The Marmalade Pot
The Marmalade Pot
The Marmalade Pot
Riverside Drive
Dundee
Tel: 01382 566864
The question is, who exactly is Tom Cobbleigh? And why does he seem to have put his name to everything on the menu ("Tom's apple pie", "Tom's special chilli" and, most bizarrely, "Tom's onion pole").The other question is why "The Marmalade Pot" (an odd enough name for a village shop in the Lake District, never mind a chain pub off a busy road outside Dundee).
The answer to the second question is obvious enough to Dundee dwellers, who at one time or another have all experienced the taste of the city's famous Keiller marmalade. Either a case of a southern pub company cashing in or an attempt to put a local stamp on something about as area-specific as McDonald's. No matter. But Tom Cobbleigh? After our lunch, we're no closer to working that one out. And no one really cares, either.
Anyway, the interior thankfully does not enlarge on the Marmalade theme, save for a plaque or two. It's a spacious and reasonably comfortable bar-restaurant with the kind of faux traditional furnishings you usually find in travel inns. You have to order food yourself at the bar, which is a real pain, but service proves reasonably swift.
The menu seems to make a bit more effort than most of its kind, featuring everything from jacket potatoes to curry to stilton and tomato tartlets and even steak pie for the typical pub luncher. That's Tom's steak pie, of course.
There's also a selection of filled "bread plaits" which we assume are glorified rolls, although we don't order one to find out. The selection for vegetarians is good and everything comes in at about a �5, which includes chips or baked spud.
Still, we have to laugh at the tomato and coriander soup, which is most definitely tinned Heinz with a sprinkling of a dried green herb, which may or may not be what it claims. We also have to wait a while for foil-wrapped butter, by which time the soup is getting chilly.
Main courses of tortilla pie and curry look impressive but apparently taste less so. The tortilla pie has been microwaved to extinction and sticks nastily to the plate, while everything else is judged…er, fairly edible.
It's never a good idea to expect too much from such establishments, and this one is no worse than usual. In fact, it's even slightly better. And it's also in a prime spot to catch incoming travellers as well as nearby office workers - which should put plenty in Tom Cobbleigh's coffers.
- Melanie Henderson
