Hind's Head

Continuing with the self referential theme, we also went to Heston's lesser known pub in Bray whilst we visited. As I read somewhere, Heston does seem to be taking over the little village much like how Rick Stein took over Padstow, but in some ways, I found the Hind's Head to be even more exciting than its famous neighbour 3 doors' down.

One thing I didn't mention in the Fat Duck post was that I didn't think the decor of the place was that successful. I think it was a pub conversion, and you can still see a lot of exposed beams. But the dining room is relatively small, and the beams felt oppressive, and also slightly out of place in the modern interiors. It gets even weirder when you go upstairs, where the toilet is ultra ultra modern, and there is this weird vacant space which they obviously are not sure what to do with.

But the beams at Hind's Head are exactly right. In an olde worlde pub, the beams give a cosy feel, it's just a shame that there were definitely a few WAGs in the pub who didn't quite fit in with their very small dresses. I also loved the fact you have to duck quite a bit to get the loo at the Hind's Head. Were people really that much smaller hundreds of years ago?

Anyway, the reason why I was quite excited was even though we were about to have a 13 course dinner next door, we still sneaked a peek at the menu. Lots of pub classics like good fashioned steak pies, bangers and mash, etc., but also a few edgier additions, including raw scotch beef with capers, half lobster and chips. And the prices are not ridiculous given its pedigree - about £8/10 for a starter, £12/15 for a main. It is obviously blooming far away to go for a pub lunch, but you can tell it would be cooked superbly.

And we did manage to try a few of the Hind's Head bar snacks to get us through to 9pm when our FD booking was. Unfortunately their very famous triple cooked chips was not on the menu - apparently there has been a change to the potato season - so we had to settle for normal French fries. Not very exciting as you can imagine. This was accompanied by Warwickshire wizzers (basically posh cocktail sausages) and a Scotch quail egg:

It's a shame we were all pretty hungry and dived in and scoffed the lot within 5 minutes, because the quail egg was such a wonder it deserved a picture. Somehow, they manage to keep the yolk of the egg soft, and given the size of a quail's egg, that's no mean feat! The sausagemeat encasing the egg was also wondrously fibrous and meaty. In fact, I would hazard to say that out of all the food I ate in that little village, that little egg was the thing that impressed me the most.

As a joke, we actually did wonder into the Waterside Inn to see if we could make a reservation - and somehow we managed to get one within the next 2 months. We did have a look at the menu, and it does look like I will have to take out a second mortgage to continue eating like this - starters at around £40, it'd better be good! Maybe I should ask for a few of those quail's eggs to takeaway in case it isn't...