A gherkin in my gusset

Tall story: The Cricket Inn’s posh burger

BURGERS, bloody burgers, was my attitude when restaurant reviewing for a living so I seldom ordered them. There were three good reasons: They were boring, ubiquitous and it was extremely unlikely the chef had ‘lovingly hand crafted’ them as I once saw written on a menu.

Instead he got them ready-made from the butcher and it would have been a miracle if he gave the man a recipe and another miracle if the butcher kept to it. The buns, of course, would have come from the baker, the tomato sauce from Heinz and the pickles from the cash & carry so what on earth was there to review? The pictures on the walls and the overhead model railway, that’s what.

Now those days are over and I can relax a bit. We are lunching at Richard Smith’s Cricket Inn at Totley and while the set menu looks tempting my wife wants fish and chips. I once wrote that for a top chef Smithy probably sells more of this dish than anything and anyone else. But my eye was caught by the burger, what must be the second most popular pub order.

I didn’t feel too guilty as it looked as if someone had sat down and thought about this dish and the Cricket wasn’t going to bowl me a googly. The pattie comprised three cuts of beef, short rib, brisket and chuck, all of which carry a lot of flavour. “Home minced,” it said on the menu just to let you know they had made it themselves. It was sandwiched between a bought-in bun, but a superior one, a brioche from the Welbeck Bakery.

It had all the trimmings, melted Swiss cheese, a gherkin, Thornbridge Beer BBQ sauce, tomato salsa and what was described as purple sauerkraut but tasted no more than sliced purple cabbage. The brioche was good. The dish, with skin-on skinny fries, was £12.

I liked it. I particularly enjoyed the pattie, about 6oz, which tasted really beefy and was coarsely minced so there was plenty to get your teeth into and a lovely burst of mouthfeel. It was well seasoned and I fancied there was a hint of cumin, although that could have been from the curried lentils which unaccountably came with my wife’s fish and chips.

For another £2 I had an extra trimming: pickled onion rings. Not pickled onions cut into rings and battered but lightly pickled rings of onion battered. Nice but they needed to be a tad stronger pickled for me.

While my wife had her food on a plate I got mine on one of those trendy slates, set in a board. It could have been worse: a shovel or a flat cap. Burgers are not the easiest thing to eat. They disintegrate like a bomb full of shrapnel and a board is not big enough to catch the fall-out. This burger towered up higher than it was wide. And the inevitable happened. I got bits in my lap.

The front of house sympathised but said the kitchen claimed it was all about presentation. I’ll remember that next time I retrieve a shard of flying gherkin from the gusset region.

Cricket Inn, Penny Lane, Totley, Sheffield S17 3AZ. Tel: 0114 236 5256. Web: www.cricketinn.co.uk

The Cricket Inn on Penny Lane, Totley

Cross words at the Cross Scythes

The Cross Scythes at Totley

FOR pub landlord Terry Groves it could all have gone terribly wrong. His local paper ran a story online listing the Cross Scythes at Totley as among 11 Sheffield eating places which got a big fat zero in the city council’s Scores on the Doors hygiene ratings.

Within hours it was on social media across the city. The Sheffield Forum website linked to it under the heading ‘Sheffield food places to avoid.’ There among a group of grubby looking takeaways was a pub with a gastro reputation in a posh suburb. So did trade slump? Quite the opposite. “A lot more people know about us now,” he told me.

The ratings run online all year but get an annual publicity boost in January. It’s part of a national scheme. Newspapers use it as a hook to run stories and while some of the places on the list might not raise eyebrows the inclusion of the Cross Scythes, which had a reputation as a gastropub under a previous head chef, Simon Ayres, certainly did.

In better times The Star would have told a reporter to ring up and find out what was going on. Instead it ran a series of 11 photographs, online only, with brief details, requiring users to click through to discover each one. As one disgruntled person commented on Sheffield Forum, this is ‘clickbait’ which would have exposed him to numerous adverts, according to his adblocker. It’s a deliberate way to earn the website money from more ‘clicks’ but lazy journalism..

So what was the story which The Star failed to find? Terry, aged 63, and his wife Glyn will be well known to local pubgoers. They ran a couple of Beefeaters, including the Mossbrook at Eckington, which they opened, as well as the Bradway Hotel and the Nelson on Furnival Gate, re-opening it as the revamped Grape Treaders and Hop Pickers.

They took a break from the trade to raise a family but were running the Shepherds Rest at Lower Bagthorpe in Nottinghamshire when they took over Enterprise Inns’ Cross Scythes last October. They now look after both.

“We knew about the zero rating. The previous tenant had said the chef had taken home the paperwork and forgotten it. Hmm. I suppose it was partly my fault I didn’t tell Environmental Health we had moved in but we were running two places and Christmas was coming up,” Terry said.

When the story went online (it hasn’t appeared in print) Terry went on Facebook to complain The Star was being unfair and to explain the situation. He’s asked, twice, for a new inspection but the council has a backlog. Terry is sanguine. The pub’s Facebook page has had plenty of hits and shares and comments have been “90 per cent positive. Until this happened I hadn’t realised the power of social media. A lot more people know about us. Some have given us five star reviews out of solidarity.”

Terry believes the rating was a paperwork problem: that gets an automatic zero. The kitchen was reasonably clean when he arrived but some equipment needed replacing. Staff training has been improved and he is happy for anyone to inspect the kitchen.

As he and Glyn moved in the previous chef walked out. Local boy Connor Lightfoot has moved up from sous to head chef. These days the Totley boozer isn’t going for gastropub status but is happy with pie, tapas and curry nights with a new specials and a la carte menu just being introduced.

Locals have rallied round on Facebook. “You’re my local. The food is always spot on,” says one. Terry reflects: “You know, there really is no such thing as bad publicity!”

Web: http://www.cross-scythes.com

Tapas at the Cross Scythes

FOOTNOTE: The Cross Scthes has now changed hands and is run by Scott Philliskirk , formerly of the Hidden Gem.