The Ducane Great Braxted (Guest Post)

Archived Maison Cupcake restaurant review published in 2011 remaining available for reference. Venue since permanently closed.

Dinner with Crayons is my semi regular weekend series of child friendly restaurant reviews. Today’s Dinner with Crayons is a post from Danny’s highly entertaining blog, Food Urchin, which recently made me laugh out loud. It’s all about a nice civilised dinner out with his two year old twins. Danny has kindly given permission for this to be reproduced here.

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Feeding time at the zoo. Sometimes there’s no other way to describe it. Within seconds of placing the plate on the table, it can end up on the floor raising a chorus of laughter followed by a shriek of exasperation. On some occasions, the carrot in the spaghetti bolognese is missed and gulped down in the blink of an eye. However, more often than not, it is spotted and becomes an interesting decorative feature that slowly slides down the kitchen wall. Inevitably, bowls become interesting hats but never ever after the contents are actually finished. Which in turn prompts howls of protest in the bath later that evening as dried rice pudding is brushed out of matted, greasy hair. Yes, welcome to the world of feeding wee bairns.

Still we’ve come a long way from those heady days of mucky little mouths and foreheads, stubby toes dangling down from high chairs and the slumped exhaustion that comes from scrubbing the kitchen floor for the twelfth time that week. The twins have turned into quite a nifty pair of diners, quite happy to sit in grown up chairs and eat whatever is put in front of them at the table. OK, I am painting a rose tinted picture here. It can still be quite messy as clumsy hands try to co-ordinate spoon and fork Isla is a total carnivore, Finlay is the sensitive veggie and it can be a struggle to get them to wolf down the vice versa. Plus they’ve picked up this annoying habit of shouting “we want dinner, we want dinner”, thumping their fists down on wood in unison. God knows where they’ve got that from……………….

But by and large, meals around the table are fun and enjoyable and pretty much encapsulate the family scene that I’ve always dreamt of. I believe that eating at the table is important and as we all get older, I hope that table will become the same social focal point that I grew up with. Eating out however, away from the safe, secure, wipe down-able confines of home is a little bit different and perhaps a slight return to hair pulling days of old (er Mrs FU hair pulling that is). We found this out late last year when we visited The DuCane in Great Braxted for lunch.

The drive out into the picturesque countryside to The DuCane, which received a barrel load of awards at the 2010 Essex Food and Drink Awards including Best Newcomer Restaurant, was surprisingly quick from the badlands of Hornchurch. Luckily the twins are still of an age where the soporific motion of the car sends them to sleep. No “are we nearly there yet? are we nearly there yet?” Which probably helped. Although the excitement quickly escalated once we woke them from their slumber and skipped across the car park hand in hand. Looking from the outside, though smart, I’d hazard a guess that The DuCane has spent the best part of its life as a regular pub before becoming a full time restaurant. So as we entered through the door, I must admit the sparse, clean decor inside threw my scent off a bit. In a kind of ‘oh balls, this looks a bit posher than I expected’ kind of way. However, as soon as we stepped towards the bar area, we were approached by a staff member who was very warm and welcoming and totally ignored the fact that my daughter had her index finger fully wedged up her nose. Which put me back at ease.