The Knowles Arms on Pleckgate Road has gone through a number of guises over the years, from the heady days when it was a drinking pub and the meeting place before a night out in the town centre to various eating pubs that appear to have had varying levels of success. The latest re-incarnation of the pub definitely places the emphasis on dining and follows a refurbishment. The signs are emblazoned with 2 for ?10 signs, with a hefty asterisk at the side (more later).
On entering the pub there was an empty greeters? podium, but someone soon jumped forward and said ?Hiya, are you eating luv.? We explained we were wanting a drink at the bar first at which juncture we were ?shown? the bar.
For a new launch restaurant the staff seemed particularly glum, with the greeter managing to have a laugh, smile and joke with the other staff, but barely cracked a smile with the customers coming through the door. It takes so little to smile and make people feel really welcome.
When we decided to move through to the dining area, we were shown to a table and again attention to detail was lacking, as we had to remove the half empty glass of lager that a customer had left on our table ourselves and one of our party did not have cutlery or a napkin. We were starting to get worried and our feelings for the place were heading in the wrong direction.
We wanted a quick evening meal and decided only to have main courses. Now is the point where the real meaning of the asterisk comes into play. The menu is large with a few interesting choices and a lot of standard choices from the sort of pub where you feel the food is on a production line or conveyor belt. Some of the main courses have a ?2 for ?10? logo against them and these are the items that fall into the promotion. We were canny, of course, and chose items in the promotion and as is usual in these sort of pubs, we ordered at the bar, equipped with table number and were offered the usual choices, such as ?chips or jacket.? We were also able to open a tab (on handing over a card) and order our drinks at the same time. Our drinks arrived at the table quickly which seemed like the start of something better maybe, although we had to wait around 25 minutes for our food to arrive.
We ordered Lincolnshire sausages, which came in a large Yorkshire pudding with gravy, mash and peas. A couple of us had ?Wexford Chicken? which was a chicken breast that had been char-grilled and then covered in a mushroom, Stilton and peppercorn creamy sauce, Our final choice was ?Hunters Chicken?, which was a similar char-grilled chicken breast, but covered in BBQ sauce and topped with cheese and bacon. All the chicken dishes came with our choice of chips and vegetable (although peas was the only vegetable we were actually offered.)
The three sausages went down well and there was plenty of gravy, mash and peas, the only disappointment being the ready-cooked Yorkshire pudding that definitely seemed like it was like the frozen variety a certain Auntie makes and sells via the supermarkets. The Hunters Chicken was tender and perfectly cooked and the sauce and topping exactly what you would expect. The Wexford Chicken was, like all the other dishes, piping hot, but one of the offerings was very overcooked and dry and the dish certainly suffers from just having the sauce poured over grilled chicken rather than being cooked in something to keep it moist. The sauce also tasted very pre-produced. The chips and peas were good helpings and very tasty and perfectly cooked. One thing that did raise a chuckle was that when our food was served, we were just about to tuck into the food and before a morsel could pass our lips, a waitress appeared at out table and asked if our meals were OK. Now every restaurant should always check with diners to make sure the food is OK, but to check before allowing us to even try it was a little too eager!
Our waitress askedm as she removed our near-empty plates, if everything had been alright (a bit better timing this time) and we mentioned that one of the chicken dishes had been overcooked and she apologised. We had not intended to stay for? a dessert, but the Tuck Shop Sundae seemed to be screaming for us to have a try. We ordered one and asked for spoons to share. We were then offered some complimetary coffee as a way of saying sorry for the over-cooked chicken?a really nice touch we thought.
The Tuck Shop Sundae arrived in an enourmous glass and was a mountain of ice-cream, fudge cake, sauces and cream with the only disappointemnt being the soggy, quickly deflating aerosol cream on the top. We also overheard another table not being able to order steaks, as they had run out!
So overall, the meal was OK, but not fantastic. We seemed to have a poor start to the evening, with the offer of coffee and the most enthusiastic member of staff being the person who finally took our payment. He was some kind of manager, we assumed, but seemed genuinely intertested in how our dining experience had been and hoped we would come back soon. His attitude just about rescued our feelings about the place.
There are a few strange quirks about the menu. It has several dishes marked with a union flag logo and then some more with a ?farm assured? label. Now the farm assured label is good and nice to know that your food is coming from a UK farm and meets certain standards, but the union flag was more puzzling. The menu states that the union flag logo, purely means that the meal is a ?British Classic?, which included apple pie and jam roly poly. The problem with the logos for us was that it highlighted the items that did not come from British farms and the ?British Classic? logo not meaning an awful lot. You should also remeber that the main courses that do not fall under the 2 for ?10 offer range in price from under to ?5 to over ?16 for the largest steak. Also, hidden away in the small print, was the squintingly small exception that the 2 for ?10 deal is not available on Bank Holidays. Not quite sure how a single diner feels in one of these restaurants, where a couple can get a substantial discount, but they can?t.
One last final gripe about the facilities and a real pet hate. Why, why, why do companies spend thousands of pounds on pub refurbishments, but forget about the toilets? The dirty grout in the floor tiles and leaking urinal really do you no favours at all.
So it is early days for this location and with our meal, with shared dessert and a drink each coming to ?8.75 a head, you could certainly not complain at the price. The food is what we have come to expect from chain-type pub eateries. The biggest let-down was really the staff and the attention to detail. A smile, as they say, costs nothing, but goes a long way. The manager needs some of his charm to rub off on the other staff. Our rating was orignally going to be 5 out of 10, but the waitress who dealt with the ?problem chicken? well and the cheerful manager scraped it up to 6, but only just!
6 out of 10 ??????????
Source: http://www.blackburnlife.com/2011/05/the-knowles-arms-food-review-of-relaunched-venue/
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