This was a gifted meal.
I do love Winchester as a city. Compact, historic, quaint and with just about everything you could need (including a fantastic tea shop) all in one place. At the bottom of the main high street there’s a subtle, unimposing restaurant called No 5 Bridge Street and we were invited for dinner. I have been before, the menu was completely different a few years ago, so I was looking forward to seeing what had changed.
Normally when I’m perusing a menu a few things will jump out at me and then I’ll whittle them down to what I will order. Not here. I wanted everything, absolutely all of it, I just couldn’t choose what to try because it all sounded so good. Fortunately the menu is designed to be a big sharing menu which helped but even then it was hard to choose which six to try first! Think of it like tapas but with plates inspired from all over the world: Japan, India, America, Britain, France and all sorts of other places. Just some of the things I picked out at first glance were: croquettas, crispy pork belly, beetroot hummus, jamon, hot smoked trout, charred leeks, stuffed courgette flowers, parsnip tart tatin, pulled beef sliders, lamb tagine, poached hake, dahl, smoked polenta, gnocchi…the list goes on and that doesn’t even include the specials.
