The Drovers Inn Review

Set in the glorious Angus countryside, The Drovers Inn near Forfar is a gastropub with a longstanding reputation for serving good food, having held an AA rosette for over a decade. Whilst staying a few miles away on holiday, it seemed an ideal time to give the place a try, so I duly rocked up for lunch with my wife, our two children, and my wife's parents on a mild August Friday.

Booking was straightforward; they don't take direct online reservations, but booking over email had been no issue. There was a little check by the person responding to my email that I'd got the correct venue, as there are several similarly named pubs and hotels across Scotland (including quite a famous hotel near Loch Lomond) which is understandable.

The pub sits in a very pleasant spot with open views on all sides, and handily there's a substantial car park with plenty of space. Externally there's a large beer garden area which we walked through to get to the main entrance, and even a children's play area which our youngest had a quick run around when we left.

It looks like a well kept pub externally and that theme continued inside; I liked the decor. The welcome on arrival was perfectly friendly and we were shown to our table in one of the dining spaces; the table was a decent size for six people and the spacious feel was helped by the double height ceiling as we sat below some old looking arched beams.

On offer at lunch is a full three course carte menu with plenty of choice (which we ate from), a selection of lighter lunch options, and also a two course children's menu. For drinks, there's quite a wide selection including a range of cocktails and a decent wine list; we just stuck with soft drinks and Hendrick's on this occasion.

We passed on starters this time and went straight to the mains. Lunch began for me with the loin of herb crusted venison, served with a pearl barley risotto, a beetroot and raspberry puree and chard. I enjoyed this; all the elements were cooked well (including the venison most importantly) and the dish as a whole packed plenty of flavour; I'd happily eat this plate again any time.

My wife went for the loin of lamb, served with back pudding, roast shoulder ballotine, smoked carrot and a pea puree. She was very impressed; again this dish was full of flavour and the cooking of all the elements was spot on; it's a wildly irrelevant comparison, but truthfully it was a lot tastier than the lamb course we'd had a couple of nights earlier at one of Scotland's best restaurants. Other dishes around the table included the guinea fowl, sea trout and burger and all went down a treat; it's fair to say we were very happy with all the main courses served to us.

After some very enjoyable savoury dishes, there was no chance of us leaving without dessert, and that proved to be a wise choice. Three of us (including myself) went for the Scottish tablet cheesecake, served with salted caramel ice cream. This was a very tasty dessert; it was sweet of course as expected given the name, and a bit of a sugar rush, but I wouldn't say overly sweet (albeit I have a sweet tooth). The accompanying ice cream was well made also; all in all it was a perfectly enjoyable dessert.

My daughter had the chocolate torte which was a nice dish also; the lime jelly and coconut sorbet perhaps being a bit more memorable than the torte itself. And my young son enjoyed a couple of scoops of tasty ice cream from the children's menu.

And so, after collecting our bill with no fuss, a very enjoyable lunch came to an end. There's no automatically included service charge here which is refreshingly unusual nowadays I'd say; I didn't see an option on the card machine to leave one or I would have (I don't tend to carry much cash).

Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by the standard of cooking here. I've been to so many AA rosette awarded restaurants in the past twelve months that just didn't justify the award in my view, but the cooking here was absolutely worthy of that rosette. Service too was good and I thought given the standard of the food, the pricing was very fair also.

Given all that, it wasn't a surprise to see plenty of tables in for a Friday lunch (clearly the locals know this is a good restaurant) and long may that continue; I'd certainly have no objection whatsoever to eating here again in future.