The Martlet — Restaurant in Rochdale

The temptation when reviewing the Martlet Kitchen, is to say that it’s indescribably awful and should be avoided at all costs, that way it’d be easier to get a table. In reality this would be to do the MK and your readers a massive disservice, this place is a rare gem. The restaurant is tucked away at the back of Rochdale’s magnificent gothic revival town hall. The internal architecture, with modern glass partitioning and locally appropriate art on the walls, makes for a warm welcoming space. The lighting level is intimate without being gloomy, the tables are quite close together, but everyone rubs along fine. Both the food and drink menus are pleasingly short, this is a kitchen concentrating on doing a small number of things extremely well, but there’s still enough choice to keep everyone happy. Sharon chose the Cherry Bakewell cocktail (very nice apparently, so much so that she had to have another) while I had a glass of very decent Malbec. Sharon began with the Scallop, presented beautifully and I’m assured perfectly cooked. I had the Bury Black Pudding Scotch egg. This quite daunting when it arrives, it’s a good size and looks as though it’s going to be heavy for a starter. It isn’t. You cut it in half and the egg yolk oozes out like golden lava. The black pudding filling is packed with flavour but surprisingly light. It comes dotted with tangy mustard on pool of delightful piccalilli (and I’m a piccalilli sceptic). Top tip, eat this with a spoon. It’s soft enough to do so comfortably, and the smallish bowl it’s served in makes attacking it with a knife and fork slightly awkward. Time for mains. Sharon went with the Cod. Again, it was perfectly cooked, I declined to try it as it was served with a number of different adaptations of cauliflower (I find cauliflower an offence to almost all my senses). My cauliflower loving wife pronounced it lovely. I went with the beef wellington. A decent sized chunk of top quality, sympathetically cooked beef, wrapped in a fine (in every sense) pastry and duxelles shawl. It came with a trio of perfectly cooked vegetables (broccoli, carrot and parsnip), al dente and packed with flavour. The triple cooked chips were spot on, golden crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy inside. My one (very minor) quibble with the whole evening, a jug of the delicious gravy would have finished it off perfectly, there just wasn’t enough. For pudding we both went with the cheese board. Three top quality cheeses (blue, cheddar and brie) served with a generous stack of artisan crackers and a freshly baked Eccles cake. This was life changing for me. Living in Yorkshire I’m used to Eccles cake being served with a wedge of Wensleydale, but the hot sweet Eccles cake, with the buttery-soft salty blue cheese, oh my goodness. Gordon Ramsay always says that high end cookery is about starting with top quality ingredients and not fckng them up. I feel that Darren Parkinson and his team have very much taken this to heart. They aren’t doing anything fancy or groundbreaking, but what they are doing they’re doing exquisitely well. The service isn’t the most polished, but find me a friendlier more eager to please set of servers and I’ll be mightily impressed. Possibly the most astonishing thing about the whole experience was the bill. All of the above, £104. It feels as though you’re stealing it, please leave a generous tip,...

Booked 2.15pm on a Saturday. When we arrived the young waitress asked if we’d booked? Then pointed down into the restaurant and declared your table is over there. Ordered drinks and then waited around ten minutes for them. My partner ordered the Cauliflower and was delighted with it. I ordered the Ribeye. The steak was very ‘grisley’, about 25%, very small portion of chips ( about 1 inch long ‘chunky’ ) and possibly the smallest flat mushroom I have seen. Can’t understand why people ask how your food is when you first start and not when you have finished, considering about 25% of the steak (gristle) had been trimmed off and left on the plate! My partner commented to the staff about the gristle and we were met with the return comment of ‘ aw bless you’??My dessert (raspberry/choc parfait) didn’t appear to be the same as the patrons on the next table and instead of frozen raspberry pieces appeared to have ‘cereal clusters scattered around the plate?My partner asked for a ‘spiced’ Margherita and was told No and settled for glass of wine. The second request for one, off the menu was turned down as they ‘ were preparing for the evening sitting’! Our ‘finished’ plates sat in front of us for a good 10 mins before I requested them to be removed, even though there were staff resetting tables for the evening! The only reason that I have rated a 2 star is due to my partners food being delicious. One waiter, Luke, was chatty about the redevelopment and informative about the other menus and in fairness was the shining light in, for my meal, a very disappointing time. I really felt as though we were the ‘stragglers’ at the end of a service and slightly in the way as they prepared for the evening shift. The steak was poor, the amount of ‘triple’ cooked chips was poor. The cherry tomatoes were nice, although as a recommendation for a meal, to say the cherry tomatoes and the biscuit that came with my coffee were the best part of a meal is quite concerning. Nice surroundings, could possibly do with some ambient background music and little more space...

I visited the Martlet with my family this weekend and we absolutely loved it. The food was wonderful and all was well-priced (we were happily surprised to see that a Grandpa Greene's ice cream was included with all kids meals!) We came on a busy Saturday and were approached by the friendly manager. Our kiddies were cranky on a hot day, so we asked how long we might have to wait, so we could set our expectations and she then made a special effort to make sure we were seated quickly and had our order taken promptly, which we really appreciated! All of the staff were fab and friendly but we have to give an extra special shout out to Tango Martini (I hope I'm remembering his name correctly), who absolutely made our visit. He was SO friendly and made an extra effort to interact with us and our children, bringing the experience up from 'great' to 'excellent'! He talked to so many people in such a friendly way, sang happy birthdays, brought things for the tables with an extra flourish. He reminded us of happy experiences eating in Italy and Spain, where the children are made to feel included and friendly service is the norm. We couldn't thank him enough for making the meal so special. We'd return for the the food and service, and we'd recommend all do the same for Tango...