The Rosemary restaurant, Stanton House Hotel, Swindon (08700 841 388). Meal for two, including wine and service £40-70
When winter comes, my thoughts turn to stew. If it's got a pulse I'll braise it, which is probably why the cat slinks away from me at this time of year, a look of fear in its eyes. I love grills. I adore roasts. But there is something about braising, about the intense interchange of flavours between cooking liquor and those tougher but much tastier cuts of meats which appeals to a very basic part of me. It demands a little thought, of course, and a willingness for delayed gratification, but it is always worth the wait. My house is most like a home when it smells of something that has been cooking long and slow in the oven all day.
I'm sorry. I appear to have come over all Nigel Slater on you. Won't do it again, I promise. In any case, we have now reached deepest midwinter, and the pleasure of the braise is beginning to pall, even for this addict. The feast days have gone, and all we have now is the long, hard drag to the cruellest month and the tantalising promise of the first bud. At this point I want not comfort food, but bright tastes of crisp clarity to remind me I am alive. That means something Japanese.
Which brings me to the most unlikely place it has ever been my pleasure to review. The Rosemary Restaurant is part of the Stanton House Hotel, a rambling old mansion of honey-coloured stone on the very edge of the Cotswolds, not far from Swindon. Close by is the massive Honda car plant, the parent company of which opened the hotel to cater to employees who had to come over from Japan. Much of the hotel's literature is in both English and Japanese, there are Japanese newspapers in the conservatory and above the reception are two clocks, one giving the time here, the other the time in Tokyo.
It also has two restaurants. Mount Fuji, up amid the varnished beams of the attic, is a shoe-less, sit-on-the-floor job and is open only in the evenings. The Rosemary is a simpler, more utilitarian affair. Which is to say it is a pretty characterless space. There are bare floorboards and French windows looking out over the meadows, and the cheerful and efficient waitresses are all English ladies up from the village who look pleased to have a gig which fits in so comfortably with the school run. A few tables are occupied the day I am there, and most of these are by groups of Japanese men wearing white workmen's jackets with the red flash of the Honda logo on the breast pocket. To one side is a Japanese food shop (closed the day I went) - and it immediately becomes clear that this place isn't just a restaurant, but a resource for an expatriate community which happens to find itself here amid the rolling hills of Wiltshire.
There is a short menu at lunchtime, but the choice for me is obvious: a kaiseki bento box, with seven dishes for £24. It is a huge thing, practically filling the width of the table, and most of what is in there is very good indeed, particularly the sashimis and sushis - tuna, salmon, sweet prawn - which are a reminder of how good these can be in the right hands. The sashimis in particular have an uncommon clarity. There is a slab of salmon teriyaki, which has a meaty texture, rather than turning to mush on the tongue. There are thin, curling slices of sirloin steak in a sweet and dark soy gravy, and some cold, slippery buckwheat noodles in a broth bursting with umami. There is, of course, miso, and pickles and rice. The star for me is the tranche of marinated eel - unagi - with its butch savoury marinade and oily flesh. The only letdown is the tempura, which needs to hit the table seconds after it has left the oil. This has hung about a while and has gone soggy. No matter. There is still pudding: balls of ice cream encased in a sweet, soft shell of rice-flour-based pastry, with cubes of sweet jelly that crumble on the tongue and a mudslide of dense, syrupy-red azuki beans.
The best way to try the Rosemary may be at one of their all-you-can-eat buffets. They charge £20 a head for adults on Thursday and Friday nights and only £11 on Sunday lunchtimes, with discounts for kids, which looks like a serious bargain. Apparently they also run quiz nights hosted by Basil Fawlty, and both Dean Martin and Robbie Williams tribute nights. It is easy to imagine the place full of homesick salarymen, white shirt-tails adrift, drunk on too much whisky and singing along to 'Volare' but comforted by one important thought: that here, on an English hillside, there is at least one restaurant where you can get a bowl of miso soup and a bloody good plate of sushi.
