Anyone who watched The Great British Menu couldn’t have failed to notice that fish course winner Emily Watkins kept apologising. For everything, really. So when the lights in the restaurant of The Kingham Plough dipped and danced a little it should have been no surprise to see Emily appear and apologise; they were new – the bulbs were too bright – she wanted to get them right.
When you own a pub restaurant, wanting everything to be perfect is no bad thing.
The Kingham Plough is a part of a Cotswold stone terrace about 15 minutes’ drive from Stow on the Wold and it’s probably only a little fanciful to say that the warmth of the sun on the stone extends inside the building as well. The young staff are friendly and helpful, and while interior designers have clearly been at work the look and feel of a village pub has been retained. The walls are decorated with local art (for sale) and the carefully mismatched furniture oozes rural chic. Not to mention comfort.
We ate in the restaurant although a full range of bar snacks (including deliciously retro pints of prawns and just plain delicious homemade pork pies) are available. Much has been made in other reviews of the sous vide cooking technique Watkins prefers, but to be honest, if we hadn’t been told, we wouldn’t have noticed. And anyway, I’m a great believer in letting the food speak for itself.
My starter was a rabbit sausage, resting on an oblong of pea puree and sharing the plate with a most attractive salad which tasted crisp, fresh and as good as it looked. My husband opted for the sea trout tartare which was served in a tower topped with an egg yolk. Before breaking the yolk he burrowed out a little from the bottom of the stack for me and that was lovely too.
We had wanted a wine which would take us through all three courses and here the young staff did let the Kingham Plough down slightly by recommending a bottle which really wasn’t appropriate, simply because it was popular. So we fell back on our own knowledge (time to fess up that my husband has certificates in this sort of thing and does spend some of his business life in the wine trade) and chose a more than acceptable bottle of Beaune which didn’t break the bank.
Although I am not a vegetarian (clearly, given the way I devoured the rabbit sausage) I decided on a beetroot soufflé with local goat cheese for my main course. I love beetroot and I love goat cheese and I certainly wasn’t disappointed by the soft and fluffy soufflé which perfectly combined them. Meanwhile my better half went for the pork wellington; a tender nugget of meat encased in homemade ‘hodge podge’ aka black pudding and the thinnest of thin sheets of pastry. I am told it was fantastic. But I didn’t get to try.
As ever, we were lured by the cheese; a selection from nine local cheeses – or all of them to share for £19. This really was a no-brainer and they came spread out along a wooden board with generous piles of homemade oatcakes, hazelnut fruit bread, celery and apple jelly. There was a modicum of confusion over which cheese was which – the blushing waitress told us Emily had prepared the board and they were always in the right order – she just wasn’t sure what the order was. But it didn’t matter. They were all quirky and original and it was the highlight of our meal taking our time over them and finishing off the Beaune.
The highlight of the meal; but not the highlight of our stay. We had booked a room for the night (clean, cosy, quiet and comfortable) which meant we were having breakfast. I am not a huge fan of the full English – give me a skinny latte and something chocolaty any day – but this time I was tempted. And besides, I hadn’t got my hands on any of the hodge podge pudding the night before.
As it happened, for me the black pudding was not the star of the show. Mainly because it had a great deal of competition. Homemade baked beans, for a start – made with real tomatoes, wonderfully seasoned. Thick, crispy bacon and mushrooms which tasted as though they had been picked from the fields just hours before. Proper leaf tea. And, best of all, a little skillet of drop scones (scotch pancakes, if you prefer), warm from the grill, just begging to be drizzled with honey.
Whether it was in revenge for the pork wellington, or just pure gluttony, I scoffed the lot.
Find out more about The Kingham Plough at www.thekinghamplough.co.uk