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

Fordwich Arms (revisited), Canterbury

If the idea this month was to revisit a few "old" favourites, the year-old Fordwich Arms shouldn't really qualify. But I've been determined to do another lunch at this incredible place ever since the dust settled from my first visit in February, and if my 40th Birthday Month is about anything, it's about doing what the hell I like and blogging about big boozy lunches on Saturday afternoons even though I wrote about the same place barely 9 months ago and everything I wrote about it back then largely still stands.

But then, there's more to say about the Fordwich Arms than one visit (no matter how big or boozy) could ever hope to cover. Like so many of the best restaurants, the menus are seasonal and change regularly, but aside from the availability of oysters and a superficial similarity in a couple of the snacks, very few of the dishes from this weekend bore even a passing resemblance to any served in February. This is a kitchen that is relentlessly experimenting and refining - in fact perhaps "refining" is a poor choice of word as it tends to suggest they're tweaking things towards some kind of imagined version of perfection. Instead, Guy, Dan and Tasha (I'm allowed to be on first name terms as that's how they signed my birthday card) are doing what every great restaurant should do - boldly reimagining dishes from the ground up, based on what's good that day, rather than simply replacing the protein element and doing all the same swirls and tricks around it.

Of course, an attitude like this, which would (and does) quite rightly scare the bejeezus out of lesser kitchens, only works if you have an obscene amount of confidence and a sickening amount of talent to back it up. Other than perhaps the Ledbury or Roganic, I can't think of another restaurant that sticks so loosely to anything approaching a formula or dreaded "comfort zone" but where the results are so astonishingly successful, time and time again. I won't give the usual blow-by-blow breakdown of my most recent meal; instead, I'll pick a few highlights from Saturday that hopefully illustrate just how clever these guys are at what they do, and why they deserve to be spoken of as amongst the very best restaurants in the country.

Firstly, the snacks. Out went the foie gras doughnuts, the pickles in cod's roe and Westcombe Cheddar tartlets topped with (from memory) puffed oats of some kind, and in their place gloriously flavoursome chickpea fritters topped with beetroot and parmesan, poached Whitstable rock oyster with caviar and apple, and little cheese tartlets topped with chalk river salmon, seasoned over a block of warm Himalayan salt. Clearly from the same family as the snacks from last time, they were now that much more bold and interesting, with the salmon served on salt brick providing a lovely bit of theatre. Even the charcuterie had stepped up a level - two different types this time, both great.

The bread course, too, had had a makeover. Here are a soda bread and sourdough to replace the fairly uninspiring foccacia from last time, presented with some nice normal salted butter but also "pork fat whipped with Marmite" which is the kind of idea an evil kitchen genius would come up with before cackling maniacally and being lit from beneath with an eerie green light.

Where what on paper looks straightforward - duck liver parfait - the Fordwich simply make sure it's the greatest duck liver parfait this side of Paris. Almost overwhelmingly smooth and rich it was saved from being too much with some zingy pickled berries, which were as vibrant visually as they were to eat. And as if they were worried we'd miss the foie gras doughnuts from last time (they know me too well), here they became an accompaniment to the parfait, golden brown and straight out of the fryer.

Perhaps it's also worth mentioning what didn't appear this time around, rather than all the things that did. What didn't appear on the table was a bowl of pickles - nice pickles, sure, but not special enough to make an effort over and the meal was better off without them. Similarly, a side of "confit potato" which was one of the few bits that less than impressed in February, and had been quietly dropped. For a restaurant to grow and improve you need to identify and realistically address your weaknesses rather than just work around them - this requires not only confidence, but a complete lack of ego. Something lacking in quite a few kitchens, but not this one.

I'm a sucker for a fancy presentation, and while last time it was sucker - sorry, suckling - pig, nestled in hay and smoking away tableside, this time some plump langoustine tails arrived on their own little bonfire, before being plated and served alongside little soda crackers topped with mediculously extracted claw meat. These were beautiful.

Oh God, I've ended up describing everything we ate again, haven't I? The problem is, food like this demands to be talked about. I mean, if you'd eaten something like this line-caught sea bass, with a delightful chestnut purée and sherry sauce, I guarantee you'd want to tell the whole world too, about how crisp and delicate the skin, how meaty and bright the flesh, and how it was a genuinely innovative combination of flavours that worked incredibly well.

Local venison managed to be the most powerfully-flavoured bit of protein I'd had in a while even before they covered it in an astonishing bone marrow gravy, which managed to be deeply umamified and robust without being cloying or overly salty. Quite a clever thing indeed. With that, a little pot of slow-cooked haunch in a frothy sauce, another effortless display of cooking technique and seasoning.

Yes, I often go on about seasoning on this blog, usually to moan about the lack of it. Everything was perfectly seasoned at Fordwich, which I suppose is the least you could expect, except how often is that really the case? Nothing I ate - literally nothing in god knows how many individual bits and pieces - could have been improved on at all, an attention to detail bordering on fanatical.

Desserts were similarly knockout. All completely different in style and form to last time yet still clearly the work of a top pastry artist, we began with luminous yellow macaroons where even the little cylinders of meringue had citrus flavour pumped into them, followed by a dark chocolate cake with about 10 different ways with chocolate all going on at once. Topped with gold leaf, because everything's better with gold leaf.

Perhaps, all said and done, it's a bit pointless going on about Fordwich Arms again so soon after the first review, which was still a rave. But I suppose I want to give as many of you as possible the opportunity to go for yourselves and discover a restaurant in that golden sweet spot of aiming for the highest gastronomic pinnacles whilst still remaining incredibly good value. Sure, the Michelin star spoiled a bit of our fun but even I, a committed Michelin-hater, would hardly deny such a talented team a star (or two) to shout about even if the prices have inched up a couple of quid.

So I'm happy for their recognition from Michelin (honestly), and here's a recognition from me. That outside of the mad-scientist international-toy-food three starrers, here and abroad, there are very few places doing this kind of food as well as the Fordwich Arms, while boasting service this polished, and in most other places you'd pay a hell of a lot more for it, as well. So as I said on Twitter, slightly tipsy from a final Armagnac and hurtling back to London on the Javelin train, there's an argument to be made that the Fordwich Arms is the best restaurant in the country right now. And I've just done my best to make it.

10/10

The Packhorse Inn, Little Longstone

It's all very easy to swan around the country, as I am wont to do, visiting high-profile ubergastropubs and Michelin-starred tasting menus, and declare self-confidently that British food is the best in the world. I do, for the record, think that British food is the best in the world, but then I go out of my way to target the ubergastropubs and Michelin-starred tasting menus and do my best do avoid anywhere serving chicken pesto panini from a laminated menu. The measure of a proper healthy food culture isn't - always - what's going on at the top end, but the kind of experience you have at your local pub or high street bistro, and the brutal truth is, in this country traditionally much pub food, and most high street bistro food was - and largely still is - not putting too fine a point on it, shit.

But recently I've noticed a few interesting developments. On a weekend break in Canterbury a few months ago, having been spoiled rotten in the Corner House on a Sunday afternoon, we braced ourselves for the inevitable laminated panini menu on a Monday evening with half of the city - including the lovely Goods Shed - closed. And yet the pub we found ourselves in purely because we liked the look of it from the outside, the Thomas Becket, turned out made their own pies, and very nice they were too.

And a couple of weeks ago in Wiltshire, attracted partly by the medieval charm of Shaftesbury's King Alfred's Kitchen and partly because it was bucketing down, and expecting nothing more exciting on offer than some microwaved scones, we were unexpectly served a truly exceptional Bakewell pudding and a stunning treacle tart, made fresh (so we were told) every morning in house. It's worth noting that neither of these places would be on any foodie lists, and barely make a song and dance about their food offering themselves, but are just quietly getting on with serving good, fresh produce with a minimum of fuss. Perhaps I'm imagining things, but I get the feeling it's getting increasingly easy to find places making an effort with their menus, and increasingly rare to be subjected to laminated menu panini.

So to the Peak District and another pub that you probably won't have heard of - the Packhorse Inn, in Little Longstone. Pubs like this - quaint, ancient, dark and cosy - are the single most important reason I couldn't live in any other country (well, that and Bovril) and I would have been more than happy sheltering from the driving rain in their stone-flagged front room even if the food had been, well, laminated menu panini. But what was this? A chalkboard menu with things like "wood pigeon pie", "dressed crab" and "raspberry and almond tart"? Local cheeseboard? Local butchers and bakers name checked? Someone here was trying.

And it was all worth the effort. Dressed crab - probably bought in from a local fishmonger but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that (have you ever tried dressing your own crab? Really not worth the hassle) - had a good amount of brown meat in it and a nice dollop of house mayonnaise spiked with paprika. It was absolutely the kind of thing you want to be given when asking for dressed crab, and well worth a paltry £6.50. I mean, the ones from Waitrose bulked up with egg are £4.

Wood pigeon pie - well of course we ordered that - was quite unneccessarily lovely. Inside a puff pastry casing lay some tender, medium-rare slices of seared pigeon breast, bound with a thick, meaty sauce. There was something vaguely artificial about the texture and Heinz-y taste of the sauce, but rather than being offputting it just gave it the tinge of nostalgia, and anyway I'm pretty sure they weren't using granules. £6 this was, for a proper homemade game pie.

Whitebait were also beyond reproach, a good amount of tiddlers, lightly breaded and enjoyably crunchy, with a chunky tartare dip. I realise it's difficult to mess up whitebait, but still.

The rabbit pie was a thing of beauty. A homemade pastry casing (so we were told), buttery and light, containing a rich, creamy filling with lots of chunks of rabbit. With this, some superb chippy-style chips - because all pies are better with chips - and a thick gravy - because all chips are better with gravy.

Lamb rump with ratatouille and red lentils was nice enough, though possibly not quite up to the standard of the pies. The topping of rocket was the first thing to get my back up, though I suppose they weren't to know I despise the stuff with every inch of my being. But ratatouille is never a particularly inspiring thing when not applied to Disney movies, and lentils can do one as well. However, the lamb was tender, it was all seasoned well, and the person who ordered it had no complaints so let's just leave it at that.

Three huge, excellent local sausages (from New Close Farm, about 10 min drive away) on a mountain of mash was my own main course, and very pleased I was with it too. Like the rabbit pie it was soaked in a straightforwardly enjoyable thick gravy, and a load of peas, and if you can't enjoy sausage, mash, gravy and peas then there's something seriously wrong with you.

Somehow we found room for the aformentioned raspberry and almond tart, homemade (of course) and served alongside Bradwell (10 min drive away) ice cream. And yes, I know not everything local is guaranteed to be wonderful, but anywhere going out of their way to not use the usual Brakes Bros. type suppliers at least has their heart in the right place, and should be recognised.

A lot to like, then, and not much to fault at all. Oh, a side of vegetables was pretty ordinary - slightly overcooked and unseasoned - but that was hardly about to ruin our day. The Packhorse were turning away group after group of ramblers and locals during the course of our lunch and you don't have to be a genius to see why - the food, the setting, the charming service, and the local Thornbridge beers all added up to what for many people will be the platonic ideal of a country pub. True, the food isn't spectacularly world-changing, but it's at the level every pub should at least be - comforting, well-priced, served with heart. In its own way, I enjoyed my lunch at the Packhorse more than many other more elaborate - and more expensive - restaurants, and I've had a lot of elaborate, expensive meals recently. Sometimes I like elaborate and expensive. And other times, I will sit in the Packhorse with a pint and a pie, while the rain hammers down outside.

8/10