Me & Jayne were planning to go for lunch at The Crabmill in Preston Bagot but it was closed for a private function so we went up to Claverdon where we came across The Red Lion, we have both heard a lot about this pub and its very popular so we thought why not?! The board outside on the car park said that they were doing a lunch time menu from 12-2.30 & we only wanted something little so we were happy they did a lunch time offer! However when we walked in, the pub itself is really lovely and the decor is very old but with a modern twist! We sat down and the waitress bought us our menus and I asked her if they had the lunch time menu which she replied that they haven't got a lunch time menu and its just the La Carte menu, which was disappointing!
We looked at the normal menu which was verrrry expensive for a lunch time so we decided to just have starters and share them. The service here was pretty good and the food came quickly!
We firstly went for the sharing platter of Baked Box Camembert with red onion jam & rustic bread
The presentation of this starter was really nice and I liked the board it came out on! The bread it came with was gorgeous, it was so fresh and was still warm and buttery, I was very impressed with the bread as camembert can be let down a lot by the bread! The actual camembert however was a bit of a let down, I didn't like how they put the red onion jam on top it would have been better on the side as it all went into the camembert which was rather messy! I found the camembert over ally cheesy, which I know sounds silly as it is cheese but it tasted as if it was almost off?! Which wasn't good! Neither of us were very impressed with this & for £8.95 it wasn't exactly cheap!
For after we decided to have two starters as our main as the mains were so expensive! I went for the Smoked Haddock fishcake with poached egg, baby spinach and hollandaise & Jayne went for the fresh mussels, scallops calamari & tiger prawns in a rich cherry tomato stew served with toasted bread!
The fish cake presentation was very good and looked expensive and smart! However the vision was better than the taste, the spinach was probably the best part of this meal! The fishcake was very dry and tasted like curry, which it didn't state in the menu because if it did I wouldn't have chose it as curry isn't one of my favourite flavours and I felt it didn't mix well with the smoked haddock at all as they are two very strong flavours. Smoked haddock needs something more simple with it and the curry flavour just over powered the fish! The hollandaise was nice but was only average and I felt the flavours just didn't gel well together, as separate parts they were all nice but put together and it just didn't work at all! I wasn't impressed with this dish and for £6.95 just for a starter I was incredibly disappointed!
Jayne felt exactly the same about her dish which is full of her favourite fish but she just felt it was too fishy, the sauce didn't even taste like tomato apparently and was just too watery! She said the bread was the best apart of the whole dish and for £7.50 it was very expensive for a starter that was a big disappointment!
Over all we were not very happy and I would give this restaurant 2/10 and definitely wouldn't return!!
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