Black Horse Goes Gastro

Drove over to Limbrick Sunday evening to see how the refurbishment was coming along. Initial pleasure on seeing that it was open was dimmed slightly on entering, by being met by a selection of those awful, oversized lager dispensers where the hand pumps used to be. However all was not lost, a couple of hand pumps had been retained at the kitchen end of the bar. Only one was "loaded" and that with Theakston's Best Bitter ~ which to my taste is rather bland, not very bitter and definitely not the best. But credit where credit's due, it was in good condition and quite drinkable. The other pump had dispensed Moorland's Old Speckled Hen.

My own Speckled Hen was disappointed in having to drink cider rather than her usual tipple ~ perhaps, as we have elsewhere, we'll ask them to get it in special, like.

The wall between the pool room and the main dining area had gone, as had the pool table and the general impression was that it is no longer the slightly scruffy boozer (frequented by slightly scruffy boozers) but rather is leaning towards attracting the dining fraternity who'll wash their meal down with a lager and bottle of wine rather than savouring the beer ~ wonder how long the hand pumps will remain?

We didn't eat (we rarely do) apart from salted peanuts, but scrutinised the menus. We were told that the chef is Italian, and this was apparent with a full page of pasta dishes. English meals sounded good and reasonably priced although pies were not much in evidence. The proof, as they say, is in the eating ~ we didn't hear any complaints or see much uneaten food going back.

I didn't check whether the dart board had been retained, although the back room had not been "diningised" so could still be used for regular pub stuff. There was one of those plasma thingies in the room nearest the kitchen, no comment. Returning to the removal of the pool table, I was going to comment adversely on that, here, but on reflection, these are a recent North American import and have no place in an English pub, bring back bar billiards!

Blast from the past ~ Richard and Gaynor Isbister were there and enjoying their meals. Richard's quite a little pudding now, hard to believe that he once ran sub 60 in the Horwich 10.

To summarise, it's now not as good a pub than it was, but it could have been worse; at least there was one hand pull, and the staff were all very pleasant.

Ed ( Now AKA Grumpy)