Location: 88 Chesil St, Winchester, SO23 0HX

Web site: http://theblackrat.co.uk/

Telephone number: 01962 844465

Date of visit: 6 October 2009

Approx. cost per head: £25 plus

Comments on wine list/beer: Interesting list with a few gems. Mark up slightly below average

Review:

On a dark and windy wednesday night in Winchester when other restaurants and pubs are nearly empty, this place is half full.

The restaurant is owned by the same people as the Black Boy and it used to be a gay pub – so I was told.

The Black Rat is mainly open for dinner and weekend lunches. The cooking is “continental” english i.e. its multiple ingredients with a slight twist.

We had the Pollock Croquttes which were moist and plum and an interesting dish of pork with rillettes and pate en croute or a sausage roll filled with pate (thats what I think it should be called) which I liked very much.

Main courses was duck, onglet steak (I always thought that this is a skirt steak but Tony of Vicars in Reading told me that this is the muscle wrapped around  the bladder –  to squeeze the bladder) and Tuscan vegetarian platter. The steak and duck were cooked pink with ample side vegetables. The Tuscan platter was disappointing – it tasted of the ingredients (bread, mushroom, red cabbage and cheese) with no “special come together effect”.

The deserts were very visual and according to my friends excellent.

Eddie – eddie@bottlesandcooks.com