The Fox Inn
The Fox Inn
Corscombe
Dorset
England
Tel: +44 (0)1935 891330
Serves lunch and dinner Monday to Sunda; bookings advised; children welcome; garden.
The Fox Inn looks too pretty to be real. Thatch snuggles down onto its clotted-cream coloured walls, lupins and hollyhocks grow along the front, and there are, indeed, roses round the door. Inside, you find stuffed owls in glass cases, old watercolours and shelves lined with demi-johns of home-made damson gin. The Fox Inn is, without a doubt, one of the loveliest pubs in England.
When the place gets busy, diners can spread into two rooms: the conservatory, a glorious room filled with just one huge, rough-hewn table, or the kitchen, with its Aga, old kettles and newspapers. As treacle tarts and braised lamb shanks are whipped out of the Aga, you feel you’re eating in someone’s home.
The food, from young chef, George Marsh, is unfussy country cooking and just right for the place: braised venison with juniper and redcurrant jelly, smoked ham and mushroom pie, and bread and butter pudding. They’re the kind of old-fashioned dishes you wish would turn up more often. The more contemporary fish dishes, such as roast sea bream with chilli and coriander butter, are based on sound ingredients and are wonderfully fresh and unadorned. But the food is only part of the Fox Inn experience. The place is genuinely rural, picture-book pretty and confers a great sense of ease. Definitely worth a detour.
