The Inconvenient Mule

A new café has recently opened on Ricky High Street, adding another option to lunching options. We already have Cinnamon Square and Brown Sugar established as firm lunch time favourites on the High Street, with Neros for coffee and snacks and Cafe in the Park at the Aquadrome. So how does this latest contender fare against the existing choices?

The Fat Aubergine makes much of its shakes and smoothies. There’s a bewildering variety, although Brown Sugar already offers a strong selection. As with Brown Sugar there are several menus around which makes it trickier to make a choice than perhaps it should. We both intended to have dairy free options and went for fruit smoothies and shakes, however missing the small print from each menu ended up with yoghurt and a milk shake respectively! They were tasty enough, but you don’t necessarily want to have to spend a good deal of time reading to make a simple choice.

We were more disappointed by the food, which is already prepared and not made to order as in Cinnamon Square or Brown Sugar. This meant that some of the choices were already sold out, and we felt there were relatively few fresh options available; something the competition does well.

On the whole, although it’s nice to see new businesses on the High Street, we didn’t feel Fat Aubergine offered anything that wasn’t already available from other cafés. It’s not the easiest of markets either, as Cinnamon Square uses its award winning homemade breads and is better than ever in its recently expanded form, while Brown Sugar’s deli format offers a superior selection of fresh food. For the moment at least we’re likely to stay with our current regular favourites for weekend lunches.

When cycling along the Grand Union Canal to the south from Ricky, the first water-side pub I encounter is the Coy Carp. After many months we finally got around to trying it out for Sunday lunch.

Each of the roads leading to Harefield seem to be quite small and narrow. Although not unusual around these parts, Harefield is larger than some of the other villages we’ve encountered yet seems somewhat tricky to reach. On arrival however, there’s a very good size pub car park, able to cope with even the busiest of Sunday lunchtimes it would seem.

From the car park the pub is accessed over a small pub which crosses a small river, running parallel to the canal. There’s both a sizeable seating area inside the pub and outside, however the weather made the outside off-limits to all put the hardiest of patrons.

The Coy Carp’s interior is fairly standard pub, fairly comfortable without being either modern or historic. Despite some poor comments on beerintheeventing.co.uk we found the service to be fine. It’s primarily ordering at the bar, although waiting staff did take our order directly for dessert.

Tara trying the fish platter at the Coy Carp pub

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It’s been quiet on the blog recently but we’ve been continuing to make some great local culinary discoveries.

Few restaurants in the area so regularly feature in top food guides as the Artichoke in Amersham. Being closed on Sundays, we booked in for Saturday lunch a few weekends ago. It quickly becomes apparent that this is the home of fine dining; the service is top notch from the moment you walk in while the menu exudes quality. It’s priced accordingly without being prohibitively expensive. Definitely worth a visit for a special occasion.

Another weekend took us again over the border to Buckinghamshire; this time to Chesham on the Metropolitan Line. Curiously, Chesham is the largest town on the Amersham branch of the Met Line, however the path of history has meant that rather than a mainline stop is it an infrequently served station at the end of a single line spur of track from Chalfont & Latimer. Despite the relative inconvenience of reaching this farthest flung outpost of the tube network, our visit revealed some surprises. Chesham’s high street isn’t bad, but it’s the old town which is the biggest highlight. Based on recommendations we tried out the Queens Head, famed around these parts for its Thai food. It lived up to the reputation and was a fine old pub with it. Round the corner there’s also a Chess River walk to be had.

Opposite Rickmansworth Station resides the Long Island Exchange Hotel & Bar. Originally the Victoria Hotel, built in 1860, it grew with the railway and the businesses moving into the area, and has been Long Island since 1984 (going by the information on the menu at least).

Although just across the road from the station we have in the months we’ve lived in Ricky never felt inclined to visit Long Island. There are a few reasons for this. First, the exterior is white, drab and looks a touch run down. Compared with the many other restaurants and hostelries in town it didn’t really stand out and sell itself. Second, we were all too aware of its status as bar & club, which can be particularly noisy and raucous on Friday and Saturday nights. Although we hadn’t given it much thought, we’d assumed there was the hotel, the bar, and that was about it.

While down for the weekend, my parents decided to stay at hotel element of Long Island, being the nearest and only central Ricky accommodation we’re aware of. The website doesn’t look bad and the prices are reasonable. I visited them there one evening and was taken aback to discover a large, modern and rather pleasant restaurant area. Doubling up as the breakfast area for the hotel, the restaurant is open from midday until 10pm. The layout is modern, with a mix of wooden chairs and comfortable semi-circular padded seats. If anything, it’s a little reminiscent of some coffee houses.

Long Island Exchange interior

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I was entertaining my parents this weekend and having given them a book of local walks they opted for a circular walk of the countryside from Heronsgate. This was a good choice as we’d not been to Heronsgate before and I was keen to see what was there. Google maps seem to indicate many large houses with swimming pools, whereas Beerintheevening highlights a CAMRA pub.

We parked on the road near the two pubs and headed on a walk, which due to some slightly off navigation took us past a farm with some attractive old buildings.

Historic farm house

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The Bricklayers Arms, Flaunden

This week’s Sunday lunch sent us back onto the local narrow, winding and pot-holed roads that criss-cross the Herts and Bucks countryside. Our destination has been well written up, most recently by Giles Coren in the Times. Yes, we were bound for the Bricklayers Arms, located in the wonderfully named hamlet of Hogpits Bottom in the village of Flaunden. Distress at the lack of necessary punctuation aside, it’s a fine hostelry in a pleasant part of the countryside.

These country pubs are notoriously popular so we were booked in for 12:15, when the pub was largely empty. It didn’t stay empty long, however, and as 1pm approached the tables filled and the pub was suddenly bustling with activity and custom; not bad for a village that from any direction is down some narrow, and in places, rather potholed roads. The clientele had clearly come specifically for the pub; the muddy boots by the front door identifying the walker fraternity; while the pub also seemed quite popular with families, although as the table opposite discovered it didn’t offer any child specific meals, just half-portions of the main menu.

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Continuing our exploration of the local towns and villages we today headed out for a short visit to Berkhamsted. Conveniently located around a half-hour’s drive away on the A41, I noticed good write-ups of the town while browsing reviews of areas on the Channel 4’s Relocation Relocation map of the best and worst places to live in the country. Berkhamsted repeatedly appeared in comments of Dacorum district as a bustling market town with an art deco cinema and as with Rickmansworth is located by the Grand Union canal.

In comparison to towns I’m familiar with, Berkhamsted reminded me a good deal of Kendal, from my own neck of the woods in South Lakeland. Both are historic market towns, abuzz on market day and full of family owned and boutique shops, with a ruined castle on the outskirts. It’s seems relatively uncommon to find a town these days that doesn’t have an homogenous high street of the same chain shops. Smaller towns can escape this curse. Rickmansworth does to a good extent and although only marginally larger in size, Berkhamsted has a far larger high street but retains a commendable proportion of independent shops.

A particular highlight for me was Berkhamsted’s art deco cinema, the Rex. The exterior is rather low-key; the majority of it advertising the Gatsby restaurant. The side of the building provides a discrete entrance to the cinema, and inside a stylish bar and box office awaits. Interestingly, the evening showings at the cinema appeared to largely booked up for some weeks in advance; a good sign of local support of their local independent cinema.

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For this week’s Sunday lunch jaunt we headed off to Chenies, another picturesque rural village in the Buckinghamshire countryside, all but equidistant between Rickmansworth, Amersham and Chesham if the signpost in town is to believed. The Bedford Arms is a little way off the A404, so easily reached, which is more than can be said for some of the currently seriously pot-holed back roads we later discovered when exploring more of the area.

But first to the food. The Bedford Arms had received a good write up and certainly lived up to expectations. We had a seat reserved in the bar as the restaurant was already fully booked. It has nice period features with some modern stylings too. Service was fine although the food took a while, which was, to be fair, peak Sunday lunch time. Fortunately the food was more than worth the wait. The Roast Beef was absolutely delicious; every bite a pleasure. Tara’s black sea bream was the same. The dessert – we both opted for the marble cheesecake – also hit that spot. That makes it two weekends in a row where we’ve come across top notch country pubs for food.

We had a quick walk around Chenies village and like many of the villages in the area it’s a beautifully picturesque corner of the world. Period buildings, a village green, winding country lanes; just what you’d hope for. Unlike Chalfont St Giles last week, Chenies is much too small for a high street, but for the quiet country life it’s all you might hope for. However both villages are located near cross-Chiltern walking trails and the Bedford Arms seemed to have something of a regular clientele, if the partially overheard conversations are anything to go by. We were though, it has to be said, some of the youngest in the pub by a considerable number of decades. Chenies isn’t for those after a racey life; it’s a place to relax, chill and take life at a slower pace. For a Sunday it’s just what you want.

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Inside the Eden Shopping Centre, High Wycombe

This weekend’s foray into the surrounding area was to High Wycombe, which along with Watford are the largest towns hereabouts. As with Watford our motivation for visiting High Wycombe was the shopping.

Getting to High Wycombe from Rickmansworth is straight-forward by a number of routes. We opted for what Google Maps promised was the fastest – if not the shortest – route, via Uxbridge Road, the M25 and the M40; an estimated 30 min journey. Alternatively, going via the A404 is around 5 miles shorter, if estimated to take a few minutes longer. However given the current 50 mph restriction on much of the M25 south of Ricky I suspect it’d be a much finer run thing.

The M40 is a none-too-busy and partially 4-lane affair with no complications. The only areas of trouble were the huge and complex roundabout from junction 4 of the M40 heading into Wycombe and the usual navigation around the town. It seems to be that towns of the size of Watford and Wycombe demand complicated and ill-sign-posted routes. Nevertheless the sat-nav saw us alright. Junction 4 could also be avoided by heading East out of Wycombe to junction 3.

Wycombe’s answer to the Harlequin is Eden, and it’s not a bad shopping centre. It’s not as enclosed as the Harlequin – much of it is under cover but still outside, meaning at this time of year you can stay dry but cold. It has large House of Fraser and M&S Stores, although I’m told the fine – and from this winter now famous John Lewis store – is location in an out-of-town location, to the West of the centre. Eden did provide all the shops we’d hoped for, though, and we returned home absolutely laden down with shopping – all of it clothing. (more…)