the restaurant was full on our visit for sunday lunch with what looked like lots of well heeledlocalresidents. it's a popular place and i can certainly understand why people are happy to spend lots of money, eating and drinking here. it's a very relaxing venue, the food is good and the service is friendly. i did find it a bit schizophrenic though, not quite hitting the mark as a fine dining restaurant but delivering a lot more than your typical brunch/lunch spot.
the look of the place, the service (on the surface), the food presentation (if not the portion size) are fine dining standard. it's just not quite there, the portions are too large for one thing and we had a couple of minor issues with the service, just little things like clumsy cutlery layout, our bottle of wine being a bit too far away and glasses not being kept topped up as well as they could be, that and running out of towels in the bathroom.
the menu was a real mix to, with summer and winter fare as well as brunch and lunch style dishes. ironically the summer/winter aspect was not a great problem as the weather outside was in keeping.
we had an amuse bouche that consisted of a hummus dip with radishes and fresh garden peas in their pods and some warm homemade bread. then for starters my companion had the fried ducks egg with scottish girolles, english mustard mayonnaise and toasted brioche - a sort of up market big breakfast, matched with a glass of wild boy chardonnay - kinda of weird, but it worked. i had 1/2 dozen oxtail stuffed snails with garlic butter and soldiers - a nicely presented brunch type dish that was a bit awkward to eat, but very tasty none the less.
for my main course i had the belly of old spot pork, charred spring onions, gooseberries, jerseys and crackling - the portion was huge, but fortunately the pork was nice and light and the gooseberries refreshing, so i had no problem finishing it off. my companions main course was even more substantial, he ordered braised lamb shoulder faggot which came with a rather large pot of pearl barley, peas and mint - very rustic, and definitely not what you expect on a summer menu.
for dessert we had the cherry bakewell tart and the english strawberries, vanilla cream and ginger biscuits accompanied by a rather nice bottle of moscato d'asti.