Food review: Granary Grill, Weston Park, Weston-under-Lizard

The opposite is true. Despite being in one of the county’s best locations, despite have extraordinary suppliers and despite being one of the most charming employers in the county, the kitchen seems to have a revolving door. Chefs spin in and out at an alarming rate, wrongly imagining that grass is greener elsewhere.

He suffers from what I call the Fish and Chip Conundrum. His customers love fish and chips – but chefs think they’re above such fripperies. They want to dazzle like Heston, rather than fry like The Codfather. Fools – the lot of them.

My friend reasons with them, encouraging them to make their version of the humble chip supper the best in the county. He exhorts them to cook with greater precision, to make sure their seasoning is pinpoint perfect, to create a batter that cracks and crunches with the sound of shattering glass and to triple cook their chips in the beef dripping of wagyu cattle, or something similar. . .

And yet time and again, his chefs give up the ghost because they want to create a pea espuma to serve with a black pepper and pineapple beignet alongside air-dried duck pastrami and spherified white balsamic. Or some such nonsense.

The Granary Grill, at Weston Park, went through a phase where its chefs wrongly imagined they were competing against the county’s fine dining elite. And so, for a little while, chefs would over-complicate and add in layers of needless detail when all the customers really wanted was a decent steak, a stunning burger, a banging plate of moules et frites or a luxurious prawn cocktail followed by a sautéed corn-fed chicken breast with garlic mash.

A few years on and the penny seems to have dropped. The Granary Grill menu 2017 is spot on, featuring a mix of tried and tested gastro pub classics – confit duck leg with lentils, twice-baked goat’s cheese soufflé, a rib eye steak with hand cut chips – alongside a few dishes that are a little more exotic but do not alienate. There are sides that all would recognise: hand cut chips, cider-battered onion rings, garlic mushrooms, béarnaise sauce and a salad et al. The age of chefs having ideas above their station is well and truly over and instead they appear to have adopted the maxim of my restaurateur friend – people love simple food, so make your version better than anyone else’s.

For that’s precisely what the Granary Grill does. During a midweek supper, my friend and I were dazzled by two courses that really oughtn’t to have been anything special: a prawn cocktail and a humble burger. Both were memorable and stood out from the crowd – more of which later.

Weston Park seems to be on a mission to make eating out the easiest pursuit known to man. It’s user-friendly website is easy to navigate, its online booking service the easiest in town – I booked online and within two hours we were sitting down to eat. Easy peasy lemon cheesey (cake).

Delight

The venue remains a delight. Located on the vast and ever-impressive Weston Park Estate, it’s easy to reach, the dining room is light and airy, the venues are a real treat – courtyard to the left, lawns to the right – while the window to the kitchen makes for an interactive and engaging experience.

Service got off to a slow start but improved as the evening went on.

We were the first diners in for the evening and the two staff seemed nonplussed by our arrival. Their shoulders shrugged as they wore: ‘you’ve-just-interrupted-our-conversation’, expressions of discontent.

First impressions count and theirs were disinterested and unimpressive. No matter. Things picked up as the evening went on and as both flicked their ‘professionalism’ switch. They had the ability, smiled their way through the evening and, kindly, made a subsequent call when I’d left a hoodie on my chair. Redemption was theirs.

The star of the evening was the chef. He served simple food to a high standard. The seasoning was good, the little twists and turns innovative and imaginative, the quality enjoyable. He’s probably the best they’ve had.

We started with prawn cocktail and mushroom ragu. The cocktail was sweet, slightly-salty and decidedly more-ish. Our conversation dried briefly as my friend cut through vast lettuce leaves to get at the creamy, pink prawns beneath. “That’s the best prawn cocktail I’ve ever eaten,” he said, with the look of a man who’d just picked up £500 on a four-bet accumulator. And while I’ve no idea how many prawn cocktails he’s previously eaten and whether they were from Iceland or The Fat Duck, he was clearly satisfied. Job done. Good work Mr Chef.

My mushroom ragu with herb-dried tomato, confit garlic but no quails egg – my choice, I didn’t fancy it – was similarly enjoyable. Decent bread was served alongside, to mop up the juices, and the commingling of flavours created a symphony of taste. Sometimes less is more, simple is best.

The waitress was by now bringing her A-Game to the table and stood over us as we ordered. In our game of Main Course Roulette, we both ordered the burger. It was magnificent. It was Elvis-lectable. It was Burger-lucious.

A brilliant, home-made, seasame-seed-topped bun – and as a self-professed Master Of Buns, I’d say that was just about the best in Shropshire – hid a prime steak burger that had been thoroughly scorched on the outside, so that it was caramelised and in places ever-so-slightly bitter.

Generous

The inside was as pink as a flamingo’s tail feather and juices rolled down our fingers as though we were hot-handed jugglers melting balls of butter.

A generous squish of Wrekin Blue cheese added contrast while bacon jam, pickles and leaves completed the creation. The jam was a little too sweet, in truth, but that aside, the chef scored full marks. Great bun, great meat, delicious accompaniments – good thinking, Chef Man. You are the Griddle King.

We skipped dessert – the burgers left both of us replete – and the initially-disinterested-but-latterly-superfly front-of-house staff kindly called later on to remind Mr Memory Fade that he’d left his jacket. Nice. And thank you very much.

The Granary Grill is in as good a place now as it’s ever been. Its staff need to play the full 90 minutes, rather than rock up after kick off, but that’s a minor gripe. A decent dining room, a menu that punches above its weight, well-sourced produce and good customer service combine to ensure a pleasurable dining experience.