Last Saturday night, the ball and chain and I decided to venture out and grab a bite to eat at a nearby pub. It had recently just changed hands and they had started serving food once again. We had Both eaten there in the past and to be honest it had been ok. Cheap food and cheap ale, usually a winning combination if you're not that fussy, which we weren't this particular evening. Plus it was a good lively atmosphere, which does make all of the difference to the dining out experience. So we journeyed to the nearby eatery in the hope of finding the place in good shape with plenty of customers at the bar and diners in the dining room. How wrong could I have been? The place was empty, completely deserted. I had seen more activity at the bottom of my grandfather's pond than I did in this pub. Not a good sign, especially on a Saturday night, the busiest night of the week for any food and drink business.
We ordered our food at the bar, from a member of staff that had about as much enthusiasm as a death row inmate waiting for the switch to be thrown! We were promptly told that we had to hurry up and get our order in before the kitchen closed at 9pm. It was just before 8pm when we arrived. And the place was empty, the music from the PA system ricocheting off of the empty tables filling the bar with noise that we could have quite honestly done without. I had their southern friend chicken burger, served with sweet and sour anions (whatever they are?), fries and truffle mayonnaise. The other half had a rump steak with the usual trimmings. With two pints of the warmest bitter the barmaid could crank out from the taps, the meal came to just over £24.00. Now in the grand scheme of things that isn't a huge amount of money to spend in a restaurant. It's fairly reasonable and not out of the way for a lot of people.
The food arrived in good time, the waitress who was the same girl who took our order plonked the plates down and scuttled back to her phone behind the bar. It seemed that the urgency of her Facebook status update or her latest Insta selfie was far more important to get back to, than asking us if there was anything else we needed before tucking in? As it happened we didn't need anything else, it had already been slung in a bucket and brought over to the table earlier by another member of staff. I looked at my burger which seemed ok, but upon closer inspection it was substandard to say the least. Remember those sweet and sour onions. Well they where nowhere to be seen, instead just a couple of rings of raw onion slapped in the middle of the bun. The truffle mayonnaise hadn't seen a truffle in its life. A small blob of mayonnaise, I'm guessing from a sachet, lubricated the top of the chicken breast. Oh dear, I thought. Can this get any worse? Yes! Was the answer. I bit into the burger to find that the chicken had been over cooked and become dry, stringy and chewy. The chips where ok though. As I chewed through this leathery avian flesh the thoughts of regret started to fill my mind.
Now let's turn our attention to the steak. It appeared to look decent and cooked to the required liking, medium rare. There was definitely more emphasis on the rare aspect of this steak than there was on the medium. Not a major faux par, but it hadn't been rested so it was swimming in its own blood and cooking juices. The other additions to that meal where ok. Peas, mushroom and onion rings three items that even the shittest cook in the world couldn't fuck up! We ate our meals, not compalining just vowing never to return. No one came over to see if everything was ok anyway so we couldn't complain even if we wanted to?
Looking back on this event, It suddenly dawned on me that when it comes to food I think we have all of our priorities wrong. £24.00 that meal cost, now if you were in a supermarket and saw a joint of meat for the that price the chances are you'd put it back and walk away. But strangely enough you'd think nothing of paying that for utter crap in a pub. The reason we pay good money to eat out is because we expect a certain standard of food. Usually a high standard that we can't replicate at home. But the truth is, with just a little commitment and patience then we can replicate such meals at home for our family and friends.
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