Telephone: 01666 502206
Address: Cirencester Road, Tetbury, Glos
Open: Lunch, Tues-Sun, 12 noon-2pm. Dinner, Tues-Sat, 6.30pm-9.30pm; Sun, 7pm-9pm
Price: Around £90 for two, including wine
Limited disabled access
We restaurant critics encounter more than our fair share of lavatories, and over the past year I've become a bit of a pan-spotter. As a writer, I find their evocative brand names are ideal for stimulating the subconscious, and many a urinal in the smallest room of a restaurant has inadvertently furnished me with material for my latest thriller.
There's the CIA hero ("The name's Sheldon, Sankey Sheldon") who teams up with MI5's dapper Armitage Shanks to investigate why evil scientists Villeroy and Boch (who are working on the Bolding Vedas project) mysteriously keep going round the bend. In Twyford, they finally flush out Vitrok, the notorious Serbian spy, and discover his secret mission: to smash the capitalist cistern. And the moral of this story? An overactive prostate can increase your word power.
I failed to notice the manufacturer's name on the lavatory at the Trouble House because I was too busy cursing the seat. It wouldn't stay upright unless held in place during micturition (readers with penises will empathise), and one repercussion for the unwary is that you can easily leave the place looking as though you've taken the words on the "Wet Floor" sign as an instruction rather than a warning.
Oddly, the phrase "the smallest room" here could refer just as easily to the dining room, because when you're sitting at the far corner table, as we were, the ancient lopsided architecture creates an optical illusion, like one of those crazy houses at the funfair. We felt like midgets as giant diners walked in with their heads scraping the ceiling, as though this was the border post between Lilliput and Brobdingnag.
My discomfiture increased when I set fire to the menu with the night-light on the table and had to use my beloved's scarf to extinguish the flames. But the heat was taken off me when a party of giants came through the door and announced, "Hello, we're the Crappers and we booked." As I wondered whether they were related to the legendary Thomas Crapper (alleged inventor of the flushing lavatory), they sat down, yet continued to look huge, and I realised they were huge (all at least 6ft 5in tall).
When some dinky doll's-house-sized bread rolls were brought to our table, further upsetting my sense of perspective, I decided I'd better concentrate on the food, after making a mental note that this would be a great place for a vertically challenged geezer to take a new girlfriend.
My geezette began with chef Michael Bedford's Salcombe crab risotto, which she described simply as "perfection" (a word that seldom passes her lips when I'm around). I've always considered the texture and flavour of crab as too delicate to be consumed in anything other than its unadulterated state (except, perhaps, in a bisque or a few oriental confections), so I opted for deep-fried breaded cod brandade served atop a bed of chicory with mixed leaves that tasted of arugula. My mouth became a crucible within which these little salt cod balls underwent strange chemical reactions with the salad, but I don't want to sound too excited by the experience (it was hardly roquette science).
As for the main courses (using local meat from Tetbury butcher Jessie Smith), the French classics were much in evidence with simple dishes such as steak frîtes and the near-Black-Country-style coq au vin that delighted my partner. The spectacular was also available at no extra charge, notably my Languedoc duck and ham cassoulet that arrived in a bowl of truly Brobdingnagian proportions.
Straight out of the États Généraux de la Gastronomie Française, the meat and beans had clearly been cooked together throughout, the whole being rich, salty and creamy thanks to the cocos beans, which did something enjoyably indecent to my dendrites and axons. The only surprise was a suspicion of smoked sausage in the broth (highly untraditional in a cassoulet), but it combined perfectly with the other flavours, so, fortunately, smoking wasn't bad for this dish's gastronomic health.
The Trouble House is allegedly haunted by the ghosts of ancient highwaymen, and it's definitely haunted by some present-day ponces on horseback because Sir Prince Charles and his sister Anne have their gaffs just down the road. But I couldn't have cared less if the entire clan had turned up, because I was deaf to the outside world as I studied the blackboard for available cheeses (from Cotswold specialists House of Cheese).
The fromage fort cheeseboard (eight for £9) excelled in value, odour and condition (boasting such smelly delights as feculent Pont l'Evêque), the standard of cooking was sky-high throughout, and I was particularly impressed by the vast selection of wines by the glass (about half of the list could be ordered in this way).
Only one mystery remains: according to my notes, a 250ml glass of Cloudy Bay cost £8.95, yet a 750ml bottle was £32 - a fiver more than buying it by the glass. Was I too pissed by then to write clearly? I hope so, otherwise I may have uncovered an oenological and fiscal paradox that even Zeno of Elea would have been unable to fathom.
