The Pot Kiln

This is the best country pub I've visited. The Pot Kiln is a true country pub. If you just want a pint, it's fantastic -- quality taps, a cozy room, a wonderful walk and a quiet view. If you want to eat, you'll find it to be as fresh as possible unless you've shot the animal yourself. I enjoyed the Fallow Deer (as I watched a Fallow Deer grazing nearby -- perhaps its brother?). This is not a place for vegetarians. The meat was perfectly cooked, tender, not "gamey" in the least, and full of flavor. Pub or not, this is an honest place for true food-lovers.

This is a great place, specialising in game, and the menu varies day to day depending on what's been shot that morning.

It's friendly and cosy and the food is good (and certainly fresh!). Something a little different - definitely worth a visit.

The Pot Kiln is great place to experience game food at its best. Simple, full of flavour and a great atmosphere. I always take my family here when then come from Australia because this type of cooking really is quentisentially british. Its rare to find a place where the food is excellent, and its perfectly acceptable to have a pint (from West Berks Brewery) with your meal. Try the pave of deer, pork belly, rabbit... actually its all good.

Pot Kiln gets the pizza oven going on a Sunday evening, which seems a perfect way to end Fathers Day.

The weather was great and the pizza excellent, if a little mean on portion control. For a tenner I'd expect more than four bites of venison, but that's really splitting hairs.

The service can be a bit slower than you'd be accustomed to in a town pub, but it's all part of the charm.

Anything to improve on? The owner's a bit in everyone's face.

All in all 3/5

We are so lucky to live near to the Pot Kiln. What was once a very small and traditional pub was taken on by Mike Robinson (a sort of celebrity TV chef - but please don’t let that put you off).

He has managed to transform it into a great small restaurant while simultaneously maintaining the feel and traditions that had made the Pot Kiln a great pub.

The key to this is the locally sourced produce - often picked or caught that morning. Vegetarians may shudder at the descriptions of just how fresh some of the produce is! As one can imagine local game is a specialty and there is also a cookery school attached which focuses on this. However other tastes are also well catered for.

Wines are also well-sourced and the service and atmosphere is always warm and friendly. You will need to book well in advance - particularly for the great Sunday lunches. And as Pot Kiln is situated in the middle of beautiful open countryside, you can justify over indulgence with a good walk!

If you like your food fresh, caught that morning and enjoy updated food in a traditional setting then this is a place for you. Well-designed dishes, well-presented and very tasty. The chef is hands on and takes great pride in his establishment. The atmosphere is friendly, staff are happy to advise on what to eat and know their food as well. Greta for lunch or evening occasion, but do book in advance.

We went to The Pot Kiln to celebrate my husband’s 70th birthday. It was fantastic. All four of us enjoyed our food, the service was great and we had a wonderful time.

Very nice indeed, went here for a small work dinner with a few people. The food, wine & service was excellent.

Would highly recommend.

The Pot Kiln is a lovely gastro pub with separate restaurant in a very rural location. The bar area is small, but the restaurant area is large and there is plenty of outdoor seating on a nice day.

The menu proclaims a healthy set of values: everything made from scratch, locally sourced produce and locally shot game and much of it seasonal. They even run a Game and Wild Food Cookery School nearby if you want to learn how it is done…

Bar £6-10: Spanish omelette; 10oz local beef & Roe deer burger; medium rare venison steak on a Ciabatta roll; Ploughman’s selected from mature cheddar, local ham, salt beef, pate; a rather nice sounding ham, cheese and bacon salad; and sandwiches.

Set menu; weekday lunchtimes 2 courses for £12, £15 with desert.

Restaurant starters £6-8: Warm salad of wood pigeon; wild Kennet crayfish bisque; dry aged Serrano ham; watercress & potato soup; Presse rabbit; pork & Foie Gras terrine; home cured Orkney Gravadlax; honey roasted beetroot salad with walnuts and English goat’s cheese dressing.

Restaurant mains £12-19: pavé of Kirby Roe deer with pommé puree and pepper corn sauce; roasted local wood pigeon with petit pois, sage & mustard; cassoulet with Gressingham duck, Guinea fowl & leek sausages, Barlotti beans & rosemary;
Whole roast Poussin marinzated with oregano, garlic, thyme, rosemary and served with sauté potatoes; Slow braised wild rabbit with lemon, rosemary, olive oil. & garlic served with sautéed potatoes & roast courgette; Whole roaste Bilbury trout with sautéed potatoes, marsh samphire & home made aioli; for the veggies: Broad bean, fresh pea & garden herb risotto with aged parmnesan

Uncharacteristically I went for the burger after the friendly barman’s description of “the best burger he’d ever had”, it was the best one I’ve ever had too! Served on a plate with a small dressed oak-leaf lettuce and potato salad, the moist delicious burger was sat on a Ciabatta roll with some salad and mature Cheddar. Everything was home made, including the roll, and tasted great. If I was going to be picky the mustard based dressing on the salad in the roll was too acidic, but still…

Highly recommended, next time I’ll try the restaurant.

UPDATE: Well I made it back to the restaurant and took my boss as a thank you.

We started with seafood bisque and Roe deer liver on potato, excellent. Next we shared a Roe deer haunch with garden vegetables, red cabbage, new potatoes – beautiful. To finish we shared cheese and biscuits, some Taylor’s port. This was all washed down with a couple of beers and a bottle of excellent Portuguese wine.

Altogether the bill was £120 which is a little expensive, but it was very, very nice and more importantly my boss had a great meal and was impressed: so well worth it.

The restaurant is highly recommended for a special occasion.

The first time we visited this pub a few years ago it was written up in our guide as a simple country pub. When we arrived we found out that it had been recently bought by TV celebrity chef Mike Robinson and turned into a brilliant gastropub.

The pub's down a lane all on its own, with nothing but fields and cows nearby. Very quiet. It has its own parking. Exterior is typical country pub. There are some nice walks around, through fields and woods.

There's a small pub room, lots of outside picnic benches, and a nice dining room.

I don't remember what we ate the first time, but it was brilliant, really tasty. The second time I made notes: my friend (who was celebrating a birthday) and I both had the wood pigeon salad with bacon and black pudding for a starter, and the slow-roasted Berkshire pork belly with roast garden veg. The others’ food was all excellent as well. We had a couple of bottles of the Domaine de la Janasse Côtes-du-Rhônes that I discovered at this same pub last year (and that I’ve since bought two cases of). Desserts were phenomenal, too; they made a special one for the birthday-boy comprised of bits of all the best desserts on offer. Afterwards, Mike Robinson came over to chat with us. The lunch service was done, and he felt chatty, I guess. He wished our friend a happy birthday, then broke the remainder of his ‘85 port and then the Taylor’s 20-year port, and he sat and drank it with us. As the driver, I could only sit in envy. We had a good laugh with him, though. He described the new cookery school show he’s did (raising his own game deer), talked about how he raises and slaughters his deer and pigs, and he gave us a detailed tour of the pub garden. I can't promise that sort of individual attention for every group, but it really made us fond of the place.