The White Hart, Northampton

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Blackthorn _ left this review about The White Hart

A traditional looking, stone-built village pub, it consists of a good sized beer garden, car park and a couple of bar areas. It’s a fairly old pub, and a plaque inside the door proclaims that the village was mentioned in the Doomsday book, although the pub is obviously far more recent than that. The young barmaid who initially served me seemed very dopey and lacking any personality, but the waitress/barmaid in the restaurant was much more proficient.

The bar area to the left has a wood effect lino on the floor with some deep red paintwork and an old TV perched on a window sill. There was a pool table to one side and the whole room had a slightly sweaty aroma unfortunately, which meant I decided to investigate the other room, which was more geared up for dining with all the tables being laid up with menus and cutlery. This had something of a softer décor with green carpeting on most of the floor, some exposed stone walling and a small brick fire-place to one side along with the usual collection of horse brasses and copper jugs. There were plenty of wooden beams on the ceiling and support posts around the perimeter, although somewhat unusually these appeared to have been constructed within the room rather than being a structural part of it. A sunken area was off to one side which was another unusual feature. This had whitewashed stone walls and some bench seating on three sides, although what it’s original purpose would have been I’m not sure. To finish off the unusual feature list, an old well had been incorporated in to the bar counter with some lighting to enable you to look in to it’s depths.

Food wise, there was a decent selection of dishes from the “pub grub” genre with options such as Pie of the day, Fish & Chips, Burger, Scampi, etc., and these were mostly priced around the £8 - £10 range. There was also a small specials board and a Wednesday Steak Night, although with the only options here being a couple of different size rumps, it didn’t strike me as too exciting. My Lemon & Ginger Sea Bass Fish Cakes with a Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce were a decent enough dish, quite tasty and a generous portion, although the uniform and very flat shape of the fish cakes didn’t exactly shout home made.

Beers on tap were Greene King IPA, London Pride and the seasonal Tick’T T’Ride from the Potbelly brewery in Kettering which is a new one on me. The solitary cider was Strongbow, unfortunately.

On 28^th August 2014 - rating: 6
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