I went to The Rusty Bicycle way back in December with my friend Fran from university. I'd been googling a lot of possibilities and this place looked perfect - a nice cosy pub for a winter's day! You can find their website here. It was quite a long walk to get there from the train station, but all that means is you can eat more as you've already burnt more calories, so I look on it as a bit of a bonus!
I really liked the interior of the restaurant - it had tasteful Christmas decorations which added to the rustic, countryside pub feel, and I really liked the chalk board drinks menu.
Also they put out tap water for you to help yourself to, and we know how much I love that!
The menu was quite impressive - classic pub food but with interesting modern twists, like the pumpkin, chickpea and coconut pie. Not your everyday pie filling!
For starter we shared the whitebait with lemon aioli
I loved the presentation (the bowl was so pretty), and they ticked another box with the tiny little mayonnaise jar - it's so sweet! The whitebait was delicious too - it tasted really fresh and I liked the way it wasn't completely battered or breadcrumbed, as it meant you got more of the fish flavour rather than just the coating.
For main I went for the beef, lager and shitake pie - nothing better than a nice stodgy pie! And it came with mash, the comfort food of dreams.
As I've said before, I normally prefer pies which are shortcrust pastry all the way round, rather than them just having a puff pastry lid, but this was a really nice pie! The pastry was butter and extremely flaky, but had managed not to get soggy from the filling - no mean feat! The meat inside was tender and the gravy thick; it also had a really interesting asian flavour, something I wasn't sure I'd like but wanted to try, but that I now think worked really well. The mash was fluffy and smooth, and dipped in the pie gravy was delicious!
I also went for a side of chips with cheese and rosemary as I just couldn't resist...
Again, lovely presentation...and the chips were amazing! Soft with fluffy centres, and they had done the best thing ever - layered the cheese!!! I always used to ask them to do that for me where I worked at uni, so it was a dream come true to find somewhere that did it without even being asked. I'm sure everyone else has felt the pain of getting to the underneath chips and there being no cheese left, but no such bad luck here! The cheese was nice and mature, too, and the rosemary made it taste a bit like a roast dinner, but not in a weird way! An interesting and clever addition. (Also Fran tried one and liked them so much she got her own portion, but they were such huge portions that we probably could have shared - and I never say that!)
Fran went for the chicken, mushroom and tarragon pie
She really enjoyed it and thought the mash and buttered greens were great as well - the pie was packed with meat and the mash looked just as creamy and fluffy as mine!
Sadly we were both far too full for pudding, but if I went back (which I hope I do) I would definitely save space for the warm chocolate brownie and some salted caramel ice cream! One final thing - the people working there were really friendly, which added to the welcoming atmosphere of the place. I wish I could make it my regular!
0 comments:
Post a Comment