AN INSPECTOR CALLS

He pays his way... and tells it like it is

RESTAURANTS with rooms are a clever idea. Eat, drink and stagger up the stairs and then come down again in the morning for a better than average breakfast. That’s exactly what you do here at celebrity chef Adam Handling’s latest project down a lane in Old Windsor — except your chances of a berth at busy times are handicapped because there are only two rooms.

Ours is special, albeit over-priced at £250. It’s a suite, with a big sofa facing the window and a roll-top bath in one corner, plus a separate shower room.

This is foodie central, so there are some delightful touches such as a jar of homemade shortbread and, on the table next to the bath, a bottle of readymade Negroni and two tumblers.

The building used to be a battered pub, but one with a charming thick wooden bar, which has been retained. The ethos here is that nothing should go to waste; everything must be sourced locally or, ideally, grown in the raised beds at the back of the building near a tented area, which must be fun in summer.

What a treat it is to sample Handling’s food at reasonable prices compared with his establishment in London’s Covent

Garden and at Carbis Bay in Cornwall, where he cooked for President Biden and other G7 leaders last June. ‘Quite a few of them had dietary requirements,’ says our friendly and highly efficient waiter. ‘So it was a little stressful.’

I just hope they were able to scoop up his signature chicken butter and whack it on fresh sourdough — sensational. And so as not to throw out the chicken skins, he cuts them up finely, pops them in the oven and then sprinkles them on the butter. Chicken scratchings.

My prawn cocktail was laced with 1970s nostalgia but with a 2020s dash of spice. It was followed by magnificent duck breast and then a sensational slice of pecan pie.

We loved our huge bed and enjoyed the quiet of riverside Berkshire. You order breakfast in advance and say what time you want it. I went for the full English but just couldn’t finish it — and felt out of kilter with the ‘no waste’ philosophy.

But I still managed lashings of chicken butter (minus the scratchings), which at one point I spread on the black pudding. Extreme indulgence, and not what the doctor ordered, but it rounded off a delicious stay.

The Loch & The Tyne, 10 Crimp Hill, Old Windsor, SL4 2QY Tel: 01753 851470, lochandtyne.com Doubles from £147