The Red Lion, Milstead

We consulted the Michelin Guide to see what other recommended pubs were within easy reach, it's been a looooong week and neither of us fancied the formality of a restaurant so this seemed a good compromise.  We both liked the look of The Red Lion in Milstead, just south of Sittingbourne, a very short distance from the middle of nowhere.  The Guide says "Simple, cosy country pub, ever changing blackboard menu offers French influenced country cooking" amongst other things....sounded ideal.

From the outside the pub is nothing to look at, screened from the road as it is by bushes and trees.  The flat brick side that greets you from the car park isn't particularly inspiring, but that soon changes as you walk through the door into the small bar area that felt immediately warm and comfortable, despite there only being two other customers there when we arrived.   The only draught ale on offer was Wells Bombardier, which was very good indeed.

The Michelin Guide isn't joking when it says "blackboard menu", there is one fairly large blackboard at the end of the bar, from which you choose starters and main courses.  We were seated quite close to it, so we had little difficulty, but every other group that came in had to sort of mill around between it and our table while they decided what to have (which became a real drag when a relatively elderly group of four came in and struggled to make decisions!).

Dee chose goats cheese on rustic bread with air cured ham and salad to start, while I opted for Coquilles St. Jacques (scallops & prawns in mashed potato served in a scallop shell, in case you were wondering).  Yes, I know....scallops again!  What can I tell you, I love them.  After a very short wait the starters arrived and they were both nice enough, but that's about all we could find to say about them.

I had high hopes that the main courses would blow us away though, so with great enthusiasm I tucked into my bowl of bouillabaisse.  It lacked nothing for ingredients, at least three different types of white fish, scallops, king prawns, huge mussels, assorted unidentifiable shell fish and a rich, smokey soup/sauce.  It was very good, but no better than the bouillabaisse I had recently at The Horseshoes (see a previous blog entry) which was almost exactly half the price.  I still think I came out ahead of Dee though, her smoked haddock fish cakes weren't up to much at all.  Barely browned in the pan, more fish stodge than fish cakes, which is a shame because they were clearly home made and actually quite tasty.  I'm not sure who thought serving them with mashed potato was a good idea, given that the majority of a fish cake is already mashed potato, but there you go.

Never mind, though.  We're two courses in, both of which were nice enough, even if they weren't staggeringly good.  Still searching for whatever it was the Michelin researchers saw in the place, we soldiered on to the desert course, purely for research purposes you understand!  Dee ordered her favourite pud, apple and red berry crumble with vanilla ice-cream, while I forced down a slice of home made amoretto baked cheesecake with toffee sauce.  Once again, I think I won this course too!  My cheesecake was a little overpowered by the toffee sauce, but the texture was good and the whole thing was a nice rich finish to the meal.  The crumble, on the other hand, was certainly not a crumble.  It was more like a bowl of very sweet fruit with a sweet crust that had been welded together with a blow-torch just prior to serving.  Such a shame.

So we leave, slightly disappointed and seventy quid poorer, feeling that while it was nice, it wasn't quite nice enough for the money.  I don't think we'll hurry back, although I'm open to suggestions that we caught them on an off night.