The Merry Harriers

Hambledon Road

Habledon, Surrey GU8 4DR

BY NEAL MARTIN | JULY 12, 2024

The Food:

English radishes & whipped cods’ roe

Scotch egg with brown sauce

Cured chalk stream trout with peas, broad beans and dill

Wintershall pork leg with crackling, crispy pork belly and potato salad

Jamaican ginger sticky toffee pudding & whisky toffee sauce

The Wine:

2021 P & J Teulier – Le Cros Marcillac    88

Though I thoroughly enjoy a peripatetic life gourmandizing around the world, nothing beats eating locally. Make that, eating well locally. Sadly, my hometown comprises cheek-to-cheek chains churning out the same old fare, pre-manufactured on some industrial estate outside Staines or Dartford. It’s depressing both for myself and my tastebuds. I envy those who live abroad and whose towns burgeon with characterful restaurants with human faces rather than brand names. Across the UK, cash-strapped councils hike up rents so that only cash-rich restaurant chains can afford them, squeezing out independent bijou eateries that help form a town's lifeblood and unique thumbprint.

The Merry Harriers facade

Hilltop Kitchen opened a couple of years ago, around a 20-minute drive from my home. You can tell it is a great place to dine before you’ve sat down, and I fell in love with it immediately, prompting me to compose a Vinous Table as soon as I returned home. The only downside is that Hilltop Kitchen is so small, with just five or six tables. Word of mouth means it’s fully booked weeks in advance. During that lunch, co-owner Sam Fiddian Green mentioned plans to expand and that he was currently scouting the area with business partner Alex Winch. Green briefly mentioned a nearby pub that he had his eyes on.

That turned out to be The Merry Harriers in Hambledon, which I should point out is not the same as the well-known English sparkling wine estate. In its former incarnation, the pub was popular with families with kids who could ride one of the alpacas across the land that stretches out the back. The alpacas have migrated to new pastures, and the pub has undergone a complete refurbishment. In fact, work had not quite finished in the rear garden, though the interior looks the part with its tasteful olive-green hues and rural décor. It looks smart and classy - even the toilet looks retro-fabulous. On this occasion, we went for lunch, but I have plans to revisit for dinner.

English radishes & whipped cods’ roe

The menu is brief: four or five options for starters, mains and desserts. Lunch and dinner menus are roughly the same, with a few tweaks, such as the obligatory fish ‘n chips available during the day. After the impressive showing at Hilltop Kitchen, I hoped I would find the same standard of fare at their second outpost.

The good news is that The Merry Harriers delivers.

Scotch egg with brown sauce

You can pay through the nose for some fancy Michelin-starred restaurant in London. However, what they provide here are ingredients either reared or grown on their own family farm or just a few minutes away, resulting in the quality of those ingredients shining on your plate. A separate page lists all the local sources for their produce so diners can see precisely where everything is grown or grazed. For that reason, the kitchen doesn’t over-complicate anything. There’s no need.

We commence with three shared starters. The English radishes and whipped cods’ roe are outstanding. So simple…but so effective. The radishes make an audible crunch as you bite into them. They taste as if they were wrenched from loamy soil that morning, packed with more flavor than the ones I buy in Guildford market, which themselves are twice as flavorsome as anything you’d buy in a supermarket. These beauties come from their own vegetable patch located at nearby Hilltop Farm. Even the leaves were scrumptious. I couldn’t stop munching them. Combined with the cods’ roe, mixed with lemon juice and red wine vinegar, it is a healthy and satisfying dish.

Cured chalk stream trout with peas, broad beans and dill

The Scotch egg with brown sauce is to die for. I wish I had the chicken’s address to send her a thank you note. The egg has perfect runniness, which is always crucial; the minced pork filling is lightly seasoned and light in texture to avoid any heaviness, and the crumb exterior has perfect crunch thanks to the Scotch egg blasted at a high temperature. The homemade brown sauce, whipped up from two kinds of mustard, white wine vinegar and a dollop of brown sugar, is fabulous, quite tart and sweet to lend an edge to the whole dish.

Perhaps best of all is the cured chalk stream trout with peas, broad beans and dill. The trout glistens on the plate with a luster indicative of its freshness. The broad beans are just al dente and partnered with the dill and pea purée. This is another dish whose simplicity is disguised with supremely well-sourced ingredients and a deft touch in the kitchen.

Wintershall pork leg with crackling, crispy pork belly and potato salad

To finish, it has to be the Jamaican ginger sticky toffee pudding and whisky toffee sauce served with a blob of mascarpone ice cream. I can’t write too much about this; otherwise, I will start dribbling over my keyboard.

Jamaican ginger sticky toffee pudding & whisky toffee sauce

The wine list is a bit perfunctory at the moment, although I was reliably informed that there are plans for expansion once the restaurant is properly up and running. There are a few choice wines from the likes of Craven in South Africa and Domaine Saint-Cyr in Beaujolais, though I plumped for the 2021 Marcillac from P & J Teulier – Le Cros. This is quite peppery on the nose with mulberry and light earthy scents. The palate is simple and unapologetically rustic, with slightly brittle tannins and perhaps missing a bit of fruit at its core. Yet it partners with our pork dish perfectly, and in fact, drinking the rest of the bottle a few hours later gains a little depth.

The Merry Harriers is a welcome addition to the rather jejune Surrey dining scene. All the best places tend to be tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Clearly, they have been bedding in the six months since taking the keys to the premises and, as they said themselves, they’ve needed that time to learn how it all works. I visited before the word had gone out, but they were about to start a promotion, a photographer asking dishes to pose for the camera for their website while we lunched. It will quickly become a go-to place to dine, just like Hilltop Kitchen. Every dish was skilfully executed with small touches that take each one to a higher gustatory level. Plus, it is satisfying knowing that nearly everything comes from their own farm, so there is clear care from the moment the vegetables are picked or the livestock slaughtered to when they arrive on your plate. Though more expensive than your regular gastro pub, The Merry Harriers is certainly cheaper than many London restaurants.

I cannot wait to return.