The Warrington
I’ve said from the beginning of this crazy cook-through project that one of the things I was most looking forward to was visiting each of Gordon Ramsay’s pubs and seeing how his professional efforts stack up in the world of pub food gastronomy. So it was with no little excitement that, this weekend past, the lawyer-chick and I arranged to meet up with a couple of friends at The Warrington for a lazy Saturday lunch.
The weather was fantastic, unbelievably warm and sunny for a London spring day. I received a text from the lawyer telling me that she was ahead of schedule and waiting for me in the garden with a cold Bloody Mary and a hangover (bad girl!). I’ve been to the Warrington once before, in its earlier pre-Ramsay guise, and I didn’t remember there being a garden, so the prospect of some outside beer-time came as a welcome surprise.
As it turned out, it wasn’t so much of a garden as a courtyard at the side of the pub, with a handful of wooden tables half shaded from the sun by some large, leafy trees. Still, all perfectly agreeable. After a quick hello to lawyer-chick, who was plonked outside on a prime sun drenched table, I went in to find myself a beer. The inside of the pub, it has to be said, was deserted. It’s quite a dark and moody interior, not necessarily in a bad way, but it certainly wasn’t somewhere you would want to be sat on such a fine, hot day as this (the outside benches were packed).
Bad news greeted me when I reached the beer engines. The choice of London Pride, Green King IPA and Adnams Broadside was uninspiring to say the least. This really is one of my pet hates, when a pub goes to so much trouble to present itself as foodie destination, where the provenance of the ingredients are given star billing, and the wine list has been painstakingly assembled, then why oh why do so many of these places pay so little attention to the beers that they serve!!??
While each of these choices are decent enough mainstream beers from some of the country’s largest real ale breweries, pubs like The Warrington should be doing their best to promote the legions of smaller brewers up and down the country that are producing beers that can blow the bigger boys away. And when I saw that the drinks menu described Foster’s Lager as being “Australian” and “lightly kilned malted barley gently brewed with a unique blend of hops to bring out the flavours” I knew that somebody, somewhere had had their brains removed. For god’s sake Gordon, Fosters is yellow, tasteless piss manufactured by the hectolitre in a huge factory somewhere just outside of Reading. If you must serve it, at least try not to make a virtue out of it!!!
Anyway, I went outside to beer-rant at the lawyer while we took a look at the bar menu and soaked up a few rays.
The bar menu is deliberately short, I guess to sufficiently differentiate between the experience of eating downstairs in the pub or upstairs in the more formal dining room. With a little while to go before our friends arrived, we decided to order a half pint of prawns to munch on while we waited. The prawns arrived promptly, shell on and served with a tangy mayonnaise that was laced with what I guessed was Dijon mustard.
The prawns were good and tasty, not too small and fiddly as they often are when served this way. We spent a happy half hour alternating between peeling, dunking, eating and drinking before our friends arrived and we all, somewhat reluctantly, left the sunshine and made our way upstairs to the pub’s restaurant area.
I was relieved to see that the upstairs was a much brighter and more open space, with huge sash windows that allowed in plenty of light. The large round tables and bright white tablecloths helped create a nice cheery atmosphere, distinct from the downstairs pub. The restaurant was surprisingly empty for a Saturday lunchtime (surely one of their busiest lunch servings?), with perhaps only a third of the chairs occupied. We were offered our choice of table and were quickly seated and provided with water and warm bread while we looked over the menu.
To start, I ordered the pan fried Dorset mackerel with potato salad, whilst the lawyer went for the soup of the day which was French onion ( I assured her it was a good hangover cure). The wine list was approachable with plenty of choice by the glass and most of the bottles coming in at under thirty quid – the cheapest starting at just £13.50, so top marks for that. We opted for a French rosé that was wholly fine for the price and was perfectly suited to the warm weather.
The mackerel dish was fine, without being outstanding. The balance of the two ingredients seemed somewhat at odds, with the tiny piece of mackerel being bullied from the plate by a huge mound of potato salad. Neither the fish nor the potatoes packed any great amount of flavour. Much better was the French onion soup. Served without the cheesy croutons you so often find floating on top, the soup arrived piping hot and was the perfect consistency – the slowly cooked, caramelised onions sitting in just the right amount of broth. The bowl was crammed with flavour, and I found myself fighting the lawyer for the last spoonful.
For main, I chose the roast pork belly with Bramley apple and onion puree, whilst we ordered sides for the table of green beans, chips and a simple green leaf and tomato salad. I had mixed feeling about the pork. It was obviously a decent piece of pig, the meat firm yet moist, slightly dark and packed with good porky flavours. However, it was let down by the crackling which was not even close to being crispy enough. It was difficult to cut through, very chewy and tended to cling defiantly to my teeth like a schoolboys’ penny sweet. The puree was fine, almost overly sugary from the stewed apples but it was definitely a good accompaniment to the belly meat. The sides were all faultless, especially the chips which soon disappeared.
Lawyer-chick opted for the whole Rye Bay plaice which was grilled and served with a lemon and parsley butter. There wasn’t really too much to complain or get excited about with this dish, it very much did what it said on the tin. The fish, which was a very decently sized portion, came perfectly cooked and slathered in a rich buttery sauce. Between the two of us we ate the lot!
By now we were well into the second bottle of wine and we didn’t need much encouragement from the waiter to plunge for dessert. We decided to share the Banoffee pie, which came to the table looking a treat with a caramel glazed half-banana perched proudly on top of perfectly piped whipped cream.
The taste was good, although not quite one of those magical banoffee moments I have had in the past (the pie at E&O in Notting Hill springs to mind). I think I would have preferred a biscuit base to the chef’s blander pastry casing, but still, it was a happy enough ending to the meal.
So, what was the overall verdict? Well, I think on the downside that the restaurant and pub could have been busier. I like a boozer to have a nice buzzy atmosphere and frankly here it was pretty flat. The food should have zinged off the plate a bit more. At times the flavors seemed somewhat labored, despite what were obviously quality ingredients. I think the kitchen could have packed something more into the dishes (the exception being the onion soup, which was perfect). On the upside, the service was great. The price, at roughly thirty quid a head, was reasonable and all of the dishes were competently cooked. And happily, The Warrington still retains the feel of a real pub, albeit one maybe more suited to a dark winter’s evening than a scorching, almost summer day.
Overall we scored the experience a 6.5 out of 10, perhaps slightly disappointing, but still an enjoyable afternoon all the same. I’m certainly looking forward to trying some more of Gordon’s mini pub-empire in order to compare. It’s a tough life this cook-through lark!
Up Next from Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food: Salad of black pudding with poached egg.
