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.

'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.