How does your garden grow - The Botanist, Marlow

While my existence may appear chaotic, underneath I’m one of life’s planners; give me half a chance and I’ve probably already made a spreadsheet plotting it’s probability in great detail. While I try to bow to random spontaneity when the occasion demands it (rubbish, she hates surprises - TE), I like to read menus, I like to see dishes online, I like to plan what I’m going to have for dinner three weeks hence (and then change my mind at the restaurant, to try and feel as if I’m really living on the edge) which is what made a last-minute lunch booking at the Botanist, with only a cursory glance at the website, so out of character.

Still, I’d had a discussion with an enthusiastic work colleague who was also planning a visit, plus found out they were knocking 50% off the bill in January as well as offering a special Ginuary menu for those who were still prioritising enjoyment above hepatic function after the excess of Christmas, so what could go wrong…

By the evening I was already having a small sense of foreboding when, after looking at social media, I noticed there were very few pictures of food, but lots of glitzy cocktails, dazzling teeth and tans of a Trumpian hue. Now, I like a flaming fishbowl along with the rest of them, but I doubted its suitability as an accompaniment to my quiet Sunday repast. 

It got worse when I did find pictures of the food and realised the conceit derived from their name meant that mayo was served in watering cans, garlic mushrooms and chocolate mousse came in a trowel (mercifully as separate dishes) and chicken liver pate arrived in a mini flower pot, complete with its own chutney-filled wheelbarrow.

Now, I’ve eaten a roast on a breadboard (with a lap-full of gravy), fritters from old spam tins and even barbecue ribs from a galvanised bin, but I started to feel a bit We Want Plates, especially as we were going for lunch with Stealth - someone who manages to be both far more spontaneous (believe me, she's not either - TE) but far more curmudgeonly (yes, I think both things are related).

Still, I was attempting to practice my edgy New Year New You abandonment and Stealth was trying to be more accommodating - read hungover and happy to leave the organising to someone else – while the long suffering Ewing was just hoping that our Millennial indignation was kept in check and we didn’t get too carried away with Ginuary, being as she was the designated driver.

On enquiring about Ginuary our waitress told us that, while available all through the month, it isn’t advertised on weekends ‘as they don’t want people to know about it’ (cunning -TE). Which perhaps explains why two of our G&Ts (we doubled up to make full use of the offer) initially arrived with no gin. Still, it would be churlish to complain too much at less than a fiver for a double and Fevertree tonic in this neck of the woods. It was also good to try a few hitherto unknown English gins, from Hunters, Langleys and Poetic Licence respectively. Stealth didn’t even complain about the basil leaves and cardamom pods floating in her glass.

After steeling myself for a starter that looked like it had been assembled in the shed, I actually found myself disappointed they had run out of the chicken liver pate. No matter, the calamari was crisp and well-seasoned and I still got a novelty watering can full of mayo for dipping.

The Ewing and Stealth made classic opening choices with a bacon-crumbed baked camembert and a scotch egg – both served on disappointingly prosaic wooden boards – respectively. The gooey cheese, served with apple slices and wholemeal toast for dunking, was particularly good. I can’t comment on Stealth’s pick, being an avowed oeuf-avoider, but if anyone’s in the market for a hot sauce hand model, get in touch.

Our mains bought a full compliment of proper plates, and very nice ones at that, with mine playing host to the classic roast beef dinner. Even my cauliflower cheese came in an eminently sensible enamel side dish. Pink meat, plenty of parsnips, crispy yorkie, well-cooked veg, glossy gravy and the aforementioned cauli; this was a properly first class roast in every respect. Even the horseradish had that sinus-clearing oomph that bought a little tear to my eye.

The Ewing and Stealth also kept up the bovine theme. My wife went for broke with a - well-judged - rare rib eye, chips and peppercorn sauce and Stealth picking steak and ale pie with peas and sweet potato fries. A pie which also gets bonus points for being a pastry product with four walls; no Casserole with a Lid here. Again, it was comfortingly rib-sticking stuff served in ample portions - clearly the Instagrammers hanging out here on a Friday night stick to a liquid diet.

Bucking the practical trend, my rice pudding with amarena cherries and honeycomb came in an old fashioned glass jelly mould. Which may have looked pretty, but meant I lost most of my cherry sauce to the indentations at the bottom of the glass, despite the valiant attempts of my probing spoon (this is why you have fingers - TE).

Freshly baked cookie dough, served in its own cast iron pan and topped with caramel ice cream was both as tooth-janglingly sweet and delicious as it sounds, but the strawberry on the cake, literally, went to Stealth’s skewer. After all the sensible tableware, I think it gave us both more joy than we’d care to admit to have desert served dangling vertically.

While they offer a range of various savoury skewers, ranging from lamb koftas to salt and pepper pork to jerk salmon – the sweet version impales berries with marshmallows and chunks of chocolate brownie (and a random piece of apple, which did cause some customary grumpy consternation), to be doused tableside in toffee sauce. 

As they were out of vanilla ice cream, she chose a scoop of eton mess, swirled with meringue, fruit coulis and popping candy - ensuring our meal went out with a wiz bang, or an enthusiastic fizzle at the very least. Rather like our New Year efforts to embrace the new.

House of the Trembling Madness

York is a city that is positively stuffed with history (alongside a surfeit of fudge shops) and the House of the Trembling Madness - tucked away on Stonegate, as you head towards the Minster - is no exception. The rear of the building dates back to 1180 AD, the first Norman house built in York, while the medieval hall upstairs is still traversed with original ships beams that would have set sail on the seas all those centuries ago.

All which makes for a wonderfully quirky interior, with the added bonus of the uneven floors and low door frames that make you feel a little tipsy before you've imbibed a drop - the place is named after the Delirium Tremens after all. Hit your head on the aforementioned beams and you could also wake up feeling like you've got a hangover.

The pub part of the operation is on the first floor - the aforementioned medieval hall and a marvellous room with a vaulted ceiling, ornate candelabra and a wall full of stuffed animal heads. The whole effect bought to mind the kind of place Henry VIII might hang out for a casual tankards of mead, when he wasn’t hosting lavish jousting tournaments or executing his wives. The sheepskin rugs on the chairs and Christmas soundtrack also contributed to the warming feeling of Hygge. Although, retrospectively, that could have also been the brandy in the mulled wine.

In our customary eagerness, we were the first through the doors for our late breakfast/early lunch. And, as even I had to concede, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas, I started with a pint of the Fairytale of Brew York from the selection of cask beers on the bar. Beers from the shop may be drunk upstairs for an additional £1.25 corkage fee per bottle. 

The Ewing went with the mulled wine, and while it wasn't quite up to the standard of my Aunt's at the panto the day before (she's an expert muller), it was still commendable - as well as being pretty lethal at half eleven in the morning. If you fancy something even stronger check out their beer shots which range from Brewdog's Tactical Nuclear Penguin at 32% right up to The Mystery of Beer, brewed by Dutch brewers 'T Koelschip, and weighing in at a hefty 70%.

Their menu states 'we believe that you should be able to eat food whenever you are hungry or need it, so we have a policy of whenever the pub is open then the food is always available to you'. A nice touch, although beware if you fancy an early pie, as we did, as you may have to wait for your gravy to warm up.

The food, expertly prepared in the tiny galley kitchen that also doubles as the bar, mostly focuses on platters of cold meats, pate and cheese, with a couple of different incarnations of the beef burger (although no chips) and a few hot dishes that can be served with mash (pies, sausages and a daily-changing stew).

The festive salmon platter was a gargantuan array of grub for a mere £6.50. More importantly, it was excellent; hot toast, cold butter, punchy pate with ribbons of smoked fish and capers studded throughout, a dab of dill mustard and a pickled chilli chaser. The homemade House of Madness slaw rounded things off - providing crisp respite from the full on flavours.

The Ewing picked the booze-inspired cheese platter, with wedges infused with Yorkshire whisky, Yorkshire beer hops and Drunken Burt's cider, alongside a Wellington blue and Green Thunder garlic and herb, all accompanied by bread from the Via Vecchia bakery, on the nearby Shambles.

Generous and delicious, although, if I had a criticism, the different flavours soon became pretty indistinguishable. Still, large amounts of cheese and crusty bread with a bunch of redcurrants thrown in for good measure. You can't really go too wrong with that.

I also had to have the steak pie and pea 'tapas', served with a jug of beer and onion gravy A kind of reverse Peter Mandelson with his mushy pea guacamole. If you could find this kinda stuff on the bars of pubs the way you find ham and omelettes in Spain I'd be a happy (and even fatter) girl.

Just in case we weren't already on course for for a seasonal dose of gout, we decided we couldn't miss the Swaledale sausage ring, infused with 7% Yorkshire imperial stout and served on a floury bap, from the breakfast/early lunchtime menu. A very wise choice, especially with lashings of butter and a blob of dill mustard. 

Going back downstairs after lunch  bought to mind the tale of when Pooh goes visiting at Rabbit's House, eats all the honey and promptly gets stuck in the doorway. Thankfully we could still squeeze through to fill our basket from an aladdin's cave of, (very well priced) beers that include a large range of Sam Smiths, from nearby Tadcaster, alongside hard to find local beers, Belgian classics, and American hop bombs There was even a collaboration stout, Descent Into Madness, brewed with the Bad Seed Brewery in Malton.

Down in the basement there is even more booze, with a variable assortment of spirits including gin, whisky, bourbon and a shelf full of the kind of lurid drinks you bring back from two weeks abroad and leave to gather dust on the sideboard for the next decade. There is also a whole case dedicated to the green fairy, absinthe, whose mythical properties were thought to cause many imbibers to hallucinate - although this was more likely caused by withdrawal symptoms from acute alcohol dependency than from the liquor itself.

Oscar Wilde said of the green stuff; 'after the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world'. Unless you're tucked up upstairs, pint in hand and a plate of bread and meat in front of you. Then things look pretty good.