A moment's respectful silence, please: the giant Masterchef pepperpot, which used to stand in the bar of the Walpole Arms at Itteringham, Norfolk, is no more. It has gone to the great skip in the sky. Or the great skip in the car park. Although I would like to claim responsibility for its removal - not least because, up to now, no restaurateur has ever taken the blindest bit of notice of anything I've ever said - I suspect the truth is otherwise. Even if it had sat beneath a huge neon arrow bearing the legend 'THROW ME AWAY' it could not have been more obviously surplus to requirements. It was only a matter of time.
Gimmicks like that one never serve a purpose. I would go so far as to say a law - let's call it Rayner's Law, because it's my bloody column - can be formulated: no restaurant is ever successful because of gimmicks; it is successful in spite of them. After all, at base, a restaurant is nothing more than a room with tables and chairs attached to a kitchen. People sit at the tables and order food from a list. Then other people bring them the food from the kitchen. Anything else only gets in the way.
Which brings us to the hugely admirable Churchill Arms in Paxford, Gloucestershire: room, tables, chairs, kitchen. People carrying food from kitchen to room. OK, I am over-simplifying a little, but only a little. There is no gimmickry here - certainly there is no giant cruet set. It is just a rather lovely Cotswolds pub, free of horse brasses, where from seven to nine each evening great food is served. It boasts a single L-shaped room, roughly in the middle of which stands a large pillar holding the menu on blackboards; this changes by the day and sometimes even during the meal itself, depending on whether certain dishes run out or not. Orders are placed at the bar, but the food is then brought to you by a small team of calm, efficient and unobtrusive waitresses.
For me, one of the pleasures of eating in a pub is the sudden realisation that you can drink beer with your food, rather than wine. There is a good, short wine list here, boasting a dozen reds and a dozen whites ranging from £9.95 to £25, plus a handful of halves, and usually one English wine. But on my first of two visits to the Churchill Arms during a recent holiday in the area, I decided to stick to creamy pints of Arkell's Summer Ale. As a result, I can tell you that it goes exceptionally well with a starter of mussels in a saffron broth with potatoes and chorizo. The mussels had soaked up both the earthiness of the saffron and the chilli edge of the chorizo. It was a fabulous dish, particularly at £4.95, the average price of the starters. Pat began with a simple plate of Spanish charcuterie served with cornichon and ripe, black olives. The meat was sweet and served perfectly at room temperature.
Pat nicked my choice of main course by having the sole with capers and salted anchovies. She then proceeded to scrape the anchovies to the side of her plate. I asked her how it was. Fine, she said, but it seemed to be missing something. The anchovies, perhaps? Ah, she said, and tried a mouthful of the two together. Mmmmmm, she said. Which meant, yes, of course, that was what it needed. That was why they were on the plate. I am an idiot and I deserve to be spanked. (I am loosely translating here.) I had seabass, which came on a dense pile of wilted spinach mixed with fine strips of smoked goose breast on a butter sauce. This was clearly more ambitious work than you would expect from a pub kitchen, not least one occupied by just two chefs, but all its various parts worked together very well.
On a second visit, three of us were able to give the main courses - mostly priced at between £10 and £12 - a real shakedown. All were great. A lush hake steak came with a citrus butter sauce, which was as ripe and tart as its name suggested. Pink lamb fillets came on a smokey aubergine pancake. A fine rib-eye steak was accompanied by a spiky horseradish sauce (although it was, to my irritation, described as a horseradish fondue, which is a bit of pointless restaurant gobbledegook. The word fondue means melt. You can melt cheese. You can not melt horseradish). All were joined by vast quantities of thin, golden rustling chips, which we felt it our duty to finish.
Puddings are equally good. A dense orange jelly came with a roasted peach which, unlike the one I cooked recently for the Michelin-starred chef Bruce Poole, was soft. It was accompanied by a crisp brandy-snap basket filled with what was described as vanilla parfait, which is just posh for vanilla ice cream. (It was almost as good as Tesco's Finest Vanilla Ice Cream. Have you tried it? Horribly good.) On the heavier side, a gloriously dense sticky toffee pudding was just the sort of thing to keep my feet firmly on the ground. And my arse and hips for that matter.
The Churchill Arms is owned by Sonya and Leo Brooke-Little, who also have the highly regarded Marsh Goose restaurant in nearby Moreton-in-Marsh. Until recently they owned another pub at Foss Cross but have got rid of that and are looking for a replacement in the area. This has to be good news. They clearly have a great formula. They also have impeccable taste. Their pricing formula is charmingly reasonable. And they have no interest in oversized cruet sets.
