Bognor five

The last thing to report from Bognor is the matter of the pie, it having been pie night at the hotel on the last night that we were there.

Bad start with a full-on and entirely unnecessary 'have you got a reservation' performance, for a hotel dining room which was busy enough but by no means full.

Then things started to look up when I was able to reserve the last steak and kidney pie. But when it turned up, it was not a patch on the turkey pie which we had taken earlier in the summer, at the Bugle in Brading, and noticed at reference 1. To be fair though, it was a proper pie with both top and bottom and it did contain a fair amount of steak and kidney.

But the pastry was dry, thick and heavy. And the gravy which was needed to soften it up a bit was very dark and rather sweet. Not much like the gravy which I used to make in the proper way, rouxing up the dripping from the roast.

And no cabbage, not having thought, on this occasion, to play safe and bring my own. This being the place where I had done just that on a previous occasion.

A rather disappointing meal, but helped along by another drop of Chablis 2014 from Laroche.

PS: we wondered about where the pie, which had been cooked in its own little pie dish, had come from. It seemed a bit unlikely that the hotel would make them up themselves; much more likely that they had overdone the microwaving a bit. On the other hand, if it came from the freezer, why would there be a last one? Did they come from the celebrated pie people at reference 2? In any event, on our next visit, we shall look them up. Illustrated above.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/fragonard-fail-aka-yaverland-five.html.

Reference 2: http://www.turnerspies.co.uk/.