Rookery Hall is possibly best known as the place where Posh Spice and David Beckham announced their engagement in 2008. Many years before that, we’d been for lunch (although I had no recollection of it) but this was the first time for dinner. The dining room is lovely. Lots of dark wood panelling entirely in keeping with a Georgian building. Great views of the countryside through floor to ceiling windows – with an almost equally large mirror at the other end, giving it an impression that it is even more spacious than it actually is. We were staying overnight at the hotel and could have taken advantage of its dinner bed & breakfast deal but that would have meant taking the tasting menu, which didn’t suit us. So, we’d booked B & B and reserved the restaurant separately so we could eat the “a la carte”.
It was going to be a very mixed meal. As you might expect, there was an amuse bouche in the form of a mushroom velouté – a pleasant enough consistency but underflavoured and underseasoned. I got “seconds” as my partner had a couple of spoonfuls and didn’t fancy finishing it. Yes, I’m the greedy one of the pair. Chicken terrine was also underwhelming as a starter. Basically, cooked chicken shredded and pressed back together again. It came with an egg yolk puree and a couple of bits of charred sweetcorn which did their best to try and lift it. Much better was a fillet of grilled plaice. That came with a lovely langoustine tail. And some Jerusalem artichoke served, perhaps a bit oddly, cold as a salad item with watercress. Really giving it a zing were some thin slices of a pickled vegetable. Perhaps more artichoke?
Then it was on to main courses. It took a while for them to arrive. In fact, it had taken a while for everything. By now, getting on for 75 minutes had passed since we sat down. The problem, whatever it was, was clearly in the kitchen, rather than with the serving staff. But it was the sort of slow, that sucks the enjoyment out of a meal.
Unlike the earlier dishes, a ribeye steak was well seasoned and accurately cooked as requested. It came with good chips, some chunks of parsnip and a nasturtium pesto, acting as a sauce. On the other plate, there was an excellent bit of cookery with some pork loin – well flavoured and nicely cooked to medium. It came with some long cooked belly pork, disappointingly with flabby skin that couldn’t be eaten. There’s also a baton of sarladaise potato which I don’t recall eating before and which was delicious. Similar to dauphinoise potato but even nicer. Which is more than could be said for the cubes of swede which were more raw than “al dente” and, again, couldn’t be eaten.
So, the savoury courses had been OK, but we decided that we didn’t want another long wait for dessert that we just knew would not be worth the calories, so just got the bill. Which brings me to my final moan. They add a 10% service charge, which is absolutely fine. But the bill then also has an open tip line. It is, to our minds, an entirely disreputable ruse to sucker unwary customers into effectively double tipping. I thought this practice had died out years back. Shame on them.
