Earlier this week a much-loved Chinese restaurant was given a one star hygiene rating after inspectors witnessed a catalogue of failings.
Horrified inspectors found raw chicken in a bucket on the floor, raw and cooked meat being stored alongside each other and a rusty fridge inside Silver Star in Maghull.
With so many reported failings how does its food really taste?
Taking a look on TripAdvisor, Silver Star currently has a 4.5 rating with one reviewer saying: "Lovely food. Lovely staff. Have eaten here several times and never disappointed. The special menu offer can’t be beaten."
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And another said: "Fab authentic Chinese food. Lovely staff and very reasonable. Will defo be a regular restaurant to visit. Take away very busy too so assume great too."
We decided to pay Silver Star a visit ...
The restaurant itself was quiet, with only two occupied tables during our Friday night visit.
Inside, there is only around 10 tables with a small bar too. The menu is standard for a Chinese restaurant with dishes including sweet and sour chicken, chicken and sweetcorn soup, crispy duck and of course, salt and pepper chicken.
To keep things fair I opted for my usual order that I would get from any Chinese to see how the Silver Star compared.
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I ordered; Salt and Pepper chicken, large chips, chicken fried rice, barbecue sauce and curry sauce with prawn crackers.
Silver Star has been based in Maghull for more than 10 years with its happy hour deal loved by its regular customers.
Its Happy Hour Special run Sunday-Friday 5pm-8:30pm and includes soup, prawn crackers, spring rolls, barbecued spare ribs, salt and pepper chicken wings and a main course for £11.50.
But, how was our order?
At first glance the order looked great and its portion sizes were really big. The restaurant however uses McCains frozen chips which did seem an unusual choice for a Chinese restaurant.
Starting with the positives; the salt and pepper chicken was full of flavour and again was a generously sized portion. It was well seasoned and came with cooked chillies and onions too.
The chicken fried rice was just as nice as other Chinese restaurants I've been to before, you'd never know you were eating at a one star rated place with these two dishes.
However, when it came to its curry and barbecue sauce these arrived cold and the prawn crackers tasted stale.
Overall, the food from the Silver Star was not as bad as I was expecting, if you judged it by its food you could never tell it only had a one star rating.
