Caldesi Campagna, Old Mill Lane, Bray, Berkshire (01628 788 500)
Meal for two, including wine and service, £90
Because I am a lost cause I hold in my head a geography of Britain defined not by useful or inspiring landmarks - churches, castles, the institutions of state - but by restaurants. Cheltenham is Le Champignon Sauvage, and Bristol is Bell's Diner. Manchester is Red Chilli, Whitechapel is Tayyabs and Baker Street is Galvin. On this peculiar, belly-obsessed map, littered with pictograms of knives and forks, one small, home counties' village has more than its fair share of cutlery.
That village is Bray in Berkshire, and if you but say the word to me the first image that will come into my mind is myself seated in the low-ceilinged dining room of the Fat Duck, being shocked and thrilled by yet another of the gloriously tonto dishes that Heston Blumenthal has devised to screw with my head. If I'm not thinking of myself there, I'm in a snug at his nearby pub, the Hinds Head, eating his faultless steak and kidney pudding. I find the notion of visiting Bray and not eating in one or other perverse. As in wrong. It is against nature. There is probably a local council bylaw forbidding it.
Sometimes, however, my job requires me to transgress, which is how I found myself walking away from the Hinds Head with a heavy heart, and down a residential village lane towards the rather handsome whitewashed house that is home to Caldesi in Campagna. I'm glad I did. It is the first venture outside London by Giancarlo and Katie Caldesi, who run a Tuscan restaurant, a cafe and a cookery school all in Marylebone, and while it might not match the culinary pyrotechnics of some of its neighbours in the village, it has an awful lot to recommend it.
Not that it has been fully discovered. The lunchtime we were there, only one other table was occupied and that was by Giancarlo himself, entertaining some friends. He came across to see us. I asked why he had chosen to set up in Bray. 'Because I am stupid,' he said, surveying the empty seats.
It is an attractive set of spaces floored in parquet, with a conservatory out back, the walls and chairs in various shades of taupe. Heavy-framed family photographs perch on windowsills and mantelpieces, giving it an appropriately domestic air. It would, though, look better with more people in it. Giancarlo then corrected himself: weekends were rammed, he said, but weekdays not so much. I can well imagine. I would love to return here for Sunday lunch.
The menu has excursions to Liguria and Sicily, but is mostly Tuscan, starting with that marvellous hymn to the pig, porchetta: the loin, boned, stuffed with fennel seeds, garlic, salt and a little rosemary, depending on the recipe, and then roasted. (My marvellous butcher, Moen's in Clapham, south London, sells a very good one, ready for the oven.) It is one of those rare roast meat dishes that can benefit from a second cooking, as here: the porchetta was sliced very thinly, then sauteed until the fat had begun to melt, and served on a stew of lentils. Against the testosterone machismo of that dish, a plate of sea bass ravioli with a light citrus butter sauce was almost dainty. I was intrigued as to whether the process of cooking the pasta - the simmering - would dilute or just simply destroy the flavour of the fish, but it was all there. This kitchen knows what it is doing.
Our main courses leaned more to the male porchetta side of things than the female, sea bass ravioli side. Scottiglia, a long slow-cooked stew of duck, guinea fowl and chicken in an assertive tomato-based sauce full of dark caramel flavours, was the sort of thing winter shouts for. Parcels of veal enclosing gooey, truffled pecorino cheese, with slices of sauteed ceps that tasted intensely of themselves, was equally strident. But what really impressed here was the side plates of vegetables, and that's not a phrase I've often had cause to type. A great deal of care had been taken over them: there were crisp, sauteed discs of aubergine, crusted with cheese; there was braised fennel, and chunks of forcefully seasoned courgette. Hell, they even serve good roast potatoes. That's enough to make me fall in love.
We finished with a light tiramisu, to which Giancarlo has been willing to put his name, and with good reason. There was a fine, wobbly panna cotta flavoured with amaretto, and because we were gluttons, some of their dark chocolate tart, the pastry thinner than Amy Winehouse, the filling with just the slightest salty edge. But again, what really impressed here was the attention to detail: the poached pears with the chocolate tart, the roasted plums with the panna cotta.
At lunch, these three courses cost £24, which is hard to argue with. Plus they seemed really pleased to see us. Given the empty tables, perhaps they were, but it's very hard to fake real interest in your customers. The village of Bray has just earned another set of cutlery on my greedy mental map.
