Amicus Apple’s been around for about 8 years now, and has recently had a make-over to celebrate. Cocktails have always been ‘their thing’ -check out that back bar! – but I’ve always enjoyed their food too. The latest refit has made it a brighter place for daytime lunch, and the all-day menu definitely merits a visit. The Silver Fox and I arrived for lunch with our ‘hungry on’.
The menu is pretty huge, offering smaller sharing plates, sandwiches, burgers and pub standards, and posh things like beef fillet and rack of lamb. It’s clear that there are staff favourites, and the baby back ribs came not so much with a recommendation, but a kind of ‘these are so good they may change your life’ endorsement. And they were right! We shared a smaller plate of these (£6) and chomped, licked and speedily devoured our way through their sticky, sweet, tender deliciousness, ‘cave-man’ style. Other small plates of red pepper and goats cheese pâté with crunchy olive oil brushed toast, and a Isle of Mull rarebit on sourdough (both £4) were nicely garnished, a little bit of lamb’s lettuce here, a sprinkling of pine nuts there. Whilst they weren’t quite as stellar, they were still flavoursome although the pâté was too runny, making it hard to apply to the bread.
We shared two mains (both £10.95), a jerk chicken burger and more ‘oink’ in the form of roast pork belly. The juicy chicken fillet was cooked to perfection (unlike so many examples you get when the breast meat is solid and impossible to bite through), tangy pickled cabbage added good texture and the crisps red rooster skinny chips were perfect, particularly dunked into their house ‘chip dip’ a BBQ sauce/mayo combo. The pork belly was on the dry side, but pleasing nonetheless, just would have loved a touch more of the sweet apricot and thyme glaze.
To finish, we shared a chewy chocolate brownie, laced with crunchy bits of salted caramel (genius!) and a generous boule of vanilla ice cream.
The menu covers so many bases that inevitably some items fall a little flat, but the chef has a real knack for Southern-style seasoning and big flavours, add to that good prices and friendly service, and you have a great venue slap-bang in the city centre to satisfy your ‘hungry’.
*apologies to Amicus for the terrible photos – I seem to have had an off day with the Canon!
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