RESTAURANTS AS THEATRE
PUBS NEAR OXFORD
THE FIRST job I had was in a pub. I was 14 and nicknamed Morning Glory. My best friend was called Evening Star. The pub was on the Thames, and prided itself on upmarket eating. We worked behind the hatch. For prawns in garlic butter we took a bag of prawns out of the freezer, added a dollop of margarine and a squeeze of garlic paste and microwaved the concoction. Stale bread was dunked in milk to revive it. Salad cream and sweetcorn were mixed with tuna and a flaccid baked potato for the Sea- man's Surprise. Mini-pizzas were topped with two pineapple rings. The Russian salad came in industrial-sized tins, and each platter was allowed half a tomato, two pick- led onions and a lettuce leaf. The only freshness was the odd greenfly. Wine came by the box.
Everything, including half-eaten After Eights, was recycled. We knew we were lucky: the pub up the road only served boiled eggs in formaldehyde and the odd pork scratching. The manageress eventually sacked us for quoting our divinity 0-level syllabus at each other. But I'd been there long enough to realise that the public house equivalent of loaves and fishes, oily scampi in a plastic basket, would need a miracle to make it palatable.
So I have little time for whining about the decline of the Great British Pub. The bucolic nirvana with real ale on tap and flagstone floors drowned under a tidal wave of Barcardi and Babycham over a genera- tion ago. Then, like the plagues of Egypt, came tougher drinking-and-driving laws and a new generation of policemen armed with breathalysers. Many country pubs went under. Others embraced the family. They shipped in bouncy castles and started serving half-portions of fish fingers. Brave ones threw out the microwave, bought an industrial cooking range and grub became gourmet.
South Oxfordshire's old coaching routes from London to the spires have now become a foodie's pilgrimage. The Goose at Britwell Salome, near Watlington, is the latest public house to go posh. The chef and co-owner, Chris Barber, used to work at Buckingham Palace, and once chopped eight crates of cabbage for a banquet. Cooking for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh wasn't any more challenging Windsor soup and lamb chops. Then one day he was approached by Prince Charles. `You're the one who doesn't overcook the vegetables,' the Prince said. Barber knew he'd found his role. For 11 years he accom- panied the world's most famous couple round the globe, supplementing delicacies like sheep's eyeballs with good British cooking. At Highgrove 90 per cent of the produce came from the royal estates, and was made into such delicacies as game pie with Sandringham pheasant.
Barber's emphasis on good ingredients hasn't changed. His pub is spartan, with paper napkins, cheap metal salt cellars and no curtains, and the swirly carpet hints at a seedier past. But the dark green walls and stunning paintings by local artist Katherine Ducker put Londoners at their ease. My parents and I chose a windy, wet Tuesday November night, which may have been unfair, but impressively the pub was half full. The menu is confidently short — three starters, main courses and puddings. My father was in raptures over his gratin of scallops, three plump molluscs, `soft not fibrous', on a bed of mashed potato. The wild mushroom risotto cake was a moist patty that was probably a Sunday night spe- cial at Highgrove. The main courses were even better. Architecturally they would have made Prince Charles proud — not a carbuncle in sight, just perfectly balanced stacks of grilled monkfish and spinach on a crab sauce, or sirloin steak layered with root vegetable purée and French beans, and, best of all, whole roast partridge with cabbage (still his speciality), lentils and roast chervil roots. But they could have thought of serrated knives.
The few regulars in the front bar would swap a bottle of white truffle oil for a decent pint, and would probably give the green risotto to their pigs. They must rue the day that the Goose came to roost at the Red Lion. For everyone else, the bird's laid a golden egg.
But how did I feel about my local being gentrified? I had my first glass of scrumpy, murky as Thames water, at the King William near Ipsden. The only food was ham rolls and that was for wimps. Now the menu covers two blackboards. The pub was shrouded in mist the Wednesday I visited, but over 50 people had managed to find the front door. There was a shooting party, a few mothers and babies, a brace of busi- nessmen and several retired couples. The old farm implements that swung from the ceilings had been taken down as hazardous, but otherwise nothing had changed except the quality of the food. The locals ignore the salads and giant New Zealand mussels, but even they are tempted by the slabs of boiled ham, steaks and sausages. The publi- can has tried to appease his inherited tap- room regulars with onion rings, chips and garlic mushrooms, but there is also lemon sole and duck liver pâté, all simple but well done. You can still have a pint by the fire and now there are loo rolls in the lavatories.
The more cut-off the inn, the harder it must try to tempt its customers, and if the King William is isolated, the Crooked Billet at Stoke Row is hidden away, at the end of a narrow cul-de-sac off the village green. Its food, however, lured Kate Winslet here two weeks ago for her wedding party. The voluptuous Titanic heroine clearly loves her meals, and the shire's best-kept culinary secret will have launched her marriage on a full stomach. On the night we went, my father had a whole local partridge braised in claret as a starter, which was as full flavoured as it was good value. My husband went for the saddle of fallow deer with fresh figs, a fearless and successful combi- nation of local produce with imported fruit. I had king scallops with a poached free range egg, and while I admired the scallops, the egg could have been runnier. The Crooked Billet has the warmth of a good pub with the hearty but clever food that French provincial restaurants do so well.
With all these to choose from, it is a relief that not all our Oxfordshire pubs have fallen to the culinary axe. There is one, The White Pony, run by two old ladies in a former cricket pavilion, that still caters for the quiet pint and no ground pepper brigade. Its name, however, has been changed here to protect this innocent sur- vivor from the apparently unstoppable march of the chopping-board across my home county.
The Goose, Britwell Salome; tel: 01491 612304. £25 a head for three courses. The King William, Ipsden; tel:• 01491 681845 £6 for a hearty plate. The Crooked Billet, Stoke Row; tel: 01491 681048. £25 a head with wine.
Previous page
