Cover - Viva Lewes

Photographs: Alex Leith
The Ram Inn
Emma Chaplin commits a terrible food crime in Firle
Very occasionally my partner and I sneak off from
work when our son is at school, to play truant
for a couple of hours. We might watch an unanimated
film, sometimes even with subtitles, or have
lunch together. We did this recently on a bitterly
cold but beautiful winter’s day, heading out to the
Ram at Firle. Last time we ate there it was after a
walk on the Downs one summer a few years ago,
and we sat in the garden. This time I noticed, for
some reason, that, like nearby Alciston, the village
has only one obvious road in and out. You do feel,
once you’re there, that you are far removed from
the nearby A27. The car park seemed to be heaving
with various excited dogs and their owners. I
wondered if they’d been having a doggie social up
on the Beacon. We entered through the back door
of the handsome 16th century building. The Ram
gets very busy at weekends, but even midweek it was
bustling with people and pets, many of whom were
local. I recognised Peter, the butler from Firle Place,
and friendly banter was being exchanged between
bar staff and the obviously regular customers. Low
winter sun shone on a slant through the windows
onto the Fired-Earth type of bitter-chocolate-colour
walls, hung with black-and-white photos showing
Firle a hundred years ago, which is much the
same as Firle today. The pub has an interesting mixture
of modern and old and, not being the sort of
place for garish Christmas decorations, clusters of
holly were strung up along the wooden beams. We
grabbed a table near a cosy fire and ordered a pint of
Harveys and a small glass of Chilean Volandas Cabernet
Sauvignon at £3, (£11.95 for the bottle). The
wine list starts reasonably but also offers Laurent
Perrier Rosé at £55. The menu changes daily, with
main courses around £10. There were some interesting-sounding
salads, but it was a warm-food kind
of day, so I ordered braised lamb shank at £9.95 and
Rob went for roast pheasant breast at £9.50. Then,
when the food arrived, both plates with puddles of
dark aromatic gravy, I committed a terrible foodie
crime. I realised I wanted the pheasant more than
the lamb, partly because the lamb came with red
cabbage, which I’m not overly fond of. Rob, rightly,
bore the look of long-suffering, put-upon partner
but kindly agreed to swap. Fortunately, he was very
happy with red cabbage, declaring it ‘beautifully
cooked’, and said the accompanying chive mash
was particularly good, because they had used waxy
potatoes and crushed rather than mashed them,
which worked well with the lamb. The red wine
and rosemary gravy tasted as delicious as it smelled.
My roasted pheasant breast came with seasonal root
vegetables and roasted new potatoes. The ‘vegetables’
seemed to include apple and plum, their
sweetness working well with the pheasant. After we
had finished eating, I could hear the siren call of
banoffee pie with chocolate sauce at £4.95, but we
both needed to head off to the wide world beyond,
and back to work.
www.raminn.co.uk
01 73 858
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