The Hand and Flowers - review

I know Marlow isn’t actually that far away from London, but walking through its dark, deserted, mist shrouded streets at 7.30pm on a Tuesday evening, it was certainly doing a good impression of remote with a side order of creepy.  You’ll have to bear with me on this, I am a complete town mouse and the minute I see something borderline rural (thatching, a tea shop) I get a little nervous. Proper countryside (or, ‘The Country’) is great: I am prepared. I have wellies and jackets and 8 pairs of pyjamas to layer up for the bedrooms, and that’s all fine. But things like Marlow freak me out.  It’s rural but not. There are no pavements except on the main road, but also a train that goes semi-direct to Paddington in 30 minutes. There’s a low, spectral mist hanging around the edges of the fields but over there is a Pizza Express. And where is everybody?  

All of this works in the Hands and Flowers’ favour somewhat, as, when you see it at the side of the road; warm, bright and full of people and chatter, you’re just so grateful you don’t have to be out in the mist with the ghost of Dick Turpin anymore.  I went with my uncle, and high hopes.

It’s a long, low, beamed room and looks like a nicely done country pub, which it is.  It was odd to look at the room and think of the Michelin stars; a sort of sensory dislocation.  I saw something similar on the Great British Menu the other week: one of the chefs made a pudding that looked a hamburger. Everything was sweet, everything went together, every component was normal, but he’d stacked it up to look like a burger, and when people tried it they didn’t like it very much, but there was nothing wrong with it. They’d just...sort of been expecting a burger.  Similarly, at the Good Food Guide/Waitrose competition that I *blush* won recently, there was a brownish canapé shaped like a lollipop on a stick that looked like it was going to be caramel or some kind of hard sugar, but in fact was a shard of tomato and balsamic vinegar.  Now, there was nothing wrong with it at all (in fact the balsamic was powdered on top, which was really clever) but I couldn’t get my head around it not tasting like I had supposed it would - you  can read more about that here if you’d like to http://www.thegoodfoodguide.co.uk/news/palates-put-on-the-line-at-waitrose-cookery-school

So there you go.  I’m not saying it’s right but, for me, the juxtaposition of a pub setting and two Michelin starred food is a bit jarring.  The Harwood Arms in Fulham is the only other pub I’ve been to with a Michelin star (now removed), and I found the same thing there. I’m not sure a scotch egg can have a star, even if it is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.  Maybe this is why a lot of people think Michelin is obsolete.

Anyway, we were in the Hand and Flowers, my Uncle and I, setting the world to rights a.k.a. gossiping about the family, and looking at the menu.  It is a really good menu; you want to eat everything.  Not having time for that, I went for the foie gras and duck parfait, and then the duck with the duck fat chips and savoy cabbage.  My Uncle had crab ravioli with truffles and then the fillet of beef.  Still being at the developmental stage where I’m fine with Blossom Hill in an emergency, I let him pick the wine. We had an English white from Chapel Down that was very good (‘flinty’ is how I would describe it), and an Italian red which I can’t remember much about because, as you will probably have gathered from my ordering, I was dying from a surfeit of duck.  

This is rich food.  An appetizer of whitebait was hot and crunchy and could have been a full sized starter in itself.  The parfait was (sorry) perfect- it even managed to look pretty, which is difficult with whipped innards.  I usually ignore chutneys (quite often they’re in random smears on the plate so you only find them by accident anyway) but the orange one here was great and really cut through the liver.  My uncle ate his ravioli very quickly, which is a good sign, unless he was just trying to psych out the waiting staff, who were lovely and attentive but slightly overenthusiastic.  Our starters arrived half way through the whitebait and we were still drinking the white wine when the main courses turned up. Still, over-eagerness is not something to get too worked up about, especially given that the alternative in a restaurant (being ignored, interminable waits for food) is so horrible.

The main courses were not only rich but huge. My duck had a slightly sweet glaze which lifted it from the background of the cabbage and a delicious little pastry thing, also meat filled.  The chips were hands (and flowers) down the best chips I’ve ever eaten, anywhere, bar none, so go for those.  My uncle didn’t think his fillet was extraordinary, but he once put the worm from a bottle of tequila into a candle at our family Christmas lunch so it exploded, so we don’t necessarily have to trust him.

We shared a cheese plate for pudding, which had some interesting stuff on it, including an epoisses-alike that was really exceptional. 

The food here is very good but I think I would have appreciated it more had I not been lulled into the sensory dissociation of it being in a pub.  Some of what we ate (the parfait, the chips) was absolutely fantastic and it definitely, as Michelin would say, ‘mérite le detour’.

I’ll leave you with an extraordinary bit of schadenfraude.  At the table just across from us were a young couple.  Her: laughing nervously and playing with her hair, him: diffident, smartly dressed, shy.  It was clearly a date and I would extrapolate, given it was the week of Valentine’s Day (the man in my story is actually my Uncle, not my “uncle”, I promise) that they had saved up to come to the Hand and Flowers for a special supper.  All seemed to be going well for them until their puddings came out.  He had ordered a soufflé which appeared to have some honeycomb or something on top. You get the idea, small and sharp bits. He promptly inhaled one of the crumbs and began to choke violently - at which point people at the nearest tables became aware of him - and then, within seconds, the situation had escalated until the poor, poor, poor chap threw up at the table, as the girl looked on in concerned bemusement.  It was without a doubt the most excruciatingly raw empathy I have ever felt for another human being (can you actually IMAGINE? He’s probably been to Pizza Express a million times and never vomited, and then he does it at the Hand and Flowers on date night), as well as (because of the general inappropriateness of bodily functions in public and the nature of the hushed room) one of the most startlingly funny.  To their credit, the staff were incredibly kind and reassuring towards him, and he quickly made a full recovery.