hand & flowers

the hand and flowers – tom kerridge from great british menu’s quintessentially british gastropub in marlow stands out for two reasons: firstly, it could well be britain’s campest named pub. secondly, as the only 'pub' in the world to ever be awarded two michelin stars (please correct me if i'm wrong), it could justifiably be claimed to serve britain’s bestpubgrub. i went, hoping for the latter.

as it’s the only two michelin starredpubin the entire uk it caught our attention - so we booked in for a visit. the hand and flowers is about an hour out of london but it’s a trip that is well worth making. award winning chef tom kerridge has created a food lovers oasis here! put it on your list.

the meals out for my birthday week continued thick and fast, with a visit to tom kerridge’s hand & flower’spubin marlow my next destination. booking a table here has become a complete nightmare ever since they got their 2nd star, with tables booked up as far as 9 months in advance. the problem with my job is that i actually do not know what my rota will be like in 6 months and hence, for a while i had just completely given up on ever dining here. thankfully, the restaurant saw some sense, scrapping the old reservation policy for one where you book 3 months in advance, much like you would at gordon ramsay or fat duck. in addition, they frequently advertise any late table availability (last minute cancellations) online and that was how i managed to snag a table here for a weekday lunch. for this visit, i would be joined by one of the ‘pies’ who had also been wanting to dine here for ages.

over the easter weekend, p surprised me with a booking at the 2 michelin starpubin 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 our good friday feast, it was easy to see why this was the firstpubto receive two stars in the michelin guide.

the hand and flowers can’t be apubbecause it’s nobody’s local. sure, it looks like a pub. it has low, uneven ceilings, and even lower beams – the type that require a sign of caution – and a few ale pumps standing to attention, pricked like a set of hare’s ears, ready to maintain the pubby frontage with every pull of a pint. but it isn’t a pub. it’s a high-end restaurant in boozy drag, one that’s bloody difficult to get into.

the hand and flowers is the onlypubin the united kingdom that has 2 michelin stars (awarded in 2011). it is located in marlow and first opened in march 2005. it is owned by chefs tom and beth kerridge and the hand and flowers is currently voted the number one uk restaurant by restaurant magazine. needless to say all these awards have made it really hard to book and i booked a table at the hand and flowers in december 2013 for august 2014 and i could not even get a saturday and sunday and had to settle for a late lunch on friday. the hand and flowers serves “ unpretentious modern british flavours as well as rustic french dishes”.   marlow is a very charming town and the hand and flowers is located in a small very charming house. they recently extended it and now it is bigger. there is a casual bar when you enter and as you go further in, the restaurant.

the hand and flowerspubin marlow is one of those restaurants that is defying what the current definition of michelin starred means. for a very long time there has been a trend in the restaurant market to make everything, for lack of a better word, fancy-pants. these restaurants more often than not have tiny portions and are striving for sensory-overload and molecular gastronomy. however, tom kerridge, a big, exuberant man that i'm hoping one day to meet, is changing all of that. he runs the world's only 2 michelin star pub. the only other restaurant i know of with as many stars that isn't stuck-up is heston's dinner. both the hand and flowers and dinner provide excellent, no exceptional, everyday food, done in a way that no weekend home chef could ever possibly do. they incorporate the greatest cooking techniques with the simplest of ingredients. take for instance, my starter: soft and raw white asparagus with roasted cep and hazelnuts, topped with parmesan and lardo. at first glance

the hand & flowers opened in 2005 and received it’s first michelin star in under a year, in the 2012 guide it was awarded it’s second becoming the only ‘pub’ in the world to hold 2 michelin stars. during that time tom kerridge has competed in 2 series of ‘great british menu’ winning the main course round both times and returning as a judge last year.

i was very intrigued by the 2 star status of the hand & flowers as i remember tom describing himself as “not a michelin-star kind of guy” and explaining that as the reason for opening apubrather than a restaurant. so i wasn’t quite sure what to expect when we arrived.

it really is a delightfully restored old countrypubat the end of marlow high-street. the interior is bare wood aplenty, with risk-of-head-hittingly low beams, and really a touch too dark. although it's a pub, the bar is only a couple of metres long (if that). the thing that gets people in is obviously the food. this is what we had (apologies in advance for the poor photos).

the hand and flowers is apubwith dining room in a 17th century building just on the outskirts of marlow in buckinghamshire. the low ceiling has exposed beams and the room has a wooden floor (mercifully there is no muzak) and plain tables without tablecloths. tables are closely packed. chef tom kerridge previously cooked at adlards in norwich (sadly now closed) as head chef, and prior to that was a senior sous-chef at the late lamented monsieur max, following stints at a number of london restaurants.

the hand & flowers is a sweet littlepubin 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

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 onlypubwith 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 apubafterall) 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

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

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 formerpubthat is now a restaurant and the inside boasts old style countrypubfeatures 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