The Borough, Lancaster

Fish and chips for £12 on a very short weekend break to the county town of Lancashire.

TheBorough is a smart, independent gastro-pub in Dalton Square in the centre of Lancaster with a fantastic selection of beers. It is an impressive Georgian Town House, once the Mayor of Lancaster's house, run as a family business since 2006.

We visited on a bank holiday weekend and the atmosphere was relaxed, friendly and not too noisy as the internal spaces were well broken up.

As you’ll see from the photo of the meal, they committed what I consider to be a serious fish and chip sin. The fish arrived wrapped on top of the chips in thick, waxed, fake newspaper, advertising the Borough’s offers – a gimmicky and unnecessary nod to the world of the chippie newspaper.

The peas arrived in a ramekin, which was fine, but the tartare had been demoted to be served in a poorer, mini paper version. Surely tartare deserves the same respect as the peas? The bread and butter was left as it had little appeal.

The fish was a very solid piece of haddock with good flavour, but I was expecting something fresher as we were so close to Heysham docks. However, it was very well cooked and enjoyable from start to finish. The batter was good in places but not in others due to some very uneven frying. The flavour of the batter was OK where it had been correctly cooked.

The chips were too big. They were clearly hand cut which I did appreciated, but their girth was 50% more than a good chip should be. They had more in common with the old block than with the chip and some had stuck together, making an already giant chip into an absolute chip monster.

They also had been inconsistently cooked, they lacked crispiness and the flavour wasn’t terribly exciting.

The peas were a reasonably mix of slightly solid and fully mushed peas with a lovely hint of mint running through them. The tartare was tart but too finely chopped for my taste, although it worked well as a complement to the fish.

A decent lemon wedge and salt and vinegar were provided – the vinegar in a standard, run-of-the-mill, Sarsons dispenser.

 It was washed down with their Borough Brewery pale ale, which was an absolute cracker.

Overall, I didn’t feel like they were using the best ingredients and they certainly could have taken more care of the cooking.

A good pub, with OK food.