A place can be years on my list but I'll get there eventually! Such as it was with The Marksman. I can't even remember when it first opened but way back in July I finally ate there.
Brilliant.
We didn't order that much - I wish I could have tried more but what we did get was filling enough. The guinea fowl, bacon and leek pie for two, plus fried potatoes and green beans.
And I couldn't resist the treacle sourdough bread and butter. Wow. That's some bread porn right there. Like a medium-level rye - slightly dark and chewy with possibly cumin seeds pepping it up, look up moreish in the dictionary and this will be staring you in the face.
The pie was presented before us whole, letting us scoop out the contents onto our plates. It was a lot more liquidy than I'd thought it would be, so we were pleased we'd ordered potatoes to go with it and soak up all that lovely stock. I kind of wished we had mashed potatoes for this job but the potatoes were pretty amazing. More on them later.
But there were plenty of meaty guinea fowl chunks in there and that is one tasty bird let me say. Gorgeous magenta colour, not overly gamey and a perfect texture. With the pie gravy all over the plate, everything was bathed in a slightly salty, savoury deliciousness.
The fried potatoes were a lie. Well, not a lie. A deceit. They were indeed potatoes, and they were indeed fried. But look at them! Do these look like just 'fried' potatoes? No. They go well beyond that banal description.
I would say they are like fondant potatoes that have then been fried and obvously they were awesome because look. Again.
The caper mayonnaise they came with I didn't like too much - a little bitter, but they were swimming in the lovely gravy anyway so that didn't matter.
After all that we had no room for dessert which made me sad. Brown butter and honey tart was calling but I don't think I would have enjoyed it with being so full. Another time.