506. Baraset Barn, Alveston, Stratford Upon Avon And Dog Day At The Hotel Du Vin.

 

 The Baraset Barn at Alveston to the northeast of Stratford upon Avon was included in the Michelin Guide in its 2012 to 2016 editions. So why not now?

  The present Head Chef is Aaron Bodaly who has previously worked at the Kings Head in Napton On The Hill, a little east of Leamington Spa, from April 2019 to 2021 and then, after working for a recruitment agency, he worked from April 2024 to May 2025 at the Tite Inn, in the Oxfordshire village of Chadlington near Chipping Norton, where the television personality Jeremy Clarkson has his farm. Bodaly started to work at The Baraset Barn in April 2025. He therefore has a strong background in preparing pub food. 

  Passing a couple of days in Stratford to go to see ‘the play with the dog in it’ at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, I had been tempted to make a reservation at the Baraset Barn after an acquaintance had told me she had been served there the very best scallops she had ever eaten in her life. Well, there was a recommendation one just had to follow up on. Unfortunately there were no scallops on the present menu but I was up for it especially as the restaurant is dog-friendly.

  My dining companions and I were seated in the light, bright, comfortable bar area and Lucy the Pup Labrador was calmed by the kind, friendly and indulgent staff with little tidbits. The humans chose from a tempting menu and clearly we both had to start with the recommended scallops. We were not disappointed, they were indeed exquisitely cooked, unimpeachable. The  accompanying pea purée was very agreeable and the little cuts of pancetta were indeed the perfect match to scallops as of course they should be.

  We were both delighted with our mains. She enthused about her dish of roast rump of lamb served with peas, pistou, celeriac purée and goats cheese and I myself enjoyed equally my main, chosen from the list of ‘specials’, of king prawn and white crab (though I would have happily paid more to have been served more crab, a lovely lobster bisque risotto and very successful, pleasingly tender samphire. These had been excellent and interesting mains.

  Desserts were very good. I had lovely rice pudding with pineapple (shown above) and my companion chose salted caramel tart.

  Baraset Barn serves lovingly prepared food and I shall not hesitate to dine there again on one of my future visits to Stratford.

Rating:- 🌞

26 August 2025.

  And so, on to the Hotel du Vin in Stratford with the aim of seeing The Winters Tail at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. I saw it and thought it was excellent and the next morning chose scrambled egg on toast for my breakfast. Scrambled eggs can so often be ruined by overcooking but those served that morning were perfect -  buttery and mildly baveuse - exactly to my preference. Absolutely delightful.

  On arrival at the hotel, the day before, we received a wonderful welcome, it being International Dog Day, and the hotel had come up with the idea of greeting each dog staying there with a special doggy bag containing little pleasures for them. Lucy posed nicely for a publicity photograph, her coooperation assured by a chew dangled before her. Well done, dog friendly Hotel du Vin.

505.The Swan Fairfield.

 

  It’s good to explore the countless dining establishments around the area in which one lives and a voucher for 40% off the price of a main course was enough for me to suggest a visit to the Swan in Fairfield near Bromsgrove, a short distance from the excellent Wildmoor Oak at Wildmoor. Fairfield is another tiny and picturesque north east Worcestershire village and the attractive Swan sits opposite one end of Swan Lane there though, like the chicken and the egg conundrum, I’m not sure which came first, the name of the inn or the name of the lane though I expect it would have been the former.

  It’s a very pleasant and spacious inn and on our arrival it was hosting a good number of lunchers who may or may not have been taking advantage of the 40% off the cost of the main course as we were. There is a section where diners accompanied by dogs are accommodated and we were settled there with my still youngish pup who strove to cause as little trouble as a pup may cause if given the opportunity. There was a choice of dining from an à la carte menu or opting for a two course lunch at just £16. I was keen to have dishes which were not on the lunch menu and so we dined à la carte. The dishes on offer were pretty standard pub offerings and I wasn’t entirely sure that these were not dishes prepared and delivered to the Swan and reheated there. 

  I chose the chicken liver and brandy paté which was served in an interesting cylindrical format along with a yellow beetroot piccalilli, peashoots which contributed very little and “toasted focaccia and salted butter”. The butter, however, failed to make an appearance but the amount of paté was generous enough to coat the focaccia which, if it had been toasted, had been subjected to a minimal amount of flame. The dish was quite edible though the paté was a little too bitter for me. My lunch companion chose a starter of “our garlic and cheddar baked mushrooms” - which the menu described as “sautéed button mushrooms in a  cheese sauce, topped with Cheddar cheese, crispy smoked streaky bacon, Mozzarella pearls, chives and toasted focaccia”. My dining companion was very pleased with her starter and had no grumbles about it.

  For my main course I opted to lunch on a very satisfactory beef and Malbec pie served with an equally satisfactory Malbec gravy. The vegetables were far from perfect though I enjoyed the large honey glazed carrot but the mashed potatoes were somewhat claggy as one finds when prepared meals are reheated. On the whole it was quite edible and with the 40% price off offer, one could hardly complain. My companion again very much enjoyed her choice of sausage and mash which was served with “crispy smoked streaky bacon” (strips of distinctly uncrisp bacon as far as I could see) and onion gravy and a generous helping of green beans.

  We rounded off our meals with desserts - my companion once more enjoyed her salted caramel sundae but I found the flavour of vanilla rather difficult to identify in my “classic vanilla cheesecake” although the accompanying cherry compote was not without some pleasure.

  The pub itself is very attractive but the staff that day were too stretched to deliver any feeling of warmth to us and the other customers. The food on offer was standard pub food not rising above the mundane in the main though the pie itself was the highlight for me with very good pastry and a tasty filling. The Swan is just a short distance in geographic terms from the Wildmoor Oak Inn but several hundred miles from it in the standard of food served there. 

Rating:- 🌛🌛

18 August 2025.

504. The Wilderness New Menu.

  As ever, there are changes at The Wilderness. Marius Gedminas has left his role as Head Chef to do some travelling with Turkish-born Ediz Engin leading a new young team, some of whom, I’m sure, will acknowledge Simpsons as their Alma Mater - including recent Masterchef The Professionals contestants, Evan Holliday and Jordan Johnson (see Blog 496) and soon another big change will be announced which will stun and shock. Despite all this, I was visiting the restaurant again because there was a new Control menu (the menu has a new splendidly gothic TW at the top of it) to try out and the chance of a new 6 course meal which is quite enough for me and it is very well priced at £65.

  This was an excellent lunch with Ediz Engin in charge of the kitchen apart from one course which really didn’t do it for me. My dining companion had no reservations at all. We both agreed, as we have many times before, that if this food were being served in a London that restaurant would certainly have a Michelin star.

  We started with a charming croustade, with good crispy pastry. How Indo like my amuses gueulesand then enjoyed

  We found the Raw course of flamed Cornish mackeral to be lovely, the mackerel’s flavour was restrained and for me all the better for being so and it felt all very summery with the scattering of peas and the soothing buttermilk. Then the vegetable course - Greens - which was something of a misnomer as the principle element of the dish’s colour palate was the crimson, where ruby meets amethyst, of beetroot bathed in a joyous ajo blanco, the subtle almond calming the beetroot. A very pretty dish.

  There was a choice of barbecued mussels in Cafe de Paris sauce served on toasted brioche or a fine - well, actually quite fabulous - plump Orkney scallop, perfectly cooked and full of flavour, served with a full bodied, delicious roe sauce and very edible seaweed. Although costing an extra £12, the pleasure the dish brought meant it was worth every extra penny.

  And so to the main course. We both chose lamb rump with anchovy, a courgette espuma and a condiment monsterously powerfully flavoured with lemon which appeared to have been installed on the wrong plate altogether and certainly seemed to me to be the worse possible match for the delicate lamb which itself was beautifully cooked but ended up being grossly assaulted by the lemon. This was a match made in Hell and not in Heaven and needs to be expelled from the menu with all due haste. Yes I know that the acidity of the lemon cuts through the fattiness of lamb but there is more to lemon than acidity and no matter how many chefs may say that this is a classic pairing, I beg to differ. Alas, poor lamb. 

     We were treated to a predessert which restored pleasure to the meal in the form of a play on cheesecake and then a fine seasonally summer dessert employing strawberries, a tonka ice cream and a pretty tuile, coloured and shaped, like a strawberry.

   There’s a new fresh team at The Wilderness. Apart from the unhappy lemon condiment served with the lamb, this was a very fine meal.

Rating:-  🌞🌞

8 August 2025.

The pass at The Wilderness, Ediz Engin & Evan Holliday, August 2025

Farewell to Marius Gedminas, seen here at ADC.

Here is the Submission menu, cost £135 - 

Ediz Engin and Alex Claridge,

503. Levain And Cherry and The Den, Stirchley

 

 The Good Food Guide, after its revival following the withdrawal of support for it by Waitrose, seems to want to be all things to all men (and women and all other genders that we may or may not know about) and is a little confusing. In a dining out guide (I prefer that term to Food Guide) I really want to discover where to go to eat a good meal in pleasant surroundings on comfortable furniture with good service. Presently the Good Food Guide is not necessarily directing one to eat somewhere which fulfills all of those reasonable criteria. Of course it is titled ‘Good Food Guide’ rather than ‘Good Meal Guide’ and so, one may deduce that as long as the food is ‘good’ at the recommended establishment then the guide has carried out its stated goal. It’s all a little iffy if you ask me, and I can see that no-one is asking me, but still I feel that the Good Food Guide is losing its way. 

  I was a little alarmed this weekend by a new addition, not surprisingly located in Bristol, to the Guide which takes the form of a “tiny trailer kitchen on an inner city farm [which is] an idiosyncratic delight” and is described as, “Possibly Bristol’s best kept secret….reached by an overgrown, graffiti-strewn lane with the trains rattling by…a green oasis if ever there was one”. Only in Bristol, I think. And if anyone’s tempted to walk down the over-grown, graffiti-strewn land then the “tiny trailer kitchen” is called Chez Candice (Modern European  Cafe  rated Good). The Good Food Guide appears to be trying to be madder than ever. I really did have to check it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. 

  However I have to thank its editor for recommending an establishment where one indeed can get good food though not a true meal and certainly not dinner and that food being of a very limited range - in short - a French bakery for which I see no reason why the term patisserie should not be used. This was an eating establishment - I remind you, recommended by The Good Food Guide - where I have only one course to report on and that being a single pastry and eaten outside in the fresh air (well, as fresh as the air along the Pershore Road in Stirchley can be).

  The patisserie is Levain and Cherry, the second shop opened by Pascal Bishop, born in Paris of Birmingham mother and French father. He opened his first shop/cafe on Kings Heath High Street at the age of 40 in 2020 having eschewed a course on baking that he was enrolled on as a young man and then travelling internationally to learn his craft. The hipsters of Kings Heath fell over themselves to buy his products and there were half hour or more-long queues to obtain some Levain and Cherry bread or pastry. Bishop expanded his business recently in 2025 by opening the Stirchley branch where once again the local hipsters and others could indulge themselves in good quality boulangerie and patisserie though there were no tables inside the establishment only tables and chairs under an awning which is very nice given the good weather we’ve been having though the traffic noise can be a little hard to bear.

  The business’ name (Levain) derives from the type of sourdough starter used to leaven  bread and ‘Cherry’ alludes to the coffee cherry, the coffee fruit from which the coffee beans are obtained. Bishop obtains his flour from France near from a mill near Paris. Pastry eaters or coffee suppers may sit outside under the awning with their dogs and I took my pup along with me to share the experience and a tiny portion of my chosen edible.

   And my chosen edible was, it has to be said, remarkably delicious - a ‘fruit brioche’ which took the form of a delightful, large crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside pastry encircling a well, filled with perfectly sweet custard and a soft half peach looking like a golden island rising from the centre of a lake. The coffee was very pleasant but the pastry stole the show, so much so that both the dog returned the following day to have another bite of the (Levain and) cherry and indulge quite joyously in the great pleasure of the fruit brioche once more. I also bought two remarkably toothsome large canales to take home with me and wished I had bought four at least as well as a savoury circular, confusingly non-crescent shaped croissant filed with, I think, chunks of blood pudding and a fried egg which was not entirely to my taste (photographs at the bottom of this piece).

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛.

    So, returning to Stirchley the next day, and finding the establishment to be dog friendly, I dropped into The Den on Pershore Road at the heart of the suburb, for breakfast. This was a large establishment with indoor seats and garden seating. Treats and water were available for the dog. I found the service to be pleasant and helpful. I opted for a brunch from the menu and found the prospect offered by the (home-made) corned beef hash with accompaniments to be very enticing. The corned beef was very good though I did not particularly like the spicing of it. The generous amount of crispy potato hash was delicious and certainly did what it said on the menu - that is - it was indeed gorgeously crispy but the rest of it did seem something of a dog’s breakfast (though of course it was a brunch), there being all sorts of elements to it - silver skin onions, fried egg (nicely done), good ‘house’ baked beans, carrot which really did not seem to have a part to play, pickled sliced onion and other elements. The hot-cold combination really did not work for me and this might best be described as ‘interesting’ and a lesson in not going over the top when creating something different.

Rating:- 🌛🌛.

  And so, after The Den, on to Levain and Cherry, as described above where everything was a little more straightforward and very enjoyable.