Berrys, BBC Food Show anchor an indulgent weekend

Truth is, most of our weekends revolve around good food and wine.  But this one was a bit more festive than usual.  I'm abandoning my husband to head off to the States for Thanksgiving week, cutting into the weekends on either side.  So I wanted to make sure our last full weekend before my departure was something special.  A kind of romantic gateway into the holiday season.

We started with a tutored tasting at Berry Brothers' Basingstoke offices on Friday, dedicated to exploring the Left and Right Banks in Bordeaux.  At £90 a ticket this is a serious investment in wine education, but it was for limited numbers (12), sold out and ... when considered critically ... worth the price.  We had generous samples of 11 wines, none of them retailing for less than about £40 a bottle.  The most expensive went for a whopping £190, some were no longer available to purchase, and £70 was a reasonable average bottle price.  Realistically, it was a way to taste wines we'd never otherwise get a chance to sample.

We both took detailed notes, asked copious questions, and … floating on a cloud of grape-fuelled euphoria … left our tasting notes in the taxi.  So I can't give you the details I intended.  Here are the highlights I remember.

Nine reds, two whites, one champagne.  The last not Bordeaux, of course, but evidently even the growers in the area reject their own sparkling stuff for the traditional.  This one was a 2000 vintage R&L Legras and here, happily, I am a cheap date.  I found it too yeasty, too bold with honey and fruit notes, and not sparkling enough.  My preference runs to drier, more biscuity sparkling wines with a simpler taste profile, most of which can be acquired for less than this bottle's £65 price.

We moved on to a white, there to prove the point that Bordeaux does produce them.  Perfectly drinkable, but unexceptional.  It's the reds the region is famous for, and that's where we spent our time.  We learned that cabernet sauvignon dominates on the left bank, where soil is stonier, and Merlot on the right because it copes better with clay, but that all good Bordeaux wines are blends.  I clearly preferred the left bank wines, finding the right too tannic and sharp.  Though, admittedly, those wines improved with the strong cheeses provided; everything here is really to be matched with fine food, not drunk on its own.

Good value Margaux
The left bank reds were all rich in black fruits, old enough for their tannins to have mellowed into magnificent complexity.  This is where the difference between a perfectly acceptable, moderately-priced bottle and a fine wine becomes clear.  With these, there were multiple scents on the nose, and when you drank, noticeable shifts in taste as the wine lingered in your mouth.  The initial hit, holding a mouthful and what you got on the finish would all be substantively different.  My favourite, if memory serves, was the 2000 Chateau Giscours from Margaux.  You'll no doubt recognise the name; Chateau Margaux makes one of the most famous red wines in the world.  This is nearby.

Berry's official tasting notes say:  "Dark ruby. Fragrant and full bodied and flattering. Solid with some lead pencil character. A big beefy mouthful but definitively left bank. This may well be good value and provide lots of solid pleasure, but it will never be subtle."  Yup.  Is that describing my taste in reds, or me?

"Good value" is clearly in the eye of the beholder; this goes for £92 a bottle.  I won't be popping up to Berry's to get a case for the Christmas table.  The tasting, however, does give you insight into how a great wine develops.  Buy the 2013 now and it's £22.50 a bottle.  Lay it down for 13 years, and you should have something akin to the pricey 2000 I liked.  In wine, as in so many things, time = money.

The food and spirits show
It's been fascinating to watch this show evolve over the years.  I first encountered it as the London
Wine Show, when we were all getting serious about understanding what we were drinking.  That merged in with a food show as attention turned to the whole picture.  The BBC took over sponsorship and now it's a festival of foodie delight, packed with celebrity chefs, cooking demonstrations and hundreds of vendors offering everything for the kitchen.

A few years ago, I remember the big trend being artisan bakers.  This year, it was boutique distilleries.  There were at least 20 scattered through the show floor, most displaying their beautiful little copper stills and the array of ingredients they infuse their products with.  Gins led the way but there were almost as many vodkas.  While fine with mixers, in almost every case these were suitable … and even preferred … for drinking neat.  The careful distilling practices stripped out the alcohol burn and left something mellow, sippable and well-flavoured.  In some cases, very well.  Toffee vodka was on several stands and was clearly a popular Christmas option.  Though with the alcohol percentages involved, dangerous stuff.

We succumbed to Black Cow pure milk vodka.  They distil the world's only dairy-based vodka from cheese whey, a bi-product from the Barbers' family dairy in Somerset. (The curds go into some tasty cheddar.)  The vodka is, unsurprisingly, creamy in taste.  And so unusual, we couldn't resist.  Our odd assortment of other shopping also included: a variety pack of Wyke Farms Cheddar; jars of crema di pistacchio from a Sicilian importer; light sparkling Japanese sake; a bulk buy on the Eat Water Slim Noodles that are my lifeline when I'd dieting seriously; Oz Clark's latest wine guide (autographed); a new pepper mill; some clever re-usable storage lids and a seriously high-end steam iron.  No, it has nothing to do with food, but we needed to upgrade and it was a great deal.

We were tempted by, but avoided:  A £959 gizmo, as used on Masterchef, that replaces your food processor, blender and stock pot; a Burgundian wine importer who let us sample his best stuff and then was trying to get us to buy more than £1000 worth; all manner of posh salamis and pork products from around the world; tempting varieties of gourmet chocolate and lots and lots of cakes.

An audience with the masters
They seem to have finally gotten the traffic flows right at Olympia.  This show was crowded, but not at the uncomfortable levels of our last visit.  Perhaps because there are now sister shows in Birmingham and Glasgow, and back-to-back sessions in several theatres draw crowds off the show floor.  For us, these sessions are what elevate this from a fun bit of shopping to an entire day out.  Many are free in theatres scattered around the hall, but the serious talent performs in an auditorium with ticketed, assigned seats.  You get to choose one show with your overall ticket purchase, and can add on more for £5 each.

We chose Michel Roux Jr. and Tom Kerridge, two big favourites in the Bencard household.  Both are exactly like their television personalities.  Roux is suave, sophisticated and elegantly confident with a constant undertone of wry humour.  Kerridge is the simple West Country lad made good, a larger-than-life, exuberant, charmingly self-deprecating man of the people.

Roux spun tales of his time as a junior chef at the Elysee Palace, knocking up Sunday brunch to satisfy Mitterand's huge appetite.  He created it as we watched:  scrambled eggs laced with double cream, served in oversized, savoury choux pastry buns, topped with slices of chicken breast sautéed in a port and veal stock sauce.  Jaw-droppingly indulgent, and it's inspired me to try my hand at choux for Christmas.

Kerridge managed a three course meal in the same time, assistants flying to finish bits and pieces for him as he kept us as entertained as a stand-up comic, telling tales of the origin and development of his two-Michelin starred pub.  I remember his eggs benedict done with lobster, guinea fowl braised atop a stew of mixed veg and potatoes, and can't remember the dessert.  I was concentrating too hard, by that point, on his announcement of a new pub in Marlow.  He's opening on 29 November, just down the street from his famous Hand and Flowers, in what had been the Coach and Horses.  (He didn't mention whether he was renaming.)  Most critically, this place doesn't take reservations, which is quite a relief for anyone who's discovered the wait for a weekend table at the original is a full year.  There's very little news about this floating about on the internet.  I suspect he's going for a soft launch to work any wrinkles out before he throws the full publicity at it.

So there's your top tip for the Christmas season.  Get to Kerridge's Coach and Horses in its first few months, before it gets famous and you have to wait for hours for your non-bookable table.

A very special Remembrance Sunday as London marks milestones

It was always going to be a special season of remembrance.

In a year that marked 100 years since the start of World War 1, 70 since the D-Day landings and the end of official British operations in Afghanistan, war and its sacrifices dominated the national agenda,  The amazing poppy display at the Tower of London, which I wrote about here, elevated awareness even more, with millions flocking to London just to see it.  Last week I rode up on the train next to a man who hadn't been to the capital in 20 years, but this was enough to draw him up from Somerset.

The icing on the cake, however, was my husband's invitation to march with veterans of his army unit in the official Remembrance Day parade past the Cenotaph, which transformed us both from observers into participants.  Him fully and me, of course, in a very minor, proud-hanger-on sort of way.

The atmosphere around London on Sunday was extraordinary.  There is a fellowship amongst comrades in arms that is extraordinary, and beyond anything I've experienced in civilian life.  They may not know each other, they may be generations apart, but they all share the same commitment to a cause and the same unique experiences.  Those of us who are related to them can share just a bit of this.  The result on Remembrance Day is like a family reunion … for tens of thousands.  Everyone smiles at each other, everyone is kind and considerate, everyone strikes up conversation easily.  (This is not London as we know it!)

Upon arrival at Waterloo, a line of taxis decorated with poppies waited to take veterans to their places, free of charge.  I accompanied Piers onto the vast parade grounds behind Horse Guards, where organisers were standing with placards naming their various divisions and organisations.  Around 5,000 usually march; this year, totals were well over 8,000.  I left him and his colleagues to their catching up and wandered about to drink in the atmosphere.

Heightened security made a sinister element to this year's events, sadly, due to terrorist threats.  Massive concrete barriers turned Whitehall into an exclusion zone; to get onto the street itself you had to wait in a hefty queue and go through airport-style screening. I skipped that and circled the route, watching viewers streaming in.  Even the far sides of Parliament Square, where you'd just glimpse a bit of the marchers turning back towards their starting point, were packed five to eight people deep.  It seemed a missed opportunity not to put screens up both there and in Trafalgar Square to handle overspill and let people participate communally.  I can only speculate that organisers were caught off guard by just how many people came to London.

I settled in for the two-minute silence at the top of Whitehall, just below Trafalgar Square.  From there, I had a glimpse of one large television screen set up along the official route, so I caught the official laying of the wreaths by the Queen and the government officials.

The silence itself is a profound experience.  To stand in what's normally one of busiest traffic points in London, amongst thousands of people, and have the world go quiet … it seems impossible.  And yet it happens.  Even cars and busses stop.  The absence of sound is so acute, it is almost a noise in itself.

And then one sound broke into my consciousness.  A grandfather kissed the top of his grandson's head.  And that said it all, really.  We gather remember those who have fallen.  But more importantly, we gather in hope that the next generation will not be called upon to risk a fall.

Between human nature, religious conflict and the global political situation, it's an unlikely hope.  But
the fact that we cling to it, despite those realities, validates the sacrifices.  A better world is always worth fighting for.

Atherton's Berners Tavern, Little Social elevate comfort food to high art

Look past all the media and marketing, and I suspect Gordon Ramsay's greatest contribution to the culinary world will actually be his proteges. I wrote about the wonderful Clare Smyth here last year.  Now, it's time to discuss Jason Atherton.

Though I wasn't aware of him at the time, it was his early genius that so impressed me the first time I wrote about Maze, and his departure from that restaurant that triggered the disappointment I recorded in my second.  Since then, he's worked his way to global chef superstardom, with restaurants all over the world.  His London anchor is the Michelin-starred Pollen Street Social, where I have yet to eat.  But in the past 10 days I've managed to dine in both of his unstarred, yet much celebrated, other restaurants in town:  Berners Tavern and Little Social.  Both were fantastic.  Though, as you might expect, neither are easy on the wallet.

Berners Tavern
London's post-recession fine dining scene has pulled back from ostentation.  Menus are still expensive, top places still require extensive forward planning to snag a table, but the stresses of recent years have favoured classics plated with flair, in dining rooms of understated elegance.

Which makes it more than a bit ironic that Atherton's "tavern" … while given a homespun name and presenting a straightforward menu of classics … is set in one of what must be one of the most jaw-droppingly showy dining rooms in London (above).  This is a place to see and be seen, redolent of another era. A massive, high-ceilinged open room, gallery-hung walls full of art, overlooked by exuberant plasterwork.  It's the kind of place where the food doesn't necessarily have to be that good, especially considering its attachment to the uber-hip, Ian Schrager-designed Edition Hotel.

In reality, it's the grand stage set that's not needed.  This food would be magnificent even in the sort of rustic, wood-panelled country spots "tavern" means in my home state.  The menu is upmarket European grill, limited choices, heavy on steaks and the catch of the day.  The descriptions don't say "fine dining", but the tastes and the plating up certainly do.  I have a simple measure for great food:  no matter how good the company, how intense the conversation, or familiar the dish … it's so good that you have to pause as the first bite hits your taste buds.  Everything else around you fades and, for a moment, all you can concentrate on is the magnificence of what you're chewing.

This was clearly happening for all four of us at the table, as each course triggered a respectful little silence followed by exclamations of delight.  I started with a steak tartare that balanced every subtle element perfectly.  On to roast monkfish with a creamy sauce.  We wrapped by splitting two desserts, an elegant eclair and a sinful layered chocolate affair in a mason jar that was all your comfort food fantasies on steroids.

Little Social
Little Social serves the same sort of food in a much cosier environment.  Here, the mood is Parisian Bistro, but clearly one in a very exclusive neighbourhood, and staffed by unusually cheerful and chatty French people.  The name comes from its big sister:  Pollen Street Social is just across the street.

Even more than at Berners, this is comfort food taken to an elegant extreme.  I could have started with the steak tartare here, and was sorely tempted to go for a comparison.  But cod brandade called:  an emulsion of salt cod, olive oil and potatoes into a thick, smooth, unctuous mash that's exactly what you want on a rainy, windy winter's evening.  Wisely, the starter portion is sized to allow you to appreciate more comfort food for the main.  In this case, the ultimate gourmet burger.  Aged Scottish beef, bacon and cheese, caramelised onions.  It is possible to have this with a supplement of pan-fried foie gras which even I, lover of that delicacy that I am, thought was a saturated fat too far.

I was tempted, however, by the restaurant's signature "poutine", evidently a Canadian speciality introduced by the Canadian head chef.  And if I were snowed in for a few months in the dark, far north, with moose and wolves beyond my door, this and a few cases of Moosehead lager would make all right with the world.  The poutine did not live up to the rare and unique billing the waitress gave them, however, as on arrival I realised they were simply what any Chicagoan would call "loaded fries".  French fries with cheese sauce, beef gravy, jalapeños and chorizo.  Just a bit of each, and all nicely balanced.  Which, once again, elevates the dish to something really special.

Having gone for much heavier comfort food here, nobody could march on to the tempting dessert menu.  We split an order of chocolate truffles; just enough to put a sweet end on things and complement the coffee without filling us up more.

Of the two restaurants, I'd probably head back to Little Social over Berners Tavern, unless I wanted to really impress someone or celebrate something big.  Both absolutely deserve their reputation, and suggest that Atherton's doing a better job of maintaining quality across his restaurant empire than many other executive chefs do.

My only complaint about both is that they're operating under the new timed table philosophy we're seeing more and more in London.  In order to turn tables twice in an evening, they're giving people strict two-hour slots.  I understand the financial drivers, and admit it does sharpen up the service, but it makes having a leisurely three-course meal a challenge.  At Berners, they moved us from our table to another in the bar for dessert.  That was equally pleasant.  But at Little Social we would have been ejected to barstools at a long bar; not so good.  So I'd avoid both of these if you want a long, leisurely catch-up with someone.  For a quick but elegant elevation of comfort food to gourmet cuisine, either of them fit the bill.

A masterpiece of ancient Rome in a Bucks stable … for just one more week

 Tucked in the Buckinghamshire countryside, for just one more week, you can see one of the finest complete mosaics of the Roman Empire.  If that's not surprising enough, get this: it's from Israel.  This is its last stop on a world tour while its new museum in Lod, near Tel Aviv, has been under construction.  If you're lucky enough to live anywhere in striking distance, get to Waddesdon Manor before the special exhibition ends next week.

What's the big deal?  There are very few mosaics from the Roman world that are this big (50 ft long by 27 feet wide) and in such perfect shape.  Other than two missing spots at one end, it's perfectly intact.  It  is marvellously beautiful.  And it conveys a sense of culture and conviviality that reminds us of just how good life could be in the Roman Empire.  Even at its edges.

This was, fairly obviously, a dining room floor.  Just below the central octagon two leopards … the standard bearers of the wine god Dionysos … hang off the sides of a large wine flagon.  The immediate message is clear: welcome, you'll have a fine time here.

If this first image promises fine drinking, the rest tells you how well you'll eat.  On one end, a dazzling variety of fish that might end up on your plate swim beneath the ships out to catch them.  On the other, a bevy of creatures of the field and forest.  Around the centre, the best of both, shown in loving detail.  And in the central octagon, an exotic scene of African animals, including an elephant and one of the earliest giraffes shown in Western art.  Its quality … in colours, in realistic portrayal of the animals, in the stylistic unity of the whole piece … is on par with the finest examples I saw in the blockbuster Bardo museum in Tunis, Tunisia (Which I wrote about here).

It's all the more interesting because it comes from Israel, someplace we don't often associate with peaceful, cosmopolitan daily lives in the Roman empire.  (Blacker episodes of a destroyed temple or Pilate's judgement are more likely to come to mind.)  Amazingly, it spent the past 1,700 years just one meter below ground level.  Experts believe it was a fluke of all four original walls falling inwards that protected the floor.  It was only another fluke, of road construction, that revealed it to the modern world.

How did it get to Waddesdon?  The manor is one of the homes of the Rothschild family in England.  Unsurprisingly, the famous family of Jewish bankers have strong ties with Israel.  This house has always been a quirky one; it's a perfect French chateau set in the middle of the English countryside.  So why shouldn't they have a perfect Roman imperial floor in their barn?

If you have nothing on next weekend, get there and check it out before it start its journey back home.

Tower's poppies best part of day of too-expensive restaurants & plans gone astray

Restaurant Reviews:  Gaucho, Tsunami

You would have to have unplugged yourself from all national and social media over the past few
months to be unaware of the poppy installation at the Tower of London.

Since the 5th of August, volunteers have been "planting" ceramic poppies in the moat.  By the 11th of November there will be 888,246; one for each British fatality in World War 1.  Officially called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, it's the wonderful idea of ceramic artist Paul Cummins and stage designer Tom Piper, and it is … with no exception … the most emotionally gripping piece of installation art I have ever seen.

It's effective in photos and on television, but nothing compared to the impact of seeing it in person.  If you have the chance, go.

The poppies flow out from strategic points atop the Tower's battlements, cascading down like a stream into the moat below.  Piper has worked magic, with placement that leaves subtle lines of green and undulates the flowers.  The naturalistic curves mean that you can can look closely and pick out individual blooms, or allow your eyes to go slightly out of focus and take in the vast ocean of red.  It's stunningly beautiful, drifting between the greys and whites of the stonework and the emerald green of the grass.  Until you remember what it actually means.  Every stem, a death.  All those names, on all those war memorials, accumulated here in horrific, terrible beauty.  It is very hard to hold the tears back.

It's also a fine reminder that this is fundraising season for the six major charities that support our armed forces.  This year, you can buy one of those ceramic poppies in addition to your usual label-decorating support.  More information here.

The rest of our day out in London couldn't really stand up to that.

We'd planned to wander through Borough Market and graze across gourmet food carts for lunch.  While I get this way fairly often for work, Piers hasn't been here for years.  I wanted to show him how London can hold its own against similar food markets in Paris and Barcelona.  But I hadn't counted on the weekend crowds.  It was shoulder-to-shoulder madness, with queues 20-deep at every dining and drinking option.  There may be more vendors here on a Saturday, but I'd advise the relative sanity of a weekday visit.

So we started walking up the south bank of the Thames, thinking we'd find someplace before too long. Through Hays Wharf, past numerous riverside pubs and restaurants, all were packed.  Leading us, finally, tired and starving, to the first empty table we saw at Gaucho Tower Bridge.

Really, I should pay more attention to my own blog.  In August 2010 I said of another of its branches that I'd return to any of the other restaurants I'd been to rather than "this outrageously expensive Argentinian chain … that is clearly set up to extract every penny it can out of its well-heeled clientele." I said more.  Nothing's changed.  We had nice but unexceptional steak tartare, some tasty sides, a decent bottle of wine, and spent precisely five times as much as the most generous budget I'd envisioned for market grazing.  Never again.

My plans misfired on the British Museum, as well.  With a quick lunch before the poppies, we should have been into the Ming exhibit by 3:30.  Instead, waving our membership cards for last-minute admission, we arrived just before 5.  With less than half an hour to skip through before closing, I can tell you that the show offers a beautiful range of objects and paints a wonderfully comprehensive picture of life during one of China's most culturally sophisticated eras.  It's also exciting to see how versatile the new exhibit space is, being used in a very different way than for the previous Viking show.  Clearly, I need to get back.

After recovering from all that rushing around with a pint in the Museum Tavern across the street (an old favourite), we trekked across town for the last planned event of the night.  Meeting our friends Tracy and Beric usually calls for sushi, since we're all big fans, and a good friend tipped Clapham's Tsunami as "good as Nobu, but much cheaper." Had to be tried.

Maybe it was the fault of our late lunch.  We weren't particularly hungry, and we were still in a bad mood from the sticker shock of the bill.  We found the menu overcomplicated and trying too hard.  Foie gras sushi?  Please.  Fusion can go too far.  They accidentally served us a yellowfin tartare we didn't order.  In a little mason jar, with fancy toasts and odd dressings.  All too fussy.  Meanwhile, we spotted no Japanese faces in the open kitchen, and there wasn't any option for combination sushi platters.

We ordered a satisfying variety a la carte.  A shared double order of their soft shell crab tempura was
the standout, by far.  Otherwise, it was tasty and nicely presented, but nothing special.  Had I only had the light lunch we'd planned, I'd probably have left hungry.  Our portion of the meal cost about the same as our lunch, and that was with double the wine.  Good value in comparison to Gaucho, but I know I would have been much happier pulling sushi off the conveyor belt at my enduring favourite, Hiroba on Kingsway.

Fortunately, the company outweighed any disgruntlement with the food, and the poppies made the trip into town … and all the expense … worth while.  I just wish more of that cash could have gone to services charities rather than to the restaurant bills.

Zaha Hadid dreams a futurescape I'm ready to occupy

You don't find me talking about work much on this blog.  It's rare that the world of corporate communications in the IT services industry intersects with the culture, travel, food and wine I write about here.  But sometimes, the planets come together and there's a wonderful moment when my "work" world makes my "life" soul sit up and take notice.  Yesterday brought one, in the form of a senior director from Zaha Hadid Architects.

My company was sponsoring a conference in central London on innovation.  On the agenda: "smart cities".  That's the concept that with technology and connectivity we can do amazing things to make cities better places to live.  While having less impact on the environment.  The architects were there to point out that things can look good, too.

I'd long been aware of Hadid, whose buildings regularly show up in design magazines and culture supplements.  She was the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, and pretty much the only woman getting headlines in a thoroughly male industry.  I've only been in one of her buildings … the swimming pavilion in London's Olympic park, because most of her work is scattered around the world.  But I had an impression of buildings that were curvy, dramatic, elegant and beautiful.  In a word: feminine.

Turns out that's just the start.  The Hadid practice's philosophy is an organic, people-centric riposte to the brutalism of late 20th century architecture.  Probably more akin in its philosophical foundations to high Gothic than to Meis van der Rohe, as Director Patrick Schumacher explained in a fast-paced, intellectually rich illustrated talk.  I think some of the IT and corporate crowd were starting to drift.  I could have listened to him all day.

In Hadid's vision, social order requires spiritual order. Architecture is a force for good that can prevent a collapse into chaos.

The typical modern city, clustering streets and buildings with little reference to the unique topography around us, is creating ubiquitous urban sprawls with no local distinction.  They have no soul.  It's the natural topography that gives a place identity and order.  Schumacher used the outskirts of London as his example: "a cancerous outgrowth, identity-less."  The feature that gives it unique identity?  The sinuous meander of the Thames.  Thus Hadid's architectural prescription for modern London is round and meandering, something we saw in the aquatic pavilion.

Schumacher said this starting point creates "islands in the urban menace."  They further humanise their designs by focusing on, and celebrating, the spaces where people come together.  Entrances, atria and hallways are all big design features in Hadid buildings.  Rejecting the fashion for putting a building's guts on the outside, they clothe their work in "smart skins" which hide what's going on.  Just like a living creature.

There's no denying that Hadid buildings are boldly modern.  But this philosophy makes them human and organic as well.  Many are huge, but there's a warmth and intimacy about them.  The skin, the curves, the relationship with the surrounding topography … it all drew my mind back to the great Gothic architects, with their forests of columns branching into canopies of groin vaulting, illuminated by massive windows.  Hadid is modern, but the company philosophy is rooted in ancient truths.

Certainly, they're top of my list should I ever be called upon to found a utopian city.  And I'd love to attend a proper lecture from Hadid or one of her partners.  But for now, I'll just have to add more of their buildings to my travel "bucket list".

Familiarity breeds appreciation for Sherfield's Four Horseshoes

We are blessed with a truly fine local pub.  I was reminded of just how blessed this weekend, when we had the rare circumstance of two pub meals in one weekend.  Dinner Saturday at the favoured Four Horseshoes in Sherfield-on-Loddon, lunch Sunday at our old local, The Queen in Dummer.

The vast gap between dining at those two pubs drove home the superiority of the Horseshoes.  And prompts me to tell you more about it.  Because, frankly, it's worth a drive for non-locals to eat here.

It has all the qualities you'd expect of a proper local pub.  It looks the part, with Georgian bones, an open fire, exposed beams and a garden.  There's even a skittle alley.  A satisfying seasonal menu on top of expected pub classics like fish and chips and burgers.  But, importantly, it's not just a restaurant.  The bar opens into two rooms, and you're as welcome to drink and socialise as to eat.

Most importantly, perhaps, it's owned and run by a local couple who are almost always around.  Scott and Jules were long-time village residents when the last owner decided to retire.  Scott, seeing the place's potential, bought it and started the transformation into the gem we see today.  This summer, they did a major renovation of the interior, losing the dated elements that said "old boozer", laying wooden flooring throughout, brightening things up.  The old world charm remains, but now there's a touch of modern elegance as well.  All this means that there are, inevitably, locals in this local.  Scott and Jules remember names, everyone chats socially, and it's clearly a meeting place for the neighbourhood.

It's the food, inevitably, that gets us through the door.  (At two miles, it's just far enough to keep us from wandering by for the swift pint alone.)  We've come to depend on seasonal specialities, local game, good sauces, deftly-handled vegetables and tasty desserts, all prepared well and served with attention to presentation.  Saturday was no different.

I started with a duck and cranberry terrine served with warm brioche which, had I been restraining my appetite, would have been enough for the whole meal.  Piers tucked into the ultimate winter warmer: an enormous home-made Scotch egg (above), centre still jigglingly soft, served on a salad studded with black pudding.  Our friend Guy went a bit lighter with a line of bacon-wrapped sardines.

The specials menu was so tempting we each were deciding between three possibilities.  I don't think there was a chance to go wrong, however.  We all ordered different things, and all proclaimed satisfaction. I had my first venison of the new season, rare with a rich sauce and horseradish mash that was worth giving up carbs the rest of the week for.  Across the table, my second choice of Gressingham duck looked fabulous (and tasted so, too, in the bite he gave me).  Guy's tower of liver and onions on a bed of creamy mash actually smelled good enough that I might reconsider my aversion to this dish in future.  I ended with a slice of lemon tart, which was no doubt an indulgence too far, but I wanted something to cut the rich flavours that had gone before.   (The boys settled for more wine.)

The next morning we went clay shooting.  It was an exquisite early Autumn day: trees just touched by hints of red and yellow, clear blue skies with billowing white clouds, just a hint of chill in the air.  The view from Chalky Hill offers up a panorama of rolling, pastoral beauty. There are few things so quintessentially English as being out in this landscape, surrounded by people in tweed and Barbours, well-behaved hunting dogs at their sides, practicing your shooting skills.  Just in case you get invited up to the big house sometime soon to bring down a few grouse.  I, of course, won't bring down anything unless I practice a great deal more … although I do seem to be better with the clays that mimic rabbits.  It might be the memory of the little pests that ate my flower garden in Texas.

Such a morning pretty much demands lunch at a country pub so, being on the other side of Basingstoke, we headed for The Queen in Dummer.  When we lived nearby, this was the best gastropub in the area.  It's high on charm, and the menu looked promising.

Just like the horseshoes, there's a standard pub menu and specials on the board.  But the arrival of the food revealed a vast divide between the two kitchens.  Scallops tasted past their prime and hadn't been cleaned thoroughly, corals neither removed nor fully included.  That might have been excusable, but grinding your teeth against bits of shell was not.  Salt and chili squid had a too-heavy breading that made them look suspiciously like they'd come out of a freezer bag.  Local wild boar lacked seasoning and was let down by what was supposed to be an apple and Armagnac sauce, but was just a sweet, gloopy mess of onions.

Everything came out on the same heavy, industrial white plates, potatoes and veg piled on artlessly.  Rationally, I know presentation does nothing for the taste of the food.  But the Horseshoes has invested in new china of different shapes to show off different dishes, and dresses them with an artful tower here, or a swirl of balsamic glaze there.  It ads to the sense of occasion.  At The Queen, the plates looked no different than what you might dish up at home in a hurry.

Such a stark contrast, so soon after a fine dinner at The Horseshoes, reminded us that if we're staying local … we might as well stay really local.  Because we have something special on the doorstep.  And those of you without the gastropub of your dreams?  Climb in the car and head to North Hampshire.  We'll meet you for a pint.  And maybe the chef's tasty rabbit papardelle with mustard cream sauce.


Sadly, The Four Horseshoes lost its chef during the summer of '15 and the owners decided they'd had enough of the business. A change of management is on the cards. Until new ownership and a fresh review, this article is no longer an endorsement, but a fond memory of what a local can be.