Frog & Nightgown, Newport Pagnell

This unusually named pub is part of the Swan Revived hotel and shares some of it’s facilities including the loos and presumably a kitchen, but it does nonetheless have it’s own identity and entrance and does in fact feel very much like a traditional pub and certainly not like a hotel bar (of which there is a separate one in The Swan). The pub is not visible from the road but has a side entrance off of a passageway leading to the hotel car park. It’s a reasonably small, single room pub with quite a cosy ambience having red patterned carpet on the floor, a low beamed ceiling as well as some wooden support posts and some dark wood panelling on parts of the walls. Elsewhere the walls were cream plasterwork with some exposed brickwork at one end and there was also a large brick fire-place with a wood burning stove and a pile of logs ready for the colder weather. Various pictures of generic country scenes were on the walls and there were a couple of plasmas stuck up in the corner. These seemed a little out of place for a cosy pub, but initially at least they were only showing a music channel with low background volume. Unfortunately that changed though when the football started and I noticed a fixture list on the wall suggesting that sports feature prominently. Food wise, the menu offered a decent enough selection of “pub grub” dishes such as Steak, Gammon Egg & Chips, Mixed Grill, Chilli, Pie of the Day, etc., as well as a couple of specials chalked up on a board above the bar. Price wise these were perhaps a step up from your normal pub prices, with most choices being in the £10 - £12 range, and the gammon seeming particularly expensive at £12.25. I went for a Thai Chicken Curry (of the green variety as it happened, although the menu did not specify this) which at £12.50 was also one of the more expensive options. It was ok, but for that price it should be something quite special. It was a generous portion, adequately tasty but nothing outstanding and it came with a few salad leaves dumped on top which seemed an odd combination. Although the chicken was very tender, it also had that curious rubbery quality like you get in cheap Chinese takeaways suggesting that it is perhaps reformed rather than proper breast meat. The solitary beer on tap was Tribute, although a second pump was in the process of being changed. The solitary cider was Strongbow, unfortunately.