Malverleys must feel like actual heaven on a balmy summer’s day. Quaint, overgrown Wessex Downs country lanes turn into acres of arduously coiffed nurseries, lawns and flowerbeds, complete with a gorgeous restaurant, deli, cafe, farm and gift shop, and lecture room. It’s as if the Famous Five have gone into hospitality and asked Peter Rabbit and Mrs Tiggy-winkle to run the cottage garden: a quintessentially English, picture-book, farm-to-plate experience. When the sun shines, you can meander in the garden, take a “hand-tied bouquet workshop”, buy fresh runner beans straight off the plots and eat a rhubarb and magnolia danish pastry on the terrace.
This balmy summer meandering is, of course, pure supposition, because I turned up at Malverleys during one of summer 2023’s numerous torrential downpours. It had been raining here on and off for four whole days; the midday sky was the colour of silt and thunder cracked in the distance. Huge raindrops bounced off the car’s windscreen as customers wrestled on cagoules and sou’westers to run the short distance from the car park to the restaurant.
As I watched the punters in the cafe determinedly take their £4 croissants out on to the damp terrace, some of them wearing plastic bags as makeshift hats, I felt that this, too, was a quintessentially English experience. People had planned a day out at Malverleys and, by Jove, they weren’t going to let a little trench foot spoil things. Likewise, the rain could not dampen my ardour for Malverleys’ little gift shop full of dangerously lovely things, where jars of Freda’s Cornish sea salt peanut butter sit close to 100% Al Qadarif sesame tahini, pairs of bohemian Thunders Love recycled cotton socks, hand-whittled serving spoons and Malverleys’ housemade hand soap. I want to be the type of woman who takes watercolour classes in farm shops, learning how to create Japanese-style botanical scenes, then loads up on artisanal ceramics and organic globe artichokes. And at Malverleys, I can be that woman – at least momentarily.
The shop and deli area, which has long, communal benches, is really just the lead-up to a more formal restaurant, where chef Hugo Harrison serves a short, set-lunch menu from Thursday to Sunday. It’s a brief – almost disconcertingly brief – list made from locally sourced and home-baked items. It’s two courses for £25 or three for £30, with two extra dishes at £5 each available to bulk out lunch. If you are hungry, you will need them, too.
Brevity of choice aside, however, things quickly got rather delightful, with huge hunks of sourdough, baked on-site that morning, with freshly churned salted butter. This was meant to be eaten alongside brawn with pickled gooseberries, which, with both of us being non-pork eaters, they swapped without fuss for fresh ricotta with pickled beetroot and carrot. The house pickles were sharp, crunchy and eminently devourable. Panisse, or chickpea chips, turned out to be two chips each and came with a lovage sauce. The extra starter course was a plate of British bresaola. Everything was fresh, wonderfully sourced and delicious, but I could already sense that, even with the extra courses, there wasn’t going to be a huge amount of food.
The main course was a small bowl of fresh maltagliati, which, shape-wise, is the hinterland between fat, flat pappardelle and fazzoletti handkerchiefs. It was the perfect foil for a sauce made of Coolea, a honey-sweet, gouda-like, Irish cheese, and chopped, sauteed chard. For the extra fiver, we were brought some dressed lettuce leaves in various colours, strewn across the plate in a fairytale-beautiful manner, but still just leaves nonetheless.
Pudding was meringue with strawberries and cream, a sort of pristine Eton unmessed, and the meringue was utterly glorious. I have spent a lifetime failing to see the point of these perilously sweet, glorified lumps of sugar – until this moment, that is, when I first tasted this brilliant, fresh, chewy one flavoured with cherry blossom and served with strawberry syrup, some berries and whipped cream. Suddenly. it all made sense. With soft drinks (kombucha) included, the bill came to £80 without service, which I happily added, because everything had been thoroughly lovely.
It feels like early days at Malverleys, which is tentatively making steps to be a top-class, cost-effective restaurant producing lovely food from less pricey items – pickles, pasta, lettuce – and then not very much of them, either. Still, as a little ride out into the countryside, to browse in the shop and fantasise about growing your own broad beans before a brief but meaningful meal, it is rather irresistible. I may have eaten my emergency car Mars bar on the way home, but my feet were cocooned in the finest reclaimed cotton socks.
Malverleys Sungrove Farm, East End, Newbury, Berkshire, 01635 635608. Open Thurs-Sun, lunch only, noon-2pm. Two courses for £25, three for £30, both plus drinks and service
Grace Dent’s new book, Comfort Eating: What We Eat When No One Is Looking, is published in October by Guardian Faber at £20. To pre-order a copy for £16, go to guardianbookshop.com
