354. Bower House And Salt.

 

  I have reported already this year on the Michelin listed The Bower House in Shipston on Stour and the Michelin starred Salt in Stratford upon Avon. This summer and early autumn I have enjoyed a few stays in Stratford and on each occasion I have taken the bus to Shipston, enjoying the scenery of south Warwickshire as the vehicle cruised calmly and peacefully through it and then delighted to be ambling around this pleasingly understated town, where everyone wears body warmers, now I think to be known as gilets, and generally look comfortably off and pleased with their lot, as I suppose they should. A bankrupt Birmingham seems a continent away and though there are no Michelin stars twinkling in the town the Bower House does give the place a spot in the firmament. The owners of The Bower House have identified their market - they oversee the serving of good, sensibly priced food in a comfortable, attractive setting with a relaxed atmosphere.

  I love the opening - a fine bread with good salted butter and tasty miso butter - a clever and more harmonious version of the ubiquitous Marmite butter. For starter, I thoroughly enjoyed my choice of heritage beetroot and the main course of pork loin with ratte potatoes and chicory salad was equally pleasurable and interesting. This is a restaurant where the chef is forever working to keep his diners on the edge of their seats to see what delights he’s going to send out to them from the kitchen.

  The dessert admittedly did not work quite as well for me - the compressed pineapple was tasty and pleasing and the accompanying pineapple sorbet equally fascinated the tastebuds but the coconut espuma was no substitute for something with a bit of real texture - the dish would have been elevated by substituting it with some coconut sponge or something with a bit of body.

  Still, all in all, another visit to the Bower House is a future prospect I view with pleasurable anticipation.

  The previous evening I had experienced the great pleasure of dining again at Paul Foster’s Salt in Stratford’s Church Street where Laura Kimber is doing such a fine job in her role of Head Chef and on the Wednesday evening I dined there, where Aurélian Molliere, was accomplishing a brilliant one man performance front of house. 

  I opted again for the fine five course menu which was well priced, superbly realised and eaten with relish (by me).

  After the excellent amuses bouches of fine cheesy tartlet and the splendidly crispy and generously sized ‘pork scratching’ and the equally excellent nut brown loaf with Ampersand butter which is one of God’s finer gifts to Man, the starter of Charlotte potatoes with dill emulsion delivered the continuing pleasure promised by the amuses gueules. The next dish, centred on Burford Brown egg, did not lower my expectations either and the main course of Cornish plaice cooked impeccably and enhanced with a happy medley of sea herbs and vegetables and naughty little brown shrimps showed that in the hands of a fine chef a truly admirable fish dish can be brought to the diner’s table even in these landlocked Middle Lands.

  For dessert I was happy to be served chocolate crémeux nicely complemented by blackberry sorbet, plump autumnal blackberries and pistachio crumbs.

  This was a very satisfactory meal. Just as I have learned to expect from this fine Head Chef and this restaurant.

  A quick mention of another bus journey from Stratford, this time in the company of the indomitable Lucy  The Labrador, to Moreton in Marsh to visit the town on market day. The traffic flow through the town was awful - a fine utterly Cotswold town being smothered by the vast amount of vehicles that pass through it. Moreton really needs a bypass. 

  The market is unremarkable with less personality to it than you might expect given the glorious Cotswold buildings which surround it. But Lucy and I headed for the Black Bear to find it crowded mainly with raucous and unappealing ladies who lunch but we found a table and gained much pleasure from an excellent beef and ale pie (the both being from local sources) served with big fat crispy chips which fell at the hurdle of being somewhat undercooked internally though the accompanying vegetables were accurately cooked. Though there was plenty of gravy in the pie (with very adequate amounts of meat), I think a little jug of additional gravy to pour over the pastry would have helped. The pudding I chose was rather more bulky than I should have liked being a ‘ginger cake’ which turned out to be, for me at least, a too generously sized, rather dense sponge when I had been expecting a light cake.

  Though I had my niggles, I do like the Black Bear and think its food is a good example of what one might hope to find in an English pub in the 2020s. The Ladies Who Lunch there certainly seemed to have a grand time scoffing all that was laid before them as well as knocking back a couple of bottles of wine between them.

  The area has a number of dining establishments of note which I hope to visit at some time in the not too distant future - on the bus journey to Shipston for instance we passed the Michelin-listed Howard Arms at Ilmington and The Fuzzy Duck at nearby Armscote.

346. To Moreton-In-Marsh. Dinner At The Woodsman.

 

  The Labrador and I took the bus from Stratford upon Avon past Shipston to Moreton in Marsh. This is a pretty market town, a gateway to the Cotswolds on the edge of Gloucestershire with numerous gorgeous Cotswold stone buildings reflecting its past and present wealth, for centuries tied to the wool industry. Home to the Michelin-listed Henne as well as some fine-looking inns and most, if not all, dog-friendly. An early lunch, to tie in with the return bus times, at the lovely Black Bear Inn - spacious and bright with an enticing menu.

  Given my love for Ploughman’s Lunches, and bearing in mind I was going to dinner in the evening, I opted for the PL and very pleased too I was with it. There was a remarkably tasty warm scotch egg, memorable sausage meat surrounding a reasonably well cooked though not totally runny egg with a good slice of fabulous local ham, sweet cocktail onions, leaves, a generous chunk of bread and a not entirely memorable Cheddar cheese. But washed down with cider this made for a very happy meal in a lovely setting.

Rating:- 🌛🌛.

  The dog and I wandered around the town ahead of the return journey noting the other inns nearby but dismayed by the sight and sound of the constant, very heavy motor traffic, swollen by the large number of tourist motor coaches, running along the main road which cuts through the town. A Cotswold haven ruined.

  In the evening, to The Woodsman in Stratford upon Avon for dinner, hopeful that it had pulled itself together compared with the last two or three times I had dined there. My hopes, however, were dashed. Again the meal was made up of overworked dishes and challenging combinations when more simplicity may have had a more pleasing outcome. After a pleasing cocktail, I chose a starter of Terrine of free-range chicken, with confit leg and smoked breast, chicken liver parfait, red grapes, frisée salad and truffle dressing. The terrine which looked gaudy and extravagant was rather dry and the grapes were a relief with their sweetness. Not a great pleasure.

  I chose a main of Fillet of Cornish stone bass served with dull, wood fired ratte potatoes, welcome Salcombe crab, the inevitable sea herbs which did contribute and a cucumber butter sauce which also worked quite well. The fish itself was on the edge of being overcooked but acceptable but it can not be said that it was visually alluring. The sweet cucumber pickle brought a little life to this dowdy dish.

  I chose a fairly disastrous dessert - poached and marinated local plums which were largely flavourless - my plum tree at home has yielded some beautifully delicious and sweet plums this year so these dull boys came as a great disappointment. The dreary fruit was accompanied by tiny fragments of sponge cake - claimed to be a hazelnut financier on the menu, a hazelnut crumble which for me was too much texture and the pleasurable relief of a wood fired plum sorbet which was the one light in an expensive and sorry effort by whoever was taking on the role of pastry chef. 

  The Head Chef and management seriously need to rethink what they’re doing to the food at this restaurant and restore a degree of simplicity to ensure that fine ingredients are more easily appreciated.

Rating:- 🌛.