Tickled Trout Review

Situated in the village of Barlow in the Derbyshire countryside, The Tickled Trout is a longstanding gastropub with a solid reputation for delivering good food. Having been awarded an AA rosette back in April 2024, by a handy twist of coincidence, they then picked up a second rosette just a few weeks before our booking. I was therefore feeling pretty optimistic about our chances of enjoying some tasty pub cooking as I rocked up for an early dinner with my wife and two children, on a bitterly cold early January Saturday.

There's a large car park behind the pub and after making our way through the rear entrance, we were greeted by a member of staff at the dining end of the bar. There was a fairly minor initial hiccup as the booking system apparently wasn't working so they couldn't find our reservation (not a problem, we were a couple of minutes early) but after a short wait all was well, and we were shown through to our table in the main dining area.

I was very impressed by the internal finish (given this is a village pub after all); the dining room was pretty immaculate and really had a nice feel. Our table tucked in one corner was very comfortable and a lovely spot to enjoy what I hoped would be a quality meal. On offer for dinner is a comprehensive three course carte menu with a lot of choice; the mains are split into 'classics' (burgers, pies, fish & chips and so on) and 'signatures' (dishes which are a bit more adventurous) with fifteen choices in total between the two.

And as if that wasn't enough, there's a full pizza menu too with a whopping (again) fifteen different pizzas available. We were given an additional specials sheet with a couple of extra dishes too, and on top of that, there's also a children's menu which only covers two courses but again had lots of different options. Drinks wise, there's a solid range here as well including a decent wine list (with the Coravin system being used to offer many options by the glass) and a slightly better than average non-alcoholic selection (albeit I didn't spy any mocktails on the cocktail list); I enjoyed a couple of glasses of rhubarb lemonade with my meal.

Lunch began for me with the spiced Cornish cod scotch egg, served with curry mayonnaise. This was probably the biggest scotch egg I've ever seen, but it was an interesting idea and I enjoyed it. My wife and daughter shared a portion of toasted sourdough bread (not made on site) with olives and dukkah. For the price, I think we'd been expecting a little bit more from this as a starter course, but the bread was fine and the accompanying elements edible. My young son had the margherita pizza from the children's menu as a starter which he was very impressed with, describing it as a 10/10 pizza.

For mains I opted for the pork ribeye; this consisted of two generous (and perfectly cooked) slabs of pork which were delicious. This was accompanied by a rich buttery slice of pommes anna, and the mustard beurre blanc sauce was pretty faultless also. The only disappointment on the dish was a ham hock raviolo; the flavours were nice but it had been left in the water too long, so both the filling and pasta were overcooked. But aside from that, this was a really strong gastropub main course for me. I also had a side of truffle and parmesan fries (hey, I'd not had lunch) which were very tasty too.

My wife was equally impressed with her duck main course; the duck cookery was very good and accompanying elements, including a wedge of beetroot, blackberries and an elderberry jus were all thoroughly pleasant too. My daughter had a full sized margherita pizza from the main pizza menu as her main which she enjoyed, whilst my son just had a side of skinny fries which were without fault also.

After some very enjoyable savoury cooking, there was little chance of us leaving without dessert, and that proved to be a wise choice. My milk chocolate parfait, accompanied by praline, white yuzu aero and a chocolate sauce, was a very neat dessert and really packed the level of lovely deep chocolate flavour I'd hoped for. My wife opted for the sticky toffee pudding; this was with admittedly ordered with some trepidation as she's had some pretty poor versions of this dish in the not too distant past. But fortunately, she needn't had worried, as this version was very good; the cake was moist and well made, with a generous helping of toffee sauce and accompanied by an entirely pleasant malt ice cream.

For the kids, my daughter opted for the ice cream trio from the adult dessert menu. This is listed as coming with vanilla ice cream, salted caramel ice cream and raspberry sorbet, but we asked if she could just have three scoops of the raspberry sorbet instead and were told that was no problem at all. When the dish was delivered, my daughter had been served the three different flavours instead, but this was quickly whisked away and replaced by the waitress who took our dessert order without us needing to say anything, which was great to see. The sorbet itself was very nice too. My son just had a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream from the children's menu which he was perfectly happy with.

And with that, a very enjoyable dinner came to an end. Overall I was very impressed with our visit; I wasn't expecting the level of cooking on show here to be as good as it was, and I think that's all the more surprising given the size of the menu. I enjoyed all three courses and I feel pretty confident that if I went back and ordered three completely different dishes, I'd still have a very good experience.

The service too was pretty faultless; all the staff were very pleasant and perfectly attentive; there was no issue ordering additional drinks and so on throughout the meal. There is an automatically included 12% service charge on top of what I would say is fairly top end pricing for this level of food, but I didn't think as a whole the meal was prohibitively expensive by any means.

Good food, good service and a good venue is always a winning combination for me, and I think all involved have done a super job of providing a high end gastropub experience here. I wish the team all the best going forwards and I would have no issues at all eating here again in future.