I was a little apprehensive the refurbishment was going to be minimal and the place would feel exactly like the Living Room. However the transformation is somewhat brilliant. With the feel of an exquisite country summer house, the Liquorist is the perfect venue for sipping cocktails and the perfect hang out for "ladies who lunch".
I started the afternoon with the English Country Garden cocktail £8.15. A very refreshing and well made drink of Hendricks Gin, Elderflower liquor muddled with fresh cucumber, lime and mint served with apple juice over ice.
To start with I choose the oven baked creamy blue mushroom to start with £4.95. Now in all the restaurants I have reviewed for my blog I have never yet found a dish inedible, but this unfortunately was a badly thought out dish and well I simply couldn't eat it.
The mushroom was watery, the chives in the dish over powered any taste of blue cheese and there was a lot of raw onion in the filling (not what the menu stated) I personally can't stand raw onion. Basically a watery mushroom filled with cream cheese onion and chive, no taste of blue cheese. In addition presenting the mushroom in a shallow dish made the starter hard to cut to eat. The presentation of basically adding 3 cherry tomatoes and some rocket on top was a little bizarre and didn't go.
My friend ordered the battered prawns £5.45 which seemed a much better choice and I was told these were pretty nice.
For the main course I opted for the smoked haddock fish cakes £8.95 which were headed on the menu under the salad options. First impressions the portion size was huge, it was far from refined and not something I would of expected from a restaurant serving up classy cocktails, a place clearly aimed at a more sophisticated audience. Quite frankly I've seen more refinement in Weatherspoons.
Since the meal was headed under salad, I was expecting something far better than un-dressed lettuce, tomato and spring onion in two heaps on the plate. The fish cakes however tasted pleasant but would of benefited from more seasoning. In addition to the two mounds of salad, the two giant fish cakes the meal also came served with a form of apple salad. My only guess as to why this was is someone cooking the meal thought how can we make this look a little fancy and unusual...I know lets make a salad from apple by adding some dressing, to well slices of apple.
As if the meal wasn't large enough then out come a portion of free chips. Now Who could complain at free chips, well "skin on fries" but there was no need at all to overwhelm me with more food.
My friend choose the ribs. Again presentation was lacking but these did actually look good. The meat fell clean of the bone, so for slow cooked ribs these couldn't really be faulted. Again served with skin of fries but this worked with this main to help mop up all the sticky BBQ sauce.
Desert was a redeeming factor for me. We were recommend the Cherry Pie £4.25 by the waiter and the desert was really good. Crumbly sweet pastry, plump juicy cherry's and melting ice cream sat on top.
We ended the meal with a round of coffee. Well I say coffee, I had an espresso Martini £7.95 and Jess choose one of the more unusual and exciting looking choices of chocolate orange hottie £4.35 (hot chocolate and orange liquor topped with marshmallow and cream). Despite my criticisms of the food the cocktails seriously can not be faulted.
Now I didn't drink all these cocktails during the meal. I had previously been to the launch night the week before so had a chance to try a mix of drinks from the menu.
Passion fruit bellini £9.15
Rock tail £8.15 (Vodka, Red bull, fresh lime juice, with strawberry and passion fruit puree, served long) plenty of alchol for your money, a strong cocktail with a passion fruit after taste.
Lemon meringue pie - £8.15 (lemoncello, absolute citron, vanilla sugar syrup, lemon juice, topped with flamed egg white and vanilla foam). An all round amazing and flamboyant cocktail tasting exactly like a comforting piece of lemon meringue pie.
Strawberry Bellini £9.15
Peanut butter & Jelly Martini £8.15 (Raspberry vodka, raspberry liquor, hazelnut liquor, milk & Cream, shaken with peanut butter and topped with caramel popcorn).
Defiantly a desert cocktail, containing two of my favourite liquors chambord and frangelico I was simply in cocktail heaven. I would say this tasted more like a jammy dodger than anything else but simply delicious.
SAMMIE
