Fatfoodie adventures in Stoke!

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.

The Chequers, Laddingford

The Chequers in Laddingford is a lovely looking village pub dating from the 15th century. There are about half a dozen car parking spaces at the front, but no shortage of space out on the road within a few yards.  My first impression of The Chequers was that it could have been really nice, but somehow didn't quite manage it. Although there were three good real ales on (as well as the usual array of fizzy stuff) and the ceilings were dripping with dark oak beams, it simply wasn't a comfortable feeling place. Possibly not helped by the large group of regulars blocking the vast majority of the bar itself, leaving just enough room for one person to be served at a time. Particularly galling as every single table was free.  In spite of this fact, we were still shown to the table right in front of the door to the toilets.

The beer, as it turns out, was excellent! A special brew from a Cornish brewer called Skinners to celebrate the Rugby World Cup, called Splendid Tackle.  At 4.2%, fruity and well balanced, it was so delicious I was forced to try a second pint to check the first one wasn't a fluke!

There was a specials board that included homemade sausages with mash. How often do you see homemade sausages on offer in a pub? I wish I'd tried them, to be honest, but more of that later. The main menu had many of the staple pub-grub dishes, and several interesting alternatives including a choice of three or four sharing platters. On a chilly evening the steak and ale pudding is sure to warm you up. For those looking for a lighter option, there is baked salmon, sole goujons, a burger with a choice of cheddar or stilton on top and a few other choices.   Prices ranged from around £5.95 for the light-bites up to £16.95 for the most expensive main course.  Deserts were all around £4.50.

Dee and I opted to share a starter of nachos, and it's a good job we didn't go for a portion each because there was enough for four to share! There was plenty of melted cheese, large dollops of salsa, sour cream and guacamole, and a generous helping of sliced jalapinos. It wasn't much to look at, but it was very tasty!

We are both big fans of sharing platters (and I'm a sucker for a buffet!) so we opted for the sharing fish, chips & dips platter. When it arrived there were sole goujons, haddock kievs, prawn wontons, prawns in filo pastry and butterfly prawns in light breadcrumbs, along with a huge bowl of the best homemade chips I've had in ages. There were three generous pots of dips, a garlic mayonnaise, a sweet chilli sauce and a homemade tartar sauce that was a little sharp for Dee but fine for me. Unfortunately both the haddock kievs were both cold, so the barmaid took them away and brought us some fresh ones. Even more unfortunately, although these were hot on the outside they were both still frozen in the middle. Although this was disappointing, particularly as it was the kievs I was most looking forward to, there was enough on the platter that we were both close to full anyway. Actually, the chips deserve a special mention, so nice to find good chips in a pub that weren't tipped into the fryer out of a Brake Bros plastic bag fresh out of the freezer!

We chose our deserts from a short menu of about seven or eight puddings. In order to give the kitchen a chance to redeem themselves after the poor effort with the kievs we both opted for homemade deserts. Dee went for the apple and mixed berry crumble with custard (who'd have thought it!) and I chose the pecan and maple tart with pouring cream. The crumble was good, but the tart was fantastic! Absolutely delicious.  Again, not much to look at, but I'd order the pecan tart again like a shot. 

With no prompting from us, when the bill arrived the waitress explained that they had not charged us for the fish & chip platter at all, despite the fact that we ate 90% of it!  A combination of the good beer, excellent deserts and this generosity would certainly have been enough to encourage us to return, but the lack of atmosphere, and if I'm totally honest (and a bit snobby) the attitude and language of the regulars make it unlikely that we will. Shame, because I get the feeling it could have been really nice.

Stockholm, Sweden

I know....I know....Stockholm isn't in Kent.  It isn't even NEAR Kent, so why do I mention it?  Well, it's a foodie blog, and we had some great food while we were there, that's why!

As most of you probably already know, the Swedish eat a lot of fish.  Salmon, prawns, crayfish, but mostly herring.  There were plenty of alternatives though, and elk, pork and beef all featured.  We stayed at the Handelsbanken training centre and hotel at Södegarn just outside Stockholm and ate all of our evening meals in the restaurant there because the food was very good indeed.  Everything was very expensive in Stockholm, beer ranged from £5.50 to £9.50 a pint (well....I say pint, obviously I mean 500ml) and a quick lunch from around £12.50 to £25.  Fortunately, the beer was a minimum of 5.3% and the food was fantastic!

 The first day we arrived just after lunchtime and the chef whipped us up a local speciality (the name of which is even more unpronounceable than I had expected) that consisted of finely diced potato, onion and ham fried up together with herbs and topped with a fried egg and with a dish of pickled beetroot on the side.  A sort of thinking mans all-day breakfast.  Hot, tasty and filling, just what the cardiologist ordered!

The week featured a series of stops for coffee and cake, known locally as "fika".  This one, simple little word encompasses a great deal.  Fika means everyone stops what they are doing and troops off to one of  the many coffee places around for a cup of fresh coffee, something sweet like a cake or cinnamon bun, and a good old chat!  Whole office departments troop off for fika at least a couple of times a day.  We should do that too.  It hasn't harmed their productivity or profit margins, so why not?

We also stopped at a number of bars for lunch, picked pretty much at random, or at least on the basis that "this one has a terrace that's in the sunshine, so let's stop here!".  Our first go at this was remarkably successful and rather set the tone for the rest of the stay.  We ordered a dish of crayfish on toast and a warm goats cheese salad.  Now, keeping in mind that this was just a little water-front bar chosen from dozens of similar looking places, look what turned up!  It tasted just as good as it looked, too.

 Another day we wandered up to a bar in a square and ordered one of each of the daily specials, which turned out to be a salmon fillet with horseradish sauce and braised vegetables for me and traditional home made meatballs and mashed potato with lingonberry sauce for Dee.  Again, the presentation was excellent (and there's not much you can do to meatballs and mash to make them look anything special!) and they tasted great.  We went in and ordered at the bar, and the barmaid told us to help ourselves to bread, crackers, salad and coffee from the table behind us as part of our meal.  An unexpected bonus as the salad was varied, the bread was fresh and the coffee strong and dark.

 We didn't have a bad dish the whole time we were there.  It just goes to show what we've always said....it's not hard to do good food!  Why do we put up with the rubbish that gets dumped in front of us for so much of the time here in England?  Life is too short to eat bad food, particularly when there is all this creative, interesting, tasty grub out there waiting to be found!  What a great city.  Not cheap, but a must-do for all you foodies out there.