If you happen to be in Broadway, chances are you are en route to, or have just come back from, Broadway Tower. Either way, a wonderful stop you may consider is The Horse and Hounds pub. This was not the world’s greatest restaurant however, it was a good pub grub and had an excellent selection of alcoholic beverages. In addition, it was far enough away from central Broadway to avoid the thrall of eager tourists and enjoy some relative peace. We ate in the back garden on one of the last days of summer, which was quite wonderful as you can imagine.
Our first foray into rural Worcester pub grub was the meat sharing platter. You may be unsurprised that this arrived at our table with relative speed. I suspect this is because the majority of what you see came out of a slim plastic packet from Tesco. I may be wrong, mind, but this was far from the locally sourced meat feast I was expecting. Additionally there was far too much balsamic vinegar mixed with the olive oil. I was left with gloop on my bread!
I, in a rare concession to my worst judgment, ordered the beef burger. Large scale beef production has an absolutely appalling impact on the environment hence I have cut it out of my diet except for on very few occasions a year. This beef burger was okay, I enjoyed the cheese and bacon combination. The bread was lovely and soft. The texture of the beef itself was a bit jarring but perhaps that is because I so seldom eat it these days. The chips on my plate were outstanding, however. Perfectly cooked and salted.
The onion rings were not half bad either. They are too curiously uniform to have been made at home that day. I suspect they are from a frozen bag of some kind. But again this is pub grub and it was not at all expensive.
I am posting the above as a public service announcement to those of you considering ordering the pizza. As with most pub pizzas, the dough is not home made and is in fact, somewhat reminiscent of a fresh digestive biscuit. This shocking betrayal of culinary standards aside, pubs always seem to get the topping right on pizzas like this. The cheese is plentiful and the tomato is often fresh. I did not expect them to put a slice of tomato on the pizza itself, but then again, this is England, and people do not know what they are doing.
One of the more successful dishes in the repertoire of this pub was the vegetable lasagna. This was a deceptively large helping and steeped in about one inch of cheese, as you can see. This was my favourite meal of the whole lunch. This had layers and flavours without committing the cardinal sin of resorting to beef. Phil was extremely full after this and could barely handle the dessert we ordered form the next restaurant we attended that afternoon. More on this in a separate post.
Finally, the infamous scampi. One of my colleagues scanned the menu ahead of ordering, declared aloud that she did not like scampi, then proceeded to order the scampi. Lo and behold, by a shocking turn of events, she did not enjoy the scampi. This came as no surprise to this reviewer, who predicted the sequel of the onion rings: ‘The Freezer Strikes Again’. I did not think to sample the scampi. I could not take any more heartbreak.
Overall, the food in the pub was a solid meh. The drinks were lovely, they even had Heineken Zero for my tee total colleague. My Orchard Pigs cider was lovely, this, with Orchard Thieves, form my two favourite ciders of the summer. The atmosphere of The Horse and Hounds is lovely, the building itself is gorgeous and the location is stunning. This is the place to go if you do not want to spend too much, have a sort of decent meal and be as far away as possible from sodding tourists.