Peter Viney's Blog

I’m calling it pre-theatre, but this applies to any restaurant with a limited short menu choice of “today” meals. A short menu is a good sign. Stuff should be fresh.

We frequent theatres with short pre-theatre menus. Often restaurants near theatres also offer Pre-Theatre, but I’m focussing on ones within the theatre. They have a major advantage, You stroll to your seat. An announcement tells you when doors are open and a five minute warning too. At the RSC and Shakespeare’s Globe, Friends / Members get a 10% discount in the restaurant. You don’t get that at Chichester. In the case of the RSC, at six to eight meals a year, the discount pays for our membership.

Partly because of the view of St Paul’s, I rate The Swan at the Globe as best, with (recently) the Minerva downstairs restaurant at Chichester a close second, with the Royal Shakespeare Company RSC Rooftop as third, though the RSC have been well below par all this year. That’d due to bad menu choices. They always have excellent staff. True of all three.

The Theatre Royal Haymarket is extremely good, but we only ate there once. The National Theatre? It keeps changing and ranges from excellent to indifferent. A decent theatre restaurant is important. I’m sure one of the reasons the old Southampton Nuffield on the university campus foundered was because there was nowhere either to eat or park.

There are basic points. A few years back, the Chichester Brasserie had a four or five choice menu. But they put chorizo on the cod fish dish. Bad move. A lot of people choose fish but not meat. Then chorizo was in a pasta dish on the same menu AND on a starter. Difficult if you don’t like or eat chorizo. (See below. They’re still doing it.)

Equally careless is having a fish starter and a fish main course and putting shellfish (a common allegy) on both of the fish items. Shellfish is not acceptable for Jews and Muslims. Then the vegetarian options will be butternut squash risotto or tomato pasta.

Both are cheap to make and stupendously unimaginative. Vegetarian and vegan food can be better.

Yes, you can say ‘take the chorizo sauce’ off the cod’ or ‘take the crab sauce off the haddock’ but then you’ve just paid a lot for a meal and all you have is an unadorned bit of white fish. I don’t think any of the restaurants above are boil in the bag / microwave, but that’s the test – if you ask to take the sauce off or put it in a side dish, and they can’t do it, it is pre-prepared. You just bought a ready meal.

Poole Lighthouse: Artful Salt Pig

This was the reason I wrote this article. I then looked at the others.

Poole Lighthouse has had a dire self-service restaurant for years. We were thrilled to see it had been taken over by The Salt Pig chain for a limited pre-theatre menu. BUT I think they got several things wrong.

First, the old counter service restaurant had shepherds pie and fish and chips simmering on the counter with chips and vegetables. It looked like a school dinner canteen and smelled like it. Salt Pig have retained that hot counter. It reeks of “school dinner” when you walk in. I don’t know whether they do counter service as well, but it looked like part at least of the table service meals were being plated there. Mistake. Hide the warming dishes in the kitchen. We all know not everything is freshly cooked but you don’t display that.

An example is the breakfast buffet. In Stratford-Upon-Avon where we stay more than six times a year, we alternate between the two IHG hotels, the Crowne Plaza and the Indigo. Prices see-saw dramatically between them and we choose the cheaper one, which is normally the Crowne Plaza (unless they have a major conference). The Crowne Plaza has one of the best open self-serve breakfast buffets. The Indigo boasts ‘hot breakfast cooked freshly to order’. So the cold section is self-service. You order your hot breakfast from a server and it arrives in 90 seconds while you’re still eating fruit or muesli. It’s absolutely obvious that the buffet is just behind the kitchen door, and it’s not freshly-cooked. It’s merely ‘put on the plate for you.’ Don’t reveal that’s what you’re doing. The Indigo should wait 5 to 10 minutes before serving the hot dish.

The Salt Pig should take note.

You pre-pay for two or three courses. OK.

We went on a symphony orchestra Wednesday. Booked for 18.00. We arrived 17.50, ordered quickly. The starter arrived at 18.30. That meant 40 minutes waiting with the smell of the dinners. There were only two servers, it was full, they were working their socks off, were pleasant, but were short-staffed by at least two servers. I can see the issue. The RSC and Chichester nearly always have something running, usually two plays at a time. Poole goes for one day stand up or music here and one day music there, which must make staffing the restaurant a nightmare. Poole rarely have something running all week. On a Tuesday night with only the small cinema operating, how do you run a restaurant? Then Wednesday is packed for the symphony concert, The RSC picks up non theatre tourist trade, Poole Lighthouse is isolated on the wrong side of a dual carriageway, There is no passing trade. If you want a meal in Poole you go to the old end of the High Street.

The menu:

I chose the Roasted Fig. This was an item that was probably a pre-prepared lump  with warm pancetta wrapped around it later. It was OK, too bland, but the rocket salad was pale, dry and wilted. At home it would have gone in the compost bin. Take one greasy cheese lump chuck some past it’s sell-by rocket in a circle and drizzle balsamic vaguely in an outer circle.

The “dusted squid: was worse. Two or three manky rocket leaves, a pot of (allegedly) “Homemade” garlic mayo. Three tiny slices of squid in a thick batter. You could buy a pack of calamari in a supermarket, cut it up and do four portions to sell.

The main event.

This is bad planning. You have five choices.

Two are beef.
One is linguine with chorizo.
Trout
Mushroom risotto.

So three choices have beef or pork. Just ask any airline why they always serve chicken.

Hindus and those like me who don’t touch beef since BSE, don’t eat beef.

Then Jews and Muslims don’t eat pork. Chorizo is pork.

In planning a menu of five choices, you shouldn’t have three pork and beef. Just the one of each is maximum. Chicken or lamb or duck for the third meat dish.

Chorizo and scallops are cheap filler. Avoid altogether.

Then the mushroom risotto may be vegetarian, but if I were planning just one vegetarian dish, I’d try and cover vegans too, so not a creamy sauce or Italian cheese.

However, don’t fall into the RSC Rooftop trap and serve “vegan cheese.” Call soya or qorn by its real name. You cannot have ‘Vegan Parmesan’ because Parmesan must contain animal rennett. The RSC have it labelled vegan Parmesan on the menu, vegan Italian-cheese flavoured substitute is more accurate. Vegan “Bufalo mozzarella” is really daft. Bufala means ‘from buffalo’ not some qorn or soya product constructed by chemists in a lab. If you want to serve that kind of thing use the brand name “Notzarella’. Sainburys sell it. And many vegetarians and even vegans avoid qorn. Soya too. You can do excellent vegan or vegetarian food with lentils or beans.

My companion described the “Pulled BBQ Beef Pie” as merely a lumpy version of cottage pie and left most of it. ‘Very salty’ was the verdict.

I had roast trout thermidor. The trout was a decent, even generous piece. The tiny garlic and mint potatoe cake had been sitting around though and was cool to cold. There were roasted peppers, slimy roasted peppers in a sauce, but the whole was soaked in either miso or soy sauce. There was way too much of it. The trout tasted only of soy sauce. I felt I’d had a salt overdose and could taste nothing else all evening. They ruined a good piece of trout. Also, soya is a common allergy. Why wasn’t it mentioned on the menu? Anyway, they upended the bottle on it. The spring cabbage was good. But I thought ‘Thermidor’ was a creamy wine or brandy sauce with some mustard and cheese, not a cup full of miso.

We didn’t do dessert. Four choices. No cheese option. I can see the issue at the fixed pre-paid price, as those who do offer cheese usually ask a supplement. That’s not unusual. It happens with steak, and if you’re paying for drinks they’re extra anyway.

The reason why the Salt Pig is so welcome in Poole Lighthouse is that the Poole restaurant area, the quay and old High Street, is too far away from the theatre. There is nothing decent as competition within a short walk. I wish them every success in getting things right. They weren’t there last week.

Royal Shakespeare Company Rooftop Restaurant

Let’s analyse another. Royal Shakespeare Company this week (we’ve had this one):

They have six choices, not four or five. I think this one gets it wrong too.

Starter

Five are meat and fish free. Too much vegan? It’s fine with me, but it is over-balanced.

Main course

There is only one fish dish. That’s shellfish linguine. I’m mildly allergic to shellfish. Fish is my first choice.

Then there are TWO vegan dishes out of six. You don’t need two even in a Woke theatre. Last time we had a vegetarian with us who complained that they’re all doing vegan to cover both vegan and vegetarian, and as a vegetarian she’d like some (real) cheese or egg. Then the aubergine has miso (which often has MSG). My companion had a reaction to it. The next time she had the butternut squash ravioli, which was OK but extremely dull.

The Chicken Caesar is cold. OK, but it’s November.

There’s just one pork. Fine. There’s lamb (I had that. It was very good).

The Swan at Shakespeare’s Globe

That’s different because you can go for the set menu or a la carte. We like the Swan so much that we go there whether we’re going to The Globe or not. I’ve twice met visitors from abroad there for lunch.

This is the short River View Menu (November 2026)

Starters. Just three but one vegetarian, one fish, one meat. That’s the right way to do it. Though I have really bad reactions to creme fraiche, but that seems very rare.

MAIN COURSE

Vegetarian, fish, meat again. Anything with butternut squash is really boring though.

I think they make two basic mistakes here.

First why has the Fish Pie got brown crab mash? Being a pie it won’t be a side dish. I avoid shellfish. Wouldn’t eat it.

Coq au Vin. Good, every meat eater eats chicken. I’d choose this, but a Jewish friend wouldn’t because of the pancetta. It’s fair to point out that the Globe has a much more multi-cultural audience than either Stratford or Chichester.

Two desserts. I’d opt for two courses anyway.

Chichester Minerva Brasserie

Online, November 2026

Starters are good, meat, fish, two vegetarian, one of which is vegan.

BUT ‘vegan Feta’? I’d put ‘Vegan Feta Substitute’. It’s not Feta.

MAIN COURSES

Chicken, Duck, Fish, Vegetarian.

The chicken is good.
The duck leg adds pancetta (pork) but it’s only on one dish out of four (and I like pancetta)

The fish. A double “no.” First it has chorizo crumb, so out for fish eaters who avoid meat. And Jews and Muslims.
Then the shellfish veloute cuts it out for allergies and shellfish is one of the most common. Jews and Muslims again. Really bad short menu dish. It would have been fine without the chorizo and shellfish.

The celeriac steak. Had it. Yes, very good vegetarian choice.

The desserts are good. They present local Sussex cheeses. Had the cheese board before. Very good, though a local Dorset cheeseboard in Poole (Sage Bistro) was much tastier than either Sussex or Warwickshire (RSC). That’s because Dorset and Hampshire cheese is intrinsically better.

National Theatre

They have had a long succession of tapas and tapas style restaurants. They keep changing the franchise. The quality has been varied too. It’s currently “Forza Wine” with Italian “small plates” which is not much different to the Spanish tapas a few years ago.

There’s a reminder there to tell restaurants about allergies. I didn’t at the National once and spent the play itching a rash on my arms. I had ordered fish, without shellfish, but they used the same oil for the fish and shellfish, which is something that Fish at Borough Market tells me they have separate deep fryers..

The full service 2 or 3 course is the Lasdun. It’s hard to get in. This is a sample menu online rather than an actual one.

They tick a lot of boxes, as a three choice but visitors might not know that Spenwood is cheese and Hereford is beef.

At £35 for two courses I would expect a bit of fish, not a fishcake. Smoked haddock and cod fishcake is a pub bar meal staple, not a good restaurant. There’s no meat option except beef. The Swan at The Globe is cheaper for two courses, but for us, also as good or better. Fish not fishcake.

Slow service

Back to slow service. The whole point of pre-theatre is getting it served, done and dusted in an hour. or not much more. With a limited choice menu, you should be able to get the starter on the table in 10 to 15 minutes. Cold starters are a wise choice for the menu. Once at Chichester, we arrived at 12.30, got our starter before 12.40 and by 13.40 still hadn’t had our main course. We asked (for the third time) when they admitted they had forgotten to register it on the system. They said they would start it and have it ready in 15 minutes. I pointed out the play started at 14.15 and I was not going to wolf down the main course at 13.55. I was shocked that the manager ‘just charged for the starter’ and put a service charge on it. I told them to take the service charge off, but added that a good restaurant would not charge at all having wasted an hour of our time when we could simply have gone and had a sandwich at the coffee bar in the main theatre. The Ivy was about to open in Chichester and I said, ‘You won’t be able to do this when there’s an Ivy down the road.’ Since then they have improved vastly both in food and service. The RSC should be aware They now have an Ivy nearby. They will have to up their game too.

I’m not a massive Ivy fan, but they do open near theatres. The Tower Bridge one next door to The Bridge Theatre is the best of the Ivy chain (it’s the one they use for training). There’s also one right by the Mousetrap theatre in Covent Garden.