The Kentish Hare, Tonbridge

The Kentish countryside, it's not in the least bit controversial to point out, is host to a collection of the most exquisitely beautiful and notable pubs in the country. You've heard me bang on about the Fordwich Arms on these pages before at length, and the Sportsman up on the north coast is an equally important point of foodie pilgrimage, but alongside those big names there are places like the Duck Inn or the Compasses, quietly and confidently brilliant (so I'm reliably told; they're still on my to-do list), each more then worth the rather painful journey from central London.

Because yes, unless you're lucky enough to be a resident of Canterbury or Tunbridge Wells or Faversham, a lot of these destination gastropubs really are that and then some - the Fordwich takes me 2 hours door to door, the Sportsman some fraction less than that but still quite a commitment for a single day - and though I'll happily make the journey (I'd find a way of getting to the Fordwich if it was on an island 200 miles into the North Sea) it is nice occasionally to be picked up at the station by a friend after a very respectable 40 minute train journey, and be driven into the rolling countryside for lunch. And thus I found myself at the Kentish Hare.

At a table in the neat, well-proportioned pub gardens we were given a menu full of things you'd want to eat, at prices that seemed more than reasonable. Of course given my inevitable compulsion to order the most 'extra' items on any given menu, I ended up paying not only a £5 substitute for Devon crab as a starter, but also £10 extra for Alyesbury duck for main. And I have absolutely no regrets at all.

The crab, sweet and fresh, was presented on a bed of densely flavoured salsa verde, the salty vegetal flavours a perfect marriage for the seafood, and with some tastefully chosen sea vegetables, sea purslane I think at least. As an introduction to the way the Kentish Hare go about their business - stylish, intelligent, attractive - you couldn't have asked for more.

Mains kept up similarly high standards. Lamb was fashioned into a kind of single giant faggot, bronzed casing containing moist slow-cooked shoulder meat. Beneath, something I only need to describe as "clotted cream potato" for you to get an idea of how wonderful it was. I think if our lunch had consisted of nothing but a bucket of clotted cream potato each and a spoon, we still would have come away happy. Vibrant broad beans and hispi cabbage, and a dousing of glossy lamb just, completed the picture.

Middlewhite pork came as geometrically exact slabs of belly, flesh bright white and with a delicate, crisp crackling, and a kind of sausage made out of who knows what other parts of the animal. With another glossy jus, and a scattering of morels, it was another almost perfect dish.

Of course, my duck was the best, but then I would say that, wouldn't I? The animal itself had been cooked to pink and yielding, with a delicate thin layer of nicely rendered fat under a golden brown, honey-glazed skin. There was an Asian lean on the vegetable side of things, with some braised pak choi lending a lovely bitter note, and some dense, meaty "maitake" (hen of the woods) mushrooms, always a treat to see in a restaurant. I loved every bit of it.

I honestly can't tell you why we didn't stay for dessert; perhaps the options (sticky toffee pudding, crème brûlée, ice cream and sorbets) weren't particularly inspiring or perhaps we had just eaten our own bodyweight in clotted cream potato (the pork and the duck each came with about half a kilo of the stuff on the side) and thought we'd better quickly remove ourselves to a safe environment before slipping fully into a carb-enduced coma. I'm sure they would have been just as wonderful as the savouries though.

With a bottle of Simpson's sparkling wine (at £36 for a bottle which I'm sure is about £28 retail, so an absolute steal) and a couple of extra bits and pieces (warm chorizo makes a lovely pre-lunch snack) the bill came to just over £50 each with service - service, by the way, which coped incredibly well with the odd operating environment of half-inside half-outside, and deserved every bit of their 12.5%. This is, I'm sure I don't need to point out given the standard of food above, great value for money.

If you aren't lucky enough to have a designated driver picking you up from the station, the 6 minute cab from Tonbridge costs a few quid (in fact you could probably walk it in under an hour if you're that way inclined), and services run direct from London Bridge all day. The point is, there's no excuse not to go to the Kentish Hare at all if you're after a heavenly taste of the Kentish countryside without breaking the bank or spending all day on a train. And if that won't convince you, nothing will.

9/10

The Pack Horse, Hayfield

I don't know if there's anything I could say that would seem suitable for this occasion. How on earth do you strike the correct balance between celebrational and sombre, full of relief and gratitude for having made it through the last few months, whilst at the same time acknowledging the countless number that haven't been so lucky, and for the countless more that feel in no way inclined to celebrate. Yes, being able to get back into restaurants again is lovely, but you can't shake the knowledge that we've been here before, and though it feels like a lifetime and a half ago, we thought we were out of the woods then, too.

So I'm not going to even try. Like most people I wish the last four months hadn't happened, and so I will pretend they haven't and just barrel straight on into a review of a lovely gastropub in the Peak District because look, what on earth else is there to do?

Hayfield is an astonishingly pretty old mill town, its elegant grey-brick buildings rising out from the banks of the river all the way up the steep sides of the Sett Valley. In many other parts of the country, in fact in many other parts of the Peak District, it would be insufferably twee and touristy, bloated with fudge shops, postcard-sellers and tearooms. But Hayfield remains resolutely unpretentious and no-nonsense, a proper little community where normal life goes on largely unaffected by the beauty all around.

In the centre of it all stands the Pack Horse, first and foremost a friendly local but one that also just happens to be serving some of the best food in the area. It's the gleaming ideal of a pub, the kind of place, alongside the Parker's Arms in Lancashire or the Draper's Arms in Islington, that have absolutely nailed-on precisely everything that makes a great pub great, serving exacting, intelligent comfort food whilst also being somewhere you could pop in with your muddy boots and dog after a walk on Kinder reservoir and nurse a pint of mild.

And that's all you need to know, really, except I imagine you're going to want to read a bit of detail out of sheer curiosity. Our evening began with 3 Lindisfarne rock oysters, neatly shucked and presented alongside a nicely sharp mignionette sauce. Funny, isn't it, how most of the best pubs serve fresh oysters, and none of the bad ones do?

Crab came as white meat incorporated into a salad of crisp spring leaves and radish, and as brown meat spread liberally on toast. Both elements were superb but the brown meat on toast was particularly good, full of grungy flavour with the spray of the sea.

A breadcrumbed and fried egg, boasting a marvellously timed and runny yolk, came served on a bed of buttery wild mushrooms and studded with pickled walnut, an unbeatable combination that covered all the pleasure points from rich dairy to hearty fungi.

And Yorkshire asparagus, great big thick things like only the best examples are, served with a silky hollandaise and various toasted seeds and nuts, tasted as good as they looked, a riot of colour, flavour and texture. If sourcing great ingredients is 90% of the battle (and I think it is) then the Pack Horse can count themselves lucky they have this side of things absolutely down pat.

Mains continued in the same vein. If I'm going to be brutally honest, my own selection of hare was a tad on the dry and chewy side, being rather too lean a meat to survive the slow braising method. However, the port, pancetta and mushroom sauce it came in was beautifully rich and glossy, and the mashed potatoes were right up there alongside those served at the Parker's Arms. And if you've ever eaten at the Parker's Arms, you'll know how much of a compliment that is.

Lemon sole, served grilled on the bone, was generously proportioned and beautifully cooked, and worth the price of admission even without the mound of mussels, samphire and sea kale on top. I don't want to get into the whole business of London pricing vs Everywhere Else pricing, but can you imagine anywhere within the M25 serving this huge slab of premium fish for £22? No, neither can I.

Or how about this giant chunk of halibut for £21? Boasting a satisfying meaty texture and with an incredible depth of flavour, it would have been a bargain at twice the price. It was presented with cute little parcels of breadcrumbed and fried oysters, and with a fantastic sauce they called "smoked roe & oyster cream", which was every bit as good as it sounds.

Oh, and a word on the chips - triple cooked, golden-brown and basically perfect, they encapsulate everything that's good about the way the Pack Horse goes about its business. They reminded me very strongly in fact of the ones served at the Parker's Arms, and as I've mentioned before, this is a Good Thing.

The chocolate and hazelnut delice, in fact, was a suggestion that the connection with the place in Newton-in-Bowland was more than just coincidental. I'm reliably informed that the chef at the Pack Horse is - amazingly - entirely self-taught, but perhaps has been inspired by a trip to Lancashire and, entirely reasonably, has decided that the Parker's is as good a template as any to base your gastropub on. Or maybe I'm reading too much into things. Either way, this was an excellent dessert.

As was this, the "summer berry mess" with attractive shards of meringue dusted with some kind of powdered fruit, and plenty of raspberries and strawberries folded into sweet whipped cream.

Every town deserves a Pack Horse, and every pub in the country deserves to be this good, but the fact that places as good as this, mature, respectable operations serving rewarding food at extremely reasonable prices and still be recognisable as a pub, are still so vanishingly rare is not due to lack of demand for them but to how incredibly difficult it is to perform the balancing act of offering elevated gastropub food without alienating your loyal customer base, and pitching prices at somewhat under "fine dining" levels whilst still turning a profit. I don't blame certain "gastropubs" for ditching their walk-in bar and going full restaurant-mode, but if you can't just rock up for a pint and a bowl of chips well, that's not a pub.

The Pack Horse is still, unmistakably, gloriously, a pub. You can sit with a group of mates (Covid caveats apply) and drink pints of local ales, or settle down for a four-course seafood extravaganza bookended by sophisticated herb-infused cocktails, but whichever path you choose you'll be served by the same smiling staff and you'll all be using the same loos. And you will, I'm absolutely sure of it, all be trotting home after your time there wanting to do it all over again, just like I was.

9/10

The Swan, Bampton, Devon

Dinner two of our little weekend jaunt to Devon took place at the Swan, in Bampton. Where the Mason's Arms had been unapologetically high-end, with its Michelin star and petits fours, set in an idyllic thatched cottage miles from anywhere, Bampton is a more normal (albeit quite pretty) functioning Devonshire town, with a butchers, greengrocers and fish & chip shop, and acccordingly, the Swan itself is a friendly and unpretentious little spot. Though not as ridiculously beautiful as the Mason's (I'm sure they won't mind me saying), it's still an attractive place to be. And as for the contrast in styles, think of the difference between the Freemasons at Wiswell (experimental, innovative modern cuisine) and the Parker's Arms (traditional pub food done incredibly well) and you're not far off.

After an expertly-constructed Negroni (my control variable, and I have to say the Swan's was slightly better than the Mason's) the first snack was a scotch egg. The Swan are participating in next month's Scotch Egg Challenge at the Canonbury, and based on this example I'm pretty sure they stand a good chance of winning. With a good crunch from the breadcrumbs, a meat layer (involving Bury black pudding) which was thick enough to provide texture but not to be cloying, and an absolutely perfectly timed egg with a lovely runny bright orange yolk from local chickens, this was basically unimprovable in any area. Oh, and a cracking home made piccallilli too. Results will be declared on 10th April; expect to hear their name mentioned.

We ordered a few things from the bar snacks menu as starters, firstly these plump prawns in a nice greaseless batter, and homemade mayo...

...a very generous bowl of hummus, where the slight disappointment of being served slightly dry flatbread was made up for a genuinely lovely chunky hummus, all buttery and salty and full of flavour. This 'snack', costing £2.95, could have fed about 6 people.

You have to love anywhere going to the effort of pickling their own herrings. These were healthy, robust things - "chewy" sounds like too much of a criticism, they just had a good solid texture and a lovely sweet/sour brine. Pickled onions and capers added a bit more texture, and were also lovely.

Best of the mains was this cod, a brilliant bit of seafood cooking boasting a crisp skin, bright white flesh falling into defined flakes. The fish itself was more than enough to justify the price tag, but topped with potted shrimp and surrounded by artichoke purée and artichoke crisps, not to mention some sea herbs, there were all kinds of colours, flavours and textures to enjoy. This is one of those dishes so thoughtfully constructed and perfectly executed you'd hardly want for another way of serving cod, anywhere.

A shame, then, that the other mains fell a bit flat. "Massaman vegetarian curry" was an odd name to give to a bowl of ratatouille and noodles. I supposed there's nothing to stop them serving ratatouille and noodles, but had "ratatouille and noodles" been on the menu, the chances of us ordering it would have been pretty small. Without a discernable trace of any of the usual massaman ingredients (chilli, fish sauce, galangal, lemongrass, garlic, shrimp paste etc. etc.) it was a bland, and deeply weird main course.

Two-thirds - specifically the top two thirds - of my steak & kidney suet pudding was lovely. A nice soft suet casing, rich in fat and flavour, huge chunks of kidneys and slow-cooked beef shin inside, in a rustic thin gravy, powerfully flavoured and seasoned, there was nothing not to enjoy. Until you reached the bottom-third, where for whatever reason the beef and kidneys turned into bullets and the suet went the texture of cement. So yes, a shame, but clearly from the flavour and texture of the majority of the thing, had it not been overcooked at the bottom it would have been a very nice steak & kidney pudding indeed.

But! We didn't stay disappointed for long. A dessert of treacle tart was sublime - just the right balance of sponge and sugar, not too dense or insubstantial, and a delicate pastry crust just holding the whole thing together. And with it, clotted cream ice cream with a fantastic smooth texture and rich dairy flavour, every bit the perfect foil for the tart. This would make a fine addition to any top gastropub dessert offering.

So I can't be too hard on the Swan, despite a couple of slip-ups. This is, after all, a proper community pub, popular and rightly so with locals and tourists, serving an accessible and unaffected menu of pub favourites and for a very reasonable amount of money. True, it didn't quite do enough to get itself into the very top tier of my own personal top 50, and I'd like to have seen a few more local game options (there's a specialist game butcher just around the corner) and shellfish (even just a plate of oysters) but I'm not about to tell a Bampton pub that I know their audience better than they do. Oh, and the upstairs rooms are spacious, well-specced and come with free sweets, and I've not slept better in a strange bed for a long time. And when it was time to leave, I wish I didn't have to. And I suppose that tells you all you need to know.

7/10

The Masons Arms, Devon

Quite apart from the quality of the food served, or the level of service offered by the front of house, I sometimes think when writing up rural gastropubs I should have a separate score, or at least apply a heavy weighting, to anywhere occupying a particularly charming ancient building. Obviously, having dinner in a low-beamed 13th century coaching inn doesn't automatically make everything else wonderful, but I can promise you that if everything else isn't wonderful, a log fire, tiny lead-lined windows, stone-flagged floors and wobbly narrow passageways make the whole experience a lot more bearable.

So upon entering the Masons Arms, an 800-year-old gastropub tucked away on the outskirts of Exmoor, it's immediately clear that, whatever else happened that evening, the prospect of being able to debrief afterwards in what is by some distance one of the most enchantingly pretty snugs I've had the pleasure of encountering in some years certainly helped cushion the uncertainty of how dinner may turn out. The place is beautiful - an almost exaggerated fairytale ideal of what an old country pub should be, like something out of a Tolkein novel.

In the end anyway, we needn't have worried about dinner. Head chef Mark Dodson learned his trade working with Michel Roux at the Waterside Inn, and though it's probably fair to say that multi-starred Gallic style has become less trendy in recent years, there's still no good reason to dismiss it out of hand - when the French do food well, they do it very well indeed. Dinner began in the aforementioned cozy bar with a couple of classy nibbles - tuna tartare on cucumber with a lovely note of toasted sesame oil, and a supremely light chicken liver parfait on fried bread.

In the main dining room (spacious, pleasant and with a celestial scene painted on the ceiling) it continued. House breads were a decent sourdough (I think I've been a bit spoiled when it comes to sourdough) and a nice warm granary bun, whose delicate crust cracked to reveal a nice soft, warm crumb. We appreciated the choice of butter or oil/balsamic, too.

Often the most impressive dishes take a simple premise - in this case, a tomato soup - and through application of classical techniques turn it into something quite special. The best way of describing it - and I hope they don't take this as a criticism, because it isn't - is as a kind of turbocharged Heinz Cream of Tomato, with an incredible depth of flavour and a distinct-but-not-overpowering hit of garlic.

Apologies for the terrible photo of this beetroot arancini dish - it was a lot better than I've made it look. The slicks and blobs of beetroot (including an interesting tube of pickled white beetroot) were very nice, and combined with a horseradish cream it had all the best flavours of early spring. But the real stars, are you might imagine, were the arancini themselves - thick with salty cheese and delicately crisp on the outside.

I'm yet to come across a combination of guinea fowl and morels that I don't like, and this, accompanied by sweet roast fennel and a very clever portion of mousse inside a fragile breadcrumbed cylinder, which was great fun. If I'm going to be brutal, the guinea fowl itself was just slightly on the dry side - not enough to spoil it, but enough to notice. Still, the cream sauce was lovely, with the morels bursting in the mouth quite addictively, and I still polished it all off.

Scallops (a starter ordered as a main) were perfectly cooked, with a delicate golden crust, and sat in a rich brown bisque. They came with a couple of cute breadcrumbed squid rings, and studded into the bisque were a handful of fregola, adding a bit of texture and heft. This was a delightful seafood starter, exactly the kind of thing you hope for from a chef trained in the classical disciplines, top ingredients married to perfect execution. And disastrously represented thanks to my terrible photography.

Halibut was less successful. Rather underpowered and underseasoned, it didn't really live up to its price tag, and felt very odd next to everything that had come before. In fact, it was the only genuinly disappointing dish of the whole meal. I won't dwell on it - there's not much more to say, for one thing - but you do wonder how they managed to slip up on this one where most other areas seasoning had been spot-on.

Anyway, the good news is desserts were brilliant. First, rhubarb three ways - a vibrant jelly, an incredible rhubarb-spiked crème brûlée, and an ideal soufflé, light and fluffy and with a perfect rise, without a hint of greasiness. Some good pastry work going on at the Masons.

This pineapple and rub shortbread affair impressed as well. Rum and pineapple are always a good match, but stacking into a kind of cakey millefuille lent an extra layer of buttery goodness. Plus one of those ultra-smooth and creamy ice creams on the side.

Coffee came with a selection of chocolatey nibbles which I completely forgot to take a photo of. Sorry. But they were nice. And pretty generous of them to bring out petits fours for three, really, considering only one of us had coffee.

And generosity - of spirit and soul - is really what makes a restaurant like this. Yes, I can pick fault with seasoning and timing here and there, but ultimately we enjoyed a big warm hug of a meal, as cozy and enjoyable as time spent in their quaint front bar, all helped by incredibly friendly and engaged front of house staff (led by Sarah Dodson herself) who are clearly loving serving the food just as much as customers love eating it. I should probably say that our bill was smaller than average thanks to one of us ordering just mains and dessert, and another having two starters, but even so you can pay far more for far worse. Far worse. So if you're ever in the area and you're in the mood for a classy dinner served with an extra helping of charm, the Masons Arms comes thoroughly recommended. Or you could just come for a pint in the front bar and pretend you're a hobbit on the way to Mordor. Both sound like fun to me.

8/10