The Mitre

Again a disappointment.

Went for Sunday Roast. The bar staff as always were delightful. The floor staff, beginning with the maitre d' who showed up after we stood at the door for about 5 minutes, was largely usless, listless and clueless.

We both ordered the roast. After an hour, we finally flagged down one of the waiters, apparently carefully trained to never make eye contact with a customer and always stare into the middle distance:

"Excuse me, do you know where our lunch is," I asked. "No", said he. And off he went. I'm not kidding! Greene King's Finest!

Finally tackled another on of the strolling staff who did kindly check on our order.

75 minutes after sitting down our Roast arrived. Apparently, it takes a very long time to carve 2 pieces of meat...

Ordered rare and medium rare, it was well done, tough and tasteless. The waiter even had the cheek to say re-arrange the rare and medium rare plates at the table even though they were neither rare nor medium rare and indistinguishable from on another in their greyness.

It really is a trick to screw up a roast, but this is the second time this has occurred.

On my last visit, as I was leaving, I stopped to chat with a couple of the staff who I knew who were taking a meal break and they asked how lunch was. Our table had been served the same grey, gristly. shoe leather Roast which we had sent back only to be replaced with similary inedible meat. As I glanced down at their plates - heaped with lovely, pink roast that could almost be cut with a fork, I said that I would have enjoyed the meal far more if we had been served the same food which the staff serves themselves.

So, go for the bar, it is fun, buzzy and, as noted before, the bar staff is usually quite good.

The food has disappointed twice. They will not get a 3rd chance.
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3 Overall rating
Food 1 | Service 1 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 1
Saturday, October 13, 2012

We were reasonably impressed with this gastropub, which we happened to pop into for dinner while walking down the road just because we liked the look of the menu.

The interior of the pub was quite interesting, forming one vast wide space, and felt warm and welcoming but slightly soulless - as is typical of these places with a grey-painted exterior. The dining area was up in a little raised area some distance to the left of the lovely circular bar. Quite a lot of noise still carried despite the pub being almost empty (it was a Sunday), so I would think it would be almost unbearable at times when one would find queues at the bar. The spotlights in the roof of the dining area seemed very out of place and didn't provide a very flattering light, a lower and warmer light source would be a big improvement.

We were welcomed by a friendly waitress, who explained to us as soon as we were seated that the kitchen had run out of a number of menu items (hardly surprising after a busy Sunday). However, she did become a little flustered when we asked for beer pairings to match the food, trying to steer us towards wine instead (we weren't in the mood).

I started with a herb soufflé that turned out to be the highlight of the meal. It was perfectly cooked, the delicate flavour sitting perfectly alongside the decadent, melting texture. It came with some delicious assorted varieties of wild mushrooms in a sauce that was tasty but could have been significantly warmer. My companion ate a smoked haddock fishcake on a bed of creamed leeks with shaved eggs in a parsley and caper velouté. The fishcake was nice and chunky, the haddock tasted good, but I thought it maybe could have benefited from being a little moister. Unfortunately the sauce here was also a little cooler than we liked, and the taste wasn't robust enough to stand up to the smokiness of the fishcakes, it really needed more capers or maybe a little spice.

The mains arrived surprisingly quickly - in fact I would say we would ask to wait a few minutes next time we visit. My fillet of sea bass was tasty and came off the skin nicely but could have used about a minute less cooking. It came with a Jerusalem Artichoke purée that was also good but had gone a little lumpy and could have used straining, some beautifully cooked mangetout, and a fantastically rich but engagingly sharp pernod butter sauce that was the most enjoyable element of the dish.

My companion chose the 28 day dry aged Angus rib eye, this was cut a little too thin and as a result they had a hard time evenly cooking it. It tasted good but wasn't as flavourful as I would expect for £18, and came topped with an absolutely wonderful Stilton and shallot butter that I will have to try making myself. The meat was served on top of a generous pile of hand-cut chips - I recommend they urgently find a different way of serving this as the juices had rendered the chips soggy.

The desserts were unfortunately quite disappointing - while the starters and mains had done the basics right, everything went to pot here. I expected my order of mulled wine poached pears to contrast warmly against the coolness of the milk panna cotta that would accompany it, but the pears were stone-cold and bland, and the equally cold mulled wine sauce did not taste good. My companion's sticky toffee pudding was simply not rich or sticky enough.

In short, some very good dishes that could have been made first-class with a little more attention to detail, and some disappointing desserts that take my food score down a mark. Prices were standard gastropub and as such, decent but not amazing value, around £30/head for 3 courses excluding service + drinks.
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Brown Pelican
7 Overall rating
Food 7 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 7
Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Not bad at all, with the food being well above pub standard. It was a bit noisy but to be expected on a Sat in December. Not that cheap and prob better for groups than couples but solid choice in a neighbourhood not overly endowed with decent eateries.
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Londonglen
7 Overall rating
Food 8 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 6 | Value for money 7
Tuesday, December 21, 2010