If you go to Bruton, I recommend eating at The Old Pharmacy. It’s not cheap. £50 a head for a tasting menu (with wine); but stupendously delicious in a totally unpretentious, but brilliant way. I’ve now read about it. I didn’t feel it to be quite as local as it claims to be, but people in Bruton certainly take their meat seriously, starting out with fresh bread cut thin with slices of saucisson and a main course of pork with roast potatoes and turnip, with burrata and broad beans in between. As much Spanish, I thought, as local, but maybe that was the focus on flavour. Coffee ice cream to finish on a bed of mascarpone, crumble and salted caramel. It’s like a lot of Bruton: a form of heightened reality, like the Hudson Valley.
