There’s a particular kind of shift in the air at this time of year nothing dramatic, just enough to make you reach for a jumper and start thinking about dinner before it’s even lunchtime. And with it comes the quiet thrill we wait for all year game season has returned!. A proper celebration, not with streamers or speeches, but with slow cooking, deep flavours, and the sense that the pub has found its rhythm again.
You open the door and the smell hits you a mix of woodsmoke, candle wax, and whatever’s bubbling away in the kitchen. Something rich. Something with bones. Something that’s been cooking since breakfast and smells like it could bring someone back to life.
The candles are already lit, flickering on old wooden tables and the joy of game season has returned in our Suffolk pub. The deep, glad welcome of it familiar in a way that feels a bit medieval. There’s something primal about the food this time of year. Something that pulls you in. Rabbit in mustard, venison braising until it gives up entirely, pheasant with cider and onions that have melted into jam.
And then there’s venison always the quiet star people forget how good it is, maybe the name sounds too posh, like something that needs a napkin folded into a swan. But really, it’s just proper, honest meat from the woods, lean but full of soul, like beef that spent its summer reading poetry and walking through misty fields.
When the first carcass comes in, still carrying the cold of the morning, the kitchen always gets excited to break it down and get it into a bath of port and red wine or roast it slow until it’s pink in the middle and dark at the edges all savoury and soft and exactly what you want with a glass of something red and fruity. Maybe with a sharp sauce, blackcurrants or pickled walnut to keep it lively. Maybe just mash and too much butter. Either way, it’s the kind of dish that stops conversation in its tracks. The kind of meal that reminds you why you love food. Why pubs matter.
And then there are the birds the true sign of the season. They start arriving in twos and threes, bundled in scruffy bags or tied by the feet, feathers still ruffled from the morning flight. Partridge first pale and delicate, ready for roasting with quince or pancetta. Then pheasant, brasher and gamey in all the best ways, perfect with red cabbage and a glug of something warming. Snipe, if you’re lucky tiny and elusive, with a flavour so rich it feels almost secretive. And the ducks, of course proper wild ones, the kind that taste of rain and sky, of muddy fields and cold rivers. Mallard with damson. Teal with burnt butter. Food that tastes like the season, like frost in the hedgerows and boot tracks through the woods.
They arrive as quietly as the leaves fall just a knock on the kitchen door, a nod from someone in a wax jacket, a murmured “Got a few for you.” And suddenly, the menu shifts. Less salad, more smoke. Less chill, more fire.
It’s not just the food that changes the whole pub leans back into itself. Familiar faces return to the bar, brushing off the rain, ordering pints without needing to ask what’s on. There’s a sense of homecoming after a summer of gardens and suspiciously pale lager. You see boots lined up by the door again, wax jackets returning to the coat hooks dogs wet, slightly sheepish, and gently steaming curled up by the fire.
Game isn’t tidy It’s not smooth or boneless or easy. But that’s the point. It tastes of land and weather, of bramble thick hedgerows and frosty mornings. Food with a story one you can actually taste where its from and when it returns after a long summer of chilled rosé and leafy things, it feels like the pub has put its coat back on. Like it’s been waiting for this moment. And honestly, so have we. The nights are drawing in. The fire’s on. The candles are lit. The partridge is in the oven.
Come in. Sit down. Game’s on.