Carrick Lodge Hotel, Ayr - Restaurants in Ayr | s1play.com

The power of suggestion

Review published on 01/12/2009 © Sunday Herald

I’ll let you into a secret: being a restaurant critic is a dangerous job. It’s not just the risk of bloat or the occasional death threats from frothing restaurateurs. It’s the clear and present danger of disappearing up your own backside. Becoming a tad, or even totally, pretentious.

I’ll let you into another secret. Every day for years e-mails have come in recommending places to review. Sometimes readers just want me to torch somewhere they’ve had a bad meal. It’s understandable, but why would I?

Largely though they talk about great places. And the place that gets mentioned the most? Not Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles, where they’ll serve you lobster in a shell that’s been separately smoked. Not The Champanay Inn in Linlithgow, where they’ll describe the last meal your cow had before cheerily surrendering its shapely rump for your delectation. Not even The Kitchin in Leith, where they’ll practically grow the food in your mouth to ensure its right-on-man freshness.

In fact it’s a family-run restaurant at Maidens in Ayrshire called Wildings. I know, I know, it’s not even on that list over there. Yes, I’ve been. Yes, I liked it, but no, it isn’t the best restaurant in the country. It clearly has something people rave about, though. Is it value? Consistency? The fact it’s professionally run?

I say all this because tonight I am at another restaurant that is frequently mentioned in glowing terms, Carrick Lodge Hotel in Ayr. And I’ve just walked in, scanned the menu and felt the deep, depressing sigh of the experienced restaurant reviewer well up in me. Tiger prawns, smoked salmon, steaks? Yawn. Bring me my sedan chair.

Astonishingly, there are no clever tricks with intestines, no hand-caught rabbit – none at all, in fact – and nary a sign of skill with a blow-torch, a bain marie or one of those daft compressed-air frothers Heston Blumenthal sleeps with.

There is, though, a fabulous and warm welcome, and the whiff of caramelising meat in the air. There are low lights, wood panels, comfortable seats and flickering candles that make even Ayrshire’s ageing and golf-obsessed community look somewhat exotic and wealthy.

There’s also one of those menus that goes on and on and features the worst word in the restaurant lexicon, “haggis”. And there are specials with “coronets” and, God no, “goujons”. I may need to lie down soon.

The truth? There’s not a single main dish I haven’t seen a hundred times before, so I surrender and Lyndsey and I order from what we are faced with rather than what we would like to see, starting with asparagus spears with hollandaise sauce and goujons of haddock with garlic mayonnaise. The spears are dull but the haddock is good, crisp and tasty with a well-seasoned mayonnaise.

It’s the main courses that give the game away, exposing why Carrick Lodge Hotel and others like it are so successful. The breast of chicken roulade stuffed with pork and pistachios comes as not one thick slice but four, with piles of vegetables, for £7.95. It’s professionally presented, surrounded by a peppery and creamy sauce and served with a basket of complimentary chilli chips. I eat the lot.

The beef olives stuffed with haggis fall flat on their faces though, largely because the haggis is horrible and the beef could sole plimsolls.

Every single dessert on the menu, and there are loads of them, comes with ice-cream. Despite that, this section of the menu is adventurous. The peach schnapps and vodka panna cotta is excellent, and the vanilla pastry cream and autumn berry tart with blackberry ice-cream and tuille biscuit is good.

No minds have been blown tonight. No wallets either, but we have had excellent value for money, the setting was very nice and the service was personable.

From time to time you don’t need spectacular food for a good meal.