Sow, sow good | Review: The Pig, The New Forest

When I first started dating my better half, we were enthralled by the idea of a weekend away in a country house hotel with a claw-footed tub. The bath represented the romantic idyll: bubbles in flutes and in the water, and non-stop nudity with room service galore. When we finally got to live the dream, we spent a fingertip-puckeringly long time submerged. It was a moveable feast too, from the countryside outside Dublin to the Norfolk Broads.

Our obsession with Victorian-issue toilette hardware hasn’t changed much over the years. So, when we arrived at The Pig in the New Forest – a rambling country house hotel with a farm and walled gardens full of bright purple kale, garlic and cavallo nero – we were a little deflated. The whole place squealed “claw-footed tub”, but even with half of the south of England underwater thanks to Biblical flooding, the only room left at The Pig was in their Snug category – which contained a perfectly nice monsoon shower, and comfortable everything else, but alas no tub. Oh, well, them’s the breaks – and, given the havoc caused elsewhere by the floods, this was a middle-class problem for sure.

Instead, we took our half bottle of welcome fizz down to one of the lounges and cracked it open on a giant floral sofa, in front of the fire. (Crackling, in slightly sinister fashion, with hardback books, which a member of staff insisted “had to go, because they’re all mouldy”.)

The Pig is a typical, 21^st century post-Babington enterprise – the retired-from-clubbing generation’s idea of a country pile, where the spa and the wine list are as crucial as the scenery

The Pig is a typical, 21^st century post-Babington enterprise – the retired-from-clubbing generation’s idea of a country pile, where the spa and the wine list are as crucial as the scenery. Conversations on the oversized sofas revolve around various impending 40^th and 50^th birthdays, punctuated by the odd parental cry in pursuit of a toddler rampaging down the hallway: “Oscar! Oscar!” Husbands steal themselves away from supposed relaxation for an hour or so with their titanium laptops, settling into huge armchairs in corners, muttering over emails and the slightly erratic wi-fi: “Shit! F––k! Bollocks!” And then, curiously: “Bingo!”

The exterior of The Pig is classic, rural, English and stately. It dates back to the 17^th century. The interior look is straight out of Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality, all self-consciously dishevelled and ersatz Lady Haversham: trompe-l’oeil wall coverings feature artful cracks and reveal brickwork that isn’t actually there, while the main dining room (lest we forget this is a “restaurant with rooms”) is half conservatory, half greenhouse, and full of pot plants grouped on a gorgeous tiled floor. This is the rural experience refracted through the lens of London Fields and Casa da Abitare, right down to the floral Wellington boots lined up by reception, and the piped music: not quite Mumford & Sons, but certainly breathing the same air, alongside bursts of Fleetwood Mac. Then there’s the Radio 2 that filters through the breakfast room, giving an otherwise pretty space something of the ambience of a workman’s caff in Peckham. It’s ill-advised – yet it made me strangely nostalgic for childhood holidays in Eastbourne, where the same music would play as the thimbles of reconstituted orange juice would land on the tablecloth alongside metal teapots and toast racks.

We hadn’t wanted to eat at The Pig twice during our stay, so we asked for lunch recommendations. “Something, perhaps, with an open fire, bearded landlord and a shaggy dog? I’m sure you know what we’re looking for.” We took a 20 minute walk to The Snakecatcher in Brockenhurst village, which had any amount of CAMRA-worthy ale amulets decorating the bar, but one of the blandest Fosters and Wife Beater-led collection of beers on draft you could imagine. Vocoded hell bled from the back bar, along with the squeals of teenagers playing pool. Still, the sausage and mash was half decent. Here, dear Hackney dwellers, is a snapshot of the real British countryside.

The food back at The Pig is the real deal, and a big enough draw to keep tables full with Londoners who head down for a long boozy lunch before a stroll around the grounds and a 90-minute train journey back to town. Unless you’re veggie, go at the earliest opportunity. The 25 Mile Menu starts with a section of “piggy bits” (the smoked chilli and honey crispy pork belly and their twist on scotch eggs are both musts), then goes onto “starters and small plates (or bigger!)”, “literally picked this morning” and then the heavy hitting “forest and solent” mains.

The restaurant at The Pig

Service is excellent, although not always precise: I would have ordered a large portion of ricotta and wild garlic tortellini as a starter if I’d known there were only four pieces in the small version, rather than the eight I was told (I am the literal gourmand). The food itself varies from good to outstanding. A Hampshire chorizo and local artichoke risotto was the former, but also… odd; the pig cheek and garden herb crunch gave it the taste of posh Monster Munch. The Pig’s “Extraordinary” Bath Chap (essentially half a pig’s jaw) was far too much for one, but a joy to behold. “It’s all very… real,” was my partner’s comment, as he tucked into the Hampshire Hogget. And it is. There’s a taste of the terroir and the farmyard here. It’s earthy stuff. The shell of crackling on my Bath Chap was vast and crisp, and I think of it now, half-hoping to conjure it up at my desk. Inside, the flesh was soft and gelatinous; vegans, however, would weep at the sight of the piggy’s teeth, still set in the jaw. I finished with The Pig’s version of Arctic Roll, which came with forced rhubarb from the greenhouse. And then I rolled myself upstairs and fell swiftly into a food coma.

Quibbles? Well, I didn’t love waking to the sound of staff on their walkie talkies downstairs. And while The Pig can do just about everything in the kitchen, it can’t do coffee. On ordering two flat whites, we were warned, by a very apologetic waiter, that coffee was done by machine not by hand. What arrived was the antithesis of a flat white: a very tall mug, from which I spooned out (and filled a tumbler with) unnecessary foam. And the coffee that was left wasn’t up to much either. Not the worst I’ve ever had, but I wouldn’t have another. The cappuccino which came with breakfast was no better, although what it lacked in flavour it made up for with the silhouette of a pig on the foam, made out perfectly in cocoa sprinkles. It was something that I couldn’t resist Tweeting an image of, aware that in photographing the top of a cup of coffee, I had become the kind of person I despise. But it was cute. And solicited a cracking pun: “Hamericano?!” Which is, come on, admit it, actually pretty funny. Oh, and one other thing: they serve chips in flower pots. Which is the kind of Etsyfied toss that makes my butt cheeks clench with irritation. But apart from that, The Pig is one mighty, handsome, and delicious beast. C

The Pig, Beaulieu Road, Brockenhurst, Hampshire, SO42 7QL01590 622354
0845 0779494; thepighotel.com