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:- 🌛.

312. The Woodsman, Stratford upon Avon.

 

  The Woodsman was opened in April 2019 by Executive Chef Mike Robinson in the newly refurbished historic Falcon Hotel, unfortunately renamed as the Hotel Indigo, situated across the road from the grounds of Shakespeare’s long lost home, New Place (see Blog 67). When it first opened it was stated that the aim of the restaurant was to serve locally sourced, seasonal food cooked using a wood-fired oven and charcoal grill. There remains a heavy emphasis on seasonal game, particularly locally sourced venison. Perhaps therefore I am foolish when I dine there in often being tempted to order a fish main course. 

  It’s a lovely restaurant; smartly, rusticly comfortable. On my last visit, there was an air of mild chaos surrounding the service there, related I suspect, to the hospitality industry recruiting crisis which was particularly acute then. Service on my latest visit was very satisfactory though I could have done without the apéritif/cocktail trolley being wheeled to my table within a few seconds of my taking my seat and before I had managed to get my thoughts together. 

  The meal got off to an excellent start with some delicious and generously portioned bread - nicely textured and tasty - two slices each of granary and focaccia accompanied by lusty wild garlic butter and a more soothing cultured butter. The starter of quail and wild garlic Kyiv was irresistible but when I ate it it was not to my liking. The small Kyiv was golden on top but was much darker shade below - close to be scorched but the coating was nice and crispy. I detected the pleasing flavour of the quail which was cooked satisfactorily but the wild garlic element was far too subtle in taste; it seemed as though all the wild garlic had been used in the fine butter that accompanied the bread. The dish also included hen of the woods mushrooms and Berkswell cheese gnocchi but, for me, the elements did not really all come together.

  On to the main of fillet of Cornish stone bass which was pleasingly meaty and firm but perhaps slightly over and lacking in moisture. The other elements of the dish were an alluring lobster and vanilla bisque, lobster tortellini and heritage carrots. I also had as a side dish, the signature Dirty mash which the menu described as mash with crisp shredded venison, sourdough crumb and deer gravy. This was a disastrous combination of ingredients. Firstly the vanilla was far too strongly flavoured; the vanilla aggressively assaulted the taste of the stone bass and clung unpleasantly to the carrots which texturally I liked but could not eat because of the powerful vanilla taste which clung to them. 

  The dirty mash was also far too powerful to go with the fish - I think a warning should be given not to choose it as a side dish if the fish is chosen as main course. The dirty mash itself has far too many crunchy elements in it and too little mash. When I first had it in 2019 - it was described as including braised oxtail, lardons, crispy onions and truffle - the dish has clearly evolved since then as I found it very admirable at the time, but on this occasion I think that evolution has not resulted in a superior species.

  Perhaps it was just me that was at fault for choosing a fish dish in a restaurant where the accent is clearly on powerful, gutsy meat dishes.

  For dessert I chose poached Wye Valley rhubarb with rice pudding mousse and a scintillating rhubarb sorbet with tiny cubes of ginger beer jelly. The rhubarb itself was satisfactorily cooked and I did get the occasional appropriate burst of ginger from the jelly cubes but the rice pudding mousse was depressingly lacking in flavour - I wanted cream and some of that vanilla which had abused the main course and more sweetness. Overall, this was another disappointing course. I found the meal lacklustre on this occasion, with various dishes failing for various reasons.

 Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛

236. Shakespeare’s Birthday Lunch 2022.

   After 2 fallow years when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the Council in Stratford from holding their otherwise annual Shakespeare’s Birthday celebrations, everything was on again - the parades, the church service and for me, the most anticipated of all - the Shakespeare Birthday lunch, held once more in giant tents in the grounds of the theatre gardens having been very comfortably housed previously for three consecutive years in a very agreeable hotel on the river bank. But of that, more later.

  Lucy The Labrador and I arrived on the eve of the big event and I was pleased to have managed to reserve a table at The Woodsman which is a pleasingly atmospheric place to lounge over a robust meal on a very comfortable spring Friday evening. The Woodsman is undoubtedly my favourite dining place in Stratford. I used to love No 9 Church Street and was very happy at No. 33 The Scullery but their numbers have all been counted up and there is little else in Stratford to match the pleasure of dining at The Woodsman now. I feel like a bad person for not admiring the Michelin-starred Salt as much as others do but there we go, it’s one of my little quirks. On the other hand I have recently developed a little place in my heart for Lamb’s of Sheep Street and there’s also a place in the same part of my anatomy for the really rather good Italian restaurant on Ely Street, Sorrento. So I am never short of anywhere to eat in Stratford on my visits there.

  And so to The Woodman. After a delicious daiquiri which had the rather unfortunate colour of a glass of meths and some very fine bread indeed (slices of ultra-fresh focaccia and soda bread with marmite butter and lovely cultured biputter), I thoroughly enjoyed my starter of house cured and smoked Chalk Farm sea trout served aptly with horseradish and buttermilk, nicely cooked beetroot and grilled turnip tops of just the right texture. A great dish.

  I ordered Grilled chop of Lavinton lamb as my main course and after a false start of an appealing plate of  wood-fired cod arriving at the table (which looked delicious and which I would have been delighted to eat) the dish which I had ordered arrived looking very alluring. The chop, exquisitely tender and pleasingly tasty was accompanied by a lovely lamb rissole on a stick as well as grilled asparagus, confit artichokes and grilled turnip tops and slices of pickled red onion and tiny game chips. There was nothing out of place and it was a course as good as I had hoped for.

  Finally for dessert, I chose Oat milk panna cotta with little juliennes of apple, a sweet and nicely cinnamon-spicy unctuous raisin sauce and a little crumble. This was tasty and very enjoyable.

  Apart from being served with the wrong main course, which didn’t bother me at all, there were a couple of irritations when my carafe of water was taken away three quarters of the way through the meal and was never to return and service gradually slowed to a glacial pace as the evening went by.

  And so, to bed. Perchance to dream.

  And then it was Shakespeare’s birthday. And St. George’s Day. The weather was very temperate, the celebratory procession through the town went very well and lunch was highly memorable. After two years of being denied the pleasure, and expense, of hosting the Shakespeare Birthday Lunch, local sponsors, the jewellers Pragnell, were pushing the boat out. The enormous marquee in the RSC gardens was decorated magnificently and right from the time of arrival it was impossible not to enter into the party spirit. Glitzy stars there were aplenty - Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Alexander Armstrong, Maureen Lipman, the author Howard Jacobson and possibly one or two others I may have forgotten and the Birmingham actor Adrian Lester was there to receive his Pragnell award for his contribution to the world of Shakespeare.

  With all the star spotting to be done the food itself may seem not all that important but it was very good and sensibly portioned which was good news as I was also due to go out to dinner in the evening, of which more later.

  The food was a pleasure and illustrated just how over the top some present trendy restaurants can be, Three simple but well executed courses which is a marvel as the kitchen was catering for 4-500 guests.

  Happily the starter was new season Vale of Evesham asparagus, grilled beautifully and served with fresh goat’s curd, crème fraiche, lemon dressing and charmingly locally foraged chive flowers.so simple and yet so enjoyable.

  Then the main course of rump of excellent, nicely flavoured Cotswolds lamb with sand carrot purée, grilled Calcot onion and wild garlic oil. The dish was cooked beautifully. There were little pieces of mint leaves but I should have liked the flavour of mint to have been a little more intrusive.

  

  Unfortunately, as I was busy photographing celebrities, I forgot to photograph the delightful dessert of pavlova with rhubarb, blood orange and grated chocolate but it was very good and pleasingly light and was an excellent end to a memorable meal

  And just who was at the lunch? Well, a few A list celebrities without a doubt - Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Howard Jacobson, Alexander Armstrong, Maureen Lipman, Adrian Lester and probably one or two others. Little wonder I forgot to photograph the dessert. The day before Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh had been awarded the Freemanship of the town and so one may expect one day to see Dame Judi driving her flock of sheep down, er, Sheep Street I assume.

  In the evening I went to a reunion of elderly doctors at some overpriced hotel on the outskirts of Stratford. While it was entertaining to try to guess who were these much changed people I had known in my youth the meal was a perfect illustration of just how awful English catering can still be. After a promising starter of smoked salmon (which the kitchen would have had little chance to maul to death) a vile main course of gruesome beef accompanied by an Aunt Bettie’s Yorkshire pudding, claggy mashed potato which had an air of inauthenticity about it, a barely-cooked carrot and mildly unpleasant green beans closed my meal as I was denied my preordered panna cotta dessert because I had visited “the facilities” while it was being served. I was offered a sticky toffee pudding which was the last thing I wanted after a day of dining out and as I declined that option the waiter in charge moved on unapologetically and unconcerned. Sometimes, away from our high flying restaurants, it is quite easy to relive the gastronomic and service horrors of the 1950s and 60s. And at a rather higher price than those horrors cost back then.

222. The Woodsman.

 

  The well-judged, cosy, smart and comfortable atmosphere of The Woodsman makes this my favourite restaurant in Stratford-upon-Avon. The atmosphere - that is - coupled with the tasty, generously portioned, well prepared food. A nice place to pass a couple or hours or so on a winter’s evening, not thinking about the reality that there’s a war raging once more in Europe as the latest mad European dictator launches an assault on the peaceful, democratic Ukraine where once there was optimism and now just dread and crushed hope.

  I sat comfortably in the smart dining room, gazing around at its walls on which were hung some charming water colours of various deer and a black labrador with a pheasant in its mouth. I was given a surprisingly long 23 minutes to decide which dishes I wished to order but having finally done so a pleasing plate of delicious ciabatta with two types of butter (one, the now almost ubiquitous marmite butter) winged it’s way to my table.

  Then an interesting starter of ‘Wild wood pigeon ‘pastrami’’. Its presentation was faux rustic in a fine dining sort of way. This was made up of little strips of pigeon served with creamed pecarino, delightful pickled mushrooms, the crunchy texture of sunflower seeds and a very pleasing sweetness provided by slices of red grape. There were also a possibly excessive number of tasty smoky flavoured leaves. The pigeon was very tasty and the dish was original and, apart from an excess of leaves, enjoyable.

  For the main course I chose a fine dish of delicious and perfectly cooked woodfired Cornish cod. I could not discern the flavour of the accompanying hay-baked potatoes and I was not particularly aware that the mussels were smoked. The warm tartar sauce was satisfactory and there was a generous helping of pickled samphire (like the leaves in the starter, probably a little more than I might have wanted). This was a nicely prepared dish, the fish certainly being the star and in a generous portion, but I was becoming a little bored with it as I worked my way to the end of it.

    I chose a dessert of ‘pear tart (note no ‘e’) tatin’. The missing ‘e’ was important as this was clearly not a classic tarte tatin. Rather it appeared to be a deconstructed version of the French classic (presumably as the restaurant prides itself on serving British food) with a precisely poached and pleasing piece of pear nestled in puff pastry with an accompanying jug of caramel sauce to provide the unctiousness of classic tarte tatin. The honey ice cream sitting on some unnecessary crumble was so mildly flavoured that I failed to detect a hint of honey. Actually, a very edible dish but I’m afraid somewhat disappointing.

  It‘s surprising that Stratford Upon Avon now only has three Michelin-listed restaurants - The Woodsman, the starred Salt and Lamb’s nestled as it is among a row of unremarkable bistros and chain restaurants on Sheep Street. The town has suffered during the pandemic because the visitors disappeared from it and the prolonged closure of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre coupled with a chain of execrable and incomprehensible productions often playing to half empty houses has in recent year done little to bring the visitors back to the town. Michelin has even dropped the theatre’s Rooftop restaurant from its listing. I see that it has now finally dawned on the Michelin editor that No 9 Church Street closed a long time ago. Thus for a diner living or visiting Stratford, The Woodsman remains the best choice still for a comfortable evening of good dining in the town. None of the fireworks, intentionally I think, of a restaurant in search of a Michelin star but a pleasing ambience and largely pleasing food.