MY PUB: The Oakley Arms, Harrold, Bedfordshire

The independent pub that is operated by Lizzie and Andy Slater is located in a village an equal distance from Bedford, Northampton and Milton Keynes.

Within this thatched site, the Slaters take care of the back of house along with other duties and its strong team cares for customers enjoying the made-from-scratch, nose-to-tail food offer.

Here, Lizzie tells The Morning Advertiser all about this great pub that also lays claim to having one of the world’s most famous music bands play a hit tune there for the first time.

The pub

Andy and I took over the Oakley Arms in 2021 and it is our first joint venture. We had a shared vision of running a countryside pub where we would be able to showcase our love of hospitality and local produce so when the opportunity arose, we jumped at the opportunity to turn our long-standing dream into a reality.

The Oakley Arms is a gorgeous, old-world type of pub with an impressive thatched roof, roaring open hearths and a colourful history featuring none other than The Beatles who played Hey Jude here for the first time at our piano in 1968.

The publican

We both studied nutrition at university and met through our joint love of food (and fitness). Andy has always been a chef and he has worked at some really fantastic restaurants, such as NuNu in Palm Cove, Australia, gaining lots of experience along the way.

My experience has been a bit more varied, working as a wedding photographer and front-of-house in restaurants before moving on to patisserie. I have taught myself pretty much everything I know but I was able to refine my skills with stints at Michelin-starred restaurants including Frog by Adam Handling.

By combining our various experiences, when the chance to take over the Oakley Arms came up, we felt ready for the challenge.

The trade

Our pub is ideally located in the heart of Harrold, a gorgeous, rural village just outside of Bedford. We are very much a food-led pub and our customers are a real mix of locals, as well as people from nearby villages and further afield who have travelled specifically to Harrold to join us for a meal.

The team

We have a small but mighty team. There are just 17 of us: six work full-time and the other 11 are part-time. We have eight members of staff out front and nine who help in the back of house, four of whom are chefs and five are ‘housekeepers’ and pot wash staff.

The drink

We take pride in offering a varied and carefully curated drinks selection that caters to a wide range of tastes and occasions.

For those seeking a perfectly poured pint, we have five draught beers alongside a rotating selection of guest cask ales, which keeps our offer fresh and exciting with something new to discover on each visit. These guest taps change every other week and we encourage our guests to tell us what they would like to see featured next through our ‘beer request book’ that sits on the bar.

Our wine list is a real labour of love and we are continuously evolving our wine menu to complement our dishes and reflect the style of food we serve from the cheeseboard right through to pudding. Our wines range from approachable, sure-fire favourites to more adventurous drops and lesser-known grape varieties.

Additionally, we offer a selection of sweet and fortified wines, each chosen to match a variety of dessert flavours and intensities. While our selection is curated with food in mind, we always ensure to include some wines that can be enjoyed just by the glass, without a meal too.

Our seasonal cocktail menu is a collaborative effort, Lily – who is one of our maître ds – creates the recipes, choosing ingredients that celebrate the seasons and very often champion ingredients from our local area, whether they’re foraged by us or supplied by our community as part of the Pints for Produce initiative.

Two of our past favourites are ‘Damson in Distress’, which is a blend of Odell damsons with bramble gin, amaretto and lemon; and for an alcohol-free twist, ‘Me, a Houseplant?’, is a refreshing non-alcoholic cocktail made with cucumber juice, lemon, apple, Harrold elderflower and Seedlip Garden 108.

The food

The food we serve is a celebration of colours, textures and our desire to excite our guests; presenting something truly unique that conjures an audible ‘wow’ from diners when the dish hits the table.

Through every dish we create and serve, we’re telling the story of our region and the people in it. Our menu reflects our location and honours the heritage the Bedfordshire county has to offer, allowing us to serve the freshest and most seasonal ingredients for our guests – both local and visiting – to enjoy and it is certainly not lost on us that without the availability and quality of this produce, we wouldn’t be able to deliver the inspired, daily changing dishes that we do.

When creating a dish, Andy champions a nose-to-tail ethos, which is artfully presented to diners with different cuts of the same beast presented thoughtfully on the plate, inviting them to experience the diversity of taste and texture.

An example of this is a past creation that showcased Buckinghamshire Pork with tender fillet, slow-cooked cheek, crispy belly and a crunchy pork rind tuille served with black pudding, Jerusalem artichoke fondants, a tangy anchovy puree, pickled walnut and a glossy pork sauce.

Or our Pastures Farm duck dish, featuring duck breast, cooked to a perfect pink, served with our homemade duck sausage, miso hispi cabbage stuffed with rice, burnt apple purée and a duck sauce.

As chef patissier, a good dessert menu is just as important as the starters and mains, and, with fellow dessert chef Sofia, we are passionate about creating awe-inspiring desserts that look too good to eat but are impossible not to.

Desserts at the Oakley Arms are not an afterthought but rather an extension of the food theatre that is presented in our starters and mains, for example, our Gariguette strawberry parfait featured caramelised almond, crispy meringue and locally foraged woodruff, used in three ways different ways – as a light and airy ‘moss cake’; to macerate the green strawberries; and as a fragrant dusting mixed with tonka.

The events

We often host special one-off events at the Oakley Arms. Last year, our calendar included a French Country Feast, celebrating provincial French cuisine as well as a six-course End of Game Season dinner and a Start of Spring dinner with tasting menus that showcased the best ingredients of those seasons.

One of our favourite events to date was a Chocolate Tasting Menu in collaboration with Valrhona, serving up a menu dedicated entirely to chocolate. We showcased a variety of cocoa bean styles, with careful consideration given to balancing sweet and savoury flavours.

A highlight for us was the goats’ cheese and Ivoire chocolate ganache, with burnt white chocolate crumb, buckwheat sable, fig parfait and fig preserve, purely because many diners in the room didn’t like goats’ cheese but after having tasted the dish, they became goats’ cheese converts.

We’ve also hosted community events such as floral wreath-making classes with Elworthy Flowers and regular brunches with the Bedford branch of The Mum Club, which is a ticketed event giving local young mothers an opportunity to connect with fantastic like-minded mum friends over a buffet brunch.

The future

We don’t have any specific plans for the future at the moment. We’re just concentrating on being consistent and refining our skills. It is a very tricky time for the hospitality industry so we have also been trying to navigate that without compromising on our vision.

We would really love to take on a bigger space so we can grow more of our own ingredients and produce but who knows what will happen…

What’s on the menu?

Sample dishes

Starters

Hand rolled pasta, local game ragu, chestnut, parmesan, egg yolk - £12

Celeriac risotto, pickled walnut, aged parmesan - £9

Beef cheek, corned beef hash, slow cooked onion, vintage cheddar veloute - £12

Mains

‘Bouillabaisse’, hake, hand-dived scallop, tiger prawn, potato, rouille, fennel - £28

Heritage pork loin, braised cheek, broccoli, pumpkin, apple - £30

Potato and lentil pithivier, roasted Roscoff onion, HP gravy - £22

Highland beef Wellington, pomme purée, roasted shallot, dressed greens, red wine sauce - £90 (sharing dish)

Desserts

Forest fruits, hazelnut torte, Valrhona Coeur de Guanaja chocolate - £10

Sticky toffee pudding, brandy basket, vanilla ice cream (V, vea, gfa) £9 (pairs with Dandelion Vineyards Legacy of Australia Pedro Ximénez XXXO - £9)

Baked Alaska, pistachio & raspberry - £12 (pairs with Doux, Domaine Laguilhon, Jurançon - £4.50)