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Cotswolds

The Cotswold Report: from old favorites to new finds, the region’s best eating, drinking & shopping

Posted on January 11, 2014

I’ve just arrived back in Los Angeles after a month in the Cotswolds, where I was struck by the pleasingly consistent, almost defiant answer locals give when asked what’s new: NOTHING. While this may be true of some things—the wet weather and the stunning landscapes come to mind—I found the Wolds were awash with new and worthy finds: some just opened, some that have been around but were new to me. During our visit I also tried all our old standards, and I’m delighted to report they generally remain in good form. Still, with very few exceptions, the service in Cotswold restaurants remains too slow. Even if a kitchen is busy, much could be done to soothe tempers by providing prompt delivery of water, wine and bread, in that order. Sadly, even this seems to be too much to expect of many eateries whose prices demand that they should know better.

And now on to the good stuff. Starting in the north and working our way south, here’s my list of the best of the Cotswolds:

Moreton-in-Marsh

Greek Deli – Recently opened by hospitality veteran Ilias Karalivanos, this is a great spot for coffee and a light lunch of Greek classics. Don’t leave without some Greek wine and tasty tidbits from the deli case.
Christmas Birds & Books – In the same arcade as the Greek Deli, Richard Kemp recently opened Moreton’s only bookshop with the worthy sentiment: “Towns deserve bookshops. They are part of the community.” Amen.

Stow-on-the-Wold and nearby

The Porch House – This recently renovated pub/hotel is decorated with oversize bell jars housing antiquarian books, an interior design trick I’m planning to employ when I buy my Cotswold dream house. Snack on honeyed chili nuts and a pint of something local in
the low-ceilinged pub, purportedly the oldest inn in England.
The Old Butchers – One of my old favorites for Sunday lunch has been reinvented as a charming wine and charcuterie bar. Coincidentally, we found its former manager at the delightful Royal Oak in Gretton, just outside of Winchombe, where we enjoyed a generous Sunday roast.
Vintage and Paint – Just opposite The Old Butchers, this curiosity shop has everything from old Johnny Strong dolls to vintage movie lights. A refreshing take on the typical Cotswold antique shop.
The Borzoi Bookshop – On a tiny lane just off the market square sits a gem of an independent bookstore. Well stocked with regionally relevant books, it’s the perfect spot to pick up my favorite kind of souvenir.
The Coffee House – A couple doors down from the bookshop, their leather sofas are my favorite place to catch up on the papers.
Daylesford Organic (about 4 miles east of Stow) – We had our first Daylesford lunch in their Notting Hill branch, but the site just outside of Stow is the real deal. It’s easy to feel like a target market here (and hate yourself a little bit for it), but there’s no getting around the fact that the food is fantastic. The proprietress recently opened The Wild Rabbit in nearby Kingham, which is on my list for my next trip to England.

Beetroot soup at Daylesford

Cheltenham

No 131 – A welcome, terribly stylish hotel/restaurant/bar addition to the Promenade, and not just because the bartender knows how to make a stonking Old Fashioned.

Burford

Mad Hatter Bookshop – a bookstore and a hat shop, because, why not? Think of the English penchant for hats and its literary heritage, and it all starts to make more sense.
New Dragon Inn – When I need a break from the standard Cotswold menu of pies, sausage and mash, and fish cakes, I head for the New Dragon Inn. Served in the incongruous surroundings of a Grade I listed building (koi tank aside), I’m a fan of the crispy duck and Singapore noodles.

Northleach

The Black Cat – A new café in the old wool house. If this was Portland, it’d be loaded with hipsters and their Mac Books, but this is the Cotswolds which means you won’t struggle with getting a table or an overloaded wifi signal. Great breakfast baps, but the kitchen seem to struggle if an order includes more than two items.
The Wheatsheaf – Every time we return, the prices have nudged gently upward, but that’s done nothing to dampen business. Excellent fish dishes and the sirloin with peppercorn sauce always delivers. Service remains consistently inconsistent.
The Ox House Wine Company – My old favorite now serves tasty lunches. Menu changes on a weekly basis but may include anything from a lamb curry to fishcakes. There’s Viennoiserie in the mornings, plus standout bacon sandwiches. Of course the real attraction here is the wine, all hand selected from small producers. A delight whether you’re drinking in or taking a bottle or two away.

Relaxing in front of the fire at the Ox House

Barnsley

Barnsley House cinema nights are a favorite way to spend an evening in the Cotswolds. Relax with a glass of wine in the pink-loveseat splendor of it all. You don’t have to be a hotel guest to attend, although it’s a great place to stay if you’re in need of a bed.
The Village Pub – A firm old favorite. One of those rare places I would be happy ordering everything on the menu.

Tetbury

The Royal Oak – Recently refurbished, this pub with rooms is worth a visit and a good excuse to take in a scenic stretch of Tetbury that’s off the main drag.
Moloh – If you’re after some real royal memorabilia, skip Prince Charles’ Highgrove shop and head to Moloh, an upscale British women’s clothier favored by Kate Middleton.
The Ormond – A pub and hotel that’s warm, friendly, and offers my personal favorite form of royal memorabilia: coronation chicken.

The Snooty Fox, Tetbury

Cotswolds

Fancy Dress

Posted on January 1, 2014

The British have quite a thing for fancy dress, or costumes in Ameri-speak, which manifested in two ways this past week. First, we went to a traditional Christmas panto, Aladdin, at the Everyman Theater in Cheltenham. If you’ve never been to a panto, it’s more or less a fairy tale livened up by pop music (a Freddie Mercury medley in this case) and both men and women in drag. The male and female romantic leads are played by women, while the role of Widow Twankey—a character that always appears, regardless of the fairytale—goes to a man that is purposely at no risk of being mistaken for a woman.

For reasons still unknown to me, this version of Aladdin was set in “Old Peking”

Our second encounter with fancy dress was at last evening’s New Year’s Eve party. (Unlike Americans, the British see no reason to limit costume parties to Halloween.) Husband and I went, respectively, as Mr. Toad from The Wind in the Willows and the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. I even managed to bag first prize, a bottle of champagne we put to good use to ring in the new year.

Our efforts at bringing two classic children’s books to life

Happy New Year to you and yours! May 2014 bring you health, wealth, and a plethora of opportunities for fancy dress.

Cotswolds

A Day Out in Tetbury

Posted on December 31, 2013

Yesterday we had a day out in Tetbury, a lovely Cotswold market town that, among other things, is home to Prince Charles’ Highgrove Estate. We didn’t run into any royals—other than the postcard of Prince George that I bought for my six-year old niece, a royal enthusiast—but we did catch the Duke of Beaufort’s Hunt right before it set out. We also tried two new-to-us places, both of which I recommend: The Royal Oak Tetbury, where we stopped for coffee, and The Ormond for lunch. There was also time to drop off a copy of Americashire at the Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, whose charming motto comes courtesy of Van Gogh: “Bookshops aren’t hares, and there’s no hurry.”

Books Cotswolds

Telephone Box Library

Posted on December 13, 2013

Husband spotted this micro library out and about in the Cotswolds today. Love it:

Cotswolds

Return to Americashire

Posted on December 8, 2013

Our month-long return to the Cotswolds is off to a fine start. We took the long way here from Los Angeles, stopping for a night and day in Boston before continuing on to Heathrow last night. Our goal was to break the journey into two, five-ish hour flights instead of one epic flight, but the stop in Boston also served as a cultural transition. New England, with her crisp air and preppy-fied populace, prepared us well for Ye Olde England.

Despite the air traffic control tumult of yesterday, our flight touched down on-time and before long we were whizzing along the M4 in our festive rental car, a red Fiat Cinquecento. It’s merry but I’m not sure how she’ll handle ice or snow, so just as well it’s still relatively mild out. We took advantage of the weather to walk the four miles to the pub for a Sunday roast. The service was predictably uneven, but, on the first day back in town, this still seems endearing. (My guess is I’ll be ranting about English customer service well before the end of the month.) Roast pork and potatoes with a Yorkshire pudding also helped dispel any budding disgruntlement.

The only remaining goal of the day is to make it to 8pm before the jet lag wins. Next up is a quick jaunt to Berlin this week before returning to the Cotswolds. London and the Lake District also feature later on the agenda. For now, I’m so happy to be back and looking forward to sharing the rest of the adventure here.

Cotswolds

Ode to the Pheasant: It’s turkey time, but I’ve got pheasant on the mind

Posted on November 27, 2013

This blog first appeared on Anglophiles United

My move to the Cotswolds started in 2007 with a rented cottage for weekends away from London. It only took six months until my husband and I were seduced by the countryside into buying our own place, where we, along with legions of other Londoners, continued the weekend ritual of self-imposed exile for the next year. Then, finally, in 2009, I took a job within commuting distance of our weekend village and left the city behind for good.

It was not, however, my status as a full-time resident that made me finally feel like a local. This, instead, was marked by the evolution of my attitude towards a bird, a feathered creature that dominates the English rural landscape by virtue of both its abundance and airheadedness. I write, of course, of the pheasant.

My early encounters with the creature were marked by fawning. While out on a bike ride I would stop to admire the miniature beasts as they foraged the fields: the male with his crimson masquerade mask over a hood of teal, the female cloaked in a humbler but still handsome pattern of nutty browns. (I couldn’t help admiring mother nature for the role reversal from humans in giving the male the responsibility for seducing a mate with his sartorial flair.) But soon my fawning and photographing morphed into annoyance. Too often when caught off guard—which was, apparently, always—the pheasant would panic and scurry toward our bikes rather than away. On the steep downhills of the wolds, the pheasant became responsible for one too many near misses of going head over handlebars. The same was true for driving; these birds are drawn to rather than repelled by headlights. I suppose it was inevitable, but the time finally came when such an encounter ended badly for both bird and car. It happened too fast to be sure, but there, on the steep downhill-side of the Fossebridge dip in the moments before impact, I’m sure I spotted this death-wish-with-a-plume flying straight for the car grill.

Not long after, I had my second encounter with a dead pheasant, this time in a farmhouse kitchen where my husband and I had been invited for Sunday lunch. This weekly gathering is a fixture of English life, and a ritual I had admired since we first moved from Los Angeles to London. Now we had been invited to our first Sunday lunch since becoming residents of the Cotswolds, and we were titillated at the prospect. We joined our hosts and two other guests around a weathered pine table, where the pheasant pie was served in a puff pastry-topped casserole dish, much the same as an American chicken pot pie. When I remarked with enthusiasm to the hostess that it was the first time I had ever eaten pheasant, she dismissed the dish as an excuse to rid her freezer of them. (Hers is a sentiment I imagine is shared by hundreds of other spouses of game shooters all around the English countryside.) Despite this, I enjoyed the meal, relieved to learn there was a savory use for this majestic if dopey bird. The afternoon continued to deliver on all my expectations of a proper English Sunday lunch. By the time snowflakes started dancing outside the kitchen window, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson had walked through the door and joined us for the cheese course.

My transition from London expat to Cotswold local had been gradual, marked by subtle milestones—the first time I wore tweed without irony, for instance. But it wasn’t until I asked for a second helping of pheasant pie in that farmhouse kitchen that I felt like a real Cotswoldian for the very first time. Should you ever be in the position to make use of a pheasant that has met with an unfortunate end, here’s that recipe for pheasant pot pie:

Ingredients
3.5 tbsp (about half a stick) butter
1/2 lb. pancetta
4 leeks, cut into large chunks
3 celery sticks, sliced
3 carrots, halved lengthwise and sliced
2 bay leaves
3 tbsp plain flour
1 and 1/4 cups cider
2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp double cream
6 pheasant breasts, skinned and cut into large chunks
3 tbsp wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 package of puff pastry
plain flour, for dusting
egg beaten with a little milk, to glaze

Directions
Heat the butter in a casserole dish and cook the pancetta for 1 minute until it changes color. Add the leeks, celery, carrots and bay leaves, and cook until they start to soften. Stir the flour into the vegetables until it goes a sandy color, then add the cider and reduce. Pour in the chicken stock, stir, then add the cream. Season, then bring everything to a simmer. Add the pheasant and gently simmer for 20 minutes until the meat and vegetables are tender. Stir through the mustard and vinegar, then turn off the heat and cool.

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Pour the mixture into a large rectangular dish. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface, place over the dish and trim round the edges, leaving an overhang. Brush the pastry with egg, then decorate with any leftover pastry, if you like. Sprinkle with a little sea salt. The pie can now be frozen for up to 1 month; defrost completely before baking. Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Cotswolds

English Lessons for Americans in England

Posted on October 1, 2013

My thoughts on learning to speak the Queen’s English are up in a post on JustLanded.com. These include my greatest hits of faux pas as a fresh arrival to London. Surely I’m not the only one to mistake the Chelsea Physic Garden for a bucolic retreat for fortune tellers?

Cotswolds

A Family-Friendly Foodie Guide to the Cotswolds

Posted on September 8, 2013

One of my enduring memories of Paris is eating lunch at a sidewalk café on the Rue Cler next to a table at which the most radiant French family was also dining. Their party included several small children, all wearing outfits that appeared to cost substantially more than the contents of my entire wardrobe, and all sitting politely and using utensils to do adept things like remove slices of buffalo mozzarella from a deconstructed caprese salad served in a jam jar. They were the embodiment of Pamela Zuckerman’s book, French Children Don’t Throw Food, and I experienced a moment of deep national envy.

But never fear: Even if the manners and tastes of your little ones are lacking the luster of my ideal French family, it’s no reason to compromise your own gastronomic ambitions on your next holiday in the Cotswolds. Granted, you’re probably not going to be dining avec les tout-petits at any Michelin-starred restaurants, although, for the record, there are four of them in the area, including the three-starred Le Champion Sauvage in Cheltenham. Instead, try one of the options in our family-friendly foodie guide, each handpicked to keep all ages’ palates pleased.

A gourmet guide

Say Cheese
It’s the mainstay of childrens’ diets around the world, whether served on toast or atop macaroni. Luckily the Cotswolds is full of it, from Double Gloucester to goats’ milk varieties. Look out for offerings from the Windrush Valley Goat Dairy and CerneyCheese while shopping at the acclaimed Saturday Stroud Farmers’ Market or The Cotswold Table, a newer market with a growing reputation that takes place on select Sundays in Kingham. Alternately, if royal baby mania has drawn you to the market town of Tetbury—home to new grandparents Charles and Camilla—stop in the House of Cheese. It specializes in farm-made cheeses and stocks 120 types.

Luscious Libations
Let’s face it, you’re going to need some wine to go with all that cheese. The Ox House WineCompany in Northleach specializes in offerings from small producers around the world. Indulge in their great selection of wines by the glass while the kids enjoy a hot chocolate. Don’t miss the wine barn in the back for great bottles to take away. As an added bonus, the World of Mechanical Music is just across the square and offers and eccentric assortment of self-playing music and automata to keep the kids amused.

Festival Fun
Why not make a day of gluttony at one of the many food festivals that take place throughout the Cotswolds? The British Asparagus Festival in the Vale of Evesham includes a mascot, Gus the Asparagus Man, and, this year, an asparagus-shaped soapbox cart, the AsparaCart. In other words, it just may succeed in making vegetables interesting to your kids. Other festivals to be on the lookout for include the Cheltenham Food Festival, and the Cotswold Food and Farming Festival in Bourton-on-the-Water.

Farm-to-Table
Farm-to-table eating is all the rage, and there’s no better place to teach kids about where food comes from than the Cotswolds. Start with a visit to a working farm like Butts Farm in South Cerney, near Cirencester. The shop is open year round, and, from Easter until the end of September, kids can help bottle feed lambs, collect eggs, and milk goats. To up the luxury quotient, stop into Daylesford Organic near Kingham, the mothership of the eponymous outlets in London, Surrey, and Tokyo. The food produced for their shop and café doesn’t come cheap, but it does come straight from their animals, creamery and market garden and tastes divine.

Sweet Treats
End your visit to the Cotswolds on a sweet note with an evening at The Pudding Club in Mickleton, a lovely village
on the northern edge of the Cotswolds, close to both Hidcote Manor Garden and Stratford-upon-Avon. The lofty aim of The Pudding Club is to preserve the traditional English pudding, from Sussex Pond to Spotted Dick, but it’s really just an excuse to eat seven puddings for supper. For something simpler but just as sweet, try Winstones Cotswold Ice Cream Shop on the edge of the National Trust’s Rodborough Common.

Note: This post originally appeared on HomeAway.co.uk on the same date it’s back-published here.

Books Cotswolds

Americashire Review on Slow Travels

Posted on May 27, 2013

Earlier this month, Pauline Kenny, another American in the Cotswolds, reviewed Americashire: A Field Guide to a Marriage on her blog, Slow Travels. You can find the review here, alongside great travel information for the Cotswolds.