The Pony and Trap, Chew Magna, Bristol

The Pony and Trap is the sort of place you’d love for your local. Long wooden pews, shaded lamps, tiled and wooden floors, leaded glass. It’s cosy, welcoming and intimate: stuffiness and over formality are strangers here, and the view is of endless fields.

Oh, and it just happens to have a Michelin-starred kitchen. But they seemed to have the missed the ‘ponce it up for the punters’ memo, because there’s no pretension on this menu. No Cauliflower Embarrassment Grieving on a Turbot  Tristesse. No Evisceration of Haddock on a Rhubarb Foreclosure. 

Welcoming? This is what they brought my daughter. And she’s two. Proper food. One of the many bees in my various bonnets is the widespread and explicit condescension to younger diners. ‘Oh, you’re only little, so colour this in while we open some freezer bags and hey presto! Here’s some bland, overprocessed crap shovelled on a plate. Ta.”

There’s a tasting menu but due to a strict timetable- and doubts as to whether our daughter could ‘last’ three hours and more- we ate from the daily-changing a la carte menu. There’s a focus on the local; the menu’s reverse shows a map of their suppliers.

Home made crisps with a chive-heavy sour cream while you ponder? Chimay on tap- the beery Holy Grail? Don’t mind if I do.

A bowl of mussels, with a cidery waft cloaking the plump little blighters, comes in a strikingly green liquor that’s just made to be mopped up by the sourdough. (£9.00)

Now, the parsnip, as any right-thinking person will agree, is the work of The Evil One. Proof of his existence, his influence in mortal affairs, in fact- further proof, if Ed Sheeran wasn’t enough. I have long held them in cordial loathing: when I was a kid, my mum used to serve me the thicker end, but sliced to look like a roast potato, with her wily Castilian ways. To no avail: the ‘seam’ gives them away, and they were duly and quite rightly rejected. Foul things, a blemish and an abomination: a pox and a murrain upon them all.

And yet…this starter (£8.50) had a lot to like, with its textures and the bitterness of the chicory. The salty sharpness of crumbled stilton, the firmness of the pear, the skill shown in the perfect cooking of the parsnip croquette; I shan’t be adding to my tattoos with an homage to parsnips any time soon, but it was a striking plate.

Quite how I managed to resist the allure of a 47 day aged ribeye with bone marrow is beyond me, but I was impressed with my eventual choice. My venison (£25.00) was superb. Served both as a loin fillet and as a faggot (insert own ‘too dear’ gag here) it was superb, the faggot bearing the faint musky uric whiff of proper offal, the sauce so luxuriously thick and glossy you could make posh pyjamas out of it.

‘Chocolate and Orange’ was decadence in spoonfuls, the dark mousse studded with the vivid citrus burst of orange gel, candied peel and slices of blood orange. A white chocolate cheesecake was almost ridiculously thick while somehow feeling light. The crunch of honeycomb and the frozen yoghurt delivered a memorable finish to an excellent meal.

If you have no room in your heart- and stomach- for a Michelin-starred restaurant which will also do you ham, egg and chips- then there’s no hope for you. To boot, their attitude to young children is to be applauded. This place should be on your list.

The Pony and Trap

Chew Magna, 

Bristol 

BS40 8TQ

Phone:01275 332627

theponyandtrap.co.uk