hand & flowers

the hand & flowers is a sweet little pub in marlow and has two michelin stars. the building has exposed wooden beams, wooden floors and low ceilings. the tables are wooden, without tablecloths. it's all rustically laid out, lots of wood - bespoke wooden accessories, such as

the menu is varied, complex and interesting. there is an autumn menu of five courses for £50 and a great vegetarian menu for £46. à la carte ranges from £9.50- £14 mark for starters with the most expensive main course at £27.50. there are set lunches around £20 for two courses, which is fair value for the style of cooking on offer. you’ll be very happy if you like game.

personally, there was nothing in our lunch that made us feel that the restaurant was worthy of its recent accolade and nor was it worth the trip from london. oh well!

2011 has been a great year for hand & flowers. tom kerridge's roasted hog topped the great british menu and the restaurant became the first and only pub with two michelin stars in the uk.

as fate would have it, i booked a table here a couple of hours before 'michelin' awarded tom kerridge a 2nd star for his gastro pub, the 'hand and flowers'. this award has elevated tom into the culinary elite of british cuisine, joining the likes of michel roux jr, raymond blanc, brett graham and andrew fairlie. we were expecting fireworks from the dishes today. from the outside it looks like your typical english country pub. on entering you have low wooden beams, a dark slate floor and what seemed to be oversized wooden dining tables that did make the restaurant a bit cramped. we arrived about 20 minutes early so we were quite prepared to come back or sit in the bar area (it was a pub afterall) until our table was ready. we were seated immediately which was great. not so good was having to ask a table of four next to us to squash in to let us past and to move our table until an in away from the occupied table of two next to us. the table of four were quite unimpressed by this. the fir

maple glazed veal sweetbread with pearl barley, sweetcorn and chives. it was a very generous portion. the sweetbread was rich and tender, i'd actually prefer a slightly smaller portion so i wouldn't get full before the main.

from the little cup of cider to drink with the pork to the stout foam on the mussels, all of the dishes are proper pub food at heart, but with more effort put into making them delicious than i have seen anywhere else.

the atmosphere inside is very relaxed, the decor simple; low ceilings with exposed beams, plain tables without tablecloths and a wooden floor. service is friendly, helpful and happy to describe and recommend dishes.

let's cut to the chase here, you don't get your dishes to the final of great british menu two years running unless they're pretty special, so we've got pretty high expectations of the hand & flowers; it's a place we've been wanting to go for a while. and while it also has a michelin star, and is not so far from london (marlow), a google search for reviews reveals only a small handful of write ups, old media and bloggers combined. but none of that we'd guess matters for the hand and flowers has local if not national fame now and at 2:30 on a friday lunchtime, the place is packed. this is another former pub that is now a restaurant and the inside boasts old style country pub features like wooden beams and low ceilings, so watch your head. table sizes are generous though the inside of the restaurant is long but not so wide so the large tables seem to trap you into your seats which is slightly uncomfortable. the menu though doesn't disappoint with both tom's 2010 slow cooked duck with duck

roast hog - the winner on great british menu. i particularly loved the simplicity of the trotter. gelatinous skin with the minced, peppery stuffing. this showed how amazing pork can be without all the fuss.

once inside we enjoyed the cosy, pubby atmosphere of the restaurant and the food itself was absolutely stunning

amex 10-10-10? unsurprisingly, that points to the sunday just gone, and was a special one-day only eating event which took place across 10 restaurants in london. being that i am a stakeholder (with my belly) heavily invested in the dining scene and all, t