Telephone: 01993 822714.
Address: 14 Witney Street, Burford, Oxon.
Rating: 12/20
When Viola came into the bar at Jonathan's at The Angel, she lowered the average age by a quarter of a century at least. Her baggy trousers, T-shirt and choker made something of a contrast with the sensible skirting and cashmere cardies, too. Still, there was something distinctly old-fashioned in her approach to eating.
"I will have the roast scallops with red pesto risotto," she said, surveying the blackboard menu above the bar, "because I love scallops, though I'm not sure that I believe in red pesto risotto. And then I will have the fillet of John Dory with Niçoise potatoes, because that sounds really good."
Well, perhaps not entirely old-fashioned. There was a time when young women ate something other than fish, but there was a lot of fish on the menu at Jonathan's, which was just as well - it's a long time since I have been the only man in a dining room. Jonathan's is very woman-friendly. It is tucked away on a side street of Burford, that jewel of the Cotswolds, village of a thousand antique shops, tea shops and shops selling green wellies, cream corduroys, Aran sweaters, waxed jackets and other classic country gear to go with the classic four-wheel drives parked nose to tail down the main street. I felt a bit out of place with my Nissan Micra, M&S jersey and baggy jacket, but what the hell.
Back in Jonathan's, I abandoned the menu above the bar in favour of the cheaper one - all courses £7.95 - that I held in my hand: bourride to start, then sautéed fillets of pheasant with chorizo. It was one of those menus on which most of the dishes come out as a kind of general purpose Mediterranean, with the emphasis on the general purpose.
My bourride was actually a decent fish stew, generously supplied with fish and potatoes. But I couldn't detect the presence of the crucial orange peel, rather missed the odoriferous qualities of garlic in the aïoli, which creams up the dish, wondered what happened to the saffron, and have yet to track down a recipe that included broccoli among the list of ingredients.
Viola (yes, that is her real name) gobbled up her scallops, which, she said, were very good and properly cooked, neither raw in the middle nor toughened up by too much searing. The red pesto risotto she toyed with rather than got stuck into. It may have been the rice, which was sticky rather than sloppy, but I think it was the pesto. Red pesto, as you must know, does not exist in Italy, where pesto is only green. Like ciabatta, it was devised by canny Italians to woo the eye and tastes of northern Europeans, with our passion for novelty and anything flavoured with tomato.
The John Dory was just as much a mix-and-match combination, but rather more successful. I am not sure what Niçoise potatoes actually are - potatoes with olives seemed to be the general idea, and not such a bad one at that, since they made a bouncily flavoured foundation for a hulking great chunk of John Dory, in every way an admirable fish, being firm, clean-tasting and boneless.
It was certainly easier to eat than my pheasant breasts, which had taken on the texture, and edibility, of short sections of rope. Pheasant is a difficult bird at the best of times, usually given to tastelessness as well as toughness. Pairing it with chorizo was a good idea (chorizo adds chilli and bite to any dish), but give pheasant breasts 20 seconds too long, or an hour too little, in the pan and what you end up with is what I got: sections of protein as taut as Cherie Blair's nerves.
Things weren't improved by the two substantial side dishes of vegetables, one of potatoes underneath a carpet of melted cheese, the other of a mishmash of overcooked root vegetables together with my old friend, broccoli florets. I would rather have one decently cooked vegetable than a thousand indifferently served. But I suspect that the customary clientele of Jonathan's don't feel the same.
I have had many a lunch saved by puddings, that true marker of British genius. This time, sadly, they did not come to the rescue. A chocolate marquise with raspberry sorbet was much too sweet, much too lacking in the robust attack of good chocolate, and you may well wonder from whose canes these raspberries were picked in mid-December. Viola spoke warmly of her parfait, but by this time my interest had waned ever so slightly.
It wasn't that any of the food was awful. It wasn't. In a half-baked way it was quite tasty, and the fish dishes were accurately done. But either I couldn't warm to the way each dish was conceived, or there were inaccuracies of technique or taste that undermined what might have been sound ideas. It was just plain sloppy.
At such times, £71.40 seems too much to spend on lunch. This included a bottle of decent, if unexciting, Beringer Sauvignon Blanc at £17.75, among the non-food items amounting to £25.35. I'll save you trouble with the maths - that leaves £46.05 on food. "My lord, I do protest," as another Viola put it.
· Open Lunch, Thurs-Sat, 12 noon-2pm; dinner, Tues-Sat, 7-9.30pm.
