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. read more

This was a gifted meal.

Winchester is home to many lovely things. A cathedral with an excellent second hand bookshop round the back, a marvellous independent tea shop and now, although I say now it has been there for some time, the River Cottage Canteen Winchester. It’s in such a lovely setting, next to the river Itchen in a park and they get as many of their ingredients as possible from Hampshire. If they don’t come from Hampshire they come from Devon (i.e. River Cottage HQ) and almost every ingredient has a story behind it. read more

This was a gifted meal. I love a good nose round a deli or farm shop. Despite supermarkets always launching new products I think they are behind the independents for the new, interesting and exciting brands and flavours. Chocolate, popcorn, rubs, gin, mixers I always find much more tempting and varied brands in a farm shop or deli. On a recent trip to The Good Life Farm Shop near Winchester I was treated to a bit of lunch and I thought this was the ideal time to find out if I don’t like quiche as much as I think I don’t.

I tried the quiche of the day which was salmon and courgette and as it turns out, I quite like quiche. A lifetime of avoiding any quiche apart from my Granny’s was over. The pastry was crisp and crumbly, the filling soft but not mushy or overly eggy, well seasoned and a generous amount of salmon. I’m a quiche convert. 

The salted caramel cake that followed was sublime; made by a lady called Mama Brown. The wedge I had was huge (as all sweet things should be!) and the caramel on top of the cake and in between the layers tasted great; without that strange caramel flavour you can sometimes get. Being well satisfied just gave me another excuse to peruse the shop; I saw it as ‘walking it off’!
Thank you to The Good Life for my lunch. All opinions and words expressed are my own. read more

I love a trip to Winchester; I always forget how big and yet small it is. That sounds a bit weird but I always forget about the other smaller roads that come off the main street that house some great independent shops and restaurants. We walked past No 5 Bridge Street on our way in and I thought it looked nice and suave, we went back around lunchtime to check out the menu and it all sounded great. The kind of food I wish I could be bothered to cook at home and here it all was, ready to eat. Lots of local produce on offer it was hard to know what to order. You have to check out the below menu because it looks and sounds great. Nibbly bits, light meals, mains and grills all full of potential.  I really liked the layout and decor in the restaurant; I wish I’d got a picture but there were too many people around as it was absolutely rammed. When a restaurant is full of people it’s normally a good sign. The other thing I really liked was that you could reserve a table, but, if they were all booked there were plenty of tables in the bar areas. The staff were all very nice, if not a little rushed, and we sat down to peruse the offerings. Sadly for us, and our wallets, potential was all there was. The presentation of the below bread with dukkah, olives and rapeseed oil was lovely. The experience of eating it, not so much. If you’re serving bread with thick crusts, I think the crusts have to be crusty rather than chewy. I also think the bread should be a little bit warmed. This bread was dry and chewy. The dukkah was very nice as were the olives. The falafel smelled fantastic and it looked good. Unfortunately the chickpeas were either not soaked or cooked for long enough or were too chunky because the flavour was quite raw and a bit unpleasant. The hummus was excellent.

I have a bit of an issue with barbecue sauce; I only like some of them. I love pulled pork and the sound of ‘pulled pork burger, toasted brioche bun, ranch dressed slaw, our BBQ sauce and skinny fries’ sounded right up my street. They were only too happy for me to have the sauce on the side which I know is a bit of an unusual ask. The portion size of the meal was actually quite small, maybe I’m greedy, but the other meal ordered (more on that in a minute) also seemed quite small. Maybe they just have really big plates.
The pork in my bun was actually a bit cold and the bottom of my bun really soggy. It seemed like all the pork in the kitchen is ready to go with barbecue sauce already on it (which makes sense) and when my request came in they washed it under a tap and didn’t dry it very well. The whole thing just got soggier and soggier as I ate it. I did like their barbecue sauce (I know I’m picky) so ended up putting some of it on the bun after all! Ranch dressing is one of my favourites but the ranch dressed slaw didn’t have much taste at all; even the vegetables. All in all, for something that sounded punchy and interesting it was actually a little disappointing. Maybe part of it was my fault but I think all the components of the meal should be equally as good as each other and taking just one away shouldn’t make that much of a difference.
The other meal at the table was ‘Chestnut flour suet pudding, wild mushroom stuffed, truffle mash and mushroom gravy’. You can never really make a suet pudding look good but as they go, this one looked pretty appetising. The suet pastry was overly sweet and very dry, the sweetness could have worked really well with the earthy mushrooms but it was just a bit too much. The pudding was absolutely full of mushrooms so they weren’t at all skimping on the stuffing but somehow they lacked a real depth of flavour. The mash was ok and the gravy was ultimately there to act as a lubricant because it didn’t taste of much either. We left disappointed which is not the feeling you want after a meal. read more