It is a result that few, including the proprietors, would have expected. Harden's restaurant guide has introduced a new award for longstanding establishments and last week Mr Underhill's, Chris and Judy Bradley's restaurant with rooms in Ludlow, was named best all-round UK restaurant outside London, beating Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, the Rouxs' Waterside Inn, and other smart and well-known places. Compared with the London restaurants' scores, Mr Underhill's still comes out on top, taking scalps including Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley.
Mr Underhill's is named after a cat (deceased), but it's fair to say that among the top five, it is the underdog. Chris Bradley is a self-taught chef, the dining room is small and the premises, though lovely, are not grand. He and Judy, both 59, were considering retirement until recently.
Chris thinks their success is due to a deliberate step back from the culinary frontier. "When we started in 1981, in Suffolk, we were very cutting-edge, and it didn't work," he says. "We decided to get a little bit behind the wave, as they say, and found that was what people wanted."
When I visited for dinner (they don't do lunch), it was clear that Mr Underhills follows these principles. Everyone gets the same seven-course daily menu; each table looks on to the gardens; and the set price, £52.50 a head, is not at all bad at this level.
Everything, including the canapés and pre-dessert, is noted on a menu that stays on your table, generating a nice sense of anticipation. It turns out that salmon cornets, a signature two-bite dish from American chef Thomas Keller, are just as delicate and crisp when made bigger. The little duck liver custards were less successful: cute though far too cold to savour, signalling an over-reliance on the fridge for service from a small kitchen.
Nevertheless, Bradley's instinct for spare, clean presentation was effective on a pale plate of halibut with a luxurious smoked haddock cream and crisp shreds of green veg, and a main course of the best local fillet of beef with a creamy shallot and horseradish sauce and a buttery mini-pie stuffed with braised beef.
Chris and Judy Bradley are right; the cutting edge may be very sharp, but at Mr Underhill's familiarity breeds pleasure.
