The Blue Boar, Witney (From The Oxford Times)

The Blue Boar, Witney

3:18pm Wednesday 1st February 2012 in Leisure-OLD By Christopher Gray

As Gray Matter readers might recall, I expressed my enthusiasm some weeks ago for the tasteful transformation (cost £1.5m) of the down-at-heel Marlborough Hotel in Witney into the good-looking Blue Boar, a name harking back to an earlier period in the building’s history.

In its prominent location beside the Market Square, the stylish establishment has become an additional source of pride for a town that already boasts the distinction of having its MP in No 10 Downing Street.

David and Samantha Cameron, who are both noted foodies (and occasional readers of this column), would do well on any future constituency visit to sample some of the dishes dispatched from the hotel’s open-to-view kitchen. Party food supplied in great quantity at the splendid launch evening by head chef Jack Bradbury and his team gave some hint of their skills. These were revealed in fuller measure to Rosemarie and me in a recent mid-week dinner there.

Like Matthew Butcher of The Clifden Arms in Worminghall — featured here last week — New Zealander Jack is a young chef who has benefited from working at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. His stint there was followed by a period as head chef of The Akeman in Tring, another property run by the Blue Boar’s owners, Oakman Inns & Restaurants.

Having been introduced to Jack by Oakman’s CEO Peter Borg-Neal amid his frantic kitchen duties on the opening night, I was pleased to make his acquaintance again at the close of our test meal. Congratulations were in order — and given.

His sure touch and artistic eye were evident from the outset in an amuse-bouche which featured a scallop amid a palisade of parsnip crisps, a side dusting of toasted pancetta crumbs and a topping of herb oil foam and parsley purée. I appreciated the fact that, for once, the scallop was well cooked, as were those that followed with my main course. The fashionable, lightly grilled variety often supply a rubbery mouthful.

I continued with a pair of baked portobello mushrooms (£6.50) filled with cream cheese and garlic. These were fine in all respects, save for the greasiness and slightly burnt flavour of the sautéed spinach beneath. Rosemarie tackled five giant Mediterranean king prawns (£7.95) cooked with white wine, garlic, chilli and olive oil, and served with rocket. Peeling them was a necessarily messy business: with nothing else to criticise, my perfectionist partner observed that the water in the finger bowl ought not to have come straight from the cold tap.

After another courtesy offering — shot-size glasses of Polish Bison Grass Vodka served over lemon sorbet — we were on to the main courses. With a wide range to choose from — including eight ways with pasta, nine dishes cooked on the restaurant’s charcoal-fuelled Josper grill and half a dozen blackboard specials — make-your-mind-up-time at the ordering stage had been a somewhat protracted business. But we had been happy to linger over the menu with our glasses of a superb Australian chardonnay (Exmoor Drive, 2009).

I eventually settled for what, in a less sophisticated establishment, would have been called ‘surf and turf’ — a special (£17.95) featuring an eight-ounce sirloin steak (farm-assured and outdoor reared, as is all meat here) with a brace of scallops and another of those whacking prawns. The chips were great (though I didn’t eat many!), and the salad of grilled baby vine tomatoes and rocket was an ideal accompaniment — as was the glass of Côtes du Rhône (Domaine Brusset, 2010). Rosemarie had the standard menu’s slow-cooked shoulder of lamb (£15.95) — the meat amazingly tender and, for shoulder, surprisingly unfatty (the Josper grill, we supposed) — with potato purée, Savoy cabbage and rosemary jus.

Pudding was a sharing plate featuring most of what is on the menu. One ‘dish’, raspberry affogato, came in a glass — raspberry sorbet with Amaretto — and was very much enjoyed. Of the others, there was an emphatic thumbs-up for the lemon crème brûlée with three discs of lavender shortbread and the exceptionally rich chocolate tart; but there was a definite stodginess about the sticky toffee pudding and the chocolate brownie. The latter was imaginatively teamed with peanut butter, not something I usually like, but a welcome novelty in a dish that also featured whipped cream and a dollop of chocolate ice cream. All tasted even better with the Italian dessert wine (2003 Candido Aleatico Salice Salentino, from Puglia).

With these delights scarcely more than sampled, it was time finally for cheese. This was another winner: runny Oxford Blue, an ash-coated goat’s cheese and pungent Stinking Bishop. A glass of port? But of course.

It will perhaps be evident from the plenitude of what is described in the foregoing that Rosemarie and I were guests of the establishment, under the courteous care of assistant manager Rob Tudgey. Of course, they put on their best show possible for us; but judging by overheard conversations from other tables (not ‘plants’ I think!), it was obvious that we were not the only ones impressed that night.

I hope it will be clear, too, that we were travelling by bus . . .