The Horseshoes Review

Sat in the village of Long Lane in the Derbyshire countryside, The Horseshoes is a longstanding pub with an increasing reputation for serving quality food. Although under the same ownership for over a decade, the last couple of years have brought some glowing reviews from the local press and the award of two AA rosettes in May 2025, as well as overwhelmingly positive feedback from regular punters also. I was therefore looking forward to what I hoped would be an enjoyable meal as I rocked up for lunch with my wife and two children, on an overcast September Saturday.

There's a good size car park on site (including a couple of electric car charging points) which is always handy, and the gardens to the rear of the pub house a number of garden rooms (fancy sheds) which are bookable in advance for larger parties. There were a couple in use during our visit; they seem like a nice idea for group bookings if you're after a private dining experience.

We made our way around to the front of the pub, through a small but nicely maintained front garden space, to the restaurant entrance. There was no one around when we first walked in, but we were acknowledged after a relatively short time and shown through to our table in the main dining area.

The dining room is a smart modern space; it has a nice light and airy feel and is a perfectly comfortable setting for a quality pub lunch. We booked a fairly late sitting on this occasion, but there were still a few tables in when we arrived which was good to see. There's a separate bar area too if you just want to pop in for a drink.

On offer for lunch is a three course lunch menu with a decent amount of choice, but although the restaurant is child friendly, there's no children's menu. In terms of drinks, we were given a fairly weighty wine and drinks list and a separate cocktail sheet also, so there's quite a wide offering here, but I would say the non-alcoholic options could have been more extensive. I stuck with my usual Hendrick's and tonic to drink which was perfectly well delivered, whilst my wife and kids had elderflower presse and apple juice.

Lunch began with complimentary bread which was a nice surprise; it's fairly unusual nowadays to receive free bread with a lunch menu. We received a slice each (including the kids) which was appreciated and plenty of flavoured butter, but in truth the bread wasn't very good. I see this quite a lot where restaurants at this kind of level try and make bread more interesting (instead of just focusing on making simple quality bread that tastes good) but it doesn't quite work; in this case it was adding random chunks of fruit into a sourdough. But hey, it was free, and I've had worse bread in the past for sure.

Lunch proper began for me with the smoked haddock arancini, served with a minted pea puree, a caper cream sauce and a fair chunk of lettuce. This was a decent dish; it was more citrus-heavy than I was expecting, but the arancini themselves were nice and overall it was a perfectly edible plate. My wife was less impressed with a palatable but dull offering of feta cheese, beetroot, mixed nuts and pumpkin seeds.

My daughter went for the charcuterie board which she enjoyed; for my young son we ordered a side of fries; he was served a side of chips (fries and chips being separate side options on the menu) but they were pretty decent chips, and he enjoyed them, so no harm done.

The mains didn't take long to arrive and were the best plates of the meal by far. I had the braised blade of beef, served with mashed potato and a mushroom cream sauce. This was a tasty dish, the beef was cooked nicely and it was an enjoyable plate. My wife wasn't blown away by her pan fried salmon with mashed potato and a hollandaise sauce, but it was a decent dish overall.

My daughter went for the horseshoe beef burger (it must be good if they put their name on it); it was too large for her so I got to eat half of it, and I can genuinely say it was the tastiest burger I've had in a long time. The pulled BBQ brisket patties were a nice idea and suitably delicious, with the accompanying smoked cheese and burger relish really adding to the overall burger experience. The only let down was the coleslaw which wasn't great, but the chips (the same as my son had) were good.

Of course, there was no chance at all of us leaving without dessert, but that unfortunately proved to be a bit of poor choice in hindsight. The only real positive I can say about any of the desserts is that they were served quickly (which now makes sense) but in all other areas, they were some of the worst desserts we've ever been served at a two rosette awarded restaurant.

My chocolate and hazelnut delice was lacking really in flavour and was over set; the menu listed it was coming with raspberry sorbet, but there was none on the plate. My wife had even less luck with an abysmal sticky toffee pudding; it was that horrible rubbery reheated texture, and the accompanying honeycomb ice cream was not good either.

I do seriously wonder if the desserts were made off site and bought in, that's how bad they were. There was one tiny sliver of positivity in that my daughter's orange posset was actually fairly tasty. For my son, as there were no dessert options offered for young children, my wife asked if he could just have a couple of scoops of the raspberry sorbet that was listed on the menu as accompanying my dessert (even though I didn't get any). This was really poor also, it was closer to a strawberry ice cream than a raspberry sorbet, and it tasted horrible.

And that as they say was pretty much that; as we collected our bill (complete with an automatically included 10% service charge), a curiously inconsistent meal came to an end. In terms of the positives, I will say the venue is nice and the service was very good also; all the staff were very pleasant and we were well looked after. The menu pacing was good too with our three courses taking less than ninety minutes, which is spot on for me for a family lunch.

The issue here is the food; although there was some decent cooking on show for the savoury courses, the desserts were, to be frank, terrible. You'd get better tasting desserts at most bog standard pubs, so to be served that level at a recently awarded two rosette restaurant was disappointing, albeit not totally unexpected given how easily the AA throw out two rosette plates nowadays.

Maybe we were just unlucky on the day, but I can naturally only judge the food on what we were served. I wish everyone involved all the best, but although I'd happily pop back here for a burger and a pint, there's little chance of me booking a return for a full three course meal any time soon.