Marco Pierre White's Yew Tree Inn, Highclere, near Newbury, Berkshire (01635 253360). Meal for two, including wine and service, £90
There used to be a pub at Highclere called the Yew Tree Inn. Not any more. Now it's called Marco Pierre White's Yew Tree Inn. His name is on the building in letters 3ft high. When I asked Marco last year about his restaurant empire he insisted he owned nothing and was just a businessman with 'interests'. Well, as his name is not so much above the door here as across the whole front elevation let us assume that he is in some way involved.
Certainly it brings expectations, but then Marco has never been afraid of those. Witness the menu, which looks exactly like the one at Mirabelle in London's Mayfair (which he may or may not own). It's full of classic phrases from Larousse - 'en crepinette', 'jus a la Parisienne' - which bellow 'I know my stuff', mixed in with more blokey dishes like fish pie. There are some obscure references, too, which I suppose are meant to big-up his expertise. So there's a pork dish named after Marco Polo and a trifle named after Wally Ladd, who apparently was a pastry chef at the Connaught hotel. Mind you, there's also an oxtail dish named after Molly Parkin, so he may just be screwing with us.
But the most striking bit of language is the use of the word 'properly', as in 'roast partridge properly garnished'. It crops up a number of times and is his way of telling us that what everybody else does is not right. What I don't understand is why, if he insists on putting the word 'properly' by the partridge, he doesn't put the words 'completely buggered up' by the shepherd's pie? It was one of the nastiest examples I've ever tasted. Oh, it looked pretty enough, with lots of crispy swirls of mash. But the potato was so grossly over-salted you'd be reported to social services if you fed it to a three-year-old. Underneath was a dismally uninspired filling that made even this devout carnivore mourn the slaughtered lamb. It may have seemed keenly priced at £10.50 but no amount of money is reasonable for a dish you don't want to eat.
On the upside, we should take comfort that even the great Marco has got involved in a food pub. It is 15 years this month since the modern gastropub movement was born with the opening of the Eagle in London's Farringdon, which is still going strong. Last year, Egon Ronay declared that Britain's food pubs were now laying down a challenge to the bistros of France and, as the press releases build up on my desk, the thesis only gathers strength. Four years ago, I shamelessly attempted to use this column to get one near my house in south London. Last month, I was finally rewarded with the terrific Prince Regent on Dulwich Road. Out go sticky carpets. In come stripped floorboards and lovely onglet with hand-cut chips. Stuff the faux nobility of Britain's working-class traditions; let's hear it for the middle classes.
Or the gentry, which is what you get at the Yew Tree. It's the sort of well-upholstered, low-ceilinged place where country chaps with neither of their own hips smoke fat cigars over plates of omelette Arnold Bennett.
If this gives the impression that I didn't like the Yew Tree, then I'm only halfway there, because there are things to admire. A starter, described in desperate Franglais as 'champignons sur toast', was good comfort food: white toast, small field mushrooms, a jewel of glossy bone marrow on each one. And, all my sniping about the language aside, the roasted partridge really was properly garnished. It came with porky chipolatas and game chips, glazed chestnuts and a crouton spread with the liver, a jug of roasting juices, another of bread sauce and some Brussels sprouts I could have done without. This was less main course than floor show, and great value for £13.50. We also liked a raspberry souffle, which wasn't too sweet, and the wine list, which offered 20 bottles for under £20.
But it is the faults that stay with me. There was the basket of dried out bread and the clumsy service, unless the maitre d' happened to be around. There was the trifle, which proved that Wally Ladd had far too sweet a tooth (black cherry jam and vanilla ice cream do not a good trifle make). We disliked the piped music, turned down so low it sounded like the rat-a-tat-tat from the iPod of the man sitting three seats away from you on the bus. The red cabbage was over-vinegared. There was the crime against humanity of that Shepherd's Pie. And there's no point pompously declaring the seasonality of the menu and then slapping asparagus on it in deepest mid-winter.
Would I be so tough on the place if Marco Pierre White hadn't had his name jigsawed out of trees to hang on the front? Probably not - but he started it.
