Montpellier Chapter Hotel, Bayshill Road, Cheltenham (01242 266708). Meal for two, including wine and service, £120
The term "consultant chef", like "French polisher" and "prime minister's press spokesman", can cover a multitude of sins. It can mean anything from "I faxed over a menu" to "I shall nurture this restaurant until my fingers bleed." Certainly the professional reputation of the chef involved is no indicator of quality. The execrable John Burton Race once held two Michelin stars; that didn't stop the now-closed Harvey's in Ramsgate, where he was a consultant, from being a travesty just begging for the wrecker's ball. Sometimes Gary Rhodes gets it right; sometimes the quality of those he works with defeats him. Albert Roux, by contrast, has generally made a good job of placing his protégés into kitchens.
Given this patchy record, the notion of Simon Hopkinson taking on the title is nerve-wracking. I like Hopkinson – Hoppy, to his friends – and the idea that he'd blot his copybook through such a bluntly commercial tie-up is worrying. Anybody who has watched his new BBC series, The Good Cook, will have got the measure of the man. He's warm, charming, a little obsessive and reassuringly greedy. In the late 1980s he opened London's Bibendum, where he's still involved, establishing a style of robust French-British cookery that echoes throughout our restaurant scene to this day.
You can trace a direct line back through Hoppy's food, and his adored book Roast Chicken and Other Stories, to the likes of Elizabeth David and Richard Olney. His food is never fussy but it does demand care.
Can that be executed by a new hotel venture like the glossy Chapter group, which has opened its first outpost in Cheltenham and hired Hoppy as consultant? The answer, happily, is yes – though I was cynical. The hotel is so self-consciously hip it can set your teeth on edge. It is all shiny surfaces and dangling light sculptures and poise. Even the staff are forced to wear Converse and suits in dog-poo brown. Despite this, they're the very model of cheer and efficiency.
The dining room is, like the menu, long. At one end is a semi-open kitchen with a wood-fired oven for the production of pizzas – not especially Hoppy. Other things are. And in any case he is only consultant. The head chef here is Tom Rains, ex of L'Escargot, and he clearly knows what he's doing. There are chunky salads, including a niçoise and something with Asian- style duck. Scallops are served on the half shell with a herb and garlic butter crust. They come surrounded by ponds of hot, melted dairy fats and are pretty perfect. As is what they are calling, a little clunkily, "the Simon Hopkinson inspired dish of the month" – in this case a lobster salad, half the meat returned to the shell on a bed of shredded lettuce. The lobster is still warm, the vinaigrette carefully balanced. It costs £16. It's so good you (almost) forget the price.
Among the mains is steak au poivre, one of those dishes that got left behind by almost everyone apart from our consultant. Here, it is spot on: the fillet properly pink, with a full-on crushed peppercorn crust and a cream-rich sauce. There are good chips, too. Calves' liver comes thick-cut with bacon and beneath it petits pois à la française. Hopkinson is very keen on offal, especially tripe, and the menu could do with more.
We finish with an impeccable crème brûlée with raspberries and a strawberry mille-feuille assembled on service: fine discs of caramelised pastry, still crunchy despite the application of strawberries, sauce of same and whorls of sweet cream.
Wines are offered by the carafe as well as the glass, and as a bar nibble there is pork crackling with apple sauce, so naturally I would be happy. None of this is especially cheap but then nothing involving Hoppy ever has been. He's not that kind of guy. So swallow hard and just be pleased his hand is lightly on the tiller.
