Restaurant review: The White Hart, Penton, Hampshire

The White Hart in Penton, Hampshire is a country pub with delicious food and serene surroundings - much like most of the Hampshire pubs, but all of them have a very distinct heritage and personality about them. We tried what The White Hart has to offer last night and I'm very impressed with the food and the service - it's a guaranteed good night!
One of the things I absolutely loved about the pub is that they use a lot of local produce like Pentons pheasants, and trust me there's enough pheasants where I live to feed an army. Or five. To me, there's something really special and home like using local produce and I wish more placed did that. Of course, you can't ask a giant chain to do so and that's exactly why we love finding privately run pubs and bars.

For starters, I had a venison salad with black pudding and eggs, Liam had king prawns which were absolutely delicious, and our friends Louise and John and the olive, bread and oil platters. My salad was so delicious, it was just right in terms of how full it made me and the black pudding balls were delicious! As, of course, was the venison - tender, slow cooked, just delicious!
For mains, I ordered the Penton pheasant breast on the grill, Liam had the venison, John the steak and Louise had The White Harts favourite fish and chips. I was so excited for my pheasant as I had always wanted to try what pheasant tastes like and nothing better than an organic, local bird. It was delicious - pheasant certainly did not disappoint. Like a mix between chicken but (and here's what surprised me the most) it was rare. I wasn't sure what to make of it because you just can't shake the feeling of eating a rare chicken because of how it looks, but the texture and the taste were just divine. After I polished off the plate, I Googled the rare pheasant phenomenon and it turns out that it's really only just chicken that you can't eat rare due to the way it is reared. So, I love pheasants even more now!
We had a couple of cheeky desserts to finish and I picked the treacle tart with salted caramel ice cream. Delish, is all I can say. Sweet, yet with a salty contrast - it was amazing.

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of country foodporn and if you ever find yourself in Hampshire, pop by The White Hart in Penton! This pub is dog friendly too, so if you have a canine companion like Cooper the Wonder Dog - you can bring them along! (Cooper is Lou and Johns little baby, Harvey was sleeping at home that evening).