Shropshire Magazine

Seared king scallops with black pudding, pancetta bacon and pea purée.

The Valley Hotel in Ironbridge was in the right place at the right time. But would the food make the journey worthwhile? Neil Thomas finds out. Pictures: Russell Davies

Junior sous chef Pete Duckett, chef de partie Alex Fisher, head chef Barry Workman and senior sous chef Paul Dodd.

This month’s restaurant review presented something of a minor challenge. Holidays and a barrowload of diary commitments boiled available dates to dine out on your behalf down to Monday, June 15.

This had me slightly concerned, since I’d always thought Monday as a night out to be relatively quiet, if not stone dead. When there’s only you and the wife and a couple of bored waiters, you don’t necessarily get a feel for the buzz of a place or how the kitchen and front-of-house staff perform under the pressure of a full dining room.

Monday is, generally speaking, stay-at-home night after the busy socialising and leisure pursuits of the weekend. Quite a few retaurants know a lost cause when they see one and don’t even bother to open at the start of the week.

In addition, these reviews are aimed at pointing you in the direction of the best restaurants in our area. We seek the best food, service and atmosphere. We publish 12 food reviews a year and our intention is to pull out 12 plums. If, to continue the food analogy, we uncover a right turkey, then it’s a pure waste of this space. 

There is also the need to share the reviews around a little on a geographical basis. Ludlow has several excellent restaurants but if, month upon month, we tapped SY8 into the satnav before heading off for a meal then readers would start to feel pretty left out in Oswestry.

This, on our quiet Monday evening, narrowed the search field even more.

There is, of course, always a saving grace. While many small independent restaurants give themselves Monday night off, hotel restaurants tend to open. Paying guests are apt to write rude things in the visitors’ book if you don’t feed them. The slight downside to this is that, though hotel catering has improved in recent years, it can be pretty hit and miss. Dining is important but, unlike restaurants, it is not their sole raison d’être. This is probably based on long experience of customers’ priorities. I find, particularly after a long drive to a hotel, that it is more important to find they haven’t double-booked my room than to be served a Michelin-starred meal.

So where to find a hotel which attaches huge importance to the quality of its restaurant?

Potato gnocchi with goat’s cheese mousse, tomato and olive tapenade and roast red-pepper dressing,

I don’t know why we worried. The Valley at Ironbridge had all the right answers – not only decent food and excellent service but a pleasant atmosphere, too. Turns out Monday nights can be pretty busy there. And as we’d not eaten out in the Telford area since last year, it ticked the geographical box as well.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that it came up trumps. The Valley is not just part of the Best Western Hotel group, it is the jewel in its crown: it is currently Best Western’s Hotel of the Year, an accolade handed out at the BW Great Britain Hotel Awards. This is particuarly impressive since the ceremony is the largest gathering of independent hoteliers in the UK. The awards are based not only on the assessments of Best Western and independent judges but on feedback from guests and customers, a kind of Britain’s Hotels Have Got Talent, if you will.

In Ironbridge, of course, we are on the site of the genesis of modern industrialisation and it comes as no surprise to learn that the hotel’s history is part of that. Its original owners were the Maw family, founders of the Jackfield Tile Factory and superb examples of the tile-maker’s art adorn the walls. The hotel’s restaurant, Chez Maw (the house of Maw), has been established for around 20 years and is an award winner in its own right, having held an AA rosette for its cuisine for the past 11 years and two AA rosettes for the past nine years.

Chez Maw makes a point of the fact that it uses fresh ingredients and is happy to cater for special dietary needs or diners who prefer a variation from the menu.

Enticing

We were happy to go along with the rather enticing mix already on offer. My wife Vanessa loves seafood and is particularly partial to scallops, so she was delighted with her starter of seared king scallops with black pudding, pancetta bacon and pea purée. The black pudding could easily have overpowered the scallops but their full-flavoured juiciness ensured the contrast of tastes had just the right balance.

Warm potato gnocchi provided an excellent start to my meal, too. This came with a lovely goat’s cheese mousse, tomato and olive tapenade and roast red pepper dressing. Again, an excellent light touch ensured that the diverse flavours on the plate complemented rather than confused one another.

To give you some idea of the range on offer other starters included Cornish crab risotto cakes with quails’ eggs, spinach and parmesan salad; chicken and pistachio terrine with confit potato and spring onion salad, caper and raisin dressing; and smoked duck breast with rhubarb and apricot chutney and toasted walnut biscotti.

I enjoyed a succulent seabass with vegetable risotto for main course, while Vanessa tucked into an eight-ounce chargrilled Herefordshire steak with blue stilton dauphinoise potatoes, buttered green beans and chasseur sauce. 

Other options we considered were roast Shropshire lamb with a mini shepherd’s pie, buttered asparagus, carrots and red-wine sauce; pan-seared cod with new potatoes, ham hock, vegetable salsa and tomato vinaigrette; and belly pork and pork fillet with crackling, apple-and-potato terrine, carrot purée and Madeira jus . . . and writing this is making my mouth water!

There is a separate vegetarian section on the menu with starters such as melon and marinated fruits, homemade sorbet and passion fruit syrup; and asparagus, spinach and quail’s egg salad with parmesan dressing. Mains were pea-and-wild-garlic risotto with mascarpone and parmesan cheese; and black olive tapenade linguine with mozzarella, fresh basil and truffle oil.

Vanilla pannacotta, mixed summer berry compôte and buttermilk ice-cream.

My warm chocolate brownie with roasted pear and espresso ice-cream was a superb dessert, while Vanessa greatly enjoyed a generous selection of English cheeses with pear-and-sultana chutney and biscuits.

Other desserts included rhubarb-and-ginger crème brulée with Shrewsbury biscuits; treacle-and-date pudding with rum custard and banana ice-cream; and vanilla pannacotta with mixed summer berry compôte and buttermilk ice-cream.

Our dishes were presented on the plate with real flair.

There are comfortable sofas in the light and airy lounge where you can sip on a gin and tonic as you study the menu and decent wine list. 

One of the delights of Ironbridge in the tourist season is the number of foreign voices you hear, and a party of Americans in the lounge were clearly enjoying their visit.

Service was excellent – efficient and friendly without being intrusive, and there was a relaxed air about the whole evening. Monday nights out, it seems, aren’t such a dead loss after all . . .

• The Valley Hotel, Buildwas Road, Ironbridge, Telford TF8 7DW. Telephone: 01952 432247. www.chezmawrestaurant.co.uk

The dining room.