The Milestone, Green Lane, Sheffield
THERE'S a credit crunch on but I'm wondering whether some restaurants have realised that.
Quite routine places can charge 15 or so for a main course and some have the cheek to ask extra for vegetables. No wonder places like Barnsley Taybarns, with all you can eat for 7.95, are tempting.
A meal out can easily be 60-70 if you include a bottle of wine but as customers we can adapt.
We can save a bit by taking up Early Bird offers or settling for two courses and a glass of wine instead of a bottle and tap instead of spa water.
Some places are now offering "credit crunch menus" which are, in essence, dressed up table d'hotes.
Restaurants are in business to make money. They have a lot of bills to pay but a canny kitchen can still keep the profit margins healthy by using cheap ingredients to produce good meals.
The Milestone gastropub at Kelham Island is currently running an 18 for two courses (22 for three) credit crunch menu. They're using cheap cuts and buying the flour they need for their own breads straight from the mill.
Purely as an experiment, we wondered how little could we spend on a three-course meal in the bar, ordering the cheapest dishes on the menu and still give the kitchen a fair crack of the whip in judging its cooking.
We selected the Milestone as its website tempted with an oxtail terrine and port jelly starter for 4.50. It was Sod's Law it was off on our visit.
But the Milestone offers a list of "gastro dishes" mostly under a tenner so we had plenty of choice, combining them with a starter and sweet.
We began by each having a half of the cheapest beer in the house, a very acceptable Wentworth Imperial at 1.85 a pint.
I had the soup of the day, tomato (4.50) which was superb with great depth of flavour. The bread was lovely, thick slices with a moist, light crumb and crisp crust.
My wife spent the same on eggs Benedict, a first-class rasher of bacon with barely wilted spinach and a still running poached egg bound together with a deft Hollandaise sauce.
One of the cheapest gastro dishes was the braised ox tongue at 7.95 although I was in two minds whether to go for the pork pie and piccalilli at a pound more.
The tongue, I realised belatedly, was really a dressed up sandwich so I was having a soup and sarnie for my meal out! Not so long ago tongue was commonplace but now it's a rarity. The kitchen gets the best out of the meat. It was pink and tender and the gentle flavour was offset by an of-the-heat horseradish with creme fraiche dressing. It came with skin-on chips and a salad.
The kitchen also makes its own pasta so my wife went for the ravioli at 8.50. She contemplated two flying-saucer shaped parcels in a wide savannah of baby spinach. A herd of wildebeest could have grazed on it.
"One extra raviolo and half the spinach would have been preferable. But don't mess with me after all this spinach," she said, flexing her muscles like Popeye. The pasta was classy and so was the filling.
By now we had clocked up 27.30. We must have looked real meanies as we fended off suggestions of another drink.
Even more so when we shared one of the cheapest sweets, a rum baba with a cherry compote (6). The baba bore only a passing resemblance to the real thing and there were some woody bits, presumably cinnamon shards, with the cherries.
This took us up 33.50, which the two of us could easily have blown with a couple of main courses on the restaurant menu.
So did we enjoy it? Yes, there was enough to tell me this is an expert kitchen and make us want to eat the more complex and expensive dishes.
Was it good value? Not bad although the courses follow quickly here and there is a limit to how long you can linger over a half a pint.
On reflection, we'd have been better tackling the credit crunch menu.
But that's the nature of experiments. You don't really know how they're going to work out.
Review:
84 Green Lane, Kelham Island, Sheffield. Tel: 0114 272 8327
Open all week 11am-11pm (Sun until 10.30pm). Credit cards. Music/TV. Disabled access and toilets. On street parking (no meters). Website www.the-milestone.co.uk
My star ratings (out of five):
Food ****
Atmosphere ****
Service ****
Value ***
Pub food category
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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