3:43pm Thursday 3rd June 2010
By Steven Thompson
TEN years ago, the Wilton Arms was a bog-standard Brewers Fayre pub serving bog-standard Brewers Fayre grub.
It was packed out every weekend with locals, knowing they could rely on the place to serve up a half-decent plate of gammon and egg, fish and chips or sausage and mash.
So, what changed? Well, by 2005, it was all Jamie-Oliver-this and Gordon-Ramsay-that, and suddenly, lasagne and garlic bread wasn’t cool any more. Trade plummeted and the restaurant was eventually sold off.
Fast forward to 2010, and, having undergone a massive revamp a couple of years ago, the signs are encouraging.
The grand wooden bar boasts a generous range of decent cask ales — prices start from around £2.50 a pint and a bottle of house wine will set you back about a tenner. There’s a lovely local feel to the place too, with framed photographs of the town and countryside dotted around the restaurant, and three of the walls covered in Ordnance Survey maps of Bolton.
In the conservatory — sit in there if you can — is an impressive raised log fire, surrounded by tables with cracking views across the moors.
There is a huge menu and an extensive specials board. Prices aren’t too steep either, with starters from £5 to £8, mains between £8 and £15, and desserts costing about £5.
The food ranges from good, honest, familiar dishes — think pie of the day or rib-eye steak and chips — to the slightly more fancy and ‘cheffy’ — braised ox cheek or confit of duck in a chocolate and red wine sauce.
I kicked off with lemon grass king prawns with sweet chilli sauce. The batter was crispy; the prawns, juicy; the sauce, fiery. Great starter.
My mate Gareth had Bury black pudding with poached egg and the Wilton Arms’ ‘special sauce’. Unfortunately, the egg was practically hard boiled and the special sauce tasted strangely similar to HP. Shame.
For my main, I went for scallops, black pudding and pancetta, served on a potato rosti, topped off with a poached egg. Sadly, again, the egg had been cooked to within an inch of its life — I wasn’t happy.
Luckily, the waitress dealt with my rant with a smile and returned the dish, complete with a perfectly poached egg, within minutes. The scallops were smooth, and combined delightfully with the black pudding and egg — but everything else was overkill.
Gareth plumped for the chicken and wild mushroom pie with mash and seasonal veg. This clearly came from the good, honest section of the menu — and it was all the better for it.
It might not be Michelin star stuff, but it was tasty, and that, at the end of the day, is all that matters.
Desserts. I had chocolate bread and butter pudding. It was evilly good. The dense chocolate and Bailey’s torte was similarly calorific and almost equally delicious.
What our puddings proved is that when you keep it simple, it works. There’s potential for a great restaurant here. They are already doing a lot of things right. If the head chef can perhaps tone down his over-imaginative instincts, and concentrate on quality, local produce, simply prepared, then the Wilton could be very, very good indeed.
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