To The Manor Born?

Having eaten at a similarly-pitched destination dining hotel nearby the evening before. Times’ food critic Giles Coren recently cancelled his reservation at the Bybrook Restaurant. “Countryside Michelin is countryside Michelin,” Giles wrote; “I just didn’t want all that flimflam two nights running”. Countryside Michelin? How very condescending (and, for a national critic, more than a little blinkered). Michelin is as Michelin does, worldwide – and ‘the countryside’ is no longer shorthand for ‘bumpkin’. And in this year’s red book roll call, the formal acknowledgement of Bybrook head chef Richard Davies was, in my humble opinion, the most well-deserved commendation of the whole newbie list. As for Giles’ other playground jibe: he may have endured too much fussy pudding up the road, but I can wholeheartedly report that the Bybrook – indeed, the whole Manor House Hotel experience – is a totally flimflam-free zone.

Seeing as I’ve set the pace of this review by quoting another food critic, I might as well quote myself. “If Castle Combe isn’t the prettiest village in England, I’ll eat my whole collection of Beatrix Potter books,” I declared, following my last visit. “The hotel itself is the epitome of country house perfection: an elegant pile of grand, stately home proportions, uber-glamorous but stuffed with character”. I couldn’t have put it better myself then, so I won’t attempt to now. But even a rifle through my own back catalogue doesn’t do justice to my recent dinner here.

After a Bellini in the seductive Full Glass bar, an amuse bouche of smooth artichoke foam and some warm, fragrant tomato bread, my starter of crab tortellini upped an ante that already scaled magnificent heights. Wrapped in the finest, silkiest pasta parcel imaginable, a moist, tender filling thrummed with the fresh flavours of a recent tide while a surf of lemongrass and sweetcorn added an almost exotic, softly sensual edge to temper the crab’s lively nip. His five fat scallops came resting on a button of dusky chorizo and a mini-puddle of smooth butternut squash puree, poached pear doing his finished dish all the favours that my lemongrass/sweetcorn chorus did for mine. This was seriously, properly good stuff, enjoyed in an intimate corner of a spacious, luxuriously decorated dining room, brought to us by smart professionals who made us feel like film stars from the moment we walked through reception (good job we’d dragged the glad rags out of the nether regions of the wardrobe before we left the house, then).

For mains, my luscious roasted sea bass came accompanied by a vanilla mash with the potential to veer too much towards a dessert theme were it not for the grown up, dusky undertones provided by a smoked bacon jus that brought everything together in perfect harmony. His meaty monkfish, meanwhile, came confined in a cloak of parma ham and resting on a light pearl barley broth, with parsnip puree and Jerusalem artichoke adding texture and balance. Talking of which: we opted for the by-the-glass wine recommendations to accompany each dish, a wise decision that added yet another dimension to a voyage of discovery headed up by one of the most competent (food) tour guides in the country. The wine option adds around another £27 each to the Bybrook’s £52/3-course set menu, but even in these credit crunchy times, you really do get much more than you pay for here.

After another unbidden treat in the form of an iced granita-topped fruit mousse, my honeycomb semifreddo turned out to be a pyramid of frozen honeycomb cream with a dandy-style honeycomb ‘feather’ in its cap next to a smaller mountain of raspberry soufflé that added both wit and reason to the dish, leaving a raspberry e’spuma to supply a touch of brazen glamour. Aptly enough, his warm, melting Valhrona chocolate fondant with a fascinating tonka bean ice cream was a manly dessert, rich in sensual metaphor. The whole experience – on all counts – was absolutely perfect.

“Can you forgive me [for not going to the Bybrook]?”, Giles whined, at the end of ‘that other’ review. The more pertinent question might be whether he can forgive himself.