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Possibly the most gorgeous pub interior in Brum - also offers Comedy nights |
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| Address |
144 High Street, Newtown Birmingham
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| Postcode |
B6 4UP Map |
| Tel |
0121 333 5988 |
| Website |
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| Email |
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Full Restaurant Listing |
| An exhaustive 1029 words from chris on Monday, May 03, 2004
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| Food: |
Value |
Service: |
Decor: |
Rating: |
Cost/head: |
Suits: |
| 5/10 |
: 7/10 |
7/10 |
6/10 |
61% |
£10 |
Get out of the house |
As Gastrojock seems to have taken a complete volte face and now only reviews places that rate above 90% it behoves me to bring a sense of balance to the current Bartons Arms euphoria. I posted the original Bartons Arms review back in May of last year and like GJ was genuinely astonished at the quality of the food and the low prices, so much so in fact that I returned with Vicki and two friends the following Friday night. I can’t recall having two such completely different experiences in the same restaurant. The food on that second occasion was quite frankly muck and I haven’t bothered going back since. I didn’t post a review on the second occasion because I really hoped that I’d experienced an off-night and I wanted other people to try the place Having imbibed rather too much last night (I must be allergic to alcohol) I decided the Bartons Arms might be worth a revisit for some comfort eating this lunchtime. Firstly, to see if the place really had improved or whether Bill and Gastrojock had taken leave of their senses and secondly because I know of no finer hangover cure than Tom Yum soup. When we arrived the place was as busy as ever (six other people, all drinking, none eating). I’m not quite sure what GJ means by ‘apache country’ but certainly the place seemed friendly enough to us. The only annoyance from the locals was two drunken examples from the Emerald isle that spent the duration of our time there shouting at each other across the lounge.
Both Vicki and I ordered the prawn Tom Yum soup (£2.95) to start. Not a great thing to do for the purposes of a review but we both had alternative motives. I also ordered the Pad Mee Sua Noodles (very fine soft noodles fried with chicken and prawns, flavoured with a light soy sauce, bean sprouts, red and green peppers and spring onions £4.95) and Vicki ordered Thai Fish Cakes (£3.95). We asked for it all to be served together which they did in rather less time than it would normally take to get a wok up to full heat.
The first mouthful of Tom Yum soup confirmed something was very wrong. It was made with chicken stock. This might me Okay if you’d ordered Chicken Tom Yum but prawn Tom yum should only ever be made out of a light shellfish stock. Unfortunately Vicki doesn’t eat meat so she naturally found it quite disgusting – not that she’s puritanical about it. I make a vegetable dish of baby onions in beetroot juice that uses a light chicken stock and she’ll happily eat that but this stock was a greasy affair with a pronounced poultry flavour that could only have been made by boiling an old rooster from December through to March. Once the kitchen had confirmed it was made of chicken stock it went straight back although in their favour they took it back without any fuss. I drank mine but was left wondering how they could call it Tom Yum. The greasy stock wasn’t help by the distinct lack of any aromatics to cut through it. There were a few slivers of lemon grass in the bottom of the bowl and a hint of chilli but there was no coriander leaf or kaffir lime leaf in it (despite the fact that they obviously had coriander in the kitchen because they used it as garnish on the noodles). On the plus side it did come with a good handful of tiger prawns which was more than generous for £2.95 but that was little compensation for a soup that was so distinctly lacking in every other ingredient. Vicki’s Thai Fish cakes looked like pretty enough things – three or four thin discs served with a fine peanut and cucumber sweet chilli dip. Unfortunately all they bought to the table was texture rather than taste and not a pleasant texture at that. I imagine if you ran over a whelk in you car and quickly fried the roadkill in oil you’d achieve a roughly similar product. My noodles were described on the menu as mild so I asked if I could have some fresh chopped chilli added to spice up the affair. Unfortunately my request probably didn’t translate well from bar to kitchen because all I got was a couple of slices as a garnish on top. It was certainly a big plate of noodles but I wasn’t attracted by the sun glistening off all the oil or the fact that the ‘light soy sauce’ dressing didn’t appear to be present. Another generous portion of tiger prawns came with the dish along with a few chunks of chicken and two or three brutally large chunks of pepper but overall it was bland and boring and I’d lost all interest in it after half a dozen forkfuls. Vicki did rather better the Pad Thai noodles (£4.95) she ordered as a replacement for her soup. She ordered the vegetarian option (also available as chicken or prawn) and this came with some interesting stir-fried cauliflower and a punchy tamarind and chilli sauce. She thought this dish was rather good but overall with just one hit and three misses we left rather disappointed.
I’ve not given up on this place yet – I’m sure overtime, familiarity with the menu will enable us to order better dishes but at the moment the place is too inconsistent and isn’t anywhere near as good as Café Soya. The location issue puzzles me because it’s literally about three minutes out of town with free parking. If you were shopping in the city on a Saturday it might even be easier to drive out to the Bartons Arms for a spot of lunch than it would be to find a convenient parking space in the centre. Sadly though I think the Bartons Arms is only really good for that. I’ll happily go again for lunch (for one thing I’ve still got to get around to trying their tempura ice cream), but I wouldn’t make the effort of trekking out there for an evening meal
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| REVIEWS
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| CHRIS |
| REVIEWS |
| No.of reviews: |
186 |
| Average Rating: |
59% |
| Highest Rating: |
99% |
| Lowest Rating: |
0% |
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