Russel's of Broadway, 20 High street, Broadway, Worcs (01386 853 555)
Meal for two, including wine and service, £80
The last time I reviewed in the Cotswolds, my bitchy comments about Stow-on-the-Wold lead to a condemnatory statement about me being read out at a meeting of the Stow Business Association. I regard this as a public service on my part. There is nothing quite as tedious and sodden with self-importance as a small-town business organisation, and if I gave them something to get excited about, that has to be to the good. Still, I hate to repeat myself, so you'll not find me having a go at Broadway in the Cotswolds this week. Sure, it does look like the kind of place which could happily accommodate a troop of Morris dancers, and that can never be positive. It's an ancient Jewish paranoia of mine. For some reason, whenever I see Morris dancers I assume a pogrom can't be far behind.
But, of course, Broadway can't be blamed for looking like the kind of place that might attract men with bells on their ankles. In any case, I can forgive it most things for having gifted me such a nice lunch at Russell's, a self-described 'restaurant with rooms' on the high street. Russell's is what we should call a Modern European brasserie, which means that its menu ranges across Italy and France, Spain and Britain (with one worrying detour into an ersatz Asia, which we will come to). It means there are outbreaks of pasta and risotto, tapas and hollandaise, Serrano ham, chilli, mozzarella, Agen prunes and chorizo, though happily not on the same plate.
What is striking is that while the menu really did read so busily as to engender eye ache - I worried it had been put together during a particularly heated game of strip Scrabble - almost everything we ate was accomplished. The one truly clunking note was that excursion into Asia: spring rolls of marinated lamb with a cold egg noodle salad. Just because you wrap something in pastry and dump it in the deep-fat fryer, it does not become a spring roll. It just becomes a lump of something in deep-fried pastry. Sure, boiling oil can cover a multitude of sins. Deep-fry John Prescott and even he'd become palatable. But that doesn't make it right.
Our other starter was their tapas plate to share, and it was so much better. It included at its heart an impeccably cooked rectangle of halibut that slipped away into pearly flakes beneath our forks, topped with slices of seared chorizo. Around it were a few very nicely sourced ingredients, including good Serrano ham, slices of charcuterie chorizo with the requisite fattiness, a heap of marinated anchovies, and so on. At £13 between the two of us, it wasn't cheap, but nor did it feel extortionate.
I fell in love with my venison steak-and-kidney pie the moment I saw it. There is something about a deep-amber glazed pastry shell which gladdens the heart even as it congests it. Inside, the braised meat tumbled away into fragile strands, speaking of long acquaintance with the oven before being introduced to the shell, which is as it should be. Perhaps it could have been a little heavier with sauce, but this is to niggle. It was a damn good pie, surrounded by damn good garlic-roasted new potatoes, and beetroots roasted to a nice caramel char.
My companion had the fish. She always has the bloody fish. She's that kind of woman. One day, I swear, I'll get her to eat something with legs and a snout, but for now it was a tranche of sea bass with goat's cheese and basil mash that actually tasted of its advertised ingredients, and a few cherry tomatoes roasted on the vine.
I finished with an iced Bailey's parfait which is the Essex girl of desserts, down to the white stilettos and the handbag. Naturally, I loved it. It was sweet, milky and a little boozy. What's not to like? On the more grown-up side of the menu was a lemon tart which was very well made indeed, with light pastry and a proper citrus zing. And all this in a bright airy room, with slate floors, which has made an accommodation with the ancient building in which it is housed rather than become beholden to it. It is a room made for lingering in, a place in which to put the world to rights.
It is an interesting place in many ways, its employment policy included. There is one aspect to this that I want to mention, but have found myself getting tied in knots over. I have worried as to whether it is patronising even to discuss it. Still, as it is something I would include in conversation it would be bizarre not to put it here, so I will simply say that the staff includes somebody with Down's syndrome, an all-too-rare sight in this country. All that you need know is the service was cheerful and efficient. Like everything else at Russell's - save for an (almost) forgivable lamb spring roll - it delivers.
