Froggies at Timber Batts, Bodsham, Kent

My apologies for the long gap since my last blog entry, I hope it won't be this long until my next one!

Timber Batts is a lovely old country pub between Ashford and Canterbury on the road out of Wye.  It's tucked away in the tiny village of Bodsham (no, I'd never heard of it before either!) and it's well worth the effort of finding it for yourself.  There is plenty of seating inside at an eclectic mix of tables, but if the weather permits you might want to sit outside and enjoy the rural views from the quiet garden to the side of the pub.  Froggies is, as you might expect from the name, run by a French father and son who have done well to retain the traditional English pub feel while adding their own Gallic charm to the place.  There are a number of wine case lids from some of the grand estates decorating the beams, and every shelf and sill is covered in empty wine bottles that span generations and vineyards of the world, mostly having been drunk by the owner!

We stopped in for a quick lunch (and maybe a swift half!) on the way home and were genuinely delighted with the food.  Although the lunch menu is short, it is full of good options including a home made burger (more on that later), various baguettes and sandwiches, moule frites, or simply ham egg and chips.  Something for everyone then!

I was feeling pretty hungry, so I went for the homemade burger, which comes with french fries and a small green salad on the side.  It's a good job I was hungry, because there was plenty of it and it was delicious.  The difficulty with very thick burgers is cooking them right through without letting them dry out, something the chef managed very nicely indeed.  There was a generous side order of the thinnest fries, and the salad had a light drizzle of house dressing that just helped cut through the big flavours in the burger.  The ham and chips looked very good too, the ham was lightly smoked and thinly cut, while the baguettes were big enough to feed even the hungriest mouth.

One of my favourite things to finish a meal is a café gourmand, usually a shot of espresso with two or three mini deserts just intended to give you something sweet to finish your meal, so I was delighted to find it on the menu.  It came with a couple of home made macaroons and a glass of café liegeois (espresso coffee poured over coffee ice-cream and topped with whipped cream served in this case in a shot glass).  A close second choice for me was the trio of deserts, which included an apricot tatin, panna cotta,  and a raspberry melba.  The desert for people unable to decide what to have, but delicious none the less.

Easy to find?  No.
Worth the effort?  Certainly.
Worth the price?  Yes, I think so.

The Red Lion, Milstead

We consulted the Michelin Guide to see what other recommended pubs were within easy reach, it's been a looooong week and neither of us fancied the formality of a restaurant so this seemed a good compromise.  We both liked the look of The Red Lion in Milstead, just south of Sittingbourne, a very short distance from the middle of nowhere.  The Guide says "Simple, cosy country pub, ever changing blackboard menu offers French influenced country cooking" amongst other things....sounded ideal.

From the outside the pub is nothing to look at, screened from the road as it is by bushes and trees.  The flat brick side that greets you from the car park isn't particularly inspiring, but that soon changes as you walk through the door into the small bar area that felt immediately warm and comfortable, despite there only being two other customers there when we arrived.   The only draught ale on offer was Wells Bombardier, which was very good indeed.

The Michelin Guide isn't joking when it says "blackboard menu", there is one fairly large blackboard at the end of the bar, from which you choose starters and main courses.  We were seated quite close to it, so we had little difficulty, but every other group that came in had to sort of mill around between it and our table while they decided what to have (which became a real drag when a relatively elderly group of four came in and struggled to make decisions!).

Dee chose goats cheese on rustic bread with air cured ham and salad to start, while I opted for Coquilles St. Jacques (scallops & prawns in mashed potato served in a scallop shell, in case you were wondering).  Yes, I know....scallops again!  What can I tell you, I love them.  After a very short wait the starters arrived and they were both nice enough, but that's about all we could find to say about them.

I had high hopes that the main courses would blow us away though, so with great enthusiasm I tucked into my bowl of bouillabaisse.  It lacked nothing for ingredients, at least three different types of white fish, scallops, king prawns, huge mussels, assorted unidentifiable shell fish and a rich, smokey soup/sauce.  It was very good, but no better than the bouillabaisse I had recently at The Horseshoes (see a previous blog entry) which was almost exactly half the price.  I still think I came out ahead of Dee though, her smoked haddock fish cakes weren't up to much at all.  Barely browned in the pan, more fish stodge than fish cakes, which is a shame because they were clearly home made and actually quite tasty.  I'm not sure who thought serving them with mashed potato was a good idea, given that the majority of a fish cake is already mashed potato, but there you go.

Never mind, though.  We're two courses in, both of which were nice enough, even if they weren't staggeringly good.  Still searching for whatever it was the Michelin researchers saw in the place, we soldiered on to the desert course, purely for research purposes you understand!  Dee ordered her favourite pud, apple and red berry crumble with vanilla ice-cream, while I forced down a slice of home made amoretto baked cheesecake with toffee sauce.  Once again, I think I won this course too!  My cheesecake was a little overpowered by the toffee sauce, but the texture was good and the whole thing was a nice rich finish to the meal.  The crumble, on the other hand, was certainly not a crumble.  It was more like a bowl of very sweet fruit with a sweet crust that had been welded together with a blow-torch just prior to serving.  Such a shame.

So we leave, slightly disappointed and seventy quid poorer, feeling that while it was nice, it wasn't quite nice enough for the money.  I don't think we'll hurry back, although I'm open to suggestions that we caught them on an off night.

Return to The Horseshoes, and new owners at The Bull

Just for a change we had dinner at The Horseshoes a couple of Fridays ago.  I was glad to see that the guest beer (Brains SA Gold) was still on, and still delicious.  I noted with great interest that the second pint was just as delicious as the first.....and the third.

Our timing was good, the new autumn menu had just been produced and for the most part the changes look positive.  I was a bit sad to see the fillet steak on a toasted brioche with duck pate removed, but some of the new dishes could well make up for it.  I like the idea of a scallop dish and a mussel dish of the day, plenty of scope for the chef to do something a bit unusual if the mood takes him.  Of course I had the scallops, which came with chorizo and lentils (one of my favourite combinations) and aside from requiring a tiny bit of seasoning they were splendid.  Dee opted for deep fried brie (always one for the healthy option!) which actually turned out to be very good indeed.

For main course I had one of the new dishes, slow cooked belly of pork with mashed potato and braised red cabbage.  Great autumnal dish, warming and filling.  The pork had been cooked long and low, so it was tender and moist.  Some home made onion rings gave it all that bit of texture that would otherwise have been missing, good addition.  Dee had the mussels of the day, a huge bowl filled to the brim with mussels in a basic cream and white wine sauce that needed nothing more added to it.  A little bowl of thin chips on the side and Dee was in her element.  The only thing lacking was a chunk of bread to soak up the sauce!

 A little individual lemon meringue pie for me (delicious!  Sharp lemon and sweet meringue) and summer berry and lemon sponge with custard for Dee just rounded off another comfortable evening nicely.

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Last weekend we wandered into what I guess could be considered our "local", The Bull in Barming.  Again, our timing was good!  We only really popped in to see if they were planning to do a quiz night soon, but the barmaid said they had only taken the place over a week earlier and were still deciding things like that.  She also told us that the kitchen was being refitted and if we came back the next night they would be doing food for the first time.  The same people also own the Redstart (see earlier blog post) and the Fox and Goose on Weavering Street in Maidstone which is apparently well known for its food.

After an encouraging start the next night (pint of Doombar for me, one of my favourites and very well presented it was too) and a chat with the chef and new landlady who were enjoying a glass of wine in the bar, we had a look through the menu.  Now, even taking into account that it was the first day the kitchen had been open and presumably they'd had to cobble the menu together a bit, it wasn't what you'd call inspiring.  We asked if the steak and ale pie was actually a pie, or one of those bowl-of-stew-with-a-flakey-pastry-lid efforts that you see so often, and were told it was a real bona fide pie.  Faced with options such as a burger, hunters chicken or sausage and mash, we both went for the pie.

It was massive!  It came with chips, peas and carrots and I suspect all came out of the microwave, but it was cheap enough and certainly filled a hole.  It's a bit of a shame though, because as we have already seen, it isn't that hard to do pub food really well.  This felt like pub food of the late 80's and might explain why we were one of only two tables dining on the opening night.  It's a particular shame, because the beer was excellent and it's a nice enough pub, but slightly sticky tables and below average food make it hard to recommend it.  We'll give them a while to settle in and try again, but if there's even a hint of scampi in a basket.......  On the plus side....the quiz starts next week!

The Chequers, Laddingford

The Chequers in Laddingford is a lovely looking village pub dating from the 15th century. There are about half a dozen car parking spaces at the front, but no shortage of space out on the road within a few yards.  My first impression of The Chequers was that it could have been really nice, but somehow didn't quite manage it. Although there were three good real ales on (as well as the usual array of fizzy stuff) and the ceilings were dripping with dark oak beams, it simply wasn't a comfortable feeling place. Possibly not helped by the large group of regulars blocking the vast majority of the bar itself, leaving just enough room for one person to be served at a time. Particularly galling as every single table was free.  In spite of this fact, we were still shown to the table right in front of the door to the toilets.

The beer, as it turns out, was excellent! A special brew from a Cornish brewer called Skinners to celebrate the Rugby World Cup, called Splendid Tackle.  At 4.2%, fruity and well balanced, it was so delicious I was forced to try a second pint to check the first one wasn't a fluke!

There was a specials board that included homemade sausages with mash. How often do you see homemade sausages on offer in a pub? I wish I'd tried them, to be honest, but more of that later. The main menu had many of the staple pub-grub dishes, and several interesting alternatives including a choice of three or four sharing platters. On a chilly evening the steak and ale pudding is sure to warm you up. For those looking for a lighter option, there is baked salmon, sole goujons, a burger with a choice of cheddar or stilton on top and a few other choices.   Prices ranged from around £5.95 for the light-bites up to £16.95 for the most expensive main course.  Deserts were all around £4.50.

Dee and I opted to share a starter of nachos, and it's a good job we didn't go for a portion each because there was enough for four to share! There was plenty of melted cheese, large dollops of salsa, sour cream and guacamole, and a generous helping of sliced jalapinos. It wasn't much to look at, but it was very tasty!

We are both big fans of sharing platters (and I'm a sucker for a buffet!) so we opted for the sharing fish, chips & dips platter. When it arrived there were sole goujons, haddock kievs, prawn wontons, prawns in filo pastry and butterfly prawns in light breadcrumbs, along with a huge bowl of the best homemade chips I've had in ages. There were three generous pots of dips, a garlic mayonnaise, a sweet chilli sauce and a homemade tartar sauce that was a little sharp for Dee but fine for me. Unfortunately both the haddock kievs were both cold, so the barmaid took them away and brought us some fresh ones. Even more unfortunately, although these were hot on the outside they were both still frozen in the middle. Although this was disappointing, particularly as it was the kievs I was most looking forward to, there was enough on the platter that we were both close to full anyway. Actually, the chips deserve a special mention, so nice to find good chips in a pub that weren't tipped into the fryer out of a Brake Bros plastic bag fresh out of the freezer!

We chose our deserts from a short menu of about seven or eight puddings. In order to give the kitchen a chance to redeem themselves after the poor effort with the kievs we both opted for homemade deserts. Dee went for the apple and mixed berry crumble with custard (who'd have thought it!) and I chose the pecan and maple tart with pouring cream. The crumble was good, but the tart was fantastic! Absolutely delicious.  Again, not much to look at, but I'd order the pecan tart again like a shot. 

With no prompting from us, when the bill arrived the waitress explained that they had not charged us for the fish & chip platter at all, despite the fact that we ate 90% of it!  A combination of the good beer, excellent deserts and this generosity would certainly have been enough to encourage us to return, but the lack of atmosphere, and if I'm totally honest (and a bit snobby) the attitude and language of the regulars make it unlikely that we will. Shame, because I get the feeling it could have been really nice.

The Horseshoes, East Farleigh

Dee and I often discuss what it is that we like about the places we regularly go back to.  We usually come to the conclusion that actually, when you get right down to it, the equation for producing a successful pub or restaurant is quite simple.  (Of course, the theory is simple, actually doing it and getting it right is much more difficult, hence the vast numbers of pubs and bars closing down around the country!)  We think it boils down to a combination of four basic things.  I'm not putting them in any particular order, because they are all equally important.

We think it must be a nice place to be.  Fairly basic requirement, you might think, but we have all wandered in to pubs that felt bare, old fashioned, run down, even hostile.  Make it a place people actually want to visit, make it somewhere they want to come back to.

It must serve good quality, well kept beer. There doesn't need to be six or eight hand pumps on the bar, just two or three really good ales (local if possible) and a range of good lagers.   A good choice of wines also helps.

It must do high quality food, nicely presented and well priced.  You'll notice I don't say reasonably priced or cheap, there are pubs everywhere that do a thriving trade selling Sunday lunch for less than a fiver, but the truth is what you get is less than a fiver's worth of lunch!  Price it right and people will pay the right price for it.

Finally, it must be well staffed with friendly, approachable people.  It's a great help if some of those people are knowledgable when asked about the beers or items on the menu, but it's quite ok to say you'll just go and check if asked something you don't know about.  You (the customer) are much more likely to go back after your first visit if you liked the people you met there the first time.  Where am I going with all this?  Well....there are lots of pubs that just don't get that these four things will make people come back again and again.

Fortunately for us, The Horseshoes in East Farleigh seems to have grasped all four!  It's a nice, traditional feeling pub that in spite of being essentially open-plan has quite distinct feeling areas that give it a slightly rambling feel inside.  There is usually a small group of regulars drinking at the bar in what is clearly the "pub" area, a lovely orangery that is the main dining area, and there are a couple of smaller, more intimate areas where two or three tables nestle amongst photographs of the area and local landmarks.  There is also a patio area to the rear of the pub that overlooks the local riding school and stables.

The menu is well balanced, offering a good range of sharing platters, starters and light-bites, traditional pub classics and an up-market feeling main courses section.  There is quite often a special menu available, which offers a limited choice of three or four starters and main courses at just £13.95, and offers the option to add a desert for just an extra £3.  Friday night is "Fish and Fizz" night, with a promotion on English champagne and a special menu featuring four starters, then Sea Bream, Mackerel fillets, Swordfish steak or Bouillabaisse.  The main menu has a range of dishes including beef rib pie, fillet steak on duck paté and toasted brioche, venison, crab cakes, home made burgers....something for everyone.

On Paul's recommendation (our host, the manager), we both had the seared scallops with chorizo with a sweet potato puree and watercress to start.  Scallops are just about my favourite thing to eat and I have tried them all over the world.  Let me tell you, these were amongst the best I've had.  Cooked to perfection!  Just a few seconds too long in the pan and they become rubbery, just a few seconds too little time in the pan and they stay slimy, so not the easiest things to cook well.  I was worried that the strong flavour of the chorizo and the sweetness of the puree might overpower the scallops but to my delight they tied together beautifully.

I had hoped to sink a pint or two of Incubus with dinner, a deliciously refreshing beer from the local Hopdaemon brewery, but it was just about dead when we arrived.  Fortunately I am well aware of the charms of the alternatives available, Sharp's Doombar and Harvey's Best Bitter.  (Doombar every time!)  Paul informed me that a new Fullers Summer Ale would be going on, so rather than order a second Doombar I waited.  I'm still trying to decide if I made the right decision, as the Summer Ale was extremely light indeed, both in colour and flavour, and while it would make a great session beer it was a bit lost in the strong flavours of the meal.

For main course Dee fancied some pasta, so she ordered the mushroom and spinach linguine.  Pasta is another one of those dishes that ought to be really easy to cook.  I mean, everyone cooks pasta, right?  Well, yes, but like the scallops, it's difficult to do it well.  Dee and I both like our pasta somewhere between cooked and al-dente, and as luck would have it that's exactly what she got.  And very nice it was too!  I'm always a bit wary of ordering dishes that contain no meat or fish as a main course, carnivore that I am, but the linguine needed nothing more than a tiny pinch of salt.  I'm not sure I would have noticed that it was a vegetarian dish if Dee hadn't told me.

Again, I went with Paul's suggestion and ordered the bouillabaisse, which is a fish soup/stew typical of Marseilles.  My eyes lit up when it arrived, I could see more scallops, at least three different types of fish, mussels, olives, tomatoes, and I could smell the paprika smokiness.  Perhaps with hindsight I should not have ordered this after the scallops, because both dishes were very smokey flavoured.  That said, the bouillabaisse was delicious, filling, out of the ordinary...everything I look for in a dish!

In the interest of completeness we felt it was our duty to at least try the deserts, even if we were fast running out of room!  It's tough sometimes, but we somehow manage to plough through!  We both chose from the special menu again, Dee opting for cappuccino cheesecake, while I went for a chocolate fondant.  I made the mistake of trying Dee's cheesecake after I had already had a mouthful of my dark chocolate fondant, so the delicate flavour of the coffee was completely lost on me, but Dee assures me that it was creamy and tasty.  My fondant was rich and gooey, warm in the middle and served with a ball of vanilla ice-cream that cut through the intense chocolate very well.

Paul has done a great job of marketing the Horseshoes both on-line and locally.  There is a thriving Facebook page and the pub has its own website too (www.thehorseshoeseastfarleigh.co.uk).  Given that there are very few houses within walking distance it is testament to the hard work of the manager and staff that the place is so busy and entertains such a wide age range of customers.  All four of my criteria for making a success of a pub have been well and truly met.  It's a good job we don't live within easy walking distance of the Horseshoes, we might never leave.