White Onion Soup and the Ferrari.

The Chinese wanted to go to The Bath Arms at Horningsham, for White Onion Soup – apparently it’s good – or at least it was 15 years ago when she last went there. The last time I went there was, specifically, at about 8pm on 31st July 1990 and I left sometime around 10.30 – I remember it well. However, I don’t recall what the place was like, nor do I have any idea of what I ate or if I liked it, I can’t even remember which girlfriend I went with – I don’t have the slightest clue. But I do know why. As we left the pub after dinner there just happened to be a brand-spanking-new Ferrari F40 parked outside. So brand-spanking-new in fact, that it’s owner couldn’t wait the last couple hours before he was legally allowed to drive it, prior to the new ‘H’ registration number plate hitting the road on August 1st – and I can’t say I blame him. That’s how I remember the date, it was the car. Not the pub, it’s food, or my girlfriend – but the car.

This time around though, it wasn’t July, or even nearly August, but one of those gloriously dark and dank English February evenings. There was a mist hanging in the air that saturated everything and threw it into a depressingly monotone and Dickensian, soft-focus, Jack the Ripper mode. We had meandered our way through the lanes at the edge of the Longleat estate and literally, within 500yds of the pub, were greeted with a ‘Road Closed’ sign, and after being diverted via the Cornish Coastal path, we eventually arrive, seemingly four days later. The tone was set. 

I’m not sure if the dining room was blue or green, it looked as though it had been decorated by a one-eyed tripped-out woodman on magic mushrooms sometime around 1749, using a live sheep dipped in nappy sludge. We were hustled to a sticky table crammed in front of a random draughty door, lost in a dingy and distant corner of an almost empty purgatory. I couldn’t position my chair comfortably because the screwed-to-the-floor door-stop was in the way and the cutlery, glasses and other superficial meant-for-instagram ephemera, was all stuck solidly to the table.  

Our server appeared to be no older than TikTok. We ordered wine and asked to be moved. A couple of minutes later she came stomping towards us twisting the top and breaking the seal from our wine bottle as if it were my neck, “there’s your wine” she snarled as she pointed vaguely across the room and followed it up with “and there’s your table”. Oops. We eventually made friends. Such good friends, in fact, that we soon discovered she was actually, slightly older than TikTok – she was seventeen and had been working there for a year and a half. We felt bad for her, smiled politely and ordered some food. It turns out that White Onion Soup has been off the menu since 2004. The Chinese was annoyed, she ordered Salmon Mousse as her starter and I went for Oyster Mushroom. Mains were to be Chicken Ballotine for the mystical Mandarin and Beef & Ale Pie for me.

Oyster snot porridge and baked cud.

The salmon mousse tasted of peppery fish flavoured salt and had the texture of six month old, rotten and congealed, semi-decomposed, oyster-snot porridge. It doggedly refused to detach itself from whatever surface it came into contact with and it practically tore the glaze from the plate. The accompanying roasted beetroot hadn’t even been in the same room as the oven, it was raw and disgusting. And there was a sliced slice of toast called Melba. My Oyster Mushroom wasn’t a mushroom at all, it too was just a slice – a single slice of too thin to slice again mushroom – and regardless of the fact that the 0.24 cubic nanometres of pickled walnut that came with it was mind-bendingly delicious, we still paid £8.50 for a single, sickeningly sad slice of a rubbery, soul-less, tasteless and exquisitely nothing fungus! 

Our mains were even worse. Chicken –  it’s white or it’s grey – you can add pretty words like Ballotine to it if you like, but it’s still nothing more than white or grey chicken. The accompanying, leftover from breakfast burnt bacon crumb, jerk fennel, and pea and mascarpone puree, served only to add extra grey to the overall greyish greyness. It was dull, hyperbolically grey and hopefully completely forgetful. In order to add a little yang to the yin, there was also a delicious, earthy and full-on mushroomy sauce as a pleasant and saporific addition of something brown and viscous. 

My Beef and Ale Pie was pre-imagined with great expectations, I’d pictured layers of crispy papyrus pastry sat on top of a heart-stopping stew of best cut bovine bites, drowning in a thick gravy of vegetables and beef stock, aside a mound of buttery, creamy and mustardy mash as the supporting act. Well that didn’t happen. What actually came to the table was a smorgasbord of stunning failures – a three-quarter inch deep dish of microwaved, lava-hot, bisto-flavoured slop, containing no more than four micro-chunks of pale brown, pedigree chum-type matter, some cud and approximately nine peas. It was topped with something loosely resembling thick potato soup-sludge with mustard seeds. 

Honestly, when it arrived at the table I had to ask our server to remind me of what it was that I’d actually ordered. Because this thing didn’t resemble anything that belongs, even loosely, into the ‘Food’ category of any of Man’s significant creations. It was disgusting. The side of Chillied Greens was a dish of raw curly kale that had been cooked at just under room temperature for roughly 3-4 minutes, it was served with a drizzle of chilli butter and was vile and confusingly repulsive.

The Flashback.

They had done a pretty good job of convincing us that we probably shouldn’t order a dessert. So we did. For no reason other than to find out just how badly they could screw that up too. First to arrive was a dark chocolate set custard, with banana ice cream and some other stuff. And it was groin-tinglingly delicious, nowhere near good enough to make up for the car-crash trash that preceeded it, but orgasmically beautiful nonetheless. There were however, a few drops of (not mentioned on the menu) isotropically fluorescent substrate on the plate. It tasted like a spine-twistingly sharp blend of spring blossom Domestos, Autoglym soft-touch deluxe car wax and concentrated battery acid – and it destroyed everything else on the plate. What a waste. Then came an Affogato – which btw translates to ‘drowned’ – the ice-cream should be drowned in coffee. Serve them separately and nothing gets drowned, it’s just coffee and ice-cream. FFS!

The only thing left to do, was leave. We paid the bill, winced and made for the exit. The extremely polite young lady at front of house graciously appreciated our custom as we left. And she did it in such a way as to perfectly encapsulate everything that seemed so wrong about the evening. She expressed her gratitude with the most exquisite Sloane accent I have ever heard, it triggered an immediate flashback to happily forgotten times of Filofaxes and GTI’s, of double-breasted ‘Barrah-Boys’ with brick-phones and Braces. Of Ronald Ray-gun and the Grantham Growler. I turned to face the source and there she was, an Alice banded, side-tied neck scarfed, tweeded and sensibly lipsticked facsimile of 1980’s London W1 – stuck solidly and stoically in a best-forgotten time of Beaujolais runs, Henley regatta, wax jackets, green wellies and pheasant plucking beaters – just like The Bath Arms.

Was it worth it?

Heading out across the car park I couldn’t help but peer out into the moist and misty gloom, imagining that fate might have one last little bit of fun with us. I was hoping that the Ferrari might still be parked there. It would have once again given me a reason to remember the place, it would have been a perfect, irony laced ending to a night to forget. Time-warping our way through the Longleat lanes and directly back into the 21st Century, our conversation in the car was based mainly around distant memories of White Onion Soup and whether or not the kebab shop in town might still be open. It wasn’t. 

We concluded that perhaps we’d caught The Bath Arms on an historically bad night. We sincerely hope so. However, should you fancy digging out your shoulder pads and back-combing your hair, or pulling on a pink Don Johnson jacket and a pair of espadrilles to head out to Horningsham for some eighties fun, with a Blue Nun and her boyfriend who didn’t quite make it into Sandhurst. Don’t. Just get a kebab and binge-watch a Dirty Den box set instead. Or do a Seventies night. Seriously.

How did we rate The Bath Arms?

Food Quality 5/100
Service 50/100
Ambience 0/100
Value For Money 0/100
Average Score 13/100

While writing this article I discovered that The Bath Arms is a part of the Beckford Group, which, coincidentally, owns The Talbot Inn at Mells. So, out of interest, I figured that I should head over and see how it compares. So here’s my review of The Talbot Inn, Mells. Also, by pure chance, The Beckford Arms at Fonthill Gifford was a local eatery for me while I was living in Hindon, so I’ll be heading off there sometime soon too.