A trip to the Carriage House

Alan Sutton visited the Carriage House to speak to owners Tim and Sophia Matthews about menus, National Trust visitors and seasonal ingredients.

You would be right in thinking you have arrived at a location for Midsummer Murders as you drive though the Chilterns and Vale of Aylesbury en route to Claydon House. If some of the villages look familiar, they probably are, because it's in and around this area that the television series which piles up dead bodies by the morgue-full is shot.
And while you won't actually find any hamlets called Midsummer, there are plenty of Claydons -- Steeple Claydon, Middle Claydon, Boltolph Claydon and East Claydon -- strewn across the Buckinghamshire landscape as if shaken from a pepper pot. In Middle Claydon is Claydon House, ancestral home to the Verney family since 1620 and today occupied by Sir Edmund Verney. It's also the location of the Carriage House Restaurant, run by Tim and Sophia Matthews, in the former Courtyard of the house.

It's a bit of a change from working in a 6ft x 9ft galley, which was the chef's kitchen for the 12 years prior to coming to Claydon House. Matthews owned and operated a floating restaurant, up and down the Thames in Oxford. He still owns a boat yard in Banbury with a café attached.

"After 12 years it was getting a bit much," he says, "although it made the Top100 restaurants in a BBC magazine."

As well as serving diners on the boat, Matthews also operated a function catering business and Claydon House was among his clientele.

"I've always loved Claydon House and always used its produce," he says. "Sir Edmund asked me to give him some catering advice for the restaurant and Tea Rooms and I ended up with a 15-year lease to run the place."

Much of the day-to-day business comes from National Trust members visiting the house, and the Tea Rooms are particularly busy on the days when coach parties come in.

"The menu for the Tea Rooms is very English – rarebits, fresh soups, sandwiches, a Daily Special and other snacky things. But everything is home made, nothing is bought in."

Neither of the businesses operates throughout the year. Claydon House is open to the public between March and November and the Tea Rooms, although not part of the National Trust property, keep the same dates. Once the Christmas and New Year bookings have been covered, the Carriage House also closes until March.

It's then that Tim Matthews can put into practice the skills he first learned as an apprentice in London at the Westbury and Kensington Close Hotels, whist studying part-time at Ealing Technical College (now Thames Valley University). Nine months in Switzerland at the Montreux Palace were followed by spells at Odins working for Peter Langan, head chef at the RAC Club and London Stock Exchange and a restaurant in Oxford where he met and married Sophia (also a chef) before buying their boat, Rosamund The Fair.

"We have a staff working in the Tea Rooms but I'm now concentrating on The Carriage House," he says. "Lunches are offered six days a week and most of the trade is to visitors to the house."

"Typical lunch menus offer a Sharing Plate for two at £10.95, which can also be taken as a main course for one."

The Autumn menu included a Chick Pea Puree with Olives, Sun Dried Tomatoes, Garlic and Avocado Dip and Grilled Halloumi Cheese for vegetarians; Cured local Ham, Gherkins, Home Smoked Sausages with Spicy potatoes, Rare Roast Beef and Estate Beetroot Relish; and Marinated Anchovies, Hot Crayfish Tails in Garlic Butter, Scottish Smoked Salmon, Caperberries, Taramasalata and Chargrilled Lemon.

In addition, an á la carte selection includes Rabbit and Ham Hock Terrine, Hot Leek and Gruyere Cheese Tart, Warm Partridge Breast, Carriage House Vegetable Wellington, and Blackened Sea Bass Fillet.

"Sunday lunches are our most popular lunch attraction, with two courses for £16.50 or three for £22.50," Matthews says. Average spend at lunch is £20; £40 for dinner.

"National Trust visitors are the bread and butter of the business," he says. "The cream is weddings, private functions and fine dining. In our first year here, just over three years ago, 60 per cent of business was through the Tea Rooms. It's now changed and the Tea Rooms, restaurant and functions bring in one-third each. Eventually, I believe weddings will take the lion's share, they are the biggest spenders.

"The house is licensed for weddings. We set up a marquee kitchen and can seat up to 100 in the house itself."

Claydon House is quite remote, so the evening restaurant business is drawn from across a wide area in the surrounding towns of Milton Keynes, Aylesbury, Bicester and Buckingham. But the emphasis is on Fine Dining and, apart from private bookings (parties of ten or more can have exclusive use of the restaurant any evening the house is open) it only opens regularly on the first Saturday of the month. In addition to that, Matthews puts on occasional Special Nights – the obvious ones such as Christmas and New Year dinners but other themes have included a Game Night, with everything coming from the estate; Chocolate Evening aided by patissiere Rod Newell who runs a chocolate shop in the Courtyard; a Valentines Weekend; and a summer, Garden Produce Evening using vegetables from the estate's walled garden.

"The Chocolate evening was a great success. We had Sausages with chocolate in them; Parma Ham with Chocolate Vinaigrette; a Chocolate Sorbet; Chicken Peri Peri with chocolate in the sauce; and finished it all off with a Trio of Chocolate dessert.

"At the end of the night we asked guests what the experience had been like. Was it too overwhelming? The general feeling was that it worked well. They felt they were being teased throughout the meal until they got to the full-on dessert."

2010 is a big year for Claydon House. It will celebrate the anniversary of the death of Florence Nightingale, the nurse who became famous for her work among wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. A regular visitor to the house, which has a room named for her, she was courted by a member of the Verney family but she refused him and he later married her sister.

Whilst working in the Crimea, Nightingale wrote many letters to the press in the UK complaining of the dreadful conditions in the field hospitals. Her correspondence was
picked up by the renowned chef, Alexis Soyer, who travelled to the war zone and worked alongside her. Correcting and improving the diets of the wounded soldiers, he was later credited as saving as many lives with his kitchens as the nurse did with her wards.

It was whilst there that Soyer invented his Soyer Field Kitchen, which was still in use with the British army until fairly recently. In celebration of these two Victorian notaries, Matthews is planning to use the oven for a Soyer evening.

"The menu will include his famous Cutlets Reform and other dishes he served at the Reform Club."

The Fine Dining and Special Evenings offer choices from a three-course menu, plus an Amuse Guile and Granita or Sorbet and for the Special Evenings a different wine is served with each course.

"It was great to get back into the kitchen when I came here," Matthews says, "I'm absolutely loving it. There is so much potential here. I was running around too much in the boat restaurant business. I had 40/50 staff and was more like a personnel officer.

"I'm now more re-connected with the seasons. I've been mushrooming in the estate woods with John Wright from River Cottage; in the game season there are two shoots a week; and in season, around 80% of our vegetables come from the estate garden. I'm not looking for stars or other forms of recognition. I just want to do what I do and do it well. That's enough for me."