Delicious Magazine – April 2008
Crown Affair
Helen Renshaw visits The Bildeston Crown
Memo to anyone making the decision to dine at The Bildeston Crown: take a good map. Buried deep in rural Suffolk, this 15th century coaching inn can be tricky to find. But it’s definitely worth the effort.
As you step through the door, the exposed beams, ancient brickwork, oak floors and open fires place you firmly in a classic country inn setting. But there’s also a surprising whiff of sophistication in the air, which is confirmed by a menu that’s a million miles from ‘pub grub’.
In fact, Chris Lee – an ambitious self-taught chef whose wife Hayley runs front of house – has created a menu that would look more at home in London’s swankier restaurants, yet the prices are a fraction of what you’d expect to pay for such food in the Big Smoke. Chris specialises in modern British cuisine with quirky flavour combinations. Dishes such as seared scallops and lobster with chutney, and confit of duck with Earl Grey tea jellies sum up Chris’s vision – and the sheer yumminess of the food quickly banishes fears of pretension.
We especially loved the ‘pork head to toe’ with its eight different cuts of ‘piggy delight’, starting with crispy cigarillos from the ear and ending with a parcel of trotters topped off with a whisker of brittle crackling. So enlist the help of an Ordnance Survey map and get yourself there. Oh, and leave space for dessert – the peanut butter parfait will haunt your dreams for weeks.
