Used to always go to a nice restaurant/pub with my dad when I went over to his place, called the Lammastide, in Berkeley.
It used to be absolutely gorgeous. Everyone in there knew my dad (him being the local postie and all), the food was always nice, and well-timed (so you didn't feel rushed, but at the same time didn't feel like you were hanging around). Plus I won £15 on their fruit machine.

Well, it recently changed hands, and the new family that ran it came from 'oop north'. They had previously owned a place up there, and had come down here to run this one (I don't know why). We thought we would try it out, to see what it was like.

Fucking bad was the conclusion.

Without putting too-fine-a-point on it, they were chavs. The dad behind the bar had a baseball cap and a stained t-shirt on. The son looked like a display case for Argos' jewellry range. The music playing was something normally heard blaring from a car stereo. That was just the first impressions.

The beer was warm, and tasted like it had sat in the pipes for a week, which wouldn't surprise me, given that all of the local punters weren't there to drink it.

So, anyway, we sit down. The menu was tiny, about 6 items to choose from on the main. We decided to forgo the starters, because nothing there sounded remotely nice. My dad had steak, my stepmother had fish and chips, and I had 'Calvados chicken with black rice'. The fish and chips looked and tasted good. The chicken was crap, mostly bone, and the rice tasted of nothing. But the steak, well, that was just fucking abysmal. It was cooked on one side. My dad always asks for no blood, because it turns him off the food. So what do they do? Burn it on one side, and leave it raw on the other. Now I know people eat steak 'blue', but you don't expect it half cooked (literally) when you asked for it 'medium, no blood'. We complained, and got half of the price off the steak (I suppose because it was only half that he didn't like. Or just cheapness).

To be fair, we would have gone back, but with the bad atmoshpere added into it, it just wasn't worth it. It is one of the only restaurants in Berkeley, but it's like putting a strip club inside a church. That kind of atmosphere they tried to create was completely out of place in the middle of a tiny place like Berkeley.

Local town for local people indeed.
( OneSullenBrit *air sandwiches*, Fri 28 Apr 2006, 18:15, Reply)