Country pub of the week: the Crooked Billet, Stoke Row — the original gastropub and perhaps the best

Paul Clerehugh is one of those chefs famous not just to the locals in the cheese shops, but in the restaurant world generally, partly as the Billet can stake a claim as the country’s first gastropub , besting the Eagle in Farringdon by two years. It’s partly his name that has made a Shires legend of The Crooked Billet, though it probably helps that Kate Winslet had her first wedding here, George Harrison was a regular and Marco Pierre White swings by. A low-ceilinged spot with a terracotta tiled floor and a noble red dining room, the Billet is the country pub from romance novels and detective stories.

Out the front is the twisting lane that brings walkers here, but mostly people book and drive: the Billet is a destination, not a stop-off on a journey elsewhere. The offering is both generous and egalitarian: you might eat from the set menu (two courses for £29) with an £8.50 glass, or go for silk-like fillet steak with a trio of brawny scallops for £58, and take each bite with a little beautiful Mersault, £115-a-bottle.



This, in fact, offers uncommonly good value, marked up only very little. Clerehugh is known not just for food but his pull with musicians. Nigel Kennedy is in soon, PP Arnold in October.

There’s more besides and why not? Gives the chattering classes something to talk about in the cheese shop. Stoke Row, Oxfordshire, thecrookedbillet.co.

uk.