The Potting Shed

Our Man on the Ground | 18 Aug 2014

The Royal Triangle is like a sort of reverse Bermuda Triangle – so instead of aircraft and ships disappearing under suspicious circumstances, tasteful Highgrove daisy grubbers, maple-handled planting trowels, traditional Sussex trugs in which to collect your earthy organic carrots and wooden apple crates simply appear. Just like that. And everything is painted that sautéed sage colour. It’s like living in the brain of Lady Bamford of Daylesford fame, the high priestess of this sort of aesthetic.

• Food

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The Restaurant at Cowley Manor

Our Man on the Ground | 18 Jul 2014

The Elder Daughter and I arrive an hour late – after driving into several hedges. The satnav doesn’t like the idea of going there and keeps ordering us imperiously to “perform a U-turn when possible” on roads the size of my little finger. When we get mobile reception – which isn’t often – we call to say we’re running late. Which might be as good a way as any to alert the staff to our table reservation. Wrong.

• Food

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Cliveden, the stately-home hotel is once again a top destination for the discerning traveller

Our Man on the Ground | 25 May 2014

Especially since the arrival there at the end of 2013 of an excellent eponymous restaurant by André Garrett (please click here for full review). Plus the hotel has become super-appealing with its just opened, newly refurbished East Wing – the first stage of restoration of the principal bedrooms. Even the staff seem different – gone is their stiffness, replaced by making the visitor feel like a treasured house guest.

• Travel: Europe/ Africa

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So to Cliveden and its eponymous new restaurant by André Garrett, formerly head chef at Galvin at Windows.

Our Man on the Ground | 25 May 2014

Under the Livingstone brothers, the new owners, the dining space has been moved from its humiliating basement home to the ground floor overlooking the Parterre – traditional gardens with formal beds, box hedging and yew topiary. Beyond that, as far as the eye can see is an unadulterated 19th century country view, not a house in sight, and the distant mist rising from the Thames.

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