The Angel in Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire, has a style and menu that would rival many restaurants - but proprietor Trevor Bosch is keen that his venue should be known as a pub.Head chef and co-proprietor Trevor Bosch has transformed the Angel from a typical pub food operation into an exclusive pub restaurant with a strong seafood bias.Trevor, a chef by trade, was trained in the hotel business and spent two years down under working in Aussie kitchens before returning home to the UK to work in country house hotels. The burgeoning conference business in that sector left Trevor feeling a little demoralised so, in April 1997, when the Angel, at Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire, came on to the market , he and engineer friend Steve Good, Trevor's "backer", decided to buy the pub.Being well connected with the culinary establishment, and having plenty of friends in the business, Trevor found himself a decent head chef, Donny Joyce, and a sous chef and basically set about transforming the old Angel into a new and exclusive restaurant.Prior to Trevor's arrival, the Angel had been run by a successful husband and wife team offering mainly bar food. Trevor's idea was to up the quality of the food and provide a more pleasing, less "pubby" environment for his customers.Restoration"It needed a lot of work doing," said Trevor, referring to the initial redecoration of the conservatory and main bar area and the construction of a new patio. "The whole place was very tired and dull and we spent a lot of time choosing natural colours. We restored the place to what it was," he said.During the pub's first two years with Trevor at the helm, inconsistent business patterns were a problem as he tried to gain a foothold in the area. While he was doing alright at weekends, the problem initially was mid-week as local customers were uncertain about the change of food style. As a result, Trevor's early years at the Angel were characterised by a menu which retained traditional pub favourites as well as Trevor's style of cooking. The previous owners of the pub offered customers a mix of fresh and frozen food.To grab customer attention, Trevor organised food and wine matching dinners, two-course ladies' lunches with a local guest speaker and a special "Champers and Chefs" dinner where leading lights of the culinary world, people like Eric DeBlonde and Murdo McSween, chose a course and cooked it for the customers."They did it to support me and provide the pub with local press coverage," said Trevor.Today, however, the transition has been a success and the pub specialises in fish and seafood which accounts for a large percentage of the menu. During Trevor's first year in the Angel the pub won Egon Ronay's Seafood Pub of the Year award. The pub also won the AA Seafood Pub of the Year 2001 for the region - and two AA rosettes. It quite rightly received a lot a valuable local publicity which Trevor described as "tremendous for the business". For Trevor, seafood is a passion and it has become a passion for his customers too. "It was the good reaction we received from our customers when adding new items to the menu, which inspired us to carry on producing innovative dishes," he said.When Trevor found himself working in country house hotels on his return from Australia, he was disheartened with the general lack of imagination and the obsession with traditional and classical grilled fish dishes. This gave him another reason to "up sticks" and take on the challenge of the Angel. It also inspired him to create more adventurous dishes for his new venture which, over the past four years, has paid dividends.DedicatedThe Angel offers 100 per cent fresh food which is prepared and cooked from what was a small kitchen. In June 1999, however, it was extended into the pub cellar. The kitchen refurb included raising the roof and building a dedicated pastry section, all of which was necessary to deal with the increasing level of business the pub was experiencing.Daily fish deliveries mean under-counter refrigeration and the fact that Trevor and his team make their own brioche and hot souffles is more than enough justification for a dedicated pastry oven. Both were added during the kitchen re-fit. Trevor's backer, Steve Good, builds extraction systems for Formula One racing cars - he was more than qualified, then, to build the Angel kitchen's extraction system!With so much fresh seafood on offer and deliveries coming in daily, how does Trevor cope? "Experience predicts what we will and won't sell," said Trevor, who changes the food offering on a daily basis and relies 100 per cent on a blackboard menu over the bar to accommodate any changes. Also, Trevor only buys a limited amount of raw ingredients. "If we do run out of, say, seabass, there are other seafood dishes," he added.Monkfish is particularly popular at the Angel at the moment and so is King Clip, a fish from South Africa which is described by Trevor as "white and fleshy and flavoursome".Trevor (pictured)and his team are in the process of designing a new menu. "In many restaurants the food suffers when the chef/proprietor is off, but Donny and I work well together and there is always one of us here," he said. For Trevor and Donny, menu planning is based on what is available at the time, and, of course, quality. The pub only plans a day in advance and bases everything around a telephone call from the markets and "a guy there who lets us know what's available".As for clientele, the Angel attracts a great deal of local business custom at lunchtimes during the week and regular customers in the evenings who come in two or three times a week for dinner. A lot of the local trade at night are people who tend to work in London during the day and, therefore, trade tends to be more adventurous when it comes to eating. Naturally, the question "is it a pub or is it a restaurant" has reared its ugly head. For Trevor, the pub tag is important because it makes the customers feel more relaxed. "We have quite a few locals in for drinks only but it is more the sort of place where you can expect to see women sharing a bottle of wine, or couples enjoying a meal," he said.The Angel offers a large wine list which is compiled by the pub's restaurant manager, Marc Morrison. "We have tastings and I go along but I don't have a vast wine knowledge," Trevor admitted.StaffThe Angel has six staff in the kitchen, most of whom were there from the word go back in 1997. "Some people dine at the pub and decide they want to work here," said Trevor.While the restaurant element of the business is key, there is a small amount of accommodation revenue generated by the Angel's three letting rooms. There is a possibility that Trevor might invest in a small bungalow to increase the accommodation available but, at present, the owner doesn't want to sell.The future looks good too. Trevor hopes to get a third AA rosette and possibly even another pub. Steve Good's original plan was for three pubs in five years. "We could seriously look at splitting in two and running a second pub, there are a fair amount of pubs on the market," he said.For 2001, however, Trevor and Steve are planning a new bar to handle the Angel's burgeoning wine trade which means new racking, refrigeration space and, for the pub's increase in diners, a small reception area.The Angel, Long Crendon, Bucks
