Edenfield Road, Norden, Rochdale, OL12 7TT
Nutter’s Restaurant, the
family-run business with a huge local reputation, pride themselves on creating
a unique, fine-dining experience. We visited the old manor house, tucked away
in its own six-and-a-half acres of countryside, for Sunday Lunch this weekend.
It was certainly unique and it was certainly an experience.
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| Nutter's Restaurant |
Back in December 2016, my Mum
arranged a surprise meal for my 21st birthday at Nutter’s. We had
the Gourmet Menu – six courses of pure decadence. It was a foodie’s dream. I
returned the following year, when I treated my Mum to afternoon tea. This was
another stunning treat. Pure sophistication, as traditional as an afternoon tea
could be.
Their Sunday Lunch came highly
recommended. After our two previous experiences, I had no reason to believe it
would be anything other than spectacular. As a family, we’d been looking
forward to our Sunday Lunch trip since we first began planning it several
months ago. Sadly, it didn’t live up to
our expectations.
The set-price Sunday menu is
£28 per person for three courses plus coffee and petit fours, with the menu
changing weekly. There are four options for each course, so there’s an adequate
choice, although on this particular Sunday, both lamb and beef were on offer,
meaning there was no white meat alternative, and the choice of desserts was
rather poor.
Upon arrival, as a party of
five, we were squashed onto a table for four, with an additional chair shoved
on the end. After twenty five minutes, I had to leave the table and go to the
bar to ask somebody to come and take our order. The manager came over and we
finally ordered, before embarking on the first of several long waits.
Before the starters, we were
served some bread: a white bread roll and caramelised onion sourdough. Both
were warm and freshly baked. Deliciously enjoyable, but they could have arrived
a lot sooner so we could have been nibbling whilst we were perusing the menu
and waiting for our order to be taken. There aren’t very many places where
you’re given bread rolls before the meal these days, so this is a welcome and
traditional touch. With so much stigma attached to consuming bread, you forget
just how enjoyable bread and butter can be.
To start, I had wild mushroom
and buffalo mozzarella arancini with vine tomato chutney. It was beautifully
presented and deliciously tasty. The wild mushrooms and tomato chutney made a
bed for the arancini to be nestle on. The tomato chutney was tangy and
extremely flavoursome. It was beautifully presented and generously portioned,
which was just as well, as I was absolutely starving, having waited over half
an hour for it to arrive.
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| Wild Mushroom and Buffalo Mozzarella Arancini |
For main course, I opted for
the traditional roast sirloin of limousine beef. I’m not a massive red meat
eater, so I was disappointed that there was no white meat alternative. Two
thick slices of nicely cooked meat, slightly pink but exactly the right
texture, came served with two large Yorkshire puddings, goose fat roast
potatoes, vegetables and red wine gravy. The Yorkshire puddings were excellent:
crispy on the outside but very light and fluffy inside. The roast potatoes were
tasty but small and no nicer than we cook at home ourselves. The vegetables,
mainly carrots and green beans, were crunchy, which is how I like my veg
cooked, but they were very stingy with the portion. There was barely even a
spoonful on the plate, hidden away under the meat.
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| Roast Sirloin of Limousine Beef |
I had to ask for some
additional gravy, as the Yorkshire puddings were barely drizzled. I made a
point of telling the waitress that nobody had bothered to ask us if we’d like
any horseradish or the like to accompany our roast beef. She simply smiled and
said, ‘okay’, clearly not understanding the problem. Nobody bothered to ask us
if the food was okay, either.
By the time we started eating
our main courses, we’d been seated for nearly two hours.
By the time we got to dessert,
it was going dark, and they weren’t even worth waiting for. The choice was
pretty naff. There was a chocolate mousse with mint cream, rum and raisin bread
and butter pudding, blood orange panna cotta or a cheese board. I opted for the
bread and butter pudding, but only because it was the best of a bad bunch.
I enjoyed it more than I
expected. It wasn’t overly stodgy and much more moist than I expected, packed
full of dried fruit. Topped with whisky ice cream and swimming in crème
anglais, it was enjoyable but I think the pudding itself could have done with
being warmer.
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| Rum and Raisin Bread and Butter Pudding |
One of the desserts appeared
to go missing, with only four of them turning up. I had to chase up the fifth
one on behalf of my Grandma. By the time it eventually arrived, with no
apology, the rest of us had almost finished ours.
We didn’t bother hanging
around for the coffee and petit fours, as we didn’t have the time nor the
inclination. I returned to the bar (as there were still no sign of any
interested staff) to ask for the bill and request our petit fours to take away.
The bill arrived with half a
dozen additional drinks on it which we hadn’t had. By this point, I was
convinced they were having a laugh at our expense. When I queried this, trying
my best to remain calm, the lady behind the bar smiled and said, ‘Oh don’t
worry, I’ll remove them for you’, as though she was doing me a favour in
removing drinks that weren’t mine. They then had the audacity to add a 10%
service charge onto the bill, despite the fact that we’d spent the whole
afternoon complaining about the poor quality of the service.
What should have been a very
special Sunday treat was completely ruined by the slow service and the complete
lack of attentiveness from the staff. When I summarised our disappointments to
the manager before we left, he couldn’t have appeared less interested.
‘We’ve never had any
complaints before’, he proclaimed. Clearly, they’ve become rather complacent.
If you’ve got a problem, it seems, you’re the problem. Whatever happened to the
old adage ‘the customer is always right’?
I won’t be returning to Nutter’s
again. What should have been a very special Sunday treat was completely ruined
by the appalling service.
What a virgin.
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