Steam Bake and Grill at Wychwood Park DeVere Resort, near Crewe: surprisingly good

21st July 2015
We had booked a bargain midweek break through TravelZoo. Amazing value - £99 for two for B and B for two nights, and one three course meal. This is one of a number of resort venues more geared up to conferences and training meeting, and I can only presume they sell off their spare capacity when there is not enough conference trade. I guess July is not a big conference month to spend in Crewe. Crewe is pretty well located for the pottery attractions of Stoke on Trent, and Ironbridge museums.
The restaurant is pretty minimalist, with no table cloths, no bread and I am guessing that all the food is pre-prepared, but I could not say where. The limited menu appearance and speed of service suggests that it is not cooked to order. Nevertheless, it turned out to be the star of this venue in my opinion. I thought I was only getting a two course meal, but it turned out to be three. You can find out more at http://www.deverevenues.co.uk/en/venues/wychwood-park/food-and-drink/ . There is a sort of open plan kitchen to see where the finishing touches are put to dishes. These were clearly the cooks that the management were happy for people to see.

For starter, I had garlic prawns

The dish was served on a weird pice of fake facsimile newspaper. It was well cooked, tasty and scored a 9 on the CHOF scale. A good start.

For main, I had a steak pie with mash, which looks a bit like a self assembly kit. There is a boat of gravy. You get the idea. This again was pretty good and also an 8.5 to 9 on the CHOF scale.

For desert, I chose the mixed chocolate roulade.

A tiny bit mass produced, but good nevertheless.

All in all this was a surprisingly good meal, at a good temperature. It has a minor pretention factor based on the over attention to appearance, but the surroundings and service negated that. We ordered a bottle of wine, but were provided with something other than what we ordered, and were told that this was what they decided to serve instead. I guess the customer is not always right. I gather that the rack rate for this meal without drink and service is £25/head. This is probably a bit overpriced for a TDH meal, but was a good deal as part of our package.