The Pharmacy, Bruton: 'You better hope it’s here to stay'
Food this fresh is undeniable
The Pharmacy represents exceptional value, even after you’ve factored in the hour drive from Bristol. If you’re over that way, perhaps for a nosey around the Hauser & Wirth gallery or a stomp around the Dovecote, then I’d enthusiastically recommend popping in.
The Pharmacy represents exceptional value, even after you’ve factored in the hour drive from Bristol. If you’re over that way, perhaps for a nosey around the Hauser & Wirth gallery or a stomp around the Dovecote, then I’d enthusiastically recommend popping in. If you find this recommendation to be a good one, or you enjoy reading about it, please consider supporting our work by making a small monthly contribution. If you can’t afford it, don’t worry — the people paying are paying so that you can read for free. It’s a great system, and one that keeps our content out of the hands of advertising.
God loves a trier, but she’s less keen on a rebrand. Particularly if it’s an alleged abuser and sex pest trying to reBrand himself as a born again Christian.
Let’s just say — a rebrand can go either way, and they rarely save a dying business. But it’s unlikely God has even noticed a recent sneaky little rebrand in Bruton, where The Old Pharmacy has become The New Pharmacy but it’s just called The Pharmacy and it’s not actually even a pharmacy. It’s a restaurant. The exact same restaurant as before, minus the word ‘old’ in the name. They haven’t even bothered to change the sign above the door.
Same staff, same space, same food. So why bother? According to the staff in there on a recent Thursday evening, the rebrand was necessitated by the incorporation of a new events business, Pharmacy Field Kitchen. Right.
However apparently pointless, it seems to have worked for The Pharmacy, as the PR team managed to get this non-story into a national publication which sufficiently piqued my interest enough to book a table and see what all the fuss is about.
After all, The Pharmacy is the sister restaurant to nearby Osip, which was elevated to the second best restaurant in the country by the National Restaurant Awards just weeks ago. The £165pp tasting menu at Osip is a bit out of my reach at the moment (please subscribe), but a trip to the New Old Pharmacy offers excellent value for money, and as I said, God loves a trier.
It’s a good job that the food wasn’t in the scope of the rebrand, because it’s just as piquant as ever. The menu, scrawled on a dusty blackboard at the back of a simple, olive green room, is only seven items deep. Landrace sourdough (£5) has been sensibly shipped in from nearby Bath, and was served in four thick wedges with a pot of butter. There are few better ways to start a meal.
Giardiniera (£10) was a tumble of crunchy, lightly pickled vegetables from one of the group’s two working farms, and the person serving it doubled as a grower — and thus was able to provide not only excellent gossip from the surrounding hospitality scene but also some hot tips for raising a horde of vegetables.
The beauty of such a small menu is the glee in declaring ‘we’ll have the lot!’ like a young Harry Potter when propositioned with ‘anything from the trolley?’ The only thing we didn’t order was ‘le grand aioli’, because to be quite frank paying £23 for a plate of aioli is absurd. The beetroots with ajo blanco and cherries, and the grilled peaches with peas and basil salad (both £12), however, represented unbelievable value.
These plates laugh heartily in the face of anyone declaring the farm-to-table movement a vapid trend; food this fresh is undeniable and you better hope it’s here to stay. Beetroot with cherry is not a novel pairing — the earthy umami of beetroot brought to life by its sweet, similarly inky bedfellow — but at The Pharmacy the apothecaries have further heightened it with a velvety and nutty ajo blanco and farm herbs. Peaches and peas, however, is not a combination I’ve encountered before and one I hope to see far more of — both sweet but brought round with an umami broad bean purée and sharp basil. As a sometimes jaded diner, to come across a new combination is unusual. I sat up in my chair and took note.
Then sardines, flash-grilled and burnished before being doused in salsa verde and gooseberries and served with a wedge of toast (£15). Every careful fork scrape and surgical pick to avoid those pesky little bones was rewarded with a mouthful of meaty, invigorating flavour — all the better smeared across toothsome sourdough. Unimprovable.
Dessert was the only area that this dispensary lacked in; only one option and a cop-out at that. I have a lot of time for fig leaf — it’s an excellent negroni-enhancer — and while a fig leaf ice cream with currants (£9) would make for a lovely side to a dessert but can it really stand up as a dessert in itself? We were pondering this when we discovered that the kitchen had anticipated our complaint and snuck some biscuity crumble in the bottom for texture, which was appreciated, but still didn’t quite raise this to the level of a tart or the brown butter cake a few doors up at Briar.
The bill was comfortably under £100, which made me realise that God is indeed aware of this place after all — these days, a meal this good for two with drinks at such a price is nothing short of a miracle. And in Bruton, no less, where simply stepping out of your house for a coffee and a croissant could set you back a year’s wages. I expect we’ll see a chapter dedicated to the New Old Pharmacy when they eventually get round to publishing the New Old Testament, at which point it will no doubt inspire vast pilgrimages — so take our word for it in the meantime and get there first.
The Pharmacy, 3 High Street, Bruton, BA10 0AB
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
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This place has been on my long list for a while. We ended up at Chapel last year instead and I wish I came here instead.