'The plough' or 'A long rant about Whitchurch' or 'half-arsed' you decide.
Whitchurch is well away on its march to become the new Pontcanna.
The overpaid media wankers of that area have allowed some excellent restaurants
such as Bullys, The new Conway and Fish at 85 to set up shop, and now Whitchurch has decided to
replicate Pontcanna’s success. Only this time the effort is far more half
arsed. That solid Whitchurch stalwart Villagio is still doing what it does best;
providing simple, cheap and excellent Italian to an appreciative and loyal
customer base. The Thai upstairs is often great, the only shame being that
it’s on the top floor and you can’t see in as too often we’ve visited to find
ourselves the only people there, and that’s always unpleasant. The village
kitchen was for a long time overpriced for a local restaurant, the cooking
however being very good. They’ve seen to this with some generous offers and a
decent sunday lunch which now make it a good choice for a meal out with friends. I’m pleased
to see that Medittaranio is presently closed, but I can only hope for good. The
old Saturday lunch offer was the only thing that made eating there worthwhile
was scrapped a long time ago. Then along came the Fino lounge, greeted with
great excitement by myself as I enjoyed their Bristol operations so much. But
alas, like so much of Whitchurch it was again half-arsed. The menus are a
delight to read but too often what arrives on your plate is a disgrace. The
only real success of recent is to be found at Deli-a-go go. It’s to my shame
that I don’t visit enough as the food and produce is excellent, and long may it
thrive.
This all leads us to Whitchurch’s newest opening (or
re-opening if you like) The Plough. Modelled
on the mega-successful re-launch of The Maltsters in Llandaff. I’ve visited the
Maltsters a few times before the re-fit and found an empty miserable, moribund
place. The re-fit worked perfectly for a place like Llandaff and offers good
pub grub with a good pub atmosphere, a Cinderella story if you like.
Brains have rightly tried to copy its success with the
Plough, but have made a very half-arsed effort of it. The Plough was a strange
place in some ways. It was by far the most overpriced and expensive pub in
Whitchurch. The chairs were uncomfortable, the music shit and the bogs were just
that, bogs. It was however the most popular and beloved place in Whitchurch to
an awful lot of people. Weekends you couldn’t move in there and the place took
money hand over fist, so it would seem an odd choice for Brains to change.
Granted the place needed a re-fit but a complete rebranding? This however is a food blog and since Brains
have opened a half-arsed gastro pub, then it’s about the half-arsed gastro bit
that I will write, and todays Sunday lunch spurred me into action.
We visited a few
weeks ago and had a very pleasant beef Sunday lunch, the only down side to it being the
boiled spuds served in place of roasted (a very, very odd choice that only
harks to a kitchen not prepared to go
the whole hog) The beef was tender and piled high, the veg plentiful. Today I
went for the same thing and it came with the same boiled spuds. This time though
the beef was inedible, un-cutable even. The friendly manager was apologetic and
returned the dish to the kitchen, but what came back was exactly the same. I
hate the obvious discomfort of complaining but it is entirely necessary to
allow a place to address concerns at the time, if you intend to write the sort
of shit that I do on my blog. However, one complaint should be enough, along
with the fact that a plate full of beef went back to the kitchen unfinished.
Another previous experience of eating there summed up
everything I mean when I say that the new Plough is a poor half-arsed attempt
at taking money from the well to do folk of Whitchurch. I ordered a starter of
crab cakes, that would have been very good had it not been for a cloying,
treacle like sweet chilli sauce that killed off any taste of crab, and the
slate it was served on made me hate the dish before I even tasted it. We eat
with our eyes first and foremost and this dish had me reaching for the fork,
not to eat the dish, but to gouge the eyeballs out of my face. The main had the
misses forcibly removing the fork from my hand for fear we’d soon own a guide
dog. A perfectly good burger was proper pub grub, but the limp and floppy chips
should never have been described as fries. The dish should have read “Burger
with abomination” and just to piss me off further the food came perched on a
piece of driftwood, making the whole thing an ’it’s a knockout’ style task for
the poor waitress to carry.
The new Conway in Pontcanna was once a local boozer to the
people of that area, and some people quite rightly felt pissed off when it was
turned into a gastropub. They though
got in return some exceptional cooking.
We Plough regulars haven’t been so well
compensated. Serving food on slate and bits of wood doesn’t make the food
innovative or exciting. It shows a place trying to draw the customer’s
attention away from the fact they’re being served average food.
The local British
boozer is and always has been the absolute heart and soul of the British
community, and Brains in their misguided effort to make more profit have torn part
of the heart and soul from Whitchurch, and in return given us a half-arsed
eatery. The bar out front was once a Bustling hot bed of banter, it’s now a
banal, and boring bar for the elderly and once a month drinkers. The front of
the pub where you could once see hundreds of people drinking in the sun and
vying for a seat on the wall to watch the world go by has been filled with uncomfortable
four seater tables that make for insular
conversation a world away from the gregarious place that once existed.
In summary, Brains have made a complete balls up of the once
mighty Plough. When they threw out the old furniture they threw out the one
thing that made the Plough special and that was the people that drank there.
The only thing that for me personally would make up for that loss, is three Michelin
starred food and not the average pub grub that the place now serves. It must be
obvious to you by now that this is a very personal review as I’ve lost a
treasured place in my life, but speaking objectively about the place as a
restaurant I have to say that it just doesn’t come up to standard. The food doesn’t
in any way deserve the prices that are charged, and were this not so personal a
place I would never have written about it. My blog is intended entirely to
inform the reader of places they must visit, or must avoid; the plough is
neither of these. Eat here if you must but for the money I’d take the short
walk to Villagio or pop into Deli-a-go go for a scotch egg.
Anyway, writing this has been for me a cathartic experience,
but for anyone reading this who is looking for a place to eat in Whitchurch I
offer this advice. If you want Italian then visit Villagio. If you want Indian
then head straight to Kafe-la, but if you want pub grub then flag down a taxi
and head to the new Conway.
