Restaurant Review: The Magdalen Arms

One of the (many) things which drives me irrationally mad is that class of features in food magazines generally titled "Girls' Night In". Generally starting with a thrilling low-fat, low-sugar cocktail, they recommend progressing to a salad, perhaps with some raw fish on top, followed by a low-fat, low-sugar, yet still "naughty" dessert. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, but the only girls' night in I regularly attend involves massive quantities of wine, loaves and loaves of bread, and half the contents of a cheese shop.

That's not to say, though, that I can't acknowledge some difference between the types of food my male and female friends prefer to eat when they're out. There does tend to need to be a greater supply of vegetarian dishes, of salads or fish dishes, for a restaurant to attract a group of female friends. Hence, despite loving the food on previous occasions, I had never considered that the Magdalen Arms might be an appropriate venue. Fortunately, I have friends who are less narrow minded, and so I found myself there with a group of four other females.

Well, eventually I did. As I've found on previous visits, the service at the Magdalen Arms always leaves a little to be desired. This time, the staff sent half the group through to the restaurant; when the other half arrived, they told them that no-one else was yet there, and seated them in the bar area. Thus the first 15 minutes of the evening were spent in two separate groups, each waiting for the other to arrive. We eventually found each other and settled down to study the menu.

It's worth saying that my general feeling about the food here stands: it's big portions of heavy food, with limited concessions to smaller appetites or lighter tastes. That's shown partly in the fact that two pairs of us went for the same options (two mushroom tagliatelles, and two partridges). One of the best suggestions came from the friend who sensibly chose to order a starter plus a side salad, in this case, the cheese souffle. I've had this before as a starter and it is delicious; I can just about squeeze it in as part of a three-course meal but it sits much more happily as a main on its own.

The mushroom tagliatelle was the only vegetarian dish on the menu. This does seem to be generally the case, and I've heard that it's not uncommon for the restaurant to have run out of this single option halfway through the evening. Luckily, we nabbed two potions of it: slippery, wafer-thin homemade egg pasta, rich in flavour but not weight, with mushrooms (sauce would not be the word here: a little seasoned butter, maybe) and a very generous dose of parmesan.

Finally, two of us went for the partridge, including me. To be honest, as my sister recently married someone with the surname Partridge, I always feel compelled to order it on menus, simply so that I can text her and suggest I am consuming her/her husband. It's funny, honest. But I probably would have chosen it in any case, accompanied as it was by choucroute and sausage. That sausage was superb, and, as expected, it appeared in generous quantities, oozing unctuous fatty juices all over the place. The choucroute was slightly underflavoured, but provided a nice enough background winey note. I was disgruntled to find the bird itself a little overcooked, but - *female friendly klaxon* - my pregnant friend was delighted not to have to worry about the dangers of underdone meat.

To finish where we started, it took an age to drag the bill out of a waitress seemingly reluctant to accept our money: again, a small example of how slightly shoddy service can let down a whole evening. But - and I suspect the Magdalen Arms knows this, and focusses its attentions accordingly - the food is good enough that the service doesn't matter. Like the vast majority of their clientele, I'll be back. I might even take some women.