The weather was absolutely horrible today as it was cold, wet and miserable. The perfect kind of day to spend under your doonah at home having a lazy one. Instead I braved the weather and ventured out to the “country-side” to visit with Jules and Sandra. But it was not without a target in mind – Apple Tree in Gerrards Cross.

Probably over a year ago Jules and Sandra had talked about how fantastic a place Apple Tree was from the generous sized portions of delicious Sunday Roast to the equally generous and delicious desserts so me, being the greedly little eater that I am, was excited to go try it out.

Arriving at Apple Tree you can tell that the clientele are generally the more, shall we say, well-to-do with the car park littered with expensive cars. Jules says that the locals are considered one of the wealthier around with the largest disparity between earnings and household values in the country I think or was it Greater London. Although a generalisation, based on that statement, its probably fair to assume that most of the families around Gerrards Cross were born into the money.

Normally you should probably book if you want to guarantee a spot at Apple Tree on a Sunday (or probably any day) though today it wasn’t overly crowded with just about the right type of busy-ness. Not too crowded that you felt rushed to finish your meal but busy enough to have a nice atmosphere. It’s a beautiful pub – all nicely done up in warm tan colours, plenty of wood on display, and lots of colourful paintings (look out for the nude drawings in the ladies’ toilets!) There is even a fireplace splitting the dining room though today, despite the cold, it was not lit.

The staff at Apple Tree were very friendly and took all requests to change options in our dishes in stride such as adding an extra thing here, swapping a thing or two there, without even having to blink and consult with the kitchen, which is a nice change. I’m afraid I didn’t really do Apple Tree justice as I hardly even glanced at the normal a la carte menu or their specials instead just going straight for their Sunday Roast options. They had roast beef, roast pork, roast chicken and roast lamb from what I recall. All ranged in value from about £11-£12 which, for what we got in terms of size and quality, seemed reasonable. I went for the roast pork with an additional yorkshire pudding (which came as an extra.) You can see from the picture that the pudding is absolutely massive and worth paying that extra pound to get it. It was nearly half the size of my head! The roast pork came with some delicious roasties, parsnip, and sides of greens (mange tout, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot etc.) The roast was perfect and the crackling – melt in your mouth. Down side – could have done with more. ;P

Despite being quite satisfied with our Sunday Roasts we all still opted to get desserts. Averaging £4.50-£5.00 the desserts at Apple Tree are pretty good. Sandra consoled me by saying that my raspberry crumble, at least, was mainly mostly fruit so I could justify having it on that basis. Heh heh.

So, was it worth traveling that far to get out to the Apple Tree (its about a 25-30 min train ride from Marylebone so all up about an hour of travel from me door to door)? I thought so. Being out there made a nice change to the hustle and bustle of central London and of course it was nice to catch up with Jules and Sandra in a non-work setting since its been a while since I’ve seen the two of them together!