Home | Browse Things | Search Things | Browse People

Login/Register | New Review

The Swan Inn, Middleton, Milton Keynes

Links

Homepage: http://www.theswan-mkvillage.co.uk/
See Also: http://miltonkeynes.openguides.org/?The_Swan_Inn,_Middleton

Map

Reviews (2)

4/5 (minimum 1) by tom on 03 Mar 2007

From this outside this is a quaint old pub in Middleton, the original Milton Keynes village. On the inside it's been recently refurbished, with a big dining area at the back. The refurb is actually really well done - I was impressed. They've managed to give it a contemporary feel that also has a lot of character. As I've said many times before, the choice of pubs in MK is not what it could be, and this certainly qualifies as one of the best, thereby justifying the four stars. However, there are some issues which for me means it doesn't warrant five.

We ate in the dining room at the back. The service was friendly and attentive, although drinks tool a while to arrive from the bar. The range of ales on tap is limited to the fairly obvious Greene King IPA and Adnam's; both of which are fine but a pub that has had so much effort put into it deserves a better range of beers. The IPA also tasted like it was pumped rather than hand pulled; more like John Smith's in a can.

The menu contained some really tasty looking things, but my major issue is the price. For what you get I'd say the prices where a quarter to a third too high. I ate fish pie, which was fine, and if you'd cooked it at home you'd be perfectly happy with it, but it didn't justify the £11.50 price tag. There was way to much mash on top (at least half the depth of the pie), and it was served in a large mug, which seemed odd, and I suspect served to reduce the amount of pie filling actually required. The flavour was fine, but didn't blow my mind.

My other comment about the dining area is that with four people sat around one table it's fairly cosy, and there was a serious shortage of space on the table itself, especially once wine, beer, water, etc etc were taken into account. The dining room itself didn't feel cramped, but they could generally have done with slightly larger tables, or smaller dinner plates.

In general I think they've done a good job, and I would go back, but they need to keep a serious lid on the food prices if they hope to build up regular dining customers.

3/5 (minimum 1) by Assayer1 on 30 Oct 2009

I was looking for somewhere smart for a birthday dinner and the Swan seemed to fit the bill; it has a very smart website suggesting old world gastro-pub opulence and an up market, ‘fine-dining’ menu with prices to match. Main courses will set you back £11-15 with any vegetables or potato dishes costing an extra £3.00 so expectations were high.

The Swan has also been lauded for managing to retain its local clientele will also operating a high-end restaurant but unfortunately this means smartly dressed diners have to run the gauntlet of challenging looks from the gaggle of hard-drinking smokers gathered around the front entrance.

The welcome inside was hardly better; with a rather indifferent barman casually thumbing the direction to the restaurant as he pored the next pint of lager. Despite having booked two weeks in advance when we reached the restaurant they had no record of it but were ‘lucky’ that they had a table spare.

Although it was mid-week the place was nearly full so it obviously has a good reputation but unfortunately only two waiting staff so service was quite slow. We ordered a chicken and leek terraine and a mushroom tapenade to start with sea bass in a cream sauce and slow-cooked belly pork and chunky chips to follow.

As it was a special occasion we ordered two glasses of champagne which were priced at £7.00each on the main menu but, it subsequently turned out, priced at £7.50 on the wine list and charged to our bill as £15.00,not £14.00.
If we were to put our ‘Masterchef’ heads on (and at these prices who else are they aiming for but that Masterchef generation) then he chicken and leek terraine definitely needed more seasoning and the leeks were under-cooked. The mushroom tapenade was serviceable enough but came on a disc of white bread that had been over-toasted so that every attempt to cut it resulted in a small explosion of hard bread fragments across the table. Both dishes were accompanied by a small pile of very dry rocket leaves which were just screaming out for a drizzle of olive oil or balsamic vinegar.
On to the main courses and the sea bass was delightfully cooked although the sauce was very rich to the extent that my wife decided against a desert afterwards. My ‘Jimmy Buttler’s’ slow-cooked belly pork came with a very tasty sauce on a bed of new potatoes which were delightful.

Sadly the pork itself hadn’t been slow cooked properly and was tough that it was unmanageable without a steak knife and I eventually gave up on it. The chunky chips however would have passed the Heston Blumental ‘thrice cooked chips’ test being golden brown and crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside and these were probably the highlight of the meal. The meal was accompanied by a reasonably priced Orvietto which proved to be good value.
Our empty plates seemed to sit in front of us for an age before I eventually stacked them on an empty adjacent table which finally prompted the waitress into action.

For desert I had a pear and almond frangipan which was delightful but would have tasted better had I not had to clean dirt my spoon before starting and it is this sort of lack of attention to detail that lets the restaurant down.

W finished with a cappuccino and liquor coffee made with some pretty watery single cream (if it was cream at all) which was a long way removed from the concept of a gloriously creamy floater coffee which is what I’d thought I’d ordered. All in the bill came to £90 for two of us and even after allowing for the champagne and the desert that had been provided free of charge because of the inedible pork it was still a whopping £70 for two courses, wine and coffee.

For that sort of price I think we’d have expected something special but the service was below par and although the menu was good the cooking was generally very ordinary with a couple of mistakes thrown in.

Sadly too many pub restaurants seem to think they can just throw on some grey-green paint, put out some of those minimalist square oak-veneer tables and call themselves a gastro-pub in order to charge people £35 each for two courses with wine. Unless they actually deliver on the food and service, customers will not come back and eventually, when reviews like this start to accumulate they will stop coming altogether.

What do you think of The Swan Inn, Middleton, Milton Keynes? Write Your Own Review...