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MD's is a bit of an odd affair — by day it's called Katie's Tea Rooms and by night it changes into MD's. The menus (for there a several) have more dishes than you can shake several sticks at: there's the table d'hôte, the a la carte and then the specials menu. With those three, you get a choice of around thirty starters and thirty mains (some are repeated across the menus) but, either way, that's a lot of choice. Now, I've always subscribed to the idea that a restaurant that offers too many choices can't cope with so many fresh dishes, but I'm happy to say that MD's produced a fine array of meals for our party of eight. And out of eight, hardly anyone had the same dish for either starter or main course. And judging by the comments, everyone was happy, everyone was impressed with their choices and considering the huge selection and variety we selected, all the meals were produced at the same time.
Examples of the variety we ordered:
- Starters
- toasted goats cheese
- prawn cocktail
- melon
- whitebait
- seafood selection
- Mains
- rump steak
- stuffed peppers
- venison
- gammon and eggs
- bacon and mushroom tagliatelle
- lamb shank
As a guide to price, eight mains, seven starters, two afters, a few soft drinks, a couple of bottles of beer and a bottle of wine came to £160, so an average of £20 each, which I think is quite reasonable.
As for afters, only the cheese board was ordered ( because I love cheese ) and a magnificent affair it was too: four different cheeses ( goat's, Red Leicester, Brie and a blue cheese ) and plenty of biscuits to match — a veritable cheese feast, in fact.
Moving away from the food, the place is vast — we ate on the ground floor, but visiting the toilets is a route march up three floors, across another two levels of seating. If the place was full it could seat around 150 I'd guess, so you'd think the facilities would be bigger (facilities for one chap at a time, I can't comment on the ladies). The other thing I did notice was the ten signs directing you up the stairs, across the various floors to your final destination. The trouble was, there are no such signs to get you back downstairs again, so unless you lay a trail like Ray Mears would do, you could end up wandering round the place on your own for days.
Finally, the service was fine, just as you would expect really; orders taken, food and drinks served, as simple as that.
So, to conclude, all eight of us would happily return to MD's without hesitation. It's not a flash place, it's quite simple and the food is well cooked and prepared.
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