"I felt actual joy at finding this pub. Had lunch there on Saturday. My partner and I like to get out weekends to explore and I love real, fresh beer, so we go to pubs for lunch a fair bit. It’s always a bit suspenseful. Will the beer be good, or will I have to have lager? Is the food honest? By which I mean local, tasty, prepared with skill and care, with the price appropriate to what you get. I’d rather a ham sandwich and pickled egg to those vast, laminated menus offering factory-made crowd pleasers from the freezer, that you pore over to find the thing they’re least likely to ruin. In the round, the experience is mixed, with enough instances of bad or disputable beer, over-priced, mediocre food and indifferent service for disappointment to be a risk. Not so here. The greeting by staff was warm and enthusiastic, the atmosphere happy and orderly. The garden, where we elected to sit, was pleasant and intimate. They’d rigged up stalls around the perimeter that give a private-dining feel even though you can still soak up the ambience. It was a bit chilly, but there are on-demand heaters. When I asked about the beer, the waiter was knowledgable and invited me to try a couple on spec. I settled for a pint of Independence, from the Bristol Beer Factory, and it was flawless and beautiful. They’d fulfilled the brewer’s vision. I could have cried. They care about beer! There were three of us, all hungry, and we ordered a little over-eagerly from the starters and small plates. Ham croquettes, prawn croquettes, chilli duck wings, glazed ox cheek, crab on toast with pickled fennel, steak with anchovy butter, flatbread with smoky pepper purée. All surprising, imaginatively-conceived, confidently executed, and delicious. It all came at once, as we’d asked, and I found it a bit daunting, not knowing what to have next. Next time we’ll order a couple of plates and savour them at leisure before ordering more. About the small plates: people accustomed to the starter-and-main paradigm might have questions about value for money. It suits me. I often order two starters and no main because I find mains oppressive in their needless bulk, and I hate wasting food. In my view, the quantity on each ‘small’ plate was generous. The toast, piled with crab paté and topped with pickled vegetables, was £7, and it would have filled me up on its own. As a point of comparison, a Whopper meal deal at Burger King, with fries and a Coke, is £6.99. Nothing against Whoppers, but sometimes you want to taste the earth’s magic. Note, this is a pub, not a restaurant occupying a pub. You don’t have to eat. The staff – who seem to enjoy themselves and to be proud of what they’re doing – want you to enjoy the beer as much as the food. Walk in drinkers are welcome, especially drinkers who might at some point get peckish. It’s a pub made for me."
