7 Park Street, Stow-on-the-Wold (01451 831 700)
Meal for two, including wine and service, £75
If I had wanted to buy an emergency cashmere sweater it would have been a breeze. There are a bunch of places selling those in Stow-on-the-Wold. If I had wanted, say, a contemporary yet unchallenging sculpture of a dog, or a most amusing glass vase or a darling little Asian carpet, I would have been spoilt for choice. Instead, all I wanted was a ballpoint bloody pen, and that is a far tougher proposition. We wandered from interiors shop to art gallery, from secondhand book dealer to jeweller, until finally we found the one place that sold stuff you might actually need.
From this you might assume that I think Stow-on-the-Wold, a market town at the heart of the Cotswolds, faintly ludicrous. You would be wrong. I think it completely and utterly ludicrous, a compendium of everything that is wrong about ersatz, up-itself, self-deluding, arthritic, rural Britain.
In this I am not alone. The week I was there, the new edition of Cotswold Life magazine was on the newsstands. Inside was an interview with one of my (so-called) rivals, who had once used his restaurant column to launch an attack on the town of such vitriol, such unbounded venom - he mentioned wanting to order up suicide bombers - that the locals were soon reaching for their secateurs to do some vigorous pruning in an attempt to keep their tempers in check. If that man had dared visit the town again, they would have... they would have... ooh, they would have given him such a look.
My own disdain has limits, though, for one reason and one reason only: the kind of town where the economy is almost entirely supported by useless shops selling pointless stuff also tends to have a thriving food culture, and so it proves here. There are an unlikely number of good-quality delis for a place so small, overflowing with olives and charcuterie and picture-perfect tarts. There's a serious butcher's shop and a number of well-regarded restaurants, among them the King's Inn, and the Eagle and Child.
The Old Butchers, just down from the main square, is a relatively new addition to the town's selection, and one reason why I would be willing to go there again. The restaurant, while pleasing to look at - white walls and bare brick, low ceilings - is not without its irritations. Why they insisted on playing vintage Robbie Williams at me, at a volume that made my teeth rattle, God only knows. And two quid for a basket of bread, albeit nice stuff from Daylesford Organics, seems opportunistic; they should bury the cost in an extra 25p here or there. But, otherwise, there is a simplicity and honesty to the cooking, by chef Peter Robinson, which is at odds with the artifice and contrivance on display in the rest of the town.
I am always going to like a kitchen that has the enthusiasm to put a salad of grilled ox heart and roquette on the menu. After all the hard work the organ has done in life, it is only right that, in death, it gets a bit of respect, and that's what it receives here. The heart was cut into manageable pieces and was as rich, meaty and tender as a good steak. The restaurant's own duck and pork rillette, while a little loose, had a serious depth of flavour and came with thick-cut toast, cornichons, white-skinned onions and a smear of Dijon mustard.
Mains were equally robust. A long slab of calves' liver, flash-fried but still soft within, came with a tangle of slow-cooked onions and an admirable mash. The cooking of monkfish was also spot on and came with a robust, garlicky salsa verde for me to drag my new potatoes through (though the portion of fish was on the meagre side for £12.50).
We finished with a gypsy tart - crisp pastry with a gooey layer of cooked-down condensed milk (a kind of banoffi pie without the bananas or cream) - and a panna cotta which, in its smooth, light texture, was beyond reproach. It had been dressed with a thimbleful of grappa, which is a new one on me, and the sudden, musky kick of alcohol was a thoroughly efficient foil to the richness of the set cream.
That was pretty much the only innovation on a menu predicated on good ingredients and sensitive cookery. We asked the waiter about the sourcing of those ingredients, most of which come from nearby. He explained that the restaurant had a pig-swapping arrangement with a local farmer, though I couldn't quite work out whether the animals were dead or alive when they were swapped, and didn't want to pry. What consenting adults get up to in their spare time out here is up to them.
We ordered a couple of glasses of Argentinian Merlot from the 10-strong list of house wines, all priced at an admirable £12.50 a bottle, and, so fortified, set out to beat off the cashmere hawkers, trinket touts and antiques pimps, which give Stow-on-the-Wold such a bad name.
