434. Charlton Arms Ludlow.

 

 I had seen an online communication from Ludlow’s The Charlton Arms which urged its customers to vote in another one of those online surveys with which the editor of the Good Food Guide is presently obsessed - this time to identify the restaurant serving the Best Sunday Roast - and as I was in Ludlow I thought I would dine there myself to try out their Sunday lunch.

 With no Sunday bus services operating in the town I had a long walk from Fishmore Hall where I was staying, Corve Street seems to become ever steeper, and I thought I deserved a treat after my physical effort. I was to be disappointed.

  The Charlton Arms is beautifully located at one end of Ludford Bridge with a fine view over the river Teme. It certainly has the location needed to win a Bib Gourmand. The dining room furniture is looking rather shabby chic but the service is very much on the ball and one is rapidly concentrating on the food rather than the internal decor.

  I decided not to have a starter as Sunday roast main courses are usually quite filling. Four slices of nicely cooked beef were served though it was not the tenderest I have eaten (the finest beef lunch in Ludlow, I think, must be that served at Mortimers in Corve Street). Roast potatoes, rather dry I thought, accompanied the beef along with a crisp, very puffed up Yorkshire pudding and what amounted to almost a macedoine of cubed root vegetables and decent gravy. Had I wanted to have any form of green, the only one on offer was cauliflower in a cheese sauce at an additional £3.50. I regret that the lunch did not really live up to my expectations even though it was very reasonably priced. I shall not be voting for the Charlton Arms’ Sunday lunch in the Good Food Guide’s competition I am afraid.

  I enjoyed my dessert of a well poached pear with vanilla ice cream and a warm chocolate sauce though there was little about it to make me feel that a Michelin recommendation was indicated.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛.

  After leaving the Charlton Arms, a necessarily slow walk back to Fishmore Hall, taking in some pleasing sites of old Ludlow, first over Ludford Bridge crossing the river Teme where Yorkists fought Lancastrians during the Wars of the Roses and then up the steep hill to the market square, then through the town and down Corve Street, past the excellent Mortimers, previously the Michelin starred La Becasse and before that, the two starred Hibiscus where Claude Bosi was chef, and then further down the hill past the former location of Shaun Hill’s The Merchant House, Ludlow’s first Michelin-starred restaurant and the birthplace of Ludlow’s now faded reputation as a centre of gastronomy. No sign I’m afraid of Ludlow returning to its former culinary prominence but it will be forever a location of the greatest importance in the history of dining out in the West Midlands.