Restaurant Opening – Beef & Pudding

Before I begin this post, I need to say two things. Firstly, that my camera has been misbehaving of late and so my images for this post are poor. I will not do the food the justice it deserves. For that, dear reader, I apologise. I’m currently lecturing said camera on proper behaviour when reviewing whilst it’s sitting on the naughty step. I’m hoping this will fix it.

Secondly, that I’ve not classed this as a restaurant review. Mostly because the two visits I made were opening week and there will be teething problems (though to be honest these were limited) and it’s not fair to review without it being settled for a little while. And have no doubt that we will be going back – having made two visits in two days, it’s a given.

Beef & Pudding is part of the New Moon Company – a partnership between David Mooney and Paul Newman. They’ve quite a number of ventures between them – The Hanging Gate Inn, The Lord Binning, The Montgomery and The Old Sessions House. What all these venues have in common is  great food and drink, locally sourced, in a singularly relaxed atmosphere.

I was lucky enough to head in earlier this week with Mr GFB and Keeley and her date for the evening – to say we were excited would be an understatement. We knew that the lovely Nic would be in the kitchen and having sampled her award winning roast dinners at Parlour, knew this was going to be good.

To get our taste buds going, we each selected a cocktail and duly our nibbles arrived. A divine garlic brioche, with melted cheese graced the table, alongside some of the fattest olives I’ve ever seen. As I’d selected the Martini, I soon had one of these pretties resting in my glass.

Not to be outdone, Mr GFB opted for the New Moon Sour made with Cognac, strawberry liqueur, lemon & sugar- definitely more sweet than sour, but he was very happy with it.

The menu is so vast and handsome that it did take us a little while to decide. Thankfully the waiting staff were patient while we debated and deliberated. In truth, we wanted everything.

And I mean everything.

But even my appetite isn’t that enormous. So we selected platters to start with – The Manc Plank and The Coastal.

The former is a meat feast – Pig & Co sausage, duck spring roll, cottage pie, buttered black peas, Cheshire cheese ‘bon-bons’, chutney, artisan bread and the best pate I’ve had in a restaurant – for me only bettered by that of a certain Drunken Butcher.

The Coastal is, as the name would suggest, far more fishy. “Gunpowder” rubbed smoked salmon, beer-battered, fish and mushy peas, garlic sautéed Dublin Bay prawns, potted shrimp cake and grilled salmon served with tartare sauce and wholemeal bread. The prawns were perfectly done, meaty, flavourful and I was hard pressed to let anyone else have any. The beer battered fish too was heavenly.

We also had to try the tripe. Being a tripe virgin (there’s a joke in there somewhere) to not make the most of this opportunity would be a failing on my part. It was delicious. I’m a big fan of sweetbreads, so the creamy texture of the tripe and its crisp coating was both familiar and a thing of happiness. The Cheshire cheese was a nice addition, but to be honest, a plate of these and I’d have been a happy diner.

 

Mains, and Mr GFB dived in for the Beef’ham Tower burger. Thick burger, sweet chilli beef brisket, horseradish, mushy pea suet pudding, chip shop gravy, onion rings, dripping chips all crammed into a brioche bun and complete with a little pipette of ‘howling at the moon’ sauce.

Sweet sticky chilli, meaty burger,  soft bun and that sauce! Wow, great heat, but not for the faint hearted. If I’m being picky, I’d have liked the burger a bit pinker, and some more salt on the pudding, but we’re still in early days and we did mention any little criticisms to chef. Of course it could be that I like pink burgers and salty peas.

Keeley’s companion (and indeed one of our companions on visit two) selected the suet pudding. Alongside the Beef’ham, this has probably been one of the most talked about dishes on Twitter and on Facebook. It’s rich, stodgy and delicious. Black peas also feature as part of the dish and their nutty flavour works really well with the sticky pudding case and savoury beef.

Keeley had opted for the pork belly and chorizo papardelle. Tomato sauce with a hint of sherry, and sweet peas, this sadly suffered from a lack of chorizo – another teething problem fed back to chef. This was a shame as the pasta was perfect, the sauce, delicious – it just missed a kick of heat and meaty morsels to sample.

I selected the, er, light option, the sea bass. Steamed with Noilly Prat Vermouth, those huge Gordal olives and Absolut Peppar vodka it was absolutely delightful. Nothing overpowered the fish, which is easy to do with bass and the new potatoes were buttered and seasoned perfectly. To the extent that I couldn’t actually leave one. Even though it meant I was then going to struggle with pudding, to leave one would have been a sacrilege.

Finally, to pudding.

 

Oh god, to pudding.

Everything was just stunning. I still don’t know where we put it – I know we have a separate dessert tummy (right?) but even so… the stars for me, were the Bakewell pie which was light, nutty and delectable and the Eccles cake which had a topping of melted Cheshire cheese. There are not enough good Eccles cakes in this world.

It’s safe to say that after this feast, we were stuffed and had to be rolled home. But gluttons that we are, Keeley and I popped back again the next day, for round two – this time on the Chef’s Table – with a perfect view into the hustle and bustle of the kitchen.

We had, however, learned our lesson from the day before and all five of us went for a single course. The ‘B&P’ house burger went down very well – the relish was declared perfect and the entire pot cleaned.

As mentioned, the pudding too happily satisfied one of our companions and Keeley this time selected the lamb stew – her second choice from the night before.

Even so, she still struggled to finish this dumpling filled dish, it’s heavy and unctuous and the lamb is deliciously tender.

The Old Spot pork belly had caught my eye – pork that is honey-basted and slow roasted is going to appeal to me. It was tender, sweet and I was really pleased to find this a comfortable dish – there was enough mash without it being over filling, especially given the size of the pork itself.

Finally, the Beef’ham tower made another appearance and again found a happily receptive audience – though the sauce was perhaps in this case a little too spicy for our fellow diner.

All in all? We bloody love the place.

It’s going to become a firm favourite. As I’ve said, there are niggles, but they are small ones and it’s been lovely to be able to feed back to such receptive hosts.

In fact, I’ve already suggested it to Mr GFB for our anniversary next week…

These meals were at the invitation of Beef & Pudding and as it was their soft opening week, we received a discounted rate.

I am more than happy (somewhat enthusiastic you might say) to write a positive review as the service, food and drink and venue were excellent and I will be visiting again.