Shropshire Magazine

The interior of The Walls in Oswestry.

Neil Thomas ponders the vexed question of portion size and finds that, in Oswestry, it’s no problem securing quantity and quality.

Pictures: Mike Hayward

Watching your wife puff out her cheeks, roll her eyes and slightly grimace across the restaurant table is not, admittedly, the reaction you’d necessarily hope for when you’ve whisked her off for a romantic dinner for two.

Yet, the first thing to emphasise about our meal at The Walls in Oswestry is that it was a delight. An utter delight.

Still, it did prompt thoughts about the size of portions served in restaurants nowadays. Vanessa left nearly half of her beautifully cooked sirloin steak on the side of the plate. What was the chef to think? That the cut was too large or his cooking stank? That Vanessa was under the weather or simply a light or fussy eater?

King scallops, flash fried with chorizo, garlic and olive oil.

Sizing portions is a tricky operation. While Vanessa struggled, an 18-stone farmer down from the Welsh hills might have cleaned his plate and grumbled under his breath about the niggardly helpings. How can a restaurant win?

This is not, it should be stressed, a dilemma confined to The Walls. It is a situation we have encountered the length and breadth of Shropshire and far beyond. Night after night across Britain expertly farmed, brilliantly cooked, high-quality food is scraped into bins. While many diners remain gloriously indifferent to this, the more sensitive will start the evening bent on relaxation and enjoyment and slope home riddled with guilt.

The food waste in our restaurants and hotels borders on the scandalous and should be the subject of a national debate within the industry.

What to do? We’ve moved away from meat portions the size of mouse droppings surrounded by twirls, smears and drizzles, all lost in the centre of a plate with the circumference of a Scania lorry hubcap. Thankfully, we’ve also not yet arrived at the gargantuan American fashion of serving up steaks the size of Mike Tyson’s fists accompanied by sufficient fries to fill a window cleaner’s bucket, swimming in enough grease to clog the channel tunnel, let alone an artery.

Roast fillet of salmon with horseradish crème fraîche, buttered asparagus and mussels.

Most British establishments try to play it safe by going for the middle ground. Yet why, when Government health experts, advised by the British Heart Foundation, insist that a piece of meat the size of a pack of playing cards is perfectly adequate for any one sitting, do we insist on stretching our stomachs to bursting point with cuts two or three times that size?

Why, so often, do we get a one-size-fits-all helping? If menus can offer a range of dishes, why not a variety of portions? If we can get a choice of seven-inch, nine-inch and 12-inch pizzas, surely it’s not beyond the loftier restaurants to give you small, medium or large bowls of vegetables?

None of which preamble should detract from what was a superb evening. We’ve eaten at The Walls several times before and always considered it to be a beacon on the Shropshire culinary landscape. Our latest visit, prompted by news of an unexpected accolade, did nothing to diminish that view. The Walls is rightly feted in its own county but now it seems its fame is spreading. It has been included in the Observer food awards, introduced by acclaimed culinary journalist Nigel Slater.

The restaurant makes mention of this, rather diffidently, in its regular, cutely titled publication The Walls Street Journal, which keeps diners up to date with special gastronomic and entertainment events.

The Walls clearly sees music as an important adjunct to the meal and a delightful pianist provided a classy background sound. The cavernous building – a converted Victorian school replete with ecclesiastically-high ceilings, bare bricks and wooden beams – is itself a mood enhancer.

Such appealing surroundings demand great food and The Walls kitchen certainly delivers.

There was an early niggle when we were ushered to a comfortable sofa at the rear of the half-busy restaurant and then forgotten. Fifteen minutes without being offered either a drink or a menu is a little ropey.

Still, apologies were effusive and what followed in the next three hours was terrific.

We all need a little spice in our lives, which might account for why chorizo seems to be flavour of the month. Celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Nigella Lawson are advocates, and supermarkets have clearly cottoned on, even slapping it on the top of their own-make pizzas.

Vanessa reckons this cured smoked sausage from the Iberian peninsula is at its best with scallops as a starter, which is how it was served at The Walls, flash-fried with garlic and olive oil.

My toasted goat’s cheese on French toast was straightforward snack food given a refreshing twist by the myriad flavours accompanying it – pesto, black pepper, tomato and mint salad.

Other starters we could have chosen included twice-baked cheese-and-thyme souffle on a salad of pear, endive and walnuts; smoked haddock and prawn pot; crab cakes with coriander and parsley, and warm pigeon breast salad.

Rich chocolate mousse cake with Bailey’s sauce.

My peppered venison steak was superb. Rich dark meat, well-done as requested yet not tough, flavoured with a hint of juniper and on a base of delicious black pudding. The port gravy was rich, dark and stimulating. To balance the earlier debate, I cleared the plate which suggests that the portion was just right . . . or that I’m a hopeless glutton.

Other mains we could – and in my wife’s case perhaps should – have chosen included twice-roasted crispy duck, breast of guinea fowl, fillet of sole cardinale and spinach-and-mushroom strudel.

No meal review would be complete without the full three courses so, in the interests of research on your behalf, Vanessa forced herself to eat dessert. Not that the panna cotta with rhubarb ice-cream took much forcing. I sampled a little, just to help her out you understand, and it was sumptuous.

I’m sure in the days when The Walls was a school they must have served up sponge and custard for pudding, but the fat boy of the fourth form would have been privileged indeed had it been a patch on my steamed lemon and cinnamon. The sponge was light, the flavours strong and the custard delightfully creamy. Chocolate-and-rum pot, forest fruit Eton mess and the ubiquitous sticky toffee pudding were among other tempting options. Fresh ground coffee rounded off the meal nicely.

The Walls is an old schoolhouse on Welsh Walls in Oswestry.

The service was friendly, attentive and, the first quarter of an hour aside, very efficient.

And all this, including a decent bottle of red, came in at under £75 for two. A jug of tapwater, freshened by ice and lemon, was offered free.

By the end, though, I’d let out my belt a notch and came away with the feeling I’d slightly overdone it. I don’t know, maybe it’s just us. Perhaps we can’t stuff food down like we used to . . . which, come to think of it, doesn’t bode well for future reviews. Yet maybe it’s just that it’s no longer considered healthy to gorge.

Blimey, now I’m getting into the national obesity debate, when all you want is to know where to go for a great night out. Well, The Walls is it. Go there!

Still, I think Vanessa and I disproved the old proverb that you can’t have too much of a good thing. Sometimes, as is often said about acting, less is more.

• The Walls, Welsh Walls, Oswestry SY11 1AW. Telephone: 01691 670970. www.the-walls.co.uk