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It's not very often that we pen reviews of venues which are out in the Burbs, and over the last 27 years have traditionally focused on the city centre, because to the blunt that keeps us busy enough without covering an even bigger radius.

But there's a pretty little village up towards the very north of Bury in a spot named Holcombe Village.  It's a popular place for walkers who fancy getting a look at the iconic Peel Tower, which sits up the hill from said village.  Most of those walkers have over the years have used the village's pub as a type of makeshift base camp to grab a post walk pint or bite, and that pub is called the Shoulder of Mutton.

Now we actually live about a 10 minute walk up the road, so a quartet of the team gathered on a random Tuesday evening to pay a visit and explore The Shoulder's (as it's known locally) Tuesday Steak Night.  As regular readers will know, we had a very lovely Steak Night in Prestwich at The Pearl, another burb hero, just a few weeks back. coming clean I think that the bug has bitten so you many see a few more of these Steak Night pieces!  They are usually an easy route to a cheap night out, on an evening which is largely quiet for venues.

At The Shoulder of Mutton, their Steak Night costs a mere £30 for 2 steaks (along with a few other options) and also a bottle of wine!  I've recent bemoaned in some recent city centre reviews that it's now seemingly impossible to find a decent bottle in many places, even super casual ones, for less than £30.  So this is exceptional value.  And the good word has clearly circulated rapidly since the place was absolutely hammered when we landed on a torrential evening.

4 oldish gents who were stood a good 5 metres from the bar and saw us enter, absolutely soaked from the rain outside, heading to the bar to claim the last available seats.   The gents promptly jogged over to the bar and grabbed some of the stools to take back to their standing table and gave us an awkward fake laugh along with a bad joke along the lines of 'We can't stand up for long at our age'.  Well you were doing just fine until you saw us coming.  My Editor wouldn’t publish what I actually thought here, so I won't waste the copy trying to get I by her.  Anyway.

After a lovely pint, seasoned with 2 minutes of internal ranting about the chair poachers, we waited for our reliably late copilots land.  Soon after, our dining table became available and here we had actual seats as well as beams, an open fire, and all the stuff that you hope to find in a cozy little country pub like this.  It's generally a lovely little enclave and feels a million miles in distance from the city centre, despite being just 15 miles up the M66.

Two of us went for 10oz Ribeyes, one an 8oz Sirloin, whilst the group's heathen decided on the Porterhouse Steak Burger. There's always one, right? And I'll come clean here, it was me, so let's start with that for our critiquing. A nice bun with the proper structure to hold everything, with a well-made, deftly seasoned and properly cooked patty, that was clearly made from steak, not just beef. And there's a difference. Garnish was minimal, as it should be IMO, with a nice amount of melted cheese and some lettuce, just allowing that beef to shine. A no nonsense, generous, nicely made burger which still gave me the kind of steak hit that you want on a steak night.

All 3 actual steaks were essentially the same dish, so I won't waste your time by blurbing about all 3. The Rib Eye pictured was cooked as ordered, medium-rare in this case, which is always a relief.  I know that in a restaurant, receiving the requested cuisson should be a given, but it so often sadly isn’t.  Add to the mix decent quality animal, proper seasoning, patient resting, and all of our steaks were superbly enjoyable and for the money, incredible value.  The serving plates were all posh too, which as proud food geeks we appreciate.  I only regret not getting an internal steak shot to prove my words as being factual.

The £30 deal doesn’t include sides, but not to worry, they are only a couple of quid for either fries, triple cooked chips, onion rings, salad, etc etc.  We ordered half a dozen different ones to share and the onions rings and fries were both as you expect; crispy, aptly salty and generous in portion for £2/£2.50, with the onion rings in particular tasting and appearing house made.  Predictably, the seasonal greens were half left over, just like a salad bowl at BBQ.  You want one but when it comes to it, nobody actually cares.  These were swimming in water too, which was a bit flat.  Lessons learned; order double onion rings for our veg portion. 

Since the wine that we ordered was hugely enjoyable, and I have a paragraph to fill up, I shall spend a few words trying to sound like a wine expert, since Google makes it easy to do just that when you write for a living.  Aside from the volumes which I consume, I'm clearly no wine expert, but luckily one of our group is a genuine wine boss so she did the ordering, and in this case it was the reassuringly named and labelled Colossal Reserva, from Portugal.  A blend of Touriga Nacional, Syrah, Tinta Roriz and Alicante Bouschet, you get black fruit and spicy flavours, well balanced with smooth tannins and a long, full, elegant finish (cheers Google), aka, it's delish.  Supposedly it retails at about £15 a bottle following Rach's latest anti-hospo tax grab, so again, this is splendid value for money and should probably cost £30 on its own in a pub/restaurant, let alone with 2 steaks.

But; the triple cooked chips were a bit flat and looked/tasted more like frozen wedges.  I fully expect for these prices in a Bury pub, the chips will be frozen.  That's not my issue.  There's some really good quality frozen Triple Cooked chips on the market, and these were not them, they were just chips.  They were however still easily worth a couple of quid and filled a gap, and this was the only real blip on the whole evening. 

We were ready to head off after a splendid time, so asked for the damage.  It landed promptly courtesy of our charming host, and everybody threw in a £20 note, which magically covered everything along with a few quid for service too!? Make sure you get a seat at the table (or bar) and book in for this great value deal!