…
out for lunch with our great friends Shirley and John to VesuviO
– part of The Sharnbrook Hotel, Park Lane, Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire
MK44 1LX. Yippee – no cooking tonight!
It
went something like, Special Garlic Mushrooms for two, Antipasto
Misto and a garlic pizza bread with cheese. The guys scrutinised the
wine list and after much deliberation decided to indulge and ordered
a carafe of the red house wine and a glass of prosecco for Shirley.
Our
mains were Branzino Al Forno – oven baked seabass fillets over
lyonnaise potatoes with roasted Mediterranean vegetables and sugo
pomodoro x 2, Salmone Al Forno – oven baked fillet of salmon over a
bed of asparagus tips in a garlic butter and white wine served with
sauté potatoes and finally an 8oz fillet steak served with
seasonable vegetables.
It
looked good when served. Sadly what followed wasn't.
Round
one - when I lifted my salmon fillet to get to the asparagus tips it
was not good news. The tips were inedible, to use the word “soft”
would be kind. I'm not generally a complainer but I couldn't hide
them so I asked the waitress to bring me a side plate and asked her
to wait whilst I removed the tips and asked her to return them and
bring me carrots instead. I can't help but be embarrassed although
I'm not really sure why!
Round
two - by this time my husband had tucked into his fillet steak –
it looked charred on arrival but I'm sat across the table so really
couldn't see too closely. My only observation would be that it
looked too big for a fillet. The first half of the steak was well
done and only in the middle was it vaguely pink so definitely not
medium. This is not going well.
Round
three – after much persuasion he sent the steak back – I should
mention here that John used to be a butcher and “knows his onions”.
Round
four – out came the chef carrying a tea plate with another raw
“fillet” steak. No thank you that does not look like fillet.
The chef was not pleased and returned to the kitchen.
Round
five – back came the chef carrying what was left of the whole
“fillet”. I've never seen a fillet of beef so large – it
looked like it came from a woolly mammoth. The fillet still had its
outer plastic wrapping which had been peeled back in order to cut the
steaks. I can't say for certain that it had been frozen but that
would be my guess. By now we were definitely losing the will and the
chef was clearly unhappy that we'd had the affront to criticise the
fillet. At £23.95 you bet!
Needless
to say the only person who ordered dessert was my husband who was
hungry.
In
fairness the seabass was excellent and the wine too.
I'm
not sure that a birthday lunch costing £103.25 was a good deal or
not – it would have been £127.20 had we paid for the steak.
I
don't think we'll be rushing back!
P.s.
I should never have said “yippee – no cooking tonight”.
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