Organic Experience

KATHERINE MACALISTER sniffs out the food – and the money – at one of the country’s finest farm shops.

If CARLSBERG did ladies-who-lunch, they’d have come up with Daylesford Organics themselves. Situated in the beautiful countryside just outside Chipping Norton, this is Chelsea decamped, a little oasis of class, taste and, above all, money.

You can smell it almost as soon as you get out of the car, where everything is painted in National Trust colours, and discretion is the name of the game.

It is beautiful, understated, expensive and wildly popular with anyone who fancies getting away from it all, but doesn’t want to venture anywhere too real. It’s pure fantasy land, from the cavernous food hall where you can spend the average mortgage on a weekly shop, to the cookery school, spa, store and cafe.

When I say ‘cafe’, it’s really a restaurant, situated outside with a tinkling fountain, obsequious staff and lots of tweed. Oh, and not a child to be seen. So it wasn’t a fabulous idea to turn up with my brood for lunch. I had been coerced into going there by a friend who said it was “very child-friendly” and I agreed because I was hungry, nearby, and curious.

But as soon as I drew up in the car park and hid my people-carrier among the Range Rovers with blacked-out windows, I knew it was a mistake. This place was as child-friendly as the lion cage at Cotswold Wildlife Park.

But in for a penny, in for a pound. We processed through the silent, well-dressed diners and the gentle Michael Buble music to a spare table and ordered as quickly as possible, while I gritted my teeth. I won’t bore you with the details, and my brood were pretty well-behaved, all things considered, but it was an ordeal, rather than a pleasure, and I can’t wait to go back with my girlfriends to do Daylesford properly.

In the short time we were there we managed to contain the kids long enough to consume a plate of pasta from the children’s menu, a ham sandwich and two Welsh rarebits. All arrived very quickly (no prizes for guessing why), the staff were scrupulously polite and the food was delicious. To give you an idea of the attention to detail here, the Daylesford rarebit on toast came with shallot & caper dressing and a baby leaf salad for £6.95.

Price-wise, it was also very affordable and there was a lot more grown-up food on offer should we want it– fresh scallops had arrived moments after we sat down. Otherwise the menu was surprisingly down-to-earth with bangers and mash, pesto spaghetti, pizza baked in their on-site Italian oven, ploughman’s, risotto and burgers on offer.

In fact, the more time I spent there, the more I wanted to come back, but we cut our losses and headed off to the car park, where I bumped into an old friend. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Having lunch,” I replied. “What? With them?” he asked pointing at the children in disbelief. “Surely you know this is where the ladies-who-lunch come without the kids?”

* For more details log on to daylesfordorganic.com