Inspired Costwolds simplicity

The last time I was in Kingham I wasn’t wearing trousers. It was during the floods, I tried to wade home, it’s a long story. This week I visited fully clothed.

Once named village of the year by Country Life, Kingham is an hour and a half by train from Paddington and the same by car. But frankly the pub I’ve found is so impressive it’s worth three hours’ travelling — hell, I’d probably even walk it.

The Plough sits on the pretty village green and has been fully refurbished by young co-owners Emily Watkins, a chef, and Adam Dorrien-Smith.

There are attractive pubs in the Cotswolds and many claim wonderful food, but none I have tried are much good (apart from the Churchill Arms in Paxford). The Plough — from the experience my wife and I had this week — is a serious find.

The food is too good here to waste space writing about the interior of the pub. Suffice to say it’s really nice.

I doubt any of you will have heard of Watkins, but for two years she was sous chef to Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck in Bray. Blumenthal, as everyone knows, is the pioneer who fiddle faddles with flavours and ends up with egg and bacon ice cream and snail porridge.

Aside from El Bulli in Spain, The Fat Duck is arguably the world’s best restaurant and has three Michelin stars.

Watkins has clearly learned much from her mentor freshly cooked, locally sourced food with distinct flavours, cooked with precision — but is not a fiddler.

Hers is a menu of delightful simplicity. Four starters and five main courses. (Note to restaurateurs, we don’t like long menus).

A crisp duck egg with watercress sauce and peppered bacon was divine. The egg, tucked up in its crunchy sleeping bag, rested on a puddle of watercress reduced with the precision of a perfumer; just the merest hint on the tongue and you may as well have been swimming through a creek full of the delicious peppery leaves. It
was the perfect foil for the rich, creamy duck egg yolk. A truly accomplished work.