The Bear's Paw Review

Sitting happily in the village of Warmingham in the Cheshire countryside, The Bear's Paw is a rather impressive nineteenth century building with a substantial seventeen bedrooms and a sizable bar and restaurant. The food here is reportedly of some repute (with the usual website promise of fresh, seasonal and locally sourced) so I duly booked and arrived with my wife and young daughter for Saturday lunch.

After depositing our vehicle in the amply sized car park, we entered via the rear door into what is really a rather grand pub-cum-restaurant. It's clear some investment has been made here; there's a dedicated restaurant area but for whatever reason, we weren't given a choice (despite having a booking) and were seated in the bar area. I say bar area but it's pretty much a restaurant in itself in the corner of the very substantial room where the bar resides.

There was a colouring-in children's menu for our daughter and a large menu for us grownups, there really was a lot of choice, possibly too much. Everything seemed fine with the service up until that point, but after ordering there was a fairly incredible wait for starters to arrive; in excess of forty minutes. Was it worth the wait? In short, no. I'd ordered scallops and black pudding which I always love as a combination, however although the black pudding was very tasty and full of flavour, the scallops were not cooked well at all.

Fortunately, more of that delicious black pudding made an appearance on my main of honey glazed pork belly with apple sauce. Yes, it wasn't anything new or different but nonetheless it was a well cooked and enjoyable dish. I also tried some of the parmesan and truffle oil chips which were nice, although this was probably a bit of a mistake on my part as the dishes here are more than big enough not to need sides.

I was suitably stuffed by this point but still managed to find a gap for the 'Bears paw sundae' which was unremarkable but perfectly edible; hard to fault a big bowl of chocolate brownie pieces and cream really. And so a perfectly decent meal came to an end; there's nothing amazing here but The Bear's Paw is a nice venue with decent food and (aside from some long waiting times) decent service too. Add in the child friendly nature of the place and you've got yourself a very fine option for a family meal; lovely stuff.