Frozen Mop Review

Being a relatively new resident of Knutsford, I asked a few friends where a good pub was in the area. The Frozen Mop was mentioned twice, so I took that as a good sign.

Located in Mobberley, The Frozen Mop sits idyllically on a small road amongst pastures and a few pretty (£1,000,000) cottages. The property itself, dating from 1880 is lovely and expansive with a nice patio for the forthcoming warm weather service. Inside is impressive. Primarily polished and sleek with clean architectural lines, it manages to retain many of the period, cosier features so traditional in pubs. The overall look is a nice balance of charming old and gleaming new.

Our waitress was friendly and knowledgeable but not overbearing—also a perfect balance. When she presented us with the menu we were impressed with its offerings. A few standards like pate with onion jam and toasts, fish and chips, braised shoulder of lamb and burgers, but more impressive were the creative, Italian influenced offerings; wood fired pizzas, spit roasted chickens, loads of pasta and main course salads, steaks, roasted meats and a nice selection of fish. It was quite honestly, hard to choose what to order.

My litmus test for restaurants is the Caesar salad. If they’ve got one on offer, I always try it. It is rare to find a restaurant that has the guts to toss up a really killer, Caesar—full of big, bold flavours. We ordered a small salmon Caesar (it’s offered in full and half portions). As the waitress placed the salad down on the table, I was hopeful.  The fish looked nicely cooked, (just done through) and the cos lettuce was evenly dressed. Then the chinks in the armour began to appear. Some of the lettuce was brown around the edges—maybe just a slip, I thought. As we dug into the salad, we found the croutons under the greens were soggy. But the damning fault was that the dressing did not have the punch, the zing, the guts for which I was hoping. Boo!

Next up was the crispy duck salad served with mouli, carrots, green onion and plum sauce. It was exactly as it said it would be; the duck was crispy, the vegetables were julienned and there was plum sauce. I felt that there was either far too much of the plum sauce on the duck or it was too sweet, or maybe both—in any case it took what could have been a great salad and brought it down a notch.

Chilli and fennel crusted squid was up next— I really interesting idea. The coating was full of chilli and fennel seed and was crunchy, but not warm enough. It was served in sort of wedges rather than rings. While I appreciate the desire to serve squid in a different shape, this wedge of calamari was tough, which is why it is often served in rings and fried—to hide the fact that it is quite a trick to cook calamari to be perfectly tender.

Lastly, we ordered a portion of their Belgium frites.  They arrived at room temperature and rather limp. Bummer...

I had such high hopes for The Frozen Mop, and I think with a bit of tweaking it could be back up to speed. The menu has such promise, the execution however needs attention. The atmosphere is excellent—it is a really nice place for a pint and the food is fine, just not to the standard that the location, atmosphere and interiors are.