CityLife

Summat To Ate

Summat To Ate
Hindley
February 2010

Average three-course cost: £22

Overall: 3/5
Decor: 3/5, Service: 3/5, Food: 3/5

Everyone knows how to cook a good steak – or thinks they do. I’m sure that the majority of dishes sent back to a restaurant kitchen are slices of beef not cooked ‘properly’.

But at Summat To Ate, on the outskirts of Wigan, your steak comes exactly as you like it because . . . you cook it yourself.

But first, let’s get that name out of the way. For those unfamiliar with Lanky speak, “summat to ate!” is the punchline of any number of jokes which affectionately take the pie-crust out of Wiganers’ love of the baked pastry and meat parcel. For example: ‘What time is it when a pie appears on Wigan Parish Church clock?’, or ‘a Wiganer had a pie-shaped watch. What time was it?’. And I could go on.

It might be mildly amusing and the restaurant neatly extends the joke with a couple of clocks on its walls stopped just before eight – geddit? – but sophisticated it ain’t.

However, I suppose there might not be a big requirement for anything fancy-pants in this former mining village, despite it having just had a £1m revamp of its main shopping street.

The restaurant is part of that redevelopment – a sleek, trendy reworking of a handsome, if functional building, looking like many an independent coffee house up and down the land, with internal mocha tones and a couple of photos of local scenes to ‘keep it real’.

The restaurant’s USP is ‘the hot rock experience’. Black, polished squares of volcanic stone are heated in a special oven to 440C and you do the cooking on them at your table.

The waiters trot out from the kitchen holding them on platters with the concentrated look of a tight-rope walker – you don’t want to spill that in anyone’s lap! – and your meat or fish comes on a separate side plate. Or it should.

But you don’t cook starters yourself. My companion’s buffalo mozzarella with tomatoes on bruschetta (£4.25) was fine, if unexciting, but I had issues with my Bury black pudding in a filo parcel on top of a portobello mushroom.

The pastry was rather tough and the pudding was a tad oily, though that is always better than being too dry. The large flat mushroom was also a little overfacing – better a handful of ceps – but at £3.75 it wasn’t a bad price.

Irritating

The kids’ menu looks better than the average dining pub with all the mains – including chicken risotto with wild mushrooms or a 4oz rump steak with chips (costing £4.95), though there is a strict under 10s only rule. For obvious reasons children shouldn’t really take ownership of a rock as they are seriously hot.

Ours were plonked down in front of us with our food already sizzling on them – 8oz prime fillet (£16.95) for me, a tuna steak (£10.75) for her. This meant that before we picked up a fork it was well on its way to cooking.

For the tuna this was fatal. Tuna is best cooked rare, with a little searing on each side keeping the fish juicy and fleshily red in the middle.

But the phenomenal heat of the rock meant that this fish was already cooked through and as grey as its tinned cousin. It still retained some flavour though, and it came with a refreshing garlic and tomato concasse.

My meat was also cooking quickly so I swiftly transferred it to the side plate.

I like steak done with minimal interference – cut off its horns and wipe its rear on a hot oiled frying pan and I’m happy. So you’d think that this way of cooking would suit me.

The meat had a good flavour but I found the whole process of preparing it a little awkward. I like to cook a steak quickly then let it rest for a minute before it tucking in. Here, cutting a chunk off, transferring it from side plate to rock and back again, next to the raw meat was a little unpalatable.

But maybe I had just not got the hang of it – after all, I’m the type of chef who doesn’t like anyone within a 100m radius and leaves a mound of washing up when I just poach an egg.

My main also came with lacklustre veg, a stodgy, unappetising mustard mash and a passable peppercorn sauce at £1.50 extra.

For the unadventurous there is also a selection of mains that the chef prepares.

Wine is all under £20 and we had a Argento Malbec (£14.95). But don’t drink too much and lose concentration – those rocks are 250C even after your meal. And that was one of the problems. The fat and stray bits of meat and fish left on the rock still sizzled away long after we had taken our fill, burning and smoking over the table.

Desserts here are run-of-the mill. The Eton Mess was unavailable – no strawberries apparently. Well, it is the depths of winter and at least they didn’t try to make it without, which a pub I once visited tried to do!

The sticky toffee pudding would have been an acceptable substitute if the smell of frazzled flesh wasn’t still lingering in the air. And I suppose that is the problem with Summat To Ate.
The hot rock novelty is initially entertaining but could quickly turn into an irritating gimmick – especially if the rest of the food is not good enough to overcome that.

Though it has to be said that as you do most of the cooking yourself, you can’t really blame the chef.

Summat To Ate, 48-50 Market Street, Hindley (01942 255150, summat-to-ate.co.uk).

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