newcastlecentric

The Lounge, opposite Central Station, is a jack of many trades.

It’s a bar for the after-work crowd in the evenings, a cafe bar by day and moonlights as a tacky meat market at weekends, where downstairs in the basement you may find topless dancers on a match day, or the grab-a-granny crowd on Friday and Saturday night, bopping away to horrendously cheesy music.

Tackiness aside, during the day the lounge is a perfectly civilised place to go for a bite to eat. Each table has a mini TV at it, so you can catch the latest on Sky Sports (if you’re so inclined), and the music helps to lift your mood if you’re taking a well deserved lunch break from work – as long as you’re open to the offerings of the Now albums and can appreciate small doses of pop chart.

We chose The Lounge because of their new menu promotion called Mix & Mash. It offers a choice of good ol’ British fodder, from doorstep sandwiches, fish pie and steak and ale pie to fish and chips or any two of numerous flavoured sausages; all served with your choice from four types of mashed potatoes and a selection of gravies.

Newcastlecentric popped along with a friend and we both chose the steak and ale pie, for fear of food envy. We were given the option of either mustard mash, cheesy mash, plain mash or mint mash, alongside the choice of onion gravy, mint gravy or good ol’ plain gravy. We went with mustard mash and no gravy with our pie, whilst our friend chose the cheesy mash, so we could compare.

On arrival, the steak and ale pie had the appearance of a giant pork pie. The pastry was thick, short crust pastry, browned to perfection. On slicing it open to see if we’d be disappointed by the lack of filling inside, we were both delighted to find our pies were filled to the brim.

The steak melted in your mouth, the ale gravy inside was rich and tasty and there was a slight twist as the chef had used whole silverskin onions and mushrooms, adding texture and flavour.

Both the cheesy and mustard mash didn’t disappoint either - although they were served with an unnecessarily giant sprig (more like a bush) of rosemary poking out, as though trying to posh up a dish that was supposed to say home cooked like your Gran used to make. We don’t remember our Gran decorating her home cooking with a herbaceous border.

We were left comfortably stuffed - if you need some good old comfort food, The Lounge’s Mix & Mash menu will sort you out for around £6.

Photo by StrudelMonkey on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

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