As one of the closest pubs to the University of Winchester,
The County Arms is a fairly popular student haunt. It is also near to the
hospital and police station, so it is also visited by many local people, particularly
during sporting events as it has several television screens. Alongside an array
of drinks, the pub also serves food.
Emma and I visited The County Arms on the 15th November. Upon entering,
we found the pub to be quite quiet and were easily able to find a seat. We
found the menu had a large variety of dishes to choose from, which made it hard
for Emma to decide what she wanted. After much deliberation, Emma went to the
bar to order. She found the staff friendly and, even once business had picked
up, they never seemed too busy to help.
Whilst our selection arrived relatively quickly, both Emma
and I found that the food quickly lost its temperature. Having ordered the tuna
and cheese melt baguette with a side of sweet potato fries, I had anticipated a
much warmer and more toasted offering. The baguette seemed undercooked and was
quite pale in its complexion while the sandwich filling had almost no warmth to
it at all. I also found the ratio of tuna to cheese to be overly weighted
towards the fish, almost as though the cheese was an afterthought. The sweet
potato fries seemed to be unseasoned however, they were well cooked and
beautifully crispy. The salad garnish was lackluster at best; the lettuce was
limp and the dressing looked unappetisingly grey. I found their selection of
wine to be far too weighted towards the drier end of the spectrum. Whilst I am
no wine expert, I do know that I much prefer a sweeter bottle so my choice was
immediately narrowed. I ended up opting for a glass of the sweetest (and also
newest) white on the menu, Yellow Tail Moscato, which was slightly sweet and
lightly fizzy with a fruity finish to it.
Emma’s meal, pasta meatball marinara, also got cold fairly
quickly. She said that she was “less than impressed” with her meal, though
still found it pleasant. Describing it as tasting “homemade,” she was a little
disappointed that, whilst the food was nice, it was no better than something
she could easily make herself any night. The pasta was a little soggy and the
meatballs grisly. She also said she
would have liked more olives in the sauce as this is how it was advertised and,
at first, thought that there weren’t any in there. Emma found the garlic bread,
too, was soggy; she wanted something crunchy “almost like bruschetta” but
thought that the fact it was ciabatta bread that was used was “a nice touch.”
As a bit of a cola connoisseur, she rated their soda 5 on a scale of 1-10 (10
being perfect and 1 being ‘I had to take it back to the bar’) as the syrup
content was quite low and the ice melted in it making it watery.
Personally, I found the décor fairly pleasing if only as it seemed
almost familiar; it has a fairly standard English pub look to it, though some
of the colours seemed a little ‘mishmashed’.
Overall ratings:
Haz:
Emma:
No comments:
Post a Comment