Telephone: 01787 247 431
Address: The Great House, Lavenham, Suffolk.
Lunch for two, including wine and service, around £60.
My friend Jocelyn lives near Newmarket where he is a pimp for horses. He would not put it this way. In the world of serious racehorse breeding, they are both wary of the vernacular and addicted to euphemism. Still, as his job is to market afternoons of carnal pleasure with some of the world's greatest stallions (yours - or should I say your mare's - for a six-figure sum) it does seem a reasonable description.
It also explains his desire to know where the asparagus at the Great House in the Suffolk village of Lavenham came from. The horse-breeding business is all about provenance and origin, and the obsession can easily tumble into the rest of life. He desperately needed to know which piece of land had sired his lunch.
The response from the waitress was as deliciously French as is the whole establishment, an old wood-lined country inn which would sit as comfortably in, say, Beaune as it does here on Britain's soft eastern shoulder. She gave a bored Gallic shrug and said simply, in richly accented English, 'I don't know. England, maybe.' She disappeared off to find out and we were left to consider the menus.
At lunchtime, worryingly, it is titled 'menu touristique', which is one of those dead phrases the adventurous eater dreads.
There is also something mournful about the word 'tourist' discovered lurking in Britain's rural heartlands right now. Foot and mouth had not, at the time of eating, reached Suffolk, but the fear remains that the contagion will infect both the land and then the tourist trade that the Great House needs to sustain its menu touristique.
Let's hope the disease stays away and the tourists keep coming, for that menu, whatever it is called, is good value at £15.95 for three courses. We were joined for lunch by Jocelyn's partner, Judy, which gave us the opportunity to try most of the starters and main courses. The menu, like the dining room and staff, is classically French: words and phrases like 'gratinées' and 'à la provençal' are scattered hither and yon. Somehow it makes it all read rather heavily, as though the dishes have been dragged from the dusty pages of Larousse and shocked into life with a defibrillator.
Certainly, where the starters are concerned, they taste and look far better than they read. Jocelyn's starter - 'your Spanish asparagus, monsieur' as he was told, with careful emphasis - was listed as coming with smoked salmon and a hollandaise sauce, beneath a 'pastry cage'. It was a clever piece of work, the warmth of the asparagus and the cool chill of the smoked salmon giving a lovely contrast. The pastry cage was more of a bonnet, and the better for it, being light and crisp. Judy's ravioli stuffed with soft, herbed cheese was made with a fine pasta and came with a cracking sorrel sauce. I ordered moules gratinées à la provençal - mussels in the shell with garlic and parsley butter - one of those dishes which it is easy to ruin: too much garlic and it becomes astringent, too long under the grill and the molluscs shrivel up. These got it right on all counts. As Jocelyn pointed out we had used up two baskets of bread to mop up our various sauces, which had to be a good sign.
The main courses were less spectacular, but still accomplished enough, though Jocelyn and I disagreed over his choice, tuna en daube à la provençal. It's a classic dish which really is in Larousse : tuna, stewed with tomatoes, onions and anchovies. I don't think fresh tuna stands up well in a stew and nothing about this particular version convinced me otherwise. The flavour is too subtle to hold its own. This, though, is personal taste. Jocelyn was happy. Judy's chicken breast with tarragon came crisp skinned and the fresh herbs gave what is usually a bland piece of the bird a solid lift. My lamb shank in a red-wine sauce was good, professional stuff, but it could have done without the slick of what tasted like melted parmesan.
Two of us made the appropriate 'mmming' sound over a pistachio crème brlée in which the custard came studded with a generous handful of crushed nuts (not a phrase to mention around a man who deals with stallions at stud). Jocelyn chose the French bread-and-butter pudding with apple and a butterscotch sauce. It was, he said, not exactly what he was expecting. There was something rather neat and tidy about what is usually a chuck-it-all-together sort of pudding, but somehow he found the will to clean the plate. There's a wide-ranging wine list at modest prices - many under £20 - with an admirable number of the wines by the glass and half bottle. We chose a sharp fresh Sancerre.
Over coffee, Jocelyn described in enthusiastic detail and at quite some volume the exact practicalities involved in getting large horses to have sex with each other. In turn a number of the other clientele - mainly local county folk, starting their weekend at Friday lunchtime - made like the asparagus and blanched. I'd explain it all for you now but I think you'd lose your appetite and that's not what a restaurant column is meant to do.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
