The Greyhound Inn - Pettistree

There’s a complex alchemy to a good gastropub. The greatest of them walk a tricky tightrope between delivering restaurant-quality food, but still conjuring the charm and atmosphere of a genuine public house. The menu should be more than simple pub grub, but not too highfalutin, the service friendly but still attentive. More and more, we want our gastropubs to serve up seasonal British ingredients at the peak of their seasons. It’s a lot to ask, but The Greyhound Inn is the rare gastropub that fulfils all the promise - a joyous local pub, serving utterly brilliant seasonal British food.

The Greyhound’s hefty timber beams, open fireplaces and low ceilings are typical country pub - anyone who bemoans the overly sanitised nature of modern gastropubs will be extremely happy propped at the bar with a pint. The menu is absolute magic, delivering peak-season British ingredients in all the ways we’d choose to eat them. Chunky spears of asparagus - fresh from a quick plunge in some boiling salted water - are dressed with quail eggs, anchovy mayonnaise and wild garlic leaves. We swipe fresh radishes through wild garlic cream and browse average house prices in the area.

Mains, impossibly, are just as good if not better. A beautiful piece of red mullet arrives, crispy skin up, nestled into a pile of Jersey Royals, with blanched monk’s beard and a generous pool of shellfish bisque. It’s every bit as good as it sounds. There’s little more to say about a spatchcock spring chicken with wild garlic chicken butter sauce, other than to repeat the words ‘wild garlic chicken butter sauce.’

If there’s one thing that food at The Greyhound lacks it is perhaps a touch of elegance, but it’s more than made up for by generosity and full-throttle flavour, and that’s what you want from a gastropub, isn’t it? The fact that everything is made in-house makes The Greyhound all the more superb. Does the perfect gastropub exist? That remains up for debate, but The Greyhound is mightily close.

The Greyhound Inn looks like something out of a fairytale, nestled snugly in the sleepy village of Pettistree, Suffolk, its historic facade is completed by a rose-hued door, climbing foliage and even a picket fence. Inside, the story book-feel continues, with a central dining room that boasts cosy fireplaces and low ceilings, studded with wooden beams.

But while visiting The Greyhound Inn might feel a little like going back in time (in a good way, of course) the dining concept is considered and contemporary, with a focus on a short seasonal menu, thoughtful wine list and local cask beer. Here, the team are dedicated to serving up the seasons and only use the freshest produce, meaning the menu changes often always giving guests something new to try.

You can check the website for this week's offering, which to give you a flavour of what to expect, is currently starters of wild rabbit with blood cake, pistachio and apricot terrine with stout mustard, alongside Isle of Wight tomatoes with stracciatella, lovage and bedlam farm radicchio.

For mains, guests might enjoy something like wild Suffolk bass with clams, Norfolk samphire, jersey royals and vermouth sauce, alongside extra special dishes like wood roasted Suffolk chicken with gem lettuce and vinaigrette, as well as chicken fat croutons aioli and smoked jersey royals and sage. Finally, for pudding, we love the sound of the wild strawberry ice cream, as well as the fig leaf crème caramel and boozy prunes.

If looking for something a little more casual, the team also put together a mix of bar snacks like Black treacle and rye sourdough and butter, hogget sweetbreads and rouille, and Mersea oyster with elderflower vinegar. There's also a selection of sharing dishes on the chalkboard and in the warmer months, a BBQ option over the weekends.