Plough Bar and Kitchen

Time Out says

Tue Sep 27 2011

You might have noticed the sandwich-board signs outside the pizza and pasta chain Zizzi, advertising their new ‘cichetti’ menu. This conveniently tells us how long, exactly, it now takes for a food trend to go from cutting-edge to high street: one year. Because it’s only twelve months ago that Polpo in Soho opened with a cichetti menu, and had restaurant critics and diners Googling like crazy to find out what the word even meant.

Now, small-plates menus are becoming so mainstream that chains are copying the idea. Stir in a few other trends of the last year or two – a US slant to the menu in dishes such as ‘sliders’ (mini meat patties in buns), plus the decor of places such as Polpo (check out those tin roof tiles) or Riding House Café (eclectic), and in this Young’s venue you get a pubco’s interpretation of where it’s at, circa 2011.

This would be wonderful if the basics had also been looked after, such as the service –  but on our visit it was smiling but very disorganised, with long waits for everything.

The cooking also left something to be desired. We gave the ‘dude food’ dishes a swerve – ‘beer can chicken’ is a ‘Jackass’-style gimmick, even if Jamie does it – but the more judicious choices too were disappointing. The only one of several we tried that we liked was the popcorn shrimp, which was nicely spiced and seasoned; one dish was so poor we sent it back and it was removed from the bill, unbidden (top marks for service on this count, though).

But does the Plough hack it as a bar? The drinks list is pretty good, with good beers (it’s a Young’s pub) and a decent selection of wines. On a Friday night visit, the place was rammed, the customers seemingly oblivious to the overly loud 1970s rawk soundtrack (since when was Dire Straits back in?). How long before the next refurb and relaunch, we wondered.