Out & About April 2017

The roast with the most at The Newbury... in Newbury HILARY SCOTT gets a flavour... plenty of flavour... at a pub in the centre of town I f you’re good at cooking Sunday roasts – and a lot of us are – then it’s often the one meal that can disappoint when you eat it out. Well fear no more – we’ve found a gastro pub that dishes up one of the best.

Of course we tried the sharing board – the rosemary-flecked poussin nestled beside the just-right sirloin and surrounded by rounds of pork. The board also included our sauces – an apple butter to melt over the pork which was new to us, but the cold butter oozing over the hot pork with its crunchy outside was fab, a horseradish with a bite and a lovely bread sauce. Everything is home-made – sauces, ice creams, pastry and more – and owner Pete Lumber and chef Darren Booker-Wilson are proud of that. “We don’t have a microwave and we have a small freezer for ice creams and sorbets,” says Darren. But while that roast dinner will remain in our memories for a good while, the rest of the menu at The Newbury is also really noteworthy.

The Newbury in Newbury town centre is proud of its Sunday roast dinners, and rightly so. Succulent local meat, flavoursome gravy, crisp roasties, light and fluffy Yorkshires, vegetables that are cooked individually and with added seasonings like carrots cooked in orange juice. And everything is steeped in flavour, flavour, flavour. For £15 you can choose from pork belly with a shard-like crackling and apple sauce; roast sirloin which has been cooking since the Saturday night at a low temperature so it is meltingly soft yet still pink; or roast poussin with bread sauce. Can’t choose? Try the sharing board that offers all the above for two diners or more at £18 per person.

Top right, orange and passionfruit tart, right espresso martini, below, Sunday roast with all the trimmings

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