THE Red Lion, in East Chisenbury, near Upavon in Wiltshire has a dual reputation as being hard to find and serving excellent food of Michelin Star and Good Food Guide 2014’s Pub Restaurant of the Year status.

Well I’m pleased to be able to disprove the former and to confirm the latter.

Located just a mile off the A342 Andover to Devizes road, just before one reaches Upavon, the Red Lion from the outside immediately dispels the belief that all Michelinstarred establishments have to present themselves in glittering raiment with liveried staff, lifting domes and a mineral water sommelier.

Instead, it presents itself as a typical, thatched, white lime-washed Wiltshire village pub with none of the drinking-only locals edged out with ‘restaurant’ pricing.

It has a proper bar, with beer mats pinned to the post and beer at £3.50 per pint – indeed, a member of our party ordered a pint of Black Rat cider for £3.80.

Scrubbed tables, bare floor boards and a dolly clothes peg holding a starched napkin is the style.

For a Sunday lunch the option was a no choice slow roast shoulder of lamb and Bramley apple crumble with Madagascan vanilla custard for £20; or from the a la carte menu there were a choice of starters from £7, main courses from £17 and desserts from £7.

Baked on the premises, two breads (slices of sour dough and rye with caraway seed) with a pot of their own butter signalled that here was an establishment serious about the production of their craft and carefully sourcing local ingredients and suppliers.

Our starters arrived: two of our party chose the chicken liver pate with Madeira jelly and a thick slice of toasted brioche.

The pate was smooth, rich, and full of flavour and the glass ‘jar’ it was served in was scraped clean by both diners.

Another member of our party chose the roasted celeriac soup with Wiltshire truffle, croutons and chive and elected it a ‘hit’.

Not a ‘miss’ was my choice of three crisp goujons of Cornish lemon sole with an exemplary ‘Red Lion’ tartare sauce – an amazing accompaniment that clearly was not served from a shop-bought jar!

For our main courses, two of the party chose the slow roast shoulder of lamb, which came with ‘roasties’ with a crisp, near glass-like crust encompassing soft, fluffy interiors, with buttered spinach, cabbage and romanesco. The lamb was flavoursome and melted in the mouth.

The other member of the party and I chose the roast rib of Wiltshire beef for two, which came with the same accompaniments as the lamb plus a voluminous Yorkshire pudding and what looked like a quenelle of cookies and cream ice cream, but was in fact horseradish cream.

The beef was thickly cut and the ribs served trimmed of most flesh and cooked medium rare with a bias towards rare.

A very minor point of criticism (indeed it disguises a compliment): the plate was too small for the generous portions of beef, roasties, Yorkshire pud and vegetables – along with the horseradish. I would have preferred the accompaniments to have been served separately.

With our lamb and beef we drank a bottle of Earthworks Australian Shiraz. There were about seven or eight wines offered by the glass (two sizes) and wines started from about £19.

For dessert we all chose the butternut squash rice pudding with praline cream and maple pecans. This was ambrosia but not as you can imagine – gorgeous. I enjoyed a glass of Akashi sake with the pudding.

The Red Lion is 45 out of 50 in the Top 50 restaurants of The UK Good Food Guide 2014, and having been to 15 of these 50 restaurants in recent years, I can vouch that this establishment is worthy of this ranking in cuisine terms.

Our food bill for four came to just over £150 and 12½ per cent service was applied. In my view, notwithstanding the excellence of the cuisine here, the pricing was somewhat firm, for what was a friendly pubstyle service and environment.

DEREK KANE