At the beginning of the year, in early January, I wrote a blog post here about my experience of the latest incarnation of The Eagle and Child in Ramsbottom, and in more cases than not, I enjoyed it greatly. A few months later and I made a return trip, again for lunch, so although I have never blogged about the same venue before, I thought it might be interesting to just offer another quick post, looking into the place again a second time around.
As I say, I had a great many good thing to say about the Eagle and Child, one of Ramsbottom's oldest and most established pubs. What's more, I am happy to say that in numerous cases, what I reported positively on initially remains consistently at a pleasingly high standard. Same obvious high demand for the place and what it offers, same great and refreshing atmosphere, same solid pub experience In fact, a key but perhaps not so positive area I looked at last time, i.e. the fact that in a sad minority of cases the odd member of staff involved in their innovative youth training scheme didn't seem to be quite as lucid and adept as you would hope, has apparently been resolved. Certainly from my most recent experience, all the staff seemed well trained, and not only that, they were also exceedingly welcoming, courteous and polite, which I find is sadly not as common as you would hope.
But, and it is a sad but resounding but, there were some differences that were not for the better, and equally as sad, they were to be found in the food. Last time I wrote about how my share of the food, and the rest of the menu as a whole seemed rather excellent. Indeed this time, my starter of smoked haddock rarebit was utterly divine, and my dining partner's starter of fresh garden vegetable soup equally so. The main problem I'm afraid, was with my Lancashire cheese and onion pie. Apparently it was "award winning" but based on mine I really struggle to see how. Unlike any cheese and onion pie, or indeed any other pie I have ever come across - it consisted of rather lovely pastry, but inside a huge amount of molten, incredibly rich, liquid melted cheese, with an infinitesimal amount of onion that could not be tasted at all, and that's it. Oh no, wait...MUSTARD...A LOT of mustard. Not a delicate hint of wholegrain mustard as a nice touch but what tasted like masses of English mustard that totally dominated and thus ruined the entire dish, and hence did cast a negative black spot on the whole Eagle and Child experience second time around.
It is a real shame, as I was so ready to praise the place again. Maybe I am being a tad unfair, and maybe it is just my individual taste that rebels against that particular dish (though with such a lot of mustard and not much else, I tend to doubt it). Yet as I'm sure many will agree, it only takes one bad thing to sully a good dining experience, and it is for this reason chiefly that at least numerically, this second review of the Eagle and Child has to go down a notch. I certainly would not say that it is conclusively damning and everyone should give up on the place here and now, but I do feel it is quite a sad state of affairs, that my second experience does kind of negatively affect my view of the establishment a wee bit, especially when it seemingly had and still apparently has a great deal of potential.
No comments:
Post a Comment