Ambience ✪✪
Service ✪✪✪
Horton Grange Country House Hotel
Berwick Hill Road
Ponteland
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE13 6BU
01661 860 686
www.hortongrange.co.uk
Accessibility? Yes
Gluten free? Yes
There are lots of meals that I could write about but don't, both good and bad. I revisit my favourite places all the time, but I’ll only write about them if there’s a major change, like a new chef, or a particularly good truffle risotto. Rest assured that if I ever do return to a place and find things not up to snuff then you’ll soon see it reflected here.
The duds, on the other hand, are a different matter.
Some meals are so terrible they make me lose the will to live, let alone waste my time and yours writing paragraphs of condemnation. Sometimes it’s so obvious that a place is on its last legs that there’s no point hammering another nail into the sarcophagus. There are also particular genres of dud meals that don’t require a write-up. If you ever find yourself on the receiving end of a three course special involving a potato skins starter, you don’t need me to tell you it isn’t going to be haute cuisine.
However, some really bad meals do need writing about, particularly when serious money is being charged, or when the restaurant makes lofty or portentous statements in their blurb. If there’s a huge gulf between the claims or price, and what ends up on the plate in front of me, I can’t help but start composing opening paragraphs in my head. Like this one. Because there’s bad – and there’s Horton Grange.
