FOOD REVIEW - MOSBOROUGH HALL HOTEL, High Street, Mosborough S20 5EA.
"SO is there a Roland Rat cuddly toy in every bedroom?" I impishly ask waitress Clare as we settle our bill for Sunday lunch at the Mosborough Hall Hotel.
She looks blank.
"You know, Roland Rat who rescued breakfast television show TV-am back in the Eighties. He was brought in by Greg Dyke. He's the boss here, isn't he?"
Indeed he is. Greg Dyke might be the former director-general of the BBC but in a life before that he was boss of breakfast telly and when hehired that puppet he increased the audience from 100,000 to just under two million.
It was, as someone brilliantly remarked at the time, the only case of a rat joining a sinking ship.
"Oh Roland Rat! Yes," says Clare. "Mr Dyke comes to see us once a month."
Some might say that Greg Dyke has done a similar rescue job on Mosborough Hall.
The 750-year-old building - well, bits of it date from then - was ailing when he took it over in 2005.
As he told me then, four years previously he had invested in the hotel "through a friend of a friend," and when it ran into difficulties he had to act.
Things have changed at Mosborough. The hotel, part of the Best Western brand, has increased in size from 24 to 42 bedrooms and had a 4 million upgrade.
"Just the sort of immigrant to Sheffield we like," opined former Lord Mayor Arthur Dunworth when he officially opened the gaffe last year.
The hotel itself is a little TV-am with some of the events laid on, loads of tribute nights, a Dirty Dancing evening and Faulty Towers night.
The ye olde minstrels gallery, the scene of a family party on our visit, is now adorned with a massive plasma screen - a far cry from the days when William Carey, husband of Mary Boleyn,lived here.
"The film, The Other Boleyn Girl, was released in 2008 one month before the refurbished hotel opened" it says on the back of our menu.
It's a pleasant drive to the hotel on a sunny Sunday and we walk though a rather futuristic bar and reception - someone has described it, wrongly, as looking like a Saga Holidays hotel - into Darcy's restaurant. He is another old cove who used to live there.Darcy's comes in two parts and we reject a table in the first for the lighter and brighter second room, with white painted wood panelling looking on to lawns. It's also further away from the lively family gathering.
Oddly, the room is decorated with portraits of pop stars, including Jarvis Cocker.
Beyond is a third room, a private dining room, already occupied.
Sunday lunch is 10.45, for two courses, and another fiver for dessert.
It's what I call a relaxed menu - carrot soup, chicken liver parfait, a radish, white carrot and red onion salad and anchovies on toast (ciabatta). Mains are a couple of roasts, beef and pork, some salmon, breast of chicken and spaghetti with ratatouille.
It's a pleasant dining room but we can't help noticing the chairs are already badly scuffed and the glasses on our table are very smeary.
The soup is OK but would be even better seasoned. I set to work. The only complaint about the parfait is that it comes with three slices of toasted ciabatta full of holes. My wife is a little miffed by that.
I get the choice of pink or well done with my beef but it proves rather pointless as it comes in two and half well done slices. If you like your beef chewy this is for you. It comes with three good roast potatoes, a crisp Yorkshire pudding, decent gravy and a bowlful of steamed or boiled vegetables to share.
My wife's salmon with a crisp skin and a red pepper oil is perfectly acceptable although she does seem to be having trouble with confit potatoes these days. The previous restaurant where she ate them didn't finish the job. Mosborough does but only just.
Our lunch is slightly married by an incredibly sarky waitress early on but Clare takes over to pour oil on troubled waters.
We proceed to sweets and these prove quite the best bit of lunch, a properly made individual summer pudding full of red and blackcurrants, the fruit's acidity well balanced, and the juice-soaked bread casing still firm not pappy. A chocolate sponge is light and chocolate driven.
Sadly the coffee machine has been out of action all week. We don't want filter so call for the bill.
Food is 30.90 and two glasses of wine 9.90.
Mosborough Hall does exactly what it says on the tin but it would be nice to have a little more.Food Review
MOSBOROUGH HALL HOTEL
High Street, Mosborough S20 5EA.
Telephone: 0114 248 4353.
Open all week lunch and dinner. Credit cards. Disabled access and toilets. Car park.
My Sunday lunch star rating (out of five): ***
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