The Boot Restaurant

The Boot at Honiley - Honiley Court Hotel On arrival we were shown to a table and given a menu. We were asked if we would like to order any drinks, as we were waiting for other members of our party, we asked for a jug of water. A jug of water we got. *Just* a jug of water - no hint of any ice or lemon. As I was about to pour a glass of water, I noticed watermarks on the glass. And all of the other glasses on the table. Do people not dry things properly any more? Or polish glasses before putting them on the table? The cutlery was little better, especially the knives. In fact, when one of the waiters saw us polishing one of the knives, he offered to change it for us - and replaced it with one from another table. Except he had to swap it a second time, as the first one he picked up was also dirty... After a few minutes another waiter (I assume the manager - he certainly appeared to be the more senior of the staff we saw) asked if we were ready to order - despite the fact that we were clearly still waiting for other guests to arrive. You may wonder what made it so clear. Well, I would have thought that the two empty chairs, with menus on the table, would be a bit of a give-away... Once the rest of our party arrived, we perused the menu and decided what to order. The menu certainly read very well - a good selection of dishes, which should suit everybody's taste. However, the waiting staff did not seem to be aware of the finer details of the dishes. For instance we asked exactly what came with the turkey (on the menu as 'turkey with all the trimmings') - the waitress didn't seem too sure, and wasn't in any hurry to go into the kitchen and find out. We renamed this dish the 'Turkey Surprise'. Having ordered the food, we were again asked what drinks we would like. The choice was apparently a very simple one - red wine, or white wine. For some reason the waiter seemed very keen to restrict us to those options (or orange juice). We wanted to do a little comparison though, so asked to see a wine list. We were told that we could have red wine or white wine. Of course, we didn't give up, and eventually did get a wine list - and prices were comparable with the house wine being offered (by the glass). All the wines from the wine list were only available by the bottle. Since only two of our party were drinking wine, we opted for the original choice, the house red. I, however, decided to chance my arm a little, and asked what beers were available. The response was, again, a very simple choice. Lager, or bitter. As no further details seemed forthcoming, I enquired what bitters there were. This seemed to confuse the waiter somewhat, as he couldn't name any of the bitters that they had. I decided to risk it though, and ordered a pint of bitter (which turned out to be Caffreys). After all the faffing about sorting the drinks order, the starters arrived. Which were not quite as we expected. The mushrooms in a tarragon sauce were served on a bread roll. Not even a *toasted* roll, just a plain, ordinary roll. Which, understandably, was getting rather soggy, as the mushrooms were served in a tarragon sauce. Did I mention the tarragon sauce? I only bring it up now to highlight the fact that there was barely a trace of tarragon to be found. Certainly none to be seen, and precious little flavour. The sauce may have seen the tarragon on the other side of the kitchen, but none of the flavour seemed to have made it as far as actually getting *into* the sauce. The chefs pate was quite good (although I'm not sure which part of the chef went into it, or what the chef had done to deserve such a cruel and unusual punishment), but the two miniscule croutons were hardly adequate for the amount of pate on the plate. Add the fact that the croutons were drizzled with a generous amount of balsamic vinegar, and you could hardly taste the pate. Maybe it's a good job the croutons were so small, as it forced you to eat the pate without the overpowering vinegar flavour. The tomato and mozzarella salad was exactly that. With a little basil oil dressing. Hardly pushing the boat out here, I mean how much simpler can you make things than slicing a tomato and some cheese, and arranging it on a plate? The main course was little better. The plates, and the food on them, were not exactly hot. While the meat was certainly cooked (the beef, I felt, was overcooked - certainly no hint of any blood), the roast potatoes were... well, I wouldn't even call them roast. They had clearly been par-boiled, and then shoved in an oven for a little while, but the 'roasting' had precious little effect. Some of them were still as hard as rocks, definitely not cooked enough to be edible. On the other hand, the vegetables were more than cooked. Limp green beans, soggy carrots, waterlogged broccoli and cauliflower. Oh, and a generous puddle of the cooking water at the bottom of the bowl the vegetables were served in. Looking around the dining room, I could see that this might be a requirement of the other clientele, as most of them were surely pushing pension age, and not up to such strenuous tasks as chewing their food. In a bid to add some flavour to the vegetables (all of the natural flavour having been boiled into submission), I decided to add some pepper. A simple task you might think. Wrong! The pepper pot turned out to have been filled with salt. Ok, I thought, someone's mixed up the salt and pepper, so tried the salt shaker. Which was also full of salt. Despite both clearly belonging to the same cruet set (i.e. they were a matching pair) both pots were filled with salt. How can you make that sort of mistake? Well, judging by the other mistakes, quite easily. I decided the only way to ensure I got the correct condiment was to borrow a (transparent, and visibly pepper-filled) pepper pot from the neighbouring table. Talking of condiments, the mustard and horseradish sauce that went with the beef was served from a large bowl, and dolloped rather unceremoniously onto the side of your plate. The cranberry sauce with the turkey was served in an individual dish, on the plate with the turkey. We think the reason it had to be served in its own dish was the fact that it was so runny. It was almost making a bid for freedom! On raising some of these issues with the waiter as he cleared away our plates, he responded 'Oh, you should have said earlier, we would have got you a replacement!' That's exactly what we were afraid of... By this point, we were less than happy with the meal. We started taking a little more notice of other things around us. Watching one of the waiters, I noticed plates being carried in such a way that the bottom of one plate was touching the food on the plate below. This can't be good, can it? We also realised that the knives were not what you'd call sharp. Perhaps this was why the vegetables were so overcooked? The rock-hard roast potatoes were clearly an oversight. The dessert was by far the best course of the meal. Although that's hardly an achievement. The chocolate almond cookie layered dessert (which, on the menu, had an even more convoluted name than that) was passable, though the mixed berry coulis it was served with managed to overpower any taste of chocolate. And the almond element seemed to be hiding away somewhere. I don't quite know where, but it certainly wasn't on my plate! The iced strawberry cheesecake parfait was indeed iced. Big crystals of the stuff. Perhaps that's why there wasn't any ice to spare to go in the water? Of course, the fun didn't end there - we still had to pay the bill. The menu clearly states the prices at the bottom: 3 courses for £9.95, 3 course with a 'complimentary' glass of wine for £13.95. You can see now why we asked for the wine list, can't you? The bill, when it arrived, was not the easiest of documents to get to grips with. Well, in one sense it was - it tod us the total. It didn't have any other useful information though, such as what had been ordered. Which clearly made things difficult for whoever produced the bill - all four of us had been charged at the £13.95 rate, when only two had in fact had the wine. Simple enough to rectify. Until we pointed out that we had a Gourmet Society card (which we had, as stated in the terms and conditions) mentioned when booking. This entitled us to a 25% discount although apparently this did not include my beer (despite the fact that the website states that the discount is 'including drinks'. It took a few frantic calculations to work out the new total, which we think was now correct. All in all, not the best culinary experience I've ever had. I can remember school dinners that were better than that. At least then you were *expecting* the vegetables to be soggy...