The Coach, Marlow

I started the week convinced I had COVID, which is regrettable in every way apart from the symptom of lack of taste and smell, which I was intrigued to experience so that I can know what it’s like to be other food bloggers. It turns out I don’t, which is a result given that it was my birthday weekend and tracking would have been a nightmare. Last week we did the Rishi thing, then the pre-birthday drinks in the cocktail bar, then the other cocktail bar, then the hotel cocktail bar because everywhere else is closed. Then the birthday trip away, then back for the birthday dinner with my mate, before the inevitable trip to a couple of pubs. Sunday went back to the pub, and the cocktail bar, and then the different pub. Then Monday night it’s like, okay, this doesn’t feel right at all. If anything it’s made me realise that I should slow down at the moment. Less groups of people over less locations and time from now on for me.

The trip away started with lunch at The Coach. Marlow is a pretty place with pretty ex-London faces spending pretty sums of money on pretty much anything. There are houses that sit on the banks of the Thames with boats just for the hell of it, and butchers which promote their wines of the week for the paltry amount of £40 a bottle. It is a mix of old Buckinghamshire money and new London money with the common denominator of money. Tom Kerridge has a two star pub here which I’ve been to before, and a one star pub which I’m about to write about. To call either the Hand & Flowers or The Coach a pub is a statement I’m not going to back-up with substance here.

It’s a nice spot. Cosy and well appointed, the palate of Victorian green and white so de rigueur, to join the small plates menu that is a very easy way of scaling up a bill quickly. Knowing that we have dinner in a few hours time we keep the order small, and it proves to be a wise choice.

I can’t pretend to love everything we eat. A venison chilli is a wholesome bit of cooking, but is a bit gritty and over seasoned, whilst the caramelised onion and Ogleshield cheese scotch egg is technically sound but the Parmesan veloute it sits in is underwhelming stuff. If it sounds like I’m giving it a hard time, I’m not, but this is a pub with one Michelin star that is presently ranked no.5 on the Top 50 Gastropub list.

When it’s good, it is so very good. The strongest dish of the day is chicken from the rotisserie. Brined and cooked until it’s borderline done, it comes swathed in opaque sheets of lardo and crisps of Jerusalem artichokes. Hidden underneath the lardo is a scattering of seeds and finely chopped herbs, whilst at the base of the dish are a dice of the Jerusalem artichoke bound in, I think, a purée of the same veg. It’s cohesive and rich, the poultry an ideal companion to the earthy, buttery tones of the veg. A chicken Kiev relies on the same meat and one veg (not me, stupid) tactic, using courgette this time as the foil. A courgette purée spun with basil is the highlight of a very nice plate of food.

A word on the chips. I’ve said for years that I consider the chips at Hand and Flowers to be the best chips I’ve ever eaten. These are better; chunkier, with a different cut that benefits the triple-cooked process and gives more potato. You might sniff when I tell you they are £7.50 for a portion including bearnaise sauce, but we’re paying and you’re not. And I’d pay it a lot more frequently if I was local.

Dishes are mostly over a tenner and all under £20, and whilst we escape with a bill under a ton, slightly bigger appetites should allow a bit more including wine. Overall I enjoyed it; the standard is similar to that of Kerridge’s other pub, and the menu is appealing. The best dishes are very good indeed. And those chips. You have to try those chips.

The Crown at Burchetts Green, Berkshire

I’d like to think that a place like The Crown could only exist under its own circumstance. How the unconventional approach of having chef patron Simon Bonwick completely alone in the kitchen allows him to play out the Escoffier tribute without another chef whispering otherwise in his ear. How the front of house, made up of a third of his nine children, are able to talk through the tiny wine list, haggle on the extra bottles on the blackboard, and explain the eccentricities on the menu like a ‘rather nice sauce’, or that day’s ‘nice’ dish. Right down to one of the team jokingly telling us that their Dad would not be happy to see a prawn topple from a main course, it’s an experience which defies convention in its usual sense.

The overall effect is a timeless restaurant that focuses on the roots of fine dining as opposed to the ever changing colours of the leaves on its many branches. The endless towers of cookbooks which litter the bar area have each served a purpose to take the restaurant to the heights of a Michelin star, via a special recommendation from the same guide the previous year. Not bad for a space of just six tables and one chef.

A little canapé arrives alongside the champagne we start with; a delicate thimble of pastry holding a purée of chickpea, lemon, and smoked almond, then a cup of chilled squash soup with clusters of seeds and a hint of spice. Bread is a hot pillowy affair, a little dense, served with slivers of butter pinned together with spikes of lavender and rosemary. A trick we’ll be stealing for dinner parties in our home.

For starters we take a huge cylinder of dressed white crab meat, thatched with batons of apple and a solitary tomato petal. There is a dressing of something sweet and acidic, and a few spiced cashews for good measure. The result is up there with the very best crab dishes I have ever eaten, a tribute to the beauty of the more subtle white flesh. A terrine of pork belly studded with lentils is lovely yet not on the same level. Acidity to cut through the fatty pig is everywhere; a blob of something mustardy, a teeny quenelle of chutney, or the bite of the pickles. They all work.

A beef main is ‘cooked on a string’ and, I’ll be honest, I’m still none the wiser as to what that involves. My guess from the texture of the fillet, is that it is both poached and steamed, resulting in an excellent piece of meat that is very rare but not the slightest bit bloody. With this is spud squared; a fondant and the most buttery of mash with a little confit garlic, some spinach, and mushrooms cooked in plenty of butter. But what makes it is the sauce, reduced so heavily you could varnish a fence with it, and so glossy it could serve as a mirror. Full of bovine notes and with something piquant lurking in the background, it reminds me of the sauce I had with beef at The Ritz, only better.

If I’m launching into hyperbole it’s because we were both having the best time. There is something magical about being somewhere so at ease with itself. The other main of halibut owes much of its majesty to the Breton prawns it shares the plate with, being some of the freshest and tastiest I can recall eating. Like the beef it has the mash and the spinach, though this has a verdant pesto and a little tomato concasse to bolster the summer flavours it speaks of on the menu. A really outstanding dish.

Saint Marcellin cheese gives me happy memories of Mere Richard in Lyon, so when it’s on the menu as cheesecake, I’m ordering it. In truth it’s the one dish I’m not mad on. The cheese flavour comes through nicely, but it’s a little dense and the base is a little chalky. Lovely raspberries though. But frankly who cares when they have steamed syrup sponge as good as this. A light, pillowly bosom, sweet and unforgiving to the hips. A proper dessert. I get a macaron with a candle in because it’s my birthday. It’s a good macaron and a great birthday.

Starters and desserts sit mostly in the teens, whilst the mains above are £40 and £44 respectively. The total bill of over two hundred for two including wine isn’t cheap, but it is worth it. We simple loved The Crown. It defies trends and fashions to serve the food which they are comfortable with, in an environment which they have curated to suite them. With the exception of a few other favourites of ours, it stands out for having a true identity. I can see many other visits happening in the future.