The Woodspeen, near Newbury, Berkshire RG20 8BN (01635 265 070). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £80-£125
They had me at the bowl of salt and vinegar crisps. These were cooked on site, each disc of potato a touch darker than the pallid, mass-produced variety. They were that little bit oilier than uptight people would think decent, in a way that might leave greasy fingerprints on napkins and bank notes. And then came the hit, not of a chemical, frown-inducing acetic acid, but of real vinegar reduced to its very essence. And yes, of course, it came with our pre-lunch drinks and was designed to make us work up a thirst, but it did so with elegance and enthusiasm and charm. A crisp that can charm you is worth travelling for. Mostly it spoke of obsessive attention to detail. I like that in a kitchen charged with feeding me.
The Woodspeen, on the outskirts of Newbury, is the restaurant of one-time modernist John Campbell. Back in the day, he cooked at a nearby hotel which was glossy and full of women in halterneck dresses with names like Chardonnay and Chlamydia. There were guttering flames ringing the water feature in front of the entrance, marble staircases, and enough polished surfaces to keep a cokehead in viable options for years.
It was, in short, very flash. In certain ways, so was Campbell’s food. His cooking could be very good, but it could also be exhausting. Every shiny technique was pushed into service – listen to the hum of the sous-vide machine; count the outbreaks of agar jelly – and you could always see his workings in the margins. He was clever and he wanted you to know it.
This newish place, opened in late 2014, is different. For a start it includes a cookery school, which is an appeal to the domestic, rather than the professional whizz bangery that he used to focus upon. The building housing the main restaurant on the other side of the road is thatched, though in a tidy, trimmed way. The roof looks like Stephen Crabb’s beard.
As you walk in it’s hard not to hear a man’s voice in your head. That man is Kevin McCloud, working himself up into a state of sweaty arousal, with one of his looping Grand Designs closing monologues: about the quiet majesty of polished concrete floors and the vaulting ceilings clad in Skandi wood slats which lead, in turn, to slits of natural daylight; about cliffs of glass bringing the outside in and the inside out, and bare wood tables eschewing the clutter of linen snowfields. Let me have my own McCloud moment: it really is a soothing space of the man-made and the rough-hewn. On a warm summer’s afternoon, the view beyond that glass is just a smudge of variegated Berkshire green. It feels like a room in which only good things happen.
I imagine a great number of the modernist techniques Campbell once liked to show off are still in use in the half-open kitchen, but they are in service of the food rather than flashiness. The workings in the margins have been rubbed away. He is no longer trying to show off his cleverness. He is trying to feed. The main menu prices are on the fearsome side. Starters can be north of a tenner with main courses in the twenties. But we also tried the three-course lunch menu which is £25, and at no point did it feel like a lesser option for those in the cheap seats.
Indeed it’s my starter, off that limited-choice cheaper menu, which gets the jealous glances. Lying beneath perfectly steamed spears of both green and white asparagus is a thick disc of crushed egg, only just boiled to solid, and still warm. It is bound with a light mayonnaise (or perhaps a butter emulsion), and scattered with generous pieces of crisped, salty bacon. It’s bacon, eggs and asparagus, but it’s bacon, eggs and asparagus in grown-up, hand-stitched brogues. The fact that it slightly overshadows the other starter is no criticism of the competition. That’s a mackerel fillet, the skin charred, alongside a soft mackerel pâté with discs of pickled cucumber and a gentle horseradish cream. It’s the humble mackerel displayed to the very best of its advantage.
Main courses are substantial platefuls, with more attention to detail. A tranche of steamed turbot, golden and salt-scattered on top, the shade of white of an unsullied ream of paper below, comes with braised, boned and pressed oxtail spun through with extraordinarily meaty pieces of mushroom. There are girolles on the plate, and a courgette flower filled with a spring-like crush of freshly podded broad beans. Mashed potato is flavoured lightly with grain mustard. From the lunch menu comes slices of lamb rump, with just enough crisped bronzed fat to remind you that lunch is for pleasure, with crushed fresh peas and a caramelised onion purée. There are cubes of salty feta and the dark push of chopped black olives. A little jus keeps everything moving. Their sourdough is crisp crusted and comes with dishes of a silky red pepper hummus that turns chickpeas into an indulgence. Service is deft.
So is the kitchen good at everything? Not quite, but only by their own high standards. Their pastry section can’t quite match the confidence and execution of everything else. It’s not actively bad; it’s just not terrific. Their soft nutmeg ice cream with a custard tart is at least made for people who really like nutmeg, rather than embarrassed about its headline ingredient. The filling in that tart is light and has the right wobble, but the pastry shell is soft rather than crisp.
From the lunch menu a take on peach melba feels like the place where the savings were made: a couple of raspberries, a few pieces of blow-torched peach, an oblong of a lightly salty vanilla parfait. The sense that the sweet end of the meal is not quite the focus is confirmed by a couple of chocolate truffles which are simply fine.
But it speaks volumes for the quality of everything else that I’d encourage you not to be put off by niggles over this part of the menu. John Campbell’s Woodspeen is that thing many of us crave: an ambitious restaurant which does its classy thing without being self-conscious about it. It’s an easy train ride from many places. And if you go for the lunch menu, it’s very well priced. Plus, they make killer salt and vinegar crisps.
Jay’s news bites
■ Woodspeen’s restaurant-cum-cookery school model is not new. Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir and Nigel Haworth’s Northcote Manor have versions of it. The Caldesi group, with Italian restaurants in Bray and London, offers various cookery school options, covering key elements of the Italian repertoire. These include a tutor kitchen in Marylebone and classes out of their kitchens in Bray (caldesi.com).
■ It’s almost August: the high days of summer. The perfect moment, I think, to announce the new Christmas products from the famed Yorkshire tea shop chain Betty’s. These include milk and white chocolate caramel mice, a Cointreau and chocolate orange torte and miniature classic Christmas puddings, serving just one or two, for families who hate Christmas pudding.
■ Getting a little tired of seeing a branch of Byron, the hamburger chain, on every high street? Get used to it. They’ve just secured a £12m banking facility to enable them to get to 100 branches in the next three years. They currently have 65.
Jay Rayner’s new book, The Ten (Food) Commandments, is out now (£6, Penguin). To order a copy for £5.10, go to bookshop.theguardian.com
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
