Cheshire Smokehouse Review

MY SMOKED ham must have come from a happy pig. The raspberries in my yoghurt seem to have leapt gleefully from their vine.

On the stove the salted butter sang a little song as it melted, the frying eggs laughed along, while in the oven the smoked prime back bacon joined in with a smug sizzle.

Yes, I'd been on the magic mushrooms again.

Or maybe I was high with the joy of food. An excursion to the Cheshire Smokehouse had put a smile on my face.

I enjoyed my Cheshire cheese crumpets with relish. Or rather with chutney. Not only were the crumpets roofed with a bold melted Cheshire but came smeared with a cheeky chutney.

There are two parts to the business; the shop and the tearoom.

The shop is a real picture. If you had to dream up the perfect food emporium you'd probably come up with this. A main feature are the shelves holding the Smokehouse's own products, but there's also a wine section, a bakery, a greengrocery station, ice creams and diary products. In other words you could do a full food shop here if you had the dosh to titillate the tastebuds to this level every week.

The Smokehouse's baked ham joint (£26 for 1.6kg), summed up the quality, providing textured, nuanced, beautifully substantial meat. The same went for the leg of lamb at £23 for our family of five. We timed this right for the Sunday roast that evening and were rewarded with a faultless experience, meat that was so refined it was almost sweet.

The smoked eel at £6 for 120gms was an indulgence but worth it for the fatty, oily flesh, with its very individual flavour - plenty of seasoning works magic on eels. The salted French Lescure butter (£2.10) went with the shop's own olive ciabatta bread like a dream.

The wine selection in the Smokehouse is worth a trip in its own right, with a broad selection of New and Old World offerings at most price points from reasonable to infinity. A Chamonix Chardonnay (£15.95) from South Africa was pure quality and a bargain at the price.

Upstairs in the tearoom we rested and refreshed from spending the family silver on food. The tearoom is a pastel painted attic over the shop with pastel wooden hens and pastel coloured pictures on the wall.

The customers on our visit were made up of men with weighty upper torsos covered in red sweaters over yellow shirts that looked as though they wouldn’t ever consider buying a vehicle lower than a Jag. One gent was tucking into an English breakfast so large it was almost indecent. The accompanying ladies were comfortably proportioned and appeared to be partial to generous muffins with lashings of butter. 

Eating there, being served by the smiling waitresses, was  a gentle and genteel experience.

I tucked in as well, enjoying my Cheshire cheese crumpets with relish. Or rather with chutney. Not only were the crumpets roofed with a bold melted Cheshire cheese but came smeared with a cheeky chutney. I’ve never made savoury crumpets before but I will be doing so now. The coffee had a nice bite to it, most of all it avoided that weakness that be-devils out in the sticks tea rooms. 

If you want to indulge your pantry, kitchen cupboards, or small bedsit cabinet, a visit to the Cheshire Smokehouse is an illuminating essay in temptation. The tearoom is an illuminating essay in well-to-do suburbia.

One final point. Magic mushrooms aren't stocked by the Cheshire Smokehouse, you have to procure them yourselves. 

You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter here @JonathSchofield

ALL SCORED CONFIDENTIAL REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL. £1000 to the reader who can prove otherwise, and dismissal for the staff member who wrote a review scored out of twenty on a freebie from the restaurant.

The Cheshire Smokehouse
Vost Farm, Morley Green
Wilmslow 01625 548499 SK95NU

Tea Room Rating: 14/20
Food: 8/10
Service: 3/5
Ambience: 3/5