Telephone: 01264 810 833
Address: 31 High Street, Stockbridge, Hampshire
Meal for two, including wine and service, £80.
The Greyhound is a food pub in the Hampshire village of Stockbridge, in the heart of hunting, fishing and shooting country. Perhaps there is something in the air down there because, despite a lifelong antipathy towards killing things for sport, I found myself yearning for a shotgun so I could deal with the tossers at the next table. This is a problem for restaurateurs. They get to make a lot of choices. They choose the premises, in the Greyhound's case an old stone pub. They choose the decor, here smart. Then they choose the style of food. At the Greyhound it is Anglo-French, cooked by a former officer in Marco Pierre White's kitchen militia, with all the professionalism that suggests.
What they can't choose is their clientele. I wouldn't have let this lot through the door: three corpulent men in late middle age, wearing country fleeces and stubble, one of them hiding behind wraparound sunglasses, and all of them barking at each other about 'the wankers' they work with and the morning's adventures on the river bank. They smoked big fat cigars, apparently oblivious to the fact that they were in the no-smoking side, and only broke off being smug to each other to be smug into mobiles. It was as if they thought they owned the place, which may well be the case. The River Test runs through the pub's grounds and this party has a licence to fish there on Fridays. My advice: don't go on Friday lunchtimes.
But do go, for the food is above the ordinary. It is by no means cheap - £40 a head with wine - but enough care has been taken to make that seem, if not a bargain, then understandable. A starter of spatchcock quail brought a meaty little bird, with crisp skin and tender flesh, on a ripe onion purée.
For my main course I had a slab of crisply sautéed turbot on a rich leek gratin with a mushroom velouté. This was punchy fish cookery, bold and flavourful. I finished with a banana tarte tatin, on a crisp pastry base with caramel sauce and vanilla ice-cream. Bliss.
Taken in the round, the Greyhound is about the essentials. There is no flummery and that has to be a good thing. Just look out for the git in the wraparounds.
