In the first of a new series we look at the small things that help make a good business great.
This month Mark Taylor talks to Robin Couling, chef/proprietor at the Falcon, in Poulton,Gloucestershire
Bar fittings
We went for the quite trendy Celli pumps and taps, which are widely used in stylish city bars,but quite unusual in a country pub. They're design-led, they work well and they're easy to use. It adds another dimension to the bar. We chose to put the Budvar on its own fount to make more of a feature of it and we sell loads of it - it's now our best-selling lager.
French Laundry Cookbook
The French Laundry is probably the best restaurant in the world at present, which is a good enough benchmark by which to set one's standards! Thomas Keller's food is original, intelligent and sometimes witty, yet he still keeps his feet on the ground with the food being squarely grounded in classic French style. He uses a few influences from further afield, but generally uses first-class ingredients treated with a huge amount of skill. I would dearly love to go and eat there. The presentation of the book is also excellent, although not one for the amateur home cook,perhaps, as the technical elements of the book are really quite advanced.
Fudge
We make everything on the premises and that includes the fudge we serve with coffee. The recipe is very basic and comes from the classic Carved Angel Cookbook by Joyce Molyneux and Sophie Grigson. It's very easy and is based on evaporated milk. More pubs should make their own canapés and petits fours because people like little touches like that.
Coffee
We get all of our coffee from Peter James of James' Gourmet Coffee Company, Ross-on-Wye, who is more passionate about his subject than anybody I've ever met. The coffee is excellent. We wanted a rich blend and he does one called Formula Six, which is his personal blend. We were trying to find a coffee supplier and my mum went to Abergavenny Food Festival and just picked up Peter's card. I went to see him and he made me coffee and I was just bowled over by the quality and the operation. We also use his Colombian decaf coffee which is also amazing, and he even got us an Italian coffee machine,which cost us £2,500.
Vanilla pods
Vanilla is a luxury but it's a kitchen essential. It can be a principal flavour, it can be an enhancer and it can be used in savoury dishes as well. It needs an educated hand and respect in the kitchen, though, because it can be overpowering. Vanilla can elevate dishes to a different level and it brightens the other flavours. You can't do without it for really good desserts. We use the Madagascar vanilla pods and they're very expensive but worth it. The price shot up recently, but it's an essential ingredient as far as I'm concerned.
Beef
All of our beef comes from Chesterton Farm,near Cirencester, which is a short distance from the pub. We've used them from the start. They're not the cheapest around, but other butchers in the area have brought samples of their meat, which we've cooked for blind tastings, and the difference is remarkable. The Chesterton Farm beef is aged for a minimum of 14 days and often twice that. We get consistently good comments from customers about it.
Chesterton is accredited to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and all the meat is fully traceable. We usually use the short horn, longhorn and Dexters - all breeds reared for their flavour and eating quality. Smaller animals means more expensive meat, but people are more aware about meat these days and are prepared to pay for quality. When you get used to working with meat like this, the stuff in supermarkets looks horribly artificial.
Bread
We make our own bread every day. I don't know why more people don't make the effort because it doesn't take that long when you're making it regularly. We bake three different kinds of bread each day, including sandwich loaves and foccacia. We make a big batch of bread in the morning and from a cost point of view, it costs peanuts. We get flour direct from Shipton Mill and we pay about £10 for a 32kg sack which goes a long way - about 60 or 70 loaves - and it costs about £1.50 for more yeast than you know what to do with. People don't seem to have the inclination to make their own bread, not even some of the good gastro pubs, which is a shame.
Chairs
All of the chairs in the pub are from a church in Gloucester. Three ladies came in for lunch and it turned out they were church wardens. They asked us if we wanted to buy some church chairs. They had about 300 of them and only wanted £5 each for them. It just happened that on that day we had a van so we bought 65. They're 80 years old and made of elm. We've had a couple of casualties but they're sturdy and full of character. We were even thinking about slotting the menus into the bit at the back where they used to put the bibles or hymn sheets, but we decided that might be taking it a little too far!
Pickles and preserves
We started making our own pickles and preserves last year and now have four products - pickled onions, spicy pear chutney,onion marmalade and plum jam - which sell for £2.95 a jar. The idea came from my time at the Carved Angel in Dartmouth,which has always made its own pickles and preserves. We sell a lot of them now.It's the kind of thing we may even develop in the future and we've even thought about selling our bread as well.
Wine glasses
We've gone for widely available, decent sized large crystal wine glasses, rather than those horrible grotty little Paris goblets they have in a lot of pubs. My background is in the wine trade so it's something close to my heart. I think good glasses enhance the wine so much. These have long stems, big bowls,thin glass and are nice to drink out of. We get them from Pattersons, a catering wholesaler in Bristol.
Presentation of drinks is always something I'm trying to drill into staff. Wine's a huge seller and people now come back for the wine as much as the food. We try to strike a balance with our wine list because commercially you have to have a few wines that people are familiar with because you just don't sell it otherwise. We've got a single vineyard Italian Pinot Bianco for £24 which is really good, but people don't know what it is and won't order it.