Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Great Milton

I’m sure the Manoir (as I will call it for this post) can impress whatever the weather, but when the early summer sun is shining, and punters are welcomed into the gardens for their aperitifs and/or digestifs, the place is surely at its best. When you’ve got gardens like these, sprawling over several manicured acres, including orchards, vegetable allotments, lawns and ponds, all in the shadow of a honeyed Cotswold stone country mansion, you need to make the most of them, and after the first glass of English sparkling wine I was thinking that whatever else happened during the day (and despite the weirdly cheap-looking garden furniture) that well, this is just lovely isn’t it?

Of course, we weren’t just at the Manoir to drink champagne in the sun (although I get the feeling the staff would have no issue with you doing just that) but to see what on earth you get for the eye-watering £230 per person lunch menu – a figure that puts it right out in the top 1% of dining experiences in the country. Paying this amount of money puts a place firmly in the ‘extremely special occasion’ category, and brings with it a certain set of expectations that, for better or worse, only a near-flawless (or actually flawless) experience can meet.

But it was during that first drink on the lawn, once we’d had a few minutes to settle down and take it all in, that we began to notice something. Good service is pretty much the norm these days in the UK – we took a while to catch up with the rest of the world but can now easily hold our own. But the staff at the Manoir appear to be operating on another level entirely. They dance around the place, nimble as ballerinas, confident, happy, assured, attentive yes but not overly-so, chatty and pleasant but never too much – it really is a world-class lesson in front of house.

So in all honesty, the food only needed to be good enough and we still would have had the time of our lives at the Manoir, as it’s impossible to not enjoy being a part of a service routine so utterly dazzling. But it’s a pleasure to report that the generous number of dishes that made up the lunch tasting menu were almost as faultless – starting with these bitesize canapes of beef tartare with shimeji mushroom, salmon tartare with trout roe, and (my favourite) a dainty beetroot and goats’ cheese meringue sandwich which absolutely exploded with flavour in the mouth.

House bread was a sort of tomato-laced brioche thing which reminded me very much of the onion brioche they used to serve at the Ledbury back in the day. Maybe they still serve it at the Ledbury, I don’t know I haven’t been in a while. Anyway that was, just like this is, excellent, just moreish enough that you worry about filling up on it before the menu proper starts.

This confit egg with pea and smoked bacon was perfectly nice but perhaps the only dish that didn’t feel quite in the same 2-Michelin-star league as everything else. I liked the little cheese straw thing wrapped with ham, but there was something a little bland and textureless about the egg and pea mixture itself. Still, another person on our table said this was his favourite dish, so there’s every chance this is just a matter of taste.

Next up (for some of us at least) was a lovely big slab of seared foie gras. For a £35 supplement – because presumably a menu costing £230 per person is barely even covering their costs – it came (as you might hope) beautifully cooked, absolutely dissolving in the mouth, and alongside a dainty little apple tart. With a tamarind sauce dropped on top, it really was a fantastically enjoyable plate of food.

The non-supplemental alternative was a scallop ceviche with cucumber and Thai spices, which I didn’t get to try but am reliably informed was also excellent. Looks the part as well, doesn’t it?

Everyone absolutely loved this next course, a huge single morel mushroom stuffed with chicken and sweetbreads, sat in a white asparagus and Jura wine foam. Sometimes when French food goes full, no-holds-barred, Frenchier-than-French haute cuisine, there’s absolutely no stopping it. This was a course to remember, certainly.

Nobody felt confident enough to go for the £50 supplement A4 Wagyu, but there was a certain amount of soul searching when we saw it presented to other tables, above a mini charcoal grill sending waves of incredible beefy flavours wafting around the room. But fortunately, lamb with sweetbread, asparagus and wild garlic was stunning – a piece of loin so tender you could have cut it with a spoon, and new season asparagus and wild garlic from the gardens adding the perfect vegetable pairing. We also loved the little potato tuiles made into the shape of flowers, and the brilliantly sharp dots of mint sauce which added another talking point.

Cheeses next – I forget which is considered more ‘French’, having cheese before dessert or after, but Le Manoir have gone for the former – and a relatively short but focussed selection of cheeses in blindingly good condition. There was an aged Comte (of course) and an English blue, but the stars of the show were two soft washed-rind cheeses, one French and one English, which I completely forgot to write down. Hopefully someone can identify them from the pictures. They were great, anyway.

As a palate cleanser with elements of savoury (lime and bitters) and dessert (cream and chocolate), the pre-dessert bridged the gap to the sweet courses perfectly. With a base of bitter chocolate and cocoa nib topped with a dome of lime foam, it looked gorgeous and tasted even better – just ridiculously easy to eat.

The strawberry dessert was absolutely perfect in every way. A hundred different pastry techniques all on show at once, all masterfully done, all showcasing a main ingredient at its absolute best and treated beautifully. I particularly liked the way they’d incorporated strawberry into the brandy-snap crunchy topping, and also placed a bit of strawberry puree into a sample of the actual strawberry so you can see where it all started.

Also, though again I didn’t get to try it, there was something called a “Cafe creme”, a cup made of actual chocolate filled with various coffee-flavoured mousses, parfaits and (I think) ice cream. And as per the scallop dish, I didn’t hear any complaints, even about the £35 supplement. And perhaps a supplement for foie gras I can understand, or Wagyu beef, but coffee and chocolate?

Petits fours, including a wonderful mini magnum on a stick, were served back out in the garden under the late afternoon sun. And it’s just as well that the final bits of food we were served here were just as impressive as the first as it was here, sozzled and sated, that we were handed the bill. £1902 for 4 people.

But there’s two points I need to make about what is clearly a lot of money for a single meal. Firstly, Le Manoir do not hold back on the old wine refills. I think we must have had about double what they advertised (125ml per glass) – at least it certainly felt like it once we’d barrelled out of the place into an Uber – and none of these extras were added to the bill or even mentioned as an issue. They just always made sure our glasses were full.

Secondly, and I realise I’m repeating myself, but bloody hell that service. As we had visited on a “very high pollen” day, one of our party sneezed (discreetly I may add) at the table and within seconds a box of tissues had appeared by her side. Our waiter wasn’t just charming but fun with it – I realise that has the potential to be completely insufferable but I honestly think he just completely clicked what kind of day we wanted and went with it. The smiles never left our faces for the whole afternoon (at least apart from the times we were filling them with food and booze) and it transformed what would have been an extremely pleasant experience into an exceptional one.

So, worth it? From my point of view absolutely yes, but you’ll have to make your own mind up whether it’s a full £250 per person better than a lunch at Pied a Terre or, I don’t know, even £350 better than somewhere like etch in Hove despite having lovely formal gardens to enjoy. A lot of places do very good food now, and the Manoir is no longer the exclusive island of gastronomy it once was over 40 years ago.

But perhaps the main story here is that somewhere with such a long history, so influential and important in the country’s culinary history (the list of alumni is basically a who’s-who of transformational British chefs) is still operating right at the top of its game, and can hold its own amongst the best the country has to offer all these years later. And, I hope and fully expect, will continue to do so for many, many more.

8/10