A Sunday roast lunch is one treat that brings the soul warmth in a chilly, grey, gusty November and December. But on so many occasions I have left a British pub dissatisfied.
Lunch has been OK — just OK. Everything feels as though the kitchen and service has gone through the motions or the checklist book.
I have been to a couple of spots in the general vicinity of London, inside the Home Counties, where the owners have sought to lift the bar but failed to reach it. Then one leaves feeling there was not sufficient value.
Most U.K. pubs in the last 30 years knew they could not succeed without food offerings, whereas before that time getting something to eat in a pub was exceedingly rare. But few ever got the new balance right.
I often feel the same happens in hotels.
On occasion one wants to check in, sleep, wake up, shower and leave, and there are excellent hotels for that. But if one wants to warm and nourish the soul, then there often is very little that does that at the same time as not breaking the bank.
It is not easy to balance the books in hotelkeeping nowadays, so it seems. To provide the best, or to provide hospitality love, requires good staff, good ingredients and that extra something. This does not come cheap.
In the United Kingdom, there is a great range of bed and breakfasts, guest houses and pub-restaurant-inns that should occupy this middle ground but appear — at least to me — to have onerously high rates and often a minimum stay of two or three nights.
With the U.K. cost-of-living crisis seemingly tightening wallets further, with business rates higher, with staff costs heftier, many in the hospitality industry are struggling.
To offset that, either average daily rate increases or menu portions shrink, or both.
Last week for a couple of days I stayed at The Merry Harriers in Hambledon, Surrey, which I have been to twice for lunch but never to stay overnight.
It is a gem, the kind of place where one is happy to read a book and to hide their phone.
Its staff are wonderful, truly welcoming, and they are also local. My wife and I asked our waiter in its excellent, locally sourced restaurant if he had to travel far to reach the inn.
“No, I’m very close,” he said. “Two fields away.”
I thought that was wonderful.
The Merry Harriers dates back to the 16th century, and old photos on its walls show an inn that has not change almost at all since then. It has four rooms in the pub itself and three shepherds’ huts in a garden across the narrow road.
Cross-country walks start immediately from the door and lead to places such as Hambledon Common and the community-owned Hambledon village shop, which contains a post office, coffee bar and small shop beside a pond and opposite a cricket green. That is, essentially many people’s idea of quintessential, leafy England.
The Merry Harriers was taken over by a new team in 2023, about when we first came for lunch, and it is evident capital was spent.
That might come with debt, a covenant, collateral and all those good things. But from the look of business on a late November evening — when perhaps people might consider drawing back from socializing before restarting again in the run up to Christmas — evidently something is going right.
It takes a great location. The pub has a couple of houses next door, a church up a small lane to its far side and a low-key business park to the other — a gin distillery, an upholsterer, a bespoke carpenter, a jeweler and a by-appointment travel agency.
The village felt like it is the place rock stars become hermits in and, indeed, the late Rick Parfitt of Status Quo owned a property there, as does former Formula 1 champion Damon Hill and did the actress Maggie Smith.
The location is leafy but not far from London.
That helps, but more so does a warm welcome and the willingness to go a few extra steps.
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