The Devonshire Arms

This will look like a vendetta. It's not. It's ignorance, though of a respectable Lefty kind. When, a few weeks ago, I slagged off the Devonshire Arms Brasserie at Bolton Abbey it didn't for a moment occur to me that the word Devonshire in the title denoted ownership by the Duke and Duchess of same. So when I decided to review another pub called the Devonshire Arms, this time on the edge of the Duke's Chatsworth Estate, I didn't realise I was honouring his lucky Grace with my opinions for the second time in about a month. I liked the decor of this one more than the first – both it turns out, overseen by the Duchess. It's smart and clever, a vivid multicoloured-stripe motif splashed around the old inn much like the flamboyant lining to a classic Paul Smith suit. The bedrooms are comfortable; the staff efficient and friendly. Breakfast, the dangerous sort you only eat when away from home, is big on pig and at dinner the night before I saw unfussy dishes going out: sausages on pillows of mash; fruit-bowl-sized pieces of battered fish. If you are waiting for the other shoe to drop cover your ears now, because this one is going to make a serious clunk. I could not, in all good conscience, eat those dishes. There is another menu of more complicated stuff and because I am here to serve I had to eat from that instead. I want to accentuate the positive. The kitchen is competent. They know how to cook pieces of meat and fish. But then, lord save us, they will insist on having ideas with a capital 'I'. The result is less a set of dishes than something a coroner should investigate. Take a special listed as "Crispy hand-dived Scottish sea scallops, sweetcorn purée, white asparagus, roasted apple purée, cinnamon toast, cafe latte". Exhausting, isn't it? Let's ignore the fact that telling us they come from the sea is redundant, given they are unlikely to have come from the stream out back. Or that they weren't at all "crispy". The other ingredients are tooth-achingly sweet. It needed acidity and didn't get it. It read cacophonously and ate like it. The little rounds of cinnamon toast were not a wonderful thing. The only positive: I could not detect the coffee. Another special of "Chinese style" salt and pepper squid, would have been taken as an insult by a genuine Chinese kitchen. It was rubbery and also strangely sweet. Cold rings of a squid "sausage" stuffed with minced mussels then sliced and sprinkled with sour berries was just plain odd. Of the main courses the best was sea bream with a "root vegetable ratatouille" which was nothing of the sort. A roasted loin of pork, again cooked with skill, was let down by accompaniments. "Crispy cardamom sprouts" were doughy dumplings that did not taste of cardamom. Beetroot jelly was more of an under-flavoured relish. The whole was then slathered in a cream-heavy mustard sauce. The real clunker was the corned beef hash , which I'm sure could have been lovely, were it not that it had been bombarded with salty capers and then beaten into submission by an equally salty, sticky gravy. Given the location, a Bakewell tart should have been a killer. It was heavy and dull. The crème brûlée would have been great, minus the lumps of mince pie that had been broken into it and sat there like the distressed wreck of a galleon. The lemon tart, an apparently unbaked affair with a crushed biscuit base filled with something lemon posset-like, was advertised as the "chef's mum's recipe". Often, when I criticise a chef, it's their mother who emails to complain. This time I can address the chef's mother directly: it was absolutely fine, exactly the sort of thing you might teach your darling boy, but not a patch on a real lemon tart. Sorry. With mains in the teens, a meal here is not cheap. It is also hugely disappointing, because this lovely inn promises something entirely other. Blimey. It seems I've dissed the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire again; that's my invitation for a Chatsworth Estate mini-break buggered up.