237. Sunday Lunch At Cheal’s Of Henley.

   As touched upon in Blog 236 the evening before I had endured a pretty rotten meal (or two thirds-meal as the dessert was never served to me) of roast beef with all the trimmings at a hotel which shall not be named on the outskirts of Stratford as part of one of those exercises in human endurance which we face in our lives - the university year reunion. It was a wonderful example of how, amid the bubbling hype surrounding our high grade restaurants, there is a rotting underbelly of British hospitality which can not cope, or does not want to cope, with providing well prepared food at a not totally savage price. It is a part of the industry that functions but serves without any love for its produce and its customers. Like the poor, I suppose, the hopeless part of hospitality will be with us always despite the daily tirades which find themselves published on the internet from barely literate Tripadvisers whose opinions are as useless as Lucy The Labrador’s (she’ll eat anything without complaint).

 But that was yesterday. Today I returned to the wonderful Cheal’s of Henley for Sunday lunch with much hope in my heart and great expectations. My hopes and expectations were not to be dashed.

  Firstly the price is ridiculous but I’m not complaining - £47.50 for olives, 2 amuses gueules (works of art in themselves), bread, three stupendous courses and a petit four - extraordinary good value for the quality of the dishes served. 

  I mentioned the wonderful amuses gueules and bread in Blog 223 so suffice it to say that these introductions to the meal were as delicious as they had been on my previous visit. My starter was a fine pea risotto with salty Windrush goat’s cheese, pea shoots and little pickled adding a sharp sweetness to really lift the dish. Very good.

  Then the roast. Spectacular. A plate of several slices of beautifully cooked 38 day aged beef rump cap with all the trimmings, each element beautifully served in little pans and pots. Everything was perfectly correct - the garden peas and hispi cabbage, fine slices of carrot, exquisitely crispy roast potatoes - they were an absolute picture, startlingly tasty cauliflower in a robust cheese sauce, root vegetable mash and a grade 1 Yorkshire pudding with a fabulously delicious gravy. Mustard and horseradish sauce were not forgotten. The plate of beef looked like a mother hen surrounded by her chicks.

  Cheal is the master of using ingredients which have long been known to work well together and to use them to produce something pleasingly comforting but vividly exciting. I almost fell off my chair in anticipation of my choice of dessert - a brilliantly alcoholic rum baba with everything that should go with it - little cubes of pineapple and mango and drops of passion fruit with coconut espuma and coconut sorbet. This was a lovely dessert, the sponge of the baba was light and the whole was pleasurable.

  Finally along came a delightful truffle as a petit four and my pleasure was complete.

   Cheal’s of Henley us at the top of its game - comfortably welcoming, immaculate service, a maestro of a restaurant manager and fine, delicious, really quite faultless food coming of a kitchen where the chef is exactly on the right track. It could well be the best restaurant in the West Midlands.