With the mercury nudging 34 degrees, Larry heads to Hartley Wintney in search of a Sunday lunch that won’t leave him feeling like the joint in the oven…
Sundays, as any right-thinking Englishman knows, are for roasts — great slabs of beef under a blanket of gravy, a Yorkshire pudding the size of a hubcap, the whole production designed to send you into a stupor by three o’clock. It is, however, rather harder to make the case for a roast dinner when the mercury is flirting with 36 degrees and one already feels uncomfortably like the joint, slowly turning in the oven of the English countryside. Something lighter, then, was required — and, happily, we knew just the place.
The Mutton sits outside the pleasingly-named Hartley Wintney, reached via New Forest-esque heathland that does a very good impression of somewhere far grander than Hampshire has any right to claim. It’s a red brick, cottage-y sort of pub — low ceilings, window seats tucked into bay windows, nooks that seem designed for exactly the kind of leisurely lunch we had in mind, having, for once, managed to park our Little Nest of Vipers elsewhere for the afternoon. Mrs L and I arrived with the giddy, slightly guilty energy of parents granted unsupervised time, and fully intended to make the most of it.
We’d been keen to visit for a while, not least because The Mutton has form: among a clutch of accolades, it was a finalist for Best Pub Garden at last year’s Great British Pub Awards, which, on a day like this, made perfect sense — because it’s the garden, not the dining room, that’s the real draw. From the cosy interior, you step out onto a broad, sunlit terrace that spills down towards a garden bordered with lavender and tall grasses, presided over by a pergola so thoroughly swallowed by wisteria that its trunk has become something of an attraction in its own right. Beyond, the fields roll off between two shepherd’s huts (a novel take on private dining), and it was hard to imagine, at that moment, wanting to be anywhere else.
The place clearly knows what it’s doing, front of house and back. I’d had half a mind to order a Hogs Back TEA before I spotted the aperitifs — the Hazy Heath, a summery tangle of gin, martini rosso, elderflower and lime, proved the correct call entirely. Mrs L, showing rather more restraint than the occasion demanded, went for an appletini. Nibbles arrived unbidden into our consciousness soon after — beef fat hash browns with mustard mayo, gochujang pickles — and between those, the cocktails and the sunshine, I was well on my way to the sort of contentment that requires a deckchair and no further ambition.
The roast is, of course, still there for those who want it — and plenty did; I watched staff ferry plates piled improbably high with Yorkshires towards tables that had clearly made the sensible seasonal error. But it’s the starters where the kitchen really shows its hand: a Thai-style chicken terrine, a jalapeño wagyu taco, mackerel pâté on a homemade crumpet with apple and fennel salad — not one of them apologetic about being on a pub menu.
Given the heat, sense prevailed at the mains stage too. Mrs L went for fish and chips (“better,” she declared, with some feeling, “than the award-winning chippie near us”), while I opted for torched salmon with courgette ribbons and wild rice salad. It’s a short list alongside the roast — three or four alternatives, tops — but a well-chosen one, and after the hash browns and the taco, I was grateful for something that wouldn’t require a lie-down.
Desserts, like the starters, are where this kitchen stops behaving like a pub kitchen altogether: an Arctic roll reimagined as Eton mess, and a pineapple and lemongrass carpaccion, with citrus sorbet, that Mrs L dispatched with real efficiency, pronouncing it “just perfect for summer” on the way out. I’d clocked some unusual flavours on the ice cream list and had to ask. “They’re homemade,” I was told, with the sort of understated pride that tells you everything. Carrot and sea buckthorn sounds, on paper, like a dare. In practice it’s rather brilliant — sweet against sharp, and thoroughly moreish. It’s a marmite dessert, in the truest sense; Mrs L recoiled, I went back for more.
Every so often you stumble on somewhere and start doing sums about house prices in the area. I won’t say I’m moving to Hartley Wintney just yet, but the temptation was real, if I could amble down to The Mutton a la H E Bates. As for the roast — the one dish we deliberately avoided, sensibly, given the weather — I’ll have to come back for that in the winter, when a hot oven feels like an asset rather than a threat, and a plate piled high with Yorkshires sounds like precisely the right idea.
The Mutton, Hook, Hampshire RG27 8NB. For more information, including details of their ‘Taste Of’ dinners and other events, and for bookings, please visit www.themuttonhazeleyheath.co.uk.
