Pecks: Dinner in a conference room anyone?
I feel disappointed to be writing my first bad review, but not as disappointed as I felt after the actual meal.
Being back home in Cheshire is great, I love spending time with my family, the countryside is gorgeous and its a hell of a lot cheaper to get a pint here than in Soho. But one thing that has been disappointing time and time again has been the restaurant options. Apart from a few decent pub choices with traditional English menu’s, the Cheshire dining scene (not counting Manchester or Liverpool) leaves a lot to be desired.
When my Mum’s birthday was around the corner I was wracking my brain to come up with a nice event for the two of us to go to. Spa days were a bit boring - Who wants to spend their bday sipping cucumber water and not sinking pints of wine? She’s deathly afraid of heights so any form of bungee jumping and/or hot air ballooning was out of the question, so I settled on a restaurant with a tasting menu, wine pairings and a chance to wear heels. I booked a table for the two of us and told my dad to buy a chauffeur’s hat so he could act as a taxi for the evening. We got suitably dressed up, drove down the country roads to Congleton and stepped out in to Pecks Restaurant.
We were greeted and brought to our table, we came for the “dinner at eight” seating as they call it, it was 7:30 so the dining room was quite empty but we didn’t really mind, just ordered a couple of cocktails and waited. We did notice that the room it felt quite corporate. There was a lot of grey and marble, not any distinguishable music and the tables were strangely arranged to be close to each other even though there was a lot of space left. People started pouring in, and that gave the room a little bit more life, even though half of the clientele had little left of their own… The servers started to bring out small amuse bouche’s which they announced to each table, naming ingredients in a very rehearsed way (I didn’t realise this would be a consistent part of the evening) and I genuinely can’t remember what they were, it was three iterations of pastry, two of which I remember being burnt. Not a great start but we were starving so I remember half heartedly saying that they were really nice.
The bread course came, which was fine and then they started coming around asking which option we would like for the soup course. They did this with every single course. Coming over, with a plate of food to show us, listing what it was, what was in it and then moving to the table right next to us, saying the exact same thing. All the while you’re sat there having heard the spiel 4 times in various volumes like a car driving past. This affectation was very odd and seemed like an unnecessary attempt to be “posh” like something Basil Fawlty would make Manuel do. All of this promenading did not make up for the fact that the food was a complete swing and a miss. There were too many courses for me to do a detailed description of each so I’ll write a list:
Chicken and sweetcorn soup - an attempt on Chinese classic but lacked all of the flavour, it could’ve been out of a tin
Goats Cheese lollipop with charcoal mayonnaise and red pepper compote - It was spelt or something held together with a teaspoon of goats cheese, the charcoal mayo was interesting but didn’t go with the red pepper at all.
Lamb ribs, homemade kimchi, chicory and kodiak beer glaze - This just wasn’t on the plate. I got two thin lamb chops which might as well have been jerky, there was no chicory but a random whole carrot, some fried little gem lettuce and plum jam on the meat. The kimchi was the best part and it tasted distinctly like the brand I buy at home.
Pudding selection - if they put as much effort in to the actual food as they did with their cakes they’d be on to a winner. I can’t remember what they were but they were great, sadly i’m not a sweet person, so I didn’t really care. The banoffee pie was good.
Cheese - The option was there, but we didn’t have it as we were too full, we opted for the dessert cocktail instead which was gross. A limoncello milkshake thing, big mistake.
Coffee and petit fours - Possibly the weakest coffee i’ve ever had, and a couple of pieces of pistachio nougat.
My mum had the braised Ox cheek with mashed potatoes for one of the courses, and that was the best thing on the menu. I was very jealous. I think if you’re going down an Asian style route you better have someone in the kitchen who knows about it. This half assed attempt at chinese/japanese/british fusion just looked try hard. This restaurant is in the Cheshire countryside catering for retired couples. Stick to what you know, use the produce around you and perfect a few really good dishes each month.
The wine pairings didn’t really make any sense, for one course we got the completely wrong wine. I payed the bill and on the way home I said to mum she didn’t have to be polite… “I’m not sure it was worth the money love” YEAH ME NEITHER. I just felt sorry that a special night fell flat. But we’ve been laughing about it and vowed not to go back.
