The local shines, Loubet repeats, but it's the Mormons who make the week

Restaurant Reviews:  The Four Horseshoes (Sherfield-on-Loddon); Bistrot Bruno Loubet (London)

I had just settled into my seat on the London-bound train when I heard two girls arguing behind me.  They took the facing seats.  One had been crying.  A mousy, brown, frizzy-headed, blotchy complexioned young Englishwoman who hunched into herself and radiated low self esteem.  The other was a glossy-haired, bright-eyed, conservatively turned-out American girl who looked like she was channelling June Cleaver.

"You can't quit," the American girl pleaded.  "You can't leave me on my own.  Just come back to the
flat and we'll talk about it."  The English girl hunched further into herself and sniffled.

From the name tag at  the American's breastbone I realised these two were Mormon missionaries.  A bit of conversation confirmed my suspicions.  The American is the innocent abroad, a bit frightened but mostly enraptured by how different England is from her native Utah.  The English girl is the daughter of local Mormons, sent out on her mission much closer to home but not happy about it.

Soon, the American has the local president on her iPhone speaker, and they're both trying to convince the huddled one to face up to her responsibilities.  She may want to quit, the president says, but if she does it she needs to do so in an organised fashion, not just run away.

I was entranced by this little drama, and suddenly wondered:  Is someone going to start singing?  Maybe I'm in a flashmob, and they're filming a promo for Book of Mormon!  Surely life couldn't imitate art that much, could it?  Evidently so, as the girls got off at the next stop to return home.  I wish them well.

That little drama was actually the highlight of what was already quite an eventful week, the first of two packed with holiday festivity.  Other people worry about their caloric and alcohol intake over the holidays, my danger zone is always the last two working weeks of December, when agency lunches and department Christmas parties mean a fortnight of wedging work in-between the food and drink.  Maybe the Mormons should have been trying to convert me rather than arguing with themselves.  God knows, I'm hitting that deadly sin of gluttony hard at the moment.

The best meal of the week was with two colleagues at my local pub, The Four Horseshoes.  This was the copywriters' lunch.  The advent of a new chef has sent it from the worst of three pubs in our village to what I'd confidently say is the best gastropub in or around Basingstoke.  I've eaten there twice now and have been stunned by what's coming out of the kitchen.  Gourmet stuff at humble pub prices.  This week I started with a beautifully assembled beetroot and goat's cheese salad before going hard core with an obviously made-from-scratch venison pie.  And then on to the test of all fine pubs:  sticky toffee pudding.  Passed with flying colours.  Sadly, the atmosphere is almost the inverse of the food.  Though a charming old exterior, someone went cheap and cheerful in the past and it currently has the interior ambiance of a bus station cafe.  If the new management starts renovating the place to match the food, they'll be a force to be reckoned with.

The fact that this meal was as good as, if not better than, Friday's gourmet outing at Bistrot Bruno Loubet tells you I'm serious.  Loubet's place was nothing to sneeze at, however, repeating the quality I found there earlier this year.  The ingredients were certainly more gourmet and the wine list infinitely better.  This was the graphic designers' lunch.  I started with a terrine of Jerusalem artichoke and Corsican sheep's cheese with black olive oil.  It didn't quite live up to the interesting description, as that exotic-sounding cheese was really just like a drained ricotta turned a dark grey by the oil.  But the duck breast with a mulled wine sauce that followed, with its little side of a pastilla (a sweet and savoury pastry of North African origin) of confit duck leg and cranberries, was as delicious as it was seasonally festive.  The walnut, prune and armagnac tart looked good, but the flavours didn't differentiate themselves and, honestly, The Horseshoes' pudding would have taken this one in a fair fight.

Earlier in the week I'd had yet another delicious meal at the Lansdowne Club, where I provided access through my membership for the UK marketing ladies' dinner.  Here we combined the gourmet ambiance of Loubet with the value-for-money of The Horseshoes.  The beauty of a private club:  a holiday three-course menu for £20.  Of course, thanks to restaurant manager Erik's excellent help with the wine list, we spent almost double on wine what we did on food.  No surprises there.

The only place I easily resisted the gluttony challenge was an atmoshere-light party barn in The City called Gilt.  It was the UK marketing team Christmas party and, frankly, after years of recessionary bans on official gatherings, just being together was miraculous.  The official £20 per person kicked in by the company only stretched to platters of deep fried whatnots, easily resisted.  Because, after all, this had been planned by the team of recent graduates and they were saving the bulk of the cash for alcohol.  They show great potential.

Corporate largess was a bit more enjoyable at back-to-back meetings at the BT Tower.  Thursday
morning we got bacon butties and hearty mugs of coffee while we contemplated updates to the corporate visual identity.  Not distracted by the view, as it was so foggy we seemed to be floating in total isolation.  The next lunchtime, after yet another marketing session, we were treated to mulled wine, hand-crafted mince pies and views that stretched for miles in all directions.  Still grey, but definitely feeling a lot like Christmas.

One more week of partying left to go before I can even think of reformation.  Mormon or otherwise.