The Times
Giles Coren opened his review with an imagined dialogue between Romantic poets talking bollocks when out walking, before working himself up to his own pitch of hyperbole and declaring: “The English rural pub is the greatest of all things on earth and the Horse and Groom is perhaps its apogee.”
This was based on his previous experience of the Gloucestershire pub – “a cosy spot with stunning views and lovely people but pretty average food” – and the knowledge that Nathan Eades and Liam Goff of the Halfway at Kineton had taken it over.
Sure enough, everything the Coren family ate was just about perfect: the Atlantic prawn cocktail, “two layers of fat, aromatic wild prawns in a cut glass whisky tumbler, served with warm, fresh soda bread”; “monkfish scampi freshly breaded and fried with a dark golden crumb”, served with “a glistening saffron aïoli, a pickled shallot and watercress salad and a wedge of Gem lettuce”; “Scotch egg shiny as a brass finial, warm, porky and sweet, the yolk a sunshine gel, with shoots and a pickled walnut puree” and “double cheeseburger, a plain, saladless, hip and sticky masterpiece of its kind”.
Giles Coren - 2024-07-21
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