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<a href=press.php target=_top>Back</a><br /><br /> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 width=300> <tr><td bgcolor=#9DB783><img src=images/spacer.gif width=1 height=1 /><br /></td> </tr> </table> <br /> <b>The Times Online</b> <span class=date>May 2007</span><br /><br /> <b>New Welsh foodies are a growing breed, especially around Abergavenny</b><br /><br /> So let's begin with some cold turkey: a weekend in Wales with my old friend Mark Lloyd, formerly director of the river charity Thames21 and currently executive director of the Herefordshire-based Anglers' Conservation Association, where he sues water polluters on behalf of fishermen — a proper environmental hero and the motivating intelligence behind both my fish sustainability rantings and my tap water campaign.<br /><br /> I took the train from Paddington on Saturday morning and Mark picked me up in Abergavenny, where we stocked up in the butcher's for a monster fry-up.<br /><br /> The bacon, sausage, duck eggs, black pudding, mushrooms and bottle of burgundy safely scoffed, we set up in deckchairs in the garden with a high-powered air rifle to shoot the rooks.<br /><br /> Or rather, to shoot at the rooks. Personally, I did not spoil my 100 per cent record of never having deliberately killed anything (Rach thinks I once winged a partridge, but since she is not allowed to appear in this piece I can assert my honest belief that it was another gun that crippled the poor blighter – I was aiming above its head, like a riot policeman, merely warning it to back off).<br /><br /> High in the trees above Mark's isolated cottage is a rookery of dozens and dozens of squawking birds whose aim in life, Mark truly believes, is to stop him sleeping. They're clever, though, rooks. They know what a man with a gun looks like and they do not like it. Each muffled shot is followed by a flurry of activity and a refusal to land again for some minutes (you really, really can't hit a moving bird from 100 yards with an air gun). I suggest shooting through the nests as a more devious approach but Mark says we can't do that because at least one of the nests contains a family of owls, I think he said, or woodpeckers. So individual assassination is the only way. Though these rooks are so smart I start wondering if the supposed woodpeckers aren't just rooks pretending to be woodpeckers.<br /><br /> Aaaaanyway, we killed nothing (though Mark usually gets a couple a week), dented some tins, and then it was time for lunch at The Foxhunter.<br /><br /> Fabulous, it was. A lovely big converted ex-pub owned by Matt and Lisa Tebbutt, where he cooks and she's out front with her rather glamorous crew, providing great service and even greater food to a dining room bustling with New Welsh Foodies (a growing breed, especially around the Abergavenny Food Festival). I started with some hake goujons that were simply astounding. Firm, slick flesh, gleaming white, bound in an impossibly light and greaseless batter, achieving an incredible level of perfection in such a thing. Truly, up there with my dazzling Tokyo tempura experiences late last year. The taming of this huge, ugly, giant-fanged, deep-water predator (did I mention Mark knows his fish?) was completed by a nicely balanced Thai dip with a good vinegary tang and spice. The perfect appetiser.<br /><br /> Mark had rollmops. Bottom of the food chain, comfortably sustainable if properly managed, sweet, here, and deeply flavoured, not too pickled and with a fresh, dill-tasting cucumber salad, again only mildly soused, and crème fraîche to smooth the mouthful through. Exemplary, really. (We might equally have started with duck livers on toast, crab risotto, roast rabbit saddle and polenta…) Next up, eschewing longhorn sirloin, haunch of Brecon venison and, obviously, the salt cod, we ate a beautiful duck breast, the meat succulent and rich but not oily, and very relaxed from a post-roast rest — duck can be a little bouncy sometimes — with purple broccoli and also a dish of monkfish with ribbon vegetables and bok choi which was, to be honest, a little bit dull, as monkfish can be. Luckily, they had half a rack of lamb with a sort of tabbouleh salad going spare, and the meat on the three serried chops was deeply, wondrously, Welshly sweet and pink. Not the new season stuff, you understand, but of last year's lambing and all the heftier and happier for it.<br /><br /> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 width=300> <tr><td bgcolor=#9DB783><img src=images/spacer.gif width=1 height=1 /><br /></td> </tr> </table> <br /> <a href=press.php target=_top>Back</a>
AA Notable Wine List 2008 & 2009
Perfect Pub Awards : Best Food 2007
Wales the True Taste (Cymru y Gwir Flas) - Dining Out Gold 2005
AA Restaurant of the Year for Wales
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