Having vowed to check out Donna and Rob Taylor’s new place the moment it opened, I got there eventually. The pair left the excellent, if somewhat outback gastropub The Compasses Inn in Crundale, Kent, at the end of last summer, promising they had bigger plans afoot. And here they are at Tallow: 26 covers and a 10-seat private dining room in Southborough, a leafy town in the civil parish of Tunbridge Wells, yet, I hasten to add, a whole 2.6 miles from the town’s main railway station. Do not, I beg you, say that Southborough is actually just Tunbridge Wells, or its residents will revolt. Well, they will after they’ve finished playing cricket on the common overlooked by the heroically pretty St Peter’s Church. Parking up on a Saturday lunchtime with the cricket in full swing is a bit like guest-starring in a Miss Marple mystery, perhaps even more so when you get to Tallow itself, a tall, narrow building painted a rather gothic dark grey.
Just as it was at the Compasses, Tallow’s food is unquestionably good. More than that, it’s get-in-the-car-and-go good. It’s “How far is Southborough, anyway?” good. Rob Taylor’s cooking seems, on first glance at the menu, reassuringly straightforward – there’s a steak tartare starter and chocolate brownie on the pudding list – yet his work is much more surprising. Take one of the first offerings, a small, freshly baked wild garlic bread that was sticky, fragrant and vividly Kermit-coloured. There was no need for butter, because its innards were moist with some sort of buttery, salty, algae-like concoction. Such touches always show a restaurant that’s going the extra yard. In a similar vein, a pre-lunch snack of crisp lamb croquette with a neat, mint mayo topping was substantial yet delicate at the same time.
