Blumen marvellous

Sometimes doing my job and having a really lovely time coincide. Since hearing last year that Heston Blumenthal, chef of The Fat Duck in Bray, had taken over the Hind's Head Hotel in the same village, I had been meaning to visit. I did so on Easter Saturday, meeting up with some of my family.

Six adults and three small children were given a large table and some high chairs in the restaurant part of the 17th-century listed building. Tables were far enough apart that I hoped we wouldn't impinge too much on quiet couples, but so delicious was the food, so genial the service, that even the smallest in our party was good as gold. Well, she was once the chips had arrived.

The award of three Michelin stars has different effects on chefs. Some turn themselves into a marketable brand, some embark on global expansion.

Heston Blumenthal, when not pushing the boundaries of molecular gastronomy, would seem to be concentrating on perfecting an indigenous cuisine.

With his chef Dominic Chapman, who worked at The Fat Duck, he has devised a menu for Hind's Head of most of what we hold dear in the name of British cooking and applied to it contemporary kitchen skills - a rare, valuable achievement.

What profound pleasure it was to see a menu with pea and ham soup, potted shrimps, soused herring, roast cod with champ and parsley sauce, lemon sole with brown shrimps, Lancashire hotpot, oxtail and kidney pudding with braised cabbage and bacon, sherry trifle and treacle tart, and then eat those dishes, so beautifully prepared. It is what should be, but so seldom is, our destiny.

The soup was made a verdant green with fresh peas. The pieces of ham in it were delicious. Potted shrimps were set in a shrimp mousse so that the butter content was reduced to a little waxy lid which gave the dish the right balance.

The watercress served alongside was delicately dressed. A perfect salad of beetroot with horseradish came with the soused herring. The fish dishes mentioned above were excellent, as was skate wing with capers, lemon and parsley.

Gloucester Old Spot pork chop was a fine piece of meat served with pease pudding made from those dried legumes that escaped the pea soup. Sandwiches, served at lunchtime from Monday to Saturday, include a 4oz steak sandwich with charred onions and watercress.

This was like a minute steak, chewy but flavoursome. Chips as a side order come as fries or the famous burnished planks that are Heston's triple-cooked chips. It was the fries that found favour with the children.