Heritage Coffee Mill And Bistro

Heritage Exchange, Lindley

Rating

VenueHeritage Coffee Mill And Bistro

Tel01484 489330

Websitewww.heritageexchange.com

Opening hours 8.30 am to 11pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm Saturday, 9am to 3pm Sunday.

ChildrenYes

Disabled accessYes, but no disabled toilet in the bistro

The bill£38.50

WELLINGTON Mills has a special place in my past.

As a pupil at the former Oakes Junior School the old mills towered above us as we played in the Victorian schoolyard.

Then I went up to Salendine Nook High in the mid 1970s and walked past this imposing landmark every day.

The mill fell silent long ago and has now been transformed into the Heritage Exchange business that includes 46 luxury apartments, a fitness suite, spa and beauty rooms, a business hub – and a coffee mill and bistro.

It’s a magnificent building and has been transformed with a very sympathetic eye on its past.

Wood abounds in the coffee mill and bistro – as it should.

The walls are painted in soft colours which give it a cosy glow in the evenings, there is a huge serving bar with tables both downstairs and also in an upstairs area that’s open plan yet tucked away out of sight.

Unusual and intriguing, it evokes an aura of a splendid past – some of the fixtures and fittings could have been taken straight from an ocean liner – and the collection of old clocks on the wall gives the impression that time can, indeed, stand still.

The bistro evening menu is not vast but gives just about enough variety. Those early birds among us can have a two-course dinner for just £10 – that’s grand value.

We missed the deadline by a mere 90 minutes.

Starters include soup, salmon goujons coated with lime and coriander breadcrumbs with homemade tartar sauce, homemade chicken liver pate with brandy and almonds, roasted tomato, mozzarella and pesto tart or warm tomato and goat cheese stack.

They’d run out of pate, but mushroom soup for Ruth and cheesy nachos for me seemed more than acceptable substitutes. OK, cheesy nachos. You’ll no doubt roll your eyes at the unadventurous nature of the choice, but these were brilliant with peppery nachos coated in melted cheese, olives, diced tomatoes and jalapenos.

Ruth’s soup was ultra smooth and creamy.

A good start then.

I was sorely tempted by the Moroccan style chicken and vegetable curry for the mains course. Others in with more than a shout were prawn and salmon fishcakes and trio of sausages – Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, pork and leek – on a bed of chive mash.

The rest included sirloin or fillet steak, tuna loin, supreme of chicken wrapped in bacon or even chargrilled beefburger with blue cheese.

Ruth went for a strange one – butternut squash risotto dressed with shavings of parmesan cheese. I had a quiet chortle. Surely that couldn’t be anything but bland as I jumped ship at the last moment and opted for the prawn and salmon fishcakes.

Painful to say I was wrong. Serves me right.

The risotto was flavour-packed, sticky and the butternut chunks were melt-in-the-mouth moments.

As for the fishcakes. Well, they seemed posh by arriving with sweet chilli sauce instead of your usual tomato fare and were accompanied by huge hand-cut chips – have them and you’ll never want a frozen chip again.

The fishcakes ended up being the sole disappointment of the evening – heavy on the breadcrumbs and light on succulent prawn and salmon filling.

But the evening ended on a high with us sharing lemon tart that was as refreshing as it gets even though we did our best to drown it in cream.

Two good cappuccinos later we could sit back and think of the sights and sounds this mill had once seen and how serene it all seemed now.