Tag: The 8+ club

Restaurant review: Quality Chop House, Farringdon

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As the proud partner of somebody who proudly works in retail, I accepted long ago that my weekends wouldn’t be like most people’s. For many years, we’d get a Saturday together if we were very lucky, a Sunday if we were a little less so. Whole weekends together were a chimera, generally speaking, and had to be booked and planned far in advance. And sometimes I’d get entire weekends to myself where I learned to like my own company better and make myself find things to do: I’m sure, on some level, they were character building. 

It hasn’t all been like that. When lockdown hit and the shops shut, we were in each other’s company all day; I was between jobs back then, and all that time together felt like a present from the universe. For all the fear of getting seriously ill, all the wondering where your next supermarket shop will come from, I’ll always be grateful for that. Walks every day round the deserted business park feeling like we were in a post-apocalyptic movie, hearing Zoë on conference calls on the front step in the sunshine, the buzz of the neighbourhood WhatsApp group as everyone prepared to step outside at 6pm and wave hello. In hindsight it was a lovely time, even if I never read Proust or wrote that novel. 

Then at the beginning of last year Zoë was on a secondment which meant that, for six months, she worked Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. And we got to experience together that life that we non-retailers take for granted – of shutting your laptop on a Friday afternoon, pouring that first drink and opening that glorious parcel of time that’s all yours. Living with someone in retail, I hope, makes me appreciate that privilege a lot more. It also makes me conscious of the sacrifice people in hospitality, as well as retail, make for the rest of us. 

The reason I start by saying all this is that for the past six months Zoë has been on a stretch where she works every Sunday and has every Saturday off, a halfway house between the conventional 9-5 and what she had before. When that happened, I became the equivalent of those people who say they don’t like wasting the day. I proclaimed that we mustn’t squander those twenty-four precious Saturdays, that we should Go Places, See People and Do Things.

Of course now that the six months is coming to an end I have to conclude that we didn’t, really. They got eaten up with illness or other commitments, or kiboshed by train strikes, or a dozen other things. I often think of the quote falsely attributed to John Lennon, that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. But it’s not a tragedy, when I think of what we did instead – Saturday morning lie-ins, or afternoons spent in the Nag’s or at Double-Barrelled people watching or planning the next holiday. We still went places, saw people and did things, just without the Capital Letters Of Expectation.

But I really did want to tick off some restaurants, the ones I’ve always wanted to visit but never got round to. In that sense we made woeful progress. But we earmarked last Saturday, one of our final Saturdays together for a while, and after some deliberation I picked Quality Chop House, because of all the restaurants on the to do list I’ve talked about before, it’s been on there possibly the longest, always close to the top.

It’s a curious beast, very much in the vanguard of modern British cooking and regularly topping everybody’s list of London’s 50 best restaurants, despite the waxing and waning of food trends. And you could be forgiven, from the “Opened in 1869” on the website, for thinking it’s that kind of place, a restaurant like Sweeting’s or Wilton’s that has been around for ever. But actually, Quality Chop House is more St John than Rules and although a restaurant has been on the site for over 150 years its current incarnation began in 2012, the last year when we were all proud of Britain.

Since then it has firmly established itself under head chef Sean Searley, who was in the kitchen when they first reopened. It’s expanded, too, with a sister wine bar and small plates restaurant, Quality Wines, next door. Some say it’s even better than its big sibling, but I wanted to start with the original and best, so after a pre-lunch beer at Mikkeller on Exmouth Market Zoë and I took a short wander and passed through its handsome doors. PROGRESSIVE WORKING CLASS CATERERS was etched on a panel of the window: it’s like they saw me coming.

The interior achieves what the menu also aspires to, managing to be simultaneously Victorian and timeless. There are two rooms – the more famous one with benches like pews and the second one which is less photogenic. It’s still a convivial space though, all chessboard tiles and bentwood chairs, chalkboards on the walls listing special wines by the glass (they start at over £20, just so you know). I had a feeling that although the other room had a wow factor this one might have been comfier, and we had a decent sized table, although we had to sit diagonally across from each other so as not to butt shoulder blades with the table behind.

The menu changes daily, which meant that I’d looked at it daily in the run-up, wishing that some things would hang in there until my lunch booking, happy for others to drop out. It was compact and, to me, in the same vein as St John, with a handful of snacks, four starters, three mains and a selection of the eponymous chops.

It’s a menu you have to mentally recalibrate as you read, because a couple of the snacks nudge into starter pricing (and then some, in the case of the £24 chicken liver parfait) and the starters are between £14 and £18. As for mains, if you want a chop or a steak they start at just shy of £35 and climb from there. I was expecting that, so it didn’t bother me, but it’s worth mentioning that their weekday no-choice set lunch is a more modest £29 for three courses. From a look at their Instagram, it has some corkers on it.

But before that we had a cocktail, because it was one of our last Saturdays together for a while. Zoë’s negroni was made with Lemon Pekoe gin and a smidge of 25 year old Madeira and was a knockout. My rhubarb Collins was, for my money, too sweet, the cordial all syrup and no bite. That’s not to say, though, that I didn’t finish it.

The problem with a menu that has snacks and starters on it is that you have to have more restraint than me not to order both. We paced it so the snacks came with our aperitifs and they included some of my favourite things in the whole meal. Salami was by Molinari, a San Francisco-based salumeria almost as old as Quality Chop House, and was just exquisite – thick and coarse but with no bounce or resistance. I loved it, although I’d have liked some cornichons: it reminded me of similar dishes at Oxford’s Pompette where they just leave the jar at the table and let you serve yourself with tongs.

But far better was the dish I had to talk Zoë into letting me order. Smoked cod’s roe came topped with grated, cured egg yolk and a cluster of hot salt and vinegar doughnuts, all gloriously nubbled and irregular. This dish was close to faultless, and scooping a doughnut through the roe before popping it in your mouth was a hugely tactile joy. The smoke in the roe was subtle, the vinegar on the doughnuts beautifully in check. If I had one criticism you needed a couple more doughnuts to really clear up all the roe, but I could forgive Quality Chop House a lot for introducing me to the concept of salt and vinegar doughnuts in the first place.

“This is like – hear me out” said Zoë, giving me a warning about what was to come, “posh Primula.”

“Primula tastes of cheese, not fish. Or are you saying this is like a cross between Dairylea and Shippams?”

“Maybe. And I don’t even have a problem with the vinegar. Menus should make a point of this – it should say salt and vinegar doughnuts, with hidden vinegar.”

Some people. Every bit as good were the pork shoulder croquettes, little dense dice of saddleback packed into a breadcrumbed shell and placed in the middle of a coaster of lime green leek mayonnaise. These were top notch, and although they’re listed as snacks I wish I’d had a portion to myself. I’m so used to Spanish croquetas, all light with bechamel, that I’d forgotten how good something like this could be – nothing but moreish shreds of salty pork. I eked this dish out, knowing that however well I did so it would be gone too soon.

“I don’t know why they call them croquettes” was Zoë’s feedback. “They’re definitely nuggets.”

“I don’t think they’re going to rebrand as the Quality Nugget House, true though it might be. People will get the wrong idea.”

With our snacks out of the way it was time to take the meal seriously and place a proper order. By this stage what had begun as an almost-empty dining room was full, and it made me realise just how efficient the staff were. Efficient and hard working, finding the perfect happy medium between the two unpalatable extremes of matey and glacial. Always there when you needed them, too, in a manner I associate more with eating in Paris than London.

We also ordered a bottle of wine, going eventually for an interesting-looking number from Roussilon that promised peach, herbs and smoke. It lived up to that, and I thought was about its money for just shy of sixty pounds. Initially I thought that the wine pricing was a little sharp at Quality Chop House considering they had a wine shop next door – there was very little south of forty quid – but later on I saw the wine we’d chosen on sale at Bloomsbury’s Shrine To The Vine for thirty pounds, so if nothing else their markups could be a lot steeper.

Starters built on the promise of what had gone before. I am a sucker for sweetbreads so I tend to order them whenever I see them and last year – at Paris’s Parcelles and Malaga’s La Cosmopolita – I had two sweetbread dishes which raised the bar. If anything, Quality Chop House’s rendition might have exceeded them. These were veal sweetbreads cooked in beef fat, and although the fat didn’t overpower them it did give them an almost crispy texture without sacrificing their softness.

But the supporting players were just as important. I’m used to calçots paired with romesco, and I’ve enjoyed that combination many times, but having the two of them as an accompaniment to sweetbreads was not something I’d ever considered. And it all went together so beautifully: heat, nuttiness and sweetness from the alliums. A beautiful dish.

Zoë didn’t especially fancy any of the four starters on offer so decided to grab an eponymous chop from the snacks menu. As a fun-sized demonstration of the meat they bought and how they cooked it, is was difficult to fault and came on a squiggle of cumin yoghurt, strewn with pickled chillies.

A dish made with lamb chops is one of our regular midweek staples, especially when we’re trying to cut down on carbs (did I mention that I have to lose about five stone in three months for this wedding I’m having?). And I wish when I cooked lamb chops they tasted like this – the forkful I tried was impressive stuff.

At this point I was convinced that I was halfway through a record-breaking meal: the wine was slipping down nicely, everything I’d eaten was magnificent and the room was buzzing. This was what I had told myself we’d do on Zoë’s Saturdays, and even if we’d left it late we’d saved the best until last.

For me the mains didn’t reach the same heights, but it didn’t change the fact that if I’d had them in any other restaurant they would have easily made my top ten of the year. I decided to eschew, rather than chew, the chops so I’d chosen the fish course – a firm, bronzed slab of pollock sitting in a moat of crab bisque, a blob of aioli behind it and some wild garlic reclining, wilted and louche, on top.

That all sounds superb, and it wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t blown away the way I had been by the smaller courses. The fish was perhaps a few seconds too well-cooked, the bisque lacking in savoury depth. I wasn’t sure the aioli added much. Was I being ultra-critical because everything else had been so fantastic? Possibly.

Zoë on the other hand had opted for the double chop combo, following up her lamb starter with an immense pork loin chop. It was Saddleback, again, and it was undeniably a terrific, whopping piece of meat. It was so beautifully cooked, the meat tender and nowhere near dry, the fat softened to the point where it was the best thing on the plate. I was allowed a fair bit of this – 400g is a big old chop – and it made me suspect that picking the fish dish was tantamount to, as a friend once put it, going to Nando’s and having the prego steak roll.

Both dishes were lacking in carbs or veg, and you have to order those separately. Maybe it was those snacks at the start, but neither of us could work up much enthusiasm for a bitter leaf salad with grapefruit (which didn’t feel like it went with anything we’d chosen) or squash with rosemary. We did, however, gravitate towards Quality Chop House’s confit potatoes. It’s a dish they’ve become known for, perhaps more than any other, and it has inspired a lot of imitations. It was also the one dish I was determined not to leave Quality Chop House without trying.

And yes, they were every bit as good as that picture down there makes them look. Hefty cuboids made up of many thin layers of spud, pressed and then fried until the outside is a salty, brittle treat. If you like starch in general, or potatoes in particular, I’m prepared to go out on a limb and say that this is a death row dish. I am struggling to thing of anything – the crispiest chip, the most buttery mash, the creamiest dauphinoise – that quite matches this as the apex of potato perfection. Personally I probably wouldn’t have piped mustard on them. But it’s their place, so they can do what the hell they like.

But the strange thing is this – I loved them, but I wasn’t sure they really went with either of our mains. That, and the lack of some kind of veg, made the meal feel a little lop-sided, a tad needlessly beige. Was I being ultra-critical because everything else was so good? There’s that question again.

Having dessert, under these circumstances, was a foregone conclusion. But first we finished our wine and had a look at the dessert wines on offer. Many of them were available by the glass, and the menu does recommend some pairings with desserts, but when I noticed a Riesling by excellent German producer Staffelter Hof my decision, and Zoë’s, were made. I’ve enjoyed their wines both at Clay’s and Marmo, but didn’t know they did a dessert wine. And it was outstanding – golden and sweet, sticky but not sickly.

Zoe’s choice of dessert, under any other circumstances, would have been mine. And it was a lovely, classic piece of work, a cheesecake with a thin but exquisite biscuit base and a layer of mandarin orange and something called “blood orange sherbert” on top. It was as good an example of a cheesecake as you’ll find, but fundamentally it was just a cheesecake.

I think I picked better: I had the ice cream. And yes, fundamentally you could say it was “just” ice cream but that would fail to do it justice. It was an olive oil ice cream made from eye-poppingly expensive Capezzana olive oil, and it was the best ice cream I’ve had in this country. Easily up there with anything I’ve had abroad, too. I’ve not had olive oil ice cream in many years but here the oil permeated everything, giving the ice cream a perfumed, grassy note that took it up several levels.

The whole thing was drizzled with olive oil that collected brightly at the bottom of the bowl, waiting to be scooped up. And each spoonful had a little crunch of salt crystals. This dish wasn’t sweet or savoury – it was far too clever to pick a side in that way. It thumbed its nose at being either and was instead authentically, enchantingly itself. It cost ten pounds, one of the least expensive dishes of the meal, and was worth every penny: if I could teleport any one dish from the Quality Chop House to my sofa right now, as I write this, it would be this one.

We had outlasted a few tables that had arrived after us – such quitters – and as our bill came with a couple of pieces of white chocolate fudge we chatted with our server. We asked if we could buy the wine we’d had at the wine bar next door and she said no, because they’d made a conscious decision to stock completely different wines there. “It’s nice for us, because it means when we go there for a meal we get to try something new” she said, adding that the staff happily ate in the restaurant or the neighbouring bar on their own dollar because the food was so good.

“The thing is, people come for the chops but I think everything else on the menu is so good. Like the fish you ordered. And you really need to come back during the week, because the set menu is amazing.”

Our bill, with service included, came to about two hundred and eighty pounds. I know that might be the bit where many of you wince – don’t I know there’s a cost of living crisis on? – and I could say that we ordered a digestif and a dessert wine each, a decent bottle of white and four courses.

But it is difficult to deny that unless you’ve having that set lunch menu during the week, Quality Chop House is a pricey restaurant. When I compare it to Manteca, across town, where we ate easily as much food last year and spent three quarters of that amount, it drifts firmly into special occasion territory. But then Manteca was 2023, and this is 2024, and a lot of restaurants are going to the wall. Even having only been there the once, I’d like it if Quality Chop House wasn’t one of them.

After my meal I knew Quality Chop House was extremely good, but I also knew I needed to reflect to figure out just how good it was. And the answer, I think, is very, but not without a handful of bet-hedging caveats. It is classic and timeless and that is a big part of its strength. You won’t be buffeted by food trends or forced to eat anything that’s been freeze dried or agitated into a foam. You’ll have a gorgeous, comforting meal in a space that feels like it could have existed and looked like this at any time in the last hundred years. You’ll experience superlative service, and come away knowing that you’ve treated yourself.

And yet there is a slight niggle that stops me giving it one of the highest ratings I’ve ever awarded. Brilliant though it is, it is pricey. The menu is a tad unbalanced, as I said. And the most interesting things on it are at the beginning and at the end, which is why I understand the plaudits that have been heaped on Quality Wines next door.

Because as much as I liked seeing a hulking great chop set down in front of us, there was a bit of me that would have preferred a restaurant that stuck to the snacks and the small plates, and maybe offered wines at more approachable prices. This venue was great, I enjoyed it and I’m so glad I went there. But that venue, the venue I might have liked Quality Chop House to be, sounds like it’s literally next door.

But never mind. After many of the things I’ve eaten this year – for the blog or for fun, mindfully or mindlessly, out and dressed up or in my comfies on the sofa, in company or alone – are firmly in the past I will still remember that afternoon of chat, laughter and leisure. And I’ll remember that ice cream. Any restaurant that can make memories like that is okay in my book.

Quality Chop House – 8.8
92-94 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3EA
020 72781452

https://thequalitychophouse.com

Restaurant review: Hala Lebanese

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Last month, after a very successful ER readers’ lunch at Kungfu Kitchen – a total of fifty-six guests in attendance and what felt like about the same number of different dishes to try – the hardcore lunch-goers were sitting in the luxurious surrounds of Park House up on campus, shooting the breeze. It was early evening and even though it was right at the beginning of December it felt, to me at least, like the start of the festive season.

I always love that bit, when the event has gone well and everybody is full and happy and I get to have a few pints and chat to all the people I haven’t yet caught up with. The readers’ lunches have been going for six years now and although there are always newcomers, many of my regulars have been coming along for a fair old time, a few since the very beginning. 

On this particular occasion I found myself in conversation with Jonathan, a newbie who very specifically wanted to talk to me about a bugbear of his: how come there weren’t any good neighbourhood restaurants where he lived in east Reading? I thought about it, and told him I had to agree. I said that since O Portugues had mysteriously closed in the spring there was nothing that even came close.

You could eat in the likes of Rizouq on the Wokingham Road, I supposed, as it had a few tables, and I’d heard suggestions that a burger joint, Pattie N’ Pulled, was operating out of the Roebuck (it looks like they’ve since moved on). But apart from that, and the artist formerly known as the Garden Of Gulab, restaurants were thin on the ground. I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but Jonathan wanted to talk about it in more detail, as if I had the power to change it.

I do get it though. As a proud East Reading resident myself, albeit one living far closer to the centre, it is an enduring mystery that it’s such a dead zone for restaurants. Caversham is well served, and Whitley and Katesgrove have a handful of places. Tilehurst, with the addition of spots like The Switch and Vesuvio, is seeing a bit of a resurgence and the Oxford Road has always been a crucible of culinary invention. Even dear old Woodley, where I grew up, has a handful of restaurants worth a visit.

By comparison, the Wokingham Road feels like slim pickings. It has takeaways, and two biryani places, and the likes of Earley Café and Chaiiwala, but nothing you could describe as a neighbourhood restaurant. It’s almost as if the people living near Palmer Park are expected to hop on the 17, walk to Kungfu Kitchen, settle for the Hope And Bear or, if all else fails, fall into Ye Babam Ye. If it wasn’t for the likes of Smash N Grab and Cake & Cream, you might struggle to see redeeming features at all. And Smash N Grab, sad to say, has its last ever service tomorrow.

I did remember, though, talking to Jonathan that there was one possible contender in the form of Hala Lebanese. It opened last June on the Wokingham Road, just past the stretch of shops, in a spot formerly occupied by another Lebanese restaurant, Alona. I still remembered Alona, partly for the astroturf but mainly for the wobbly shawarma that had slightly traumatised my dining companion John and me. I told Jonathan I would get to Hala as soon as I could and, what with Christmas and Covid, I think I’ve pretty much kept my promise: last Saturday Zoë and I trekked up the Wokingham Road to give it a whirl.

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Café review: Filter Coffee House

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As of October 2024 Filter Coffee House has changed its interior layout and so is now takeaway only.

Filter Coffee House, a tiny café on Castle Street offering authentic South Indian coffee, opened last August. It occupies a unit which as far as I can remember used to be home to a very small, rather unsuccessful produce store by the people behind Tamp Culture (remember them?). I found myself stopping in last year a couple of weeks after Filter Coffee House opened and, slightly bending my usual rule to wait a month, I talked about it on social media.

I couldn’t help it. I waxed lyrical on Instagram about their coffee and, in particular, their banana bun, a confection quite unlike anything I’d ever eaten before. Not quite sweet, not quite savoury but glazed, complex and moreish, it was not the kind of thing you eat and forget. Quite the contrary: you want to tell the world about it. I loved it so much that when I put together my list of Reading’s 50 best dishes last September, as part of the blog’s 10th birthday celebrations, I snuck it in at number 47. I called it a little miracle. 

Maybe I was jumping the gun but I had a feeling it was going to be huge, and I wanted my admiration of that banana bun to be a matter of public record as soon as possible. Because there are few four word combinations in the English language quite as satisfying, if you ask me, as I told you so.

Anyway, the amount of praise that bun has garnered on social media since has borne out my hunch. But not only that, if you follow Filter Coffee House’s hugely winning Instagram feed you’ll see that they’ve really flourished in the last five months. The month after they opened they teamed up with nearby Rise to expand their range of baked goods. In October they introduced a menu of Saturday specials, and in November they brought in a sandwich menu.

In December, naturally, there was a Christmas menu – the “Mistle-Toast” is still available, if you’re tempted – and now Filter Coffee House also stocks goodies by Cocolico, Reading’s vegan pâtissière. The overall picture is one of constant forward movement and innovation, and it shows no signs of stopping: last Sunday, for the first time, they had a stall at Caversham’s Artisan Market. 

And yet, shamefully, with one thing and another I had not been back since that first visit back in August. Of all the places I’d neglected in the latter half of 2023, sorting this one was right at the top of my list. So last Saturday, lured by that specials menu and fresh from the elation of having bought our wedding rings in town, Zoë and I sauntered over, keen to see how things had progressed.

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Café review: Minas Café

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I think it was Kierkegaard who said, very wisely, that life can only be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forward. And I think you could say the same about food trends: it’s easy to pontificate at the start of the year about what you think is going to happen, but the world of food is full of surprises and it’s far better to bide your time, get to the point where the New Year is around the corner and identify the patterns with the benefit of hindsight.

It doesn’t take much to form a food trend in Reading either, even if it is the U.K.’s largest town: two similar establishments opening in a year is a coincidence, three is a trend. So last year Reading had two main trends, I would say. The first was biryani places springing up all over the shop – Biryani Mama, Biryani Lounge, Biryani Boyzz and so on. Add in the ambiguously-named Biryanish and you definitely have yourself what passes for a trend. And of course there was the proliferation of sushi places – Intoku, Iro and You Me Sushi all opened in quick succession to challenge the primacy of Sushimania, Yo Sushi and grab and go chains like Kokoro and Itsu.

What about this year? Marugame Udon and Cici Noodle Bar opened weeks apart, but I’m not sure that’s quite enough. For me the biggest trend of the year has been a raft of interesting cafés, moving beyond the ubiquity of third-wave places like Compound or C.U.P. to offer something less generic and more regionally specific, potentially the antidote to all those “not another coffee place” bores out there (where will they go now Berkshire Live has kicked the bucket?).

So down the Oxford Road you have Time 4 Coffee, a cafe apparently offering pasteis da nata, Portuguese bread with chouriço and a range of other traditional dishes from that under-represented cuisine; I’ve not yet been, but it’s high on my list to review next year. On Castle Street Filter Coffee House is already making a name for itself with its authentic South Indian filter coffee and absolutely delicious banana buns, and continues to develop a big menu for such a little space, with intriguing specials available every Saturday morning.

And then finally we have the subject of this week’s review, Minas Cafe, which opened in April and is perhaps the most incongruous of the lot – a Brazilian café, no less, in Whitley, of all places. That I hadn’t been to check it out yet felt like it was verging on neglect, so last Sunday when I had the day to myself I hopped on the number 6 bus just before lunchtime and alighted by Buckland Road. Whitley was shrouded in a drizzly mist, the day murky and dreich: a less Brazilian scene was difficult to imagine.

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Restaurant review: Chequers, Bath

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I hadn’t been to Bath since before the pandemic, so when arranging a leisurely weekend lunch with my old friend Dave it sprung to mind as a break from the norm. Especially as that norm largely involves him visiting me in Reading and complaining at length that Swindon has nothing anywhere near as good (a hypothesis I tested a few months back: it isn’t the whole story).

My relative ignorance of Bath is largely a consequence of the ridiculous train fares: it costs pretty much the same exorbitant amount to sit on the train for fifteen more minutes and get off at Temple Meads, so that’s what I’ve done every time. And otherwise I usually go to Oxford, which as we’ve established is cheap, convenient and full of good places to eat. But I’ve been hearing an increasing buzz about a number of interesting restaurants springing up in Bath, so I thought this would be an auspicious opportunity to try somewhere properly new for a change.

But where to go? Even a little research uncovered an embarrassment of riches. There’s the likes of Upstairs At Landrace and Beckford Bottle Shop and Canteen, which have attracted the attention of various broadsheet hacks, and Wilks, the formerly Michelin-starred former Bristol restaurant which has recently relocated. There’s excellent fish at the Scallop Shell, or wine and small plates at Corkage. And finally there’s Chequers (not The Chequers, if their website and social media are to be believed), a gastropub near the Royal Crescent that won a Bib Gourmand from Michelin this year. 

Well, I say finally but actually the list goes on and on: I could also have gone high end at The Elder or institution Menu Gordon Jones, or eaten more casually at any of Pintxo, Bath’s branch of Bosco Pizzeria, Yak Yeti Yak (which celebrates its twentieth birthday next year) or much-loved Italian Sotto Sotto. Why had I never reviewed anywhere in Bath before? And why didn’t it have a restaurant blog of its own? It was baffling.

So why Chequers this week? Well, I’d like to say that it’s because I reviewed all the options and wanted somewhere classic and timeless, untouched by the ebbing tides of small plates, natural wine and craft beer. I’d like to say, as I have before, that the Bib Gourmand remains, in this country, far more useful than stars or the Top 100 Restaurants or Gastropubs or the proclamations of some blogging tosspot or other.

But in truth I went to Chequers (the lack of a The is going to get annoying, I can tell: we’ll get through it together) for a far simpler reason. I gave a list to my friend Dave, asked him to pick and he chose Chequers because it was the only only he had been to before. In hindsight, I probably should have predicted this outcome: Dave has raised risk aversion to an art form, never encountered an airport he didn’t want to arrive at four hours before his flight was scheduled to take off. He is a man who uses the L word constantly with his wife and all his close friends: unfortunately, it stands for logistics.

Anyway, from the outside it was hard to imagine it could be a bad choice. It’s in a particularly attractive part of the city, just off from the beautiful Georgian sweep of The Circus, and Rivers Street is so fetching that even before I’d set foot through the front door of Chequers I found myself wishing it was my local. And inside it was all tasteful and classy, wood-panelled walls in muted Farrow and Ball shades and a stunning parquet floor. I say I wished it was my local, but I couldn’t say whether it was one of those gastropubs that was still a pub, or whether you’d have to be eating to pay it a visit.

Not that it mattered in our case – my friends Dave, Al and I had made our way there with one thing on our mind: luncheon. We were given an especially nice table in a little three-sided nook off from one of the two dining rooms, with comfy banquettes and a nice view out across the pub.

The menu, too, was more cheffy than pubby. The only real concession to pub food was the presence of burger and chips or steak and chips, but other than that it was a real beauty pageant of great sounding dishes, all of which you could comfortably order. On any other day I could have been telling you about the octopus with romesco, or the thyme roasted bone marrow, the saag aloo fritters or the pork tenderloin with Stornaway black pudding. Starters jostled around the ten pound mark, mains ran a much wider gamut from seventeen to thirty.

So agonising choices all round, posed by a kitchen that seemed, on paper at least, to know exactly what it was doing. And although I’d say most of it was squarely Modern European, little hints – a ponzo cured yolk here, tamarind glazed oyster mushrooms there – spoke of a little culinary wanderlust.

Matters were further complicated by a specials board including roasted monkfish tail with sobrasada, or brill with seaweed butter. Fish courses were well represented in general and I should also add, because I never talk about this enough, that there were two credible meat-free options for both starters and mains, more than half of which appeared to be vegan.

We had plenty to catch up on, so it was some time before we got our shit together and placed our order. But in the meantime we occupied ourselves with a snack from the specials board, pork scratchings with apple compote. These were wonderful, light, Quaverish things which were somehow completely lacking in grease but still left your fingers shiny by the time you’d finished.

If I was being pedantic I’d say these were more pork rinds than pork scratchings, but it’s not like I was demanding a refund. The apple dip, almost a deep, fruity ketchup, went brilliantly. Our server had brought over a bottle of Fleurie, the fancy face of Beaujolais, and it was absolutely divine with enough complexity, we thought, to stand up to what we planned to order. We clinked glasses, with a good feeling about what lay ahead.

One thing Dave loves even more than logistics is venison, so when the menu offered multiple opportunities to eat it he was dead set on taking those opportunities. I might have inwardly rolled my eyes at him – predictable, risk averse Dave – and then he showed me up as the judgmental twat I am by ordering a phenomenal dish. A solitary venison faggot, deep and delicious, was plonked on a puddle of parsnip puree, itself ringed with jus, and crowned with parsnip crisps.

But the thing that made this so enviable was the salsa verde which anointed it. Venison with dark fruits or chocolate is a tried and tested way to tease out the characteristics of that singular meat. But salse verde? A new one on me, and downright brilliant. Dave claims he let me try some for completeness’ sake, for the review. But I think he just wanted to provoke starter envy.

I couldn’t complain too much, though, because Al and I had both plumped for an equally admirable dish. Lamb neck terrine (which we couldn’t help but pronounce as nectarine to our server, with predictably unamusing consequences) was a really wonderful, earthy choice. But that denseness was offset with a superb lightness of touch elsewhere.

Pea purée, all hyper-saturated colour and high-contrast flavour, was a perfect accompaniment. The terrine was studded with cubes of confit aubergine and the whole thing was set off with a tumble of girolles. The menu said they were pickled, but if they were it had been done very subtly. This cost nine pounds, and was every bit as tasty as it was decorous.

Now, normally my rule when I go on duty is to order something different from my companions. But I was feeling mutinous that day, no doubt a hangover from week after week of sitting across the table from Zoë watching her demolish my first choice on the menu, so for once I decided to go easy on myself and order the venison, as I knew Dave would do.

And as it turns out Al went for the same thing too, which I think amused our server. She was brilliant throughout the lunch by the way – fantastic at looking after us, hugely engaging and clearly enthusiastic about Chequers and what it does. She twinkled indulgently at the three of us from start to finish, although whether it was from genuine entertainment or pity I suspect we will never know.

So was the venison good enough to justify three separate orders? Well, it depends rather who you ask. Dave loved it and demolished it without complaint, Al did too. I was slightly more circumspect. Although I’m not sure why because every component worked. On paper it was a smash hit, the loin beautifully cooked, still a ruddy pink where it should have been.

And the cavolo nero was a ferrous joy – it’s one of my favourite veg and a surefire sign that autumn is well under way, even if it was still warm outside in November. Little wedges of golden beetroot and scattered blackberries added earthiness and sweetness. But the real star of the show, billed as a hash brown of all things, was a hefty brick of shredded potato, pressed and fried until burnished and crispy, a proper golden wonder. I found myself enjoying this more than the venison, although I don’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one – like it or not, it was the spud I found myself ekeing out.

So why did I like it rather than love it? Well, believe it or not it was a little too restrained for me. The jus, such as it was, was gorgeous (black garlic was involved, apparently) but the dish needed more of it. Venison is a dry meat at the best of times and this needed more sauce to bring everything together. Without that it was a bunch of well-behaved elements badly in search of an overarching theme (maybe, one day, I’ll make it into Pseud’s Corner).

It was also, at thirty pounds, the most expensive dish on the menu: I couldn’t help thinking of the previous day, when dinner at the Lyndhurst had involved pheasant breast, a croquette of shredded pheasant leg, a slab of confit potato, parsnip puree and a lake of gravy for considerably less money. The Lyndhurst might never get a Bib Gourmand, but for quality and value they can comfortably beat at least one pub that’s got one.

The choice of desserts was more compact than that of mains and starters, and because we all fancied two desserts we picked one each and one to share. The one in the middle of the table was Chequers’ pavlova, made with Pernod roasted fig and granola. I have to say that I’m glad this was the one we shared, because if I’d had one to myself I would have wanted to order another dessert to make up for the disappointment.

I love Pernod, I love figs, I love the sweetness of roasted fennel. This should have been right up my alley, but the Pernod was overpowering, brutally harsh and bitter. I had a spoonful and told the others they were welcome to it. Such a pity, though, because the meringue and the Chantilly cream were both outstanding.

My own personal dessert, although better than that, still didn’t scale the heights. I’m a sucker for a chocolate cremeux, and Chequers’ rendition was a glossy marvel. But serving it with a giant nugget of honeycomb that I struggled to break up with a spoon, half fearing that it would wang across the room, wasn’t a helpful combination. Blackberries made another appearance, pickled this time, although they’d been pickled with the same diffident touch as the girolles earlier on.

Maybe I was getting curmudgeonly by this point but I also didn’t understand why they’d festooned the whole thing with foliage. It made it look like something you’d find on the forest floor, if somebody’s owner hadn’t bothered to clean it up.

This might be sour grapes, because Al and Dave ordered something I never order, sticky toffee pudding, and it was the best sticky toffee pudding I’ve only ever had a spoonful of. I sniffily thought it was overkill serving it with salted caramel and a brandy snap biscuit on top and stem ginger nestled in the brandy snap. Well, this just goes to show that I know the square root of fuck all, because it was a miraculous dessert – every element working on its own, but completely transfigured by juxtaposition. The salted caramel sauce alone was worth the price of admission alone, the best I can remember (and I’ve tried a fair few).

“Why do people only say cheers with drinks?” said Dave as, thin-lipped and resentful, I took a sip of my dessert wine. “People ought to say cheers after the first mouthful of a dessert like this.” Smug wanker, I thought.

All good things must come to an end, and once we had digested, discussed and cogitated it was time to settle up and make our way across the city in search of somewhere to drink more and talk nonsense. Even then, in the back of my mind, I was thinking that Chequers, with that table, that view and the prospect that if I stayed another hour I might be able to excuse ordering a sticky toffee pudding to myself, was a decidedly difficult place to leave.

But the beers and banquettes at Kingsmead Street Bottle were calling to us, so it was time to go. Our meal came to just over two hundred and twenty pounds, not including tip. You could spend less, I’m sure, if you didn’t order multiple desserts and a trio of glasses of late harvest Semillon, but I didn’t leave feeling mugged.

A really beautiful pub doing really wonderful food is one of life’s great pleasures, as is a Saturday lunchtime spent in one with old friends,a good bottle of red, gossip and food envy. In that sense, Chequers was only ever going to be a success. And yet I do find myself weighing it against other places with similar credentials. I liked it far better than the Black Rat in Winchester which lost a Michelin star and lost its way. I’m not sure I preferred it to Oxford’s Magdalen Arms, where the prices are a little less steep and the food a lot less pristine.

And, of course, the nearest thing we have closer to home is the Lyndhurst: I’m sure if you picked it up and dropped it in Bath it would finally get the plaudits it always seems to miss out on. But nevertheless it’s impossible to dispute that Chequers has got so many things right, from the beauty of its dining room to the sheer quality of its welcome. And if I didn’t love everything I ate, I could appreciate that all of it, with the exception of that pavlova, was accomplished, clever and skilfully done.

So here goes one of those positive reviews that somehow, even so, isn’t quite positive enough: I thought Chequers was very good. I wouldn’t go to Bath just to eat there, but if I was in Bath, and I wasn’t in the business of constantly finding new places so I can write about them, I would definitely book another table. If ever you find yourself in Bath, I think you could do an awful lot worse.

Chequers – 8.3
50 Rivers St, Bath, BA1 2QA
01225 428924

https://chequersbath.net