The Lescar

The Lescar is a good pub.

The Lescar with some very good Sheffield based friends is even better. It’s in the student enclave of the Hunter’s Bar area of Sheffield and is definitely the most bohemian pub on Sharrow Vale Road, but serves a good selection of real ales and is a pub shaped pub.

The Lescar takes pride in promoting its food and I was hoping for great things from the beer battered haddock and skin-on chips with crushed peas & tartare at £8.50. I was disappointed.

The fish was watery and bland with the batter soggy and undercooked and it ended up having quite a gloopy texture in the mouth. Green herbs had been added to the batter mix and it looks as odd written down as it did seeing it on a plate. You do not put any herbs in a batter for deep fried fish and it shouldn't cross anyone's mind to do it in the first place.

The chips were good and although I knew they were coming with skins on there’s still that sense of a missed opportunity that could have been had, had the chips been deep fried potato slices peeled on every side rather than leaving one to have more texture than the others. If they’ve not fully peeled then it’s a wedge in my book and not a chip.

The crushed peas were OK but not seasoned enough and almost too green. The tartare was also OK but a little too acidic and the lemon was far too small for what was a decent sized fish. They had posh vinegar, which was fine, but I’ve never heard anyone say that “this Sarsons is nowhere near as good as ...”, so I say stick to Sarsons. There was no bread and butter and I was sufficiently disappointed to not even bother asking for the tomato ketchup.

A great afternoon but the meal’s only redeeming feature were the chips, and they weren’t really chips at all.

Crown Street restaurant

A very short late October walk to the hometown staple for this review. A sit-down at Crown St costs £6.95 and comes with bread and butter plus tea - which is a shame because I don't like tea!

The fish tasted incredibly fresh with lovely big flakes but it might have been a tad overcooked. The batter was crispy and flavoursome and held its shape really well. Sadly the chips needed cooking for longer, which is a perennial problem at Crown St, but they tasted fresh even though they were anaemic. Didn't have any mushy peas this time so no comment to make on this but in terms of the extras the lemon was surprisingly big, the tartare was a packet of nonsense and the bread was a bog-standard sliced bread.

However this is the go to fish and chip restaurant in town and we will return many many times in the future.

Haworth Steam Brewery

An early October trip over the hill to Haworth and some fish and chips in the  Haworth Steam Brewery.

Playing the safety first game I elected for the small Yorkshire Fish & Chips, deep fried in their own “ True Tyke” Yorkshire beer batter, as I have far too much experience of not being able to finish the huge portions that are occasionally provided for a Yorkshire based F+C fan. It was a perfectly good portion and at £5.95 pretty good value.

The fish had a very good texture and taste, the batter was light and crispy but a little undercooked and lacking flavour. The chips seemed to have come from a factory and therefore didn't have much personality but were very well cooked. The peas tasted homemade with great texture, a real depth of colour and flavour - fine robust mushy peas! Sadly the tartare sauce was again of the off-the-shelf variety and this particular version had no texture and was far too vinegary. The lemon was a good size and came with a large and frustrating population of pips whilst the salt dispenser also brought its own ergonomic challenges and the vinegar was more off-the-shelf nonsense.

Overall a perfectly pleasant experience. The door was permanently open and as I'm not as hard as Yorkshire folk it made for a pretty cold and drafty eating experience which wasn't helped by having to listen to the joyous sound of a Radio 2 1960s music show, but the stunningly good beers from the pubs microbrewery were outstanding and will will be returning in the future - and I'll be having the F+C yet again!

I'd noticed that there was some contemporary art on at the Brontë Parsonage Museum which was recommended in the Guardian and as I got in free we went along to see 'Ways to the stone house' by Simon Warner. Most of the work used iPhones, sat on the displays in the rooms, to bring beautiful films of evocative Pennine landscapes into the spaces and there were some fabulous photos by Alexander Keighley, Bill Brandt and Fay Godwin on display in the exhibition space.