The White Horse, Churton

Churton is not a place you're supposed to have heard of, so don't feel bad if you haven't. Unlike its larger, and lets face it more attractive, neighbour Farndon with its pretty medieval half-timbered cottages and 14th century church tower, or Tattenhall to the east, another quaint self-contained little community with village grocers, butchers and tea rooms, Churton is (or at least was) just somewhere on the way to somewhere else, another hamlet stitched into the patchwork of the pleasant, gently rolling Cheshire countryside.

The White Horse, Churton's only pub - in fact, pretty much Churton's only building of note at all - is a well-proportioned 1920s red brick structure that, along with so many community pubs up and down the country, found itself boarded up and up for sale in 2019, just the latest victim of the public's shift away from communal eating and drinking and towards supermarket booze and takeaways. And if you've kept your eyes open in the last few years - particularly since the pandemic - you will know that, tragically, they weren't the only ones.

Has Gary Usher's Sticky Walnut group found some secret magic formula uniquely capable of turning an abandoned, unloved local back into the vibrant centre of the community it once was? On the face of it, the "formula" is pretty straightforward - serve lovely homemade food for not much money, fill the place with smiling staff that look like they're having the time of their lives, and make sure there's nice clean toilets. When you lay it out like that, I mean, it doesn't look like rocket science.

Of course, there's more to it than that. But first, the food. Whitebait were giant chunky things, closer to mini sardines than the usual baitfish, which had been very cleverly fried to grease-free perfection, served alongside a generous mound of parsley and lemon mayonnaise. By using larger animals you really got a bigger hit of the fish flavour, which can often otherwise be overwhelmed by batter and grease. These were very good indeed.

One of the White Horse's "tricks", if you can call it that, is to have some menu items deliberately to snare the odd offal obsessive like me, whilst still sitting happily amongst more straightforward pub fare. This is slow braised pigs trotters, a more deliriously moreish concoction of piggy flavour and soft fat I've hardly had anywhere outside of specialist BBQ joints in the US, served with a creamy, rich piccalilli so good we suggested to the waitress they should sell it in jars. She said she'd pass the message on.

Ricotta, beetroot and spicy harissa pumpkin seeds does admittedly sound like the kind of thing you'd default to to keep the veggies happy, but I tried a bit and it was very nice despite the fact I'm not its target audience.

Soup of the day was another classic veggie option - cream of cauliflower - but was so impressive with its bold seasoning and loose, silky texture it will be first to be ordered on a return visit (assuming its on). There is something especially heartwarming about a kitchen that takes the time to perfect something as straightforward as a cauliflower soup - get the details right, and everything else follows.

For my own main, inevitably, I went for faggots. Arriving under a mound of salsa verde and fried shallots, the main events themselves were not immediately obvious, but a bit of digging revealed three balls of lamb mince with a lovely loose texture that brought to mind one of Islington butcher Turner and George's "blue label" aged beef burgers. But instead of beef, the flavour here was a rich, gamey mix of offal and herbs, absolutely irresistible. Oh, and I almost forgot - the buttery, smooth mash underneath and lamb gravy were superb, too.

King prawns were huge, plump things with a lovely bite and in a very generous pool of garlic chilli butter. It was about this time we'd realised we'd ordered lots of dishes that involved bread - completely our fault of course, but worth bearing in mind for if you plan a trip yourself.

Fish fingers on toast was another very generous mound of fish for £7.50, all crunchy and soft in the right places and with a nicely seasoned layer of crushed peas underneath. I might have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'd forgotten to provide a wedge of lemon, because it really needed a bit of acidity, but we managed to get hold of some Sarson's which did the trick.

Oh, and "skinny" fries were just normal chip size really - I think the distinction here is because the Sticky group's style of normal chips are giant wedges. All very nicely done of course, and I'm not about to get into an argument about proper chip size, it's just something to be aware of.

Finally, we just managed to squeeze in a portion of the Sticky group's famous honeycomb ice cream between the three of us. The ice cream was as good as ever, but of course most of the joy of this dish is smashing apart the giant slab of honeycomb it comes with. We may have made a bit of a mess doing this. Sorry.

As I said, none of this really is rocket science. I'd like to believe - and I have to cling on to this idea for my own sanity's sake - that if you run a nice friendly pub serving home made food for reasonable prices, it will, no matter where it is, find an audience. True, the White Horse has the advantage of Gary Usher's extraordinary ability to harness crowdsourcing fever on Twitter, and that the place is so immediately, obviously successful is partly due to that, but all that Kickstarter cash really does is get you out of the gate. From then on, you need to be good enough to get people booking return visits.

And as you might have gathered by now, the White Horse does that and more. It's the kind of place that every community up and down the country must wish they had on their doorstep, somewhere you can drop in for a pint of beer (hot tip: the front saloon is not bookable, and was empty for most of our lunch, so try your luck there if you can't get a table in the main restaurant. Oh, and there's a terrace for sunny days) and bowl of whitebait or sit down at the back on a large table and go full Sunday roast. It is, in short, the pub we all deserve. So don't stop now, Mr Usher, you're on a roll.

8/10