Gammon & Turkey @ The World Turned Upside Down, 06/04/2015

I left you last week in a state of suspense – will I ever do another roast review?

Next weekend I am in London so unlikely to be able to produce a review, and this weekend gone I was in the beautiful city of Hull – City of Culture 2017.  I assume the cultured among you will be visiting?

But I didn’t want you to think that I was leaving you.  I might one day but my work is unfinished.  Especially now I even have Get Reading following the blog.

I got back into Reading around 9pm on Sunday night – still stuffed after my mother’s roast dinner (I reckon a 7.4 before you ask) so there was no way I was going to be able to have a roast dinner anywhere.  And how was I going to get a Sunday Roast on a Monday?

There was only one solution.

Yes for £7.49 on a Sunday, and just £4.29 Monday to Saturday (except of course on bank holidays, grrrr) – and an extra £1.50 to GO LARGE, there was The World Turned Upside Down.  How could I resist?

It isn’t in the most salubrious area.  I can avoid making a snotty comment about the clientele as there were not enough clientele to pass remark upon.  The ambience was one of near-silence.  Perhaps they need some dub techno to set the mood?  Possibly the most tenuous way to promote my DJing.

We waited for a short period until the chef appeared, who was very friendly and up for some banter.  The gammon looked freshly cooked but the other meats looked dry – as if they had been under heat lamps for several hours.  Which of course they had.  You could also have pie instead of meat for the roast.  Or a half-chicken though it was closer to a third by time the heat lamps had shrivelled them up.

The vegetable selection wasn’t exactly inspiring – peas, carrots, cauliflower ‘cheese’, sweetcorn – they also had chips.  Chips???!  Though I admit that I have on occasion had chips on self-made roast dinners when I had had too bad a hangover to make roast potatoes.

I chose only the cauliflower ‘cheese’ – two of the vegetables on offer are FOFs (the second word is “off”, I will leave you to work out the rest) and I didn’t fancy plain old carrots.  My accomplice did assure me that the carrots did not taste of arse.  The cauliflower cheese was ok, quite on the soft side and a hint of creaminess to pass the Trading Standards Cauliflower Cheese test.

As I could have as many roast potatoes as I wanted, I had 8, maybe 9.  There were one or two crispy sides mixed in, but generally a rubbery lukewarm feel to them.  Vaguely acceptable.

Having the special golden large ticket, I was granted a sausage.  The sausages had clearly been cooked some hours ago, but it was edible and porkish.  Something close to a Walls sausage.

The special golden large ticket (it was actually just a white receipt and the same size as a normal sized dinner receipt but my accomplice works in marketing and it seems to be rubbing off on me) also granted a large Yorkshire pudding instead of unlimited small Yorkshire puddings.  As the large one needed to be made fresh, I chose that option.  Crispy sides and a delightfully soggy base, it really wasn’t too bad at all.  Far from award-winning but acceptable.

I cannot really pass too much comment upon the stuffing.  It was a slightly different colour and taste to what I expected, and a touch on the stale side.  But at least it was attempted – I wish more places would do so.  Granted I accept most places are going for a higher class of customer (or “better” class of customer as Get Reading managed to suggest those shopping at the Oracle are compared to those shopping at Primark…ouch) and stuffing balls may not be part of the staple diet in Henley.

Just to clarify, I am working class.  At least when I’m in Henley.  In Hull I am upper-middle class.

Onto the meat and I chose gammon, which I normally don’t go for.  However it looked freshly cooked unlike the other meats and it tasted gammony, a touch salty with a wide brim of fat, but it was quite enjoyable.

The other meats looked awful – beef, lamb and turkey but I noticed a fresh turkey had been brought out and placed near the vegetables – however Adolf’s chirpy and banterous nature did not cheer him up enough to allow me the fresh meat so I just plumped for the turkey.

Did you get it?! Plumped…turkey...

Moving on.

Frankly it was some of the worst meat I have reviewed so far.  Cold, dry, stale.  It was your step-auntie’s turkey from Christmas Day – at the New Year’s Eve party that you really didn’t want to go to.

So onto the gravy.  The most complimentary thing to say was at least it wasn’t jus.  Is it complimentary or complementary?  I’m normally pretty good with my spelling despite going to school in Hull.  It was quite thin but generally acceptable.  Unlike my schooling.

I did not have high expectations for this.  I think it beat my low expectations.  Had it been freshly cooked then the score would have been a little higher.

It was better than the Toby Carvery – the meat had taste to it for a start.

I’m going to give it a slightly controversial 4.4 out of 10.

Next weekend I am partying in London on the Saturday night and with the first train home being the Waterloo stopping service at 7am, I doubt I will be able to move, let alone eat come Sunday afternoon.  But you never know.

By the way, if you are looking for a Christmas present for your soon-to-be ex-wife/husband, look no further then the below great offer.

Can you imagine the joy on their face?

Turkey Christmas Dinner @ Hilton Hotel, Bracknell

Welcome to my unexpected Christmas special.

I didn’t intend to review my work Christmas dinner – it doesn’t really count as a Sunday roast despite having most of the ingredients, however this was something else.

Generally I loathe these types of gatherings – they seem like something a cruel government would inflict on its citizens as punishment, however I actually like a couple of my colleagues, there was gravy on offer, it was free and included some free drinks.  It being a Hilton, I was expecting the lovely Paris to be DJing, sadly there was not even a hologram of her DJing.  Perhaps our Christmas party budget does not stretch to £500,000 for the DJ.

Anyway, I straightened my hair, filled up my new hip flask with vodka and I was reddehtegurrrr, as we say in ‘Ull.  By the way, it is a city in the north of England.  No, it isn’t near Newcastle.

The starter was pate.  I have to gurrrr back up north in 10 days so I thought best to reduce my risk of being beaten up and declined to eat it.  Otherwise I’ll be accused of being a Cockney again.  Urrrrgh yuv lost yurrr akkscent, yurrahCockneh.

The main meal arrived.  This I can eat.  Though whether I should have done is another question.

 

The sprouts were anaemic-looking green balls which one imagines could have been excreted by Dale Winton after a particularly long greens-only diet.

Carrots.  It is hard to do carrots wrong and they were mass-cooked and microwaved in standard format.

Parsnips.  Uncooked.  At least they were defrosted.

Was there any chance perhaps of some nice, crispy roast potatoes?  Ho Ho Ho.  3 small soggy items with a rough edge, kind of like a fine sandpaper.

And finally, the piece de resistance – the turkey.  Now turkey can be dry when cooked but this was extra dry.  I didn’t taste any turkey and can only assume that it was some recycled cardboard reformed and injected with turkey stem cells.  MacDonalds chicken nuggets have a closer resemblance to meat than this turkey did.

You may also have noticed some gooey thing on top of the processed things.  I couldn’t quite decide what this was – imagine stuffing, but in a jelly texture that tastes of bacon.

The gravy, sorry, I mean shiny brown water, was invisible when my dinner arrived.  However they had a gravy boat especially for me so I could drown my reformed manufactures.  Interestingly, the remaining gravy in said gravy boat actually had some consistency to it an hour later.

Now I have had a worse meal before.  A group of us went to Island Bar many years ago and some food was actually still frozen upon arrival.  At least this dinner was defrosted and microwaved.  Not sure when it was microwaved as I do not recall any particular warmth.

When I was at university, I did once just complete the name section on an exam paper to see if I got a mark for it.  I didn’t.

In a similar kind of way, I feel that the Hilton hotel does deserve at least some credit for not serving frozen food and also not giving me food poisoning.  Not quite a whole point though.

So I give it a 0.8 out of 10.

I did enjoy the bread roll.  And yes I did get chucked out of university.  Voluntarily.

Beef, Pork & Turkey @ The Cunning Man 26/10/2014

Moo you looking at?

I decided to go for a walk along the River Kennet on Sunday afternoon – it was a reasonably pleasant day and there was a handy pub an hour’s walk from Reading town centre called The Cunning Man.

It looks nice on the outside, with a presumably fake thatched roof (forgive me for my lack of thatch expertise – Thatcher yes, thatch no) and plenty of outdoor seating – a rather pleasant setting.

 

I decided to enjoy a pint outside in my very own tepee hut area, albeit still rather dirty with last night’s cigarette butts everywhere, whilst awaiting my dining partner for the afternoon.  It was pleasantly warm – for a northerner – at around 15’C.

The menu sounded good – as you may have worked out by now if there is an option for more than one meat, it is very difficult for me to avoid choosing this.  I am yet to conclude as to whether this is a wise idea – does my greed obstruct my ability to appreciate a particular roast?

We were quickly seated, albeit with some confusion by the staff – our order was taken pretty much straight away, I went for a pee, came back and it arrived.

First impressions upon viewing were of a more generous helping than The Moderation had managed – 4decent baby carrots for a start, which is 3 more than the aforementioned had considered appropriate.

The cabbage was…bland.

The roast potatoes were average at best.  They kind of tasted like they were microwaved.  More soggy and solid than crispy – but I have had worse efforts.

The herb-crusted loin of sweetcure pork was just a slice of pork with no immediately obvious hint of herbs.  I have no idea what sweetcured means.

The chipolator unwrapped in bacon was fine, the stuffing was a very round circle of very average stuffing-meat.

The beef and turkey were fine - turkey probably the best meat of the 3 - but probably only a slight upgrade from the Toby Carvery.  All the meats tasted roughly the same.  1 slice of each around 3-4mm thick.

And the reason why everything tasted the same?  The gravy.  We did ask how thick the gravy was before ordering, and the waitress said it was quite thick this week.  I like a good consistency.  The thicker the better.

This was a good consistency.  It looked promising and we got extra gravy upon request – not sure why it wasn’t poured in the Yorkshire, which is close to a criminal offence, which by the way seemed very similar to a slightly-larger than normal Aunt Bessie’s frozen Yorkshire pudding.  But the flavour of the gravy was so over-powering – again a tomato-based taste, as you can see from the hint of red.  I really don’t get this wannabe-fancy different tasting gravy.  Just some beef or chicken stock will do.  Hell, even serve me Bisto granules if you have to.

So overpowering that I had to have a rest halfway through, despite not having eaten anything prior to this.

Had the gravy been reasonable, then it would have pushed the high 6’s.  A decent amount of food and the quality was fine.  As it is, it was marginally better than The Moderation and it receives a score of 5.4 out of 10.

All that leaves me to say is, if moo enjoyed my review, please share, like and invite.

Sorry.  That was worse than the gravy.

Turkey & Beef @ Toby Carvery, Reading 28/09/2014

Roast Dinners In Reading is back.  There will be at least one roast a month from now on.  Maybe.

And a real domain name.  Maybe a Facebook/Twitter page too.  I might even amend the name slightly.

So after a nice walk near Ascot on Sunday just gone, I decided that I required a big pile of food on a pre-payday budget.

Toby Carvery was the choice.

It wasn’t as cheap as I had thought it would be - £9.49 for a carvery and an extra £1.50 to go KING SIZE.  I went KING SIZE.

KING SIZE gets you two chipolatas, an extra Yorkshire pudding and a bit more meat.

Either normal size or KING SIZE gets you up to 4 different meats – turkey, gammon, pork and beef were the choices.  The pork didn’t looked like it had been there for a few hours, so I chose beef and turkey.

The vegetable choices were pretty basic – carrots, cauliflower ‘cheese’, peas, runner beans, onions.  There were 3 different types of gravy – vegetarian, mint and meat.  I drenched my plate in meat.

So onto the food.  And boy was I hungry.

The beef was ok, it tasted like the turkey, which was so thinly sliced that the server should really have a job at Bernard Matthews doing their wafer-thin turkey slices.  The potatoes were ok, they tasted like the turkey.  The stuffing tasted like the potatoes, but at least had a different texture.  The sausages did taste like sausages but the cauliflower ‘cheese’ tasted like the beef, or the turkey, or the potatoes.  Certainly not of cheese.

The gravy was brown water.

The crackling was inedible.

Thankfully a dining experience isn’t all about the food.

The waitress was very helpful (and quite hot), the wait for a table was just 10 minutes or so and the clientele were friendly, though the two ladies near us seemed a little confused as to why Muslims tend not to have western names such as Harry or Fred.  I considered suggesting that neither do the French or Germans but decided against.

The beer choice was not great - I plumped for Amstel but it tasted of chemicals.

Thankfully the company was excellent.

Things can only get better.  Malmaison next weekend?!

A more-generous-than-their-meat-serving score of 3.5 out of 10.

Oh wait a minute, the Yorkshire pudding were pretty good.

The Trio Of Roasts @ Griffin, Caversham 16/03/2014

When a trio of meat is on offer – there is no decision to be made.

The Griffin does very good food so I was particular hopeful and expectant of a cracking roast, sat in the very pleasant early Spring sunshine, beer on table, in their sizeable garden area.

It arrived in good time and there was a decent portion for the £10.50 paid for the roast.  A reasonable sum in Berkshire.

There were many other options, ranging from £7.99 to £13.99 - the menu is here.

Starting with the vegetables – carrots, broccoli and cauliflower.  All decent, but nothing exciting.

The potatoes were rather on the soft and soggy side – they looked good but didn’t quite meet hopes, no crispy edges.

The Yorkshire pudding was a decent size and there was unlimited gravy on offer – none of this poncey thin runny stuff but not too thick to scare your average southerner either.

Finally, the meat.  Beef, pork and turkey (if I recall correctly!).  The pork was disappointing – it was just slices of cooked pork.  The beef and turkey were standardly average.  There was enough meat but it was crying out to be a little more special – just the odd herb perhaps?!

There wasn’t anything bad about the roast but I have eaten at the Griffin several times and their food is normally very, very good – the roast was only ok.

I wouldn’t recommend the roast – stick to the other meals as they are far nicer.

6 out of 10 – distinctly average.

I expect I will return and would definitely consider the Sunday Best as they look rather more interesting.

The quest for the perfect Sunday roast in Reading continues…if you want to join me or have a recommendation then please post below.