hand & flowers

over the easter weekend, p surprised me with a booking at the 2 michelin star pub in marlow, the hand and flowers. owned by tom kerridge, one of p’s favourite chefs, and who i had become familiar with since moving to the uk from his appearances on sunday brunch and the great british menu, it was fair to say we were both more than a bit excited to score a table. and after ourgoodfriday feast, it was easy to see why this was the first pub to receive two stars in the michelin guide.

... the menu is agoodcombination of british and french dishes. the food is good, the service is excellent, and the dishes come out looking beautiful. what more can i say?

...overall, the food was certainly excellent and delicious; there was also definitely verygoodattentive service. suffice to say, if you are ever passing by that part of the world, making plans to detour for a hearty and well-prepared delicious meal won’t go wrong. now, the tricky question is: if i was a londoner, would i travel the (google map estimate) 1 hour drive back there again? tough call.

they have a verygoodvalue lunch set but it's a bit boring :p so we just went for a main course from a la carte

deep-fried white bait, and breads shortly after our drinks and whilst the white bait went untouched, the bread was scoffed in a minute or two. pumpkin soup with maple walnut dressing was enormously satisfying. if lacking depth of flavour - it was a verygoodpumpkin soup but it didn't leave me craving more.

looking back i appear to have been a little more meticulous when it came to keeping on top of my travel eating, with the exception perhaps of the two weeks in san francisco , napa and vegas when i was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of posts that needed writing. below are some forgotten bits and bobs from that fortnight, as well as a few strays from our trips to hong kong , singapore , bilbao and closer to home , cheltenham and oxford. daniel patterson's coi is one of our favourite restaurants in san francisco . his food is always elegant, considered, and impeccably sourced. there was much we liked from the spring 2011 tasting menu - a rich velvety smoke-infused green garlic and goats cheese soup garnished with almonds and delicate wild onion flowers, tender seaweed-dusted asparagus tips cooked simply in their own juice served with lemon sabayon, and a sinfullygoodmoscavado cake with sticky medjool dates and raw milk ice cream, to name a few. most special though was the crab melt, ca

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 sogoodwas 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