Arrived at the venue and like others have mentioned, do not allow the drab grey exterior to put you off. You walk into a classic British bar setting purposely designed to look a little tattered but welcoming.
The menu is what you would expect from a pub, there is a specials board with 5 special dishes, minted lamb, steak and blue cheese salad, half pound Mexican burger (burger with chili con carne) chicken Tika masala, hand cut pork.
We went for the chicken goujons, black pudding and stuffed mushrooms for starters, pretty uninspiring start, although the batter over the chicken was nice and crispy and the black pudding was also very well sourced the plate missed any thing to exemplify the dish, the real looser was the stuffed mushrooms, way too much bland rubbery cheese which entirely stifled the dish, the addition of breadcrumbs to the cheese turned what may have been a grease apocalypse into sludge. But do not let that detract that all meals were served on a slab of slate... Yes a slab of slate, why? Does it add anything to the meal? Nope, not at all, but it doesn't detract either, just seems a little cliché.
Onto the main course, a steak and ale pie and two 'WA burgers', the steak and ale pie itself was actually very good, full of nice big chunks of beef in a rich vegetable and gravy mixture. The burgers however, well, to be fair the presentation was very nice, this is what tempted us to them, however the product delivered was at best, very disappointing, the burger consists of a crown and heal, 3 patties, 2 onion rings and a salad garnish, the burgers were low quality chump meat burnt to a solid crispy state, the fries served with the burger were frozen cheap class fries, some how very very dry.
One burger went back to the kitchen the other was half eaten, after noticing plates being taken back into the kitchen this was a theme, immensely disappointing, after the starters and the beef pie there is certainly potential here, but if you can't get a beef burger to be edible then that leaves the entire menu as suspect, disappointingly so.
Service was OK, not good but Ok, if a member of staff came near to the table during the meal then maybe the issue could have been recitified, only after clearly stating that I would not want be paying for the main dish did they offer to remove it. No substitute offer was made.
It's a shame to spend 35 quid on a meal for 3 and for two people to leave hungry is a serious disappointment, for one diner to have an acceptable meal and the other two to have to hit McDonald's should really indicate this is not somewhere to eat, sadly.
Going to give two stars as their ale is a huge saving grace. read more