The Times
Giles Coren led a football-heavy posse of pals including ex-Man U head honcho Ed Woodward and Gary Lineker (“obviously”) for a long lunch at the new incarnation of this restaurant from Merlin Labron-Johnson, a chef he first came across at Portland in 2015.
“A heavily renovated old 18th-century inn on the edge of a pine forest, the old brick white-washed to an ethereal, ghost-like presence in the misty countryside”, Osip features a “supermodern show kitchen” and “pretty, posh young wait staff bustling about in charmingly ill-fitting whites in a way that simply screams ‘World’s 50 Best’.”
The “very French, very haute” food, from a long and ever-changing” £125 set menu, is dominated by plants, 85 per cent sourced from the chef’s own organic farm, with “not much meat … beyond a small ribbon of cured fat, a grating of heart, a sliver of eel, the base of a stock”. Although a scallop, a lobster claw, and various cuts of lamb all eventually made an appearance.
Giles made a show of forgetting the “increasingly blurry” specifics of what was a boozy meal – but there was no doubting its quality, and he had no trouble conjuring up a couple of wonderful game pithiviers, “shimmering amber parcels… served sliced, a very rare loin of venison wrapped in thinly sliced breast of wild quail, with some green leaves (spinach?) for clarity and colour, a fruity sauce, roasted quail legs served on the side”.
Giles Coren - 2024-12-08
