This year's Classic Food Pub winner, the Waggon & Horses in the affluent village of Halam, just outside Nottingham, is a shining example of how the creative vision and personality of a good licensee couple can transform a very average pub into a thriving business.
Licensees Roy and Laura Wood have really stamped their mark on the pub in the short time - just 18 months - since they took on the Thwaites-owned site.
New to running their own pub, the couple nevertheless have a background in the leisure and service sector, with Roy having trained as a chef in top kitchens across Europe, and Laura an adept front-of-house professional who was bartender of the year during her stint working within the Bar Room Bar retail brand.
These skills have been well employed at the Waggon & Horses, with Roy taking charge of the busy pub kitchen and Laura very much in evidence on the pub floor and behind the bar. This keeps the Woods close to their customers, and ensures that they are able to constantly improve and adapt their offer according to customers' comments and reaction.
The pub itself has been transformed internally, with a significant refurbishment which has opened up the space and modernised the formerly very traditional décor while keeping some of the original features, such as the open fireplace. The tables are positioned so as to give customers a good impression of space. By keeping them bare, with no formal table settings or tablecloths, the pub has retained a more relaxed feel rather than going for the high-end dining market. This makes it very welcoming for customers.
Roy has spent a lot of time working on sourcing the best ingredients as locally as he can and has designed a menu which offers a classic slice of British pub cuisine - while using his evident talent to bring some unique modern twists to the dishes he creates. The prawn cocktail, for example, is served not in the usual stacked glass but on a wide open dish which showcases the amazing colours and layers; and a simple dessert, bananas and custard, is taken out of the realm of school dinners with some slick presentation and elevated to the classics. The traditional fresh vegetables are also given a bit of theatre, arriving at the table in steaming Chinese baskets.
This flair for the imaginative, while keeping to a very classic, simple pub food offer, really impressed the judges. So too did the couple's commitment to keeping the pub at the heart of its local community - offering up its car park for use during village school events and daily, for parents dropping off and picking up kids, for example.
In a very short time, the Woods have become a centre of village life as well as attracting a busy destination food trade, and their personal touches are obvious to every customer who visits. The offer is honest and simple, but never disappoints, and the welcome is as warm as any you'll find. Congratulations to a worthy winner!