Fanny Grey Inn, Salterforth

8:18am Friday 7th September 2007

WITH my Polish friend's departure to her homeland imminent, I thought I'd have a stab at changing her opinion of British food.

Since she's been over here for a summer job, Miss S has found plenty of things to like about this country - "The people are so happy and smiley. When you meet someone, they say: Hi, how are you? I'm fine! In Poland you ask people how they are and they say: Not good. The weather's bad, I'm not very well, life is horrible."

However, brought up on herbs, fruit and vegetables straight from the earth, she's not been too taken with our eating habits. Complaints include the "funny" tasting bread and milk and the "crazy" cooked breakfast. However, perhaps her biggest gripe relates to that starchy bedrock of the English diet - chips.

"Over here, you eat a lot of pies," she recently remarked. "some of them taste quite nice. But the chips! You have chips with absolutely everything. Chip with this, chip with that, even chip on bread!"

So to prove that not all English fayre is of the Little Chef mould, I set myself the challenge of showing her some decent English pub grub.

After hearing good things about the place, I settled on the memorably-titled Fanny Grey Inn, a well-known outpost perched high on the moors above Salterforth. First impressions were good - the welcome we got was exceptionally warm and the place had a cosy and cosseting feel.

At the bar, the selection of ales was limited, but it was refreshing to find that the Fanny Grey is one of the few hostelries where you don't pay through the nose for wine, at just £2.30 for a glass of perfectly acceptable red.

The service at the Fanny Grey is pretty minimal - you pick up your own menus, fetch your own drinks and order your food at the bar. However, this seems to fit in with the ethos of the place - it's completely down to earth and doesn't claim to be anything it's not.

Like the place itself, the menu was unpretentious but characterful, with some intriguing variations on traditional pub fayre including "drunken chicken."

The starters were a bit thin on the ground, but the list of main courses more than made up for this, with several pages of diverse dishes and fish - not counting the specials board.

To start, I opted for garlic mushrooms while Miss S, ever the calorie fascist, went for the anti pasto', which included olives, salami, brown bread and pickles.

When they arrived, I think she'd made the right choice because my mushrooms were drowned in a sea of creamy peppercorn sauce and I had to chase them around the dish like a bear fishing for salmon. However, they were tasty enough and when the mains arrived, I think my judgement was reprieved.

I'd opted for an interestingly-titled Carpetbagger steak'. At around the £12 mark, it was huge and came sandwiched between a row of juicy prawns on top and a bed of stir-fried veg and onions below. Much to my companions horror, I'd opted for chips to go with it, rather than new potatoes, but they were so crisp and fluffy, even Miss S pinched a few off my plate.

Meanwhile, she'd opted for a smoked haddock stack and it was sublime - cooked to just the right point, extremely well-presented and served with appropriate fresh veg (no chips): enough to change her view of us as an island of junk-munching slobs in an instant.

Neither of us could manage a sweet and instead opted to stagger to the car. With both starters just under the £5 mark and mains at around £10, the food bill came to £32 - well worth it for the quality of food and the exceptionally pleasant service.

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