The Bear's Paw Review

Having held an AA rosette for well over a decade, The Bear's Paw in the Cheshire village of Warmingham has remained a popular venue in the ten years since my last visit, although the other major food guides have not really shown any interest during that time. I was nonetheless hopeful of seeing some decent pub cooking as a I rocked up for a late lunch with my wife and two children, on a sunny April Saturday.

There's still a large car park behind the restaurant with plenty of space, and the welcome on arrival was warm as we were shown to our table in one of the dining areas. The table was spacious and the internal decor is still pleasant and very much as I remember, with lots of wood panelling and a nice country pub/hotel type feel to the various rooms.

On offer at lunch is a pretty sizeable carte menu, plus we were given a specials sheet too, with additional choices for all three courses. There's also a three course children's menu which is always appreciated. Drinks wise, we didn't see a wine list but the main food menu lists a wide range of cocktails including a much-larger-than-average selection of non-alcoholic choices. My wife and daughter enjoyed a couple of different mocktails, whilst I was perfectly happy with the Hendrick's and tonic 'perfect serve G&T' offering, accompanied by basil and cucumber.

Lunch began for me with the salmon gravlax from the specials menu. I enjoyed this; it was a nice fresh tasting dish. My wife was equally happy with her starter of char sui pork belly, accompanied by a chilli jam which was very tasty too. Both the kids enjoyed a portion of garlic bread each (one being a smaller portion from the children's menu) which was perfectly edible.

The mains came out unnervingly quickly, just a couple of minutes after our starter plates had been removed. I was looking forward to my assiette of pork, but it was a bit of a disappointing dish on the whole. Both the confit pork belly and sticky pork cheek were overcooked and dry, albeit I did enjoy the roasted tenderloin and wholegrain mustard mash on the side.

My wife was happier with her honey glazed duck breast, although some of the duck was very chewy, and the chargrilled steak burger my daughter opted for was a decent effort (I got to eat half of it). My son had the margherita pizza from the children's menu but this was poor; the base tasted very much like it has been bought in rather than made in the kitchen which was a shame, but I do appreciate it's the only pizza on any of the menus so making a fresh base probably isn't an option here. He did enjoy his side of skinny fries though.

The portion sizes here are decent so we were pretty stuffed by this point, however we did of course manage to find space for dessert. I went for the rhubarb and honey panna cotta, served with roasted rhubarb, ginger granola and orange jelly. This was an ok dessert and perfectly edible, but the panna cotta itself didn't pack a great deal of flavour.

My wife wasn't too enthused with her lemon and pistachio cheesecake either; it wasn't terrible, but the cheesecake layer itself didn't carry much flavour, there was just a lemon jelly layer on top with the base housing the pistachio. My daughter did enjoy her sorbet though (a scoop each of lemon and blackcurrant) and my son's vanilla ice cream was nice also.

And so after collecting the bill with no issue (complete with a 7.5% service charge), our lunch came to an end. Overall we enjoyed our visit here; the venue is still nice and the service on the whole was good too, all the staff were perfectly amiable and attentive enough. The food was just OK though; there were no terrible dishes, and indeed some of the food was tasty, but quite a lot of the cooking could have been better for me, with some less than stellar meat cookery on show and some not very memorable desserts.

There's no doubt this is a venue doing a lot of things right and I'd have no objections to popping in again for a meal if in the area, but although I wish all involved lots of success moving forwards, this isn't a place I'm likely to rush back to.