The Cheltenham Five - Part Two where we drink cocktails

This is Part II of our #smuts Food Blogger meet in Cheltenham but before I go any further, I have to say a huge thank you to Fiona of London Unattached for the sterling work she did in finding our two eateries.  You can read about how well we were treated at the Well Walk Tea Room in part I.  For part II we were booked for dinner at The Tavern, Cheltenham and were delighted to be treated to complimentary cocktails as Fiona had forewarned them that we would be taking photographs and writing about our experience.

Of course, I stuck to sparkling water (liar, liar pants on fire!) and loved the little tin mugs of popcorn that we enjoyed with our drinks.  My drink of choice was actually a Mojito Royal and very nice it was too.

Fried Nocellera Olives

 Moving on from the cocktails to the dinner, you can see the full menu on The Tavern website, we chose some nibbles to eat while we decided on what to choose from the menu.  We had Fried Nocellara Olives, which I really didn't enjoy, it seemed a waste of a good olive to cover it in breadcrumbs and fry it!  What we all enjoyed were the Chickpea Chips and Chilli Jam.  These Chickpea chips are made using gram flour cooked and set like polenta then cut into chips, rolled in semolina and fried. They were delicious.

Chickpea Chips with Chilli Jam

Sea Bass was a popular choice and was a delicious dish with all the juices from the fish soaking into the vegetables below.
Choclette chose this amazing looking vegetable burger, loaded with lots of vegetable goodies with more of those amazing chickpea chips.

I couldn't resist the ribs which were one of the specials for the day, they were tasty but not quite as tender as they were billed to be.

Apologies for dodgy photo!

Fiona and Karen

Labels: Cheltenham, Chermoula, chickpea chips, chocolate fondant, olives., pistaschio icecream, ribs, samphire, sea bass, smuts, The Tavern

posted by Janice @ 07:00 3 Comments

The Cheltenham Five: Part 1 where we eat CAKE!

The best cake plate is an empty one!

The internet is a wonderful place to meet like-minded people and even within the food blogging community you find yourself drawn towards certain people's blogs and certain conversations on Twitter. Some of those conversations were verging on the smutty and so our hashtag #smuts was born.

There are eight of food bloggers who make up the #smuts, Karen of Lavender and Lovage, Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes, Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog, Fiona from London Unattached, Ros of The more than occasional baker, Sue from Heaven on a Plate, Dom from Belleau Kitchen and me!  After many false start discussions and meetings of two or three at various events, we felt it was time we all met together.  As we are flung to the far corners of the UK and France,  we settled on Cheltenham as a reasonable place that was easily accessible by rail.

Early on in our planning we lost one #smut,  as Jac was off to the sun for a well earned holiday.  Then more unavoidable events meant that Dom and Sue both had to call off almost at the last minute. And then there were five...not of all of those present will be featured in this post, Karen and I don't give a damn so you will see a lot of the two of us!  Fiona also features as long as her hair is okay ;-)

Fiona and Karen came up from London on the train together and I met them at Cheltenham Spa station.    After checking into our hotel, we had a bit of a scout around the sales in Cheltenham including Cath Kidston, Radley and Toast. 

We then headed for our rendez-vous with Choclette and Ros at the Well Walk Tea Room,
It's located in  one of Cheltenham's oldest shops and is a real delight, in terms of decor, customer service and the tea itself.



We couldn't resist some scones with jam and cream as they were straight out of the oven!

Bloggers do it with pictures!

Labels: afternoon tea, cake, Cheltenham, cream, jam, Scones, tea, vintage china, Well Walk Tea Room

posted by Janice @ 20:11 9 Comments