I go out for meals a lot, the main goal is to try new places in the local area and usually we find some hidden gems. My partner and I often drive past The Dusty Miller when we go to another local restaurant and have always thought about visiting and trying out their menu, and on one warm Saturday evening after hanging out with our friends we decided to give it a go and try to enjoy a nice meal out.
The Dusty Miller is situated just outside of Harlow town and boasts a Gastro Pub menu with things for everyone to enjoy and has been growing in popularity since 2022 when it was opened. According to their website they have four different menu’s one of which is the main menu that can change depending on what’s available and the menu itself often changes and is updated weekly to keep items fresh and after having a wonderful experience at the Norfolk Lavender Cafe I was looking forward to enjoying something new.
Which is all well and good, but I cant say that I had a good experience with them, Perhaps this was my own personal tastes but I viewed many of their amazing meals on Instagram which made us decide to go along and try their menu. But when I was there it just didn’t live up to the social media hype I saw.
We both ordered starters, I had southern fried chicken strips and Neil had Arancini with Nduja which we both enjoyed and was surprised at just how big the starters were. Everything was going so well until I cut into my third and final chicken strip and noticed that the chicken was still pink in the middle, Being smart I put that to one side and they took our plates away and quickly came back to apologise about the chicken.
Apologising is fine but surely you need to make sure the chicken is fully cooked before it left the kitchen…
For mains we was all so undecided, I liked the look of the fish and chips but decided on a buttermilk chicken burger with fries and Neil went for a sirloin steak medium rare, The mains looked amazing when they came out, but, and this might be down to my own personal tastes, found that the batter on the chicken burger simply tasted funny, it acted almost like cheese and fell off the chicken, so I tried to eat some of that but after the first experience of the chicken I was a little nervous about eating it, the chicken itself was this time dry and overcooked and a complete opposite of the starter.
Neil’s steak wasn’t medium rare and ended up being a bit of disappointment, he did mention that the mushroom that was on the plate tasted lovely and the fries, that we both got, were an okay part of the dish, I did notice him struggling to chew the steak which is a shame.
Now for pudding, I was feeling a little bit full, or sick I wasn’t sure by that point, I wanted something simple and easy for my pudding and thought how could they get ice cream wrong… but they did, Now I am all for alternative and inclusive food, but when I order ice cream.. I expect dairy unless other whys requested.. but I was presented with vegan ice cream, that was just so sweet I couldn’t eat it. Neil however had sticky toffee pudding which he did enjoy but that also had the vegan ice cream on top.
When I decide to write a review of our meal out I really hoped for more of a positive experience, but I didn’t expect to come away from it worried that I was feeling sick from food poisoning, we jointly decided that we weren’t going back in the future, perhaps it wasn’t something I wasn’t used too..
But still… who is used to pink chicken during a meal out?
Sarah
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