Last night I had dinner in a pleasant riverside cafe restaurant called the Lock Inn, situated on the banks of the River Avon in Bradford-on-Avon. Offering home cooked meals ranging from egg and chips to lasagne. I’d been there before about a year ago and it was nice then so why not give it another go?
After a short walk from the car along the tow path passing by canal barges of all descriptions, some Devine in appearance, some so hideous they should be taken out onto the river Severn and sunk into its deepest depths we arrived at the restaurant. As expected it was busy, Saturday night being the prime time for most restaurants. The sun was glorious and the air warm and pleasant. One could quite have easily have been abroad it was that nice.
Now the one thing with this place it isn’t terribly big. It has a large seating area outside but inside is how you would say cosy! So to compensate for this they have a couple of disused canal boats tied up on the river bank converted into dining rooms. We where put in one of those. If I’m honest I’d rather have been sat inside. I found the boats uncomfortable, and not the greatest place to sit and have a meal. There was a table of seven of us hunched round a table with barely enough elbow room. Being on the river you see beautiful wildlife such as ducks, geese, swans and the occasional squirrel dashing up and down the trees. You also get the smells of the river. Mainly dead foliage and what I can only describe as a human sewer. When tucking into your dinner the last thing you want to be getting a whiff of is the toilet! So that’s all the negatives done with. And in the grand scheme of things the weren’t that many.
So onto the food! The food here is good, very good. Basic but good. The menu is a little cheesy and a little pointless in some parts but I wasn’t there to analyse the menu and give a literary report I was there to sample the food. To start I had a classic moules mariner with an Asian twist. Cooked in a Thai green curry sauce and served with crusty bread this was a really good starter. Fresh and fragrant and full of flavour. Not too overpowering that you couldn’t taste the mussels and not too bland that all you could taste were mussels. I really enjoyed this dish, the cooking broth was so nice it could have easily doubled as a soup. My only criticism, not enough bread to mop up the delicious Asian infused liquor.
For mains I had a mighty plate of steak and chips with a peppercorn sauce and coleslaw. The steak was rump cooked medium rare and was full of flavour. Nicely seasoned and cooked to perfection. The chips where fat steak chips that where crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. The meal also came with grilled tomato and fried onion and mushrooms. The meal was generous in size, wonderfully cooked and is excellent value for money. The pepper sauce again was rich in flavour and plentiful. Usually when you order a steak sauce in a restaurant it comes in a farting ramekin that would make a hamsters water bowl look huge! So it was nice to get a sauce that hadn’t come out of a packet, been anywhere near a microwave and was enough to do two meals instead of barley just the one.
After the mains where finished Ollie our waiter who was great by the way cleared our plates and took our dessert order. I managed to squeeze in a baked waffle with toffee sauce and toffee ice cream. I’d over indulged in the other two courses so there was no point in skimping on dessert. You have to go big or go home when you eat out. That’s my rule anyway. Pudding arrived and it was as every bit delicious as the previous two courses.
I really enjoyed this place and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants honest, simple home cooked food with very little fuss in a quirky if not somewhat eccentric setting. It’s great for families, couples or singles. I’d be interested to see what they put on their menu for winter?
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