The Woodsman

4 Chapel St

Stratford-upon-Avon

CV37 6HA

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 14, 2023

The Food:

Winter salad of Jerusalem artichokes, pumpernickel & roasted lemon, preserved wild mushrooms with hazelnut vinaigrette

Beetroot & Elderwood cured chalk stream trout with pickled golden beetroot, blood orange and sesame mayonnaise

Bathurst Estate roast venison to share with roasted broccoli, dirty mash and wood-fired root vegetables

Glazed dark chocolate mousse with hazelnut praline, poached pear and pear sorbet

Blood orange tartlet, white chocolate and tarragon, olive oil cake with blood orange sorbet

The Wines:

If food be the music of love, eat on – Thirteenth Night (sequel to Twelfth)

Shakespeare spun some great yarns. The man could tell a story. But this spotty-faced schoolboy’s memories are comprised of endless hours staring gormlessly at a page completely befuddled. What the hell is he blathering on about? I should have been reciting sonnets like some foppish dandy out of the Evelyn Waugh novel. Instead, I clutched my dog-eared copy of Macbeth in the futile act of unraveling the wordy nonsensical prose and abhorring the haphazard punctuation. Like J.R.R. Tolkien, who could write an intelligible sentence, I “disliked cordially” this supposed founder of the English language.

Come to my O-Levels exams aged sixteen. The Bard stood in the dock accused of forcing me to quit English literature. The jury found that he could stuff his adroit alliterations, soliloquies and iambic pentameter that left readers more stressed than (every other) syllable down his breeches. Henceforth, I would study subjects more useful in becoming a captain of industry by studying maths and economics. There’s nothing metaphorical in a quadratic equation or Keynesian macroeconomic theory. Alas, I was so overcome with ennui that I yearned for an occasional rhyming couplet. How ironic that my vocation involves threading words into sentences, some even remarking that they enjoy it, the fools.

Thirty-six years after quitting Shakespeare, it was time to make my peace with a pilgrimage to his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. Perchance our rapprochement would inspire me? Naturally, once I had visited his original home and begged forgiveness at the foot of his statue, I could eat a horse. Thankfully, I had booked a restaurant nearby that epitomizes everything I love about eating out.

The Woodsman façade

Even before broaching the menu, there are many aspects of The Woodsman that I admire. It nestles in a splendid 16th-century townhouse converted into a hotel, surfeit with antiquated charm, warped oak beams and flagstone paving greeting you at the entrance. The restaurant, part of the Hotel Indigo, was refurbished but maintains a comforting timeworn aesthetic, manifesting a very cozy ambiance, a background hubbub wafting in from an adjoining bar. There is a nice buzz about the place. Our table was in the direct line of a pizza oven, and fearing that by the main course I would be seared on one side of my face, I asked to move, which the waitress accommodated immediately.

Head chef Mike Robertson is known for his impeccable sourcing of local ingredients and nose-to-tail eating philosophy. I came close to choosing a nearby Michelin-starred restaurant. But I am more swayed by the meticulous detail of sourcing information gleaned from The Woodsman’s website, which is always a good sign. Our three-course dinner might have been simple, yet it was one of the most delicious I have eaten in a long time, every dish bursting with flavor and consistently well-cooked.

Winter salad of Jerusalem artichokes, pumpernickel & roasted lemon, preserved wild mushrooms with hazelnut vinaigrette

We started with a winter salad of Jerusalem artichokes, pumpernickel & roasted lemon, preserved wild mushrooms with hazelnut vinaigrette. This was brilliant. There’s been a recent thread on the Your Say forum in appreciation of vegetarian dishes, and this starter completely exemplified the joys of meat/fish-free fare. The ingredients worked in absolute harmony with each other: the sharpness of the artichoke and lemon, the sweetness of the pumpernickel and the acidity of the vinaigrette. I came close to re-ordering it. We also chose the beetroot & Elderwood cured chalk stream trout with pickled golden beetroot, blood orange and sesame mayonnaise. This was almost as good as the winter salad, the golden beetroot and trout, an inspired combination.

Bathurst Estate roast venison to share with roasted broccoli, dirty mash and wood-fired root vegetables

For the main, we shared the joint of seasoned roast venison that Robinson butchers for the restaurant. Cooked to absolute perfection and bursting with flavor, this was partnered with roasted broccoli and pots of dirty mash (with shredded venison, sourdough crumb and deer gravy) and woodfired root vegetables. Straightforward but devastatingly effective, you would not want to be eating anything else at that precise moment.

Glazed dark chocolate mousse with hazelnut praline, poached pear and pear sorbet

Moving on to desserts (after a ten minute pause to digest and reminisce about the venison), a plate of glazed dark chocolate mousse with hazelnut praline, poached pear and pear sorbet exited the kitchen with “Happy Birthday” scrawled in chocolate.

Took about three minutes to demolish that.

Who said that things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour? Not in this case.

Blood orange tartlet, white chocolate and tarragon, olive oil cake with blood orange sorbet

Perhaps the killer dessert was a sublime blood orange tartlet, white chocolate and tarragon, olive oil cake with blood orange sorbet. The tarragon worked perfectly with the olive oil cake, a dessert that was light on its feet, tangy and a bit like my artichoke starter, simply a perfect combination of ingredients.

With regard to the wines, The Woodsman has a decent but not extensive list. I appreciate that they are completely open to corkage with a very reasonable charge, prompting me to scarper to a local wine shop where I found a bottle of 2019 Puligny-Montrachet Les Tremblots Vieilles Vignes from Domaine Hubert Lamy priced about one-third of its current market value. I was taken by this from barrel, so it was a chance to revisit the wine in bottle. It showcases Olivier Lamy’s brilliance. Much more tensile than you would expect from a warm vintage, this bursts from the glass with freshly-sliced Conference pear, crushed limestone and oyster shell scents. Say what you like about Burgundy, but no other region delivers aromatics like this. The palate is brilliantly defined with poise and a sense of electricity that keeps drawing you back for another sip. And this is not even the Haut-Densité incarnation! The 2014 Pichon Baron followed. This has moved little since my last note. Blackberry and briary scents are interlaced with graphite. The bouquet opens nicely over a couple of hours, youthful but not disconcertingly so. The palate is beautifully balanced with a sense of coolness and class, an aristocratic Pauillac with crunchy tannins, pure black fruit and that flintiness on the finish that feels focused and abundantly fresh. No harm in opening bottles now, though I would afford it another couple of years in the cellar.

I must confess, I became rather star-crossed by The Woodsman. It delivers without pretension, the careful sourcing of ingredients plain to see and obvious to taste in every mouthful. Our dinner was a fraction of the price gourmands must fork out in the capital these days, and few restaurants can conjure such quaint Tudor surroundings. ‘Tis the kind of get-away-from-it place where diners can just relax, unwind and savor the cuisine. I look forward to returning anon. Who knows, I might have actually read Shakespeare by then? But I cannot promise to understand it.

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