Yes, I know it's not in Kent. Again. But there was good food to be had in Stoke! Well....I say "in" Stoke, obviously I don't actually mean "in Stoke"....I mean near Stoke. Alright, so not in Stoke at all, in Trentham and in Stone....but they're close enough, ok?
Anyway....the food. Dee and I took the last few bits Josie needed for the start of her last year at Staffordshire University last weekend. We stayed in the Travelodge (don't ask, and certainly don't go there!) at Trentham on the outskirts of Stoke-on-Trent. Trentham Gardens is home to a great little place called The Pie Minister, a sort of modern take on the old pie and mash shops of my youth! It was a light, airy, log cabin type unit with brightly coloured posters and info about their pies around the walls.
For a very reasonable price (about a fiver) they do a home cooked pie of your choice from a list of about a dozen with mash and red wine gravy. For about £7.20 they do something called "The Mothership". To my surprise Josie (who hasn't got the largest appetite) opted for the Mothership with a Thai Chook pie. This comprised a lovely thai chicken green curry pie, a double helping of mash, a dollop of minted mushy peas, red wine gravy and sprinkles of crispy fried onions and grated cheddar. Quite a plate-full. I was even more surprised when she came very close indeed to finishing off the lot! I opted for a PM pie mothership, but with a single helping of mash. The PM pie is their signature dish, it's a sort of cross between steak and kidney and beef and veg pie. Good decision to go for single mash, I can tell you. There was still plenty of it. Dee wasn't all that hungry, but she still managed to put away a large sausage roll with mash and gravy.
They sell t-shirts with "Keep Calm & Eat More Pies" on the front, and all the staff wear them as uniform. I would have bought one, but they were so flimsy I didn't feel they were worth the tenner asking price. All in all, very good quality and fantastic value food. An ideal lunch stop on an autumn shopping day, hot and filling, lots of choice, worth a visit!
I've done this in the wrong order really, because Pie Minister was Sunday lunch, but dinner Saturday night turned out to be pretty good too. We went to a village a few miles outside Stoke called Stone to revisit a pub / steakhouse that Ben and Jen took us to on our last visit. Sadly for them, the ovens weren't working on that occasion so the menu choice was seriously limited. Not so this time!
The pub is in two halves with a large central bar area. To one side is a very modern feeling disco type pub, complete with bar stocked with several fruit flavoured ciders, alcopops and any number of fizzy beers. The other side though is a rather nice, modern feeling restaurant which feels much more like a wine bar than a pub. Fortunately for me, there were a couple of good real ales on, Marsden's Pedigree and Jenning's Cocker Hoop (which I felt it was in the interest of my loyal readers to try).
The menu was also in two halves. On one side was a selection of fish dishes, ribs, and the usual gastro-pub type offerings, and on the back was a grill and hot-stones menu. As you'd expect, prices ranged from
around £7 to £16 for main courses. We dispensed with starters in the vain hope that we might have room for a desert, and dived straight in to the main courses. Our waiter and waitress were friendly, chatty, and knowledgeable. They explained the menu and the three steak specials on offer. We could have chosen an ostrich steak, a buffalo steak or something called a bistro steak. Dee opted for the latter, which turned out to be a nice thick beef rump steak cut from a particular part of the rump that makes it almost as tender as fillet but with all the meaty flavour of rump. This came topped with a fried duck egg, chips and mushrooms. Josie and I weren't in the mood to be refined, so we both chose the rack of pork ribs, but with different sauces. I went for Jack Daniels BBQ, while Josie chose hoi-sin. I have to admit, although they were both good, her sauce was better.
It's hard to do anything too imaginative with ribs, but putting a good sauce on them is a great start! If there's one thing I love it's slow cooked ribs where the meat just falls off the bone. I cut the end one off the rack, picked up the end of the rib itself, and by the time I'd got it to my mouth the meat was back on the plate leaving just the clean bone in my hand! Spot on. The coleslaw was very good too, high quality supplier or home made, I'm not sure which. I've never been a big fan of the whole hot stones idea, I'm not sure I want to pay extra for the joy of still having to cook my own dinner. I want chef to cook it for me please, I'm sure he'll do a better job of it.
In spite of a good choice of deserts, we only had room to share one between the three of us. We had the house speciality, a hot baked cookie still in the iron skillet it was cooked in with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream. The waitress warned us that the skillet was still very hot indeed, but both the girls still managed to burn themselves on it! They both agreed it was worth it though.
Next time we visit Stoke we will probably revisit both the Steakhouse and the Pie Minister again. If you're in the area and hungry you could do worse than do the same.
