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This week we have been mostly eating in small restaurants. Our judicial duties for the Food and Drink Festival Awards have taken us on a scofftastic tour of Chester's finest less-than-forty-seater restaurants. Far from the usual unscientific sampling of subjective sentiment that constitutes a typical Chester@Large review, this exercise was conducted in the very spirit of scientific rigour. Using a fifty five box questionnaire designed to ensure consistency, fairness and accuracy, we munched a trail of glory through the shortlisted establishments.
To say that all the finalists were of an exceptionally high standard sounds trite to the point of nausea, but that's not going to stop us saying it anyway. I have to confess to being a sucker for the excitement and drama of our larger venues, so this was a timely reminder of the rewards to be had from visiting the smaller restaurant. Joseph Benjamin, Got Wine!, Upstairs at the Grill and the Village Bistro hardly put a foot wrong during our recent visits. Different in so many ways, the one quality all four venues had in common was a passion and enthusiasm for their product.
La Taverna was another that shared this passion. Sad, then, to report that it ceased to trade at the start of the year. We are never short, in Chester, of Italian restaurants, but there is none now that offers the authentic Tuscan experience that could be found at La Taverna. Ironically, Pizza Express,
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which once occupied the remarkable room now vacated by La Taverna, is set to reopen elsewhere in town.
At the other end of the scale, we also lost Yates's Wine Lodge. Once an honourable institution that performed the well-intentioned function of serving inexpensive, but decent quality wine to those who would otherwise have fetched up drinking unspeakable rotgut, it ended up going full circle serving cheap rotgut to an unspeakable clientele. I don't like to generalise, but the only time I've ever felt nervous in a Chester bar was on my infrequent visits to Yates's. See ya.
To make up for the loss of Yates's it seems we are to get not one, but five new bars. Lloyds No 1 will eventually open at the Mansion House to judge by a recent planning application, a Cape Wine Bar and a Pitcher & Piano will open at the new hotel facing the amphitheatre and two clubs - the bog standard Cruise on St John Street, and the anything but Oddfellows on Lower Bridge Street - are expected to launch this quarter. You could call that raising the bar.
Regular readers will know we're always on the lookout for reviews of bars and restaurants that either don't appear on these pages or are in need of an update (Alexander's, Brannigan's, the Summer Palace for starters). As ever, the spiritual rewards will be manifold, though the pay is non-existent.
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