Kingham, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire (01608 658 327). Meal for two, including wine and service, £110
It was while standing in Daylesford Organics, trying to work out whether the kids could go without shoes so I could afford to buy an emergency hunk of Comté cheese, that I realised my companion's description of interior design in this part of the Oxfordshire Cotswolds was spot on: Burford Buff, she called it. Daylesford really is an orgy of Farrow & Ball, which means any shade of paint you like as long as it's beige. I was suddenly overcome by a desire to induce in myself a massive nosebleed to break up those acres of tasteful creaminess.
I hope I have enough self-knowledge to recognise that mine is the instinctive response of someone trying not to be seduced. From Daylesford we went for lunch at the Kingham Plough, where chef Emily Watkins has received endless plaudits for, as she puts it, combining traditional recipes with modern methods. And again we were in the land of fawn and tallow; even the pigs in a painting on the wall were clean. It is all very civilised, polite and engagingly dignified.
There is something of that about the food, which reads rugged but arrives refined. Yes, the sausage roll offered as a bar snack is a chunky affair, but the meaty filling is processed to a precise smoothness, and the roll is bisected with such precision, so the two parts might be artfully arranged, that one suspects a laser was involved.
It was a theme repeated throughout the savoury courses. The autumn squash soup arrived in a jug to be poured into a bowl containing deep-fried sage leaves, seared ceps, squash dumplings and fragments of creamy goat's cheese. It's an admirable dish, and when I got a spoonful of the purée-like soup and the goat's cheese together the flavours stomped about gloriously. But I still found myself hankering after something a little less demure. Likewise a terrine of Old Spot brawn, with both celeriac purée and remoulade, was beyond reproach in terms of execution. The piggy head meat was presented in solid lumps, the celeriac purée smooth and velvety. But the whole lacked an assertive sharp punch. Bring on the capers.
With a main dish of roast partridge laid alongside girolles and chewy duck hearts and more autumn dumplings, the issue was simply one of seasoning. It felt cautious, and very, very controlled. Fillets of John Dory with a celeriac fondant and mushrooms were more assertive, but only within the confines of subtle fish dishes.
At dessert everything changed. When I was a randy adolescent in London, boys my age talked feverishly of wanting to bag a girl from one of the posher schools. The posh girls might have lovely manners but were rumoured to be much ruder than the girls from the local comp if they let you into the bedroom. Dessert here felt like a posh girl dragging you behind the bedroom door. Just the words "sticky toffee brioche" sound filthy, don't they? The fact that, with the pressed layers of brioche and the toffee-glazed surface, it looked like a hunk of pork belly only added to the moment. It was soft and sweet and came with an extra jug of caramel sauce, because there's no such thing as enough. A scoop of caramelised pecan ice cream was a vital part of a killer dish. Just as wonderful were shamefully well-made meringues, that perfect balance of crisp and soft, flavoured with local brambles. They were served with a scoop of brightly acidic wood sorrel ice cream.
Nothing here should be taken as a condemnation of Watkins's cooking. The combination of ingredients makes absolute sense, and most of the execution is terrific. But there is lusciousness in those desserts, an in-yer-face magnificence, which didn't quite show itself in the same way elsewhere. Like so much of this part of Oxfordshire, it is elegant and refined. It could risk being a little more louche.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
