SOMEBODY piped up at an event.
"If you want a really good pub with really good food try the Barton Arms in Worsley."
Another son had the 'ultimate' burger (£9.50). Ultimate? It really was the last thing you'd want to eat.
I hadn't heard of this place and we hadn't been out Worsley way for a while with Confidential. It seemed like a good idea.
In any case I love the green of Worsley Green and the orange of the Bridgewater Canal. I love the half-timbered Victoriana of the buildings, and I yearn to delve in the forty miles of tunnels dug under Worsley woods.
I also like a good pub.
In my mind's eye I was thinking the Barton Arms would be a sturdy Edwardian pub with some charming original features and a good chef cooking strong regional British food. A freehouse too no doubt with excellent ales and whiskies.
Instead the Barton Arms looks like it was built a week last Wednesday. It has that 21st century half-timbering that looks wrong because it's spaced out too far and looks cheap.
The Barton Arms - built a week last Wednesday
Having said that, the interior isn't too offensive. Cutsy books, artfully split into rooms and so on. Ale ok too.
But as guests we should have turned tail and fled just as we picked up the menus. The table next to ours started a proper row about "overcooking".
They knew what they were talking about too. The burgers summed it up.
One son had the pulled pork burger (£7.75) apparently made from 'coarse-ground, lightly seasoned beef from British and Irish farms' and it was truly horrible; solid and heavy like a dumbbell weight. The pulled pork was scraggy and dry like a witch's wig in a production of Macbeth.
Another son had the 'ultimate' burger (£9.50). Ultimate? It really was the last thing you'd want to eat - just look at the meat in the picture at the top of this page.
The problem here is that the pub - or rather the parent company Ember Inns - doesn't trust their suppliers to provide healthy burgers so they torch them to within an inch of their afterlives to make sure they're disease free. Pink flesh, it was explained by the staff, is banned.
This could be avoided if Ember Inns made their burgers on site with meat from a trusted butcher, but they clearly can't be arsed. They have the fear obviously. They fear their chefs won't be up to the job of keeping the bugs away.
Dry, greasy or tasteless - take your pick
The 'ultimate' mixed grill at £11.65 was almost as bad, if not quite the last thing you'd ever want to eat. The rump steak was shoe leather, the gammon tasted of bad offal, the chips had been torched dry like the burgers, the onion rings were lumps of dried fat and the grilled tomato looked deeply offended by the whole thing. The mushroom was ok.
A starter of almond crumbed Somerset brie (£4.25) was a slab of flesh-strippingly hot goo and a dessert of lemon syllabub sundae (£4.25) was simply a sweet blast of sweetness with occasional kicks of lemon on freezer cabinet meringue.
Syllabobbins
Only one dish did anything at all. The devilled whitebait (£4.45) was alright, perky in their spicy cases. It was a surprise to see them on the menu at all.
Otherwise the food was completely mistimed, overcooked, tasteless - it was the 'ultimate' waste of space. Perhaps the main chef was on holiday or boating on the canal but the real problem was all the bought-in and unloved food. The real problem was Ember Inns.
If this had been a Wetherspoons you couldn't really complain but Ember Inns plaster their websites with words such as 'authentic'. They encourage us to come along for 'expertly cooked meat, seafood and vegetarian meals that make the most of the season’s produce'. They think they're good.
That's all bollocks.
This is a pub group trying to keep its costs so low that the food - on our visit - was inedible. They could spend more and keep the prices as democratically low if they handed control over to the kitchen and let them free. And maybe spent less on the design of fibbing websites.
The person who recommended this to me - you know who you are.
On a brighter note, we enjoyed a lovely walk along the canal after lunch. It was worth a trip to Worsley after all.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter@JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY THE MAGAZINE.
Barton Arms, 2 Stablefold, Worsley M28 2ED. 0161 728 6157
Rating: 8/20
Food: 2/10 (Ultimate burger 1, classic burger 1, mixed grill 3, brie 3, whitebait 4, syllabub 3)
Service: 3/5
Ambience: 3/5
Unusually ok whitebait
