Address: 1 Chesil Street, Winchester, SO23 0HU

Telephone:  01962 851 555

Website: http://www.chesilrectory.co.uk/site/chesil/content-folder/home

Date of visit: 10 November 2011

Costs: Around £25 for two courses. Most starters priced under £7, most main courses under £18. £15.95 for the two course set meal – available during lunch and early evening.

Wines and beer: Decent list at a reasonable mark up.

Likes and dislikes: Food is slightly above average. There are no potatoes on offer as a side dish (£3). They seemed to dislike deep frying as nothing of this nature is on offer. Where are my chips?

Cuisine: Modern British

Summary:

The restaurant is located in a 1450 building on the corner of Chesil Street. Parking is behind in the multi-story (free from 6pm). There are two restaurants with similar scores  listed in the Good Food Guide  in Winchester – The Black Rat and The Chesil Rectory. The Black Rat has recently been awared a Michelin Star.

The inside is divided into rooms – upstairs and downstairs – with exposed black beams. The tables are barewood – no stickiness – with linen napkin. On the night we went, the place was about 40% full – not bad for a wet Thursday night in November.

I went with Damian who designed and manage the Bottles and Cooks site.

We started with two Freedom organic lagers (£3.50) which were pretty good whilst we were looking at the menus. We were offered brown and /or parmesan cheese rolls – both excellent

D chose the smoked haddock soup (£6.50) followed by the pan fried beam (£18.95). I had the mushroom on brioche toast (£6.50), followed by the oxtail and kidney pudding (£17.95).

I had mixed feelings about my dinner. The stockbrige mushroom turned out to be Japanese enoki mushrooms – the ones with a bulb head and long thin stems. This came in a cream sauce and was quite tasty.

The main course was a disappointment. Let’s start with the pudding. It was full of oxtail. I couldn’t taste any kidneys. However it was not over salted as per the ones in The Hind Head (Heston’s pub). I have had 4 puddings there and they were all over salted! The confit root vegetables and garlic fritters were a touch too sweet for me and did not go with the light savoury taste of the oxtail – it would work if the pud came with an intensely reduced sauce. Worst, it came with no potatoes and the menu did not offer any potatoes as sides. The waitress offered me a side of mash potato which was later put down on the bill as broccoli.

As we were in conversation (business) all evening, I never found out what D thought of his food. He did eat it all.

We had a bottle of Italian Brusco di Bambi (£26.95) to wash the meal down. This was the first time in my life that we still have half a bottle of wine left after we finished the main courses. Usually, the wine is finished half way through the main course. There was nothing wrong with the wine.

With 2 coffees, the meal came to just over £90 – service which was pretty good was not included. This is about average for an evening meal for 2 in Southern England. However, I wasn’t all that impressed. May be I chose badly.

E

Address: 75 Kingsgate Street, Winchester, Hampshire SO23 9PE

Telephone number: 01962 853834

Website: http://www.fullershotels.com/rte.asp?id=129

Date of visit: 3 December 2010

Approximate cost per head: £20 for 2 courses

Comments on wine list/beer: Pretty extensive wine list at the usual (approx 300%) mark up. Beers supplied by Fullers- from £3.20 a pint

Cuisine: Modern British Cooking

Summary:

This is an 18 Century institution round the corner from the Cathedral and Winchester School.

You get a sense of history as you enter because the tables near the bar are all “old” writing desks – from the school?

The place was packed out on a Friday lunch time as Winchester Cathedral is currently hosting a Xmas Market – mainly bric-a bracs with hardly any food stalls.

The menu here can only be described as a cross between gastropub and a brasserie.

The “dining” areas are housed in several rooms all accessible via the bar. I believe that they would probably serve around 80 covers.

My friends (M & D) are old Winchester hands. M seemed to know everyone – he is the nearest thing to “human silk – ultra smooth” that I have ever come across.

We started off with a couple of pints in the bar and it was fine – usual Fullers standards – before we were ushered to one of the side rooms to have our lunch.

We had a table that overlooked a deli on Kingsgate Street. We ordered 2 bottles of Rioja Crianza 2005 (£25.20 a bottle) but we were served with the 2006 – significantly inferior year; much more watery. I wish restaurants would tell you that THE YEAR one ordered is no longer available. Instead most of them would slip in a newer vintage and pretend that nothing has changed. Do they not know that wine prices change from year to year and there is such a thing as VINTAGE. To be honest, I noticed it straight away but I decided that it was not worth complaining as I didn’t want to ruin my friends’ lunch.

We ordered fish and chips with mushy peas (£11.50), lambs liver with faggots (£11.50) and a slow cooked pork belly with mash (£13). D who had the fish and chips kept going on about how good the chips were but said very little about the haddock and mushy peas. M thought that the gravy (reduced sauce) with his belly of pork was too salty.

I had the lamb’s liver with faggots and mash. To start with, the faggots turned out to a single large faggot about the size of a snooker ball. It was pretty good, had the right proportion of liver to mince meat. The lamb’s liver – one thickish slice – was over cooked and was a bit on the hard side. The mash ok but then the gray was as M said, too salty. Did the chef – more likely the under sous chef – added salt before the reduction or did he/she added the salt at the end without tasting the sauce. Life is such a mystery.

My conclusion is that this is another place trading on its historical name. The menu was not just basic pub grub but has a lot of very “innovative” sounding dishes to it but the execution is below par. However, I understand that M is still going to have his Xmas dinner there. Well, he is slim and smooth so I don’t think that he has high blood pressure and the extra salt won’t damage him.

E

Address: 3 Romsey Road, Winchester SO22 5BE

Telephone number: 01962 890018

Website: http://www.myspace.com/stjamestavernlive

Date of visit: 26 April 2010

Approximate cost per head: £10

Comments on wine list/beer: Several excellent beers on tap including the rare Butcombe range. Pretty good wine list for a pub from £12. You can even get bottles of champagne (Moet at £45)

Summary:

An excellent pub up the steep Romsey Road. There is regular “live” music – see web site.

You can have soup and pate to start with at £3.95 and £4.95 respectively.

There is a whole array of sandwiches of the traditional type, beef, ham, cheese etc at £5.25 and if you want it as bread with the meat/cheese on the side with a salad, its at £5.95

They also serve jacket potatoes with the traditional filling – chilli, beans, tuna melt at £5.95

The main courses are priced at £7.95. My friends and I had the fish & chips, cottage pie and ham egg and chips.

The ham is served sliced thin not a chunky cut – so its probably out of a packet. I had the fish and chips, served with mushy peas and a not too vinegary tartar sauce. The chips were great, but the batter was not the traditional batter – very much like the mazo meal versions that you get at Golders Green.

The truth is that you come here to drink and the food is not bad and it’s fairly cheap compared with Reading, Oxford or London.

Eddie

Web site: within review

Telephone number: Cafe Monde (01962 877 177), The Cornerhouse (01962 827 779), Hotel du Vin(01962 841 414)

Date of visit: November 2009

Approx. cost per head: within review

Comments on wine list/beer: N/A

Review:

Winchester breakfasts
We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and also the most literally named. The first food that our body welcomes upon return from the land of nod does indeed break the fast of the night before.
All too often these days breakfast is a hastily conjured affair, a bowl of salt and sugar-laden cereal with suspect milk or perhaps a guilty purchase on the station platform. In my opinion however there remains no finer alternative than a brilliantly prepared and properly savoured Full English Breakfast, particularly now that the nights are drawing in and our bodies need that extra morning fuel to get us through the day.
Happily, Winchester is blessed with a wide, if variable variety of places that serve a Full English, at last count more than twenty different establishments. Apart from being a soul-warming start to the day, (and, if prepared from good quality ingredients thoughtfully cooked, not nearly as unhealthy an option as we are led to believe), a leisurely breakfast can also be an excellent platform for a business meeting, or mentally preparing oneself for an important day ahead.
So where to go? Over thirteen years of extensive research I have come to frequent three places which are attractive for different reasons but which each offer an interpretation of the FEB that are well worth experiencing.
Cafe Monde
Walking along Winchester High Street you will come across the Buttercross, a large ornate sandstone monument which fell from the sky in the early 18th century narrowly missing the beautiful half-timbered buildings nearby. Walk through the archway nearby and Cafe Monde is on your left.
Monde is probably a modern trendy sort of a place with ferny wallpaper and lime green bits, service is provided by attractive student types dressed in black, they are always polite and friendly and reasonably quick. You can sit either outside or in one of three cosy indoor areas. There are complimentary newspapers and some unobtrusive piped music.
The full English at Monde is a play-off between generosity of portion and quality of ingredients and cooking; the quality can be variable compared to the reviews to follow, but it is rare to see a plate return to the kitchen unfinished. The bacon is decent back bacon, by which I mean there is more meat than fat, although this has been cooked in bulk rather than individually. Sausages are of average quality pork which has been cooked and then finished on the griddle; satisfactory if not inspired, but the scrambled egg, tomato and toast are all first rate and very fresh. Mushrooms are not a strength at Monde, and they are often of the overcooked boiled variety, beans arrive as part of the package but are generally well positioned on the plate. Order a large cappuccino and some extra toast and you have a great start to the day that will leave you feeling full until well into the afternoon without the need for that 2pm pretend to stare at your monitor snooze that so often follows a heavy lunch. The food at Monde is well cooked and never greasy, so on the coronary stakes this only starts to really score points if you use both packets of butter on your toast. Which is needless to say highly recommended as nothing tastes better than a mouthful of scrambled egg on buttered toast at 8am on a Friday after a heavy Thursday night.
So visit Cafe Monde for a reliable, entry level sort of a breakfast, you won’t be disappointed but you also might not be tempted to write a review about it, erm.
£8-£10 including coffee

The Cornerhouse, corner of Parchment Street & North Walls
The second venue I have chosen is also the most recent arrival on the scene. The Cornerhouse breakfast is like a Cheryl Cole debut single, coming straight in at the top of the charts. Whether the Cornerhouse is married to a dodgy footballer I can’t comment, but I’m certain that this restaurant would stand its ground against Simon Cowell just like our Cheryl. The venue is great, it’s like a modern version of your favourite barmy aunts living room with big plants, standard lamps, rugs and comfy cushions. The breakfast menu is superb with a wide variety of things involving salmon and poached eggs that I’m sure are great if you aren’t a die-hard traditionalist like myself. The full English here takes a little longer to arrive than at Monde, but this is because the cook in the kitchen is taking fresh cold sausages and bacon from the fridge and cooking these to order, you can tell, the local produced pork is a taste sensation and accompanied by properly seasoned mushrooms, excellent scrambled eggs, beans and black pudding. I always think one measure of the quality of the ingredients of an FEB is how much brown sauce you see people using… at Cornerhouse the HP bottles will last a long time. The only negative here would be that toast is extra, but that’s a minor niggle, there are papers galore and from a wide spectrum of political persuasions, and the coffee is freshly ground and brewed. Booking is highly recommended especially at weekends when Cornerhouse is rammed with disciples of the sausage.
Breakfast & toast & coffee £10-13
Hotel du Vin
Now please don’t think I’m cheating, yes the Hotel du Vin is a hotel, but it is also a popular bar and restaurant and anyone is free to turn up to eat. In my experience it has always been possible to get a table at the spare of the moment for breakfast, but if too many of you start doing the same then this will of course change, so book anyway.
The simplest way to explain a breakfast at du Vin is that if the sausages at Monde are pre-cooked and then griddled, the sausages at Cornerhouse are proper bangers cooked well to order, then the sausages at du Vin have to fill in an application form, audition and be interviewed to be allowed in the building. These are seriously tasty bangers which you won’t want to offend with brown sauce, although this is available on request (and kept out of sight of the chef). Quite simply the breakfast here is flawless, two rashers of smoked back butchers bacon properly grilled, Bury black pudding, a confit tomato, a whole field mushroom seasoned and fried, and scrambled eggs which are finished with cream. You can have as much toast as you like, and the service is of course impeccable in the comfortable and peaceful surroundings of the bistro. This breakfast is a well kept secret and, at £14 all-in including freshly brewed coffee the ultimate start to a weekend or working day. Think of it as going to worship at the church de la petit dejeuner. Breakfast du vin £14 Southgate street.

Location: 27 City Road, Winchester, SO23 8SD

Public transport/parking:

Web site: http://www.sweettreatco.co.uk/

Telephone number: 01962 808343

Date of visit: 10 October, 2009

Review:
Born in 1967, I spent quite a bit of my pocket-money during the 1970s in sweet-shops just like this one. Well, perhaps the shops of yesteryear were a little less colourful than this, and a bit less “polished” – more North-East England and less Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets Disneyland. But the rows and rows of jars of sweets—ranging across the palate of my childhood from wine gums to various flavours of sherbert to aniseed twists to fruit salads to midget gems to what used to be called sweet cigarettes to all sorts of licourice to you-remember-it-they’ve-got-it—are all the genuine article, delivered to the twenty-first century high street via some highly-sugared miracle of time-travel worthy of Tom Baker himself.

If you live in Winchester and have children, I recommend you take them as soon as possible. If you do not have children then no matter – go anyway. In fact, I think I enjoyed visiting this shop more than my son, aged seven. I left with a smile-inducingly large bag of wine gums—the original type, slightly hard unlike the feeble, too-soft imitation variety one usually finds in packets—while my son opted for a lolly pop about the size of his head. Children these days have no respect for traditional values, I am pleased to report. As I left the shop someone I know was driving past and caught my smile. He beamed back at me with complete understanding.

If you live elsewhere your inner child will have to make do with a virtual trip down memory lane by shopping on-line.

Before we left this splendid confectionery shop I told the owner it was quite possibly the best shop I’d visited in the last twenty-five years, and wished him well with his old-new business venture.

Damian@bottlesandcooks.com

Name of restaurant or pub: The Black Rat

Location: 88 Chesil St, Winchester, SO23 0HX

Web site: http://theblackrat.co.uk/

Telephone number: 01962 844465

Date of visit: 6 October 2009

Approx. cost per head: £25 plus

Comments on wine list/beer: Interesting list with a few gems. Mark up slightly below average

Review:

On a dark and windy wednesday night in Winchester when other restaurants and pubs are nearly empty, this place is half full.

The restaurant is owned by the same people as the Black Boy and it used to be a gay pub – so I was told.

The Black Rat is mainly open for dinner and weekend lunches. The cooking is “continental” english i.e. its multiple ingredients with a slight twist.

We had the Pollock Croquttes which were moist and plum and an interesting dish of pork with rillettes and pate en croute or a sausage roll filled with pate (thats what I think it should be called) which I liked very much.

Main courses was duck, onglet steak (I always thought that this is a skirt steak but Tony of Vicars in Reading told me that this is the muscle wrapped around  the bladder –  to squeeze the bladder) and Tuscan vegetarian platter. The steak and duck were cooked pink with ample side vegetables. The Tuscan platter was disappointing – it tasted of the ingredients (bread, mushroom, red cabbage and cheese) with no “special come together effect”.

The deserts were very visual and according to my friends excellent.

Eddie – eddie@bottlesandcooks.com