Cow Dining Room

i had wanted to go to the cow for ages so was glad of the opportunity to go.

we started with a glass of champagne, some oysters followed by a goats cheese salad and the famous fish soup which i must say was divine, i will definitely be back if only to have that dish again!

there is only a very small wine list, we had two bottles which were both fairly expensive and in my opinion were not very good considering how much we were paying. i had a guinness at the end of hte night which i thought would be good but was not

the bill was expensive but then we had quite a lot and oysters, champagne and the wine were very expensive.

service was good although the waitress had thought that we had only ordered one soup to share between the 3 of us (!!!!) so one person had to eat while the other two waited for their dishes to arrive which was a bit of a shame but worth waiting for. other than that the service was good.
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Annie
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 8 | Atmosphere 9 | Value for money 8
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Was really looking forward to a slap up lunch at The Cow - had never been to the dining room upstairs before, but was greedily visualising decent, generous, delciious British cooking. Wrong. How the chef had the nerve to put together such an insipid, uninspiring menu is quite beyond me. Nettle soup followed by lemon risotto? £22? Pollock and mashed potatoes? Grim, grim, grim. The kitchen is clearly run by people who have lost interest - we arrived at 230 as planned and were told that we had to order before 245 or the kitchen would be closed.

Our dreadful experience was frankly a horrible throwback to 20 years ago and I doubt that any of the 6 dishes put in front of us would have even got whoever prepared them through the first round of Master Chef - not even the celebrity version. Salt is a seasoning not an offensive weapon!

Would we go back? No. Life is too short and taste buds are too valuable. There are at least 3 better gastro pubs in the same road for starters.
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John McIvor - View all reviews by this user
Overall rating
Food 0 | Service 5 | Atmosphere 7 | Value for money 2
Monday, April 30, 2007

A group of six of us went for Sunday lunch. Pleasant atmosphere, surprisingly unbusy. I had chicken in red wine with puy lentils and spinach and the quality was excellent, far better than most gastropubs I've been to recently. The waitress was a little ignorant about some of the menu items, but not to an extent that it was a problem, and was always willing to find out the answers to our questions. I'd definitely recommend this place once the smoking ban comes in - the ventilation system didn't appear to be up to coping with a couple of patrons who were chainsmoking.
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Alex M
Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 7 | Atmosphere 8 | Value for money 7
Tuesday, March 14, 2006