William Sitwell reviews The George, Peak District: ‘Excellent cooking – but too much goddamn information’

telegraph.co.uk:

comprehend.Within this cosy pub – dark stone mixed with grey-black walls decorated with jolly photos, wine bottles, antlers and currency pinned to the rafters – I’m looking at the menu and thinking fondly of the ugly service station I once stopped at near Châlus in Limousin, south-central France, where I ate a perfect bavette steak and crème caramel.And I’m studying this menu and thinking that it is when a petrol station serves an impeccable bavette that you know that a nation is at culinary ease with itself.

It offers simple perfection as a matter of course. But we’re not there yet. Our service stations – bar the wonderful but excruciatingly expensive likes of Gloucester services – are an international embarrassment.Just drive across Austria and be utterly amazed by what they are doing, then come home and feel deep, rotten shame.

I dream of a time when you can eat well at a petrol station – and when every decent pub doesn’t feel the need to be a Michelin-star-tilting restaurant.So here I am at The George, and while for lunch I’m not quite confronted with a tasting menu, I’m still left yearning for a little of that stunning, rural simplicity.Instead there are 10 dishes including the bread – and the professional, friendly hostelry staff have suggested we have them all to share.

The order seems sensible, like a well-planned album. Smoked carrot will give way to beef tartare, then lobster, fish, lamb, peach, cheese and apple.