And a swift note on our table comrades for the evening; the Johnstons, otherwise known as the 'Jaysters', or 'Johnmondoes' were kind enough to spare some time in their busy social schedule to join us for dinner and stay out later than their usual bedtime of 9pm. After tracking the place down, we walked in and found ourselves by a bar and promptly ordered a drink. Looking around, things got even better as I noticed an open pass and a horde of chefs working like mad behind it.
We sat and tried to make our way through the menu with page after page of dishes to choose. The emphasis is on Italian food with pizzas and multiple pasta dishes but in fact, I would say that the menu was just too large and the problems we saw later may well be mainly attributed to the shear volume of different dishes the team were forced to supply. Dinner started with what I like to consider, in hindsight, to be an unfortunate incident. Admittedly, it was entirely my own fault that I forgot that the Johnstons don't like olives as I unilaterally ordered bread and olives, but we'll gloss over that won't we, it's not as if I'll make two stupid mistakes in one night is it?
They were tasty for sure but a lot for one person which led me to further issues when my second mistake of the evening appeared soon afterwards...
Oh dear, it seems I may have miscalculated, in fact, there were so many olives for even a man such as I to consume, that I had to wrap some up in foil and take them home. So olives aside, what else did we have here? Unfortunately, this brings me to my second point; to mis-quote the Black Eyed Peas (and let's be honest, who doesn't like to do that every once in a while), 'Where was the Love?'
Soggy toast topped with chopped tomatoes, accompanied by cold roast peppers, cold courgette, cold aubergine and ham with salami all fresh from fridge to plate with seemingly no time inbetween. Nice flavours but without any seasoning at all, it was a plate the The Child could, and in fact has in the past, put together better. She at least added some capers for seasoning even if she did also include ketchup.
The others fared marginally better - but only marginally, with the garlic prawns being OK but not amazing, the parfait from the specials menu coming with a distinct proportion issue between bread to parfait and with such a huge plate the whole thing just looked odd. Oddly though, the fish cakes had the entirely opposite problem being as they were; enormous but similarly suffering from lack of seasoning.
I'm afraid the mains were also a game of two halfs.
Let's start with the frankly colossal rack of ribs that were set in front of Mrs P. Well executed with soft juicy meat and a homemade sauce that tasted pleasantly more tart than the sugary sweet bottled standard and thus went down with suitably positive comments. The coleslaw was a mustardy effort which I thought brought something new to the coleslaw world and marked itself out from the default mass produced stuff. Unfortunately my thoughts were not echoed and I was left as a lone voice and therefore ignored as the leprous olive and coleslaw eater of the table.
Mr Johnston tucked into what claimed to be roast pork with crackling but while the meat was soft, I'm afraid that grievously, so was the crackling. The fat simply hadn't rendered and so what was left was a quivering hunk of warm fatty meat wrapped in a chewy, skin flavoured tarpaulin.
I was asked when ordering my pollo picante (spicy chicken) if I wanted chips. I declined in favour of a salad (one must be careful, especially as Grillstock is only few days away), and more on that momentarily. When it arrived, the chicken was lovely and soft with a good crust of spices to live up to it's title. Again (third mistake of the evening), I forgot that none of my fellow diners liked Chilli and so couldn't share across plate-borders as the others were achieving. I also received a vine of warmed tomatoes. Not cooked, not oiled, salted or cared for in any way. Just warmed. I was, and remain, confused by this. Why would you go to the effort of warming a tomato? It seemed odd while eating it after a couple of pints of social beverage and now in the cold light of day, it shows itself to be positively weird.
However moving on, lets touch briefly on that salad; it had to be one of the most sorry excuses of a salad I have had the misfortune to try and eat. I've already mentioned the peppers served at a temperature between a chilly 2 to 4 degrees and they made a re-appearance here along with some equally frigid rocket and spinach leaves. These had been sat to the point that they had started to mush down. Unpleasant to the max.
Finally lets talk Mrs Johnstons duck. She seemed to enjoy it but said that while the elements were individually good, there was way too much gravy and the duck skin just wasn't crisp which seems like a cardinal sin for something as expensive as duck.
And lets be honest, the meal certainly wasn't cheap. £160 quid for four of us with drinks, although while I say we had drinks, it was a bit of a struggle as the waitress wasn't enormously responsive and we waited over 30 mins for refills through the meal and a further 20 mins with two reminders in between for the pudding menus. A pleasant and friendly conversationalist certainly but to say she was pushed would be being kind.
So on to the puds then and the theme continued with four perfectly adequate but over priced examples including white chocolate cheesecake, banoffee sundae, ice cream and chocolate brownie (which I don't seem to have a photo of - Mr Johnston if you could be so kind as to supply one, I will update this record!).
Now with added brownie:
The best thing, and something that we all agreed on was the delicious raspberry sorbet.
In fairness, we visited on a Friday night and the place was heaving so a slight variation in service and quality could be expected but the salad that went back and was refunded and the crackling that didn't crackle were both just silly errors.
In conclusion, I feel that The Navigation Inn suffers from a slight case of style over substance. The place looks great - thanks in part to the recent renovation that clearly cost an arm and a leg. Even the toilets look the part with their shabby chic sinks and taps.
But look closer and you find a couple of things that aren't quite hitting the mark. For example, in a place like this you would expect proper local beer but it's all mass produced stuff; you want simple food done well but you get a miss-matched selection of standard Italian classics prepared without the love and attention that that culinary culture demands..
Mrs P and I will certainly be coming back to try and establish if this was just an anomalous Friday night, but maybe next time we'll have a couple of drinks out by the canal.
@thenavcosgrove
www.thenavigationcosgrove.co.uk
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