Perkins Restaurant & Bar

I Keep Trying (18 January 2009)

We had Sunday lunch there a few weeks ago and, for the price, we were less than impressed. We've eaten in several Michelin starred restaurants so we know what standards are like or what they ought to be. Wherever possible, we always try to go Bib Gourmand as a minimum. We can see and appreciate how value is added to food by a decent chef and we don't mind paying for that value, that's why we eat out. Having read that Perkins had won the Midlands restaurant of the year award for the second year running we thought we would give it a go. The food wasn't bad, per se, but some of it was stone cold. The vegetables had been heated far too long and were dry on the outside and exhausted on the inside. The crackling was excellent. The Yorkshire pudding was, to be fair, dismal. Dry stodge at the bottom and dust dry at the top - the hallmarks, in my opinion, of being reheated in the oven. It takes less than 5 minutes to make a decent Yorkshire pudding but evidently we hadn't paid for that particular 5 minutes and had to make do with a reheated pudding.

Courses were oddly paced, too, with the wait for someone to take our order coming in at about 15 minutes but the wait for our dessert order taking both of us by surprise, with the waitress appearing out of nowhere within about 2 minutes of the table being cleared. All in, with drinks, we spent about £60 for Sunday lunch for two. We feel that we were served over priced pub grub, which ought to have cost about a tenner, tops. We've both had better food at one of those all-you-can-eat-for-a-tenner buffets. We'll give it one more go, they might have been having a bad day, so might we, but how is it possible, at that price, to get a basic Sunday lunch wrong and leave punters feeling short changed?

SNIK (16 January 2009)

I have been eating in Perkins since 1992. The original restaurant was great and was featured in the Good Food Guide - I had Thames Valley customers request to go there. The restaurant lost its way several years ago when the owners brought in management to run it on their behalf. However, I am pleased to say that the second generation of family are now running it and the restaurant is even better than it was originally. Good food and service at good value prices – it’s definitely worth visiting.

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