The Three Shires Inn, Little Langdale


The Three Shires Inn, in Little Langdale in the Lake District, is the "local" for Little Langdale. It is a pleasant old pub, with a lovely fire, popular with walkers, does not have loud music, appears (from my non-drinking viewpoint) to have a good range of drinks; it is a nice place to spend an evening after a hard day's walking.

So what is crap about it? The food.

It seems that the owners have been brainwashed by people like Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, and other such prats who should be put up against the wall and shot. When you look at the menu, it looks pretty appetising; it's only when the food is actually served that you realise you should have gone somewhere else.

As an example, I ordered the roast pork dinner. Naturally, I was expecting a traditional English roast plateful, with lots of pork, roast potatoes, gravy, the works; a large and filling meal which would do a sterling job of replenishing the bodily resources depleted by going up mountains.

When the meal arrived, I was horrified. I got an enormous plate... with two tiny slices of pork about 3 inches in diameter plonked in the middle of it, looking thoroughly lost, and a dollop of parsley sauce carefully arranged so as to lie symmetrically on the two tiddly bits of pork. The rest of the plate was empty.

Then the vegetables arrived. Roast spuds? No such luck. Boiled spuds. Three little ones. They hadn't even peeled them. A fair number of carrots, all small, badly undercooked and rock hard. And some peculiar greens which I had never seen before on an English table, also small, badly undercooked and hard. And why the fuck were they in a separate dish instead of being on the plate with the rest of the meal? As I say, the plate was huge and had very little on it; it's not as if there was not enough room.

I have had the misfortune to have several meals bought for me at this pub, and have therefore been able to research the offerings on the menu to try and discover what meals are cooked and served in the least poncy fucked-up manner, something I certainly wouldn't have bothered to do if I had been paying myself. It turns out that they are all fucked up. The safest option seems to be scampi and chips.

Even this is only safe if only one person in the party is eating it. If more than one person chooses scampi and chips, you get a plate with a normal helping of scampi on it, and no chips. The chips come separately in a different dish, and you don't get your own dish. You get one dish for the whole party, which only has enough chips in it for one person. I mean, what the FUCK are they on? Where do they get these bloody stupid ideas, and what makes them think it's good? It's totally crap!

To add insult to injury, sometimes there is pigeon on the menu. Anyone who eats pigeon is a cunt. There isn't even enough meat on a pigeon for more than a couple of mouthfuls. For someone who is not starving, and has normal access to supplies of food, to deliberately choose to eat a pigeon, they must be (a) stupid and (b) a complete wanker. They should be forced to eat the complete bird, including all the bones and feathers, then when the splinters of bone pierce the walls of their intestines leading to massive peritonitis, they should be denied any form of medical care. Let the fuckers die in agony, poncy posing scum.

When I go to a pub for a meal, I expect a proper traditional English pub meal. Not some poncy fucked-up nouvelle cuisine shit. If I want to eat poncy fucked-up food in minute portions at extortionate prices, I'll go to a poncy fucked-up restaurant in London. I don't expect that sort of crap served as a pub meal. Especially in the Lake District, where I am likely to have spent the day walking up mountains and therefore want a big meal at the end of it.

It's a great shame, because otherwise the pub is great. It's just the food which is shite.

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