The UK based Restaurant, Hotel and Wine Review
The UK based Restaurant, Hotel and Wine Review
Clifford Mould offers this
cautionary tale to would be restaurateurs.
The establishment in question has since closed down.
Most of us have those impossible dreams about beginning another life. Selling up and living on a remote hill farm in Wales, or building a boat out of ferroconcrete and sailing it round to the Med. A dangerously fashionable dream for those who've made a bob or two in the city is to open a restaurant. What fun it is welcoming both strangers and friends - but mostly friends to start with - playing mine host behind the bar and carting a few plates out to the kitchen when the staff are getting a bit hard pressed. "We discovered this amazingly talented young chef called Jason, so we simply had to set him up in our own restaurant".
The trouble with this dream is that the losers are the innocent punters, seduced into the newly spruced up restaurant, so tastefully converted from a wing of a coaching inn, by the stripped pine floors, the ultramodern blue paintwork as far as the dado, the bleached old beams overhead. And the promise of such a good value menu, £11.50 for a three course lunch, with modern sounding dishes made from king prawns and scallops and rocket leaf salad, and goat's cheese and duck breasts and seafood risotto, with tarte tatin and creme brulée and chocolate fondant to follow.
It all looked so nice as the four of us trooped in to The Mad Hatter at the Talbot in the pretty village of Ripley in Surrey. There was a large family lunch party, 14 jolly people from at least three generations, having a great time, a very French sight I thought, indulgently. I settled into a really comfortable, generously padded brasserie bench and admired the surroundings, especially one very pretty waitress and thought to myself, here's another great little Dine Online Discovery.
Our order was taken with alacrity, smiles all round, and "would we like some wine and a bottle of mineral water, at all?" A very quaffable Simonsig Pinotage came rapidly to the table. It's surprising how fast the time goes when you're having fun, the first twenty minutes seems to hurtle by. The next quarter of an hour goes a little bit more slowly, and just as you begin to wonder whether you'll ever catch one of those uncatchable eyes, the visionary waitress appears to apologise for the fact that there's no more cured salmon in the salmon duo starter, and "would smoked salmon on its own be alright, at all?" I had rather set my heart on the cured salmon so instead I opted for mussels in saffron sauce, immediately wishing I hadn't, since this would add even more time to our wait.
The mussels were so gritty I was seriously in danger of losing all my fillings, but the sauce was quite good. I had to ask for a bowl to put the shells in, plus a finger bowl because the sauce was very creamy, and a spoon because I certainly wasn't going to waste any of it -apart from the sand at the bottom of the plate. My companions fared differently. There was a minuscule portion of the tiniest "king" prawns I've yet seen; the chicken and mozzarella salad was a double quick construction, but the simple goat's cheese with a good oven dried tomato was the best of all. None of these dishes would have taken a competent chef more than a few minutes to assemble.
We then waited for another fifty minutes for the main courses to arrive. A kind of black humour descends on these occasions. Everything has its comic side, like the older waitress on her mobile phone by the bar, (if we'd known her number we could have called her up to ask for missing cutlery whose absence was never noticed). No offer was made to replenish the empty wine bottle on our table - the manager remaining safe behind his bar doing the accounts. In one of her long periods of inactivity, since there were no plates forthcoming from the kitchen, the visionary young lady perched on a barstool facing us (but not looking at us) smoking a cigarette!
We wondered if anyone would ever come, unbidden, to apologise for this second, and by now quite unacceptable delay, but the older waitress, (who, it later transpired was the co-proprietor) was herself busy having a fag, and her harassed partner was still muttering over his bills.
The mains finally arrived. The duck was alright, the chicken breast in a truffle oiled sauce was good and moist, but the vegetables were very dull, school dinner dull. The seafood risotto was so bad we had to send it back, we would have put up with the fact that they had used the wrong rice, overcooked it and dried it out, but the omnipresent sand from the mussels was too much to bear.
Since a pudding is generously included in this three course extravaganza, we went for it. By now it was getting on for four o'clock, so what the heck! The creme brulée was excellent, opinion was a little divided on the tarte tatin made from pears which I rather liked, but my chocolate fondant had the texture of very stiff polyfilla.
By now we had the undivided attention of the proprietors who told us that normally everything was going swimmingly, but they were a bit overwhelmed by 26 people at once, so they kindly supplied an extra bottle of house wine (not the Simonsig). There was that unmistakably unspoken implication that "no one had complained before, at all." I vowed that I wouldn't write them up, seeing they were amateurs and new to the game, but that the place clearly had potential. But when the bill came with the service charge already added in with no option but to cross it out, I thought no! let them face judgment!
We paid the bill, including the service charge, and left, smiling graciously. No thank you, we didn't want coffee, at all.
The Mad Hatter at the Talbot, High Street, Ripley, Surrey no longer exists at all.
Clifford Mould Original review: April 1999
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