A good food market can be wonderful. In London we were pretty much limited to Borough Market and that certainly had some serious stuff. It also had countless tourists shambling around at a snail’s pace, stopping only to gawp like fools at every single item for sale in the market with the occasional extended pause to take multiple pictures of their friends blocking a walkway whilst standing in front of something mundane. There were also hordes of parents pushing around baby buggies the size of armoured personnel carriers whilst loudly sighing, groaning and looking incredibly put-upon every time someone had the temerity to get hit and severely wounded by their ludicrously outsized pushchairs. If you went there with the outlandish notion of procuring some food, rather than the more usual aim of inconveniencing everyone, it wasn’t the best of experiences. Now that I’ve been to the Hampshire farmer’s market here in Winchester, Borough market also seems ludicrously expensive and full of pretentious crap for the neurotic.

The Winchester market is quite large, with an impressive array of produce on offer of which everything we tried was excellent. Considering this uniformly high quality we were chuffed as punch to see that almost nothing was over-priced – we procured a decent quantity of food and drink and were surprised by how little it all cost.

I have very high standards when it comes to meat, even with burgers where basically only Hawksmoor’s efforts pleasure me. Consequently I was flabbergasted by the brilliance of the water buffalo burger from Broughton Water Buffalo. Perhaps a less masterful, involved creation than at Hawksmoor, but it redefined the pleasure possibilities of the basic ‘bit of minced, grilled animal in a bun’-experience. The meat itself was fascinating. It had clearly been given a bit of age to enhance its flavour and it wasn’t quite beef; perhaps more like slightly beef-tasting venison that was uncommonly lacking in terms of venison’s generally dry, tough nature. Ask for yours medium rare.

After over a decade of living somewhere where it was only the cheese shops that impressed me, it is great to be back in a city where the local cheese makes me proud. As soon as I nibbled a sliver Lyburn Farmhouse Cheesemakers 16 month old ‘Old Winchester’ (pictured above) a large chunk had to be mine. It has very mature, powerful flavours coupled with a rich creaminess and complex set of fruity flavours not dissimilar to those of ripe pears. It’s freaking scrummy, yeah! On our return to Elitistreview towers we had a comparison with the cat’s favourite cheddar, also a personal favourite, and despite their obvious differences neither of us could honestly say which was best. Old Winchester costs a little over half the price of Bakers Ploughmans Vintage Cheddar from Mr Waitrose’s shops.

We’d scored a couple of pints of Itchin Valley real ale to have with our lunch, but we needed a drink to battle the cold wind. A bumper of Mr Whitehead’s Hampshire strong cider and medium cider worked a treat. These were ‘real’ ciders of the type I have previously described as often having a slightly nasty character. The root of this character is that most real ciders are drank more than half an hour’s drive away from there they have been made, and so the cider is not fresh and in poor condition. These came from just down the road and were bursting with fresh fruit and a lively acid/astringency balance. And enough alcohol too. The Boxing Dog strong cider keeps banging me on the back of my head to ask if it really is the best real cider I’ve ever tried.

After buying some meat at Greenfield Pork Products, Hampshire’s supreme sausage champion, plus old English chipolatas and dry-cure streaky bacon from Beechcroft Editor Daniel was eager to get a bit of English pork inside him (as the sign and his visage in the picture below demonstrate).

He had to wait until we got home to have a mouthful of sausage when we fried up the Beechcroft chipolatas and made them into sandwiches with Old Winchester cheese inside some rather tasty bread flavoured with chillies and another local cheese. By arse, that was good noshing!

The sausage and leek rolls at Mud Foods looked delicious but there was only so much we could carry. We limited ourselves to the yummy-sounding sausage and black pudding pie that, as you can see in the picture below, is adorned with an adorable pastry piggy.

A couple of fun animal products were worth reporting. All farmers’ markets are contractually obliged to have a hog roast and if you buy one from one you are normally treated to a bread roll full of fat which if it has any meat attached will be dried out and flavourless. As we approached Greenfield Pork Products hog roast, pictured above, my nasal receptors screamed with ecstasy at being treated to some truly lovely pork aroma molecules. It looked and smelled far beyond the standard offerings.

As you can read on the sign in the picture below this lady from Kings Somborne Free Range Eggs was selling eggs judged as the best in a BBC Radio Solent contest. Audio-only doesn’t strike me as the best format for a comparative egg tasting. I suppose local radio cannot always have top-drawer content.

There were countless other bits of drool-inducing bits of animal that will keep us attending and buying from the market regularly, but just to be slightly unusual I’ll share some pictures of plant material that look surprisingly appetising.

The Fruitwise Heritage Apple stand pictured above (manned by a fellow who is a perfect match for my mental image of a committed orchard owner) had an impressive array of rare apple varieties. We got one of each which we shall taste and report upon soon – assuming Kisu doesn’t eat them first.

My final two pictures are of some amusing carrots and the most attractive living things I’ve seen from the Isle of Wight, a heap of ripe tomatoes.

As we walked home we discussed, between my heel pain-caused whimpering, the myriad of marvels we revelled in whilst at the farmers’ market. On passing Winchester’s reasonably impressive cathedral Dani annouced, “No, Winchester is not just so nice it could be abroad. It is as lovely as England should be, but so rarely is.” I suppose that is a compliment…

As you leave this monstrosity behind things just get worse. The walk up George Street to vague civilisation assaults your sensibilities with a staggeringly wretched collection of insipid chain drinking establishments and harrowingly lowest-common-denominator eateries. It is so repulsive that everyone walking along that road looks harassed and despondent; I lengthened my stride and tried not to think of jumping in front of passing traffic.

Getting to Broad Street is a positive relief. There may be countless shops selling over-priced tat for tourists, but there are some great sandwich shops (Morton’s is as good as ever) and Blackwell’s is a wonderful place to lose yourself in books for an hour or two. However, this is just a minor jolly in comparison to what lies down a small passageway at the end of the road – our destination, The Turf Tavern.

The Turf Tavern is a sprawling assembly of courtyards, outhouses and doors. These encircle and sometimes give access to a core of throbbingly busy rooms of irregular shape and head-crippling height. In these you can fretfully queue for far too long with the aim of purchasing samples from a multitude of wizard real ales that are invariably in cracking condition.

We had not just come to The Turf for quality bevvies, the prime draw was an appointment with erstwhile drinking-buddy ‘Stinky’ Geoff, the polymath number-cruncher and charismatic shower-phobe. Given our discomposure after the trek through the obnoxious end of town we were very grateful he left us at a table outside to get our breath back whilst he battled to score the first round.

Being tucked in the middle of several of the nicer buildings in Oxford the courtyards afford some good views. The picture shows a view of the tower belonging to my undergraduate den, New College. We are told the people who built the the tower and first parts of the college in the 14th century were housed al fresco in the very same courtyards which belonged to a pub even back then. We are also told that when it was built my college had a different name: the College of St Mary the Virgin of Winchester at Oxford. Unfortunately, there was already a College of St Mary the Virgin of Winchester at Oxford so my future home became the New College of St Mary the Virgin of Winchester at Oxford and eventually simply New College.

Geoff returned before we expired from the unseasonably hot weather with three pints of IPA, one of which he models in this picture. Sadly, for reasons that will become clear I cannot remember the staggeringly obscure brewer who made it, which is a bit of an appalling omission on a website that reviews drink and food. However, even though I found this example of IPA to be lacking a degree of the hoppy bitterness I want from such beers, it was in quite astonishingly good condition.

Real ale is a delicate beast that needs care and attention to stop it from tasting as noxious as every pint of London Pride I’ve been misfortunate enough to try. With the number of real ales The Turf has on offer it must take serious application on the part of the staff to keep them all showing as well as this pint did. They have maintained the good practices I first experienced two decades ago.

With several nights of no sleep behind me and one pint already improving my mental state continuing with booze to drink my way through the shagged-out barrier seemed the prudent strategy. I pointed Editor Daniel to one of the innumerable doors and asked him to kindly furnish me with the strongest beer they had on offer on the other side of it.

He did well, coming back with a pint of something that had a confusing name and a confusing alcohol level of 5.8%. Like many distinctly strong beers it had a suggestion of sweetness that was more than a little reminiscent of strawberry jam in aroma and flavour. This character is not one I particularly enjoy, but the mystery brew had just enough bitterness to give it an approximation of balance and, once again, it was in rude good health. This slipped down a treat and rather rapidly too.

Conversation was jocular and I had almost forgotten being incoherently tired, but the odd yawn showed I needed further fortification. Dani dragged me into the back bar to show me what he had found. It was truly the perfect discovery for the moment, a scrumpy (rough cider) clocking in with a migraine-tastic booze-quotient of 7.9%. A pint of that would keep me going through dinner and all the way back home.

It was remarkably clean, fruity and lacking filth-associated flavours for a scrumpy. We had to finish off rather quickly as Geoff had a college function to attend, but when I had those three pints inside me, crowned with the delight of chatting to a thoroughly spiffing old flame, it was abundantly clear to me that the pub experience could be one of supreme pleasure.

This fact has been underlined on at least one occasion before at The Turf. Fourteen years ago I had popped out of the lab for a swift academic half at lunchtime and at the table next to me I noticed an ageing lady sitting with a boy I’d guess was about five years old. She had a pint, he a small glass of lemonade (I suppose it could have been a beginner’s size G&T). Suddenly she fixed the lad with an intense stare and said to him, “Oooh, there is nothing like a trip to a good pub is there?” At five I might have lacked a large enough dataset to answer such a query with confidence, but, with the wisdom in advance of his years, the little boy annouced, “Yes Granny, I think pubs are great!”

After innumerable disappointing pints of Young’s beer at the King’s Arms in Oxford I generally feel distinctly less than thrilled about drinking in their establishments. Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised to find the Dial Arch offering four real ales on draught from different brewers. I had only heard of one of them, but that is par for the course for guest beers in boozers. Their keg beer selection was quite extensive with plenty of fizzy lager options for the hard of drinking. It was nice to see the wheat beer Erdinger on offer as I am rather partial to a pint or two of the stuff. So far, so good.

Then I made my first mistake: I ordered a pint of Addlestone’s, their draught cider. I like cider, ideally bursting with life and very slightly rancid fruit flavours; this stuff was as dull as dishwater. It tasted of perilously little and my kidneys can pass more alcoholic fluids after even a moderate night getting newscasted. This was a woefully insipid, lacklustre example of the noble cider genre.

My second mistake was ordering a pizza for lunch. The base seemed of reasonable quality, but the cheese was spectacularly characterless pap considering its hilariously high fat content. Moreover, the topping included far too many thick slices of wet tomato which resulted in the pizza being distinctly too soggy. Furthermore, its slices of pepperoni must have been made from tremendously thin slices of shoe leather baked long and hard enough to dry them out so that all trace of the feet that wore them, indeed any hint of flavour at all, had long since been incinerated.

However, my drinking chums were distinctly less hebetated by their choices of booze and claimed their lunch options were quite satisfactory, if a touch on the undemanding side. There are other positive points about the Dial Arch: children are allowed in but (joyfully) not after 8pm, if you want to risk the food it is possible to book on their website and finally there is a decent amount of seating including some snug corners to hide in. Consequently, this boozer is not sub-interest. Eating there might not be my first choice (although I do fancy trying their bar snacks and their pies, I love pies), yet I feel its range of beers could tempt me back for an occasional pint or two. I like an occasional pint or two. With the arrival of banh mi in Woolwich and now a boozer less themed on stabbing than most in the area perhaps one day in the distant future Woolwich residents may not be quite so appalled when they contemplate the locality they have chosen as home.

Contact details: The Dial Arch, Major Draper Street, Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, SE18 6GH. Telephone 020 3130 0700.

* Those of a historical bent might be interested to know the boozer is on the site where the Arsenal football team was founded, being named after the Royal Arsenal (at that time the biggest weapons factory in Europe) where they were based.

This perry is suitably charged with booze action, being 7.4%, but the thing I like best about it is its lovely, slightly sweet fruitiness. Nothing wrong with liking slightly sweet or fruity things, of course, and such drinks are not just for the ladies. I’m a big man and I feel quite at ease drinking this charming beverage. Yeah, a big man!

Westons make an excellent range of cider and perry. My favourite ciders of theirs are the Henry Westons Special Reserve Vintage Cider, which clocks in at a suitably heroic 8.2%, and their Organic Vintage Still Cider, tipping the scales at 7.3%. This last one is flat and comes in a three-litre bag in box. Despite this unattractive packaging, which suggests to some people that it is merely fuel for alcoholics, it is a really complex and interesting cider. More in the style that real cider twats go for instead of being a charming, fizzy fruit-fest, but it is properly good and not actively nasty. In view of this I would be fascinated to try their news release, pictured below.

It may only be 6%, it may be organic (which isn’t a factor that even remotely concerns me when I go drink shopping), but if it is up to the quality of the Still Vintage Cider, I can see it being characterful and compelling. I’ve got to look out for vats of this in the shops; I don’t think I’ll be disappointed by it.

We are told (by a most informative article on the Slate) that cider is going to be the next big thing in the US. This would be a Good Thing as real cider is a characterful, improving drink; we all need characterful, improving drinks from time to time. As the Slate article points out, most commercial ciders in the US are made from eating apples or concentrated apple juice; this means they’ll never be terribly complex or interesting expressions of cider. However, before we slag off our cousins over the pond let us not forget that the big names in cider over here in Blighty (Strongbow, Dry Blackthorn, Woodpecker and the like) are also filth made from concentrated juice. I’ve never had any of the US artisanal producers of cider mentioned in the Slate, but given the high enjoyment factor and general affordability of decent cider I’d suggest that my reader from the US keeps their eyes open for them. I’d be very pleased to hear your opinions should those ciders (or any other decent offerings) be found. Of course, if you see a bottle of Westons (who seem to make more high quality cider than it is possible to believe) or any of the other cider I’ve recommended, you should buy it and enjoy a taste of England.

Cheers!

There are better bargains out there at the moment. Ocado, the online supermarket, are selling Westons’ ciders at three bottles for four pounds. This means the wonderful, booze monster Henry Westons Special Reserve Vintage cider and the fruit-tastic Perry are now even better value. Buy some and have fun.