Out & About Spring 2019

FOOD & DRINK - RESTAURANT REVIEW

The Harrow, Little Bedwyn

HILARY SCOTT discovers why The Harrow in Little Bedwyn has retained its Michelin Star since 2006

T here are some meals you wish could never end. And very, very occasionally you love a lunch so much you want to go for a nap then reappear for dinner service. Our lunch at The Harrow in Little Bedwyn was one of those gems. Nestled between Newbury and Marlborough, even on a damp January day it lit up our world. Looking like a country pub, as we ambled up with the skies ominous and the crows squawking, we soon realised this one Michelin-starred restaurant was as slick as anything city-borne.

a gluten-free hunk of bread and a normal sourdough, both served with curry butter. Next came for me a frosty parfait of beetroot, which was packed with beetroot flavour, no mean feat since frozen parfaits take some doing to pack taste in. On top, slabs of mild Homewood feta cheese, foraged herbs, pickled fennel, smoky Isle of Wight tomatoes and a tomato concasse and pea purée. It was fresh, zingy and delicious. My companion had an adapted dish from the menu’s shrimp and lobster dumpling (she could not eat the wrapper) which was the sweetest lobster claws with Asian sauce and shiso leaf salad and a slick of Thai chilli

jam. And we should just mention the price here – an amazing £40 a head for five courses and unlike many tasting menus there is a choice. Optional matched tasting wines ( 2 x100ml and 1x50ml) are £15 per person and premium wines £25 a head. There’s an eight-course menu too with choices also. The wine list is encyclopaedia-sized – a 900- bin effort – and Sue and Roger are proud connoisseurs of their selections. We had a bottle of South African Lukas Von Loggerenberg’s Break a Leg Rosé (£38), a herby and lush rosé. Cornish line-caught cod, soft and succulent, came with mash, treacly bacon and Dorset cockles and swam in

The windowsills and walls groaned with awards, and we were about to find out why. The Harrow does great ingredients which are allowed to sing – as owner Sue Jones and chef/partner Roger explained later there’s no heavy sauces, foams or suchlike to detract from the food and the cooking. The fact they’ve kept their star since 2006 shows it works. With a companion recently diagnosed with wheat intolerance, it was going to be interesting to see how The Harrow handled it – with aplomb, as it turned out. So two different amuse bouches (I cannot eat peppers, but really we are not a chef’s bad dream) – a strong spicy mulligatawny soup and a sweetish macaron with a disk of foie gras glued together with a sticky glaze came with

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