THE THATCH - Bottesford

www.thatchrestaurant.co.uk


The Thatch is a picturesque listed building in the village of Bottesford, situated within the Vale Of Belvoir. The rather old fashioned looking website doesn't really do the building itself much justice. 

We were given a free 'amuse bouche' to start but strangely were not told by the staff what it was we were eating. It consisted of some rather drab looking salad leaves with a dollop of some slow cooked lamb on the top. I found this an odd choice to choose to start the meal and you wouldn't really refer to it as an amuse bouche. Perhaps they were trying a bit too hard to impress but missing the mark somewhat.

First on the starters was a duck pate, with melba toast and red onion jam, which was presented nicely and i am informed by James, that this was very enjoyable. Not being a pate fan myself i tried some of the melba toast and onion jam and pleased to see that the melba toast had not come out of a packet.

My starter was a seafood bouillabaisse, which i was really looking forward to as i had been wanting to try this dish for sometime. When it arrived it did not resemble a bouillabaisse at all. It was a rich earthy looking broth filled with lovely chunks of fish. Instead, i was served a rather thick looking fish soup which had the consistency of baby food and tasted like pureed salmon. Very disappointing!

Whilst waiting for our main courses we were served a complementary sorbet. Again, we were not told by the staff what the flavour of the sorbet was and spent the whole time debating about it. I overheard another member of staff telling another table that this was an orange and aniseed flavoured sorbet, (nice of them to have offered up the information beforehand). My sorbet didn't really have any taste other than that of a syrupy cough mixture which was not very enjoyable and didn't cleanse my pallet at all.

The main meals looked much more appealing, and i was very pleased with the presentation of my Moroccan lamb dish. The amount of lamb was very generous, i think there were three large sized chops all together and the meat was beautifully cooked. This was resting on top of a lovely mixture of morrocan spiced vegetables and rich wine soaked beetroot. At first i thought that this seemed like quite an odd combination but i really enjoyed the dish

.

James had the steak, with a mini shepherds pie and dauphinoise potatoes. When the dish arrived we were both a bit unsure of the rather odd looking serving platter it arrived on. Looking more like a fancy pottery chopping board and making the size of the food look a bit tiny in comparison. Also quite hard to cut the steak on without attracting a lot of attention due to the strange ridges on the platter. Overall opinion on this dish was that the meat was nicely cooked, but the amount of peppercorn sauce was a bit overpowering. It could also have done with more fresh vegetables as an accompaniment as the meat and the pie were both quite rich.

I forgot to photograph my pudding as i was quite underwhelmed first of all by the choices on the pudding menu but also the presentation of my dish. I opted for a lemon tart and cream. The pastry was quite nice and buttery, and not too thick and the lemon filling was nice and fresh. However the cream had big sugar granules in it as though it had not been mixed very well, and was quite unpleasant. I also thought they were a bit mean with their portion sizes. 

James however, did remember to photograph his pudding. This was a rhubarb crumble with vanilla ice cream and a decorative physilis. Overall opinion was that the rhubarb was much too hard and would have been nicer if it had been stewed down a bit more. Also the presentation of the dish was a bit disappointing and probably would have been nicer served in the traditional way with a nice splash of rich creamy custard!

My overall thoughts about 'The Thatch' were that the staff needed to relax a little more, they were very attentive but they seemed on edge and uncomfortable a lot of the time, which didn't put me at ease. They also failed to inform us what we were eating when they put our plates down, and i found this frustrating. I also think that you should have one member of staff wait on your table and not three different members of staff. I think they have a bit of an identity problem, perhaps they are not quite sure what kind of environment they are trying to achieve, and they are taking relatively good pub food and tryin to elevate it to fine dining.


We dined here using a groupon voucher, which entitled us to a three course meal for two for £25.