I have been looking forward to this one, as it is not often that I have the company of my fellow singing and musician friends from Frome and also we booked in at The Cyder Barn B&B across the road. Scott and I were late as it took us longer for Scott to get back from work and for us to get there in rush hour, but we dumped our bags at the Cyder Barn, donned a dress and walked over through a little wooden gate in the wall to The Grange. This restaurant also serves as a cookery school, and is modern and bright with friendly young staff who were very helpful. Everyone was there before us, and I was spoiled with gifts of flowers and truffles and cards... With any luck I can spread this birthday for the entire year and gradually decorate my kitchen with cards!
The menu is simple and three courses without any extras from the chef. I started with a prawn salad which was fresh but lacked flavour... could it be that the prawns were frozen? Scott and Martin had a warm salad of boned quail (which turned out to mean that it had a bone in it!) delicious with caramelised onions, baby vegetables and a strong, tasty duck liver parfait. Bay's humus and babaganoush had a hot tomato chutney with it but the scallops were rather small but with a delicious mayonnaise.
For mains, Karine and I had spring chicken which was stuffed, moist and tender with slightly soggy roast new potatoes and morel mushrooms which looked and tasted as if they might have been dried and reconstituted as they had very little flavour. I realised there were no green vegetables and after a hasty order, they brought them very quickly. The zuppa di pescatore was the winning dish... full of flavour and much fish with a wonderful aioli dip and enjoyed by Nickomo, Rasullah and Scott. Nick and Bay had pizzas which they said were very good. The wine was fruity and warm and everyone relaxed into harmonious conversation.
Dessert was rose macaroons with raspberries, blueberries and raspberry icecream and looked very pretty, but was weak flavoured. The chocolate layered cake was a bit disappointing and was a bit tiramisu-like but the dessert wine was nectar sweet.
The bill was moderate and reflected the moderation of our response to the food. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening though with my lovely singing tribe. Scott and I had a hysterical run back to our barn in pouring rain, lit by my iphone torch app! The Cyder Barn had everything you could possibly want in a B&B... fruit, flowers, every sort of tea and coffee, thick towels and rugs, even a remote controlled gas fire! Breakfast was also full and English and so were we!
Oh, and by the way, I got my one and a half stone award last week, and this week am on my way to the Club 10 award, which means in 2lb time I will have lost one tenth of my body weight! However, this may not happen this week as tomorrow night I am eating out again in the Watersky Chinese restaurant with my Gasworks Singers! Help!
I look forward to your review of the Watersky restaurant. I've perused their menu on many an occasion and wondered if the food is as good as it sounds.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to review Watersky as we go there often. It is worth going - for £15.95, Mon to Fri, you get as much as you want of starters, crispy duck and mains. Some of the dishes are delicious... the deep fried soya with salt and pepper, prawn wontons, spare ribs in barbecue sauce, crispy beef, prawns with ginger etc.... They use rather horrible cheap chicken, best avoided. The tables are good and round with lazy susans but beer is expensive, jasmine tea is plentiful and only £1.20.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dee. On the strength of your recommendation I might just give it a whirl this summer. Lucky you having such an excellent Chinese on your doorstep.
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