I got an email asking what wine to have with turkey. Bloody hell. I would have the wine that is being served by friends who are cooking goose, duck, a damned good chicken, lamb or grilling a bleeding marvellous (literally) piece of beef. I wouldn’t drink wine with turkey because I hate and despise turkey. It is a fowl curse on the name of meat.

Invariably when we are served this filth one of two things will happen: Normally, the bugger will be totally dried out. it’ll taste of nothing and have the texture of dry cotton wool. All of those dry mountains of flavourless horribleness to hack through; I shudder to think of it.

The second thing that might happen is that you have a bird that has been injected with all the fresh water in Western Europe (jets of pallid fluid gush out when you cut into these) all so some hard of thinking mouth-breather can say, “Oh at least it is moist.” Moist? Is that such an amazing accolade? Sure, it has no taste and the texture of cotton wool, but at least the cotton wool is slightly damp. No.

“Turkey with all the trimmings”, must be one of the most hideously depressing phrases in the whole of the English language. It suggests food on the wrong side of ruined, served artlessly and ploughed through like mush from a trough, all whilst in the company of people who, at best, would all rather be elsewhere.

“Sweaty tests” is what I say to turkey, and so the question about wine with turkey would not work for me. I’d have the wine and not the turkey.

Our final appointment in our tour of South-East England dining establishments was The Hind’s Head Hotel. We’ve been there before, you can read the review here. This visit wasn’t such a success, but it couldn’t be helped.

We rolled up in Bray in plenty of time to have a pint and some bar snacks before lunch. It was really great to see Timothy Taylor’s Landlord on offer, it is one of the best pale ales there is. We ordered a couple of Scotch quails’ eggs and sat down to study the menu. The Scotch eggs were once again brilliant, but as we finished them off and thought about claiming our table the waiter came out and apologised profusely because they had been struck by a power cut. All of the ovens and fridges were off, the last things that came out of the kitchen were our Scotch eggs.

We were happy drinking Landlord and hoping it would be fixed soon. After half an hour or so the maitre d’ suggested we go to our table and have some cold starters. He was very apologetic, but clearly somewhat vexed. I asked how many covers he had for lunch, he said ninety with a sigh.

The cold starters were excellent. Carpaccio of Scotch beef with capers and shallots was damned good. Excellent quality beef with real flavour. A brilliant prawn and crab cocktail was Daniel’s other starter, which was certainly a top example of the genre. I love prawn cocktail; I’m so far behind that I am ahead. My potted shrimps were enhanced with paprika which gave them an interesting colour and a piquant flavour, delicious.

Then we sat around. Finally as the time approached for us to catch our train I went for a hit and miss and as I stood in the gents the lights flicked on. Bugger. We had to go.

After returning from our largely disappointing jaunt to the provinces I wanted to cook something new, simple, yet tasty for dinner. A recipe in Richard Corrigan’s excellent The Clatter of Forks and Spoons (itself based on a recipe in Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking) seemed to fit the bill.

The verdict

The sauce was a revelation. The combination of the buttery texture and flavour with the earthy grassiness of the snails and the not inconsiderable garlic finish was very successful.

We think the sauce would work even better with sirloin steak (especially on the bone), or with a trimmed rack of lamb.

Our version last night was further improved as we couldn’t find a small tin of snails, so we used the drained snails from a jar of Godard’s Cassolette d’Escargots au Beurre Truffé. They imparted a subtle but highly pleasurable character to the sauce. The next time we make this sauce, we’ll definitely use fresh snails and shaved black truffle.

We had heard so many good things about Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham that we had high hopes. A moment’s doubt crossed our minds when we saw the hideous dining room, but that wouldn’t matter as long as the food was all that we had been promised. It wasn't. Indeed, it was one of the most shockingly abysmal meals it has been our displeasure not to have avoided eating.

The menu was short and focussed, with a few interesting sounding dishes. As we read this they brought us a few amuses bouches. The cube of parmesan mousse dusted with chorizo powder was quite interesting. There was also a ball of deep-fried rice flavoured with cheese, this too seemed good. The final amuse bouche was a brownie tuile with basil cream which was staggeringly dull.

After we'd chosen they brought out a pre-starter of mushroom and coconut veloute with sage foam. The sage foam was pretty good, but the veloute really lacked flavour, it was bland. We would come to realise bland would be the best we’d get here.

Then things got really bad. We both ordered seared scallops with pig's head carpaccio and pear puree. It looked like a poorly-maintained compost heap. The slice of pig's head tasted fine, slow cooked but a bit mushy. The scallops, oh dear the scallops. They had not so much been seared rather used as a re-entry shield for the last space shuttle mission. Never have we eaten such leathery, dry and generally overcooked scallops. This was a shockingly, mind-bendingly bad starter and we should have walked out at that point.

My main course could have been served at any crap boozer in the country. There was a piece of utterly flavourless lamb (which at least was not overcooked) with a miniscule portion of tedious goats’ cheese mash and pointless grilled spring onions. The sauce it was smothered in was hackneyed, clichéd and trite: not so far away from pissy pub gravy.

Their attempt for Daniel was a random collection of things that had just been thrown together without any thought as to whether any matched. His piece of cod was overcooked and flavourless, there were some hellishly crunchy squid which they also must have started cooking in a thermonuclear-powered oven last week. There was a nice part to this dish, which was a slice of pork belly, but when you've been served a plate of mostly filth a slice of half decent meat does not really excite. It was all so bland. So very bland.

We didn't order dessert. Would you want more of this appallingly prepared, dull food? Not for us.

The wine list was dull, not the most expensive we have seen, but the shocking dreadfulness of the food and the horrific design of the dining room are more serious problems with this little restaurant of horrors.

Such a disappointment, we were so looking forward to it. We were prepared to give this place the benefit of the doubt if they had any slight misses, but it was far, far too horrible to do anything but hate it. I suppose it was pleasing that the restaurant was half empty. It is a bit of a mystery how supposedly reliable people can rate this shit, it was clearly sub standard.

Contact details Le Champignon Sauvage, 24-26 Suffolk Road, Cheltenham GL20 2AQ. Telephone: 01242 573449.

This review is going to be difficult to write as, whilst we both enjoyed our lunch, we found it lacking the spark of excitement that makes for a properly mind-bending repast.

I have to admit to not actually reading the menu, I was too busy looking at the wine list and making sharp intakes of breath every so often. There were a few good things on it but most I thought were excessively priced for merely ordinary wine. They had some Arlaud Clos de la Roche for a reasonable amount and we enjoyed that very much. Indeed, it was damned-fine wine.

We took the tasting menu in the hope that it would provide most fireworks. It started well with a little amuse bouche in the form of a blue cheese, celery and apple foam/soup. This was pleasingly delicate in terms of blue cheese character and the tiny cubes of apple in it made for an interesting texture.

Our first real course was something we have often cooked at home, confit of salmon. This was a terribly good example of the dish; the salmon had a brilliant texture and it was complimented by some crunchy apple pieces and some surprisingly characterful pickled mooli. The wasabi mayonnaise that came with this was compelling: subtle and with a good richness. After this we really felt we would do well with our meal.

We had a foie gras course which was just about decadent enough. The foie was in a terrine and put into a little sandwich of thin ginger bread with some quince chutney. This was perfectly acceptable, but we have had better foie gras at so many other places.

A serious disappointment followed. Halibut fillet with crab risotto and tempura of soft shell crab. The crab risotto was very good, with a powerful crab character and we loved the crunchy fun of the bit of crab tempura. However, the halibut was way too overdone. A lovely bit of halibut could have charmed us no end, so we frowned as we ate this shamefully ruined fish.

Our meat course was a properly good piece of saddle of venison wrapped in bacon served with red cabbage and sauce grand veneur. Venison normally doesn't hit our lewd spots, but this was rare and tender, with great flavour which was only enhanced by the bacon. Delicious. This and salmon were easily the dishes of the afternoon and were streets ahead of everything else.

Coconut foam with chocolate jelly followed. There was a lot of coconut foam, which was quite edible, compared to the small amount of chocolate jelly. This seemed more like a mousse than jelly and the coconut foam lacked foam character, so it sounded more interesting than it tasted.

Our final course was baked vanilla cheesecake with autumn fruit carpaccio, blackberry sorbet and the world’s most cinnamon-laced donut. The cheesecake was up to standard and Daniel liked the donut.

It was undoubtedly a competently prepared meal from some good ingredients; we did enjoy it. Yet, we left feeling a tiny bit let down. Given the cost and the accolades bestowed on the chef we were surprised that there was so little personality identifiable in the food. We'd have liked a bit more excitement. And the halibut a bit less cooked.

Contact details: L’Ortolan, Church Lane, Shinfield, Reading RG2 9BY. Telephone: 01189 888 500