The Luttrell Arms Hotel, Minehead

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Blackthorn _ left this review about The Luttrell Arms Hotel

A substantial and imposing stone built pub right at the top of Dunster’s attractive High Street, it also consists of a hotel and restaurant and is something of a rabbit warren of different rooms internally. Besides the internal space, there is also a sizeable and very attractive beer garden, with a good view of the castle and even it’s own mini-bar to keep punters refreshed.

The main bar area is towards the rear of the pub, and this has a cosy and atmospheric feel with old leaded windows looking out in to an internal courtyard, beams and horse brasses on the ceiling and a large stone fireplace with a pile of logs stacked up ready for the colder weather. A number of sets of antlers were mounted on the wall, as well as some guns. Numerous pewter tankards were hanging from the beams and old wooden pews provided much of the seating. Beyond this was another room that could perhaps loosely be described as a snug with another fireplace and a bread oven off to one side that had been pressed in to use as a bookshelf, numerous horse brasses and old black and white pictures of the locale. At the front was a more elegant room that was perhaps more of a resident’s lounge than a public bar.

The menu offered a decent selection of “pub grub” dishes, such as fish & chips, ham egg & chips, burger, etc., although these were a little more than your typical pub prices, with most of the main courses being somewhere around £12 - £14. My Cod, spring onion and coriander fishcakes were decent enough, and served with crème fraiche and a chilli jam.

Beers on tap were Otter Amber, Cotleigh Barn Owl and Exmoor Ale. Ciders were well represented with Thatcher’s Gold, Sharp’s Orchard and Cheddar Valley. Service at the bar could be a bit haphazard with only one person serving most of the time, but she seemed switched on and efficient and certainly did her best. Overall, whilst I wouldn’t normally consider a hotel bar my sort of pub, I really liked this with it’s olde worlde atmosphere and lovely gardens. Certainly it was my favourite out of all of the pubs in the village.

On 11^th May 2018 - rating: 8
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