I decided I should kick off in style, and what better way to do it than review a Wetherspoons?
I am sure this is exactly what Get Reading readers are looking to read about.
Forgive me but I am not going to review all 3 Wetherspoon's pubs in the town centre. I chose the one with less clientele that appear to live there. Did I manage to come across not to snobby there?!
The choices were chicken, beef, turkey and a vegetarian option. For just £6.99. And I got a pint of Stowford Press cider for just £0.99. Quite why other places sell it for £4.50 I don't know. Also worth mentioning that you could have a large for £1.50 extra. I declined, which is not the sort of thing I normally do.
Slightly off-tangent, but I went to the Purple Turtle yesterday, and ordered a slightly unusual beer and the barmaid said, "it is £4.50, you know?" in a do you really want to spend £4.50 on a beer kind of way. £4.50 sounds a good price to me nowadays. I have to say I do like what the Turtle are doing in terms of trying to bring something different music-wise to the town. But that is a story for someone else to tell.
Anyway, back on topic and the barman serving me was exceptionally unwelcoming and made me almost feel a tad uncomfortable in ordering. Every response was grunted with a real unwillingness to want to serve or even be polite. Quite awful. I did ask what vegetables it came with, and he nonchalantly suggested carrots and broccoli whilst looking in the other direction. I always have to correct broccoli in the spell-checker.
Perhaps he just took a dislike to my bright purple chinos.
So I sat down, opened Facebook (not to check in, may I hasten to add), had a sip of my £0.99 cider and the dinner arrived. It took just 3 minutes. 3 minutes. They clearly wanted rid of such an undesirable as oneself.
I know what you are thinking, at least my regular readers, not the 7 and a half new followers that Get Reading have kindly sent my way.
Peas.
Apologies to regular readers for repeating myself but I have a phobia of peas. I just cannot have them on my plate. It's all down to the lack of discipline.
I dealt with it my pouring my gravy on the Yorkshire pudding and then scooping the peas into the gravy pot. I did consider pouring all the peas onto the table or the floor but decided it was probably a tad immature.
So after spending longer removing the peas, then it took them to "cook" my roast dinner, I tucked into the carrots. Well, I had three of them, for they were cool, rubbery and just tasted of water.
The broccoli (YES! I spelt it without the spell-checker!), was vaguely better. Soft, floppy but slightly less-watery.
If you look carefully at the mash, you can see the almost perfectly rectangular edges which suggest how it was packaged. It was edible, but my disdain for it was almost on the level of the barman's disdain for service. I had one bite which was enough.
Onto the roast potatoes. Which would be a trade descriptions act offence. They more resembled potato croquettes, There were 4, one of which was pretty much uncooked, the others were cooked but perhaps more likely put in a deep fat fryer 10 days ago, frozen then microwaved 10 seconds after Mr Miserable pressed the send button on the till. They were awful. I really do not see how they could have been worse.
And penultimately onto the roast half chicken, seasoned with black pepper. It was perhaps the driest chicken I have ever been served in my life. Think back to Christmas 15 years ago, when your Grandma over-cooked the turkey, and you were still eating it a few days later. That level of dryness.
It was quite abominable.
The gravy wasn't too bad. It was at least, gravy. Though by time it was on my plate, it was very much of a watery-consistency. In hindsight it may have been better to dip the food in the gravy whilst it was in the pot. Then again, in hindsight, the Iraq War might have been better if we had sent more troops.
Or maybe, just maybe, in ultra magical hindsight, it was better just not to go in the first place.
Gosh, that was a good analogy.
Sometimes I say, please share just for my own vanity. But this time, I ask that you share this review for the sake of your fellow human.
I am trying to think whether it is worse than The Pheasant Inn. I think when it comes to the quality and taste of the food, it was marginally better than the totally abominable Pheasant Inn. However the overall experience was generally heinous - at least The Pheasant Inn was hilariously bad, and had cute barmaids, this was just dreadful from minute one.
There is scope to be worse, but this was the worst roast dinner I have ever reviewed. It gets a 0.8 out of 10.
There are so many better places to try - even if you have to go to a Wetherspoons for budgetary purposes, please just save a little extra money and go somewhere else, then go to Wetherspoons for a drink.
Next week will be somewhere town-centre based as I will be short on time again.
I did quite like the design of the plate. Oh and I did throw a few peas on the floor.
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