Cork & Tile Portuguese opened in the Fred Winter Centre in the Guild Street back street area of Stratford-Upon-Avon in the spring of 2022. It’s somewhere different to try out when in Stratford as a rest from the lookalike Sheep Street bistros and its attraction is, or should be, that it’s offering a new cuisine for the town - Portuguese.
The restaurateurs have done their best to give it a Mediterranean feel - pleasing bright decor with sunny yellows, colourful Portuguese ceramics on the walls and authentic Portuguese background music. The place is spacious but the building itself makes it impossible to suspend one’s belief that one is in Stratford and not in a cosy Algarve restaurant, sea breezes wafting around one and the squeal of seabirds eyeing up your grilled sardines. The outside looks like a sports centre and the ceiling of the restaurant - all pipes and tubes - burdens the attempt to bring the Mediterranean to Stratford with an overwhelming industrial feel to it. It’s a shame. The owners have done their best but it’s the wrong building in the wrong location to enable one to really enter into the spirit of what is intended; perhaps if they had been able to acquire a more traditional location on Waterfront looking out towards the Avon then it really would have been quite thrilling to visit. That said they’ve clearly done their best with the location available.
Good service and a good explanation of what was on offer left one only to wait for one’s choice of dishes from the menu. But there was a second problem. The restaurant has no alcohol license and while one is invited to bring one’s own bottle it would be really rather nice if the restaurant were offering a choice of wines, particularly Portuguese or Iberian, to help conjure up the Lusitanian atmosphere which the building itself denies the diner. In all events, it’s an interesting menu and as starter I chose Gambas com Alho (translated as Garlic prawns with croutons). This was undoubtedly a robust start to the meal; the magnificent prawns were well cooked and tasty and the herb and garlic sauce very enjoyable. The croutons were terrifyingly hard and anyone biting into them without soaking them in the sauce first would be running a serious risk to their dentition. Nevertheless a fine and enjoyable dish.
For the main course I chose Alheira com Batata a Murro e Grelos (“A classic bread sausage of wild boar and deer meat with crushed new potatoes and turnip greens”). This turned up looking about as rustic as any dish could do, with the vast, slightly unnerving, splendidly phallic bread sausage tied up in an ‘O’ shape and the turnip greens sitting comfortably on 4 or 5 very well cooked but uncrushed new potatoes.
The ‘classic bread sausage’ is not particularly any more appealing on the inside than it is on the outside. It seems to be largely bread, as described on the menu, with little pieces of chopped protein inside it. It’s rather mushy and while it no doubt does appeal to Portuguese tastes it’s not a sausage that I feel I shall be revisiting. Still interesting to try and I have no complaints to make to the chef on the preparation of the dish.
I had room for dessert (my proton pump inhibitor is working splendidly). I chose Bolo de Coco e Ananàs) pineapple and coconut cake) served with vanilla ice cream. This was thoroughly satisfying and the cake had a nice texture though the flavour of pineapple was less in evidence than that which came from the coconut. The helping of ice cream was generous though the ice cream was fairly unremarkable and I didn’t really need the strawberry sauce poured on it.
This restaurant makes a pleasing alternative venue if one is looking for somewhere to eat in Stratford. I shall be interested to see how the restaurant develops in the coming months. It is the second branch of Cork And Tile Portuguese, the original shop being opened in Exeter in July 2019. The chef in Stratford is Ana Natalia. Rating - 🌜🌜
Stratford is the sort of town where one would expect to find a good number of restaurants which might find their way into the Good Food Guide or the Michelin Guide. The Good Food Guide is very much in flux at the moment and at the moment does not list a single Stratford restaurant in its short list of Midlands restaurants. The nearest restaurant mentioned in the Good Food Guide is the immaculate Cheal’s of Henley. Michelin meanwhile lists three - the single starred Salt, Lambs of Sheep Street and The Woodsman.
Here is a list of all the Stratford upon Avon restaurants mentioned in the Michelin Guide during its existence as hard copy which is the period 1974 - 2020 and then the subsequent years as an online tool.The years in which each restaurant featured in the Guide are indicated:-
(Da) Giovanni 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83
Marianne 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82
Buccaneer 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81
Bankside 75 76 77
Le Provençal 77 78 79 80 81 82
Christophi’s 77 78 79 80 81
Piper At The Gates of Dawn (floating restaurant) 78 79
The Chase (Ettington) 83 84 85 86 87 88 89
Marlowe’s Elizabethan Rooms 85
Hill’s 85
Rumours 87
Hussains 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01
Sir Toby’s 90 91 92 93 94 95
Liaison 96
The Boathouse 98 99 00
Desport’s 99 00 01 02 03
Lamb’s 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Restaurant Margaux 02 03 04 05
Hamilton’s Brasserie 05
Malbec (Petit Bistro) 06 07 08 09 10 11
Church Street Townhouse 12 13 14 15 16
Oak Room (Ettingham Park Hotel) 12 13
Waterside Brasserie 12 13 14 15 16 17
Rooftop (Royal Shakespeare Theatre) 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
No 9 Church St 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Baraset Barn (Alveston) 12 13 14 15 16
Woodsman 20 21 22
Salt 18 19* 20* 21* 22*
As can be seen, Lamb’s has had by far the longest run on the pages of the Guide (2000-22), followed by Hussain’s which still exists though it has not been listed since 2001. I have visited it twice though several years ago when I found it to be a fairly run-of-the-mill, old fashioned south Asian-style restaurant. However it would be interesting to visit it again now to see if it remains a time capsule or is more grounded now in the 21st century.
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