Native at Netherwood Estate, Worcestershire

We first dined at Native five years ago when they had a place near Borough Market and I really enjoyed their inventive use of native ingredients: they served us aged ex-dairy cow before it was trendy, and Kentish wood ants on our pea pod ice cream. White chocolate and bone marrow caramel served in the bone. It all worked really well and made me smile.

So now they’ve moved into the absolute wilderness of the Worcestershire countryside, taking over the dining room that used to be Pensons, and since we were visiting the area we decided to stop in for the short version of their first tasting menu. The dining room is a stunner, high ceiling and impressive woven light fittings like giant weaverbird nests, huge windows out onto the country garden.

The menu kinda underwhelmed me, though, probably because of what I had been expecting. After an excellent snack-bite of sticky duck leg wrapped in a shiso leaf and some very good sourdough with a nut-brown crust we went on to… chalk-stream trout. Gently cooked and with a crisp skin, served with a beurre blanc of woodruff. I’m not sure the earthy-hay flavour of woodruff really goes with trout, but it was mostly overwhelmed by the salty bites of trout roe on top.

The main was… Creedy Carver duck. Aged to intensify the flavour, served with a smoked beetroot puree and sliced roast beetroot. The beetroot was a golden variety called Flaming Barrel, beautifully sweet, and the smoked puree was a splendid relish for the duck. Excellent gravy. Overall a very nice main.

Dessert was blackcurrants with buttermilk icecream and a good blackcurrant leaf foam. Nice flavour but one of those textureless dessert you scarcely notice. It was served with a tempura blackcurrant leaf, but this had a bitter flavour and the tempura was heavy and oily and overwhelmed the delicate leaf. The bitterness didn’t come from the leaf – I ate one of the leaves that dressed the plate, just to check! It was much better without the batter.

Apart from the tempura leaf, good cooking throughout. But I try to blog my personal reaction to a meal, and after ex-dairy cow and wood ants this was just… unmemorable. Chalk-stream trout and Creedy Carver duck? Sounds like the menu at a thousand 2-rosette country house hotels. I suspect we were just unlucky – there’s every chance their first menu was just playing safe while they settle in and explore their new surroundings (they’d only been open 2 months!). The short menu was £65 before drinks. But there we go: I’ll only likely return if I start seeing rave reviews from all the nationals and the best bloggers!