A piece of burnt parsnip

We have been to The Jolly Boatman before and I remember it as being a pleasant place to eat, the food was average, not the kind of meal that would go out of my way to have again.  We were going past and thought we would go in, take our grand daughter for a meal and a catch up.

We choose to sit in the restaurant and got a table with a view. We ordered our food and settled down to look out the window at the canal boats meandering past in the late afternoon sun, people all bundled up out walking their dogs.


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Lotus reached out to investigate the reserve sign left on the table. I spotted that it was not clean, it had greasy finger marks on it and in need of a wipe. This prompted inspecting cutlery.  One dirty knife, a fork with fluff on it. We swapped out the dirty cutlery and spent a considerable amount of time shining the remaining cutlery left on the table.

By now we had doubts about the meal.



The food arrived, I think I ordered the most expensive meal on the menu, fillet medallion steak with blue cheese sauce, veg and chips. I could see why the waiter gave me a funny look when I asked for my steak to be med/rare. It looked like microwaved gloopy mess.  There was a punnet of asparagus on the plate ( now don't get me wrong I love asparagus ) but 10 stalks covered in a congealed, lumpy sauce. Not a good look.  I was hopping for a smooth rich sauce poured gently over the medallions of steak.....

 I think they thought that the heat from the sauce would cook the asparagus through.  I can tell from experience, nope it does not.  They were stringy and tough.






Pete got a bowl of mash with sausages and a river of gravy. Now the menu said onion gravy, I am sure Pete was imagining, onions gently cooked until soft and sweet...... wake up,  there is raw red onion thinly sliced and sprinkled all over the plate.

Poor Lotus got chicken nuggets that were so hard she could not pierce them with the fork and while she was eating the peas I spotted a strange black thing on the plate.  We all inspected it and decided it was not animal and that she could go on eating her peas. I put it to one side on a serviette.

When the server came back I informed him that the meal that I had was not worth the £15 plus price tag attached to it and showed him the black thingy on the serviette. He went off with the plates displaying half eaten food  and the black thingy. 

He came back after a while straight back and a bit of an attitude, to inform us that it was just a piece of burnt parsnip crisp.  I looked at  him wondering how they determined that , did someone taste it? I wonder if they played paper, rock, scissors to determine who would have to.

Pete went to pay the bill and we got out as soon as we could, never to return for sure. Hoping all the while that we would not get ill.

Jolly Boatman......... more like sinking ship.
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