‘This is clever, generous modern cooking’: TOM PARKER BOWLES reviews a proper, old-fashioned boozer in Newbury
There are worse places to spend a bracingly bitter Friday evening than the Old Waggon & Horses in Newbury. It’s a proper, old-fashioned boozer, complete with fruit machines, Sky Sports, and the sort of long-term and lovely punters that all good pubs deserve. Better still, it’s licensed to 3am. Not that we get to take advantage of those splendidly liberal hours, as it’s off to the nearby Goat On The Roof for dinner, where owner Patrick Vaughan-Fowler and head chef Sam May create the sort of local restaurant that fills one with faith in mankind.
Inside, away from winter’s chill, the lights may be low, but spirits are very much high. This is the kind of place that appeals to all. Merry enough for a friends’ night out, but quietly seductive too. Bottles of wine line the wall, all well-priced and interesting, and I suggest you leave recommendations to the boss (Patrick, that is). He knows of what he speaks.
Berkshire pork belly: ‘clever, generous, modern cooking’
‘Skewers to start’ include the Barbed Dart (quail’s egg, radish, mushroom and smoked tomato) and a Fish Gilda (quail’s egg and smoked haddock). Both come under a glossy slick of mayonnaise, and both are divine. ‘Crispbread’ is more salty chicken skin than biscuit, dragged through a cool, creamy pork tonnato. Trealy Farm ham and Winchester cheese croquettes are four burnished globes of subtle beauty, the shell as crisp and delicate as spun sugar, the centre a molten morass of oozing delight.
There’s a great hunk of pork belly, the fat expertly rendered, with curls of brittle crackling. And a brilliant pheasant schnitzel, with a sprightly cider sauce, heavy on the butter and lardons. Sides are excellent: whole carrots slow-cooked in a sweet and sour, tarragon-heavy sauce transforms the everyday into the unforgettable. Just like the crisp roasted potatoes sitting in a sharp tomato sauce, slathered with pungent aioli. Joyous, in every way.
This is clever, generous modern cooking. Never arch or pretentious, rather elegant, sensual and unashamedly voluptuous. An occasional crack or crunch – of roast pig skin, radish or breadcrumbs – reminds one that life is not all sybaritic softness. We eat pain perdu with chewy brown-bread ice cream for pudding, and linger over brandy. I mean to ask why it’s called Goat On The Roof. But the cooking’s so good that it rather slips my mind.
About £40 per head. Goat On The Roof, 1 Bridge Street, Newbury RG14; goatontheroof.co.uk
