The Crown, Rochester

Dinner and drinks with three work colleagues last Tuesday night. My department is scattered all around the country so we don't often get to meet up and put the world to rights over a few beers. On the odd occasion that we do it's usually in Leeds or Kent. This time it was Kent's turn so we thought we'd give Rochester a try.

Very few of the pubs on the high street seemed to contain any diners, so we sort of ended up at the Crown by default as it's at the end of the road. The menu covered all the standard pub stuff, but the handwritten specials board and numerous signs proclaiming their status as a Freehouse suggested that perhaps they were making an effort. They weren't.

Things started to go badly with the non-arrival of a starter. All of the mains arrived, but no sign of the one starter that had been ordered. The following conversation ensued:

'Excuse me, we ordered a calamari starter' said I.
'oh yeah, it's just in the lift' said the waitress.
'err but it's a starter' said I.
'Did you order it as a starter?' she queried.
'well it was ordered from the section of the menu headed 'Starters', I ordered it before the main course, and asked for it 'to start' I explained.
'Oh well it's here',  she replied, a touch indignant by this stage as if she was thinking 'well we didn't forget it entirely so what's the problem'.
'You'd best bring it out then.'

That was that. And what had just arrived in front of me. This:

Steak and ale pie with mash and veg. I really need to have a rant about the mash. It was the most unpleasant thing I have been served in a long time. It tasted of starchy water and had the texture of lumpy wallpaper paste. This is not an exaggeration. I can only assume it was some sort of Smash. If it was made from actual potatoes then fuck knows how they managed to create that texture. None of the rest was actively vile, in that you could eat it. You probably wouldn't want to, but you could. The vegetables were overcooked, the pastry was undercooked and the gravy was congealed budget Bisto. The chunks of meat in the pie were ok, but there weren't many of them. This cost a tenner.

Two of us had steaks (one in a mixed grill, one in a surf and turf). Both were cooked way beyond the level requested (medium) to a uniform grey throughout. And finally this:

which is belly pork. Allegedly. First time I've ever seen belly pork served in a thin slice covered in packet gravy and half cooked onions before. My friend couldn't identify what it was, but she didn't think it was pork. This cost thirteen pounds, and was from the 'Specials' board.

The waitress did come over to ask if everything was ok. We'd pretty much given up by that point. I told her that no, it was horrible. She said she would go and inform the chef. We hung around for a while to see whether this would elicit some sort of response (an apology, free drinks, anything??). It didn't. We left.

The next pub we were about to stop off at was in the process of having its drains cleaned. It stank. We headed back to the safety of Wetherspoons, which had a great selection of ales on, and on the basis of this admittedly small sample is probably the best pub in town.


2/10

The Crown Freehouse

2 High Street

Rochester

Kent

ME1 1PT

http://www.thecrownrochester.co.uk/

All Bar One, Leeds

I usually try to avoid eating at big chain restaurants or bars, because most of them are rubbish. That may be a sweeping generalisation, some are certainly better than others, but my experience at All Bar One on Sunday backed up the theory pretty well.

I wanted some brunch, I wanted to sit in the sun, I didn't want a meat fest (I was heading to a barbecue in the afternoon for burgers, sausages, steak, chicken, kebabs and beer) and All Bar One on Millenium Square met all the criteria. Bubble and squeak with fried eggs, spinach and salsa sounded great.

It looks ok too, but it wasn't. The egg on the left wasn't cooked, the yolk was surrounded by a thick layer of translucent raw white. The edible egg was very greasy. The bubble and squeak mix was fine, but as with the eggs whoever was manning the stove had completely cocked it up. What appears to be a nice crusty exterior was very thin and rapidly gave way to greasy, slimy, mushy innards. Hint: stuff doesn't fry properly if your oil isn't hot enough. The spinach somehow managed to stick to the greasy theme, seemingly having been wilted in warm oil rather than a drop or two of water. The salsa was inoffensive in a bland, tastes like the mild stuff you get in jars sort of way.

On being asked if everything was ok with my meal I complained about the state of the eggs. This brought a cursory apology but nothing further. The guy serving me was pleasant enough but clearly wishing he was anywhere but there on a sunny holiday weekend.

My meal was ordered from the £6 lunch menu. A cappuccino was £2.20. I had a nice time because I had the paper to read, it was sunny and I was about to go drink beer in my mates back garden. Nothing much to do with the All Bar One experience, which was rubbish. It might be worth noting that I've read a fairly positive review of this place on another blog that I read recently (can't remember which one), so perhaps I was just unlucky.

3/10

All Bar One Millenium Square
Unit D
Electric Press
Leeds
LS2 3AD

http://www.allbarone.co.uk/allbaronemillenniumsquare/

A pair of negative reviews

A friend commented recently that since I started this blog I've written very few negative reviews. I think the primary reason for this is that I tend to research where I'm going to eat in advance, so I generally have a fair idea that I'll be going somewhere that's to my taste. The secondary reason is that I can't always be bothered writing up negative experiences, particularly if I never expected them to be good in the first place (bad experiences when I was expecting good are a different matter). Here are a couple of examples from this week:

Sainsbury's Café, Sale

Things didn't bode well as soon as I walked in here. The guy behind the counter looked more than a bit dishevelled and had something fairly large stuck on his face. It was either a food remnant (pastry?) stuck in the stubble, or a colossal yellowheaded spot. Nice. Trying to banish unpleasant thoughts from my mind I ordered a cappuccino and an iced cinnamon bun.

The cinnamon bun wasn't. There was definitely no cinnamon in it and it tasted weirdly of artificial lemon flavouring (like a Mr Kipling lemon slice or somesuch). It was also very stale. The coffee wasn't actively offensive but didn't really taste of anything.

I tried to read the paper but my mind kept wandering back to the pastry/yellowhead. What if it ended up in my coffee? I left the rest untouched and scarpered.

Plus points: inexpensive
Minus points: see above

2/10

Sainsbury's
Curzon Road
Sale
M33 7SA


The Copper Pot, Knowsley

The Copper Pot is one of those inexplicably popular new build dining pubs often found squatting next to roundabouts, usually somewhere near a Premier Inn. This one is on the edge of Knowsley Industrial Park, a place I have to visit often with work. And so it was that I found myself in there for lunch the other day.

The menu is one of those lengthy affairs, the idea being that 'there's something for everyone'. It's also 'two for one' on all main courses, the main advantage of this being that if your meal is shit, at least it will also be cheap. Unless of course you are sad, lonely and dining alone, in which case it will be shit and expensive.

I ordered the fish and chips, which turned out to have one or two redeeming features. It was a good sized chunky piece of fish, not overcooked and the batter wasn't too thick. The skin had been left on though, which I'm not a fan of, and there were also bones running right through it. Someone wasn't paying attention in filleting class. So, narrowly avoiding the Heimlich maneouvre, on to the rest: the mushy peas were claggy and horrible, and the chips were limp and flabby. Service was indolent.

Plus points: inexpensive, I wasn't paying, the fish
Minus points: the fish, the chips, the peas, the service

4/10

Coopers Lane
Knowsley
L33 7TT
http://www.copperpotpub.co.uk/


So there we have it. I rather doubt that those reviews will be of use to anyone, but I rather enjoyed writing them. I might do it more often.