Food review: Delicious food shines through at The Salwey Arms, Ludlow
It might not have been the starriest night of the year. It was wet and windy – has it been anything else, this past month?
Dinner on Thursday at The Salwey Arms, however, proved to be a real treat with a menu also featuring unexpectedly delicious food making for an evening that over-delivered and left this diner impressed and happy.
And that’s got to be the test of any hospitality business. Do guests leave a dining room feeling replete, content, and transported, if only just a bit?
Or do they leave underwhelmed, wondering why they’d left the comfort of their home on a cold, wet night, wishing they’d not put a dent in their wallet?
In the case of The Salwey Arms, it was very definitely the former.
Two days earlier, I’d been talking to a chef from a restaurant far, far away. It was gunning for a Michelin star and he’d featured in front of an audience of more than a million that week, cooking dishes for prime-time TV.
Such is the life of fast-lane-living, fast-car-driving, celebrity cooks. He’d just opened a new place, very different to his accolade-hunting, headling-grabbing restaurant. It was a pub and, yes, it did fish and chips as well as a decent steak.
He’d been eulogising the delights of such classics, explaining that however humble the dishes might seem, there was some sort of culinary honour in getting them right.
He’d commented: “If you’re going to do fish and chips, make sure you do it better than anyone else. If you’re doing a burger, make sure it’s the best burger.”
The Salwey Arms might not be invited to glitzy award ceremonies, nor is its brigade of chefs likely to be spotted on prime-time TV, where they cook scallops and are manipulated by devious directors who want to see them sweat.
They will, however, satisfy a steady stream of customers by doing the basics well.
