537. Sunday Lunch At Samo.

 

  Chef Elliot Brown opened his restaurant Samo in March 2026 in the Great Western Arcade. The location had previously been home to Land before it moved a short distance along the arcade and prior to Land’s occupation of the site it had been home to Bistro 1847 where once in his salad days Alex Claridge had served vegetarian dishes. Brown has a distinguished curriculum vitae, having trained at the Hotel du Vin and then at Simpsons when Leo Kattou, now at the Bower House in Shipston on Stour, was Head Chef there. Subsequently Brown worked at Aktar Islam’s short-lived Legna and then at Tierra Tacos and Trentina both in the Jewellery Quarter and then he had gained experience with Italian-style food at Tropea in Harborne. Brown is assisted in the kitchen by Greg Shephard, his sous chef.

  Brown’s intended style for his own restaurant was a wise choice - ‘modern bistro’ - with an emphasis on the seasonality of ingredients. My first visit to the new restaurant was for the first Sunday lunch to be served there and it proved to be a very pleasing experience. It really was very good. I was the first diner to arrive for the particular sitting and I received a pleasing welcome and then sat back to enjoy an anis aperitif while the other diners trickled in. The middle class on a Sunday don’t like to hurry themselves.

  As starter I chose an impressive-looking and tasty prawn cocktail surmounted by two king prawns looking accusingly with their dead eyes from the rim of the dish. There was a very generous portion of little shrimps and the Marie Rose was well made.

  But of course I was there for the roast beef and out it came - tender, pink and blushing. There came with it a fine crusty Yorkshire pudding and a banquet of vegetables - very edible beef dripping roast potatoes and slices of roast turnip, gorgeously - yes, gorgeously, that’s the very word, buttery mashed swede with creamed leeks and cabbage and, as an extra, cauliflower in cheese sauce. More vegetables than I could manage but I made a good attempt and there really wasn’t very much left on my plate by the time I surrendered it to be taken to the dish washer, be it machine or human.

    I was kidnapped by the lovely creamy rice pudding with compôte when I read the dessert menu and my choice was fully vindicated by the intense enjoyment it gave. Modern bistro had rendered classic, fine English Sunday lunch. And I had been seated at a window table and what a relaxing time I had watching the Sunday afternoon shoppers pass by. Brilliant!

Elliot Brown & Greg Shephard

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛

29 March 2026.

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.

345. Salt. The Bower House.

 

  I have already waxed lyrical about Salt this year (Blog 298) and was sufficiently enthused by my evening there, wallowing in the pleasure of the tasting menu, that I rated it 🌞🌞🌞. Since those early days, back long before the pandemic lockdowns it has matured into a provider of very fine food. The present Head Chef there is Laura Kimber and she has a very firm hand on the tiller. Likewise, Salt’s exceptional restaurant manager, the splendidly named Aurélian Molliere, who was appointed there in November 2022 having previously been restaurant manager at Buckland Manor, has the front of house running at tip top level, embracing the intention to be relaxed but at the same time to serve the diners with perfect poise and style.

  An autumn 4 course menu has been introduced there at a very reasonable price of £65 (sans gratuity) and  as my reservation was relatively late, and having visited Libertine Burger earlier in the day (see previous Blog), I opted to have this lighter menu if only to address the issue of my overnight gastrointestinal comfort.

  Though a menu of limited size, all the extras were pleasingly presented to make this feel like the full monty - hors d’oeuvres of fine olives and toasted almonds, 2 delightful amuses gueules made up of a crispy, flavoursome cheesy little tartlet and a splendid piece of pork ‘scratching’, some excellent bread with cultured butter and then a delicate heritage tomato starter, and afterwards a second starter of tasty Roscoff onion, very nicely cooked with pickled onion to bring sweetness and bite and crispy onion for texture. 

  The main was a beautifully and accurately cooked piece of Gigha halibut with sea herbs and for dessert a very pretty dish centred on plump blackcurrants, delightfully seasonal, with a soothing yoghurt sorbet. Two pleasing petits fours - a fudge and a jelly - were served with coffee. A well rounded fine meal.

   This four course supper was an excellent illustration of how multiple courses are not necessary for enable a chef to highlight their abilities and are kinder not only on the digestive system but also, of course, the pocket. The absence of meat was of little concern to me - I very often prefer fish for my main course but it may be a sign of things to come. This was a great pleasure and reminded me of just how good a restaurant Salt is.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞.

  The following day, back to Shipston on Stour by bus through the quiet and beautiful south Warwickshire countryside for another lunch at the Bower House. Unlike my previous visit which had taken place on a miserable wet day, I arrived in bright sunshine set in a blue sky, and the town was looking very appealing. 

  Just as the previous evening had reinforced my very positive opinions about Salt, so this lunch had the same effects on me regarding the Bower House. The welcome and service is very good and the interior is very atmospheric, in one part stone flagged floors, in another a spacious dining room with large windows on two sides letting in the bright light.

  Here too I chose the set three course lunch, finding it appealing because of its highlighting of Japanese ingredients which I did not really expect to see being offered as a theme running through the meal. It represented exceptionally good value bringing with it a glass of house wine, bread with two types of tasty butter and petits fours to accompany the coffee (at an additional price). I indulged myself in a delicious Bower Sour to kick things off.

  

    The starter was a dish of tasty aubergine gyozas, very nicely cooked, with a mushroom and soy dip giving a real zing to the dish.

  I thoroughly enjoyed the main of stir fried roast breast of duck and vegetables and udon noodles. It was delicious and I felt very happy with my meal. The dessert of ‘Japanese crème caramel’ - a very good crème with slices of mandarin orange - was enjoyable though I suspected that the dish was more a playful invention of the chef rather than something whose origins can be pinpointed to the vicinity of Tokyo!

  

  The petits fours rounded off the meal very happily. The Bower House is such a pleasing restaurant to visit and its unpretentious but enjoyable food together with the excellent service and comfortable atmosphere make a trip out to Shipston to dine there very worthwhile.

Rating:- 🌞.

336. The Bower House, Shipston On Stour

 

  

  The bus journey from Stratford upon Avon to the charming Shipston on Stour where virtually everyone wears a green body warmer is not far in miles but these are country miles and so the trip seems longer than you might expect as it passes through the gorgeous Warwickshire countryside with hardly any human habitation in sight apart from the occasional hamlet or village, such as Ilmington where you can catch sight of the beautiful Michelin-listed Howard Arms as the number 51 heads towards Shipston. There are fields full of sheep and some fine cattle and gradually the buildings change from West Midlands red brick to buttery Cotswold stone.

  Shipston is not large and not of the 2020s. Many of the local shops look roughly like they may have looked in the post second world era but without Attlee’s rationing being evident. And there are two former Michelin dining establishments to spot in the town square - the White Bear (listed 1985 to 1990) and the George (listed 1980) (both decidedly Georgian in style) before you arrive at the Bower House comfortably spread over two shops and, on entering, looking spacious and bright with the main dining room at a corner of the building and light flooding in through the very large windows on two sides. The dining room is tastefully decorated in an attractive shade of red with blue and red, comfortable furnishings.

  Service is excellent - polite and friendly and on the ball. There’s an appealing menu - small plates or starters with mains in the form of fish or meat from the charcoal grill. The set menu  looks like exceptionally good value and includes dishes that one would be sorely tempted to order but I was lured by the à la carte and had no regrets. I began with a delicious Bower Sour and a delightful little brioche was served with salted butter and a tasty white miso butter. The starter was not far behind. 

  My choice was the very tasty rabbit and bacon terrine which was served with radish, black garlic aioli and playful crispy kale. A great start - the terrine was delicious and the accompaniments spot on though I think I should have preferred my bread not to have been toasted.

  The stone bass I chose for my main was also perfectly cooked and seasoned, the accuracy of the cooking contrasted with a sadly overcooked plaice I had had at a bistro in Stratford the previous evening. If you’re going to serve fish, cook it accurately, and if you want to know what that means go and see what the Bower House does with the fish it serves. The stone bass was served with a gorgeously creamy polenta, excellent pickled girolles, strips of spring onion which I did not like particularly and a fabulous, tasty chicken jus which brought everything together. A fine dish.

  

  Dessert was fairly simple - a generous slice of very fine Basque cheesecake with a beautifully sticky Pedro Ximénez syrup. I should have liked a little more of the syrup and could have done without the decorative microherbage but I appreciate that it is not easy to make a plate of Basque cheesecake look pretty so I see why the greenery had invaded the dessert.

  Three pleasing petit fours accompanied the coffee - a fudge, a truffle and a splendidly peppery tuile. 

  There was time to see the sights of Shipston which did not involve a lot of walking before reembarking the bus for Stratford and enjoying another land cruise through this beautiful and empty part of Warwickshire, replete and impressed by my lunch at the Bower House.

The White Bear, previously Michelin-listed

The George, previously Michelin-listed

An amble around Shipston -

Raring - 🌝