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LONDON PUBS
The Eagle showed that pub
food could be wonderful. But
it turns out the gastro-pub
may have been invented outside
the capital.
CATCHING A TRAIN FROM Marylebone
Station, it’s amazing
how quickly the gray of the
city gives way to rolling green.
Soon we’re chugging through some of the costliest
real estate in England, past towns with names that
sound like they come straight from Jane Austen’s
address book: Cleverdon, Saunderton, Bicester
Wood, Thame Parkway.
We alight at Princes Risborough, a village 45
minutes west of London. The first store we see
sells model trains to people who feel their garden
needs a private railroad. It’s market day and as we
walk past the Literary Institute & Snooker Club a
street vendor shouts out, over and over, “Lovely
English Victoria plums! Lovely English strawberries!”
Hard as it is to tear ourselves away, we
have a lunch appointment to keep and hop a cab
to the Sir Charles Napier, a country pub sitting
A wonderful
juxtaposition
of Thai and
traditional
high in the Chilterns, the
ridge of chalk hills that
runs through southern
England. In the words of
Jay Rayner, The Observer’s
restaurant critic, the Sir
Charles “could reasonably
be described as the godfather
of the gastro-pub
revolution, not least because
it began life in exactly the same way as its
modern counterparts: as an old 18th-century pub,
sold off to somebody whose sensibilities lay less
with beer taps and more with what could be put
on the plate.”
Getting out of the cab, it seems ordinary
enough: a redbrick building on a quiet country
lane with a fluttering Union Jack. Inside, there’s
a small bar with a rather underwhelming dining
room behind it. So far, so so-so. But then we step
outside onto an unevenly paved terrace covered
with a canopy of grapevines that leads to an immaculate
lawn with a large bronze snail in the
middle of it. Two small girls are climbing on the
snail while their parents sit beside the flower-
Blooming amazing :
The exterior of the
Churchill Arms
is smothered with
window boxes and
hanging baskets
60 DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013 SCANORAMA
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