We had been invited to join some friends who had been given a complementary meal as a result of serious confusion on New Years Eve which resulted in us being denied access to the pub, despite the thinking that there was a reservation. In the event it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we were about triple the age of the average customer on that night.
The deal was that we could have a meal, but the drink was down to us. Fair enough, and it emphasises the value of complaining about unsatisfactory service.
There is a moderately helpful web site at http://thegriffin-whetstone.co.uk/ but the menu on the web site was out of date at the time of writing, but is not a million miles away and give you the flavour of the typical pub restaurant meals. Half fancy and not quite yet a gastro-pub.
We were there on a Wednesday night in January, and whilst there were a lot of people drinking, I did not see anyone else using the restaurant facilities. There were one or two somewhat raucous tables of celebratory drinkers which made the atmosphere a bit too noisy for my liking, but it is a pub, and what could I expect?
For starter I chose the fried calamari with chilli sauce
This was a decent size portion with fairly soft calamari, and a tasty sauce, and joy of joys scoring a 9 on the CHOF scale. They were not too oily and clearly some had thought about the appearance which is quite attractive: lots of browns and golds.
For main course I had the Angus Burger with Fries and coleslaw.
I asked for mine to be medium well done with cheese. You cannot see much of the burger as there is a lot of bun served with it, and the cheesed seemed more like cheese sauce. The burger was well cooked and was very hot scoring a 9.2 on the CHOF scale (wow: both courses at my sort of temperature). It was somewhat solid in texture, and I think the best burger I have had still rests with the Jersey City, NJ branch of 5 Guys (I still have not tried any of the UK branches). The chips were quite tasty, but the coleslaw which you cannot see was a bit swimming in dressing. You can see the attempt to also make this attractive by serving on a slate plate.
Altogether a satisfactory meal, as were the meals of my companions, but nothing special and nothing that would make me want to rush back there to eat, given the wide variety of options in Whetstone High Road. The place became very noisy with a big table of girly drinkers, to the point where we decided to move table to somewhere at the front where there were less customers.
I don't know if it was because we were the only ones eating, or because this was known by the staff to be an 'apology meal', but service was attentive and almost bordering on the unctuous. I would guess that for an average customer, they could not put so much effort in, but I may be wrong. House red was about £15/bottle.
Assuming that the quality and quantity are representative of what happens every day, and if you like this sort of formula pub food, then the Griffin will work for you. An average starter is about £5 and an average main about £10.
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