The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Table talk
Our critic’s local excels at Sunday lunch – served with a hearty portion of nostalgia
William Sitwell visits The Crown Inn, Northampton
I CAN’T MERELY declare an interest in this week’s subject. I must declare a passion. You see, me and The Crown are close; about 150 yards to be precise. And if I’m really thirsty, I can get there in around 26 seconds. For this establishment is in the village where my family and I live, the village where I spent my teenage years.
This pub has history – part of it dates back as a 16th-century coaching inn – and the pub and I have history. Me and my pals sipped long and hard in The Crown in our teens, we chatted up girls in there, played skittles and darts, put music on the jukebox and became good friends with the locals, young and old.
My pal Jim and I would sit at the bar, drink pints of Hooky (Hook Norton ale), eat pork scratchings and share Bullseye jokes; that’s the darts quiz show of the 1980s with catchphrases like: ‘Keep out of the black and in the red. Nothing in this game for two in a bed.’ Host Jim Bowen once introduced a prize thus: ‘Stay cool and upright like yours truly with this fabulous refrigerator.’
The Crown’s bar has always been filled with characters. There was old Frank, a gardener by trade, bent double, who ironically seemed to hate fresh air. ‘Bloody wind,’ he’d always moan. He described a pint of Hooky as ‘like making love in a punt. It’s near water.’
There used to be a bearded man who stood at the bar and talked to himself loudly all evening. From time to time, he’d laugh. Occasionally, he’d lose his temper with himself. He played Soft
Cell’s Tainted Love repeatedly on the jukebox. Another local, Clyde – the village auctioneer and comedian – claims to have met Lord Lucan at the bar a day after he went missing in 1974.
The pub itself has had its ups and downs. There were the glory years of the ’80s, when genial landlord John Satchwell was the life and soul of the village and spent more time on the customers’ side of the bar. There were years that followed when another couple decided to ban all the locals before disappearing one night never to be seen again. And there were years when no one could face up to the challenge of running a rural boozer and it stayed sad, empty and shut.
But now The Crown booms again and is the model of convivial hospitality. Harsh-but-fair Mike, with his wide-boy grin and swagger, has procured a fabulous team including a brilliantly consistent chef in Scottish Andy and the evercharming Italian Claudio at the bar. With ales including my beloved weak and watery Hooky, and a small but excellent wine list, it is matched by a solid menu of classic pub food with the odd flourish. Weeknights feature fish, pie and curry specials, but the place excels at Sunday lunch. On a recent visit, we started by sharing salt and pepper fried squid. It came with decorative swirls of sweet chilli that alone would be an unambitious cheap shot, but with small chunks of hot chorizo to perk up the soft squid and crispy batter, it was a fantastic appetiser.
I then went for the roast beef. Cooked slowly for 12 hours, it was a carnivore’s dream. If any plant-basedmunching acquaintance, weeping at the sight of a butcher’s shop, ever asks why you eat meat, bring them to The Crown and get them to observe you and your soul – a being at peace – as you consume soft, pinkish slivers of flesh.
But whereas some establishments cover the plate in accompanying veg as bulking froth, here everything else on the dish is sublime; stars of their own. The spoonful or two of rich cauliflower cheese has bite and texture. The roast potatoes are waxy inside, crisp on the outside, the gravy is rich and perfect and there’s a big fat proud Yorkshire pudding, too. It’s a magnificent assembly; a flag-waving, nationalistic, proud victory of a dish. Emily was chowing on ‘beer-battered haddock fillet’ meanwhile and declared the mushy peas – my idea of torture – as the greatest she had ever tasted.
Then I went greedy nuts with profiteroles in hot chocolate sauce. But what’s this? The sauce was cold. I remonstrated with a waitress, shocked and shaking as I pointed out the menu/ dish discrepancy. Within minutes, a little jug of steaming chocolate arrived to save the day.
This is a classic English inn, with rooms for the weary traveller, an open fire one end and a wood burner the other. There are little alcoves for cosy tables for two, dining rooms off the main bar, all amid heart-warming, ironbrown Northamptonshire stone. This is our local and Jim, Clyde, myself and all the regulars really don’t mind if you swing by and join us.
It’s a magnificent assembly; a flag-waving, nationalistic, proud victory of a dish