The Royal Oak 9.25/10
Telephone 01628 620541
Address Paley Street, near Maidenhead, Berkshire
Open Lunch, all week, noon-2.30pm (noon-3.30pm, Sun); dinner, Mon-Sat, 6.30-9.30pm (10pm, Fri & Sat)
No frilly shirts, no side-burns, no Ronnie Hazlehurst with his band, no please-don't-go-on-or-I'll-soil-myself lachrymose chortling at clunking Hollywood anecdotage. No Billy Connolly or Stirling Moss, no winsome flirting with Miss Piggy, no Betty Bacall drawling on and on about life with Bogie. No semi-spiral staircase, for goodness sake. Nothing. Not so much as a faux-vengeful dish involving the roasting, braising or boiling of emu.
Whatever it was we expected of the Royal Oak, Sir Michael Parkinson's gastropub on that Wind In The Willows stretch of Thames far more replete with faded TV stars than with water rats and moles, the lack of homage to the career from which he recently retired wasn't it.
"Old boy, this can't be right," said my cousin, Nick, making a long overdue return to his role as the pit canary of provincial dining, and gazing bemusedly at the jolly cricket sketches on the walls. "I mean, they didn't knight him for his sportswriting, did they? You'd have thought Good Old Parky might at least have managed a cardboard Peter Ustinov in the corner."
He had a point. In the age when the PC Brigade trample over our sacred cultural memories like stampeding rhinos (Parky and I share the same contempt for the Rosses, Nortons and other potty-mouthed Johnny-Come-Latelys of the chat-show pantheon), there is a moral imperative on 70s telly icons to fight a doughty rearguard by adhering rigidly to ancient stereotype. Which is why, as Melanie Phillips and I were saying only the other week, Ronnie Corbett's cocaine-snorting cameo in Extras was so gratuitously offensive.
Then again, the precedent of the chatshow stalwart trying his luck as a restaurateur and relying on self-aggrandising gimmickry isn't great. Fans of The Larry Sanders Show will recall the short-lived catastrophe that was "Hey Now" Hank Kingsley's Look Around Cafe. On that evidence, Goold Old Parky is wise to resist the lure of theming the Royal Oak on his past glories, and leave the running of the place to his son, Nicholas.
And run it immaculately Parky Junior, chatting amiably with punters at the bar, clearly does. Every single thing about the place is spot on, from the warm and cosy decor (exposed brickwork, sloping, oak-beamed roof, soft lighting, quiet jazz that teasingly hints at morphing into that familiar old theme tune) to the expert and friendly service and nicely balanced wine list. Impressive as these qualities are, though, the undisputed headline act of this show is chef Dominic Chapman.
Poached from the Hinds Head, Heston Blumenthal's pub in nearby Bray, Chapman is a master of neo-traditional British cuisine (his work has been semi-plagiarised at Gordon Ramsay's Docklands gastropub The Narrow). Nowhere is Chapman's gift for reinventing long disregarded dishes more luminous than in his recreation of the Scotch egg as a thing to be savoured and revered rather than covered by triple-A medical insurance.
"Oh my God, that's unbelievable," Nick murmured as the first mouthful of crunchy breadcrumbs, peppery sausagemeat and runny quail's egg yolk hit the tastebuds. "We had better have another - these are worth ruining your appetite for." If nothing that followed could quite match the majesty of Chapman's Scotch eggs (when the Alabama penitentiary's last meal cook makes the inquiry, these are what I'll request), every dish came close enough to ensure that we left The Royal Oak in gastric discomfort that didn't abate until the next afternoon.
Jerusalem artichoke soup was thick, creamy and subtle, and came with some anchovy toast that neutralised any suggestion of blandness, while my starter of delicately smoked eel with beetroot and horseradish was wonderfully fresh. Both main courses, meanwhile, were superb. My haunch of venison comprised six chunky, ruby-red slices of this most imperial meat, encrusted with black peppercorns in a rich red-wine gravy and accompanied by creamed spinach. Nick's plump lemon sole looked just as enticing, being covered in brown shrimps and cucumber. I asked if he had anything to say about his fish.
"No."
"Please."
"Must I?" he snapped, resenting the interruption. "All right, then - it strips off the bone like Marilyn Monroe slipping off négligée. It's wonderful."
Mash, green beans and buttered carrots were flawless, and we finished off with a frothy lemon posset, served with what Nick cited as the first Garibaldi biscuit he'd eaten since 1968, three years before Parky first wielded his clipboard on national TV; and a steamed butterscotch pudding of such mystifying lightness and such indecent flavour that any further description would risk violating the borderline between food criticism and pornography.
"That was one of the best meals I can remember," Nick said as we waddled off to the car park. "I've never had much time for Parky, as you know, but you have to give him this one."
You certainly do. Good Old Parky indeed.
The bill
Scotch eggs x 3 £7.50
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Jerusalem artichoke soup £6.50
Smoked eel £6.95
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Haunch of venison £16
Lemon sole £19
Mashed potato £2.75
Green beans £2.75
Buttered carrots £2.75
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Butterscotch pudding £6.50
Lemon posset £5.95
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Glass Riesling x 4 £26
Filter coffee £2.75
Espresso £2
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Subtotal £107.40
Service @ 12.5% £13.42
Total £120.82
