I love Marlow, what a quaint and interesting town close to Clivedon, this is a gorgeous part of the UK. Tom Kerridge’s Hand And Flowers is in the same area and so is his other restaurant The Coach, which I tried to book online in the morning but it appeared to not be working for me with this daily reservations malarky (Can’t say I like this) Can I just book in advance like a normal person please? So instead, I spontaneously walked into his third place The Butcher’s Tap And Grill-I thought we would be safe here considering how much I like his food.
But I was wrong… I have a lot of respect for Tom and his cuisine, but this was showing him in a bad light. I liked the vibe of the place for a start, it is cool and chilled and being able to watch the football on the ‘pub screen’ makes you feel right at home, like you are in your local boozer. Below my feet (We sat at the bar) were different cuts of meat, looking quite good actually. The menu, a decent offering, albeit large, (Should I be worried?) I already started to imagine how the food would come out and look. I couldn’t wait.
We took for a lighter style of lunch: the chicken and lamb skewers, hispi cabbage, the coleslaw and corn on the cob. I have cooked a lot of Tom’s barbecue recipes from his book, and they do come out absolutely on point, in fact this book is one of my favourites for the summertime when you whip out the barbecue. I have high praise for that, but here the skewers were extremely average and the lamb one was inedible entirely, and when I say entirely, imagine me chewing the lamb and spitting every single part back out onto the plate. How can this be? The cut was not tender at all, left with a lot of sinew and off cuts, surely the chef checked this? Nope.
The chicken teriyaki was not the best either flavour wise, it didn’t have the sticky, sweet, depth and delicious quality about it, rather a little bit dull and insipid. However, the chicken was tender and moist, well cooked. I remember the skewers I cooked following Tom’s fuss free recipes, perfect for grilling. They are epic, believe me, this was totally not him at all in this plate of food. I am not saying it must be a cardboard cutout, but I like to think I know his style of cuisine as I have worked my way through his entire book. I have followed him naturally, like most British people, And I have eaten at The Hand And Flowers…
Anyway, we continue… The lettuce on the side of the plate was covered in mustard. (That is a right off then, as I don’t like it) Why don’t chefs just put this on the side instead? The coleslaw didn’t even arrive as they forgot about it. Butter is a favourite thing here, butter with the corn on the cob, butter on the toast, butter on top of the hispi cabbage. Butter everywhere. Sorry but that isn’t going to let you off the hook… There were uneven slices of pickled carrot too, fair enough you don’t want to waste the whole carrot, so all the varied sizes are served. I just found it a little bit unrefined with everything plonked onto one plate, even the mayo. The staff asked if we wanted something else instead, but we declined and they took the lamb skewer off the bill, this was the right thing to do. I felt a little bit embarrassed as I brought my guest here, and I assured them we won’t go wrong with Tom in Marlow, so I apologised many times. I was expecting much better food, and it didn’t arrive. I left annoyed and hungry.
