As soon as we finished eating at this lovely restaurant in Chester a month or so ago, I decided to rebook for the seventh anniversary of my kidney transplant. We wanted something special as this may well turn out to be the last anniversary of this transplant.

On arrival we were seated in a lovely corner booth and ordered a glass of English bubbly each. Steve was presented with an updated version of the gluten and dairy free menu which this time had a few seasonal variations and we ordered pretty rapidly as we knew that on this visit we wanted to try the steak and I wanted to try a dessert.

The gluten free bread was much improved on this visit so a big thumbs up to the baker for that. I skipped starters to leave room for a sweet treat at the end, but as a more savoury person, Steve opted for a hand dived Orkney scallop baked in the flames, which I think wasn’t on his free from menu last time. With an XO sauce, dashi, sea herbs, apple and roe, this beautiful dish was a lovely way to start.

Now, onto the main course. In this restaurant is a big fridge full of cuts of meat. You walk past it as you enter. When you choose the steak as a main you are taken to this fridge to pick the meat you want. Steve picked a whopping 1.2kg hunk at £9/100g. Well it was a special occasion 😉

This dish is a sharing dish so I was happy to eat around Stevens intolerances. The meat is a 60-80 day dry aged sirloin, rib eye and T-bone of rare breed beef on the bone, cooked over oak wood. This came with a dairy free peppercorn sauce, triple cooked chips, wood fired beetroot and kale. It is cooked to your liking and brought to your table carved and ready to go.

The meat was tender, the chips were incredible and unsurprisingly we couldn’t eat it all. We had the few remaining slices and the bone bagged up to take home to our very lucky dogs. But again unsurprisingly I had room for dessert. I chose something that I didn’t remember being on the menu last time. A Basque cheesecake baked in the wood fired oven. This came with Cheshire blackberries, caramelised sourdough and pine.

Now a Basque cheesecake is a specialty dessert from Spain. This ‘burnt’ cheesecake comes out super dark and caramelised and has no crust. I’ve wanted to try one of these forever. It was delicious. Creamy and caramelised all at once and amazing that it was cooked in the same way as my steak. The blackberry was a perfect pairing and the pine was nice if a little overpowering. It went down a treat.

I would definitely recommend this place, the head chef is in the final of the Roux scholarship so he definitely knows what he’s doing. Yes it’s a little pricey but for a splash out meal or for a special occasion it’s just perfect.