Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Pop in for a pizza and a pint at Baz and Fred’s ‘pub for mates’
OH, no, not another rundown old country inn reopening as a fancy food pub, I hear you cry. Well, not quite.
The 18th-century Hare & Hounds at Foss Cross, near Cirencester, may be no more, but its bright new replacement is a bit more interesting than most gussied up gastropubs.
Renamed The Stump – a reference to the nearby tree – the pub has recently been taken over by Harry Henriques and Fred Hicks – two local lads better known as ‘Baz & Fred’.
As ‘Baz and Fred’, they have gained something of a cult following around the Cotswolds for their pizzas, which started out being served from a trailer at festivals and weddings, but has since expanded with a permanent London operation and now their first pub-with-rooms.
What’s particularly interesting about The Stump is that the menu is pretty much exclusively pizzas and pasta, with the occasional special cooked in the wood-fired oven that takes pride of place in the open kitchen.
Considerable money has clearly been dropped on the project, which has seen this former brewery-owned pub taken back to being an independent free house.
As well as being completely renovated, there’s an attractive garden and ten ensuite bedrooms. Baz and Fred have even added a new pool table for the locals. I wouldn’t be surprised if the dart board makes a reappearance next. After all, they wanted to open a pub for the community and their mates.
Dating from 1772, the stone-built roadside pub has three open fires, low oak beams and scrubbed pine tables. I’m not sure if it was the wood-fired oven or the inglenook but there was an alluring smoky smell wafting around the pub at lunchtime.
Exposed stone walls dotted with pictures of pheasants and Georgian gents complete the rural feel but the pub is thoroughly contemporary in every other way.
Tables have huge Italian tomato tins with cutlery, staff are young and smiley and there are craft ales behind the bar as well as more traditional beers like Hooky.
The Stump is also big on aperitifs and classic cocktails such as a properly made Negroni and an Old Fashioned made with Maker’s Mark whisky and bitters.
It was pretty quiet on the midweek lunchtime I was there but the waitress told me evenings are already getting busy after the first month, with people travelling from Cheltenham, Cirencester and beyond.
The menu is divided into ‘small plates’, pizza, pasta and salad. Prices are certainly fair, with pizzas from £8.50 to £11.50 and only the Dorset crab, lemon and chilli linguine tipping over the £14 mark. For an upmarket pub in the heart of the Cotswolds, those are almost bargain basement price tags.
We warmed up with a couple of small plates – crisp croquettes (£4.65) with a creamy, bosky wild mushroom filling and even more pungent truffle aioli, and a generous portion of bruschetta topped with a carpet of marinated anchovies and tomatoes. From the pizza list, chorizo and ‘nduja with raw honey, tomato and mozzarella (£11.50) is apparently the bestseller and I can see why. Apart from the impressively thin, crisp and blistered base, the combination of sweet and spicy toppings is a winning one. It was a prize pizza and possibly better than any I’ve had in ‘proper’ pizzerias run by ‘real’ Italians.
A bowl of ragu pappardelle (£11.25) was a mountainous tangle of pasta ribbons coated in a rich and robust sauce of slow-cooked (for eight hours) beef shin in tomato sauce served with a flurry of grated Parmesan.
There is also considerable skill in the pastry section of the kitchen. From the specials board, ‘Chocolate Suburbia’ (£6.50) was subtitled ‘Pip’s chocolate and caramel tart’ in honour of its creator. A type of sandwich comprising two crisp chocolate biscuits and a central swirl of caramel and chocolate cream, it was as delicious as it was life shortening.
Too many country gastropubs try to be posh restaurants with fancy menus so it’s refreshing to see The Stump concentrating on only a few things but doing them really well.
The days of accompanying your beer with a pickled egg or packet of crisps may be numbered but, if Baz & Fred are to believed, the future of rural pubs may well be all about popping in for a pizza or bowl of pasta and a pint. I’ll drink to that.
RATING:
4/5