‘Guy Ritchie's is the foulest lunch of the year': Lore of the Sky, Compton Abbas, restaurant review

Telegraph

2 days ago

The dramatic landscape of Dorset was at its best. Blue sky and fabulously green rolling hills – I could admire it from the airfield at Compton Abbas.
It was from here, in 1993, that Asil Nadir fled in a six-seater to northern Cyprus, accused of stealing from his firm Polly Peck. This particularly irked the landed locals who had piled into the multifarious FTSE hero before it went belly up. Nadir was later sentenced to 10 years, but the squires or their descendants still fume at the diminished plans for their pool houses.
You don't need a private jet to visit Compton Abbas. Today, like many such small airfields, there's an eatery to pull you in. And this one is owned by Guy Ritchie, the film director who crafts extraordinarily witty movies and who has dabbled successfully in hospitality, too – he has a restaurant in London's Fitzrovia, called Lore of the Land.
Lore of the Sky promised a smokehouse serving the finest fare of Texas, but in fact provided me with the foulest lunch of the year.
It's a handsome modern building of slatted wood and glass, echoed by the roomy interior: aircraft-hangar cool. There's a desk in the middle from which came news that there was no trace of my booking. At least not on their side; yet the emails of confirmation, and those urging me to leave feedback (at your service, right here, right now), had flowed thick and fast.
There was plenty of room, however, and we were duly taken to a dirty table by the window. Note to Lore of the Sky: better to keep punters waiting while you clean and re-lay a table than show them to one spread with the effluence of the last gobblers.
The menu, making use of a vast smokery, is full of that pulled style of meat: slowly cooked and then literally forked off the bone. I fancied the pulled pork in a bun and couldn't resist the idea of 'pork belly burnt ends', either. We also ordered oak-smoked chicken leg, Caesar salad and fries, with 'smokehouse nachos' to share as a starter.
Back came our charming waitress with news that they'd run out of pulled pork and its burnt ends. Yes, a Texas-style smokehouse runs out of pig. It's like Big Ben losing its bells or Margaret Thatcher without a handbag. So I went for the pulled beef instead (the other choice was 'pulled jackfruit', and if you've pulled a jackfruit something's gone seriously wrong).
The nachos came: a splattered mess of stuff that had landed on tortilla chips. There was yellow gloopy goo pretending to be melted cheese, and on that bits of meat, somehow rendered green. I'd hesitate to call it chicken as that would shame the name of protein, but imagine a few weeks of life in a dingy shed with an afterlife this insulting? Sweet red sauce flowed around it. There was a squelch of avocado on the side and I picked at it briefly like a pigeon searches for nutrients in a cowpat. My pal Flozza just looked at it and said, 'Oh my god, that's revolting', refusing to brave a bite.
A dish of chicken was like Epsom in winter – firm, too hard for this pony – and was drizzled in a spicy red sauce which failed to either overpower or rescue it. My pulled beef was dismal and the chips, like everything else I'd wager, the work of talent some
distance from Compton Abbas. Likewise the bought-in Caesar salad sauce and croutons, and frozen-solid Yarde Farm ice cream.
They call this dirty food. I'd say it was just filthy.