Lunch was another jacket potato today, this time with a salad made up of bits in the fridge; beetroot, tomatoes, green beans, sweetcorn and a few slices of fried chorizo.
There's a restaurant just round the corner that's had at least four different incarnations in the four years we've lived here. The original restaurant was really good, but over the past few changes of hands, it's been just average rather than special. It changed again just recently, so we thought we'd better give it a try. It's now called the Townhouse and is going for up-market English, with a rather fancy menu full of unusual combinations and food in little stacks. We both had scallops with pea puree and black pudding to start. It could have been quite nice and it was all okay, but nothing very inspiring. Then for main, I had fillet of bream with pork belly and more black pudding. Again, it sounded like an interesting combination, but the meat and the fish were presented at different ends of the plate - the rather small, plain fish fillet on a pile of spring greens and the pork and black pudding as part of a potato stack. It felt a bit like eating two different meals on one plate, neither terribly exciting and they didn't particularly work together. I don't mind a bit of fancy cooking and presentation, but I think if you're going to present lots of small little bits of food, they've got to be really special and this just wasn't. Each of the elements might have got away with being solid, English cooking in nice big chunky portions (a la the Kensington Arms), but didn't really cut it here. Not sure we'll bother going back.
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