POSH PUBS AND PRINCELY GRUB: A CULINARY JOURNEY THROUGH COTSWOLDS COUNTRY

By CINDA CHAVICH

(special to the Toronto Star)

The Cotswolds are only a one-hour drive outside of London but something magical happens the minute you veer off the motorway and into the hills.

This is the classic British countryside of fairy tales, where spring lambs bound across fields of lush grass, dewy and up to your knees, and where stacked stone walls line the little roads that pass yellow hillsides of blooming canola, and cut through towering beech forests, carpeted with bluebells.

It’s ridiculously idyllic, really, so perfectly pretty you expect Jane Eyre to stroll up the lane to the rose-covered stone cottage, where you’re sipping a pint on a sunny pub patio.

It’s no wonder that this little pocket of nostalgic old England has become home to those escaping the city life to simpler times, a place of organic gardens and locovore chefs, upscale country markets, gastropubs and pudding clubs.

Our route from Westcote through Stow-on-the-Wold, The Slaughters and Snowshill to Gloucester and Tetbury is a gastronomic whirlwind tour in a teacup, criss-crossing this compact region on a maze of winding backroads, with a delicious diversion – and a pub - around every bend.

In fact, there are plenty of prime watering holes to visit on any tour of the Cotswolds, and a growing number where fine food is a priority.

In the Vale of Evesham, the region where much of the country’s asparagus is grown, we stop for a pub lunch at The Plough Inn in Ford. In a snug corner, beneath the low timbered ceilings of this historic house, we gorge on the local and seasonal specialties, platters of ham and fresh asparagus, dipped in hollandaise, and classic sticky toffee pudding, swimming in warm custard.

The new high tone of public house fare is part of a growing trend, and while the world “gastropub” may elicit comments about oxymorons (or even jokes about indigestion), pubs that give good ale and gastronomy equal billing are definitely a sign of the culinary revolution underway in rural Britain.

Posh pubs, the kind where stars like Hugh Grant or Kate Winslet might pop down for a pint, are now at the centre of the quaint villages you’ll find along these British backroads.

Winslet, in fact, has just restored a manor house in the tiny town of Nether Westcote, near the 300-year-old Westcote Inn, where the recently-refurbished Tack Room pub has an authentic but minimalist decor, complete with rustic wide plank antique tables, flagstone floors and photos of the inn’s own award-winning race horse on the buff stone walls.

The menu is simple, but even a ploughman’s lunch is carefully concocted, featuring a local Daylesford organic cheese, sweet house-churned butter and slabs of crusty farmhouse bread, with house-made chutneys and perfectly boiled free-range eggs.

But perhaps the best example of this new genre of rural dining is The Kingham Plough, a pared down and modernized rural pub in Kingham.

It’s here in a tiny town that I find noted British chef Emily Watkins cooking hearty English dishes – like pot pies and apple fritters – but with the precision of her mentor, Heston Blumenthal. Watkins gave up her enviable position as Blumenthal’s sous chef at the famed Fat Duck (a three Michelin star restaurant) to pursue her own style of nose-to-tail cooking here in the Cotswolds, sourcing local ingredients from her neighbors and adding her urbane style to the rustic plates, whether it’s the crisp duck egg wrapped in bacon with watercress sauce or a fillet of local Hereford beef with triple cooked chips. My tender pigeon was cooked sous vide, she admits, before being encased in pastry for a pub-like presentation, and the Granny Smith ice cream and local cider granitee, served alongside the exquisite sugared apple doughnut (a.k.a. beignet), was churned to order in house.

It’s one picturesque village of tidy yellow stone cottages after another, all with a nod to exquisitely fresh, locally-sourced food. Martha Stewart would be happy here – among the rare Cotswold Legbar chickens with their powder blue eggs, the handsome heirloom pigs and green pastures dotted with wooly sheep. There are historic venison estates, with “deer parks” for raising wild game for the table, and pretty village hotels serving up nostalgic British puddings.

Celebrities and artists, from Elizabeth Hurley and Stella McCartney to Damien Hirst, Kate Moss and Hugh Grant, have homes here.

Even the Royals have found peace in the Cotswolds. In fact, it may have been Prince Charles himself who set the bar for the local, sustainable food movement in the area, with his organic farm on the Highgrove Estate, and his The Pub is the Hub campaign, designed to preserve the small town pubs that are at the centre of small rural communities.

We stop to putter through the Prince’s new Highgrove Shop in Tetbury, where mud from the Duchy Farm still clings to the carrots and potatoes sold to fund his charity work. The Duchy Farm brand is the largest organic brand in the UK and we feel lucky for the chance to buy Highgrove branded china and garden tools, a luxury once only available to those with a suitably guilded invitation to the Highgrove Estate.

Tetbury is one of the classic wool market towns that dot the region. It’s agrarian, but with a posh veneer, the shops offering colorful rubber Wellies, antiques and gourmet food. At chef Michael Bedford’s Chef’s Table cookery school, for one, you can shop for fresh fish and local cheese, then pop upstairs for a day course to learn to create “a selection of breads, risottos, a fish course, traditional cassoulet and pudding”.

It’s the old chicken and egg question – what came first, the chefs and their city customers, or the local organic growers, artisan cheese maker and fancy food shops? Whatever the answer, they’re all here in spades.

The London crowd is obviously behind Daylesford Organic, a farm shop and creamery where the free-range chickens, with their pretty blue eggs, are artfully displayed alongside the wheels of organic cheese, an impressive artisan bakery, tony garden shop and Hay Barn Spa, all housed in a collection of restored stone farm buildings.

This may be the country, but with a very urbane vibe. While the philosophy is all about growing and serving healthy organic food, the bucolic setting is the only thing rural about this very upscale market for sophisticated gastronomes.

We head to the patio where polished young servers deliver organic cappuccino – with organic sugar - to stylish Moms, while nannies vainly attempt to placate two-year-olds screaming for their fair trade chocolate “babyccinos” and Mongolian cashmere felt teddy bears.

Beyond this hubbub, we find solace chatting with the Daylesford butchers about their “80-day chickens,” and the Gloucester Old Spot heirloom pork in their famous bangers.

The Saturday farmers’ market in Stroud is a little more down to earth, but you’ll find some great local artisan products – from Simon Weaver’s delicate Cotswolds Blue cheese to Charles Martell’s runny and assertive Stinking Bishop, fresh pork sausages from Addley Farm, and Badger’s Bottom hard cider, “as rough as a badger’s bottom.” You might even find local author and “freelance chef” Rob Rees doing an outdoor cooking class for the crowd.

Even quirkier culinary experiences in the area range from the classic Pudding Club dessert debauchery every Friday night at Three Ways House in Mickleton, to the 200-year-old tradition of cheese rolling – actually chasing - a 4-kg wheel of Double Gloucester cheese down Cooper’s Hill.

As we pass the 60-degree slope, local Chris Dees explains that the race was once cancelled “for safety reasons” and, when reinstated in 1999, the start time was moved up to noon from 6 p.m., “to prevent runners from drinking too long in the pub.”

That’s probably a good idea, considering the danger of tumbling headlong down this near vertical precipice, especially when fortified with liquid courage.

But it’s hard to imagine that much hard drinking goes on in the new generation of posh public houses in the Cotswolds these days – the dining is simply too divine.

IF YOU GO:

The Cotswolds is truly an “area of outstanding natural beauty” and there’s even a website dedicated to the fact – www.cotswoldsaonb.uk For general tourism information about the area visit www.cotswolds.com On the food side, start with a copy of The Good Pub Guide (www.thegoodpubguide.co.uk), or hook up with Rob Reese (the Cotswolds Chef) for a private food tour or a cooking class using local products www.robrees.com

GASTRO PUBS AND OTHER GOOD EATS:

Kingham Plough: gastropub, The Green, Kingham, Chipping Norton, 0X7 6YD   0845 205 1646  www.thekinghamplough.co.uk

The Wheatsheaf: gastropub, Combe Hay, Bath  0122 583 3504  www.wheatsheafcombehay.co.uk

The Westcote Inn: gastropub, Nether Westcote, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire 1993 830 888  www.westcoteinn.co.uk

Plough at Ford: ancient Cotswolds pub, Temple Guilting, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL 54 5RU   01386 584215 www.theploughinnatford.co.uk

Daylesford Organic Farmshop, Daylesford near Kingham, Gloucestershire GL56 0YG  016 08731700

www.daylesfordorganic.com

STATELY SLEEPS:

Lords of the Manor: a stately hotel on eight acres, with 26 rooms from £195

Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire GL54 2JD  145 182 0243  www.lordsofthemanor.com

Three Ways House: quirky pudding themed rooms from £140

Mickleton, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire GL55 6SB  138 643 8429  www.puddingclub.com

The Manor House Hotel at Castle Combe: 365 acres including the 14th century house and maze of quaint Cotswolds cottages, from £180

Castle Combe, North Bath, Wiltshire SN14 7HR  124 978 2206   www.manorhouse.co.uk

(This story appeared in the Toronto Star)

©Cinda Chavich

www.tastereport.com