The Lamb at Satwell

The South Oxfordshire pub was closed by its owner, the celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson, within days when his company went into administration. By the time my article appeared he had already shut another of his pubs, The Greyhound in nearby Rotherfield Peppard, but I wrote: “I feel confident that The Lamb is not going to follow suit.” My confidence was misplaced.

Anyway, this delightful old pub soon had new owners in Chris Smith and Nick Gross. They have now been there for more than two years, attracting plaudits all round for their traditional way of doing things. This involves a commendable use of local suppliers for much of the food and drink.

In the case of the former — and you couldn’t get more local — this includes eggs from their own flock of chickens pecking away at the rear of the pretty garden. The menu says that one of these comes with the salad Lyonnaise starter but is less specific about the poached egg offered with the main course of smoked haddock, which Rosemarie ordered. Was hers to be a Satwell egg? The young man serving us was unsure, but since this was only his first full day at work this was perhaps understandable.

As for the drink, much of this is supplied by the Loddon Brewery, just along the road in Dunsden Green. One beer, a deliciously refreshing bitter called Leaping Lamb, is brewed specially for the pub. We enjoyed drinking it in the garden as we looked over the menu. Later, I spotted the man who produced it, Loddon boss Chris Hearn, eating his dinner with three friends at a table immediately adjacent to ours. Though I didn’t know him, my ears pricked up when I heard him mention the names of his two sons, one of them a colleague of mine at Newspaper House. I wondered about introducing myself and complimenting him on his skill, but decided it would be an ill-mannered intrusion. He must be hearing things like this all the time.

I notice incidentally, as I write, that neither my half nor Rosemarie’s pint was included on our bill. Never mind. Paying up will give me the excuse for a return visit — no hardship at all, with the prospect of more food of the quality we were offered.

Rosemarie began with a brimming bowl of soup. “Carrot and cumin,” said our waiter. “Bet it’ll turn out to be coriander,” said Rosemarie. But cumin it was, showing the new recruit — called, I think, David — to be well briefed on this aspect of the menu at least. The unusual combination, lavishly laced with cream, worked very well.

She continued with the haddock, a very generous piece of dyed fish served with baby spinach, crushed new potatoes and an excellent chive hollandaise. Whether Satwell or not, the egg achieved the only black mark of the meal for being overcooked to the extent that the yolk was near-totally solid.

I began with a slice of a splendid terrine of juicy ham hock and tender white pieces of wild rabbit. These were interlaced in a most visually attractive way with what I at first took to be smoked salmon (what would it taste like?) but which, perhaps happily, turned out to be thin strips of carrot. The outside binding was Savoy cabbage. There were three slices of home-baked brown bread (Rosemarie had white, likewise lightly toasted), a dollop of radish chutney — a new one on me, very toothsome — and a well-dressed salad garnish.

My main course was (and for some reason the menu came over all French at this point) “l’agneau en deux cuissons”, the two classical cooking techniques (“les cuissons”) being the grilling presumably applied to the three perfect pink chops from a Cotswold-reared lamb and the roasting which I suppose had been given to the ‘gummy’ chunks of confit shoulder beneath them. They came with two rosemary Chateau potatoes (new ones fried with the herb to a delicious internal softness in a sealed skillet) and French beans. I ordered a green salad, dear for what it was.

We finished this memorably fine meal with a shared portion of citrus tart (lemon and possibly grapefruit, we thought, and of a curd-like consistency) with Chantilly cream and lime syrup. The crumbly pastry was notably good. I had coffee, without caffeine but certainly not without flavour.