Eurozone dining solidarity #1: Cyprus/Xynisteri

I don't know how much you've been watching the news, but the story of the last few weeks (off and on) has been the financial difficulty in Cyprus.  There's a lot of different takes on the story, and a lot of complexity on levels I certainly have no intention of getting into here.  But in the interests of demonstrating some solidarity with the bits of the Cypriot economy that have nothing to do with finance, we were drinking a Cypriot Xynisteri with dinner tonight.

Unlike most that seem to be mentioned, this is not a sticky but a dry-ish normal table white.  I thought it was sort of like a minerally Torrontes, but Mrs.--who has a more refined palate than I do, she reminds me--described it as sort of Chenin blanc with a dollop of Chardonnay when we had it with chicken a little while back, and tonight with salmon thinks its closer to a white Rioja.

However you describe it, tasty, and £14.50 at the Sampler in South Ken, or slightly cheaper by the crate from others.

By some coincidence, the cases of eurozone bailout/stress/whatever have coincided so far with well-developed traditional drinks culture, with either long and good wine tradition or, well, Ireland with a long and deep alcohol tradition.  Coincidence or not, it's a great excuse to show some solidarity at dinnertime.  And if Slovenia is next for a eurozone bailout, well, that's fine: they've been producing some good, underrated crispy whites recently...

Well fed and exercised occasional #1: Chamonix, les Vielles Luges

Chamonix is a funny place--a bit like the girl with the curl, when it's mediocre or bad, then it's very very very bad: expensive and hassle-filled and difficult and just not a holiday.  But when it's good, it's the best in the world bar none (in my admittedly non-comprehensive experience) and the hassle and expense either dissipates or seems sooo worth it.  That's as true of the skiing as anything else, including restaurants.  And one of the things that make the difference seems to be insider or local knowledge... the other seems to be luck.

So for what it's worth to those gastroramblers who also ski, it's worth mentioning les Vielles Luges ("the old sleds"), a shack on the side of the mountain over les Houches, just down the valley.  I went there as part of a ski group, and it's worth saying the meal was stellar.  It wasn't complex, and it wasn't subtle, but for a hard-pounding exercise day on the hill, it was exactly the right thing.

There were no shortage of good options, but the ski guides recommended the diots and farçon and then proceeded to order same themselves, which is always a good sign.

Diots were smoked sausages--but the texture and taste were extraordinary: normal sausage runs the gamut from the fine-grind of the sort Café Anglais serves as a pike boudin through the coarse meatiness of a good kielbasa, to the density of a heavy savoyard salami...this sausage was extraordinary in that it hit the texture of a very tender long-cooked pork steak, as a consistent texture from one end of the sausage to the other, without gristle or chunk...just smooth smoky meaty wonderful.  The smokiness of the flavour matched the smokiness of a woodfire... I never did find out if there was a woodfire in the restaurant, though it does seem the sort of place that would have one, but the flavour came through wonderfully.  The Hungry Skier gives them a plug, and I have no idea whether the sort that VL does are available at market.

Farçon was a sort of potato-bacon cake with prunes, cooked, gelled and refried in butter to brown it.  Nuff said: you can't serve something like diots with a salad on the side, can you?

Of course, I did this while skiing: while that is exercise--and hard exercise when done right--it's not something Mrs enjoys, so she had to make do with photos of the meal via blackberry, or so I thought at the time.  But while researching this short post, I now realise that one branch of the famous GR5 hiking trail marches right through the VL's patio...

We're now booked for a version of Offa's lunch (which we've been talking about for months) and will march off in a few weeks on a 5½day version.  We've already had fate intervene when our first night's dinner and first night's bunk, the Crown at Whitebrook, closed suddenly.  But I have great faith we'll make a go of this hike in Wales... there's a number of other excellent restaurants all in a row with 15-20 miles between them.  But if thinking about a 2014 or 2015 longer distance multi-day hike, well, we'll see... and maybe Mrs will see the diots first-hand after all.

http://www.lesvieillesluges.com/restaurant-de-charme.html

White Oak (Cookham) via Thames Path

Restaurant: White Oak
Trail: Thames Path National Trail  map printed from web

• Eating: good, and stunning value-- you can see why they got their bib.  We had celebrated our 10th anniversary together the night before at Launceston Place (one of the best in London) which was spectacular; White Oak isn't in that bracket, but there's a lot of places where the lunch after a dinner like that would leave you with whiplash of the palate... White Oak managed to stand up.
• Hiking: 10.43mi, 4hr00mins exactly on the march, very flat and would have been difficult to lose the trail since it follows the river so closely
• Wildlife spotted: thin, really-- not much at all until getting very close to Cookham, with one exception (more on that later)
• Nature's bounty: thin on this particular path, and although it was December, it wouldn't have been better any other time of the year.
• Muddy boots factor: bit of mud, but not very much considering it's soggy wintertime.
• Muddy boots tolerance: very laid back place-- although we did change into clean shoes just outside (bench helpfully placed by the door), I can't help feeling they wouldn't have been that worried if we had shown up straight from trail.

This blog is dedicated to the rural idyll and the beasts that live there, whether on the wing or on the hoof or on the plate.  So, gentle reader, it is with heavy heart that I must report a planning error on our part-- on this particular walk, the first 5/6ths of the walk were seriously lacking in rural idyll.  Mrs. grew up in rural and remote parts, and I grew up in a ex-urb of a medium-sized city, and where we now live is full urban central: we both agree that it makes sense to go full urban or full rural, but that some sort of halfway compromise is a muddle that doesn't have the benefit of either yet has the annoyances of both.  And that is precisely what we found ourselves walking through for the most part.  Unusually, we're doing this one twice: once with Mr. and Mrs., then a second time with friends--while we did get a good lunch the first time, we certainly didn't get the best of the hike.

Our first shot at it had started pretty well-- our train was at a civilised hour of 9:21 (change at Slough) and rolled into Windsor central at 9:53, along with a lot of people who looked like tourists: bumbags around their waists, guidebooks in multiple languages.  And they're thick on the ground--we follow them to the front of the train station, which is set up as a shopping arcade... they seem to be heading for the castle, and we're a bit disoriented even though we saw the path itself from the train as we rolled in, but being a riverside path, our innate sense of direction kicks in ("river is likely to be downhill") and we find our way onto a pedestrian stone bridge with lots of people on it taking each other's pictures.  Turn left off the bridge, find river and start hiking into the countryside... simple? 

Well, sort of.  The meadow where we started had bona fide mud and bona fide ducks, but you could hear the A332 and the A309 in the distance, a constant hum that reminds you how close you are to Windsor which is--despite the twee and tourists--a good-sized city.  We marched and marched: even though it was now midmorning, the early December sun never got very high in the sky.  After a few miles, the path walked us past Boveney Church, which was firmly shut, but interesting from the outside, a fascinating bit of history and an excuse to take a little sit-down.  It broke up the walk a bit, and was a helpful reminder that this is countryside rather than suburb, particularly as the noise of the A308 was just starting to be drowned out by the noise from the M4 freeway.  Just past the church, we rounded Eton Dorney, a man-made pseudo-lake where the rowing events at the Olympics were held.  From the path, you could just about see the paddlers pounding up and down the water, but you had a rather better view of the construction machines that were reshaping the lake, or of the large-ish homes on the far side of the river.  Yet despite being pleasant, the scrub woods on our side of the river and the well-kept houses on the other side, the hum of the roads meant you never ~felt~ like you were out in the countryside... it was always suburb with freeway.  That's not to say that suburban life is entirely ugly: the path ran underneath the M4 (surprisingly, directly under the bridge is one of the quieter bits of the path) and the view of the bones of the bridge is wonderfully modernist and has a certain beauty.  The water was high as well after a fair bit of rain, and some of the docks along the river were under water.

As we passed under the highway bridge, we were watching closely to see where the river crossings were-- the far bank of the river is Bray, famed in song and story among gluttons.  Given that we've got a reservation elsewhere, we weren't planning to eat in Bray, but with so many really really good restaurants in town, even popping in for a pint coffee as mid-journey rest seems sure to be worthwhile: you can't serve bad food with neighbours like that, after all.  The horror of it was, though, that our printed Google maps weren't at a resolution to show any footbridges, and we weren't going to use the M4 bridge (you'd have to run across pretty fast).  I had a poke around at the lock-keeper's islet at Pigeonfall Eyot hoping for a better crossing, but none to be had there (and as the lock-keeper spotted me, I had to pretend I was looking at his flood-highwater-mark thing).  As it turned out, the only way across would have been to ford it.  I had brought newly-purchased knee-high wellies (after the H&F mudbath, that was £26 well spent) but the river looked deeper than that and it was flowing too fast for a swim.  Which is a shame as Mrs. kept telling me there wasn't another pub before lunch (unusually: normally she's trying to drag me out of the pub) but any side-trip would have been miles out of the way for lack of any foot-bridge.  Surely some enterprising local kid with a canoe will spot the revenue opportunity?

We marched on, through undifferentiated scrub on our side of the river, and suburban homes (what in Canada would be called backsplit ranch-style, but I'm sure whatever is the English English term sounds better) on the far bank.  Mrs is now properly awake, and bemoaning the fact that so far, nothing much has happened-- and she's right, it's been a bit of a dull walk so far, with the annoying buzz of traffic (by now the M4 is fading into the distance but the A4 is becoming louder) there to remind us that there's been no compensating amusements.  And we are just coming up on the apparently famous rail bridge (an I.K.Brunel engineering marvel) through Maidenhead, we heard what sounded like the whistle of a steam train... and sure enough, one chugged overhead just as we were saying to each other "that sounds like..." when we were near enough to see the steam-train enthusiasts in the carriages (with sandwiches).  We took this as a good omen that our luck would change.  At some point.

Maidenhead town was not going to be that point, though.  We crossed on the A4 bridge, on the lookout for a pub since it was well time for a sitdown, but none to be.  As we didn't get near the centre of Maidenhead, I can't say whether it's pleasant or not: it doesn't get the same butt-of-jokes treatment that Slough does, but we were quite ready to stop in a bogus-Tudor bar and couldn't find one (Betjeman didn't include any directions or reviews in the poem, and in fairness probably didn't write the poem as a travelogue).  The bit we marched past had its interesting points (one house looked like it had been built as a Victorian astrological observatory) but really, it was a suburban road with the river constrained by a concrete jetty, for a couple of miles.  There was even CCTV, and if you need a hint that your rural ramble has taken a decidedly non-rural turn, then CCTV is a pretty big clue.  But just North of Glen Island, the road drifts left and the river leans right, and as you walk away from the road, the far bank of the river rises as bluffs that block out the A4 noise.... and wonders, you can just about hear the countryside exhale.  We've crossed the watershed, and found real rural at last.  

Practically the first thing we came upon was an older couple with binos and wrapped up against the cold, watching the rather large congregation of grebes on the line of posts by the weir at Glen Island on the far side of the river.  We like twitchers (though I myself don't know a hawk from a henshaw) and Mrs. is often shameless about rocking up to them and asking what they're gawping at.  In this case, the couple were counting the grebes on the posts, something the often do and sometimes wager on.  We chatted a bit, they were also heading off to a pub lunch... though we never found out what was riding on the bet, nor what the large number of grebes had won for the grebe-counters (dessert? a better pub?).  As we pushed off, a henshaw (or something) was circling over in an odd way-- Mrs. snapped it, and since her camera is better than either of our eyesight, it was only once home that we noticed a mouse-sized-and-shaped blur in the bird's claws.  The annoying bit is that Mrs. had only just adjusted the setting of the camera to take less detailed photos so it didn't fill up the memory card so quickly... or it would have been a remarkable sighting.

The bluffs on the far side now start giving us glimpses of Cliveden, though the sort of entertainments that were on offer in 1963 (and slightly primly alluded to by their own site, using a bit of Andrew Marr-narrated history) were either not on offer or we need to reset the camera to taking sharper pix for more than just wildlife photography.  After all too short a countryside ramble, we turn inland and walk across into Cookham village and lunch.

We returned a few weeks later with countryside friends who had driven in from the hinterland of Oxford for another lunch later-- we did try to do some hiking with them, but this was during the wet times between Christmas and New Year, when the Thames was over it's banks and flooded some of the riverside towns-- fortunately not Cookham, but the Thames Path, which we were hoping to explore on the far (West) side of the village, was a matter for hip-waders rather than wellies.  We did a circuit around town instead, and got back to the restaurant as it was starting to rain again.

And the food?  They deserve their bib--dishes were consistently interesting, clearly they're having fun playing around with things.  And the set menu is value of the sort that doesn't exist many places any more-- it tends not to be their most spectacular items on the menu (if going back, we'd both order from the main list) but it was certainly good quality and interesting.  From the evidence of our two meals there, the White Oak also seem to be on a crusade to reclaim ragù bolognese for the dining classes from the open-the-can school of cuisine that association with Spag Bol has been relegated it to.  There was an interesting crab and greens starter for Mrs. off the main menu and a chorizo salad on the £15 set which was tasty but the crab was a clear winner.  The wine list proclaims that it's all sourced from Corney's and that's the truth of it, but not badly chosen from their fairly large list and lots by the glass so we went through and had a glass of this and a glass of that (to follow the glass of fizz which Mrs. is working hard to turn into an obligatory part of the arrival ceremony at gastrorambling destinations).  For mains, the menu that day had a duck breast plate which was good, but this was where the bolognese came into its own: on one visit it was with game, on another with more domestic meats, in each case over pasta and very, well, toothsome in a way that the standard from-the-can that gets poured over supermarket hamburger and called bologese is not.  After a pause, Mrs. was uncharacteristically eyeing the dessert off the set, a rice pudding, which thoughtfully came with two spoons...I've never been that much of a fan, but it was smooth and sweet and gently spiced and we had done a lot of hiking and was a very pleasant end.  While there wasn't anything that blew our socks off the way that some of the dishes we've described in these pages have done, everything, even the £15 menu items, were done with thought and attention to making it something worth thinking about while you're eating it.  I do hope they're managing to make money on those £15's, as it's not just a loss leader to get people through the door... though I imagine there's some who would see it as a place too fancy if they didn't have that option.

From the restaurant, it was a short walk to the train station (one small train an hour) which had the one of the simplest route maps I've ever seen-- no real way to jump the wrong train here.  With dusk just gathering, we snoozed comfortably back to London.




Next month: winter warming with a Jancis-approved wine list at The Harrow, Bedwyn...we hope, since I've been a bit disorganised with the reservation.

Other people's reviews (historical): 
http://www.fine-dining-guide.com/the-white-oak-restaurant-review-cookham-june-2012
http://www.maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk/News/Areas/Cookhams/REVIEW-The-White-Oak-in-Cookham-25012012.htm


The info:

• Train: £7.15 each, day return, from zone 2 boundry to Cookham, even though our jump-off point was Eton&Windsor Central.  We mentioned "Thames Path" and they did exactly as previous, return from Cookham.  I think we saved a quid or two as Mrs was also on a pass for Central London so also paid only for the zone 2 boundry rather than London terminals
• Map: off the web, printed--easy to follow
• Second Brek: Caffe Nero Paddington, £7.90
• Carbohydrate Energy Drink on trail: nuffink, at all.  Not best pleased about it either.
• Meal: trailhead aperitifs (pint of Abbot at £3.30 and prosecco at £5.50) and then a three-course "Auberge" prix fixé at £15 (yes, that's all three courses) and from the carte, crab starter at £9 and a bolognaise at £16, with three 250ml carafes of wine at 9 and 6 and 8.40 made a total of £72.20 and tip of £8.66 makes £80.86

All in cost: £103.06, which is more like it, really-- as much as we like going large at Launceston Place or Hand&Flower, you can't do that every day (despite someone lobbying in favour of...) and this meal hit the Gastrorambling sweet spot exactly.

[I've finally gotten the GPS thing to be able to download a full hike into Google Earth and produce an image... but the hike was so very suburban I'm not sure I have the heart to download it for display]

Hand and Flower (Marlow, Bucks) via Thames Path

Restaurant: Hand and Flowers
Trail: Thames Path National Trail  map printed from web

• Eating: very good, but with one or two off notes (the whitebait amuse was, well amusing).  Slow-roast duck main was a clear winner, as was the mushroom (and almost certainly truffled) cream that came with the dill terrine starter.
• Hiking: 11.78mi, 4hr15mins on the march, very flat and--with the exception of the short but very slow patches of mud--it was easy and quick walking.  Signposting was excellent and the path was well worn so easy to follow
• Wildlife spotted: lots of birdlife, particularly aquatic birds
• Nature's bounty: not in November, no.
• Muddy boots factor: mud, mud, glorious mud... actually, much of the trail was gravelled or asphalted, but the few short spells of mud were absolutely trenches-of-flanders from the recent rains.  Wore full boots and still got muddy but at least not wet.
• Muddy boots tolerance: as usual, changed into proper footwear just outside... unfortunately we had encountered a pair of enthusiastic and friendly Labrador dogs in one of the muddier bits of the path and I wasn't fast enough fending them off.  Because of the mud, they were golden labs above the shoulder and chocolate labs below the shoulder, and left a splotch down one trouser leg which the restaurant staff were kind enough to pretend not to see.  Helped a lot to roll up trouser legs a bit while walking, but speckles of mud came up to mid-thigh which became more obvious as they dried in the warmth of the resto.

While England is in many ways heaven for hikers, there is a downside: it rains.  It seldom rains very hard or very long (no monsoons, none of the pounding torrential sheets that movies of New York show by running fire sprinklers in the studio) but English rain can sometimes be steady and when that happens it takes more than an hour or two to dry out after it stops.  This is particularly true in the winter.  And it makes a great excuse to stay in bed.

Mrs. had been watching the forecast closely, and had been lobbying to just ride the train into Marlow, munch and leave, should it rain.  That would mean she could have a proper lie-in.  The weather forecast varied from steady all-day rain, to just a little, to everything in between.  The night before, the forecast settled down as rain until 10am-ish, then grey for the rest of the day, and we--after negotiations no less serious nor less hard-fought than the SALT II talks--reached a deal which would involve an extra hour's slumber and a slightly later train, allowing us to let the rain pass before hitting the trail, and a precisely-timed single stop in only one of the two possible wayside pubs.  Fair result, I'd say.

Paddington is a better place for second breakfast than Charing Cross was, with lots of places and since we were catching an 8:57 train, most of them open.  Lots of people clearly do variants on what we do, as there were plenty of people with bikes or boots, and the ticket man surprised us by selling us train tickets specifically for hiking the Thames Path (detail below) when we told him our destination and return.  Mrs. snoozed on the train until we got to Shiplake station at 10am and it was time to jump off-- the trail runs right past the station... from the north end of the station, cross the road and the path starts just to the right of the tracks and follows the tracks up the way.  This first bit leads through the village, past several mock-Tudor houses, all nowhere near Tudor age and in mocking they range from a gentle nudging mockery to derisive and sneering oligarchitecture mocking.  But at the end of the row and the last bit before walking out into a wide field by the Thames, is something that mocks much more than the Tudors and we weren't sure we believed it until another walker with a dog passed by and confirmed it: the house had a railway, ultranarrow guage at perhaps 10 or 12 inches.  With a continental-style station whose clock tower reached up to almost head height.  The opposite field, the local told us, was where his polo ponies trained.  He didn't seem to approve.

From there, we went through a couple of smaller gates and onto a wide flood plain  to the Thames-side.  This immediately became countryside with diving birds on the river, and families of ducks (with odd blue bills) on the river.  There was a bird circling (a kite?), a pheasant croaking in the next field which we never did spot, and what sounded like a village rugby game.  At 1.35mi, the path crosses a weir on a duckboard bridge, with, appropriately enough, ducks below, rootling through the froth that gathered at the edge of the weir.  To judge by the state of the froth and the empty bottles bouncing in the surf, those ducks drink a lot of cider from 2L jugs.  After the weir, we can tell that we're coming into town as the people we pass on the path say hello less and less often and once within Henley town limits not at all.

Henley's a pretty little town, with a brewery right in the centre of town that Mrs. hadn't mentioned for some reason, and we crossed the main bridge just as a peleton in tight-fitting garish uniform whizzed the other way.  For a rowing-famous town, there were few out on the river, but as we passed out of town on the far bank of the Thames we could see many rowing clubs, and eventually one solitary rower on the river.  The riverside was asphalted and we walked quickly, not long people started to say hello again and we could hear shotgun shots in the distance and another pheasant croaking.  Mrs had woken up properly by then and we were chatting more about other long-distance hikes with restaurants: not just Offa's Dyke/Offa's Lunch that we were chatting about on the way to Apicius, but surely there's other similar?  The Chamonix-to-Zermatt Haute Route as a haute cuisine route?

By now there was a little spittle of rain (just enough to put hoods up on the gore-tex) and green parrots flying over.  No, we weren't hallucinating: apparently there were enough escaped house-pet parrots that they've formed colonies (they're very social birds) around any wilderness in the south-east.  At this point we're joined--briefly-- by another couple who are very slowmoving on account of being perhaps 40 years older than us: Mrs. comments that this will be us in 40 years, walking the trails and packing cheese sandwiches... well, maybe, but not if I (and the midweek restaurant specials we can't take yet advantage of while working) can help it.  Another large wotsit (kite?) circles over, and we spot a well-rusted sign on a pier in the river pointing to the Flower Pot pub.  On the road down, more fowl: turkeys and guinea fowl in the yard of the pub.  We roll into the pub on the dot of noon, and our previous SALT-II negotiations mean I have precisely 25mins to pee, wash, and finish my pint, a tasty bitter from a brewery I had never heard of before.

The pub is cozy: fire in every corner, and stuffed (taxidermied, I mean) animals everywhere.  We order, and are startled by London prices in a bit that's a long way from London, but can't really complain--once you get used to London prices, all the world's a bargain.  In the small village pub way, I get chatting with two young fogeys on the far side of the fire... Mrs. is eavesdropping on two elderly gentlemen having a rambling conversation over their lunchtime pints.  The menu at the pub is actually quite good, though neither guinea fowl nor turkey features.  The pint isn't local, but very tasty, and as my 25mins are drawing to a close Mrs. decides to help me with it so as to maintain schedule.

The way out of town leads past a lovely mock-(gentle mocking)-Georgian with statuary in the back yard and remarkable security fences, and Mrs. asks if we could live somewhere like that (a familiar conversation, as we're still renting our home) but if that's what the local pub charges, I'm sure we can't afford to live there.  The field is thick with deer and cows (and one bull) as we walk along to rejoin the Thames.  By now, Mrs. is hungry and we start to tramp a little faster past the forests and past what would be called a trailer park if it was in Florida: the far bank rises to steep bluffs and we can see buildings there.  We pass again over a footbridge and onto the North bank... and after a couple of fields, we hit mud.  Not just mud-- deep, wide, impassable mud that would suck you down like quicksand, with three-strand barbed wire on one side and the river on the other.  I'm wearing hiking boots but not wellies, and Mrs has on only hiking shoes, and we make progress only by holding the unbarbed topmost strand of wire on the wire fence side of the path, so we can walk at a diagonal with our feet on the solid bit of ground directly below the wires that hasn't yet been churned to mud.  This was when the Labradors bounced up to be friendly, followed by their owner in thigh-high rubber boots, which might be a bit OTT in any other circumstance but very practical here.  Mrs. managed to slip all the same, and caught her gore-tex on the barbed wire... it took some doing to extract her, and typing this eight days later she still has the bruise.  After a few hundred yards of this (and vowing to start carrying wellies on future hikes) we hit pavement again and step up the pace as we're now late... and very hungry indeed.

We roll into the car-park at 2:40 for a 2:30 table-- and I know this is the last sitting, so rush in to ensure they don't give the table away, while Mrs. is still changing shoes and trying to make herself presentable in the parking lot.  The restaurant is hot from the fires and the kitchen, and the low beamed roof means it's dark, so we needn't have worried: they showed us our table and took the plastic bag with our now mud-encrusted boots without flinching.


Mrs says: When handed the menu and wine list, it was good to see the wine list had a really wide range of reasonable value, non-French stuff, as Mr isn't much of a French fan, and normally at Michelin 2 star places you have to wade through pages and pages of Chateau this and Domaine that, and at £100+. The menu helpfully points out the dishes which have been made famous on the telly, like the slow roast duck. So I ordered the famous dishes (pigs head and the slow duck) and Mr had a couple of safer bets - a terrine and the loin of venison. This also made the wine choice quite easy, s they have a range of reds in the "Full bodied, complex" section, most of which would have matched well with all of the complex meaty flavours which were about to roll onto the table. Which to choose?? A Douro from Portugal? A hefty Madiran from SW France? Or a tub thumping Chilean Carignan, which would admit to 14.5% alcohol on the label, but might well be more than that in the glass? Looking it up later, turns out it has 92 Parker points... but I chose the Vizar 12 Meses from Douro - a Tempranillo / Cab Sauv blend with 12 months in oak, on the basis that I hadn't seen it on any other lists so should try it out.

I was rather disappointed when the pig's head turned up as a rectangular crispy thing. The piggy meat inside was very good, but the stand-out taste was the chick weed. It just looked like small green leaf sprigs, but tasted incredibly fresh and spring like, cutting through the richness of the meat and pancetta. Mr GR's terrine was fine, but the mushroom/truffle butter provided to go with the sourdough  bread was just stunning. Smooth, slightly salty, totally truffle-y. 

I can't tell you very much about the venison main as I was too busy eating the slow roast duck, quite quickly. And in particular, the duck fat chips. The photo just about does them justice. I would dearly like to go back and sit at the bar and order duck fat chips with truffle butter - and then die very happily of Michelin-induced heart disease.
All that bread, chips and meaty things had filled us up, so we shared the "Hand & Flowers Chocolate Cake with Salted Caramel and Muscovado Ice Cream" (though this might also have been because desserts are £9.00 each). The chocolate bit wasn't as deeply, richly, chocolate-y as the chocolate terrine at Apicius, but the salted caramel brittle and the icecream nearly made up for this. If I were to go back, I think I'd have the raspberry souffle to follow the duck fat chips.

Train station is the other side of town, and there's one an hour, so we hustled out... and hustled harder as it got closer to time... and hustling is hard after a walk and meal like all that.  But we made it to the single platform in plenty of time and snoozed home quite comfortably.

Next month: White Oak after the leaves have fallen

Other people's reviews (historical): 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/06/hand-flowers-two-michelin-stars
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/hotel/66073/The-Hand-and-Flowers-hotel-Chilterns-Buckinghamshire-review.html
http://www.thestaffcanteen.com/featured-chef/tom-kerridge-chef-owner-hand-and-flowers-marlow/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/restaurants/8852323/The-Hand-and-Flowers-Marlow-Bucks-restaurant-review.html
and while the reviews do go on a bit about the stars, they're broadly right, though they also rightly hold to a very high standard.  There was one (from the Grauniad, not reprinted here) that was less complimentary about the quality of the punters, which we didn't quite agree with: while our co-diners weren't quite all of Gastrorambling standard, they'd all pass muster, even the people who rolled into the carpark in a Bentley as we were changing our boots.

• Train: £9.20 each, day return, from zone 2 boundry.  The train wicket man at Paddington took our out-to-Shiplake/back-from-Marlow order, and printed us normal tickets to Shiplake return (I had expected a return to/from Maidenhead or Twyford, with singles for the side-branches)... he wrote "Thames Path" on the top and stamped the back--I had never heard of this before, but apparently if you pay the more expensive return, the conductors on this route are good with it--and our return conductor said as much.  Yet I haven't been able to find anything on the net about it, despite being a very sensible thing--and we wouldn't have had a clue if we had booked online as we usually do.  No wonder people think using the internet or the machines to buy train tickets is a complete crapshoot on what you pay.
• Map: off the web, printed--easy to follow
• Second Brek: Caffe Nero Paddington, £7.90
• Carbohydrate Energy Drink on trail: pint of bitter, small glass of chardonnay, £8.40 at Flower Pot
• Meal: two starters at £9.00 and £10.95, two mains at £25 and £27, two glasses of prosecco £15.20, Spanish red £43, choccy cake with salted caramel £9-- tip 12.5% makes that £156.54

All in cost: £191.24 (a pretty pricey one, but next one's a bib gourmand and will be easier on the pocket)

[this is still the spot to insert the GPS trail from the Garmin onto a map...which partially worked but for some reason only shows the last 2/3 of the hike]

Apicius (Cranbrook Kent) via High Weald Landscape Trail

Restaurant: Apicius
Trail: High Weald Landscape Trail  map OS136

• Eating: divine, been there many times and never less than stellar
• Hiking: 12.21mi, 4.5hrs on the march, rolling hills, and in good weather there's spectacular shires scenery
• Wildlife spotted: aside from domestic animals, two grey rabbits, two hawklike somethings circling over Goudhurst, and between Goudhurst and Cranbrook so many pheasants you almost had to kick them out of the way
• Nature's bounty: blackberries aplenty through late summer and early autumn (elevation appears to mean that different bits of the brambles fruit at different times) and still plenty are out and ripe for this hike in mid-October.  There were things that looked like redcurrents which we didn't try... and we have too much to live for to try the mushrooms that were growing but they were fist-sized.  It's bad manners to eat the apples in the orchards and they looked mainly like cooking or cider apples anyway.
• Muddy boots factor: on the trail, more than usual this time-- had rained recently, I guess--but not too bad... we were mostly alright with just trail shoes rather than full boots
• Muddy boots tolerance: we usually bring more elegant shoes to change into for the resto, but Faith (the maitress d') knows our foibles so isn't shocked if we leave the boots in the cloakroom to dry.  I must remember to roll up trouser legs a bit when hiking so you don't get mud on the inside of the cuff.

The first time Apicius came on the radar was-- appropriately enough, given that it is now kicking us off in blogging--a bit of internet ephemera by an anonymous eGullet contributor called Gareth.  The story that caught the eye was this:
It won my "restaurant anecdote of the year" award last year as Faith Johnson (the Chef's wife) who does front of house told us about one of her regular lunch tables which comprises 4 women putting the world to rights over half a case of Bordeaux. Two of these ladies spent the war in SOE, one at Bletchley Park and one in the French Resistance. One day Faith ventured to comment on their prodigious capacity for claret and was told in no uncertain terms by Madame de la Resistance "I am not an alcoholic, I am a drunk. Alcoholics attend meetings."
Well, that sounded promising if that's the target audience.  Mrs. read several more reviews, all absolutely unanimously unwaveringly glowing--and this was long before they got their Mich star.  So how do we get there?  We don't own a car; no train station in Cranbrook.  Then we spotted the trail symbol on the map.  This was in 2006-- our first real experiment in hiking to lunch, but we had done plenty of hiking previously, and plenty of lunching.  That time, we were a little late getting started for a 2pm Sunday lunch, and had to give up at the pub at Goudhurst... taxis are so thin in this part of Kent that a fellow at the bar volunteered to give us a lift, he was going that way.  In 2012, we're more prepared.

Alarm goes off at 6:30am, which Mrs. finds to be a little early and promptly rolls over again.  I myself need breakfast before this sort of hike (more than one breakfast ideally) so made porridge and coffee for one, and pushed Mrs. out of bed in time to catch an 8:08 train at Charing Cross.  I don't think she'd put up with this if there wasn't a lunch at the end of it, with a 2pm reservation.  Charing Cross is not a promising place to start a culinary adventure: at that hour of a Sunday morning, since the only place open at that hour is a Delice de France hole-in-the-wall... Mrs.'s first breakfast and my second set us back £11.18 but then we did have ~very~ large coffees.  By chance, this was the same day as the Royal Park Half, and lots of participants were streaming into town off the early trains, ready to run in spandex and dayglo.  I've never run the RPFHM and I'm sure it's a lovely run, but it's also a £45 entry fee, and I thought it was a little amusing that all the dayglo spandexers who were coming off the trains were on a course that is less than a mile longer than our course, and only slightly cheaper than our day out will be.  And they won't eat as well.
Train runs to time and we get to our jumping off point of Paddock Wood at 9:08am.  There's neither paddock nor wood in sight, but the main road from the station leads due south, past a couple of cafs (definitely not cafés, these are definitely cafs) and a Costa, all of which open and the high street bustling at this early hour.  The sun is out but it's autumnal crisp and (after setting out clothing, map, etc. the previous night) I find I had forgotten both sunglasses and gloves.  The main trail is below town, so the first mile or so is just following the main road out of town, but it gets very rural very quickly, at least to our Londoner's eyes, and we gawp at a couple of birds we can't quite identify, on an oast (traditional Kentish building) top.

At exactly a mile from the train station (on the GPS, which we're bringing on this hike for the first time) just after a school playing field, a set of steps

and onto a footpath that starts to feel like we're hiking properly on the dew that's still left although the fog has burned away.  The path here follows the outside of the playing field fence and we've done this path several times, so I'm tapping notes into the blackberry with one hand and rechecking the map in the other as the dew gets into my shoes (and thinking I should have worn full boots after all) and what ho, there's a large-ish horse in the field looking at us from thirty yards away.  "There's a horse," I say to Mrs. who lets me know it had been watching us as we walked all the way round the field and I had been to preoccupied to notice... then between the amusement of this exchange and watching about two dozen sparrows flocking in a hedge, Mrs. walks straight past the narrow snicket between two houses on Chantler's Hill that we should be taking.  "We always do that," she says, and in truth we always do do that on this path.

Through the snicket leads at 1.3mi via a kissing gate onto a disused golf course-- or at least I assume it's disused, as the grass is very yellow and nobody's golfing.  There are a few sheep grazing in a gully over what must have been a water hazard... surely they don't let sheep out if people are golfing, do they?  At 2mi another kissing gate lets us into an orchard (with more oasts in the background)

The orchard owners are apparently very tolerant of hikers and fell runners (we passed several runners who hadn't gone up to London for the Half who were running on the trail) but perhaps a little too tolerant as there are many paths through the orchards, and we always get a little bit spun around and never quite follow the thin green dotted line on the Ord Survey map.  At the exact middle of the orchard, we stop for a map check and Mrs. tells me "we always do this" as we give up on the map and take a path that looks roughly right.  A few minutes later we stumble out onto an A road on the outskirts of the village of Brenchley, only about a quarter mile from where we should be.

Brenchley is the picture-postcard version of what a Kentish village should be, almost the cartoon version of a Kentish village, with terracotta-tile-sided cottages and half-timbered Tudor houses
and we marched quickly past the Rose and Crown (apparently now converted to houses) and the Bull Inn (sadly shut at 10:15am, though they gave us delicious pints when we did this hike aiming for a dinnertime sitting) to the almost comically where's-the-movie-camera beautiful triangular village square.  There's a small church and atmospheric churchyard

and this is where you join onto the main High Weald Landscape Trail.  Since it's a main national trail, it'd be tempting to say you can't miss it, but the first steps out of the village square/triangle are a half-hidden path where you climb into a bush beside the fishmongers.  It's 3mi already hiking and we've only just joined the main trail, but the next stretch is along walled gardens and very quick walking, and very atmospheric

with a smell of autumn leaves as you rustle along.  If that's too poetic, though, at the end of the tunnel of foliage there's the first proper bramble of ripe blackberries and--two breakfasts already be damned--it's 10:30 and I'm hungry again, and tuck in to the very sweet ripe berries as Mrs. walks ahead a bit, down and up a fairly steep hill, so I'm sure I'll catch her up.  Passing a small lake in a copse, there are signs out referring to wilful damage and trespassing (path is public, sides are not) and I can't help wondering what it is about the fencing with three strands of barbed wire across the top that someone found ambiguous.  Apparently the police were notified.  As we top the first serious hill of the day, we look over fenced fields where further signs suggest that the livestock bite and kick and therefore we should stay to the path.  That particular morning, the kicking livestock were clearly positioning themselves far enough away that they could get a good run up for the promised kickings, as we saw none of them.  Along a small road with cottages and back into the orchards, it's harvest time

in another set of orchards.  We notice and debate the smaller, separate trees in the mix (one has lots of smaller cherry-sized yellow fruit, another looks like unripe cherries, another what would be called in Canada crabapples) leads down towards a lake by a wood.  This is another traditional muddle spot, though you can hardly miss the lake that's marked and I think we're finally benefitting from having done this trail before that we take the right path with only a minimum of muddle.  It helps that we're talking about planning for the next few hike/dining days: we're booked into the Hand&Flower in Marlow in a month, as we walk along a bit of the path where the landowner has helpfully fenced off both sides of the path with electric fencing

so you can't make a wrong turn, and we've been talking about the large number of very good restos in the Welsh Marches which might be combined with Offa's Dyke Path which we've started calling Offa's Lunch.  Perhaps for summer 2013, but we don't actually conclude on anything, cheerfully chatting plans as we cross the road at 4.5mi into Sprivers.  We've never had time to visit the lovely house on the grounds-- indeed, it's not clear whether you can-- but there's always a flock of very polished-looking black faced sheep on the lawn and the property has a lovely calm atmosphere.  The fields immediately around and after Sprivers are hop fields, for the local beers that are common and delicious in Kent, with some still on their poles and some hop vines harvested and pulled down.

I took one of the buds (left over, on an already-harvested vine) between my fingers and crushing it brought out a wonderful floral bitter smell... but also brought out a sticky resin which stuck to my fingers and there still is a bitter-smelling smudge on our OS map.  On the far side of the fields, there's a keyhole in the hedge that doesn't look like it belongs to a main national trail, but that's the way onwards.  Somehow that makes it feel all the more Alice-in-Wonderland... we're still marvelling at the sunshine and warm day, let alone anything else.  At 5.5mi, there's a little stretch by a chicken farm where somehow the posts with the waymarkings always seem to be twisted the wrong way, or fallen over on the ground.  It's the bane of hiking that there's still a few farmers out there with "Git Orf Moy Land" tendency... and while that is what it is, it's always made very little sense to me that they might muck up the waymarking.  Surely if they want us orf, we're more than  happy to go and we'll git orf ever so much faster if it's clear which is the right way orf and the sign pointing us orf is still standing.  Best to be charitable: perhaps the waymark posts were attacked by Kentish termites.  Past hikes, we've gotten very lost at this stretch and spent quite a while admiring the chickens (a variety of breeds, some quite exotic-looking) but this time we're careful, knowing "we always do this" and hold straight on until another keyhole in the hedge drops us out into a five-way fork in the path at 5.68mi from the start, and from here, we don't get lost again-- but cresting a small ridge, Mrs. can see Goudhurst on a ridge above the trail... and the climb looks daunting (or so Mrs. grumbles), but once you get going it goes quickly, and the steepness is a wonderful excuse to stop and look back over the countryside we've walked through:

More importantly, as we march up the high street, this is our first official break, at just shy of 8mi and just over three hours hiking-- it's traditional to stop at the Star&Eagle in Goudhurst for a drink, and you can see I'm in a bit of a rush to get there (with backpack).

I maintain we should have caught the train a halfhour earlier (so I could have a full pint rather than the half I'm permitted) but this opinion doesn't get a lot of sympathy.  As we set off, we're now properly hungry and Mrs is setting a sharp pace down the hill the other side of Goudhurst and through the fields.  There must be a pheasant hatchery somewhere nearby, as the fields are thick with them, in groups of up to a dozen and very careless of humans-- we weren't carrying guns nor were we intending to hunt, but with a bit of a run we could probably have grabbed a couple in hand.  If they stay that naive, they won't last the season.  At about 10mi, we cross a road near Glassenbury and run across a large group of teenage hikers, just tucking into tinned fruit by the pathside-- we don't attempt to evangelise; they'll come round to our way of thinking when they're older.  We also pass an oldfashioned looking armoured car rusting on the side of a field, its machinegun turret pointed out into the field, presumably against the pheasants who were massing there.  The last stretch is through a group of woods which on a previous hike were absolutely carpeted with bluebells, but looking very autumnal today and we march straight through under orders of Mrs. who is now firmly in the lead.  At 10.65mi, we climb out of the ex-bluebell forest onto the A229, cross and walk up the high street, and at 13:55  and 12.2mi we're changing our shoes and sit for lunch.  The GPS calculates that the walk burned 1273 calories, which seems an excellent excuse.

Mrs now takes over for the serious bit ...

Mr.'s starter of deep fried smoked haddock brandade, quails eggs, aoli and tapenade was the most interesting starter we've had at Apicius. Although it did create a slight fug in the dining room, from the deepfryer. The oiliness of the mackerel offset by the potato in the brandade; the crispiness of the shell combined with the smooth eggs and the bite of the tapenade and aoli to cut through; overall a balanced yet challenging dish. My foie gras was (close your ears if you are an opponent of gavage) delicious, but slightly ho hum, with the pain epice soaked in too much oil and the crab boudin blanc slightly too bland. However, these are very minor quibbles as we expect so much from Tim's cooking.
Mr. won the starter course by at least a length, but the mains gave me a resounding victory. The scallop and smoked bacon brochette was superb. The scallops absolutely perfectly cooked, sweet and tender and given extra depth by the bacon. The linguini smooth and tasty - I have no idea how Chef managed to make linguini have such depth of umami flavour. Mr.'s Romney Marsh lamb was very good; in most other restaurants this dish would have stood out. However against the precision and depth of the scallop dish, it appeared merely competent. 
I chose a Fleurie to match the mains - Gamay is not a usual match to lamb, but Mr. likes it, and Fleurie can also have white grapes added (though the French, being what they are, never admit to this on the label) so it was also a worthwhile partner to the scallops and bacon.
The third course was a tie: Mr. had a fabulous deep chocolate and coffee terrine and I had generous servings of six different English cheeses, including 'Admiral Collingwood', a medium hard cow's cheese with a rind washed in Newcastle Brown ale. Accompanied by a further glass of Brouilly: again from Beaujolais but further south, so warmer and more fruit-forward than the Fleurie.

With that, and now something past 4pm, the restaurant was kind enough to roll us into a taxi to the train station back to London, where we managed not to fall asleep until we were actually on the train.  And very good luck we were going to the railhead at Charing Cross.

Next month: Ten miles & Hand & Flower.

Other people's reviews (historical): 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/restaurants/3342228/Restaurant-review-Apicius.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2005/aug/06/foodanddrink.shopping2

• Train: £8.45 each, day return, from zone 2 boundry, with discount for an annual tube pass (which I used to think was the height of staid middleagedness, but now find rather practical)
• Map: already had it
• Second Brek: £11.18
• Carbohydrate Energy Drink on trail: halfpint of bitter, halfpint of shandy, £3.90
• Meal: twocourse £29 w/cheese £9, threecourse £31.50, two glasses of champagne £16, Fleurie £29, glass of Brouilly to go with cheese £5-- tip 12.5% makes that £131.06
• taxi from restaurant back to train £14.50

All in cost: £177.54

[spot to insert the GPS trail when I work out how to export it from my Garmin and onto a map]

It's not only armies that march on their stomachs...

Ah, yes, another food blog.  Just what the world (or at least that slightly podgy corner of the world that eats well) needs.

No, actually, we do need one more: there's a side of the enjoyment of culinary arts in the UK countryside that doesn't seem to be addressed by anyone writing about food--professional or hobbyist--at least not in English.  We (Mr. and Mrs., based in central London) can't be the only people that think this way, can we?
 
London is a tough place for running a restaurant: competition is fierce, tolerance for mediocrity low, failure easy, and it's all a bit of a treadmill for a chef... hard bloody work.  More and more chefs seem to be opting out of the London restaurant rat-race and setting up in the countryside.  I'm sure it's a nicer life, with no commute, cheaper premises and help, and of course out in the country is where food comes from so you're closer to the source.  There's places in the countryside that have become famous for clusters of restaurants (Ludlow, Marlow) and other places where there's only one restaurant of note for many miles, the only one in town or even in the middle of nowhere special.  We rather like these sorts of places-- not only is it more likely the chef is having fun and tends to be more interesting food (Mrs. likes this) but is often much better value than London restauranting (Mr. keeps an eye on this, since we do rather a lot of restauranting, and nobody's sponsoring this blog)

The countryside is great for another thing too: a good long hike.  The UK's combination of public rights-of-way, well marked paths, and high quality OS maps, along with a dense rail network for getting out of the city, make dayhiking from home easy.  And we see enough people on the trails to know that we're not alone in liking a hiking.
 
Hiking leaves you hungry.  There's great countryside restaurants.  We can't be the only people to spot the coincidence here, are we?

I don't think we are, at least not entirely.  A few years ago, we were sitting in a bar at the small village where the Coast to Coast path crosses the Pennine Way chatting with the barman, who was saying his little resto attached to the hotel/hostel did a roaring trade in good-quality food.  The locals, he said, had initially made fun, saying the walkers wouldn't want that, they just want filling stodge and a pint before settling into their tents-- the ramblers won't pay for quality.  He disagreed, and I still remember the locally-shot game pie ("it's quicker to shoot something than to drive to the supermarket") that he served that night.

But nobody seems to be writing about it.  We can't be the only people sticking Michelin *'s onto our OS maps, can we?

We did get into this particular combination of enthusiasms by accident.  A very good and very funny review of a then-new country restaurant in Kent caught our eye, and a Google check showed that the High Weald Landscape Trail marched right past the door.  That was several years ago.  The restaurant now has a * and  we've done that walk more than once--when last I phoned to book, we gave the name and they said "you're the hikers, aren't you..."-- as well as other walks to other restaurants.  And we're off again tomorrow for a late lunch on the same path that we first did.  But after talking about it for several years (and running through several possible names for the blog) this time we're going to take notes, take pictures, and actually write about it.  After all, we can't be the only people interested...