Digging through our library files to unearth something of the long history of The Bull at Burford, I came across my earliest review of its restaurant. It was written in December `1979, the final month of the ‘Decade that Taste Forgot’. The meal I ate was all too typical of the period: grapefruit topped with sugar and grilled; roast beef, sliced and heated in gravy and served with a baked potato (!); pear poached in red wine.

Had I been able to look 30 years into the future, how I would have marvelled at some of the dishes listed on the menu in the summer of 2010. These include a terrine starter in which mackerel is daringly blended with beetroot and rhubarb; a main course of roasted fillet of sea trout teamed with crab and tomato cannelloni, ginger and fennel purée and a green pea salsa; and a pudding, aptly styled ‘L’experience au caramel’, which consists of a hot caramel soufflé, crème caramel, caramel mousse and parfait, and a banana and caramel ice cream. That these look as good as they sound can be judged from the photographs on this page, which demonstrate the care that chef Paul Scott puts into presentation. That his creations taste even better than they look, you must take my word for, until you have the chance to try for yourselves.

Lest I seem too wide-eyed in wonder, I ought to say that imaginative dishes of this sort were not altogether unknown in the England of 1979. A certain M. Raymond Blanc, for instance, was starting to make his name with such fare at a restaurant in a shopping parade in Summertown. It just wasn’t the sort of thing you found in country hotels like The Bull, where Charles II once dined and dallied with Nell Gwynne.

It happens that it is a countryman of Raymond’s who has been responsible for the recent revamp there — a circumstance that might not have gone down too well with another of the hotel’s famous past patrons, Lord Nelson. He stayed in 1802 on a tour of the Cotswolds during which he was notoriously denied admission to Blenheim Palace. With a distinguished career working at restaurants in France and the UK, Jean-Marie Lauzier has now taken over the hotel with his wife Clare and son Joe. The place is run, in hands-on style, as a proper family operation. You can expect to see all three of them if you call in for a meal.

Jean-Marie is the dapper chap in the bow-tie — or at least he was on the recent Saturday night we visited. He greeted us at the front door as we arrived, before settling us into the otherwise empty lounge (a rather characterless room) and passing us into the care of Joe. I had already struck up something of a friendship with him owing to a gaffe during the telephone call in which I booked. I said I would see him the next day “unless the place burns down”. I’d forgotten The Bull famously did burn down in 1982.

Over first sips of the bottle of house chardonnay (vin de pays, d’Oc) we made our choices from the menu. We were soon called through to the dining room where we were pleased to see lots more people, all clearly enjoying themselves, and decor in a much-more appealing olde-worlde style. (The panelled bar beyond the lounge also possesses traditional comforts and would, I’d suggest, be a rather better ‘holding bay’ for restaurant customers.) Fresh flowers, polished cutlery and glass and white napery made a good impression from the start. So did our first taste of the bread (home-made walnut and sultana, in my case) and chef Paul’s complimentary offering, an amuse bouche of cod brandade with bacon.

For my starter, I had chosen the excitingly named ‘Explosion d’asperges aux Champagne’. This brought a prettily arranged display of asparagus served in different ways — including a creamy mousse, a terrine and thin spears au naturel — with a champagne and truffle dressing.

Rosemarie, having surprised me by passing on the crab (a tian, with tomato petals, avocado and gaspacho sorbet) went for Coquilles St Jacques Carolina. This is a dish, previously unencountered by us (an original?) in which the scallops are pan-seared and presented with a piquant smoked salmon tartare and a garnish of peas and chopped apple.

After a second chef’s gift, a little cup of Buck’s Fizz sorbet, we moved seamlessly on to our main courses. Mine was ‘Fletan aux epinards’ — a juicy chunk of pan-fried halibut, on a bed of spinach, with the hollowed base of cooked artichoke containing a poached egg, more spinach and a hint of liquorice.

All delicious — if again not very substantial. I was pleased to be offered a taste of Rosemarie’s ‘Trio de porc au Calvados’, which featured generous pieces of Kelmscott pork tenderloin, confit of pork belly, and a juicy little sausage made from pig’s trotter with cocotte potato, carrot ‘spaghetti’ and a cider and calvados sauce.

Since she dislikes olives, I got the black olive tuile part of her pudding — a clever take on lemon meringue pie with a green basil sorbet. It went rather well with my selection of cheeses and oatmeal biscuits. The accompanying hot cheese soufflé, made with Stinking Bishop, was just fine by itself.

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