BE L GRAVI A RE S I DE NT S J OURNA L 021

E
ach year the news gets a little worse for the middle.
It reminds me of the famous poem by the mid
twentieth century German pastor Martin Niemoller,
the one that starts rst they came for before stringing
together a list victims who might have been saved had it
not been for the cowardice of its author.
First I read a Slavoj Zizek essay about it but I did
not speak out because I was not a communist. Then I
watched news about a squeezed middle but I did not
speak out because I was a student. Then the banking
crisis came, and then an articially inated asset price
boom etc. You get the point.
So the news that Longshot Country Inns have moved
into Churt, a village in deepest, darkest Surrey (actually,
its on the Hampshire border), comes as gospel to an
increasingly beleaguered section of society. This is the
company responsible for the proliferation of Bel & the
Dragon pubs pretty much the only thing popping up
faster than house prices in the region.
The name may sound and look a little dyslexic
(shouldnt it be The Knight and Dragon, The Railway Bell
or something?), however, its business plan is anything but.
Joel Cadbury of the chocolate clan is a local Belgravian and
notable for being a co-founder of St Pauls Knightsbridge
Henry Hopwood-Phillips goes to see what local Belgravian,
Joel Cadbury, has been building in the Surrey Hills...
Foundation. Here in Churt he is better known for throwing
700,000 at an old boozer in its death throes, converting it
into a gastropub with 14 rooms to boot.
The aim of the aesthetic, best described as industrial
chic, is to look very untidy in a disturbingly tidy manner.
Its like watching the most perfectly choreographed ballet,
with the ballerinas all in builders dungarees, on purpose.
Therefore chapel chairs stand on parquet ooring; primary
colour light ttings shine on squat jam pots, books, pottery
and all the other paraphernalia
that surrounds any honest
Englishmans home or at least
any that might own Enid Blyton.
Blyton is not the author
trumpeted here, however. That
honour lands on Jane Austen
who lived nearby. As Im led to my room, Darcy, we pass
crystal decanters of whiskeys and coffee machines, the
sort of thing a hotel would charge you a small fortune to
inhale. That is all free, we are reassured. It doesnt end in
our room either where a bottle of Sloe Gin from another
of Joels businesses, Sipsmith, taunts our sobriety.
In spite of a charming rusticity, Im not sure whether
we should touch anything in the room. It looks like a
Farrow & Ball advertisement. The White Company covers
are so soft my partner promptly bullies me into agreeing
to buy some; its all so National Trust cottage it leaves you
wondering why the furniture would look so traumatised.
Not that the Bel & the Dragon has been pushed into
polite sterility, a museum of gentrication. A comforting
burble of locals taking advantage of the weather comes
from the garden. Downstairs at dinner the whole place is
brim-full of both natives and travellers.
Even better than the social nexus is this pubs
cellar, out of which emerges a 2011 Bordeaux by Berry
Bros & Rudd, a bold number that assures us it is an
extraordinary claret. Spicy oak, leather and smoke
certainly make it the only liquid that could possibly
contend with the steak.
A Chateaubriand for two, split mainly because its is
a cut thats sold in heavier weights. Its also one that packs
the avour of a rib eye with the texture of a let mignon.
Sitting on a chopping board as thick as a loaf, its not got
a hard customer. I love fat, meat and salt.
It comes with metal pails of chips you will only eat
if you treat their entry into your
peripheral as an assault on your
masculine powers of appetite. I
did, and therefore had to skip
dessert for an espresso martini.
A house speciality, they hold
back on the kahlua that usually
reduces the crown jewel of digestifs to saccharine syrup,
its a top-notch restorative.
Usually a new fangled inn such as the B&D would
have me reaching for awkward adjectives such as self-
conscious or falling back on insults such as its got about as
much kick to it as I do on my sofa at home but both would
be unfair in this case. B&D has a personality, whats more
its a well-furnished one, and its comfortable in its own skin.
Thats an extraordinary feat in under a year.
Bel and the Dragon, Jumps Road, Churt, Surrey
GU10 2LD (belandthedragon.co.uk)
The name may sound and
look a little dyslexic
Horse and Hound
Great British Escape
Country