Sunday - the day of food!

On the Sunday when we were in Shrewsbury we ate breakfast at the Bed and Breakfast, it was an optional £5 each so we decided to give it a go. It was a typical traditional fry up, not to greasey and generous portions and the coffee was very nice. After breakfast we went sight seeing for a bit before getting caught in a heavy downpour about lunch time.

To shelter from the rain we decided to stop for lunch at Bellstone, a restaurant and hotel,http://www.bellstone-hotel.co.uk/, it had a lovely sounding menu including mains, sandwiches, puddings etc. We had a pint of flowers IPA each and ordered sandwiches, I chose the steak and red onion with aioli on sour dough roll and hubby chose the bellstone club on malted granary bread, and to share we ordered vine tomato and red onion salad.

The sandwiches came with a genrous side salad and a bowl of chips each, hubby's club sandwich was generously filled with a tender and juicy chicken breast and nicely smoked bacon, he claimed that it was the nicest club sandwich he ever had; my steak roll was stuffed with steak pieces that were all perfectly cooked (pink in the middle) and was the most tender steak I have ever had on a sandwich, the chips were fresh and the side salad was generous with a lovely honey and mustard dressing on, and the tomato and red onion salad was tasty and fresh and generous in size. The bill came to about £22 which is dear for lunch time, but was definitely worth it as the sandwiches were fantastic and the ale was well kept.

And believe it or not we still had room for dinner in the evening!

For dinner we chose to go to the Cornhouse http://www.cornhouse.co.uk/, the interior of the restaurant was very typical french style cafe/restaurant, plain walls and various ornaments/bottle strewn around, on Sunday it was hosting part of a Shrewsbury wide art festival and was displaying work by local artists on the walls. As we had not booked we poked our heads round to see if they still had a table available, the waiter who greeted us was very friendly and explained that they were very busy at the moment, but did have room, but could not serve us straight away - as it takes the hubby ages to pick his order - we were not very concerned about this, they showed us to the table bought over a basket of bread, a jug of iced tap water (without being requested) and the wine menu. After a short time to read the wine list they came back to take our wine order and bring us the food menus. The menu was brief but delicous sounding and I chose to go for a starter off the specials menu - smoked trout with horseraddish and potato salad, and hubby went for oriental duck salad with hoi sin sauce, for mains I chose the 10oz sirloin steak after checking that it would come properly rare and not verging on medium rare which came with king prawns and homemade chips, and the hubby went for the new season lamb which came with leak and mustard crumble. My smoked trout starter was a wonderful tower of smoked trout balanced on a potato salad, my only quibble would be that I would have liked the horseradish to be a bit stronger - but that is because I adore horseradish! Hubby's duck salad was delicious the duck was warm and tender, the salad generous and the hoi sin sauce tasty but not over powering. The mains came and I was flabbergasted by the size of my steak and that fact that it was perfectly rare throughout the piece, the king prawns were grilled and were verging on overcooked (but only just!) and the homemade chips were sweet and a very generous portion. Hubby's lamb came pink and came with a large bowl of roasted vegatables (courgettes, aubergine, peppers) which was not mentioned on the menu but were perfectly cooked and extremely tasty. My steak was very flavoursome and had a perfect texture and it was massive, the prawns worked perfectly with it, unfortunately the portions were so generous the portion of homemade chips defeated me. Hubby's lamb was flavoursome and the mash matched the lamb perfectly, but again the portions were so generous his vegatables defeated him. We were so full we could not even face the puddings. I forgot to mention that it was live music night and a very talented gentleman with a guitar seranaded that restaurant whilst we were eating. It created a perfect atmosphere to match the wonderful food, a perfect end to a wonderful day. We dawdled in the restaurant getting through two bottles of a great french wine, that had been imported by the local wine merchants, and three glasses of desert wine. The bill in total came to around £90. We are already planning on returning the next time we are in Shrewbury.