After 2 fallow years when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the Council in Stratford from holding their otherwise annual Shakespeare’s Birthday celebrations, everything was on again - the parades, the church service and for me, the most anticipated of all - the Shakespeare Birthday lunch, held once more in giant tents in the grounds of the theatre gardens having been very comfortably housed previously for three consecutive years in a very agreeable hotel on the river bank. But of that, more later.
Lucy The Labrador and I arrived on the eve of the big event and I was pleased to have managed to reserve a table at The Woodsman which is a pleasingly atmospheric place to lounge over a robust meal on a very comfortable spring Friday evening. The Woodsman is undoubtedly my favourite dining place in Stratford. I used to love No 9 Church Street and was very happy at No. 33 The Scullery but their numbers have all been counted up and there is little else in Stratford to match the pleasure of dining at The Woodsman now. I feel like a bad person for not admiring the Michelin-starred Salt as much as others do but there we go, it’s one of my little quirks. On the other hand I have recently developed a little place in my heart for Lamb’s of Sheep Street and there’s also a place in the same part of my anatomy for the really rather good Italian restaurant on Ely Street, Sorrento. So I am never short of anywhere to eat in Stratford on my visits there.
And so to The Woodman. After a delicious daiquiri which had the rather unfortunate colour of a glass of meths and some very fine bread indeed (slices of ultra-fresh focaccia and soda bread with marmite butter and lovely cultured biputter), I thoroughly enjoyed my starter of house cured and smoked Chalk Farm sea trout served aptly with horseradish and buttermilk, nicely cooked beetroot and grilled turnip tops of just the right texture. A great dish.
I ordered Grilled chop of Lavinton lamb as my main course and after a false start of an appealing plate of wood-fired cod arriving at the table (which looked delicious and which I would have been delighted to eat) the dish which I had ordered arrived looking very alluring. The chop, exquisitely tender and pleasingly tasty was accompanied by a lovely lamb rissole on a stick as well as grilled asparagus, confit artichokes and grilled turnip tops and slices of pickled red onion and tiny game chips. There was nothing out of place and it was a course as good as I had hoped for.
Finally for dessert, I chose Oat milk panna cotta with little juliennes of apple, a sweet and nicely cinnamon-spicy unctuous raisin sauce and a little crumble. This was tasty and very enjoyable.
Apart from being served with the wrong main course, which didn’t bother me at all, there were a couple of irritations when my carafe of water was taken away three quarters of the way through the meal and was never to return and service gradually slowed to a glacial pace as the evening went by.
And so, to bed. Perchance to dream.
And then it was Shakespeare’s birthday. And St. George’s Day. The weather was very temperate, the celebratory procession through the town went very well and lunch was highly memorable. After two years of being denied the pleasure, and expense, of hosting the Shakespeare Birthday Lunch, local sponsors, the jewellers Pragnell, were pushing the boat out. The enormous marquee in the RSC gardens was decorated magnificently and right from the time of arrival it was impossible not to enter into the party spirit. Glitzy stars there were aplenty - Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Alexander Armstrong, Maureen Lipman, the author Howard Jacobson and possibly one or two others I may have forgotten and the Birmingham actor Adrian Lester was there to receive his Pragnell award for his contribution to the world of Shakespeare.
With all the star spotting to be done the food itself may seem not all that important but it was very good and sensibly portioned which was good news as I was also due to go out to dinner in the evening, of which more later.
The food was a pleasure and illustrated just how over the top some present trendy restaurants can be, Three simple but well executed courses which is a marvel as the kitchen was catering for 4-500 guests.
Happily the starter was new season Vale of Evesham asparagus, grilled beautifully and served with fresh goat’s curd, crème fraiche, lemon dressing and charmingly locally foraged chive flowers.so simple and yet so enjoyable.
Then the main course of rump of excellent, nicely flavoured Cotswolds lamb with sand carrot purée, grilled Calcot onion and wild garlic oil. The dish was cooked beautifully. There were little pieces of mint leaves but I should have liked the flavour of mint to have been a little more intrusive.
Unfortunately, as I was busy photographing celebrities, I forgot to photograph the delightful dessert of pavlova with rhubarb, blood orange and grated chocolate but it was very good and pleasingly light and was an excellent end to a memorable meal
And just who was at the lunch? Well, a few A list celebrities without a doubt - Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Howard Jacobson, Alexander Armstrong, Maureen Lipman, Adrian Lester and probably one or two others. Little wonder I forgot to photograph the dessert. The day before Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh had been awarded the Freemanship of the town and so one may expect one day to see Dame Judi driving her flock of sheep down, er, Sheep Street I assume.
In the evening I went to a reunion of elderly doctors at some overpriced hotel on the outskirts of Stratford. While it was entertaining to try to guess who were these much changed people I had known in my youth the meal was a perfect illustration of just how awful English catering can still be. After a promising starter of smoked salmon (which the kitchen would have had little chance to maul to death) a vile main course of gruesome beef accompanied by an Aunt Bettie’s Yorkshire pudding, claggy mashed potato which had an air of inauthenticity about it, a barely-cooked carrot and mildly unpleasant green beans closed my meal as I was denied my preordered panna cotta dessert because I had visited “the facilities” while it was being served. I was offered a sticky toffee pudding which was the last thing I wanted after a day of dining out and as I declined that option the waiter in charge moved on unapologetically and unconcerned. Sometimes, away from our high flying restaurants, it is quite easy to relive the gastronomic and service horrors of the 1950s and 60s. And at a rather higher price than those horrors cost back then.
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