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Lunch for two, including service, £50.
For certifiable restaurant fetishists the Michelin Red Guide to Great Britain and Ireland is akin to pornography. For them - damn it, for me - the announcement of the new star ratings, which occurred a couple of weeks ago, is a filthy pleasure to be savoured. In truth, there's no good reason why it should be so. Michelin is a thoroughly conservative organisation and it makes very few decisions that could not be predicted in advance (even if not by me; half of the predictions I made in this paper were wrong).
This year, what controversy there was focused on the decision not to award Marcus Wareing's restaurant, Petrus, a second star, and to award Nahm, the hyped Thai place at London's Halkin Hotel, its first.
Furthermore, the Michelin inspectors are hidebound by distinctly antiquated French notions of what makes for a good restaurant. It's significant that Michelin only deigned to bestow stars on two of London's Indian restaurants a year ago, when Britain has long boasted some of the best Indian places outside India itself. When they are willing to award restaurants that do not fit the Western model of food, the service still has to keep to type. The awarding of a star to Nahm may look like progress, but it isn't really; Nahm plays the Michelin game.
All of that said, the Michelin ratings are still a good way of keeping score. To claim to be interested in restaurants but have not even a passing interest in Michelin is a little like claiming to be a football supporter with no interest in the premiership. At the top end, Michelin does tend to be spot on. The awarding of a second star, for example, to the Fat Duck at Bray made total sense.
They are also good at highlighting trends and there is no doubting this year's top trend: the improving quality of food in pubs. Last year, Michelin awarded its first star to a pub, the Stagg Inn near Kington, in Herefordshire. Two more gain stars this year: the Olive Branch in Clipsham, near Stamford, and the Star Inn in Harome, near Helmsey. Another nine pubs come into the guide at various other ratings, bringing the total number tipped by Michelin to 263.
I wouldn't be surprised if the White Hart Hotel at Nettlebed in Oxfordshire joins their ranks next year, though it is not without its faults. It is a second venture from Chris Barber, the man behind the highly regarded Goose pub at nearby Britwell Salome. For some reason though, this new pub restaurant plus brasserie is being promoted less on that and more on the fact that Barber spent 11 years as personal chef to Prince Charles. This is a very bad advertising strategy. I can think of no family more genetically predisposed to bad taste than the Windsors. Likewise, the White Hart has made a lot of noise about the fact that its designer, Natalie Mitchell, previously designed the interior of Jamie Oliver's house. Like we care.
What counts is her work here and, I have to say, it is not entirely convincing. The White Hart is, from the outside, an ancient lump of country inn. Inside, however, it is now all cool modernist spaces, white walls and downlighters.
Intellectually, I have no problem with old and new side by side. The failing here is that the design has no sympathy for the building in which it is housed; the cosy low ceilings and rabbit-warren rooms seem to have been treated as an obstacle to be disguised rather than a feature to be celebrated. The effect, combined with the hard, unfriendly furniture, is to create a series of rooms in which one is not moved to linger.
It's a pity, because the food I tried in the brasserie is really very good. Pricing is exceptionally competitive at around £4 for starters and £8 for main courses, and the choice of dishes deeply comforting and reassuring: pté or prawn cocktail to begin, for example, sausage and mash or shepherd's pie to follow. There is also a list of specials and, in an attempt to put the kitchen through its paces on a more complex dish, I chose from there: grilled scallops on a pea purée. It was beautifully presented, the three deep-orange corals placed daintily on the puddles of the rich, ferric purée. The big, fat scallops were perfectly seared outside and just the right side of raw on the inside. A great dish.
For my main course I went for the shepherd's pie; I was nursing the beginnings of a cold and I wanted comfort food. Excuse a little hyperbole but it was perfect, a reminder of why it is such a classic dish. The meat was lean, the gravy rich, the smooth potato topping crisp. Green beans served alongside were also crisp and buttery. I finished with a lemon cheesecake which, while fine, was less impressive. There was something just a little heavy and overbearing about the filling.
Service, like the decor, was unconvincing. Clearly there were a couple of people out front who knew what they were doing, but the same cannot be said for everybody. When I asked my waitress what the various breads were in the basket she was offering me she said, 'I have no idea. They just put them in the basket and told me to come out here with them.' I don't think she's found her vocation. It's odd, because the experienced management clearly has serious aspirations for the White Hart, as the menu in the upscale Nettlebed restaurant indicates. Starters there come in at around £12, main courses at double that. Such ambitious pricing has to be met by ambitious standards of service.
As the new Michelin Guide proves, food in pubs has become seriously competitive. The White Hart would be wise to iron out any wrinkles now before the inspectors come calling, as come they surely will.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
