Cheltenham: Hotel du Vin and Brian Jones

A Posh District, a Dinner Worth Reviewing and the Grave of a Rolling Stone

Parabola Road, Montpellier District

07-Jul-2019

Gloucestershire

Cheltenham

From Deerhurst we drove to Cheltenham and found our way to Parabola Road and the Hotel du Vin in the Montpellier district. Montpellier was developed in the 1830s in conjunction with Cheltenham Spa – Harrogate’s Montpellier district has a similar history – and is now an area of bars, cafés, restaurants, specialist shops and expensive housing.

Hotel du Vin, Parabola Road, Cheltenham

We checked in, watched the women’s World Cup Final and took a stroll along Parabola Road. It does an old(ish) mathematician's heart good to walk along a parabola which, as everyone knows, is the locus of a point equidistant from a fixed point (the focus) and a fixed line (the directrix). The road’s central section is a fair approximation to the right shape.

Parabola Road, Cheltenham

Dinner in the Hotel du Vin, Cheltenham

Having visited Albania last month, where Norman Wisdom became some kind of folk hero, we were amused by the blue plaque by the hotel entrance. Lynne saw him perform at the London Palladium in 1954. Though only 4, she remembers it well.

Blue plaque outside the Hotel du Vin, Cheltenham

Hotel du Vin is a chain of 19 ‘luxury boutique hotels'. One of the founders was a master sommelier and is now a Master of Wine, hence the name. Rooms are named after assorted vinous luminaries, though we found ‘Geoff Merril’ a little harder to locate than, say, room 234.

Olives

Stationing ourselves in the bar, we ordered two gins (Tanqueray) and one tonic. That cost over £12 - tonic is expensive round here - but they did bring a nice bowl of nuts and mixed olives. Cerignola olives are the biggest I have ever seen, but like tiger prawns they demonstrate that bigger is not always better.

Mixed olives, Hotel du Vin, Cheltenham
Cerignola is the huge pale one, Gaeta is the grape-sized black one and Nocellara, the shiny green one

Hotel du Vin restaurants have the same menu but each has its own head chef; Paul Mottram in Cheltenham.

Wine Problems (Partly of our own Making)

We had a tricky negotiation over the menu, selecting main courses which would suit the same wine. The wine list is short, considering the origins of these hotels, but covers most bases and all wines are offered by the bottle, glass or 500ml carafe. We wanted a bottle - the perfect size for two - and settled on lemon sole for both and a white Rioja.

I liked the old-fashioned white oak-aged Riojas, but that is not to modern tastes. Our bottle, inevitably, was a modern white Rioja, well-made and well-balanced and, I admit, a better match for sole than the old style.

We were savouring the wine when the waiter returned, apologised and told us there was only one sole. Lynne changed her order to lamb, the waiter suggested we choose a different wine but that brought us back to our original problem. I proposed keeping the Rioja and him bringing Lynne a glass of Pinotage, free of charge, to accompany her lamb. And that solved that.

Starters: Escargot and Pork & Rabbit Paté

Lynne started with Escargots à la Bourguignonne. We have eaten escargots many times, once regrettably in a pastry coffin laced with Pernod and once spectacularly with garlic pannacotta and bone-marrow beignet at the now defunct but then Michelin starred La Bécasse in Ludlow, but mostly Bourguignonne. It is a classic, and a simple classic at that, requiring no more than industrial quantities of butter, garlic and parsley. This came sprinkled with a crumb which Lynne found particularly pleasing as it soaked up even more of the butter.

Lynne's escargots, Hotel du Vin, Cheltenham

I had pork and rabbit pâté en croûte with Winterdale Cheddar crisps and apple chutney.

I carved a slice off the big slab of pâté to swap for one of Lynne’s snails – surely you should not be able to carve a pâté. Solid it may have been, but it had a fine flavour, the pork providing a reassuring background to the stronger up-front rabbit. I am unsure, though, why it was ‘en croûte, the embrace of cold, clammy pastry did nothing for it.

Pork and rabbit pate, Winterdale cheddar crisps and apple chutney, Hotel du Vin, Cheltenham

The Winterdale cheddar crisps were excellent (and that is not ‘crisps’ in the Walkers meaning of the word). Winterdale Farm in Wrotham, Kent is an artisan cheese producer claiming to be carbon neutral in both production and delivery. If ‘crisps’ can be a true representation theirs is a very rich and powerful cheddar – though the Winterdale website stresses its Kentish origin and studiously avoids the word ‘cheddar’. Wonderful as they were, they rather overwhelmed the pâté. The apple chutney was a good partner for the crisps, but for the pâté, it too was overly assertive – and sweet.

Mains: Roast Rump of Lamb and Sole Meunière

Lynne was more than happy with her ‘roast rump of lamb with summer vegetable fricassée in a light tomato broth’, it had been her first choice before I talked her into the sole. The piece of meat I tasted was full of sheepy flavour – in fact it is a long time since I tasted such a fine morsel of lamb.

Roast rump of lamb, Hotel du Vin, Cheltenham

My lemon sole meunière, was spot on. In May, I had a Dover sole in a pub in Devon, it was an excellent fish, but seemed to have drowned in butter. This lemon sole was buttery, too – that is what meunière means – but not drowned, and the capers provided a necessary bite of acidity. Dover sole is a patrician among fish, lemon sole more down-to-earth, its flesh denser and less finely flavoured, but on the plus side there is more of it!

Lemon sole meuniere, Hotel du Vin, Cheltenham

We had ordered sides of haricot beans and lyonnaise potatoes when we were both having sole. Lynne’s lamb came with vegetables but we failed to change the order. The haricots were first class, garlicky and crisp without being ‘squeaky’, the lyonnaise potatoes less successful. I thought the potatoes too floury for this dish, and spuds and onions gave the impression of hardly being introduced, let alone sautéed (what a strange franglais word) together.

Whilst we were eating Jo, the wife of Lynne’s cousin Matthew, came to tell us they were eating in the outside section of the restaurant and suggested we meet for drinks after.

Lynne and I ummed and erred over dessert, but when our coffee arrived we asked them to take it up to the bar. ‘We can bring desserts up, too’ they said hopefully. We were firm, after all we did not need desserts and all their extra calories, so we joined Jo and Matthew for a convivial hour, during which we drank as many calories as we had saved.

The meal cost far more than a pub dinner, but much less than dinner in a Michelin starred restaurant, and the quality fitted appropriately into that wide band. The originality and imagination of a Michelin starred kitchen were lacking, but instead there was a concentration on classics – the escargots and the sole, to pick two examples. These are not complicated dishes* presenting great technical difficulties, but are nonetheless extremely satisfying - that is why they are classics.

08-Jul-2019

The Grave of Brian Jones

We had come to Cheltenham for a family funeral, hence our reaction at finding Matthew and Jo in the same hotel was mild surprise rather than amazement. The funeral is beyond the scope of this blog, but Lynne’s aunt was duly laid to rest beside her husband in the town cemetery.

Just round the corner is someone who in his prime might well have been a noisy neighbour.

Brian Jones, Cheltenham Cemetery

The photo above was taken in 2010, there was no significance to that day, there are always flowers on the grave of the Rolling Stone who lost his way. Driving past this time, we noticed it was absolutely covered with floral tributes. Only later did we realise that five days ago it had been 50 years since Brian Jones died. Can it really be so long?

*Escargots à la Bourguignonne are a little more complicated than I made out - but they certainly do not involve liquid nitrogen or cooking anything sous vide.

Also, on the road to Cheltenham

Croome Court and Deerhurst

Other 1 AA Rosette meals
The Speech House, Forest of Dean Gloucestershire (2019)
The Hotel du Vin, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (2019)
The Hotel du Vin, Stratford-upon-Avon. Warwickshire (2022)
The Dukes Head, Kings Lynn, Norfolk (2022)