Shropshire Magazine

The Walls, on Welsh Walls, Oswestry.

Neil Thomas goes back to school for a lesson in fine food.  Pictures: Russell Davies

I’ve always liked The Walls. The food and drink are great, the staff friendly and the service excellent. But beyond that, I love its sense of space. It has one of the highest ceilings of any restaurant in Shropshire and its borders. It must require a builder’s hydraulic lift just to change a lightbulb.

The architectural dimensions are ecclesiastical in nature, although in fact it is a former Victorian school.

The first little pupils attending The National School in 1841 might, were a tardis to deposit them outside today, be surprised at how little it has changed from the outside, although they may wonder why strange and unbecoming metallic objects with bizarre names like Skoda, Ford and Vauxhall were spread like a rash around the place and what they were meant to be.

The spacious interior.

Inside, The Walls has retained period features like impressive ceiling beams, wooden floors, exposed brickwork and stone fireplaces, and worked them imaginatively and creatively into a modern setting.Lighting is subtle and cleverly arranged while live music — there are often pianists or guitarists — lulls, schmoozes and entertains.

It is a stylish setting that creates a sophisticated and stimulating ambience. There is always a buzz about the place, an effect that I suspect is easier to describe than achieve. Rather like that indefinable quality of charisma in a person, you’ve either got it or you ain’t.

This is even more impressive when you consider that this cavernous building can cater for up to 200 people, which obviously puts it in demand for private functions.

It takes some filling and yet, even when a third full as on the evening we visited, there is a sense of occasion, a feeling that you are somewhere rather special.

It was the second time we had eaten there in the space of three months, the first being a Sunday lunchtime family party for our eldest son’s birthday. It was packed to the gunwales — trust him to have a birth date that virtually coincides with Valentine’s Day! — and it tested the kitchen and waiting-on staff to the limit. They came up trumps then, so there was no question of them being fazed when my wife Vanessa and I returned on a quieter Friday evening in May.

Service was swift, friendly, efficient and attentive without being in any way intrusive.

Our pre-dinner drinks were, in fact, served by proprietor/chef Geoff Hughes under whose expert auspices The Walls has built up its formidable reputation over the past decade and more.

Unique

Geoff has stamped The Walls with its unique brand — aside from the live music and entertainment there are exhibitions of art and local culture and the restaurant’s own regular newsletter, The Walls Street Journal.

Style, ambience, culture and fine hospitality aren’t, in themselves, enough to guarantee success in the restaurant industry, though. The public soon sees through that ruse if the food isn’t up to scratch. The bedrock of The Walls’ success is the accomplishment of Geoff and his team in the kitchen.

Like many restaurants nowadays, keen to demonstrate that they are cutting down on food miles and supporting the economy on their doorstep, The Walls is proud to use local produce and rightly makes much of the provenance of its meals. All its meat is from local suppliers, it uses free-range chickens, its salmon is ‘eco’ grade or wild and it uses large amounts of local organic vegetables.

However, using local produce isn’t, in itself, enough to produce great food. It simply means that you are buying your meat off the butcher around the corner, or the farmer down the road grows a mean potato. It’s all very ethical but a fantastic meal depends on the person who gets their hands on these ingredients knowing what to do with them. No worries on that score at The Walls.

Shropshire being land-locked means that seafood clearly isn’t going to be local, but that doesn’t stop Geoff and his talented crew doing lovely things with it.

King scallops flash-fried with garlic, chilli and olive oil.

Vanessa’s king scallops were succulent and full of flavour, flash-fried with garlic, parsley, chilli and olive oil to provide a complement of tastes and textures with a spicy kick. Her verdict: suberb.

My starter was equally delicious, two hefty crab and prawn cakes with a sweet chilli dipping sauce and fresh salad. This was a dish with plenty of white crab meat and a generous helping of succulent prawns.

Vanessa’s loin of venison main course provided a large helping of sumptuous, tender fillet, prepared medium rare as she had asked. Black pudding provided a stimulating contrast of fattiness to the leanness of the meat while the sauce of port, smoked bacon and thyme was a rich adjunct. Again, the dish was excellent, she said.

My two generous fillets of seabass were cooked to perfection with a slightly crispy base giving way to fish meat so tender it fell apart at the merest touch of the fork. It was accompanied by a refreshing salsa verde and mountain of delicious hand-cut ‘real’ chips, a nostalgic tour de force for a child of the 1960s like me, growing up in a house like so many where a giant spud would be cut into no more than a dozen chunky pieces and the chip pan was never off the stove.

These mains arrived with a large dish of excellently prepared vegetables — new potatoes, red cabbage, broccoli and carrots.

Loin of venison with black pudding and port, smoked bacon and thyme sauce.

In fact, ‘large’ barely does justice to the generosity of portions served at The Walls. We had eaten a fair weight of food between us by the time the dessert menu was proffered but it took all of two seconds for us to accept it. The food here is so good we see it as a treat.

Super-sized

Sweets lived up to the standard of the first two courses. Vanessa got in the mood for a sunkissed (hopefully) summer to come with an Eton Mess, another super-sized portion.

My chocolate soufflé cake was expertly done, a slightly crispy shell giving way to the lightest of sponge with a rich, dark chocolate sauce at the centre. A ‘chocoholics’ dream.

The food is unfussy and unpretentious, attractively arranged on the plate without seeking to be a work of art.

We rounded off a wonderful meal with delicious fresh-ground coffee and a couple of chocolate truffles.

To complement the excellent food there is a comprehensive choice of excellent wines with pithy and helpful descriptions which, in the case of the Italian white we enjoyed, proved perfectly accurate.

We ate from the à la carte menu and our bill came to just over £90 for two including wine and pre-dinner drinks, which I regard, considering the appetite-busting generosity of the helpings, to be tremendous value for money.

What’s more, The Walls was running when we visited an early birds offer on its alternative WORMS — Will Our Rocket Make Summer? — menu (no, I don’t know either), where two courses, which are normally £18.50 are reduced to £13.50 if orders are in the kitchen by 7.30pm. A recession-breaker of an offer if ever there was.

It is always reassuring to have your own high regard for a restaurant reinforced and not only does this come from the hundreds of diners who must return again and again, but also industry professionals. The Walls has won several accolades over the years, including a value listing in the Michelin guide for the fourth year running while, two years ago, it was included in the Observer food awards, introduced by acclaimed culinary journalist Nigel Slater.

All in all The Walls is a real gem and I, for one, am grateful to have it on the doorstep.

Geoff Hughes at work in the kitchen.