It was an old Ordnance Survey map that got us there. Light-bleached and dog-eared, I’d discovered it in the back of my father’s car not long after he’d died. One of those quotidian treasures that I couldn’t part with – not yet. Opening its fragile concertina, I carefully smoothed it out on the kitchen table for one last outing, one last hurrah for a stubbornly analogue relic before it was consigned to the ashes of memory. With an equally venerable felt tip and my old school ruler, we drew a wistful line down from Frome to South Petherton and north again to Cheddar – two sides of a jaunty, slightly arbitrary triangle that nonetheless inscribes much excellent making and eating in the south-west of England.
I’ll go there and eat and think of you, Dad – you with your love of aglio e olio, tinned apricots and Guigal Côtes du Rhône. I almost said it aloud, but there was no one there to listen except Fido, whose ears are attuned only to the poetry of ‘ball’, ‘bone’ and ‘basket’.
Bruton was the logical first stop. It’s now firmly on the food map – geographically if not demographically somewhere between Frome and Yeovil – thanks in large part to the Michelin-starred antics of chef Merlin Labron-Johnson at his flagship restaurant, Osip. ‘Farm to fork’ is a rather trite description of what goes on in the lime-washed, mid-century mod of the place. But it is accurate, to a point. Anyway, all you really need to know is that the food is exceptional. And that you should go there.
But this time we headed for Bruton central, which also has much to offer the passing gourmand: your choice of Matt’s Kitchen (one man, one tiny kitchen, one to watch), the good folk At the Chapel with their boutique resto/hotel/bakery, and more great field-to-frying-pan shenanigans at Briar, for example.
A studiedly unkempt 60-something emerged from the Bruton Museum as we parked. Linen shirt effortlessly crumpled, one button too many undone and Wayfarers atop what remained of carefully curated hair. Fido sniffed at a suede loafer as he passed by leaving a chem trail of expensive cologne. Welcome to Bruton, I thought as we turned away in unison towards our destination – The Old Pharmacy, Labron-Johnson’s other, more bistro-like place.
Entering through the wine bar come grocery store on the left, we were led across an empire-line slender hall to the bright dining room beyond. Old-school hip-hop played joyously in the background at convivial volume; it gave a wonderful frisson of iconoclasm and fresh NYC vibes to the Sense and Sensibility cut of the interior’s jib. Comfortably ensconced, Fido happily checking for stray chips under the table, I dived straight into a Masini, Matilde Rosato 2023 and my driver (aka husband) his very tasty kombucha. Full-bodied, chewy, rubicund (wine not husband), it worked well to coax the palate awake when chilled and turned into a really good food wine as it neared room temperature.
Unusually, you’re rather spoiled for choice on the rosé front, it being joined on the menu by a Chiaretto di Bardolino, a Tavel (the Gaël Petit family’s Postérité, Soixante-Dix 2023) and a Puglian Negroamaro from Cristiano Guttarolo (Violet, 2022). Someone here has a good eye for the pink stuff – Charlie the restaurant manager, it later turned out, stretching his Averys-trained wings across their pleasingly eclectic list. I spotted a Lambrusco over the page and a Malacari Rosso Cònero from Le Marche. Made mostly from Montepulciano, Rosso Cònero is the house wine in virtually every resto within miles of Ancona. I’d become fond of its unpretentious cheer while sunning myself there a few years back but it’s not a common find on UK wine lists (too unpredictable, too lacking in the necessary Adriatic views). Bravo. Brave.
On the food front, a wall-mounted blackboard promised smaller things and larger: a handful of each. You could create a trad starter/main course affair (à la russe) or go à la française, as you liked. We didn’t do either but grazed across the menu, wantonly, greedily (à l’anglaise?). In any case, things seemed to appear at their own pace, if more or less to the right rhythm. Landrace sourdough was the first up, accompanied by golden, salt-crusted butter. Landrace central is over in Bath but the spinning querns of their mill are close at hand, cheek by jowl with Westcombe dairy at Batcombe. How clever of the Pharmaciens not to make their own bread; with this superlative stuff around the corner, there’s little point.
We’d gone for something fresh and light to have with it – Iberiko tomatoes simply presented atop a tangle of agretti. The latter is one of those wonderful weed-like greens of which the Italians are inordinately fond. It’s also called monk’s beard (a direct translation of its other Italian name, barba di frate) and is a kind of samphire-like, fleshy green crunch with pleasingly saline-citrus notes. A little grated bottarga over the top ensured that the tomatoey juices were seasoned with intense savouriness that made for an unforgettable foil for the bread.
As we mopped and dabbed, a dish of al-dente sprouting broccoli with sauce gribiche arrived as if to announce that the French also had a place at the table. Sprouting broccoli’s earlier harvesting date usually means it is one of the tamer brassicae with less of that ominous sulphurous hum. Pairing it with egg therefore seemed a tad perverse. It maybe just that I have a rather dim view of gribiche in general; the unfortunate offspring of egg mayonnaise and tartare sauce isn’t a patch on either, as far as I am concerned. But the al-dente greenery and velvety mayonnaise textures worked well together and were at least familiar from other, arguably more successful, veggie pairings: asparagus, French beans etc.
The two dishes that followed were, however, exceptional. ‘Red mullet crudo with rhubarb and fennel’ had sounded intriguing enough on the board. What arrived was a lovely fillet of rouget cured to a delightful firmness that gave in blushing flakes to our impertinent forkings. A tangle of shaved fennel sat alongside, adding scandi anise, but underneath lay the real highlight – a rhubarb sauce of winning sweet-sherbety tang. Rhubarb is a classic accompaniment to oily fish but here it clothed the nakedness of the lighter mullet beautifully, soft filaments entangling the pearlescent flesh in its perfumed weft. Cleverly, someone had thought to serve it on a plain white plate, unlike most of the other dishes with their mismatched chintz crockery. It made for a perfect picture of a dish, painted in shades of rose, ivory and jade. We quizzed the super-helpful waiter on its genesis. The sauce had originally been made to accompany ice cream, she smiled, but some bright spark in the kitchen had thought to spoon it over their lunch-break fillet thereby giving birth to something rather special, we thought.
Its table companion was a bowl of creamy white beans (top-quality haricot, I think) garnished with artichoke hearts, criss-crossed by a trail of salsa verde. It was sweet, chalky-fresh and salty-savoury. A perfect dish for lunch, it went superbly with the fish (even the rhubarb) and dialled up the salinity of the pink wine nicely. Lip-smackingly so.
There was a single pud on offer: blood-orange jelly, custard and shortbread. Jelly and custard makes me think of institutionalised gastronomy, so we ordered it with no great sense of anticipation. But it arrived to banish all memories of NHS catering and boarding-school tucker. Valencian sunshine for the tongue and perfectly soft-set, it was the best jelly I’ve eaten. With a pinch of sea salt on top, a pool of just-thick-enough custard and the sandy snap of shortbread, it combined nostalgia and gentle innovation much to the credit of Chef Marc Ackland (and no doubt emanations from the Osip mothership).
The jelly seemed to embody the mix-and-match eclecticism, the Regency breakbeat, Hoxton-meets-Bridgerton charms of the place. Feels fresh, exciting I thought as we meandered back up Bruton’s pukka high street. And if you’ve got the chutzpah to spoon ice cream sauce on to your crudo then you get a big fat tick on me old Dad’s proprietary gastro map (at approx 51.1125° -2.45278°, for future reference).
Lunch with a couple of glasses of wine (for me) and a kombucha (for him) came to £45 a head.
The Old Pharmacy 3 High Street, Bruton, BA10 0AB, UK; tel: +44 (0)1749 813 111
Photos are the author’s own unless otherwise credited.
Note: Fido is the stage name of my dog. We keep his true identity secret for professional purposes.
