Tuesday - Saturday
12.30 - 1.15pm
(last order: 1.30pm)
7.30 - 8.30pm
(last order: 8.45pm)
Queries? Telephone
+44 (0) 1242-573449
12.30 - 1.15pm
(last order: 1.30pm)
7.30 - 8.30pm
(last order: 8.45pm)
Queries? Telephone
+44 (0) 1242-573449
Lunch is £ 18.50 for three courses. Dinner has two options: a la carte, £37.50, and menu de jour, £19.95 (three courses) The phrase ‘Britain's restaurant revolution’ seems to crop up frequently these days, but what does it actually mean. Actually, for Britain, read London. Gastronomic progress outside the capital is distinctly patchy, mainly restricted to cities, such as Glasgow or Leeds, or expensive country house hotels.
Take Cheltenham, for example. A few miles away is the city of Bath, with one of the best selection of restaurants outside London. Cheltenham, meanwhile, has seen off a host of good restaurants over the years, its honest burghers too worried, no doubt about school fees and swimming pools to fritter away cash on a decent meal.
Le Champignon Sauvage,a small, smart restaurant a few minutes' walk from the town centre, has stubbornly hung on for 13 years. Awarded a second Michelin star earlier this year, chef David Everitt-Matthias and his wife and front-of-house Helen survive thanks to a reasonable evening trade. In France, a similar restaurant in a provincial town would fill its tables twice over. Cheltenham on a Tuesday lunchtime is a different matter. Apart from myself and my guest. There were four other diners. I can only presume that the locals have a blind eye for a bargain.
The restaurant is split into two halves: a small, comfortable bar, perfect for post-prandial coffees and brandies; and a bright yellow and blue dining room with a curious selection of art on the walls.
The amuse-gueule was a small bowl of creamy soup with white beans, pancetta and cabbage,scented with black truffle oil.
Mr Everitt-Matthias and his co-chef, Anthony Rush, are clearly not of the vegetarian persuasion, as a glance at any of their menus will reveal. My starter, ravioli of oxtail with bone marrow risotto, featured a dark, rich stock reduction and several pieces of tail, as well as some trademark wild mushrooms for good measure. It was a faultless dish: rib-sticking oxtail, smooth pasta, and a perfectly cooked risotto, enriched with plenty of the stuff that gives dogs an active life, but makes me fancy a quiet snooze after lunch.
My companion's starter, marinated fillets of grey mullet with sardine vinaigrette, had an escabeche-Iike quality which a half bottle of Alsace gerwurztraminer perfectly matched. I often find grey mullet lives up to its name - coarse and muddy - but this dish showed a delicate hand at work.
Back to full-bodied flavours - and a decent bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape - for our main courses. Breast of wood pigeon with home-made black pudding featured perfectly pink meat, surprisingly tender for the season, and another aromatic, sticky reduction. I like my black pudding a little looser in texture - French boudin noir-Style - but that is a minor quibble. Braised lamb dumplings with roasted sweetbreads, wrapped in caul fat, were hauntingly deep and lingering in flavour.
In deference to the firmly French theme, we finished the Rhone with the cheeseboard - 20 or so specimens, beautifully kept, with a fine selection of goat's cheeses and home-made crackers. The pudding - we shared an iced prune parfait with bitter chocolate cream - was virtuosic.
The a la carte dinner menu features such luxuries as scallops and venison,and the choice on the menu de jour, though more restricted, is scarcely less impressive.
David and Helen Everitt-Matthias have developed a little gem of a place, which is the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Vive la France, but let's keep them in Britain.
LE CHAMPIGNON SAUVAGE RESTAURANT,
24-26, SUFFOLK ROAD, CHELTENHAM, GLOS. GL50 2AQ. UK.
TEL: 01242-573449 FAX: 01242-254365
