KATHERINE MACALISTER joyfully tucks into the best meal of the year.

It’s exhilarating to have the rug whipped out from under your feet sometimes, taking with it all the mediocre ruminations and lukewarm reviews.

Because let’s face it, one meal a week, 52 weeks of the year… you do the maths. And there have been some great culinary moments in 2010 – Danesfield House, The Ashmolean, Portabello, Magdalen Arms, Witney Lakes.

But, best meal this year? The Feathers, definitely. Biggest surprise? Without a doubt. Humbled? Utterly. But best of all it was totally unexpected.

The occasion was a rainy November weekend, and it was third time lucky. Whenever we’d tried to eat there in the past the 17th century Woodstock hotel had been fully booked. Our last attempt was almost biblical – being turned away on a snowy December night because there was literally no room at the inn.

So to make sure we got in, we booked a room and reserved a table for dinner. The historic hotel has had a recent revamp, the bedrooms upstairs having been beautifully redone; all flock wallpaper, mahogany antiques and contemporary finishes. Stunning and again not what you’d expect.

Downstairs will be next for the decorating gurus, starting off with the restaurant which is currently rather banal. Lots of hunting prints and white damask tablecloths. But The Feathers now boasts the UK’s only gin bar and we started off with bar manager Lubos Stevcik’s fantastic own gin concoction, the Slow Lubos, which comes highly recommended. Cocktails aside, the next best thing The Feathers has got going for it is the head chef Marc Hardiman, pictured, a Gordon Ramsay protégée, who cooked for us on a wet and windy Saturday night.

So what was I expecting? Something rather predictable and stultifying really. Something heavy and old-fashioned. But as Marc’s breathtaking skill and inventiveness became apparent, all our preconceptions disappeared as quickly as the food we were eating.

We chose the tasting menu, with the wine tasting menu to accompany it. Having the wine specially selected for us by the hotel’s restaurant manager and sommelier Pavol Herak was an additional £42 a head, but as we had five courses to get through plus cheese, we thought it worth the extra expense. If you’re going to push the boat out, you might as well do it properly, even if it does mean cancelling Christmas. And we were right, every wine matching perfectly the very specific tastes of each course.

But it was the food that stole the show. And if I say anything worthwhile this year it’s that Mark is a name to watch.

Incredulity was the main theme of the evening, because Marc had also come up with a beautifully thought out vegetarian tasting menu for one of our party, where each course matched the carnivorous version faultlessly. And imaginative vegetarian food is usually an oxymoron, like a poor footballer, or a helpful call centre operator. Only Le Manoir pushes the boat out to this degree for our more caring friends.

We started with the diver scallops with cauliflower puree & beignet with sweet and sour raisins, while she had the jerusalem artichokes cut into discs like the scallops, with a coffee jelly, girolle mushrooms and chocolate and cherry pastilla.

Now I won’t list every one of our courses, because staying awake throughout a restaurant review is preferable, but you get the picture. Not only were all the ingredients individually supreme, but the sum of their parts were sensational. Many of them you wouldn’t put together in a million years, but under Mark’s culinary eye, they accentuated each other briliantly. Other titbits included the goat’s cheese panacotta with walnut bread, port infused grapes and candied walnuts.

The rabbit and foie gras terrine came with pickled mushrooms and toasted pistachios and the Blenheim Estate partridge with pithivier, red cabbage, honey roast parsnip and juniper jus.

The vegetarian course that stood out was ‘the beetroot 3 ways’ served on a horseradish potato salad with a potato gallette (like a mini rosti) and rock cress. Genius.

My only criticism of the entire meal was that the concluding dessert, the sticky toffee sponge with parsnip ice cream and butterscotch, was too heavy to finish off with, however marvellous it was.

Bumping into Marc on our way out I had to physically restrain myself from throwing myself into his arms and kissing him passionately for creating such a sumptuous feast, Mr Greedy was in situ after all, so settling for profusely thanking him instead, he said: “It would just be nice if everyone else out there knew.” Well, now you do.

* The Feathers is at 16-20 Market Street, Woodstock. The taster menu costs £60 a head. Call 01993 812291 or see feathers.co.uk