The plan was for the Pie Club members to meet up at the bus stop in Bishops Waltham square at 12.00 noon. Unfortunately Joe, Si, and new member Steve (welcome) arrived early, happened to notice that the Crown Inn was open, and right next door to the bus stop. This pub has only very recently re-opened after a very expensive refit, so they decided to check it out and have a quick one in The Crown while waiting for the others to catch up.
Unfortunately, they don't serve pies there. Otherwise we would have had this Pie Club meeting in The Crown.
Nevertheless, a well refreshed Joe, Si & Steve still managed to get to the bus stop by noon to meet up with Trev and Nick, just as they were boarding the No. 8 bus to Botley. This bus goes all around the place, seemingly visiting every little hamlet for miles around, but eventually we arrived in Botley, and headed straight for The Bugle Inn.
We were welcomed by the landlord, and noticed immediately that there was a fine selection of ales available: the excellent Bowman's Wallops Wood 4%, the always popular Sharp's Doombar 4% , and (maybe a bit strong for lunch time) Gale's HSB 4.8%.
We settled down for our first pint, some having Wallops Wood, and others having Doombar, and surveyed our surroundings. The landlord had taken us to a table in the dining area of the pub, where there were no other customers, so we had the place to ourselves, although there were several drinkers in the other bar that we could hear. There was no garden to sit in. We had our second pint then decided it was time to order some food. As there was only one pie on the menu it didn't take us long to decide what to order. 2 of us opted to have chips instead of new potatoes. We didn't have to wait long for the food.
The pies had the correct short-crust pastry, a Steak & Mushroom filling, pre-applied gravy, and a selection of freshly-cooked vegetables: Cauliflower, carrots, and red cabbage. Some of us (perhaps those who were hungriest) thought they were OK - nothing special but OK - but others were quite put off by the smell, and one of our members was actually unable to finish eating his pie*.
We'd also noticed some strange smells coming from the loos (or were they coming from the kitchens?). To be fair, this pub has a Lebanese chef, and a full menu of Lebanese food available (but no Lebanese pies, which might have been interesting). Maybe that accounted for some of the strange smells.
There was a tempting selection of puddings available, but by now we'd had enough, so we decided to skip the puddings:
As we left the pub, someone suggested walking just around the corner to The Brewery Bar to see if we could get some puddings there. This is not a bad looking pub, with a good food menu (including some pies) and a fine selection of ales:
It was a lovely sunny day so we sat outside in the garden and had a pint while we considered the pudding menu. In the end we didn't bother with the puddings, and after a couple of pints we caught the bus back to Bishops Waltham. We quite liked the look of the Brewery Bar, and decided that it was probably worth a proper Pie Club assessment later in the year.
As we got off the bus in Bishops Waltham, someone happened to notice that the Crown Inn was open, and right next door to the bus stop. This pub has only very recently re-opened after a very expensive refit, so we decided to check it out and have a quick one in garden at the front, in the sun. As we were sitting there enjoying our pints, we got chatting with a young couple sitting at the next table who turned out to be JK and Lucy, presenters of Heart South Coast Breakfast Show.
Lucy got quite friendly with one of the Pie Club members, but Pieman feels honour-bound to reveal no more, and certainly won't publish any photos! The Pie Club got a mention on their show the next morning.
Scores for The Bugle, Botley (max. 5 in each category, 25 overall):
- Pastry 3.3
- Filling 3.6
- Beer 3.6
- Ambience 2.7
- Value 3.4
- Overall 16.6
* On checking the Pie Club constitution, Pieman was surprised to see that there is nothing in the rules about penalties for leaving a pie half uneaten. Pieman would have thought that the offending member would at least have to buy a round.
After our disappointing experience last month, Trev and Si took great pains to ensure that we would not be disappointed with our next outing, even going so far to to undertake a reconnaissance visit to this pub earlier in the month. So, it was with some anticipation that we boarded the No. 69 bus to visit The Bugle Inn in Twyford.
Unfortunately Doug was unable to join us for this outing, so it was Trev, Si, and Joe who (perhaps surprisingly) managed to all catch the same bus. Nick already had some business to attend to in Twyford, so met us at the pub.
Some might say that this place is rather more of a restaurant and less of a pub, but as we were warmly greeted by the barmaid and shown to the comfortable leather sofas in front of the blazing log fire to sup our first pints of beer we all thought "this'll do nicely". The ales on offer were Bowman Ales Swift One 3.8% (our perennial favourite, at £3.25/pint), The Governor 3.8% (Marco Pierre White's own brew, from Manchester), Flowerpots Goodens Gold 4.8%, and Flowerpots IPA 6%. A fine selection of ales. We thought it wise to save the stronger ales until later, so we all settled down with pints of Swift One while we studied the menus.
As there was only one pie available on the menu, it didn't take us long to decide what to order. We had been hoping for a venison and port pie, but unfortunately it wasn't available as the local butcher didn't have any venison. So we all ordered the Steak and Ale Pie, or (to quote the menu) "freshly baked pie made with Hampshire beef and local Flowerpots Bitter, served with creamy potato and celeriac mash and fruity braised red cabbage £12.95":
Except Joe asked for his pie to be served with the rather more traditional peas and chips:
The first thing we noticed about the pies was that they were individual pies instead of slices from a large pie. In general we are not so keen on individual pies because if they are fully encased in pastry (as they should be) then the ratio of pastry to filling tends to be too high. In this case, however, this was not a problem as the chef had introduced an interesting variation: the pastry was thin on top but with thick bevelling around the edge, and there was a thin layer of pastry extending down the sides. There was no pastry at the bottom of the pie. The second thing we noticed was that it was puff pastry, which we normally disapprove of. The third thing we noticed was the lack of any unnecessary garnishing - no unwelcome sprigs of parsley or other greenery.
However, the proof of the pie is in the eating, and here (with the possible exception of Nick) we were all very impressed. The pastry was delicious. The filling was near-perfect, "a complex fabric of complimentary flavours" to quote Nick. The vegetables were delicious. Joe was so impressed with his chips that he let us all have a taste, and we all agreed they were perfect. Portion sizes were just right so we still had room for puddings.
The puddings were also exceptionally good. Nick had the fresh fruit pavlova with double cream, mint & coulis, which looked fabulous:
Trev had freshly baked gooey chocolate pudding with Jude's vanilla pod ice cream (delicious, apparently):
Si had Chocolate, Orange and Cointreau pot with amoretti biscuit and Jude's hazlenut ice cream. He thought the pot was a bit difficult to finish as it was so rich:
And Joe was content to have just a scoop of ice cream:
The general ambience of the pub was very good. It was modern, clean and comfortable. The service was excellent. There were a few other customers there (mostly women), but not enough to spoil our enjoyment of what was an exceptionally fine meal. There was background music, but it was tasteful, and we didn't even notice it until we retired back to the sofas for our last pint. At this point Si couldn't resist trying a pint of the Flowerpots IPA 6%, which was sufficient to render him comatose for a few hours when he got home.
The final bill came to £32.50 each, so it was not a cheap meal, and this is reflected in the scores for value-for-money.
A final small point of detail: the beer was served in glasses with built-in finger-grips! Attention to detail like that can make such a difference:
Scores (max. 5 in each category, 25
overall):
- Pastry 4.05
- Filling 4.175
- Beer
4.2
- Ambience 4.375
- Value 3.5
- Overall 20.3
This puts the Bugle in 3rd place in our rankings, after the Bowman (21.5) and the Barleycorn (20.375). This is rather a surprising result, given that we all enjoyed the meal so much. The poor score for value-for-money was clearly a factor, but what price do you put on quality?
There won't be a pie club meeting in December, to allow more time for members to sample mince pies. So the next meeting will be on 26th January 2012. At this time 2 pie club members will be in Australia, so we can all look forward to some reports on Australian pies!
