meat is sourced locally, too – the wild boar comes from Castle Coombe, while
the beef for next year’s vincigrassi is currently grazing on the field
behind the helipad. The cheese trolley, domain of the passionate French
sommelier, was also top-notch, although he seemed to be steering us away
from the actually rather fine British examples towards the classics of his
native country.
The owners of Barnsley House also run the Village Pub, just down the road. In
this less formal environment, a young chef by the name of Richard Burkert is
fashioning a more relaxed menu, with dishes such as blackleg chicken breast
with beetroot. Admittedly, at £16.50, it’s pricey for a piece of chicken,
but one of the joys of the Cotswolds is that you don’t need to eat
expensively if you’re prepared to cook it yourself.
A friend from France raves about the cafe at Daylesford Organic, the farm shop
owned by Lady Bamford of the JCB family (yes, even the farmers are
celebrities round here). For a tenner, you can buy an organic blackleg
chicken or pick up a couple of award-winning Cerney goat’s cheeses. For
beef, though, go to Slatters, the village store-cum-butcher in Chadlington,
the only butcher I know where customers come in on a Saturday to pick up the
ingredients for Sunday lunch still wearing their hunting coats.
Needless to say, there’s also a celebrity cheesemaker in the area. Alex James,
formerly of Blur, is now pursuing a career as a farmer in Kingham. His
Little Wallop goat’s cheese isn’t widely available yet, but early signs are
good – it won best new regional cheese at the 2007 British Cheese Awards.
His partner, Roger Crudge, makes other local cheeses, including Kingham
Green, a cow’s cheese redolent of alpine reblochon.
Two of my favourite Cotswold gastropubs are just 10 miles apart. Both have
female chefs, and both use local ingredients, but they are as different as –
well, not chalk and cheese, perhaps, but certainly as different as Little
Wallop and Kingham Green.
In Kingham itself, the Plough has recently been renovated. The chef is Emily
Watkins, who worked at the Fat Duck under Heston Blumenthal. Some of the
dishes show his influence: steak cooked sous vide (under vacuum) with
triple-cooked chips was straight from the master’s repertoire.
But others, such as whole partridge with Jerusalem artichoke and crispy leeks
– the partridge sous vide soft, but smoky from a final searing
on the grill – showed a chef who is finding her own, more rustic style. A
dessert of spicy pears poached in mulled wine was equally gutsy. The only
disappointment, in fact, was the cheese, which perhaps showed the
limitations of the “source everything within 10 miles” policy.
That may change now that James has taken an interest in his village pub’s
cheeseboard. Front of house was friendly and slick: the young waiting staff
seemed to have attended, between them, most of Britain’s more expensive
public schools. But then this is the Cotswolds.
A few miles north, at the Churchill Arms, in Paxford, Sonya Kidney’s career
has followed a similar trajectory. She once cooked at the upmarket Marsh
Goose, in Moreton-in-Marsh, but, like Watkins, has turned her back on fine
dining in favour of the more relaxed environment of the village pub.
There’s no expensive restoration or bought-in antiques here, no halogen
downlighters or artfully mismatched furniture. It’s just a nice old building
next to a field with some sheep and a tiny church in it, and a blackboard
with today’s dishes.
Sonya comes from the Caribbean, and it shows in her cooking, which is simple
but packed with interesting flavours and surprising combinations. Veal with
piccalilli was tender and punchy, while saddle, leg and faggot of rabbit
with madeira sauce was a magical marriage.
This is a chef who knows her own tastes and is confident enough to strip away
everything but the essentials. Sadly, though, you can’t book – an odd thing
to do to your customers when you run a pub in the middle of nowhere, as they
can hardly turn up for dinner, then decide to go somewhere else, but in
keeping with the laid-back atmosphere of the place.
Both pubs offer rooms, which is just as well: they may be strict about
sourcing their ingredients locally, but with chefs like these, their
customers are going to be coming back from much further afield.
Where to eat: the Swan (01367 850205, www.theswanatsouthrop.co.uk),
at Southrop; £25 a head plus wine. The Village Pub, in Barnsley (01285
740421, www.thevillagepub.co.uk);
£27 a head plus wine. The Plough, in Kingham (01608 658327, www.
thekinghamplough.co.uk; no food on Sunday evenings or Mondays); £22 a
head plus wine. The Churchill Arms, in Paxford (01386 594000, www.thechurchillarms.com);
£20 a head plus wine.
Where to buy: Daylesford Organic, in Daylesford (01608 731700, www.daylesfordorganic.com);
Slatters Butchers (01608 676350), in Chadlington; Chadlington Quality Foods
(01608 676675).
Where to stay: Barnsley House, in Barnsley (01285 740000, www.barnsleyhouse.com)
has superior rooms from £290, B&B, midweek and £315, B&B,
at weekends. For a more no-frills approach, the Churchill Arms, in Paxford
(01386 594000, www.
thechurchillarms.com), has double rooms from £70, B&B.
When are you back on Question Time? the best comedy I have seen in years.
ally, glasgow,