The Old Station Inn is the prettiest little pub sitting on the Wells Road at Hallatrow offering all the best in hospitality, great food and a large selection of beverages including for the purists, real ales.  It has recently been taken over by Neville and Debbie King (he is the chef and she runs the front of house) and these two are just made for the job, warm and friendly, they like people and obviously can’t do enough for their customers.  The bar was very busy both with customers and bric-a-brac to keep you amused; my favourite piece was sign that said “keep Bristol tidy – eat a seagull for breakfast” as many a time my car has been target practice for the gulls in the city centre.

As a second string to its bow, the pub has extensive gardens in which stands an authentic Great Western railway carriage cleverly adapted to house the restaurant.  I’ve always wanted to have dinner on the Orient Express and this looked to be the next best thing and more within our budget.  The carriage is nicely old-fashioned with rich red high back chairs, crisp white linen cloths (Hercule Poroit would be at home here twiddling his moustache whilst he mused on the dastardly murder aboard the 8.15 pm to Pottle Whistle Halt) and has its own bar.  We settled comfortably and went through the menu; Neville’s expertise gained through working around the world in some of the best five star hotel kitchens could be found in the ‘specials’; lobster bisque, or crab cakes for starters, and a risotto with jumbo shrimps, scallops and chorizo.  Alongside these though were plenty of traditional dishes to tempt us. 

Indecision was the order of the day but helped by Debbie, who suggested we had a medley of starters so as not to miss tasting anything, we then chose to follow, char-grilled fillet steak with wild mushroom sauce, crushed potatoes and mixed vegetables for him and ‘pie of the day’ which happened to suit me very well in that it was chicken, leek and ham, served with chips.  The main courses are very reasonable, the steak at £14.95 and the pie £7.95 together with a bottle of house red wine at £12.95. 

The starter medley was amazing; giant shrimps speared together with scallops and chorizo, crab cakes with lemon butter and a dinky little cup of lobster bisque, a cornucopia of delicate flavours all on one plate, with some vine tomatoes and mozzarella to complete the magic.  Neville certainly is the master when it comes to the preparation of seafood and the lobster bisque was outstanding.  We entertained ourselves between courses by saying fiddley-de, fiddley da, as you do when going over the points and thinking of as many songs about trains as possible in one minute.  We were having a thoroughly good time and it was probably just as well that the high back chairs blot you out from other diners.

Our main courses came and proved equally as special as the starter.  The steak was served in an enormous round dish, atop the vegetables and was cooked perfectly.  I delved through the crisp and flaky crust lid of my pie and found meltingly tender pieces of chicken and ham in a creamy white sauce – just the thing for mopping up with your chips!   Our journey was drawing to a close but not before I had sampled the croissant bread and butter pudding whose fame has already spread apparently (Neville rang up the local garage and when he gave the pub’s name, the owner said “ah, the place that does the great bread and butter pudding”).  Anyway, I agreed with the local garage owner and all in all we had an excellent meal and a lovely evening.

Jacquie Vowles