Melting into the Butcher's Arms: A proper chef cooking food you can’t wait to devour at a pub that didn’t need Michelin to make it a star. No wonder I'm swooning!

The Butcher’s Arms is a proper country pub, entirely without swagger, self-importance or pretence. 

Fires roar, ales foam and a long bar is steadfastly propped. 

There’s a fug of genuine bonhomie, too, as unfiltered as their excellent cider.

But the place has scant interest in dewy-eyed, soft-focus Tourist Board visions of Great British bucolic boozing. 

The menu at The Butcher’s Arms is short and unfussy, five starters, mains and puddings. The beef may be Hereford, the turbot from Looe, and the fish soup Cornish (pictured: fillet of beef with mini oxtail pie)

It’s a working village pub in Eldersfield, a blessedly untrendy part of Gloucestershire. And at a few minutes past seven on an icy February’s eve, the place is bloody rammed.

We fight through the good-natured scrum, where gossip is devoured along with the crisps, and happily flushed faces are plastered with two-pint grins.

And order glasses of something golden and Gloucestershire-brewed, looking in vain for somewhere to sit.

As we hover, uncertainly, a voice pipes up from somewhere in the throng. 

‘Have you booked for dinner?’ 

We nod and are sweetly pointed towards a small section to one side, where stripped pine tables sit alongside mismatched chairs. 

Because we’re not here for the beer, rather food. In this most un-Michelin like of Michelin-starred pubs.

Now there are famous pubs with stars, from Stephen Harris’s magnificent Sportsman to Tom Kerridge’s redoubtable Hand And Flowers. 

But these places come ready-barded with praise and adulation, immovable parts of the national culinary landscape. 

The menu doesn’t gush with the usual hyperbolic Michelin hot air, rather does what a good menu should – offer a glimpse into the very soul of the chef (pictured: red mullet with crab tortellini)

There, certain types spend longer Instagramming their food than actually eating it. Here, the other diners actually talk. To each other. 

Barely looking at their phones at all. Analogue castaways in a digital deluge, but civilised and grown up and entirely in keeping with the spirit of the pub.

Matthew, who lives the other side of the M5, has been raving about the place for a while. 

Chef/proprietor James Winter trained under Alastair Little and Stephen Markwick. 

Gilded pedigree, for sure, for these two are very serious cooks, hugely knowledgeable and deeply revered. 

Yet entirely unmoved by the transient fripperies of the modern restaurant world. They both cooked food you actually wanted to eat.

So, thank God, does Winter. Bread arrives hot, its crust glistening with oil and salt, like a blessed mix of foccaccia and fried bread. Damn, it’s good. 

The menu is short and unfussy, five starters, mains and puddings. The beef may be Hereford, the turbot from Looe, and the fish soup Cornish. 

But it doesn’t gush with the usual hyperbolic Michelin hot air, rather does what a good menu should – offer a glimpse into the very soul of the chef.

The prices that won’t scare the gee-gees. Exceptional service too. In short, I fell swooning into The Butcher’s Arms. Because this is one pub that doesn’t need Michelin to make it a star

I have octopus to start, one vast, plump, charred leg, of such sweet, smoke-scented softness that I actually pause in mid-bite, dumbstruck by its majesty. 

In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten cephalopod quite as splendid. It’s fist-pumpingly fine, bathed in a ginger and soy sauce, and accompanied by a neat but generous pork dumpling, the immaculate pastry just about holding back the oinking mass within. 

This dim sum would impress in Royal China Club. But here, as one part of one dish, among a multinational menu of French, Scottish and Italian, it’s exceptional. 

Spring onion and cucumber salad, spiked with rice vinegar and mustard seeds, offers bracingly acidic relief. 

Although the dish wears its flavours like an exquisite silk kimono, the art is in the holding back. Winter not only knows how to cook, but when to stop, too. A mark of true culinary nous.

But there’s more. Smoked eel, sitting atop a melting slice of rolled pork belly, is heavenly surf and turf. 

The main players are assured and handsome, but it’s the bit parts – a few luscious cubes of mango, and the earthy yet sparky beetroot chutney with cumin seeds – that bind the dish, moving it from good to truly great.

A main course of pigeon comes pink, rather than bleeding, and on the bone. 

The meat is elegant and subtly liverish, like a partridge that’s been to finishing school. Why don’t I eat more squab? 

This is a bird that has it all. A neat pile of Robuchon-style, butter-drenched puréed potatoes is there to soak up a gravy of profound depth, while peppery balls of deep-fried haggis offer crunch and punch. 

On their own, each element sings, but together, they become the choir eternal.

Matthew raves about his venison faggot, the web-like caul fat still just visible, the flavour marked but not overbearing. 

As for the splodge of home-made black pudding – it may be closer to boudin noir than British, but this is porky art. Again, there are no extraneous bits. 

Every part plays a role, and each dish is perfectly contained. There’s a generosity of spirit, along with total mastery of flavour and texture. 

Food to thrill, delight and revitalise a rather jaded palate.

Then pudding, and fresh, brown-sugar-coated doughnuts that transport me back to the 1983 Linfield Fair, and my grandfather’s face, puce and scrunched up, as we spin round and round, faster and faster, in the low-slung seat of an old-fashioned Waltzer.

There’s a scoop of bitter, chewy, boozy chocolate ice cream and a blob of flawless lemon curd. 

All this, and at prices that won’t scare the gee-gees. Exceptional service too. 

In short, I fell swooning into The Butcher’s Arms. Because this is one pub that doesn’t need Michelin to make it a star.

Lunch for two minus drinks: £90

FIVE MORE TO TRY

Pubs with great food

THE HARWOOD ARMS 

FULHAM, LONDON  

harwoodarms.com 

Brett Graham of The Ledbury is one of the owners, so standards are high. His partner, Mike Robinson of The Pot Kiln, really knows his game too. So expect game in season, one of the best Scotch eggs in the capital and Sunday roasts to rule them all. 

THE SCRAN & SCALLIE

EDINBURGH 

scranandscallie.com 

Tom Kitchin’s pub, of which he is co-owner, cooks up classic Scottish food, with the occasional French flourish. The steak pie is divine

THE TREBY ARMS 

SPARKWELL, DEVON 

thetrebyarms.co.uk 

The food is skilled and quite sophisticated, but never fussy or mucked about. Chef/proprietor Anton Piotrowski is seriously talented, and makes the most of local produce. Dishes both elegant and full of flavour. 

THE ANCHOR & HOPE 

WATERLOO, LONDON  

anchorandhopepub.co.uk

This Waterloo stalwart serves up modern British food, with a few European dishes. Flavours are hearty and robust, but the cooking precise and generous too. A London classic. 

THE HAND & FLOWERS 

MARLOW, BUCKS  

thehandandflowers.co.uk 

OK, so it has two Michelin stars. But the great Tom Kerridge takes great British dishes and gives them an haute cuisine makeover, without ever losing any of their fundamental appeal. Big flavour, and generous in every way. 

TASTY READS

Martin Parr is a great chronicler of British life, a photographer who sits between artist and documentarian. Real Food is filled with photos of everyday items, taken across the world over 25 years: buttered white bread, ice lollies, tacos, hotdogs, cream teas and gravy. It also has a wonderful introductory essay by Fergus Henderson of St John. Pure understated very British brilliance.