“Hallelujah!” – the “brilliant” food at James & Kate Mackenzie’s “professional” but still “pubby” operation in a “pretty village” has rightly won acclaim; this all purpose place is equally at home “for a ploughman’s lunch outside on a sunny day, or a special dinner”.
Keep your own review of The Pipe & Glass Inn using our diary service.
This turns out to be a “nice, unpretentious country pub serving quality food with inspired touches”. It has just won a Michelin star, though, and he finds his appreciation muddied by his “relationship with the bloody guide”, which he (correctly, in our view, biased as we may be) finds “horribly Francophilic, … inconsistent and scattergun”. “[T]oo often it can get in the way of seeing clearly the restaurants we eat in.… [H]ad I gone to the Pipe & Glass without there being a star in place I would have instantly thought it terrific, but because of that star I was measuring it against an irrelevant scale”. He “hopes [the award] doesn't bring is battalions of fork-wielding, napkin-sniffing, dish-photographing Michelin pervs”, like – he has the candour to admit – himself.
Jay Rayner (22nd February 2010)
Follow hardensbites
Become a Harden's fan
