En route to The Feathered Nest in Nether Westcote, Oxfordshire, I remembered that the cool thing to say about the Cotswolds is that they are awful. A bucolic establishment bolthole where David Cameron and Jeremy Clarkson hang out eating Blur-flavoured cheese strings at one of Alex James’ regular soirées de fromages. Who’d want to live there?
OK, I’ll start: me. The Cotswolds are heavenly. Nether Westcote, for example, is close to the picturesque, medieval town of Burford, which has a high street festooned with antiques shops and charming tea rooms selling fresh, plump lardy cakes. Burford looks like the set of one of those Murder, She Wrote specials when Jessica Fletcher visits England without ever actually leaving the Universal Studios backlot, by simply flinging about ducks, scones and Aston Martins.
The Feathered Nest, six miles down the road, is an exquisitely restored malthouse, dating from 1692, that gazes down on to the Evenlode valley. Its chef Kuba Winkowski recently won the Craft Guild of Chefs’ National Chef of the Year award, plus various other accolades, so do not darken its doors requesting a pie.
No, Winkowski does fancy fine dining over several courses: small plates of sturgeon and caviar littered with fresh nasturtium leaf, Mangalitza pig with Silesian dumpling or duck tortellini with winter truffle. Tiny, pre-dinner snacks of finely hewn smoked haddock tart and a basket of fresh, sticky cheese rolls appear, then an excellent, and minuscule, taster of pumpkin soup. Produce is exemplary, flavours paramount.
There is loads to love here. There is a full vegetarian menu, and a children’s one featuring meatballs and brownies. If you are one of those annoying, sylph-like women who can wear Gap Kids clothes, I’d suggest giving that a go, because, otherwise, four dishes off the elegant adult menu cost £70 and six £90.
The two signature dishes of the evening, octopus and dumpling, in our case, come with an extra £10-15 supplement. You’re in a country pub with bar stools made of horse saddles, yet you’re looking at a menu more suited to The Ledbury in Notting Hill.
Even so, on a Saturday evening, the place is swamped. The Cotswolds are not short of customers who will go with Winkowski’s vision. Several of them were staying in The Feathered Nest’s rooms, which, according to the website, require a two-night booking at weekends. Without dinner, accommodation for even the cheapest room would be getting on for £600. Rolling my eyes, I booked into Mollie’s Motel And Diner, 18 miles away, for one night at £55, but more of that adventure later.
The main challenge a large pub like The Feathered Nest faces, when attempting to replicate The Ledbury or even Fera at Claridge’s, is that such places require a squadron of top-level staff working in nigh-eerie harmony, leaving no knife unswapped, no glass unfilled, no dietary quibble uncherished. That is the magic.
The Feathered Nest, however, has an eighth of the staff it needs, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that our request for no pork, repeated three times, saw one dish arrive with lardo, then the next wrapped in pancetta, and without apology. At Claridge’s, this would feasibly result in me having to talk down the maître d’ from a public seppuku ceremony.
We drink two glasses of Château St Michelle and range through the menu, eating the likes of a wonderful, slender slab of salmon on an inky reduction of black garlic. Charles is enamoured of his sweetbreads on a pungent, pureed cauliflower cheese showered with bianchetto truffle. Guinea fowl appears with a confit egg yolk and a pixie’s handful of morels. It is faultless.
But by course five, sat in a beautifully hammered-on conservatory, a sense of cabin fever that I often experience during fancy dinners takes hold. There is a brilliant bit in one Thanksgiving episode of Friends, just after Rachel unveils her beef English trifle and Phoebe admits her love for Jacques Cousteau, when Joey’s meagre manners leave him and he bangs the table shouting his innermost desire: “I want to go!”
I felt like that while waiting about, sitting downwind of loud conversations about the consent debate, Corbyn and house prices, and knowing both that the staff are far too hectic even to visit this room any more, and that I still have a soufflé on order (albeit a very nice rhubarb one with a blood orange kick), plus the revealing of the non-surprise surprise petit fours and then a hunt for the card machine and, eventually, my coat.
The starry sky – no light pollution here – on the drive afterwards warmed my heart completely, but dinner left me a little cold.
The Feathered Nest Nether Westcote, Oxfordshire, 01993 833030. Open Thurs-Sun only, noon-2.30pm (3.30pm Sun), 6.30-9.30pm (7-9.30pm Sun). Set menus: lunch £45 for three courses (£55 Sun), dinner £70 for four courses, £80 for five, £90 for six. All plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 5/10
Service 5/10
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