I have visited this pub more than once in the last 5 years, mostly with my Grandparents, for whom this is a firm favourite! For this review I will describe my most recent visit, with Granny and my better half, and our 3 year old daughter, which gives a point of view from a very wide age range!
On first glance, it is an ideally placed pub, in a small village on the outskirts of Ipswich, and locally it has a reputation for doing very good food. It has a large bar area as you walk in, which is normally populated by the locals, and then you go down 3 steps to a wider area between the bar and the restaurant, which has seating on your right hand side. It can feel a bit like you are being watched at this point, so make sure you don't trip up.
On this lower ground part
is the serving desk for the food, and the desserts are normally on display in a glass fronted fridge cabinet, and these look fabulous. I know I am starting the menu the wrong way round, but the desserts often include chocolate fudge cake, cheesecakes, ice cream, sorbet, and a some good old fashioned English puddings such as apple pie and treacle pudding, depending on the time of year. You can also get a cheeseboard, but it's not exciting, cheddar and biscuits only (well, that's what I got!). Prices for desserts were around £2.95 to £4.95 for a portion, and cream, custard and ice cream were all available to add at no extra cost.
The dining area is quite spacious, and has a red patterned carpet with neutral walls, and the furniture is mostly polished pine, which has a nice country pub effect. They have high chairs for toddlers too, and will happily adapt their menu if you want something slightly specialised for the kids.
At this point I should say it is usually advisable to book in advance, as they cater for parties and large groups quite a lot, so tables are often reserved well in advance.
The menu when I was last there was very conventional, and consisted of things like steak and chips, cottage pie, scampi, cod, pasta, sausages, roast dinners, all the usual suspects, and there is also a specials board, which changes from day to day. You can also get a wide range of sandwiches and baguettes.
Prices start at around £4.95 up to around £14.95 for a main course, depending on what you order, so it's normal pub food prices. When I was there, there were a few starters, including soup of the day, and they also were about £2.95 - £5.95.
So, the food itself. My partner-in-crime and I ordered a steak each, and it came sizzling on one of those iron platters that keeps everything hot. It also came with a plate piled high with thick cut chips (from a packet, not home-made, for people who appreciate these things), two halves of a grilled tomato, some (greasy) mushrooms, and a salad (no dressing). He was very pleased with his plateful, but I was slightly less impressed, because although it was good solid pub food, I would really like to see some imagination sometimes - and why would you deep fry mushrooms without batter? Why? I also felt that my steak was overdone on the wrong side of medium rare.
Granny ordered Lasagne, which came with garlic bread, also sizzling hot, and although I thought it looked a little stodgy, she pronounced it as delicious. She couldn't finish it all though.
We had requested a small portion of pasta with a tomato sauce for the little'un, who loves spaghetti hoops, and it arrived as requested, although the portion was huge which instantly put her off, and she ended up mostly eating chips from our plates, which again annoyed me slightly.
We had to wait nearly 40 minutes for the food, which I thought was really too long. You also have to get up and get your own drinks, which is fine, but there were not enough bar staff, which resulted in a long wait, and our little'un got very bored and fidgety. The restaurant quickly filled up, and staffing levels were not adequate to cope with it, so overall, it was a pretty average dining experience, but then I am quite fussy. The village is very pretty though, and the area has much to recommend it, so have a brisk walk beforehand to work up an appetite!
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Jun 16th, 2007
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