An eating experience that left some food for thought

BY CHRIS GILL

It has a charming and attractive restaurant far beyond what you might expect in a local.

The two young people who were serving in it were deserving of a gold medal, if hostessing were an Olympic sport.

So what a shame some of the food let it down.

We were at the Park because the other half had enjoyed a superb meal on a girlies’ night out a few weeks earlier.

We had heard the portions were rather large so decided to give the starters a wide berth. A mix of local breads and balsamic oil to dip it in was more than adequate on this occasion.

For a main I opted for liver and bacon and was delighted when I was able to have home-made chips instead of mashed potatoes. I do like my food piping hot and while the chips were, I got the impression the rest had been hanging around. Not ideal but I could cope with that.

My pal ordered pork belly and chips and was especially looking forward to the crackling. What a let down. It was never going to crackle and resembled a two inch fat elastic band. It was poor fayre.


It didn’t cut a pretty picture and it was the moment a decent night out began to die a slow death.

The sweet young lady removed it and offered another, so still hope. But when that appeared again it simply had not been fully cooked.

A polite gentleman in charge offered us his profuse apologies, assured us the customer was always right – then by way of mitigation suggested the salmon was ‘close’. Not in our book.

So, basically, it was all over, three people, our other friend had smugly murdered her beer battered fish and chips, had finished their meals and the hungry wife had lost her appetite.

We were now the centre of attention, other diners were watching. We were the entertainment. Not what we had in mind.

We toughed it out and at least Mrs G was able to feast herself on a superb complimentary assiette of sweets, as she was famished.

The rest of us disposed of apple crumble and custard, and panna cotta but to be honest we couldn’t wait to get out. The bill was £82 which in a perfect world might have been okay. As an experience it was disappointing.