Hudson's Restaurant , Sandhurst Hotel, Middlewich (From Northwich Guardian)

Hudson's Restaurant , Sandhurst Hotel, Middlewich

11:55am Wednesday 28th November 2007 in Leisure By Vivien Kandel

How it rated

Quality of service - could have been better

Value for money - average

Ambience - lovely, Edwardian splendour

Speed of service - starters slow, mains fine

Quality of food - mixed

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I HAD a wonderful meal when I went to the Hudson's Restaurant at the Sandhurst Hotel in Middlewich last week.

A melt in your mouth spinach and cheese filling in filo parcels cooked to perfection on a bed of mixed leaves. It truly was delicious.

However, it was a mixed bag overall as my companions weren't quite as lucky.

But I digress. To start from the beginning.

The hotel is an Edwardian house with beautiful features lovingly restored - you really do get a sense of having stepped back in time.

The room where we ate was truly spectacular but I was disappointed because none of the staff dressed up in Edwardian costume.

Perhaps it was because the football was on - but to be fair it is a selling point on the hotel's website.

There were two interesting menus on offer, one of them was a £19.99 for two which has plenty of choice on it and I think is excellent value for money.

However we plumped for the a la carte and had difficulty in deciding what to have as it all looked so tempting.

We had a long wait for our starters - 47minutes when there were just two tables of diners - but mine was well worth the wait.

A melt in your mouth spinach and cheese filling in filo parcels cooked to perfection on a bed of mixed leaves. It truly was delicious.

My companion's black pudding had come highly recommended and also didn't disappoint but it came on a potato rosti tower and bearing in mind the richness of the black pudding was slightly overfacing as a starter.

The smoked fish and spring onion potato cakes ordered by the third member of our party were a huge disapointment. The texture was perfect but you could hardly taste the fish because it was drowned by the taste of the potato.

I was slightly concerned when my main course of cod arrived as it looked as though there was too much mushroom sauce. I need not have worried - it was all scrumptious.

I don't often have fish when I go out and this was memorable.

Herb crusted cod which was beautlfully cooked on a bed of spinach in a delcious mushroom sauce. I was in heaven.

My companion's roast duck breast with braised cabbage had a beautiful taste but was too fatty and chewy while our third main course, the venison, didn't quite live up to expectation - my companion didn't like the combination of flavours.

I always like vegetables to be crunchy and slightly underdone which unfortunately didn't happen in this case - the cauliflower and carrots were soft although the broad beans and corn were excellent.

We decided to share a sweet and plumped for the treacle tart, which had too much pastry in it which unfortunately didn't allow the treacle flavour to come through.

Our bill came to £75 for three people.