Originally published by the Guardian, Saturday 8 May 2010

The Kingham Plough is part-owned by Emily Watkins, a former sous chef at the Fat Duck. It’s not every day you find one of Heston Blumenthal’s protégés in a local.

I’m meeting my friend D – she of the food allergies. I swear it is not a deliberate ploy to test the kitchen – but for once I remember to mention it when booking. A girl at the bar takes me back out, to a door marked “Residents” and upstairs to our rooms. The biggest has a half-tester bed and claw-foot bath, but I plump for the smaller, because it has a shower and pansy-filled window boxes.

Top marks for a cotton bag in the bathroom with tampons, and a towel rail which actually heats up. There are tiny biscuits in a little jar by the packets of instant coffee and tea. Surprised about UHT milk and silk, not fresh, flowers, but what drive me instantly mad are thief-proof hangers suspended from wooden pegs on the back of the door. They fall off the minute I hang anything up – the sort of thing a hotelier only discovers if they or their staff actually stay in the rooms.

Enough carping – D is here, loves her room, starving. We install ourselves at the bar where, on this Monday night, we are the only drinkers. Not that the Plough has that Monday feeling – diners occupy almost every table.

A shower of little menus arrives – Today’s Bar Food, says one. What a great selection: scotched quail’s eggs, sausage roll and homemade ketchup, pork pie and pickle. Two dinner menus have landed too. Impressively, one is gluten- and dairy-free. The kitchen must like a challenge.

Now, I am not a real foodie and would never spend good shoe money on a Michelin-star meal, but only one main course here is more than £20, and they seem to be offering good, traditional food in an exciting way.

We’re seated now, upstairs in a barn extension (or possibly a keg store), beside a fantastic painting of a blue cow. D’s starter is a white bean and tomato stew with cuttlefish and bacon rasher on top; mine is a tart, light as air, of broccoli (from, I learn, a revered local market gardener) and tangy Adlestrop cheese. We go for shoulder of venison (three impossibly soft, hunky ruby slices) and Cotswold White chicken (accompanied by a sauce of morels, wild garlic and a hint of tarragon and Madeira), but completely forget to order Heston-esque triple-cooked chips (see confession above).

Lemon thyme ice-cream, mead-flavoured jelly, cider granita and rhubarb sorbet are the closing highlights. We realise that not once were we disturbed by that inanity, “Is everything all right?”

After her breakfast of “proper bacon”, D dashes off, while I wait for kedgeree made to order, nibbling meanwhile on tiny, sweet drop scones which appear by my elbow. DIY toast (homemade bread) provides a worthy vehicle for the rhubarb jam.

“Did the traffic disturb?” asks Emily’s husband Miles, when I check out. Not me. He chats about planned improvements – planting, new showers in annexe rooms. What is already on offer, for foodies and philistines alike, is unponcy dining which won’t eat into the footwear budget.

Kingham Plough
The Green, Kingham
Chipping Norton
+44 (0)1608 658327
thekinghamplough.co.uk

Double rooms from £85-£125 B&B (pets welcome in the small room, £10 a night). Expect to pay around £29 a head for three-course dinner excluding wine. Booking essential.