Goodwins Bar and Kitchen is part of the Greene King Group, the Chorley venue is currently one of only 4 in the country with this branding, the idea is to be provide a different offering than the other Greene King brands, Gloriously simple food with a more intimate feel and with more focus on the overall eating experience. We recently popped along for lunch at the newly open Chorley venue.
Martin the manager and the team gave us a friendly welcome on a busy Saturday lunchtime, the venue was proving popular with family parties. Due to its location on a busy set of road abouts near a junction to the motorway, the location should also prove popular with business travellers and general passing trade. Service was very good and the food came out promptly, so no problems there.
We choose from the main menu despite it being lunchtime, the website can be found here
So for our starters. Mr LF chose the Homemade Cumberland scotch egg with dressed watercress and brown sauce. The dish overall was tasty not standout but as described,it needed the brown sauce to accompany the sausage meat and egg combination.
I chose the Scallops on crushed peas, a nicely presented dish, but too much pea and mint puree in my opinion, the scallops were well cooked but lacked flavour, the bacon was fine and helped to lift the dish. A little disappointing as I love a good scallop.
On to our Mains, Mr LF always goes for the pie, in this case the Goodwins steak and ale pie, British beef in Ruddles ale, normally with mash but swapped for chips on request and seasonal vegetables an a cute jug of tasty gravy.This was a tasty pie with flaky tender pastry, plenty of gravy and filling in the pie, the chips were crispy and fluffy and the perfect choice to soak up all that lovely gravy. Vegetables were fine a good selection of peas, endamame beans, sugar snap peas and chunky carrots.
I ordered the Hunters chicken with bbq sauce, streaky bacon, mature cheddar cheese and triple cooked chips. Served with onion loaf, thyme grilled tomato and dressed watercress.The dish was good, a nicely cooked tender juicy chicken breast, topped with a dark smoky bbq sauce, bacon and tangy cheese, tasty chips and the unusual onion loaf, this was very savoury and a little different. The dressed watercress nicely irony and a good contrast to the sweeter flavours in play from the onion loaf and the bbq sauce. My only gripe on this dish was the grilled tomato, nice touch using the thyme but if you are grilling a tomato make sure its a thing of melting beauty and not one that's barely cooked.
On to desserts Mr LF ordered Basked Alaska - berries topped with cookie dough cheese cake, treacle toffee ice cream and toasted meringue. Served in a dinky pot, the dish was sweet and decadent, Mr LF particularly enjoyed the treacle toffee ice cream part, but not sure it was toasted meringue on top, looked and tasted more like toasted marshmallow fluff. It disappeared all the same however.
My menu choice was the Elderflower posset - with summer berries and shortbread. My dessert choice was disappointing as the portion was way too large for such a rich dish, I also couldn't taste the elderflower either, the berries on the top helped but were more of a compote than berries, I would have also have liked to have seen the shortbread be larger pieces. I chatted this through with Martin and they are looking to adjust this dish in the future.
Martin the manager explained to us that their drinks menu is aimed at being more gender neutral, so no craft beers on draft here ( only Peroni or Prahva both lager style), everything else comes in a bottle, beer and cider wise. Lancashire Food doesn't have a problem with this per say but would have liked to have seen some beers and ciders that where more locally produced. Plenty of choice if wine or a cocktail is your thing, they even make lemonade and iced tea on the premises and their Gin menu has quite a few choices too.
Nice touch is that when they serve you your drinks this is accompanied with a small dish of salted popcorn.
Menu prices represent reasonable value and they have a special price lunch offer too. Sunday lunch is sure to be popular too.
You can find Goodwins Bar and Kitchen, Chorley
Preston Road
Chorley,
Lancashire,
PR6 7AX
It's next door to the Hartwood Hall Hotel, which has also recently been refurbished
We dined on a complementary basis after being invited to give a review, all thoughts, views, opinions are our own. We were not expected to give a positive review.