With the reopening of the Cabot Tower this week, one of the best vantage points in Bristol can once again be enjoyed. A perpetual joy about living in this city of ours is that the countryside is so close and surrounding us on all sides, minutes away from the city centre.

Almost due south from the Cabot Tower, Dundry can be seen in the distance, its squat church tower a distinctive landmark on the horizon.

Almost due north, although obscured by the high ground of Clifton, is Henbury. And like Henbury being obscured by Clifton from the Cabot Tower, an intriguing part of Henbury is hidden from only the most keen or most knowledgeable of observers, accessed by car via a long and winding country lane, or for a certain clientèle that this boutique hotel and restaurant hopes to attract, via helicopter with these handy directions.

Berwick Lodge is a former manor house set in 15 acres of private gardens and woodland, overlooking the Bristol Channel and across to Wales.

It opened as a luxury hotel in 2009, with its restaurant being put in charge of Chris Wicks of Bell’s Diner fame.

Wicks was not cooking in the kitchen when I visited on a week night earlier this month, but his deputies had been briefed to perfection as they made an eight-course tasting menu easily one of the best meals I have ever had the privilege of eating.

It might be unfair to compare hearty meals in high street eateries with tasting menus you can be served in restaurants such as the aforementioned Bell’s Diner in Montpelier and the Michelin-starred Casamia in Westbury-on-Trym. But the food at these restaurants is of a different class, and Berwick Lodge, although a relative new kid on the block, easily compares. In some areas, it even exceeds these two special places.

Evening Post restaurant critic Mark Taylor recently tweeted after Casamia’s announcement that they were launching a new 11-course tasting menu that although he was looking forward to trying it, he would “just wish more places in the city could cook three decent courses”.

He makes a fair point, but a restaurant like that at Berwick Lodge – which Taylor in the past has tipped as a future holder of a Michelin star – is not a place where many would expect simply three decent courses.

This is especially true if you arrive in your luxurious hotel suite (one of which contains a pulpit) by helicopter, and then expect to be fed and watered in a style befitting the elegance of this sumptuous venue, the toilets of which both my dining companion Ali and I declared to be the finest we have experienced, with fluffy individual white hand towels and glamorous shiny fittings.

Befitting the circumstances for which I was there, on a remarkably opulent first dinner date (admission: half-price voucher for tasting menu soon to expire; not usually this posh), I did not keep a record of each course, nor in the manner popular with foodie bloggers take a grainy photograph of each dish on the table in front of me and then write a detailed description about its ingredients.

For those interested, the menu which I found stuffed in the back pocket of my best trousers a few days ago, is reproduced below.

Suffice to say, the meal, which we accompanied with a bottle of chilled white Rioja from the sommelier’s picks of a huge wine list, was fabulous.

Highlights included a two-hour twice-cooked duck egg just willing to be jabbed by a fork to reveal its gooey centre; ‘snail garden’, featuring a small snail hiding under a large shell among mushroom soil and a trail of parsley; lamb loin to live long in the memory; and to end, ‘chocolate texture’, a sweet-toothed sensation that we just about managed to finish after what had by that time become a lot of food to consume.

Unfortunately, no helicopter arrived to whisk us back to Bedminster, so we made do with a taxi, leaving back down the narrow country lane from what could have been a deserted location in the middle of nowhere but is less than a mile from Cribbs Causeway.

A countryside hotel just outside Bristol, hidden away from the best vantage points in the city but once found never forgotten, Berwick Lodge is a delight. It would be fitting if its restaurant was awarded a Michelin star as it is one of the finest in the city with a tasting menu full of wonder, experimentation and verve.

Berwick Lodge, Berwick Drive, Bristol. 0117 958 1590.

www.berwicklodge.co.uk

Berwick Lodge tasting menu, £65

Honey and goat cheese cannelloni, walnut salad

Duck egg, hay ash, bacon, sour cream, onion, parsley

Mackerel, beetroot, horseradish, thyme

Snail Garden, mushroom soil, pickled vegetable

Cod, pea, asparagus, girolles, broad bean, ruby grapefruit

Lamb loin and shoulder, onion, anchovy, olive, ratatouille

Sauternes verrine, crème caramel, caramel cream, William pear

Chocolate texture (below)

(Photographs courtesy of the Berwick Lodge website photo gallery)