Review: Muse, Cheltenham

When we walked in and scoped out the decor, the clientele and the menus I think we both felt reasonably confident that we’d pegged Muse. There’s a kind of up-market provincial brasserie with over-enthusiastic decor and well-dressed middle age punters where the menu is typically brave and full of all the right words (including last year’s food trends) and the execution is far less accomplished than the ambition.

So we were delighted to discover… but no, it was not to be that story. We were bang on the money, and left disappointed and over £100 poorer.

The free amuse was a nicely spiced pakora nugget and a swig of watermelon gazpacho that actually had us thinking we might be heading the right way. But my pissaladiere was a sad affair of nut-brown pastry with not enough confit onion on it and a quartet of overpowering anchovy fillets. Maureen’s samosa chat had a good, spicy samosa at its heart but was then incredibly mean on the sev and bizarrely lacking the yogurt sauce. Thus, twas a dry lump of a thing.

Maureen picked chalk stream trout and mussels in a moilee sauce. Well, this was a big bit of trout and had been cruelly cooked to fully opaque dryness. The moilee was thin and lacked any kind of punch. Cooking down for an older English audience? Maybe, maybe not. My slow braised duck leg was pretty good, with a nice deep wine gravy and a mixture of peas and salty bacon on the side. I’d been attracted by the hasselback potatoes. Surely the idea of painstakingly cutting lots of slices through the potato is to get more crisp crunchiness? Sadly this was just a potato, that had been sliced a lot. Baby gem lettuce charred on the grill must have seemed a good idea, but here the result was a kinda wilt-y burned thing.

Two courses will be around £30 each before drinks (we didn’t bother looking at desserts). They make a pretty decent cocktail and the wine list is reasonable if not inspiring. But the cooking is just nowhere near the ambition of the menu.