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.

Return to The Horseshoes, and new owners at The Bull

Just for a change we had dinner at The Horseshoes a couple of Fridays ago.  I was glad to see that the guest beer (Brains SA Gold) was still on, and still delicious.  I noted with great interest that the second pint was just as delicious as the first.....and the third.

Our timing was good, the new autumn menu had just been produced and for the most part the changes look positive.  I was a bit sad to see the fillet steak on a toasted brioche with duck pate removed, but some of the new dishes could well make up for it.  I like the idea of a scallop dish and a mussel dish of the day, plenty of scope for the chef to do something a bit unusual if the mood takes him.  Of course I had the scallops, which came with chorizo and lentils (one of my favourite combinations) and aside from requiring a tiny bit of seasoning they were splendid.  Dee opted for deep fried brie (always one for the healthy option!) which actually turned out to be very good indeed.

For main course I had one of the new dishes, slow cooked belly of pork with mashed potato and braised red cabbage.  Great autumnal dish, warming and filling.  The pork had been cooked long and low, so it was tender and moist.  Some home made onion rings gave it all that bit of texture that would otherwise have been missing, good addition.  Dee had the mussels of the day, a huge bowl filled to the brim with mussels in a basic cream and white wine sauce that needed nothing more added to it.  A little bowl of thin chips on the side and Dee was in her element.  The only thing lacking was a chunk of bread to soak up the sauce!

 A little individual lemon meringue pie for me (delicious!  Sharp lemon and sweet meringue) and summer berry and lemon sponge with custard for Dee just rounded off another comfortable evening nicely.

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Last weekend we wandered into what I guess could be considered our "local", The Bull in Barming.  Again, our timing was good!  We only really popped in to see if they were planning to do a quiz night soon, but the barmaid said they had only taken the place over a week earlier and were still deciding things like that.  She also told us that the kitchen was being refitted and if we came back the next night they would be doing food for the first time.  The same people also own the Redstart (see earlier blog post) and the Fox and Goose on Weavering Street in Maidstone which is apparently well known for its food.

After an encouraging start the next night (pint of Doombar for me, one of my favourites and very well presented it was too) and a chat with the chef and new landlady who were enjoying a glass of wine in the bar, we had a look through the menu.  Now, even taking into account that it was the first day the kitchen had been open and presumably they'd had to cobble the menu together a bit, it wasn't what you'd call inspiring.  We asked if the steak and ale pie was actually a pie, or one of those bowl-of-stew-with-a-flakey-pastry-lid efforts that you see so often, and were told it was a real bona fide pie.  Faced with options such as a burger, hunters chicken or sausage and mash, we both went for the pie.

It was massive!  It came with chips, peas and carrots and I suspect all came out of the microwave, but it was cheap enough and certainly filled a hole.  It's a bit of a shame though, because as we have already seen, it isn't that hard to do pub food really well.  This felt like pub food of the late 80's and might explain why we were one of only two tables dining on the opening night.  It's a particular shame, because the beer was excellent and it's a nice enough pub, but slightly sticky tables and below average food make it hard to recommend it.  We'll give them a while to settle in and try again, but if there's even a hint of scampi in a basket.......  On the plus side....the quiz starts next week!

Fatfoodie adventures in Stoke!

Yes, I know it's not in Kent.  Again.  But there was good food to be had in Stoke!  Well....I say "in" Stoke, obviously I don't actually mean "in Stoke"....I mean near Stoke.  Alright, so not in Stoke at all, in Trentham and in Stone....but they're close enough, ok?

Anyway....the food.  Dee and I took the last few bits Josie needed for the start of her last year at Staffordshire University last weekend.  We stayed in the Travelodge (don't ask, and certainly don't go there!) at Trentham on the outskirts of Stoke-on-Trent.  Trentham Gardens is home to a great little place called The Pie Minister, a sort of modern take on the old pie and mash shops of my youth!  It was a light, airy, log cabin type unit with brightly coloured posters and info about their pies around the walls.

For a very reasonable price (about a fiver) they do a home cooked pie of your choice from a list of about a dozen with mash and red wine gravy.  For about £7.20 they do something called "The Mothership".  To my surprise Josie (who hasn't got the largest appetite) opted for the Mothership with a Thai Chook pie.  This comprised a lovely thai chicken green curry pie, a double helping of mash, a dollop of minted mushy peas, red wine gravy and sprinkles of crispy fried onions and grated cheddar.  Quite a plate-full.  I was even more surprised when she came very close indeed to finishing off the lot!  I opted for a PM pie mothership, but with a single helping of mash.  The PM pie is their signature dish, it's a sort of cross between steak and kidney and beef and veg pie.  Good decision to go for single mash, I can tell you.  There was still plenty of it.  Dee wasn't all that hungry, but she still managed to put away a large sausage roll with mash and gravy.

They sell t-shirts with "Keep Calm & Eat More Pies" on the front, and all the staff wear them as uniform.  I would have bought one, but they were so flimsy I didn't feel they were worth the tenner asking price.  All in all, very good quality and fantastic value food.  An ideal lunch stop on an autumn shopping day, hot and filling, lots of choice, worth a visit!

I've done this in the wrong order really, because Pie Minister was Sunday lunch, but dinner Saturday night turned out to be pretty good too.  We went to a village a few miles outside Stoke called Stone to revisit a pub / steakhouse that Ben and Jen took us to on our last visit.  Sadly for them, the ovens weren't working on that occasion so the menu choice was seriously limited.  Not so this time!

 The pub is in two halves with a large central bar area.  To one side is a very modern feeling disco type pub, complete with bar stocked with several fruit flavoured ciders, alcopops and any number of fizzy beers.  The other side though is a rather nice, modern feeling restaurant which feels much more like a wine bar than a pub.  Fortunately for me, there were a couple of good real ales on, Marsden's Pedigree and Jenning's Cocker Hoop (which I felt it was in the interest of my loyal readers to try).

The menu was also in two halves.  On one side was a selection of fish dishes, ribs, and the usual gastro-pub type offerings, and on the back was a grill and hot-stones menu.  As you'd expect, prices ranged from
around £7 to £16 for main courses.  We dispensed with starters in the vain hope that we might have room for a desert, and dived straight in to the main courses.  Our waiter and waitress were friendly, chatty, and knowledgeable.  They explained the menu and the three steak specials on offer.  We could have chosen an ostrich steak, a buffalo steak or something called a bistro steak.  Dee opted for the latter, which turned out to be a nice thick beef rump steak cut from a particular part of the rump that makes it almost as tender as fillet but with all the meaty flavour of rump.  This came topped with a fried duck egg, chips and mushrooms.  Josie and I weren't in the mood to be refined, so we both chose the rack of pork ribs, but with different sauces.  I went for Jack Daniels BBQ, while Josie chose hoi-sin.  I have to admit, although they were both good, her sauce was better.

It's hard to do anything too imaginative with ribs, but putting a good sauce on them is a great start!  If there's one thing I love it's slow cooked ribs where the meat just falls off the bone.  I cut the end one off the rack, picked up the end of the rib itself, and by the time I'd got it to my mouth the meat was back on the plate leaving just the clean bone in my hand!  Spot on.  The coleslaw was very good too, high quality supplier or home made, I'm not sure which.  I've never been a big fan of the whole hot stones idea, I'm not sure I want to pay extra for the joy of still having to cook my own dinner.  I want chef to cook it for me please, I'm sure he'll do a better job of it.

In spite of a good choice of deserts, we only had room to share one between the three of us.  We had the house speciality, a hot baked cookie still in the iron skillet it was cooked in with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream.  The waitress warned us that the skillet was still very hot indeed, but both the girls still managed to burn themselves on it!  They both agreed it was worth it though.

Next time we visit Stoke we will probably revisit both the Steakhouse and the Pie Minister again.  If you're in the area and hungry you could do worse than do the same.

The Horseshoes, East Farleigh

Dee and I often discuss what it is that we like about the places we regularly go back to.  We usually come to the conclusion that actually, when you get right down to it, the equation for producing a successful pub or restaurant is quite simple.  (Of course, the theory is simple, actually doing it and getting it right is much more difficult, hence the vast numbers of pubs and bars closing down around the country!)  We think it boils down to a combination of four basic things.  I'm not putting them in any particular order, because they are all equally important.

We think it must be a nice place to be.  Fairly basic requirement, you might think, but we have all wandered in to pubs that felt bare, old fashioned, run down, even hostile.  Make it a place people actually want to visit, make it somewhere they want to come back to.

It must serve good quality, well kept beer. There doesn't need to be six or eight hand pumps on the bar, just two or three really good ales (local if possible) and a range of good lagers.   A good choice of wines also helps.

It must do high quality food, nicely presented and well priced.  You'll notice I don't say reasonably priced or cheap, there are pubs everywhere that do a thriving trade selling Sunday lunch for less than a fiver, but the truth is what you get is less than a fiver's worth of lunch!  Price it right and people will pay the right price for it.

Finally, it must be well staffed with friendly, approachable people.  It's a great help if some of those people are knowledgable when asked about the beers or items on the menu, but it's quite ok to say you'll just go and check if asked something you don't know about.  You (the customer) are much more likely to go back after your first visit if you liked the people you met there the first time.  Where am I going with all this?  Well....there are lots of pubs that just don't get that these four things will make people come back again and again.

Fortunately for us, The Horseshoes in East Farleigh seems to have grasped all four!  It's a nice, traditional feeling pub that in spite of being essentially open-plan has quite distinct feeling areas that give it a slightly rambling feel inside.  There is usually a small group of regulars drinking at the bar in what is clearly the "pub" area, a lovely orangery that is the main dining area, and there are a couple of smaller, more intimate areas where two or three tables nestle amongst photographs of the area and local landmarks.  There is also a patio area to the rear of the pub that overlooks the local riding school and stables.

The menu is well balanced, offering a good range of sharing platters, starters and light-bites, traditional pub classics and an up-market feeling main courses section.  There is quite often a special menu available, which offers a limited choice of three or four starters and main courses at just £13.95, and offers the option to add a desert for just an extra £3.  Friday night is "Fish and Fizz" night, with a promotion on English champagne and a special menu featuring four starters, then Sea Bream, Mackerel fillets, Swordfish steak or Bouillabaisse.  The main menu has a range of dishes including beef rib pie, fillet steak on duck paté and toasted brioche, venison, crab cakes, home made burgers....something for everyone.

On Paul's recommendation (our host, the manager), we both had the seared scallops with chorizo with a sweet potato puree and watercress to start.  Scallops are just about my favourite thing to eat and I have tried them all over the world.  Let me tell you, these were amongst the best I've had.  Cooked to perfection!  Just a few seconds too long in the pan and they become rubbery, just a few seconds too little time in the pan and they stay slimy, so not the easiest things to cook well.  I was worried that the strong flavour of the chorizo and the sweetness of the puree might overpower the scallops but to my delight they tied together beautifully.

I had hoped to sink a pint or two of Incubus with dinner, a deliciously refreshing beer from the local Hopdaemon brewery, but it was just about dead when we arrived.  Fortunately I am well aware of the charms of the alternatives available, Sharp's Doombar and Harvey's Best Bitter.  (Doombar every time!)  Paul informed me that a new Fullers Summer Ale would be going on, so rather than order a second Doombar I waited.  I'm still trying to decide if I made the right decision, as the Summer Ale was extremely light indeed, both in colour and flavour, and while it would make a great session beer it was a bit lost in the strong flavours of the meal.

For main course Dee fancied some pasta, so she ordered the mushroom and spinach linguine.  Pasta is another one of those dishes that ought to be really easy to cook.  I mean, everyone cooks pasta, right?  Well, yes, but like the scallops, it's difficult to do it well.  Dee and I both like our pasta somewhere between cooked and al-dente, and as luck would have it that's exactly what she got.  And very nice it was too!  I'm always a bit wary of ordering dishes that contain no meat or fish as a main course, carnivore that I am, but the linguine needed nothing more than a tiny pinch of salt.  I'm not sure I would have noticed that it was a vegetarian dish if Dee hadn't told me.

Again, I went with Paul's suggestion and ordered the bouillabaisse, which is a fish soup/stew typical of Marseilles.  My eyes lit up when it arrived, I could see more scallops, at least three different types of fish, mussels, olives, tomatoes, and I could smell the paprika smokiness.  Perhaps with hindsight I should not have ordered this after the scallops, because both dishes were very smokey flavoured.  That said, the bouillabaisse was delicious, filling, out of the ordinary...everything I look for in a dish!

In the interest of completeness we felt it was our duty to at least try the deserts, even if we were fast running out of room!  It's tough sometimes, but we somehow manage to plough through!  We both chose from the special menu again, Dee opting for cappuccino cheesecake, while I went for a chocolate fondant.  I made the mistake of trying Dee's cheesecake after I had already had a mouthful of my dark chocolate fondant, so the delicate flavour of the coffee was completely lost on me, but Dee assures me that it was creamy and tasty.  My fondant was rich and gooey, warm in the middle and served with a ball of vanilla ice-cream that cut through the intense chocolate very well.

Paul has done a great job of marketing the Horseshoes both on-line and locally.  There is a thriving Facebook page and the pub has its own website too (www.thehorseshoeseastfarleigh.co.uk).  Given that there are very few houses within walking distance it is testament to the hard work of the manager and staff that the place is so busy and entertains such a wide age range of customers.  All four of my criteria for making a success of a pub have been well and truly met.  It's a good job we don't live within easy walking distance of the Horseshoes, we might never leave.

The Dirty Habit, Hollingbourne

Searching for something a bit different for Sunday lunch, not really in the mood for a roast on such a scorching hot afternoon, we stopped on a whim at a 13th century inn called The Dirty Habit.  Recently taken over by a small chain of gastro-pubs and given a bit of a make-over, this ultra-traditional Kentish building felt welcoming from the start.

The interior is heavily beamed and rambles a bit from room to room around a central bar.  The menu is fairly short, featuring the obligatory Sunday roast lunches and an assortment of traditional dishes very similar to those on the menu at The Farmhouse (see my earlier blog review!) with main courses from £10.50 for Dublin pie up to £24.50 for fillet of Kentish beef with all the trimmings.  

There were various lagers and three real ales on tap, two local Rother Valley Old Dairy Brewery beers and Harveys Sussex from just over the border.  I had a pint of Red Top that, although a little cloudy, was light and refreshing at just 3.8%.

Having all decided we were in the mood for a ploughman's lunch or something similar, we were delighted to see a selection of "light bites" on the menu.  Dee chose smoked haddock fish cakes with poached eggs, wilted spinach and hollandaise sauce (which was also available as a starter), while Mum and I both went for the fish deli-board.  

The deli-boards didn't look like a large portion, and were part of the light-bites section on the menu, but they proved to be surprisingly filling and neither of us managed to finish the lot!  There were some delicious smoked salmon crostini, four ramekins of such delicacies as smoked trout fillet, salmon rillette, crayfish cocktail and fresh anchovies.  I was a bit dubious about the anchovies to start with, my only previous experience of them having been on pizzas or in a caesar salad, but without all the oil and salt they were actually very nice indeed and as it turned out it was the smoked trout that proved too salty for me.  The fresh bread that came with it was soft and tasty, the perfect accompaniment.  Dee's fish cakes were large and mostly potato, but the smokey flavour from the haddock and the hollandaise sauce were enough to keep her interested.  With two poached eggs it was very filling and may be too much for some, but they kept the dish balanced.

The staff were friendly and, although they were not the quickest, got everything right.  All in all a thoroughly enjoyable lunch in a truly lovely setting.  Will we go back there again?  Yes, I'm sure we will.

The Farmhouse, West Malling (general info)

The restaurant is clean and well presented, the staff are attentive but not in your face. We sat upstairs, there was a member of staff around all the time, usually behind the small bar keeping busy, so although not in the main dining area we didn't feel forgotten.

The menu is fresh and varied, featuring about 8 starters and a dozen main courses.

Starters range from about £5 to £9.50 (bit of a one-off, this was for a scallop dish. Most starters between £6 and £7) and main courses from £9 to £16. There are a couple of steaks, a couple of fish dishes and a few other things...all worth trying.

The wine list is quite good, the house red is perfectly drinkable and the Mersault very good indeed. The real ales are well kept and the choice changes regularly.