The Neville Bull in Birling

We went in search of a new country pub to try at lunchtime today and stumbled across a potential winner! Birling village looks like a typical Kentish village, and the Neville Bull looks like a typical Kentish pub, until you get inside. I've never seen a more eclectic mixture of flags, pictures, ornaments, samplers, bits & bobs and goodness only knows what in one place before!

The bar is filled with a variety of furniture, including a big green leather sofa and a mixture of old dining tables, chairs and benches. Every surface is covered with nick-nacks and every flat wall has a picture or two on it. It could be overwhelming but is actually very charming. There is a real focus on local produce, even behind the bar. There was Kentish cider, wine and beer on offer, including a pale ale brewed in Birling village itself. It doesn't get much more local than that! Unfortunately I didn't discover until we were leaving that they offer a "beer bat", a third of a pint of each of the real ales on offer for those who have trouble choosing. Even the fruit juices we're Kentish.

As well as the main menu there was a fairly large selection of specials written on blackboards in the bar. We ordered two starters to share between the three of us, and it's a good job we didn't choose one each because the portion sizes were very generous indeed. We shared a whole baked Camembert with a basket of about half a loaf of hand cut fresh bread (a starter for one person? A whole cheese! Really???) and a portion of eight large tempura prawns with soy and chilli dips. The prawns were delicious, hot and crispy, but the Camembert was a bit disappointing to be honest. It hadn't been baked enough, so it wasn't runny enough to dip the bread in so we asked them to put it back in again for a while. Unfortunately whatever they did to it made it hotter also changed the texture to something akin to an omelette.

Mum and I both chose the steak & kidney pudding from the specials board, while Dee chose the chicken pie from the main menu. Both came with vegetables and chips, which turned out to be a huge dish of cabbage with bacon and cream sauce, a second huge dish of carrots and peas, and a third huge dish of thick, crispy chips. Probably enough of six, and we certainly came nowhere near finishing them. The puddings were fantastic...about a pound of steak and kidney in a shell of suet pudding that was just the right mixture of light & soft on the inside and lightly crisp on the outside. Ridiculously too much for one person, and again, neither of us managed to finish ours. Dee's chicken pie was not really a pie, in that it was actually a bowl of chicken stew with a puff pastry lid. This seems to be the norm for pub pies at the moment, and it's a great shame because you can't beat a real pie.

Unfortunately I can't tell you about the deserts because we were so full we didn't come very close to finishing the main course. What we had was delicious, traditional pub food in a friendly pub with an open fire and a warm welcome, but like the ornaments there was far too much of it. I'm certain we'll go back there, but we won't eat for a couple of days in preparation!