Past Lunches:  01/04/2003

Location:  The Castle (Holland Park Avenue)    Price:  £10.90
Food:  "Sausages & Mash, with red onion gravy marmalade" and a pint of Staropramen

To the food. The Castle has been calling out to me for some time, purely because they have Sausage and Mash on the menu. A while back the BBC asked me to do an interview for them for "The Nations Favourite Food" lunch edition, but I never got around to calling them back (fool. FOOL!) - and Sausage and Mash would definitely have been my favourite. Anyway, the food... it isn't quite Sausage and mash, it's Sausages and Mash with red onion gravy marmalade. Sounds a bit dodgy, marmalade. But the food comes out: three sausages on a sizeable amount of mash (much more than it looks in that photo) with red onion piled on top and a very dark gravy round the bottom. No arty-fartiness here, just good food. The mash is smooth (but not packet-mash smooth) and creamy, but not over-flavoured with rich butter or anything. The gravy - and there's just the right amount of it - is dark and rich in flavour as it's part of the whole red onion marmalade deal. It's still beefy but with a not-too strong onion flavour with a slight tang - that'll be the marmalade. Now don't get scared (I didn't) - there's no actual lumps of marmalade in this dish that I can detect, but there is a slight tanginess which adds to an otherwise (lets face it) usually quite bland dish that would otherwise normally make us reach for some mustard and tomato sauce - which I did, but didn't really need.

The onions on top are soft and silky, a little mild as they're red onion and with a slight tang as they're the main feature of the whole red onion gravy marmalade thing.

The most important bit of this dish... actually it isn't the sausages, it's the mash, but I've already talked about that - so I'll talk about the sausages. The sausages are a little odd - they're very nice and tender and tasty, but they're not the sort of sausies you'd generally buy from the supermarket and grill for your dinner: they've got little slits in them all along the sausage, going inwards diagonally. These are very handy for slicing, although they're probably there to aid even cooking or for some traditional sausage style. I don't know: they're pretty yummy, but they don't have that crispy little outer skin that browns so well under the grill, which normally I rather like.

This was all washed down with a lovely pint of czechoslovakian Staropramen that I've never had before - pretty good as lager goes, but again pretty inoffensive in that there's not much to say about it. It's certainly a safe pint if someone asks for lager and doesn't specify what brand they want.

The Castle itself is a very nice looking pub from the outside. Quite old, it's clad in green and white marblish tiles with foliage hanging down from the roof and hanging baskets. Inside it's all wood - very wide and open but with plenty of booths for privacy. Past the bar out the back are lots of tables and chairs obviously suited for food, but the booths round the front by the front windows are much lighter and let you look out on people passing by as you eat. The seats in the booths look like they've been nicked from an ancient train, complete with baggage netting above each leather-sofa-like bench. Good solid furniture, you might have a struggle getting your legs in if your as tall as me, but once your in and settled it's extremely comfortable. The bloke in the picture here was trying to flog stuff from his bag to customers in the booths, no doubt all fallen off the back of a lorry. But he wasn't around long and didn't hassle anyone too much, so it was no problem.

A great place to drink in too, but service can be slow as everyone seems to pay separately and with cards, and there's usually only one person behind the bar - two at most. But I was served fast and the food came very fast, so no criticism today there. If you like the sound of it (and it is a nice place) but don't want sausage and mash, the menu is pretty extensive, ranging from a bowl of good thick crisp chips to outlandish pasta and seafood creations, with excellent burgers and all sorts. You can't miss the menu - its on an odd revolving blackboard thing next to the bar, and everything is reasonably priced for this area.

So, another great experience! There could have been a bit more sausage and mash than I got for my cash, and the service was pretty functional (nary a word nor a smile), so The Castle drops one point - from what I've seen before it could have dropped another for speed of food delivery, but in my case most definitely not.

Thanks again to this weeks sponsor - and you'll be seeing them again soon along with a few others as I only spent £10.90 of their £15 donated. The excess kitty now stands at £7.22 - it'll be mealtime again soon!
Rating: 4/5