'red meat'

Shrewsbury - I think is my spiritual home.

Three days of real ale and good food was the plan, and Shrewsbury didn't disappoint.

We arrived in Shrewsbury about 11am on Saturday and walked over the bulging river Severn to 'Ye Olde Bucks Head Inn' http://www.bucksheadinn.co.uk/facilities.htm to our home for the next two days, the room was nice, clean with en-suite bathroom but unfortunately no shower.!

After dashing back across town, we were a bit out of breath and thirsty so felt that obvious solution was to start the pub tour right away in a small bar that looked like it was straight out of the seventies; it was the Coach and Horses which turned out to be a fantastic real ale pub with a locally sourced ever changing menu, that had us salivating straight away, but we had only just had breakfast so we had to restrain ourselves. After the fantastic pint of Hanby Cheery bomb - my favourite beer; it was off round the corner to the Admiral Benbow for an update of the golf from the friendly people at the bar, and a sensible half. We followed this with a visit to the Three Fishes on Fish Street, for some great oakham ales, and a wander round to the Yorkshire House for some local IPA and down to the Vaults, a local rock pub, with fantastic Wild Hare on draft and a great sounding home made menu.

Time flew past and it was soon time to go to the Golden Cross Hotel, the restaurant that we had booked for dinner. To sum the restaurant up it was fantastic. We arrived to find the restaurant was an electic mix of styles in a gorgeous medieval setting, there are two rooms to the restaurant and we were shown into the back room, this room was still stylish but not as luxurious looking as the room we had just walked through, so we were a bit disappointed. We were shown to our table, which was a little bit awkard for me and the hubby as we're rather on the larger side and the table legs were in a difficult position so we either had to straddle the leg or squeeze between them -this was to be the only disappointment of the evening. We ordered gin and tonic to start whilst we read the extensive wine list and sumptuous seasonal menu. We decided to order a red, as we knew we would be ordering red meat for our main course, it was a lovely pinotage. The hubby chose to start with chicken liver parfait with red onion marmelade served with toasted brioche, and I chose the grilled fresh sardines served on a nicoise salad on toasted bread; the chicken liver was smooth and tasty which worked perfectly with the sweet brioche and the onion marmelade and my sardines were two grilled sardines on a mixed salad leaves with fresh anchovies, it was delicious but incredibly filling. For our mains hubby went for duck breast with cauliflower mash and baked red cabbage with star anise and I chose the lavender crusted rump of spring lamb served with dauphenoise potatoes & ratatouille, and was very pleased when the waitress checked how I would like the lamb cooked, I chose pink.

I could rant on about the quality of the mains for the rest of the log, but you might get a bit bored, but just to sum up, the hubby claims the duck (which was served perfectly pink/red, through out) was the best he had ever tasted, and the red cabbage was perfect; my lamb came melt in the mouth pink and had just the right amount of lavender subtle but not over powering, and the dauphenoise potatoes were like a perfect millefeuille almost too pretty to eat.

After such fantastic meals we decided to treat ourselves to pudding as well, hubby had a smooth and creamy home made strawberry ice cream served with handmade shortbread (that was melt in the mouth) and local clotted cream, and I had a ginger and lemon cheesecake, that was perfect to cleanse the palate.

For the three courses each, a gin and tonic each and one bottle of wine the bill came to £70.00, which for the high quality seemed amazingly reasonable.

We are already planning our return and hoping to be able to get a room there as well as eating there again.