Dale House, Willenhall

When it comes to choosing a nice restaurant for a meal out Willenhall is not the first place that automatically springs to mind.

Indeed when I recommended Dale House to a friend of mine his reaction was he always tended to look towards Wolverhampton for somewhere to go rather than Willenhall despite it being just five minutes down the road from his house.

However, he has now revised his thinking after he joined me for a bite to end at the restaurant.

Over the years it has built up a brilliant reputation, thanks to owners Mike Seabridge and Adrian Hill, who took over in November 1999.

The two-floor restaurant is packed out most Saturday evenings and Sunday lunchtimes with booking recommended.

The building itself is also steeped in history. It dates back to the 1750s and was originally home to generations of the Hincks family who were yeomen farmers that developed a business in malting.

It still has all the original doors and locally made locks and allegedly its very own ghost which apparently occasionally shimmies across the upstairs landing.

We arrived at the pub on a busy Saturday evening and were shown into the bar where we were invited to order a drink while looking through the menu.

There is a main set menu to choose from together with a specials board offering customers more than enough choice.

Starters include soup, potato skins with bacon and cheese, melon, prawn cocktail, pate, deep fried mushrooms, king prawns with scollops and mushrooms and goujons of plaice.

For the main course a large number of customers like to choose from the carvery but there are also other options such as lamb shank, sirloin steak, chicken in a cream and white wine sauce, poached salmon, roast duck with orange sauce and deep fried scampi.

There is also at least one vegetarian option every day.

All the main courses are served with vegetables and for a small extra cost you can order items such as onion rings and mushrooms.

After around 10 minutes, which was about the right time in which to make our choice, the friendly staff came back to the table to take our order.

Despite being tempted by the starters we decided to give them a miss to ensure we had enough room later on for a dessert.

I opted for turkey with all the trimmings while my friend - who was unable to make his mind up - decided to have both turkey and beef.

Our plates were piled high with vegetables and potatoes but it didn't take long for us both to polish off our meals.

At £7.95 the carvery is reasonably good value and is definitely one of the best roast meals I've had in a long time.

After a short break the staff brought the pudding menu to our table and again it was not easy deciding what to eat.

Puddings are priced £3.95 or £2.50 for ice cream. People can also choose to have cheese and biscuits which also costs £3.95.

Still feeling full from the main course I decided to go for the strawberry ice cream while my friend plumped for the slightly more hearty apple crumble and custard. Both puddings were delicious and rounded off our meal nicely.

Together with a glass of red wine and a pint of guinness our total bill came to just over £28 which in my book is very reasonable.

As for my dining companion, he is now planning to recommend the Dale House to a number of his other friends as well as his parents so the already busy restaurant can expect to have to welcome even more new customers through its doors in the next few weeks.

Food is served from 12 noon to 2pm every day except Saturday, and dinner is served from 7.30pm to 9.30pm, every day except on Sunday.

ADDRESS

Dale House Restaurant, Bilston Street, Willenhall

Tel 01902 602902

By Emma Tate