With the West Midlands turned into a giant lake as the result of the incessant rain and resultant flooding, it was pleasing to find that Stratford-upon-Avon at least was only mildly affected with a fairly minor bursting of its banks by the Avon as it flowed through the town near the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare’s mortal remains lie at rest.
The thing about Stratford is that it is a one industry town and that industry is Shakespeare. If anything goes wrong Shakespeare-wise then everyone there suffers. The disastrous decision by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to feature endlessly on its main stage a pretty naff musical about a boy who wants to wear a dress and turn up to school in it has, so I am told, had a negative effect on some of the good restaurants in the town. It seems that the play, aimed at families with teenagers, is not attracting the usual people who visit the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and those it is attracting - its target audience - are more likely to end up in a cheapish pizza joint (though nothing is cheap in Stratford) than a good quality restaurant. So it seems that the winter season has not been a kind one to some of Stratford’s restaurants.
Some probably have advantages in this situation - Salt, despite its glum waiting staff, has a Michelin star to attract the punters though when I walked past it one evening a couple of weeks ago it didn’t really look as though trade was booming, The Woodsman has the benefits of being situated in an upmarket hotel with a potentially captive clientele and also has the lure to the curious of being a fairly recently opened restaurant which has been feted by some professional critics and No 9 Church Street seems to have a loyal band of older local diners who turn up there from time to time though the thought of setting out to go there on dark wet evenings as we have had in recent weeks may act as a disincentive despite no matter how enjoyable the food served there might be. Then there are the cloned bistros on Sheep Street, close to the theatre and hotels, which have menus which hold more promise than they deliver and are well set up for passing trade.
Then there is No 33 The Scullery, a dear little restaurant loved by Tripadvisors but ignored by Michelin and The Good Food Guide though the food there is really rather good. Situated on Greenhill Street, rather unpromisingly next door to a launderette, it doesn’t benefit to any degree from passing trade unlike the establishments of Sheep Street. But it does benefit from its justified Tripadvisor popularity and, I should think, local word of mouth.
Small and narrow, it was opened by chef Andrew Edwards and his business partner Carl Pritchard towards the end of 2014 in the same spot vacated by Moro, a well thought of Italian restaurant which relocated to elsewhere in Stratford. I dined there quite often in its early days when things were rather quieter than now and you could have a little chat with chef about your opinion about his dishes at the end of your meal. The Stratford dining scene was quite different then - no Salt, no Woodsman, all the Sheep Street clones, some not very good Asian restaurants and some chains - just No 9 Church Street to tickle up one’s appetite. Andrew Edwards’ new little restaurant was a bright light newly lit for Stratford diners - he revealed himself to be a chef who could produce extremely enjoyable dishes with high quality, locally sourced ingredients without silly, flashy blobs and streaks scattered around the plate and substituting better cuts of meat for the prevailing and ubiquitous pork belly and cheeks of ox or pig. In short the arrival of No 33 The Scullery in Stratford was a step forward for this town where there’s a fair bit of money floating around and where one would expect that the locals would appreciate an alternative high quality food emporium.
It isn’t a place where you feel you need very much more than the exceptionally fresh and delicious food prepared admirably expertly by Edwards but the restaurant is bright and cheerful, the serving team pleasant and helpful and the drinks are rather good. It was soon after The Scullery was opened that I discovered the sheer joy of Cotswold Gin from south Warwickshire and debuting in The Scullery and it’s still there along with, I see, Stratford gin. But back to the food. The point about the place is that Andrew Edwards is a really good cook. He knows how to produce excellent fish dishes without needing to immerse them in water baths and his meat is perfectly cooked by methods used by cooks rather than celebrity chefs.
He does have a habit of being rather inflexible and probably unseasonal with the vegetables he serves with his dishes; I have made the mange tout a particular enemy of mine over the years and that particular entity does seem to appear on his plates of food at any time of the year but, unlike so many restaurants, he does actually seem to realise that having some vegetables accompanying a meal is a good thing. It’s a particularly good thing if you’re not paying £5 for a small pot of mashed potatoes with a bit of garlic and bacon added to it, even if it’s delicious, as is the case in another Stratford restaurant. I’m sorry to say that I don’t entirely go along with him on how cooked a vegetable should be; some of his vegetables are a little al dente for my taste.
Andrew Edwards has maintained an excellent standard of the food presented at No 33 since the restaurant opened. I say that because I have recently visited there again. A joyous evening.
I had a starter of a wonderfully delicious warm goat’s cheese and beetroot tartlet with balsamic glaze sitting on some very pleasant leaves. The pastry was fine and nicely thin and perfectly crispy. Goat’s cheese can be an unpleasant little number when it wants to be but this tartlet with the sweetness of the beetroot made the cheese that rode on its back excruciatingly moreish. A great little dish.
It’s hard to have any credibility as a food lover if one can not wax lyrical about game. I often fail dreadfully on that score. But seeing what was on offer on the No 33 The Scullery ‘Specials’ board drove me with great anticipation to plunge deep into the world of game - I chose exquisitely cooked medallions of venison served with a truly fabulous bitter chocolate and port sauce with slices of small sautéed potatoes which soaked up deliciously some of the sauce making them little taste bombs of pleasure. The picture below shows that there was a nice green and orange selection of vegetables also claiming a place on the plate but among them you can see a wicked not-too-little mange tout pushing its way into the foreground of the pretty still life. The venison was generously portioned and looked and tasted magnificent but the addition of the sauce really made it a dish to savour and remember.
For pudding a very edible salted caramel cheesecake with a few squirts of raspberry coulis and an amusing little texture on top in the form a few bits of pop corn.
Hopefully the Royal Shakespeare Theatre will get over all the current silliness going on there at the moment about trying to address every concern that its liberal elite thinks that a good liberal member of society should have and give back Shakespeare to its punters and bring them all out to support the town’s only industry and ensure that great little restaurants like No 33 The Scullery and other businesses in the town don’t suffer because of the policies of the theatre’s increasingly loopy artistic production elite.
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