REVIEW | Bill's, Liverpool One

FROM the stews to the sofas, everything at Bill’s has been added with your well-being in mind.

You can’t help but feel at home here, especially if your home features industrial ducting and lampshades designed for giants. 

An air of huggy snuggliness comes courtesy of leather-rich Chesterfields, clusters of Earth-mother shawls, all manner of stuff stacked on to shelves and hanging from the ceiling, and a forest full of wood knocked into chunky wooden tables and well-stocked bookcases.

The 10oz ribeye wasn't a bad piece of meat....but having had no time to rest before being plated up, its muscles were tenser than the PM’s buttocks when Boris is on the line

Much of the Liverpool One branch has a distressed, washed-in-on-the-Mersey-tide look. Indeed, the floor is so distressed it’s hard to say what it needs more: a roll of linoleum or a course of Valium.

Even the name of the place has a ring of reassurance. Bills are solid, dependable sort of guys. Like Bens. And Bobs. But not Barrys, obviously.

Something about Bill’s feels very American; like a New Englander’s re-imagining of the old country, yet the chain that began life in a Sussex shed is as English as it comes.

The portions are US-sized all right, but quantity is rarely matched by quality. A menu described as “contemporary European” covers, if not a multitude of sins, at least a few acts of sacrilege.

Giant green gordal olives (£2.95) came in a tell-tale puddle of brine which told us what we already knew, they had been pitted and preserved, a process of culinary castration which can reduce these majestic fruits to a pale, flabby version of their former selves. In this case it had.

A hefty plate of crunchy tortillas (£3.95) came with tzatziki, guacamole that was absent of seasoning, and tomato salsa that showed little indication of having been freshly pepared.

A salad of roasted beetroot, falafel and goats cheese with puy lentils (£5.50) was unbalanced and lacking flavour: too many lentils, too little goat’s cheese, too little eastern spice.

Comfort foods crop up a lot, among them cauliflower soup (£4.95) a simple, creamy bowlful, served with a hard chunk of rye sourdough that had been pressed on the grill bars. Then there is Bill’s fish pie (£12.95), trying its best with cod, salmon, smoked haddock, garlic prawns, peas and roasted baby onions, topped with mustard and cheddar mash, but which I found hard to love, a feeling not helped by having to pour on the white sauce from a separate jug. 
 

A 10oz ribeye steak (£16.95) wasn’t a bad piece of meat, correctly cooked to medium rare. But, having had no time to rest before being plated up, its muscles were tenser than the PM’s buttocks when Boris is on the line. A beaker of uniformly lacklustre fries and a small pile of watercress did nothing to help. The optional boat of Bearnaise (£1.20) was served, like the fries, with skin on.

Puddings brought little consolation; lemon meringue pie cheesecake in a glass (£5.50) was so unwieldy I had to trowel half of the gluey topping out on to a side plate before it could be tackled, while warm mini cinnamon doughnuts (£5.50), with anaemic strawberry pieces and a watery chocolate dipping sauce, were so heavily coated in the spice that they could be appreciated only by one who loved cinnamon more than life itself.
 

Service was the sort you want; friendly (but not too friendly), efficient and helpful (even steering us away from one dish on the basis that it had “too much pearl barley”).

Confidential had a better time with breakfast at Bill’s, and I can imagine happily whiling an hour or two on a Chesterfield with a full English and couple of their perfectly decent coffees. 

But for now, the Bill before us was no longer the solid and dependable sort, but the one that said “total due”. And we were the ones wearing the distressed look.