‘A glorious, tightly written menu of dreams’

The Black Horse, Chipping Norton

It’s the sort of menu one might write while stranded on a desert island, alone with nothing but stars, lapping waves and mosquitoes for company. A menu so fabulous that, having imagined it out loud to a fallen coconut, one might be content never to be rescued.

Yes, it’s that good, that well conceived and – tantalisingly – it is just as well executed.

If the offering at The Black Horse, in the tiny village of Salford, near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, provided such gastronomic tonic to this critic, imagine how happy the locals must be. Just a few years back, this pub was heading to faded wreck status. A ‘for sale’ sign was posted outside, ivy was crawling up and into the old Cotswold-stone walls, windows rattled in their rotted frames and the only public meeting space left in the village with its roof intact was the ancient Norman church.

But then along came knights in shining armour to rescue this old nag. And they proved that there is an upside to property magnates, media tycoons and Tv-presenters-cum-tv-farmers moving into the neighbourhood. The Black Horse is the evidence, as are two other nearby pubs also owned by Lionhearth Group (backed by property tycoon Sir Tony Gallagher and wealthy investors arm-twisted at his smart dinner parties): The Chequers and The Swan.

The Black Horse recently reopened to reveal a sympathetic and tasteful eye in its interior design: where there isn’t bare stone, the walls are white, and there are pale beams. There’s a stone floor, leather-bound chairs and banquettes, and the tables are clad in flattened zinc.

At the entrance there’s the most perfectly small and cute bar, where a smattering of locals can rest, while the remainder of the place is taken up with the dining room, which shows a canny use of space and a sensible approach to the economics of modern hospitality.

Then there’s that glorious, tightly written menu of dreams. There are five starters, each displaying a knowledge of classic British grub with a nudge of tempting flair. So on my visit, there was a lobster and prawn cocktail, smoked salmon, baked goat’s cheese and steak tartare, along with skewers of goat.

There’s then a smattering of meat cuts under the ‘grill’ section, along with some sea bass and a veggie squash loaf; a list of three large cuts of cow to share; and a pile of sides, from mac ’n’ cheese and butterhead lettuce to honey-roasted roots, buttery mash and fries. You can choose chicken – whole or half – from the rotisserie and there’s a list of sauces and butters. Oh, and there are the puds, some tinkering with well-known ideas such as the rotisserie pineapple tart tatin.

We ate the goat – it being my job to do things like order goat when I see ‘goat skewers’ – and it was soft, earthy and crumbling, given some tart crunch with spring onions and silky grace with yoghurt. If you own a British pub and you want business to sing, put a little goat on your menu. We also ate the lobster and prawn cocktail, a pretty mound of seafoody pleasure with an orange dressing that hinted at Marie Rose but wasn’t so sickly sweet.

Then there was rib-eye, tender and pink, and pork belly, crisp and crunchy, both portions being handsome but modest. The mash was a smooth – but not too smooth – winner, the lettuce fresh and crunchy, and there was broccoli. It came unadorned, solo, merely cooked al dente. It can be done, see?

With kindly, informed service, this is one hell of a perfect pub.

We ate the goat – it being my job to do things like order goat when I see ‘goat skewers’ on the menu