502. Two Country Pubs - The Fuzzy Duck, Armscote And The Wildmoor Oak Inn, Bromsgrove.

    South of Stratford upon Avon, where Worcestershire red brick is starting to give way to Cotswold stone, there is the Michelin-recommended pub with rooms that goes by the name of The Fuzzy Duck. I have been hoping to get there for some time but bus services are difficult and it’s best to take a car and fortunately I had a friend who was pleased to drive me there and join me for lunch.

  The village in which the pub is located is Armscote in a quiet country lane off the main road between Ilmington, home to the Howard Arms, and Shipston on Stour, where one might dine at The Bower House, where Leo Kattou the former Head Chef at Simpsons and the recently closed Laghi’s, now rules the kitchen. The pub was opened in 2013, having been fully renovated and modernised, by siblings Tania and Adrian Slater and first featured in the Michelin Guide in its 2015 edition. The Guide’s description then stated, “Adrian and Tania … took this place from boarded up boozer to welcoming, fashionably attired dining pub. Seasonal British dishes use great quality local and sustainable ingredients…”.

  I had finally achieved my goal of dining at the Fuzzy Duck and first impressions were very positive. There was a pleasing welcome for myself, my guest and my young dog who behaved not far short of impeccably and we were delighted to find the dining room to be delightfully and relaxingly decorated, brightly lit by the natural light coming through the sizeable windows and spacious to ensure that one felt comfortable and able to talk without being overheard. 

 The table was nicely laid even though there was no table cloth and it was not long before I was embibing a Pink Duck cocktail from the drinks menu which featured at a cute fluffy ducking on its cover, made from Chase Rhubarb and apple gin, strawberry purée, lemon juice and lemonade. It was a pleasingly refreshing choice.

  Neither my companion nor myself were able to resist the lovely twice baked cheese soufflé with truffle sauce as our starter. It had a good punchy, cheesy flavour and was splendidly light and airy. We were already clearly in the rarefied atmosphere of fine and refined pub food and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

  For my main, I felt the Quack and Chips demanded my attention and very good it was too. The fairly small but very well cooked honey and soy glazed duck leg was delicious, the meat moist and succulent, and the accompanying truffle and Parmesan chips were equally delightful both in their flavour and their texture - very fine chips indeed.mYes, this was an excellent dish and the salad of thin ribbons of carrot with an Asiatic sesame dressing added a soothing coolness to it all.

  I was very pleasingly satiated and could only manage an affogato served with a shot of amaretto as dessert but it was nicely served and proved to be a nice close to the meal.

  My dining companion (not Lucy The Labrador) gained as much pleasure from her opening cheese soufflé as I had myself and was immensely pleased with her dish of beautifully cooked sea bream and accompaniments along with her rather extravagant dessert of Eton Mess.

  We  departed content and very well fed and with the resolution that the Fuzzy Duck had not seen the last of us.

Rating:- 🌝+

30 July 2025

  The day previous, a dining companion and I revisited the Wildmoor Oak Inn at Wildmoor near Bromsgrove. I have written about this previously but enjoy lunching there so much that I find it hard to stay away for very long. The food served from the kitchen where Peter Jackson, Brad Carter’s brother-in-law, is Head Chef is excellent pub food, delicious and of that standard consistently. as well as being of very good value.

  We were not disappointed on our latest visit. We shared a plate of tasty hummus of good flavour, the amount of garlic in it nicely judged, served with thin slices of beetroot, sweet, softly textured confit garlic cloves and pea shoots, which for once served a real role in the dish rather than being a lazy man’s garnish for everything from breakfast scrambled egg to steak in the evening.

  My plate of haddock and chips was, as ever, excellent. The fish was beautifully cooked with delightful  crispy batter and the chips were about as perfect as chips can be. While I can live without the curry sauce, the mushy peas were delicious - sweet and minty - and the accompanying tartare sauce was a cut above most tartare sauces that one encounters. For dessert I chose the perfectly wobbly vanilla panna cotta which was lovely though the flavour of vanilla might have been stepped up another notch. The pleasingly wobbly panna cotta was accompanied by nicely macerated strawberries and an excellent sable biscuit.

  My lunch companion chose one of the ‘specials of the day’ as her main course - gammon, which though it looked rather overcooked, was judged to be delicious and succulent. This was accompanied by a pot of the much loved chips, peas and a remarkably attractive-looking fried egg. Her dessert was very grand - a magnificent confection made up of a perfectly sweet mango sorbet sitting on a mango and passion fruit pavlova.  No complaints about it were heard.

  The Wildmoor Oak Inn continues to be a very great pleasure to dine at and represents very good value in these times of continually rising ingredients prices.

Rating:- 🌞

29 July 2025.

  Now, a quick mention that I very much enjoyed my pretheatre dinner at Stratford’ s Hotel du Vin where I chose to eat a splendidly sweet and filling bowl of French onion covered by a thick, vigorously tasty cheesy crouton and then, for the second time in two days, a very well cooked, moist and flavourful confit duck, more generously sized than that served at the Fuzzy Duck, and in a rich and highly toothsome sauce. This was excellent and perhaps only held back by being served with a generous helping of sauté potatoes when I rather would have preferred fewer potatoes and some other vegetable to give more contrast to the dish. Nevertheless it was very good. The Stratford Bistro du Vin serves some very good dishes and I especially enjoy the robust, rustic and filling Gallic-style dishes it has on its menu.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛.

31 July 2025.

  The HdV dinner preceded a trip covering the short distance to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre where a fabulous production of one of the three plays I have never before seen, The Winters Tale, certainly did not give me any indigestion though, the production being so powerful and at times very dark, a stiff post-theatre drink seemed a necessity.

  Finally, during a long walk around Stratford town and along the river bank I spotted two interesting sights relevant to Stratford’s dining out history. Firstly, I espied the ‘floating restaurant’ The Countess which chugs up and down the Avon serving lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. While this is not particularly notable it’s worth noting that in 1978 and 1979 another Stratford floating restaurant, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was included in the Michelin Guide. 

  Further along the river, by the bridge near the theatre, can be found the site of the former Boathouse restaurant and this too was once included in the Michelin Guide in the 1998 to 2000 editions.

  There was also a sad sign of the times - a notice in the window of the Stratford upon Avon branch of Pizza Express announcing that the dining establishment is to close on 2 August. There are now many empty shops in the town and many of them former restaurants and cafes. There are directly caused by the Labour government’s raised taxes for businesses and aggressive raising of the minimum wage which are wreaking havoc with the hospitality industry which continues to also be hit ever rising food prices. Stratford is now a shadow of its former self and Starmer’s crass Labour government and the actions it is taking are playing a huge role in destroying the town and the industry. So Stratford says Ciao to another popular dining establishment. No doubt, it is not the last. 

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.