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Dinner Detective: Didsbury Village Restaurant
Dinner Detective16/12/2005
Unlike restaurant reviewers on some newspapers, the Dinner Detective eats out incognito and always pays for the meal. That way, the Dinner Detective gets the same treatment as the readers, giving an honest review of the service you might receive.
WITH its cosy, cottage-like appearance, the Didsbury Village Restaurant promises a warm welcome to a hungry stranger on a cold winter's evening.
Traipsing in from the freezing night, you can only assume this little piece of the Cotswolds which has been transplanted to a Manchester suburb will provide hearty fare, preferably dished up by some jovial rosy-cheeked chef who will come out to chat to you beside a blazing log fire.
Once you are on the other side of those doors, however, such
images are dismissed as the fantasies they are.
Having booked my table on a weekend night, I was told to wait at
the bar with a drink.
Three quarters of an hour later, I was still waiting.
"Okay, they're busy, it'll be worth the wait" the optimist in me
kept saying, but deep down I knew they'd have to pull something
fairly impressive out of the bag to bring this one back.
We were eventually shown to our table with a bad taste already
developing in our mouths.
It didn't help that our starters - the tomato and basil soup of the
day - were cold.
I apologise if this was meant to be some sort of gazpacho. There
was nothing to say that was the case.
It also wasn't entirely cold - it was more sort of tepid, which
isn't exactly what you want from a hearty warming winter
soup.
It was about this time I noticed a couple, who had been sitting in
the bar with us, were still optimistically waiting for their table,
despite the fact there seemed to be plenty available around
us.
I also noticed the staff seemed to be rushing around preoccupied
with some enormous party that was going on upstairs, meaning the
diners downstairs were getting overlooked.
Our mains arrived without too much of a wait.
I had the vegetable filo strudel with port wine sauce (£9.95) one
of the two vegetarian options on the menu. The dish, particularly
the port sauce, was good enough to make me forget the rest of the
night, but the feeling didn't last longer than it took me to finish
it.
My dining companion had the oven-roasted breast of duck set on a
bed of bubble and squeak with a rich red wine sauce (£12.95).
Again, this would have been more than adequate on any other night,
but it just wasn't enough to make you forget everything else.
Especially when the bill, including desserts and wine, came to
around £75.
Being more tolerant than most, I'm prepared to accept I caught the
place on an off night, but that still doesn't mean I'd ever be
likely to return.
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