REVIEW: Delighted to be back at Goodwood’s Farmer, Butcher, Chef

But you do not need me to remind you that these are no ordinary times.

As our eating establishments emerge from state-imposed coronavirus hibernation, the primary focus of all diners is on health and cleanliness.

So when the couple concluded their meal on a table a generous two metres away from ours at Goodwood’s Farmer, Butcher Chef restaurant, the forensic process of preparing the place for the next customers was swiftly and slickly implemented.

Of course, the dining experience has to be about more than basic hygiene - fundamental though that is in a post lockdown world.

Group Executive Chef Darron Bunn in welcoming us repeatedly employed the word ‘joy’ and of course he is right.

Dining out has to be a joyous experience. Something that transforms you from the humdrum of your own kitchen cooker especially when for four months you have been entirely at its mercy.

Goodwood’s offering is unique.

The restaurant is located just yards from Home Farm – one of the only self-sustaining organic farms in Europe and farmed by the same family for more than 300 years.

So the concept of ‘field to fork’ was never more pertinent than here. There is not merely total traceability of the produce on your plate but the standards are the very highest.

Darron launched the restaurant four years ago.

His aim then as it is now is to showcase the meat in terms of flavour, quality and provenance. But there was another guiding principle too: never to waste any part of the animal.

So unusual cuts creatively prepared and presented have been a hallmark of the menu.

That menu is quite properly slimmed down today.

The kitchen is huge – and supported by another two in the adjoining hotel and spa – but a trimmed menu guarantees that those preparing the food can work at substantial distances from each other.

As you would expect, our standards of hygiene have always been exemplary, he explained. But in today’s careful world they have been taken to a whole new level.

So the menus are disposable paper ones. The tables are bare of cloths. The sugar to accompany the coffee is individually sealed. The waiters and waitresses wear visors and give gentle reassurance like ‘your pepper mill has been personally sanitised.’

If this all sounds a little clinical, then rightly it is.

But it is also strangely apposite to its surroundings. For this restaurant, in capturing and blending the ambiance of farm, butcher and chef has always deliberately possessed an industrial edge to its decor.

So nothing feels out of place and if anything the inevitable restrictions reinforce that sense of honest provenance and fastidious care throughout the food chain.

The restaurant is renowned for its Butcher’s Boards – which feature various cuts and cooking techniques for the farm’s lamb, beef and pork.

But we knew from experience just how generous the boards can prove.

Instead, we chose slow cooked lamb shoulder and gin and tonic cured trout for starters. For mains the smoked Southdown lamb and the pork collar, and to conclude a wonderfully indulgent strawberry and clotted cream Baked Alaska. Wow.

The dessert would have fed four quite easily and we bowed defeated by the final helpings.

As for the meat, it was as flavoursome as aficionados of Goodwood produce would expect. The pork collar served with creamed corn and spring onions, barbecued cabbage and black pudding granola was Darron’s recommendation and did not disappoint.

Not surprisingly, the restaurant was sold out and the serving team were clearly delighted to be back in business. Their smiles and the warmth of the greeting, albeit through visor, said it all.

We were invited as the guests of Goodwood. They knew we were reviewing. But our praise is utterly genuine.

Restaurants of quality here and across the district are working tirelessly to reopen the economy, secure jobs, and restore our sense of normality and pride in everything that the locality has to offer – and to do it safely.

We are very pleased to support them all in this vital endeavour #supportlocal.

Well done, Goodwood.