The Sunday Times
Adam Kay visited a country pub in a “tiny and expensively formed Cotswolds village” overlooking the “sunscorched but stunning Evenlode Valley”. “There can’t be many restaurants in the country with a better view,” although the “wipe-clean faux rattan chairs” on the terrace “suggest the end-of-season sale at B&Q”, while the bar’s “beautiful ancient oak beams shake their timbers sadly at the brand-new panelling and floor”, making it feel “like a chain”.
Adam’s martini arrived at room temperature and “tasted of a mixture of petrol station vodka and petrol station petrol” (perhaps his own fault for ordering a martini in a country pub), but it was followed by a “decent viognier”. The chef James Erasmus, boasts an impressive CV including The Ledbury, but dinner contained “few surprises and too many let-downs”; the kitchen had a “misplaced confidence”, with “grand ambitions often stumbling over the basics”.
On the credit side, ‘Pekin duck’ was a “rather pretty-looking vanilla slice of terrine served between crackers and dotted with fuity splodges”, and côte de boeuf was good if slightly unrendered, with a piquant café au lait sauce. But salads were poor, potatoes and onions wrinkled and overcooked, and a beetroot main course “arrives in three great slabs, as if someone’s knocked over a Stonehenge trilithon, and is overcooked, its texture not far off the accompanying sheep’s milk curd”. Among the desserts, a choux bun tasted like the Yorkshire pudding you find in your oven ten days after your last roast dinner.
Adam Kay - 2026-08-02
Drinks
Extras
