Eating out in England is widely held to be an awful experience compared with like nations – expensive, mediocre food and poor service. There’s no getting around the expense, and certainly I dislike the way so many pubs seem to have joined up with one bulk catering scheme or another so that, if you see it advertising “2 for £10″ or “2 for £8″ as you drive in, you can be pretty certain that the menu contains breaded mushrooms, hamburgers of scant differentiation, cajun chicken with mushy peas (what?), poached salmon and a beef pie. But on the whole, if you go to a place where the establishment chooses and buys its ingredients, you can be fairly sure they’ll be using their own recipes and might actually have some interest in what it tastes like. Within these guidelines I haven’t had a bad experience, until yesterday.
I found myself on the south side of Coventry at 2.30pm not having had any lunch. As you know, when you’re on insulin you need to have some regularity in mealtimes, and I didn’t want a McDonalds, and I didn’t want to go into town to any of my old haunts as that would mean parking and town-centre hassle. The answer, I decided, was a pub, but I realised that when I lived at the University of Warwick I never went to local pubs and usually travelled further afield for eateries, to Warwick or Stratford, and I certainly didn’t feel like trekking all the way there. In the end I decided to drop into the Old Mill at Baginton, a well-situated pub I had often wondered about but never gone into.
This is really another episode in my “You should never go back” series, a fond memory has been tarnished now. First of all I was frogmarched into a dingy alcove to a table behind glass partitions by a pleasant enough woman who appeared just a leeeeetle too flustered and uncertain – she clearly knew she needed to deal with me but the range of options was limited. I suggested sitting in the more comfortable (and open) sofas but she was adamant that if I wanted to eat I should sit at a table. Well OK. As it turned out she should have suggested I go outside which is where everyone else was, apparently, but that presumably didn’t seem right to her either. I had a feeling that this would not be a great experience.
I should point out that the interior was dark, with dark wood tables, dark sofas, dark easy chairs and low ceilings. Sounds like a normal pub you say, very nice. Somehow the effect was dingy, the decor was of a modern minimalist style without the light, and not like a cosy old pub at all. Anyway the pleasant but out-of-her-depth woman told me three times that someone would be along to take my order shortly, and in the end she offered to organise me something to drink while I read the menu (again). When she brought my sparkling mineral water I ordered an asparagus, mushroom and brie pie followed by chocolate cake.
I have to say there wasn’t much on the menu that I fancied, all the dishes, even the lunchtime ones, were too heavy and elaborate for a simple lunch and I would have given my eye teeth, ironically, for some nice breaded mushrooms or poached salmon. Still, the pie sounded nice enough, actually I had pretty high hopes of it. The woman found a piece of paper and wrote down my order and off she went. I got the feeling she’d shove it behind the till somewhere and forget about it, but in that I do her a disservice. Fifteen minutes later my pie arrived.
Most of that fifteen minutes was spent in observing some kind of bill cock-up being resolved. Just thought I’d mention that. Back to the pie.
The pastry was nice.
Underneath the pastry was a single large mushroom in a cream-of-mushroom sauce. It was excessively hot, so much so that I thought “microwave,” and judging by how quickly it cooled down I am pretty sure that did figure in the equation somewhere. Pulling out the mushroom to make it easier to cut up, I discovered some asparagus underneath it, and further poking around identified some vestiges of brie. The sauce, however, was cooling rapidly and the more it did, the more it resembled Campbell’s condensed mushroom soup before it is diluted. It was jelly-like. It had no flavour, even with the brie. It turned my stomach, actually, and I realised I’d walked into a Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare.
I pushed the plate away to the other side of my table and waited. And waited. And waited. All the while the waiting staff (geddit?) were carrying on their conversations at the tops of their voices. “Did you serve that fruit crumble?” “Not yet, I’ve a whole load of starters to do” “ooh my feet ache” “I just don’t like this new till” “The new ones have a better screen” and so on and so on. I was glad not to be the recipient of the fruit crumble, I just don’t think your dishes should be bandied about it public like that, they should be mysterious, and personal, and not one of a long sequence of tedious jobs for underworked and overpaid restaurant staff. A young man, who had earlier been asked to take my order, but who had declined, at the top of his voice, because he was already serving someone else (?????) started filling up the cigarette machine at the opening of my alcove. I said “Excuse me” several times, each at a progressively higher volume with increased acerbity, but to no avail. He was too busy holding up his end of the new tills conversation, and besides, we all know how important it is to keep the cigarette machine topped up. And when he had done that, off he went, presumably to do something much more pressing than serving a customer. Or maybe it was just me he didn’t want to serve.
I watched a couple come in to the pub all excited about the meal they were about to have, they quickly realised the bar person (the pleasant woman) was busy sorting out yet another bill cock-up so they productively spent their time browsing the menu, talking about the options, all with a bonhomie that genteelly but palpably dissipated as the bill cock-up dragged on and on and on. The protagonists in that little debacle started saying things like “I tell you what, why don’t you take this from that and put it on that and that way we’ll be all square” – when the customers have to come up with the solution you know the restaurant has problems – and the happy, hopeful couple decided to cut their losses and go elsewhere. Meanwhile the waitress was walking back and forth with main courses, desserts and clearing used plates (but not mine) and not a single person came near me to check how things were going or whether I’d finished.
Half an hour went by. With that glutinous mess on the plate in front of me. Yuck.
In the last five minutes or so I started to get angry. As the waitress went past yet again with yet another heap of used plates I took a spare fork and rapped my table very loudly. Rapped it so hard, actually, that I left marks on it. This produced no reaction at all. Another few minutes went by and a man who was clearly on the staff but not in the regulation black and white began setting tables in the alcove next to me, so I did my bit with the fork again, this time with all my strength. This brought him round to me and he got an earful about how long I had waited. Apparently no one normally complained (I love it when they say that) and he only helped out when they were busy (that was a good one – they’re so busy that customers are leaving without being served and he decides to set tables? nb there were four tables near me that were already set). At around this point I said to myself “I’m blogging this.” He agreed to report my comments back to the staff and he would get me my dessert and make sure (as I instructed him) that it was fresh and hadn’t been sitting on the side somewhere, congealing and separating into different degrees of ooze.
Give him his due, he brought out my chocolate cake within a couple of minutes. The microwave had been put to use again on the chocolate sauce, but the sauce was pretty good for all that. The cake was fairly flavourless. By this time I just wanted to go. Unfortunately I didn’t have the right money to just leave the cash and walk out, besides I didn’t know how much the drink was. I did think about leaving without paying, they wouldn’t have noticed and it might have been days before they figured it out, but that would mean releasing the moral high ground, so with a sinking feeling I went up to the till. A chap was being served with his round of drinks and the pleasant woman asked me if I’d enjoyed my meal. I made a sharp comment about how the meal wasn’t improved by a half-hour wait between courses, more than that as it took that long for the plate to get collected, and she was very sympathetic. The man was all ears, of course 
Eventually it was my turn and I asked to settle up. Table 11, we all agreed. No record of it in the till. She beetled off (I’m not sure what for) and came back and tried again. No record. Definitely table 11, she put it in herself. No record. The other waitress came by, went to get the ticket from the kitchen, and from the kitchen door she bellowed “Did you have the vegetarian pie?” “No!” yelled back the pleasant woman. “Actually, yes,” I said. “Did you really?” said the pleasant woman. Like I say, a sinking feeling. Back comes the waitress, shows me the ticket and I agree it’s mine, they’d put it against Table 12. She apologised for not serving me better, but you know, it’s very difficult when there are so many people outside, people don’t realise how busy they are when inside it’s empty and everyone’s outside. So, I asked, are you understaffed at the moment? Apparently not, but you know, it’s very difficult because, you know, people need serving. Yes indeed they do.
It took about 10 minutes to get my bill paid.
Not going back.
UPDATE: oooh, oooh, I’ve just found a picture of the table where I sat! Mine’s that little table for two in the fireplace.
