Stovell's

"The restaurant has not been open on the first working day of the New Year for a number of years, but it was clearly the right thing to do in 2018 as the lunch sitting was very well attended and the diners were certainly able to profit from the high standard set by Fernando Stovell in his mind-your-head 16th century mansion. Although the Mexican tasting menu looked interesting, we decided to go à la carte, and, unusually, we selected different options for each of the courses. The amuse-bouches tickled the palate appropriately, tapioca crisp with garam masala and creamy aubergine dip, and a sweet celeriac, parsnip and potato soup with horseradish foam setting us up for some very good open fire-roasted Norfolk guinea fowl with quince and a lovely warm foie gras dish with toasted hazelnuts, Grelot onions, hay tea dressing with sherry and a cooling pennywort juice. Next came a deconstructed beef Wellington, tasty char-grilled local beef sitting on top of a flaky pastry “bun” with a lovely truffle mash, oxtail, brassica and perfect duck-fat cooked chips, and wood-roasted Iberico pork neck which was beautifully tender, had the authentic Spanish taste and was enhanced by pork “popcorn”, avocado served three ways, and onion crisp. A pre-dessert of lime granita with raspberry and hibiscus sorbet was extremely good as well as acting as a palate cleanser for what the menu claimed to be a chocolate mille-feuille but was actually a tennis ball sized sphere cleverly filled with a ganache and accompanied by banana sprinkled with caramelised sugar and vanilla cream, while the other dessert, carrot cake, came in a mini garden pot with confit baby carrots and smoked sour cream. These thoughtful variations on standard themes and the good biscotti, chocolate balls with a touch of Bailey’s, a macaron with a touch of chilli and a chilli choco-brownie which finished our lunch all made a very good impression and confirmed once more that, for us, Michelin is less likely to get restaurant ratings right than the other guides."