The Hand and Flowers
126 West St
Marlow, Wycombe, South East England
As it’s the only two Michelin starred pub in the entire UK it caught our attention - so we booked in for a visit. The Hand and Flowers is about an hour out of London but it’s a trip that is well worth making. Award winning chef Tom Kerridge has created a food lovers oasis here! Put it on your list.
We arrived a bit early for our booked time - and we’re so glad we did. There’s a lovely bar and lounge area and we decided to have a drink and enjoy the room while we waited for our table. The intriguing piece of slate in front of us had two different nibbles listed. The pork and paprika puffs immediately stole our attention. We were told by the waitress there that they were the pick - so we ordered some. They arrived in a surprisingly large bowl, all puffed and spicy. They were so tasty too - we ate way more than we should have! We of course also ordered some drinks - reds this time.
We then moved in to the lovely restaurant itself. It’s an old building that’s been lovingly looked after. You do notice how low the ceilings are though - just a little bit over six feet. After we were seated we ordered some more wine and a lovely selection of appetisers arrived. The house-baked bread and house-churned butter was certainly good. The cone of lightlky battered whitebait was delicious, as was the dipping sauce.
The half beer roast chicken was a big meal. Very big in fact. It came with Norfolk asparagus, 48 month aged Parmesan and mushroom crunch. It was eye-catching on arrival at the table with its shards protruding. The chicken was so tender and juicy as well.
Duck is always one of our top choices so we had the slow cooked duck breast with sugar cured rhubarb and soured duck fat onion and liver tart. It was such a pretty dish with great flavours. The duck was cooked perfectly and the tart was so tasty too.
We also grabbed a few side dishes. The pomme boulangerie intrigued us. We obviously knew it was potato based but weren’t completely sure beyond that. They turned out to be golden tubes of cruncy potato goodness. Delicious. To add some greens we also chose the cavalo nero with English mustard and crispy ham hock. This is the way we’d like to eat our greens from now on!
After your meal you can adjourn back to the bar and lounge area for another drink. We were tempted but needed to leave to head back in to London.
The Hand and Flowers isn’t your every day pub. It brings a whole new level to the overused term gastropub. This is the real deal.