Huntingdon, in Cambridgeshire, is my home town. It is not a particularly nice one, although having grown up, been schooled and experienced the best and very, very worst of the town over the last decade or so, I have come to regard it with a patronising sort of fondness. I see it as a dim nephew, whose limitations are painfully obvious to everyone in the family but who is accommodated because he will sometimes do something hilarious, like run into a door.
What Huntingdon does have is a couple of nice places to eat, though. The Samuel Pepys bears up under new exacting standards of pub food, and the Old Bridge Hotel provides wonderful 'proper' dinners, if your wallet can stand the strain. An old favourite of Huntingdon’s younger clientele, though, is Pop Bellies, a restaurant-cum-bistro-cum-cafe which has always managed to both look nice and produce half-decent tucker at reasonable prices. It has recently undergone a revamp, which is why a few of us found ourselves wanting to sample its (hopefully) new, exciting delights.
That was where my optimism ended, though. We were shown to our table, given menus, ordered wine and placed our order – 4 main courses – all in under 10 minutes. Evidently, though, Time then decided to chuck a U-turn and put itself on hold for a while, because that is the only explanation for our main courses taking nearly an hour to arrive. For four, fairly rudimentary, main courses. You couldn't, for want of a better phrase, make it up.
After The Wait, the main courses were hit (1), and miss (3). The lamb souvlaki was very good. The beef and stilton salad, though, was missing any stilton (I didn’t have the heart to complain). A promising-sounding pepper and tiger prawn pasta was beige, in colour and taste. And as a fantastic centrepiece to the meal, the Jamaican jerk chicken was basted – honestly – with Reggae Reggae Sauce.
After The Wait, the main courses were hit (1), and miss (3). The lamb souvlaki was very good. The beef and stilton salad, though, was missing any stilton (I didn’t have the heart to complain). A promising-sounding pepper and tiger prawn pasta was beige, in colour and taste. And as a fantastic centrepiece to the meal, the Jamaican jerk chicken was basted – honestly – with Reggae Reggae Sauce.
It all smacked of the chefs being unable to cope with what is a large and unwieldly menu, and of inadequate care and attention being paid to presentation, seasoning and all the other things one should take for granted these days. Which is a shame, but I don’t think we’ll be darkening the door of Pop Bellies again for a while.
Main courses with (lots of) wine – c. £80
4/10
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