Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Interesting selection of wines but food was unremarkable
IT may be a brand new opening but there was a strong sense of déjà vu when I arrived at Stony Street House in Frome and it wasn’t simply because I had reviewed Sam’s Kitchen, its short-lived predecessor on the same site, only a year ago.
From the hexagonal letterpress logo on the floor-to-ceiling windows to the familiar concept of small plates, lots of wines by the glass and a dedicated wine shop on the ground floor, it brought back immediate memories of visits to Beckford Bottle Shop in Bath and Tisbury.
So similar is Stony Street House that when I mentioned to somebody in a local coffee shop that I was just off to eat there that even they thought it was the latest opening from the Beckford Bottle Shop team.
It’s actually nothing to do with Beckford Bottle Shop but Stony Street House owner Kent Barker did once work for them and clearly found it an inspiration for his first solo venture.
I’m sure in some ways, the Beckford Bottle Shop would have happily snapped up the building at the bottom of Catherine Hill in Frome’s artisan quarter. It’s a cracking site in the best part of a town with a growing national reputation for food and art.
Once a Poundstretcher, this imposing red-brick and green-tile Edwardian building was Sam’s Kitchen for a couple of years until it suddenly shut its doors last summer.
With its stripped floors, battleship grey-painted brick walls, woodburners and exposed extraction ducting, it shares a similarly utilitarian look as its predecessor and the woodfired oven and open kitchen are the same as before.
Mismatched vintage furniture and low sofas soften the industrial look and when I arrived just before midday, most people were having coffee. It was all rather civilised.
There are around 350 wines in the shop with bottles starting at just £6.50. All bottles can be drunk in house when ordering food for a corkage cost of £10, which ultimately gives diners better value when they order the more expensive and interesting wines.
Alternatively, you can just order wines from the list and all 30-plus bottles are available by the glass or carafe.
The same food menu is served all day and the wood-fired oven is the prime focus, with sourdough pizzas including one topped with locally cured wild venison chorizo and pickled chillies and a few vegetarian options including grilled courgette, marinated artichoke and spinach with ricotta and pumpkin seed pesto.
Apart from the pizzas and mezzelike sharing boards of cheese and charcuterie, the options are pretty limited, with seven small/large ‘plates’, the majority of which are salads and bruschettas.
In search of something a little more interesting, I started with prawns, chilli, garlic and lemon mayo (£9.50). The four king prawns were still searingly hot and smoky from the wood-fired oven, although once I had removed the shells, I couldn’t really detect the chilli and garlic and the pot of thick mayo topped with zest was reminiscent of a lemon cheesecake.
It was followed by a ragu with tagliatelle and Parmesan (£12.50) - a rustic pasta dish with tender cubes of beef in the rich sauce and thick slices of Parmesan rather than thin shavings. It had a good depth of flavour but refined it wasn’t.
My lemon tart with crème fraîche and pistachio praline (£6.50) should never have left the kitchen, let alone served at the table.
The filling was zesty enough but the slim slice was parsimonious and the pastry was soft. And quite how the chefs thought it would be OK to serve it with a deep crack running across the centre is beyond me. It looked amateurish, like a tart that came last in Great British Bake Off.
Ultimately, the food was unremarkable although the wines I tried were more interesting - the crisp and floral Amélie Blanc Languedoc blend of viognier, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc worked well with the prawns and the Clos Henri pinot noir from New Zealand stood up well to the ragu - and the staff were amiable without giving the impression of a complete mastery of the wine list or a real passion for the subject, but it’s early days.
Despite the obvious comparisons, Stony Street House isn’t quite as cool, edgy or challenging on the food front as Beckford Bottle Shop.
In wine terms, you might say it’s more like a generic, watered-down taste of the New World whereas its more established Bath and Tisbury rival is a more full-bodied and refined drop of the Old World.
Either way, it’s fair to say that upmarket wine bars in West Country towns and cities are very much a growing trend and that can only be something to raise a large glass to.
RATING