Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, here we go again with one of those reviews that gushes and gushes like a massive oil strike in a JR Ewing wet dream; one of those pieces that flails around for the tiniest of flaws to play the role of floating log in this turbulent swell of wide-eyed besottedness. So, appreciating how difficult such uncritical critiques are to read (you should try writing them), permission is hereby granted for the tut, snort and tedium-inspired raising of brows that prefaces the brusque turning of a page.
For anyone who is still here, the bottom line about Morston Hall is that it's as close to an earthly paradise as a British hotel-restaurant will transport you. Ordinarily, this being a restaurant review, I wouldn't dwell on the accommodation, but since the food and overnight stay are integrated into the one all-in price, let me briefly doff the cap to a massive, lavishly appointed,
Wi-Fi-enabled room in a handsome development whose doors open on to bunny-infested meadow, and to the unparalleled splendour of a bathroom that features a telly in the wall and a waterproof remote.
If the owners' intention is to mimic a visit to an obscenely wealthy friend's country home, then they realise it astonishingly well. I'm guessing here, frankly, having very few friends at all and none with money. But if I did have such a friend, and if that friend had excellent taste and a chef to make Anatole, PG Wodehouse's paradigm of culinary genius, look like a short order cook in a New Jersey diner, a visit to Morston Hall is, I imagine, what it would be like.
One of the many beauties of the place is the liberation from decision-making. Greeted by an exceedingly young and exceedingly talented manager, you are informed that dinner is 7.30pm for 8pm. You wander along to one elegant conservatory at 7.30pm for a drink, and half an hour later are led to a table in another - a lovely, perfectly lit room with a thick, pastelly carpet, a large skylight and a view over elegant lawns - for a four-course meal in which (assuming you've no special requests or dietary requirements) you have no choice.
The chef, who owns and runs the place with his wife Tracy and bears the splendidly Dickensian name of Galton Blackiston, changes his menu daily according to what local ingredients most appeal - and his food is simply a joy to consume. Technically brilliant, beautifully presented, free from the usual bucolic hotel-restaurant pretension, it zings with the inventiveness of someone who cooks not for money, reverence or ostentation, but with passion for his work.
First up, after some spectacular bread with tomatoes and basil, and a tomato soup appetiser, came a fluffily delectable crab mousse served inside a courgette flower alongside the most peasome of petits pois and the crispiest of bacon - this was a gloriously light, fresh collation in which each ingredient enhanced every one of the others. There followed a juicy, fleshy and exquisitely sweet scallop that didn't strictly require the embellishment of a cauliflower purée.
The service, from people who were even younger than that superlative maître d', was so good that I found myself almost tearful with gratitude, in much the same way that you well up in the presence of an unusually kind doctor bearing good news. There's no compelling reason why waiters in rural hotels shouldn't be charming and expert without being cloyingly obtrusive. It's just that experience teaches otherwise.
On reflection, the overactive lacrimals may have been down to the rather swift consumption of a half-bottle of delicious gewürztraminer from a superbly informative and liberty-eschewing wine list, followed by a glass of a rich New Zealand red called Lilac with the main course.
My solitary quibble about a barely improvable meal was with the cut of the meat, fillet being entirely a textural pleasure and so much less flavourful than cheaper cuts such as rump and skirt. Even so, this fat chunk of locally reared beef was properly melty, and came in a colourful arrangement with mashed new potatoes, Norfolk asparagus and fabulous braised shallots in a beefy gravy.
So profoundly impressive was this meal that, en route back to the room for coffee and a plate of stunningly good cheese, I broke the habit of a lifetime and bought a chef's recipe book, A Return To Real Cooking, from its display case (I say "bought", but on checking the bill after I got home, it appears that "thieved" may be technically more accurate). Since then, from the fair hand of my wife, I have had the finest roast lamb of my life.
Having long ago given up trying to penetrate the thinking of those schlumps at Michelin, I won't muse as to why Galton Blackiston has just the one star. He is, however, the favourite chef of a local woman who knows her food as well as most. And so, in the style of Delia addressing the Carrow Road faithless, and on behalf of the most pleasing hotel I've ever stayed and eaten in anywhere in the world, I will conclude with only this. Where are you? Where are you? Caaahhhm on, let's be 'aving you.
