The White Swan Review

With a long day trip upcoming to Nuneaton in the Midlands for a late afternoon family party, I looked on this very website (it's quite useful you know) for a quality restaurant we could stop at for a meal on the way, without too much of a detour. Step forward The White Swan in the pretty village of Shawell, holder of a Michelin guide listing and also two AA rosettes since early 2020. It seemed like a great choice for a family meal, and so I duly rocked up for lunch with my wife and two young children, on a dreary November Saturday.

Despite the village location, the restaurant is only a short drive from two major motorways and there's plenty of parking on site also which is always appreciated after a long drive. Externally, the place looks very smart and internally follows suit with a smart, modern and spacious feel. The welcome on arrival was warm enough, and we were shown to our table towards the back of the restaurant overlooking the car park (which still genuinely felt like quite a pleasant spot). The dining room was quiet on arrival but did fill up as lunch progressed.

On offer at lunch is a decent sized lunch menu (from what I could tell, a slightly scaled down version of the dinner menu) and there's a three course children's menu too which was much appreciated. There were also a number of specials for both starters and mains which our waitress was able to recall without issue (although a board or two to show these in the restaurant might have been helpful). Drinks wise, there's a strong wine list and a fairly comprehensive drinks list including a couple of non-alcoholic cocktails. I stuck with my usual Hendricks and tonics during the meal whilst my wife and daughter enjoyed various flavours of Belvoir Sparkling, and my son apple juice.

Bread isn't free here (not at all unusual nowadays) but we ordered some for the table and I have to say, it was delicious - home made and accompanied by some very flavoursome butter. Lunch proper began for me with the spiced pork bonbons, served with honey glazed pineapple and crackling. This was a very nice dish; the pork bonbons were maybe a touch on the dry side, but the flavours overall were good and the dish ate well. My wife opted for the whisky cured salmon with baby beetroot, apple and horseradish; it was a lovely fresh starter with some great flavours. My daughter had the doughballs with wild garlic butter from the children's menu; these were very similar to the bread we'd already been served (a portion of which she'd eaten), but nonetheless enjoyable.

For mains, I had the beef cheek served with horseradish mash and crispy kale. It was a perfectly edible main; the beef cooking was spot on and overall the dish was enjoyable. My wife opted for the pork and leek pie from the specials list; the pie was well made and full of flavour, you can't really ask for much more than that for a pie. The kids both went for a (small) freshly made margherita pizza, with good chips and a selection of vegetables. It wasn't the best pizza they've ever had, but as children's main courses go, it was a good effort. They could choose from chips or mash, and also from a selection of vegetables to go with it which was a nice touch.

After some very enjoyable savoury courses, of course there was little chance of us leaving without dessert, albeit there weren't a huge number of choices on the menu. I went for the chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce and custard. It was a decent pub-grub-level dessert, there's not really much more I can say about it. My wife had slightly better luck with a tasty vanilla and yoghurt berry fool, served with Maldon shortcake.

For the kids, there were only two choices on the children's menu. My son went for the seasonal ice cream sundae which was a nice mix and a perfectly decent child's dessert. My daughter ordered the only other dessert on the children's menu, the Fruit Pastille lolly. I've had many desserts over the years titled on the menu as British classics like "Snickers", "Twix," "Tutti Frutti" and more, and it's always great to see how a chef can recreate such well known and familiar flavours. For the Fruit Pastille lolly, I was really curious how the kitchen would create the iconic layers and how would it be plated; my daughter was genuinely excited (as was I) to see some top quality dessert skills on show.

Imagine our surprise when we were presented with.... a shop bought Fruit Pastille lolly. I genuinely couldn't believe it, and I think our waitress could see we were dumbfounded. I remember one time in my life (and my daughter remembers too) where a one-rosette pub served my daughter ice cream directly in the carboard tub, but at least it was a fairly nice artisan type ice cream you couldn't just buy anywhere. We'd driven 115 miles to be served an ice lolly you can pick up as a pack of four in Tesco for £1.99; it was the biggest pisstake of a dessert I've ever been served in an award holding restaurant. By all means, keep some in the freezer for really young children as a not-on-the-menu option, but to have the nerve to sell that as a proper dessert is just incredible.

Although we were still in a little bit of shock, we had some time to kill so my wife and I had a couple of coffees to finish. These were pretty mediocre but I've had worse coffee in my time. And so, after eventually managing to collect the bill (complete with 12.5% service charge) a confusing but fairly enjoyable lunch came to an end.

The food on the whole (that wasn't bought ready to serve at the local supermarket) was good; I would say the savoury courses were stronger than the desserts but there was clearly some competent cooking on display. Service though wasn't great; it was a young team who tried their best but there didn't seem to be any experienced leadership on hand which I would have expected at a restaurant of this level serving food at this price point. There were also some fairly basic errors like no cutlery being provided for dessert, and when it did arrive, they bizarrely gave my son such a massive spoon that it didn't fit in his sundae glass. Even when coffee arrived there was again no spoon to mix the sugar, so I ended up using a fork left over from an earlier course.

Overall, The White Swan is a smart, family friendly restaurant with a lot of positive qualities and I've certainly had far worse meals in the past. But with a number of significant frustrations during our meal, it's not a venue I'm likely to head back to any time soon.