It was a couple of years since I had last eaten at the Swan in Streatley, which boasts an up-market restaurant featuring dishes produced from impeccably sourced ingredients. The arrival of a new chef, Andrew West-Letford, formerly of Danesfield House, in Marlow, suggested this might be a good time to reacquaint myself with it. I had another reason to visit, in connection with an unusual celebration taking place last Saturday night in the former Magdalen College barge moored alongside the hotel and now used for the Swan's special functions. I shall tell you about that in Gray Matter next week.
Travel to Streatley from Oxford ought properly, I suppose, to be by river, though this would prove somewhat long-winded. Next best is First Great Western's admirable rail service, which offers a train roughly once an hour. In order to look in on the barge festivities, we were off from Oxford around 6pm. After a pleasant stroll through the pretty village and half an hour on the barge, we were ready for our dinner in Cygnetures Restaurant.
The courteous staff there had reserved us an ideal table, beside a window looking out on to the still sun-dappled Thames. As Havelock Ellis put it in a poem printed on the back of the menu: Sure never was a hostelry Located half so sweetly, The silver stream glides peacefully Before the Swan at Streatley.
But what was printed on the inside of the menu was of greater moment now. Adam West-Letford is clearly maintaining the restaurant's happy record for elegantly assembled dishes. Among the starters are rare grilled tuna with puy lentils and a quail's egg, salad of white asparagus and globe artichoke with a duck egg and truffle emulsion, and risotto of wild garlic with confit frogs' legs persillade. Main courses include new season lamb cutlets with a smoked anchovy beignet, cannette of duck with creamed Savoy cabbage, fillet of beef with horseradish gnocchi, and pan-fried John Dory fillet, with salted cucumber, mussels and oysters.
Readers familiar with my practice in this column will guess, correctly, that we ate none of these. My starter (and indeed my main course) was a dish that was, according to the waiter, especially recommended by the chef. You might have thought, incidentally, that he would be recommending all the products of his kitchen and leaving someone else to place them in a pecking order.
But, no matter: his warm salad of wood pigeon was absolutely delicious. Thick slices of breast meat were placed on a bed of shredded celeriac in mayonnaise, with dried cranberries (looking and tasting like sultanas) and tiny pickled girolles. The pigeon, of course, was bloody, verging on raw: I have almost forgotten what well-cooked pigeon tastes like (tough, I expect).
Rosemarie enjoyed a smooth and creamy parsley soup with Stilton mousse and croutons. Since we were plentifully supplied with various types of bread and little cylinders of excellent unsalted butter, she was not without the means for mopping operations.
She continued with roasted monkfish tail, which was served in a rich marscapone ragout with slivers of courgette, chunks of chorizo, that so-fashionable ingredient, and chorizo beignets. The bread also came in handy with this bowl of fish stew.
My recommended main course was a chunky piece of roasted halibut, served without skin and cooked to a perfect gleaming whiteness, with white onion puree, braised baby gem lettuce, skinned broad beans (which the menu somewhat posily calls "feves"), peas (not styled "pois") and fondant potatoes. This dish was perfect.
I finished with "assiette of apple", which I correctly guessed was going to be various miniature ways with Adam's temptation, including a sorbet, a cream, a doughnut and a glazed tart. Rosemarie had a hot chocolate fondant, the runny favourite for which we have to thank the great Raymond Blanc, served here with white chocolate (not styled "chocolat blanc") ice cream.
This was all seriously good food, served with competence and charm in a memorably attractive environment. Highly recommended.
As Havelock Ellis's poem has it: And this to all is my advice Put plainly and concretely "If you're in search of all that's nice Go to the Swan at Streatley."
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