THERE are no two institutions better equipped to vex the
restaurant critic than the health farm and the country house hotel. There is much to dread in both: the health farm stands in thin-lipped opposi- tion to the life of the senses; the country house hotel merely sends it up with a dis- concerting lack of irony and an abundance of chintz. But a peculiar seasonal pressure forced me to find myself in what I feared would be a curious amalgam of both. After all, the job of the restaurant critic is to be, for the purposes of readers at any rate, a vicarious eater, and at this time of year most of you are doing quite enough eating of your own not to need anyone else fulfill- ing the function by proxy. Not to eat, but not to eat well, in commodious circum- stances, was my aim. I strove to find, for you, the perfect antidote to Christmas; in Chewton Glen I found it. Slay the geese, stuff the turkeys and yourselves, by all means, drink port and gobble the mince pies — as many as you want — and do not count the calories: the road to digestive deliverance is a few miles off the M3.
But given my cautious preamble, perhaps I should clear up the little matter of just what Chewton Glen is. To say that it is, indeed, a country house hotel, more, the country house hotel, suffices only if one adds that it stands in such commendable contradistinction to its fellows that it runs the risk of bringing the genus into repute. We are all familiar with the model: the leafy green acres in which it is set; the florid soft furnishings with which it is draped; the plush pile underfoot and the soft lights overhead. Chewton Glen satis- fies these requirements, but in custom and demeanour it is a place apart. The mood is truly amiable, and the service glad and quick, but with none of that leaden famil- iarity which would have you collude in the pretence that no commercial transaction is taking place — you are merely a weekend guest in an old friend's country pile. The luxury is quiet and sensible: the world with- in its walls may be an entirely different world from the one we live in for most of the time, but it is no emetically fake, pseu- do-Peacockian one. The voluptuousness and comfort are willingly paid for; the chintz and grandiose pelmets, for once, work. And the dining room, instead of employing the routine country-house-hotel practice of peddling pretentious confec- tions on oversized plates, serves some of the best food in the country.
For the first few weeks in January, how- ever, and the purposes of this review, this last aspect is perhaps of less interest. From January 1-19, Chewton Glen proposes to hold specially designed After Christmas Detoxifying breaks. The hotel has fairly recently extended its remit to include a health club, equipped with gym, treatment rooms and a swimming pool (one large enough to swim in properly), though it is, thankfully, far from encroaching on fat farm territory. Just as country house hotels customarily pretend to be some well-heeled pal's pad, your average health farm pur- ports to he some kind of clinic. Staff parade about the place in white coats and punters slop around in dressing-gowns and track- suits and the most you get to eat is a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon in it and a bowl of shredded carrots. The Chewton Glen detoxifying package has none of that. I tried it out for a weekend run and wasn't reduced to eating the pot-pourri. What it really entails is self-indulgence but without the sauces. Breakfast — when you want, there is none of that hospital-aping busi- ness of the early start so beloved of the fat farm — is a vast plate of fruit. Lunch is taken on the verandah overlooking the pool, and constitutes as much as you like from the salads on the sideboard, and din- ner is an elegant low-fat affair, a piece of grilled fish or grilled chicken with steamed vegetables, and lots of them, maybe a gold- en consommé crammed with diced vegeta- bles or a glorious tomato salad to start with and a bowl of berries after. And if you want to eat more, Matron isn't going to rap you over the knuckles.
In between, there are the treatments. You can be pummelled by jets of water in a bath infused with marine algae, massaged by aromatherapists or, my favourite, given the Seaweed Wrap, which entails being smothered with a green paste, covered in a hot thermal blanket and then left to cook in your cocoon. Strange to tell, it does make you feel better. You swim, take steam baths, play tennis or golf in the grounds, walk on the beach or in the New Forest (both ten minutes away) and sweat over the machines in the gym. This comes after the threatening prospect of the Fitness Assess- ment. But not to worry: if I, with my reso- lutely high cholesterol intake and slovenly ways, can score 11 out of 20 (and 20 would reveal you to be up and running for the Olympic Games in Barcelona next year) then there's hope for the rest of you. I agree that just after Christmas is not the best time to have your flabby bits pinched by calipers to gauge your body fat percent- age ratio and to be required to do step-ups for six minutes and sit-ups for one minute, but it's not as painful or as embarrassing as it sounds.
The one drawback to all this is the dining room. How can you stay in a hotel with the chef and sommelier that Chewton Glen has without being tempted? Surely to resist such temptation would be reprehensible? That, I'm afraid, is the line I took and was not punished for it. There is no obligation anyway to follow the detoxifying pro- gramme in January: the hotel will also be functioning as usual. Chef Pierre Chevil- lard's mussel soup, thickened and deep- ened with thyme-infused cream, his cured duck with grill-blistered goat's cheese and shiny dark lentils, the partridge with chest- nuts and dried fruits and garnet-brown venison with cream-cheese noodles are extraordinary feats of simple perfection. And the wine — Oh! the wine. Toxins never tasted as good. What's more, the sommelier, Gerard Basset, is completely devoid of the otgued so characteristic of others of his profession. This was my last stop of 1991, and I don't think I have eaten better anywhere in the course of the year. will not further tempt prospective detoxify- ers here: I will return, then, to Chewton Glen's dining room in a later article.
The After Christmas Detoxifying break (which at £99 per person per night costs less than you could find at any country house hotel or health farm) is available only till 19 January, but some stress-man- agement stays, under the aegis of Dr Mossaref Ali, head of Integrated Medicine at the Hale Clinic, are planned for March.
Chewton Glen, New Milton, Hampshire BH25 6QS; tel 0425 275341; Fax 0425 272310
Nigella Lawson
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