Every year, The Good Food Guide team award ‘Editors’ choice Awards’ to eateries who they feel deserve the highest recognition. In 2012 The Duke won this prestigious award!

“It’s hard to think of a more perfect country pub: infectiously welcoming, centuries old, in a glorious location and with all the seasons covered, from winter fires to fantastic alfresco opportunities. Drinkers are truly welcome and Simon Goodman’s menu keeps pace with a nifty mix of the traditional and the cosmopolitan. It’s a simple recipe for success, but not many manage to get it so right.”
Elizabeth Carter, editor The Good Food Guide.

Simon Goodman, head chef and owner of the Duke of Cumberland, was named UK Pub Chef of the Year 2010, he was also named winner of the ‘roast’ category. Simon then had the honour of having a three-course dinner menu, devised by himself, served to the 350 guests attending the awards ceremony. The event brings together the results of the Morning Advertiser’s chefs’ competition with pub company food awards.

The awards ceremony brings together the results of the Morning Advertiser’s chefs’ competition with pub company food awards.

The Duke has also had a reviews from the food critic Giles Coren, here are some snippets:

“..The pub was as nice as I remembered: a tiny inn on a hill surrounded by steep garden all around, dozens of little stone pools full of trout and crayfish, the sound of running water, little bowers, tables in nooks and crannies, views over the South Downs, and cool, pale, lovely light pints of Hip Hop from the Langham brewery at Lodsworth, just round the corner.”

“..And better still, terrific food. Local, seasonal and straightforward. I had a pale-green, very vernal soup of watercress and Henley wild garlic and then two lovely fillets of sea trout piled on top of Jersey royals and English samphire with caper butter. Chris had an excellent crayfish tail and prawn salad prettily garnished and singing with dill, and their excellent burger, served medium rare. ”

“..There was dressed crab from nearby Selsey, organic pork sausages from Midhurst, a pint of prawns with home-made garlic and lemon mayonnaise, a Serrano ham salad and some good vegetarian options, not to mention very good organic baguettes. Our bill came to about 35 quid, including beer. All told, you just couldn’t ask for more from an English spring afternoon in the middle of the working week.”

Also a review from Adam Edwards of the Telegraph:

Some time ago, “Lancelot Beaumont” (his inverted commas) sent me a paean of praise to a well-hidden pub. It is, he said, a 16th-century inn, with beams and a thatched roof, located in the leafiest part of southern England, two miles from the nearest main road. It has a “splendidly, riotously filled garden”, with a stream running through it.

Inside, there are flagstones, wooden scrubbed tables, local ales served straight from the barrel and, if you fancy, trout – you nominate the fish from one of the stream’s pools. In the evening, the joint of your choice is served at the table with the tools to carve it.

“If you were an Englishman sitting in the heat of a Middle Eastern desert, it is the place you would most want to be,” he wrote, adding – rather meanly, I thought – that he was not going to reveal its name for fear of spoiling it.

I have been searching for this idyll ever since and last week I believed I had found it when I pulled into the Duke of Cumberland Arms.

Full review can be found at the link..