Amended on 14 September 2011
The White Hart Inn closed for business some time ago
Until last year, Michel Roux was a partner in this restaurant with rooms. Once or twice a month, Roux left his more famous Waterside Inn at Bray to attend at this location in the village of Nayland, on the Suffolk/Essex border. Roux sold his stake last year, and the new chef patron, Didier Piot, has come from the French House at Lavenham.
Brrr, it's a bracing dash to the door - a festive red. Inside, more pillar box paintwork, smartly offsetting dark beams, loads of 'em. Furnishings are a bit lacklustre in a potentially dramatic bar and restaurant. Also regrettable is that the fireplaces aren't ablaze, but two welcoming staff instantly offer tea, tell us there's a genuine Constable hanging in the church, and show us upstairs.
I'm in a room called "Isabella" and Tim's next door. Bit chilly up here. "Hope this is enough," he says, pointing at his bed - the sheets are crisp but there is only one blanket and a thin quilt. "Catch!" I say, spotting a spare blanket in a zip-up case.
My room has a chimney stack, oodles of character, a big cobweb and deep sash window into which someone called Carole etched her name on a pane in 1962. I'm wondering if the bathroom lino dates back to when Carole woz here as I hang my coat next to a trouser press.
There's a party of 15 in the private dining room on this Monday night, but just us in the restaurant. We've got Dean Martin for company, though. "Did you see the wine cellar through those glass panels in the floor?" asks Tim, pointing behind me.
Soon dishes are waltzing out of the kitchen. Beautiful salmon and smoked trout terrine with salsa verde so delicious I'd like a ladleful, and a platter of duck breast (oak smoked here, along with the trout) as pretty as a picture with ruby nibs of pomegranate and quail's egg.
"Are those what they call triple cooked? They're the best ever," says Tim, nicking my chips and accepting a slice of Dedham Vale rib eye, perfectly, juicily, medium rare. "My taste buds are exploding," he says, over a stack of seabass fillets on a fricassee of potato, chorizo and samphire.
Hot chocolate fondant takes 10 minutes, says the menu, so we ask for it to take half an hour. Good move. It is too sublime to eat (and the vanilla-infused creme fraiche) with anything other than gusto. What a meal.
A slight crackle when I pull back the bedcover alerts me to a plastic-backed mattress cover - my bête noir, and rarely encountered these days. However, out-moded can be good. I only need twiddle a knob - not take a degree in technology - to get Today on the radio next morning.
Cereals laid out buffet-style don't get a look-in. A White Hart breakfast is served with the same flair as dinner: fresh croissants and pains au chocolat, squeezed orange juice, fruit with yoghurt and honey, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, and for Tim, the full English.
Set up for exploring, we pass the prettiest post office - and wooden pigeonholes, visible through the window, in a tiny sorting office next door - then Kerridge the butcher's, with sawdust on the floor, and into the church of St James (to see the Constable, of course, but discovering 15th-century painted panels too), until we reach the river Stour for a muddy amble beneath an ice-blue East Anglian sky.
Best for: Food is the star - but it deserves classier surroundings.
• White Hart Inn (01206 263382, whitehart-nayland.co.uk). Doubles from £96 per night, B&B. Dinner costs around £89 for two, including a bottle of house wine.
