Published 30 July 1995 Sunday Telegraph By Craig Brown
Up Hunstrete: 'A gem of a hotel, especially - or perhaps only - if you have money to burn' (Peter Payne)
It was not until some time into our first course that my wife glanced into a mirror and saw the face of Mr Michael Winner reflected back at her.
Mr Winner, the film director, was, it transpired, eating at the opposite end of the hotel dining room, but we were hidden from him, and he from us, by two other diners. My initial response was one of cowardice: though I had often called Mr Winner slightly unpleasant things in print, such as the most revolting man in the world, I had never been in the same room as him.
My second reaction was one of pity for the staff of Hunstrete House. Mr Winner is the restaurant critic of The Sunday Times, and the odds against two restaurant critics from two different Sunday newspapers appearing for the same meal in the same hotel in the middle of nowhere must be very, very long indeed.
My third and final reaction was one of curiosity, for Mr Winner's restaurant reviews consist of loving descriptions of the immensity of his own wealth, wit and importance, supplemented by sporadic outbursts agianst the chef and staff of whichever restaurant he has deigned to visit. How would he match up in real life?
Alas, we were out of earshot - the only Winner comment I managed to pick up was ". . . and it goes to show what salaries they can command these days" - so my impression of him was only visual, gained by stealthily leaning forward, then leaning back again whenever he seemed about to look round.
His own technique as a restaurant critic was, as I had suspected, very different from others. Most of us book under false names, keep our heads down and quietly take notes when no one is looking. But not Michael Winner. No one could have been more Michael Winner-ish that evening than he: most of his meal was occupied by summoning this, that or the other member of the hotel staff to his table to hear what he had to say.
This impression of a pantomime version of Lady Bracknell was aided by his use of pince-nez on the end of a stick to peruse the menu. But his table manners, I was interested to note, owe less to the plays of Oscar Wilde than to the Aliens series of science-fiction films: when an item of food on the end of a fork comes within a foot or so of him, his head leaps forward, his mouth opens wide and within a split-second the item has disappeared into the Winner stomach, never to return.
Alas, restaurant critics are employed to review not restaurant critics but restaurants, so here we must leave Mr Winner as he chomps and barks away, in order to embark on a broader review of the hotel itself. Hunstrete is, I would say, a gem of a hotel, especially - or perhaps only - if you have money to burn. Hunstrete is a long Georgian manor house with outstanding Victorian walled gardens with long flower lined avenues, all beautifully kept. The garden borders on a deer park, and the deer, young and old, pose obligingly for passing guests.
On the back of the hotel postcards is the strangely off-putting and ambiguous slogan: "Relax in style and comfort with standards you had forgotten existed", but though the slogan may be clumsy, the aim seems to have been reached. The hotel is owned by an organisation calling itself Arcadian International plc, but it has a pleasantly uncorporate air of extravagance and trust about it, with fine furniture and paintings, and the extras upon which other hotels generally scrimp - bathrobes, portable radios, bubble bath and so forth - all large and lavish. The swimming pool is one of the prettiest I have ever seen, set in its own little garden 100 yards from the hotel.
The final bill for a nights stay is breathtaking - it cost around £500 for two rooms for us and our children, plus dinner for two - but given the general standards of cosseting and grandeur, I still find it hard to see how the hotel could be profitable.
The service is attentive (as our daughter got out of the car, the delightful receptionist rushed to do up her shoelaces) but with none of that patronising air familiarity that can be found in so many hotels that boast of being "family run". My only real criticism throughout our stay was that the ham sandwiches we ordered for our children's tea were mean and stringy.
Our dinner was very definitely in the tradition of the country house hotel, with lots of heavily reduced sauces and an ample sufficiency of Spirograph-style patterning with the vegetables, but it was also, by and large, jolly good. The dining-room is stately but not unfriendly, with two chandeliers and a variety of Reynolds-style paintings of the type of pasty-faced people one would always prefer to see safely in portraits rather than sitting next to one at dinner.
The set dinner menu is £29.50 for three courses with coffee and chocolates. I started with an amazing salad of perfectly poached quail eggs, each resting on a roast quail breast, all of them surrounding a bed of lettuce which was itself topped b y incredibly finely cut strings of fried onions, arranged in a Hendrix-style hairy globe. My wife had a salad that included virtually everything on could think of, like one of those text-book diagrams for teaching children French. Among the ingredients, all arranged very prettily, were fried red and yellow peppers, skinless tomatoes, avocado, radishes, mushrooms, parsley, cucumber, and more Hendrix onions.
Having admired the deer in the park earlier in the day, I heartlessly chose the roast loin of venison for my main course. It was perfect, and came in neat bite size chunks, with lots of bits and pieces loitering, including dauphinoise potatoes, sweet little carrots, chopped-up mange-touts and mushrooms. My wife had another starter as a main course - a crab, spring onion and ginger tart, which she awarded 10 out of 10.
Over a fine summer pudding, I began to worry about how I would get out of the dining-room without Michael Winner seeing me, as he was positioned opposite the door. I even thought of darting headlong through an open window, but finally I summoned the courage to ask a waiter if I might leave by the kitchen exit. This was a request to which he unblinkingly agreed, leaving me with the impression that this was something everyone always requests whenever Mr Winner comes to stay.
