The Flitch of Bacon, Little Dunmow, Essex (01371 821 660). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £120
The Flitch of Bacon, a whitewashed lump of a pub near Bishop’s Stortford in Essex, is like some great joke without a punch line. The word “bacon” is in its name. It should surely be bacon central. They should have a bacon tasting menu: of dry cure and wet cure, of smoked and not, of maple glazed and peppered, of slabs of salty gammon, or hunks of those fabulous bacon rib joints that have loitered in a sugar syrup for three days that Hannan Meats of Northern Ireland do. It should be bacon-central, bacon-tastic, the capital city of planet bacon. Yes, I know it sounds like I’m just trying to turn myself on. (And, frankly, succeeding. I work at home, alone, at my desk. Don’t judge me.) But this is a brilliant idea.
So is there any bacon on the menu? Is there hell. There’s one pork dish (pork is not the same as bacon) and some strands of ham hock in croquettes. But that’s it. To be fair – and I do try to be – there is some very assured cooking here, from a brigade with lots of classical technique. They can cook. But that’s what you’d expect, given one of the owners is Daniel Clifford of the much-garlanded Midsummer House in Cambridge.
This, I think, is meant to be their cheaper diffusion line, and it is, but only if you’ve haemorrhaged cash at Midsummer House first. If you’re coming from the other direction – looking for a pub lunch – it’s merely a glossy restaurant housed in what was once a pub, where main courses are mostly north of £20 and the car park bulges with recently issued number plates. It’s Essex posh and certainly a little too grand for something as humble as bacon. This is a tragedy, if only for a man like me.
The pub is named after the prize given at a festival held every four years in nearby Great Dunmow (and being held again this year). At the Dunmow Flitch Trials, which date back to 1104, wedded couples must prove to a jury that they have lived as man and wife for a year and a day and not wished themselves unmarried. If the couple wins they get a flitch of bacon, which is half a pig. Over the years various people were invited to guest as barristers in the trial, including my mother who was so good at it she was the first one to be asked back, and repeatedly. One year even my dad, who had been an actor, stood in as the judge when the incumbent fell ill. I think my parents liked wearing wigs. As a result the Dunmow Flitch Trials and the flitch of bacon became a part of my family’s folklore.
What’s more, we received lots of cured pig products as a mark of gratitude, which was great because there’s an awful lot of very good pig reared round here. Not that you’d know that from the menu. At the start there is hope, in the shape of exceptionally good croquettes flavoured with ham hock and Lincolnshire Poacher cheese, and some deep-fried quail’s eggs with a beetroot and horseradish dip. Deep frying is an expert skill and they have it. But that’s as close to pub food as it gets here.
A deep-fried duck egg, bound in ribbons of crisp pastry applied just so, comes with very fine slices of smoked duck breast, and petals of artichoke both crisp and not; a perfectly trimmed piece of seared mackerel is served with a disc of pickled white cabbage with, on the top, a “piccalilli Chantilly”. Which is to say thick cream flavoured with piccalilli. These are clever dishes, as they should be at £9 a pop, but they are also exhausting. They are plates of food you know you must look at and nod over for a while, before you destroy them.
The main courses have something of that about them, too. A thick pork chop is cut on the bias so that one end can be laid carefully across another because, well, just because. They don’t just put pork chops on plates here. They slice them. There are splodges of purée topped with crisp onion rings so tiny they’re practically foetal. They have bothered to bake the golden turnips in hay. An oblong of pork belly is all softness and meatiness, with the right amount of fat. The only thing to find fault with is the sticky sauce on braised beef cheeks which has been so heavily reduced it could empathise with Marmite in a group therapy session. But there’s a crust of crushed hazelnuts on the beef cheeks, and some caramelised florets of cauliflower and a purée of smoked almonds. They know how to make mashed potato that hasn’t tumbled over the edge into being a condiment.
I long ago concluded that reviewing a restaurant for what it isn’t, is a bad idea. But there’s something about the heft of this one – the new wood bar is very shiny indeed; there are colour-charted walls of olive green and beetroot pink; the back of the open kitchen appears to be brushed copper – which feels like an opportunity missed. Sure, there is a set lunch menu at £22.50 for three courses, but only two choices at each. I get more complaints about local pubs being taken over and turned into inaccessible spendy restaurants while still pretending to be pubs, than almost anything else. This feels like one of those. They wouldn’t have to do much to change. They could just look around, clock that it’s a pub and relax a little. They could serve the best bloody bacon sandwich in the south of England.
Still, when in Rome and all that. Or Essex. So here comes a bulging blood orange soufflé with a little syrup to add, and on the side, a scoop of a glorious chocolate sorbet that is a big hit of flavour while also managing to be clean and uncloying. It’s a fine example of the whole soufflé thing. It’s £8. In a pub. As is a pear and frangipane tart, more a disc of sweet crisp almond and biscuit with a bit of fruit and a creamy something plonked on top, dribbled artfully with caramel. At the end they bring chocolate truffles flavoured with the Skandi aromatics of pine, and crusted with more crushed hazelnuts. Well of course they do. And they do this with poise, conviction and grace. But they do not bring us any bacon.
Jay’s news bites
■ Talking of bacon, when the funky, Mumbai-influenced chain Dishoom opened in 2010 I gave it a mixed review. Naturally it has gone from strength to strength with queues regularly at all its London branches. I returned for breakfast and I have to say the bacon naan with smoked streaky from the Ginger Pig is a beautiful thing (dishoom.com).
■ Here’s an unmissable opportunity: the entire 275 UK strong Pizza Hut franchise is up for sale. Just think. For a price rumoured to be a mere £150m you could be peddling pizzas with crusts dotted with mini-cheeseburgers to the great British public, while learning to hate yourself. The latest accounts show profit at £3.3m for 2014 (pizzahut.co.uk).
■ Far better pizza news. The rather brilliant Bristol pizzeria Flour and Ash (reviewed here a couple of months ago) has opened its second venture. They’ve taken over the site previously occupied by Casamia at Westbury-on-Trym, which has moved to the new ‘General’ development in the city centre (flourandash.co.uk).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
