Restaurant/ InnsEze Restaurant > Review
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pretty good
A not very Mediterranean restaurant
koshkha (43)
Northampton, United Kingdom
In my new job I'm working with a lovely bunch of people but we all live in different areas and all the best intentions to 'go out and do something' tend to drift. So a couple of months before I joined, the group appointed 'Jack-the-placement-student' as the department social secretary and set him the task of arranging a night out once a month. And being a student, Jack specialises in finding cheap places to eat.
Our objective, apparently, is to 'eat the world' - trying to find a different style of food each time and this month the choice was Eze Restaurant in Wilmslow, Cheshire, which describes its food as 'French and Mediterranean'. This was chosen as much for its 'three course early diner special' as for any other culinary reasons.
Where is it?
The restaurant is at 9/11 (sounds ominous) Rex Buildings on Alderley Road - which to those who know Wilmslow means it's in the same parade of shops as Hoopers department store, in the centre of the town - across the road from Barclays Bank and Starbucks. There is parking directly outside and since we were 'early diners' we had no trouble getting places.
How do I pronounce it?
It's always been my belief that any product or service that the public can't pronounce is almost doomed to fail - why else would so few people drink Gewuertztraminer? So to prevent any embarrassment, the pronunciation is Ez - as in Les or Des or those little sweet dispensers, Pez. Apparently it's a town in the South of France.
First Impressions
My first thoughts were that the décor was both clichéd and looking a bit tired. The restaurant is one big room with lots of tables lined up and quite close together. The floors are stripped wood and the walls have white painted tongue and groove cladding up to a picture rail. Above the rail and all over the ceiling was painted in a shade of orangey 'not-quite-terracotta' which had the disturbing effect of making it feel like the ceiling was looming down at you. This was like the reverse of using paint effects to 'lift' the ceiling.
The tables are bare wood - no tablecloths - and the chairs are all mismatched and jumbled up. It looked like there were plenty enough chairs that they could have matched them up on any given table so I can only conclude it was done for effect, though goodness only knows WHAT effect.
I was the first to arrive and the restaurant was empty but for the waiter/maitre d' who was friendly and welcoming and from that famous Mediterranean destination of Cork, with a lovely Irish accent to boot. He assured me they had a 'couple of French chefs' in the kitchen. He showed me to our table in the back corner and brought me a drink whilst I waited for everyone else. In his shoes I would have put us in the window to make the place look busier rather than tucking us out of sight. (Restaurateurs tend to like me because I'll always be willing to sit in the window - mind you, if they knew what I say about them after, they might be spitting in my soup).
The Menu
The Early Diner menu is for orders placed between 6 and 7 pm. It costs £8.95 for two courses or £10.90 for three. There were around half a dozen starters and main courses to choose from with a fish and vegetarian included in the list for each course. Eight of us were eating and despite there being lots of choice, we didn't really explore the full breadth of the options. The split on starters was four for the lobster terrine and four for melon with Parma ham. For mains, we again split down the middle with half going for some kind of steak in Dijon mustard sauce and the others for salmon with pesto cream sauce.
Had we gone a la carte, starters ranged from soup at £3.25 through to smoked salmon and prawns at £5.85. Mains were more expensive with a set of seven dishes at £9.95 on the 'salads and pastas' section (none of which could really be identified as particularly Mediterranean) and other main 'plats' from £9.95 to £15.75. Had I been going a la carte, I would probably have wanted to try the 'Andalucian Fish Stew' which at £13.95 seemed a bit pricey.
The Food
Whilst we waited for the starters we polished off a couple of bowls of olives which tasted as if they were probably tinned. The starters arrived accompanied by baskets of French bread (not brilliant - a bit past its best) and pats of foil wrapped butter. The melon eaters gave lots of 'oohs' and 'aahs' of delight - for goodness sake, it's only melon! I have never really seen the attraction of eating my dessert for a starter. The terrine of lobster was visually very good - three layers in distinctly different colours presented on a bed of mixed leaves with balsamic dressing. The flavours though were a bit strange with little real differentiation between each layer. It was nicely fishy but I wouldn't really have been able to say it was lobster rather than any other kind of sea critter.
The main courses arrived shortly after the starter plates were cleared. At this point, we were still the only diners. The gap between courses was just about right - not too rushed, not too slow.
I had the salmon because the stir fried vegetables with noodles didn't sound very 'Med' to me. The fish was a generously sized slice but was swimming - no pun intended - in far too much sauce. The sauce was a creamy pesto and I really couldn't say that basil is an obvious choice for putting with salmon, especially in a sauce that was very strong. I think it would have worked better as a pesto and tomato sauce instead of pesto and cream. I scraped most of it off the fish and tried to shove it to the side of the plate. The salmon was unfortunately not as fresh as it should been and had that 'off' taste of yesterday's fish. Two large bowls of veg were brought to the table and were excellent. There were baby potatoes boiled in their skins as well as larger boiled potato pieces, red cabbage, carrots and green beans (or something else green, I don't recall but they were all very well cooked). The steak eaters had managed to choose four different versions from rare through to very well done so I'd guess the chefs were cursing them for their contrariness. However, everyone seemed very happy with what they got and if the restaurant had a dog to eat the leftovers, he'd have gone hungry with little more than my pesto cream sauce.
Pudding Time
Sensibly at this point the staff drifted off and left us for ages to ensure we'd need to have puddings. There were three specials on the board and a great selection on the menu. It's rare that I can look at a dessert menu and have more than three that I fancy the look of but I really did struggle to choose. All the deserts were £3.75, as was the cheese alternative. I think that all of these desserts were included in the 3-course menu but I'm not absolutely sure of that. However, despite two good sized courses already under our belts everyone chose to squeeze in a good pud.
Options included apple tarte tatin (isn't tarte tatin always apple???), banana crepes, lemon tart and such traditional French wonders as bread and butter pudding and banoffee pie - each of which is surely as British as beefeaters and bulldogs - and the classic Australian pavlova. More so than on the previous courses, I had to wonder what part of France the chefs in the kitchen had hailed from.
I had the tarte tatin which was disappointing - the apple was soft and grey and hadn't caramelised at all and the pastry was greasy and soggy. The banoffee pies seemed to be going down a storm as was the pavlova. Again, by the time we'd finished there was little more than the pattern left on the plates.
By this point a couple of large groups had taken over the other side of the restaurant and time had ticked on to 8.15pm. With a couple of hours drive ahead of me I made my escape and hit the road whilst the rest of the group stayed until about 9.30 pm.
The Price
I left Jack-the-placement-student £20 with instructions to put any change in the tea fund. Apparently it came to £16 per head. Most of us were drinking soft drinks all evening so this was effectively three courses and either three or four drinks for most people. Very good value, if not the greatest quality.
Would I recommend?
If you can go early I'd say yes - the early bird offer is good value but I really wouldn't have been happy to have paid the £30 a head that it would probably have cost if we'd gone in later. Also it was a good place to take a group - having a set menu meant that nobody could get caught up in the 'he had the starter, I only had one drink' debacle that can so easily arise.
My biggest reservation was that the restaurant clearly has an identity problem - is it French, is it Italian, does it know or care? I really wasn't convinced that they'd got their positioning sorted. The décor was more '1990s Changing Rooms' (i.e. stripped floors and dodgy paint jobs) than Biarritz or Cannes and needs a bit of a rethink. The music they played all evening was good - I was even tempted to ask what the CD was - but it again, was entirely un-Mediterranean. I do believe that if you are going to claim a theme, then you have to live it completely and Eze just haven't done that.
The food was OK but not exceptional - my starter was good, my main course frankly hard to get down and the dessert was poorly done. But everyone else seemed either happy or too polite to let on if they didn't like it so maybe I'm just a bit fussy.
Our objective, apparently, is to 'eat the world' - trying to find a different style of food each time and this month the choice was Eze Restaurant in Wilmslow, Cheshire, which describes its food as 'French and Mediterranean'. This was chosen as much for its 'three course early diner special' as for any other culinary reasons.
Where is it?
The restaurant is at 9/11 (sounds ominous) Rex Buildings on Alderley Road - which to those who know Wilmslow means it's in the same parade of shops as Hoopers department store, in the centre of the town - across the road from Barclays Bank and Starbucks. There is parking directly outside and since we were 'early diners' we had no trouble getting places.
How do I pronounce it?
It's always been my belief that any product or service that the public can't pronounce is almost doomed to fail - why else would so few people drink Gewuertztraminer? So to prevent any embarrassment, the pronunciation is Ez - as in Les or Des or those little sweet dispensers, Pez. Apparently it's a town in the South of France.
First Impressions
My first thoughts were that the décor was both clichéd and looking a bit tired. The restaurant is one big room with lots of tables lined up and quite close together. The floors are stripped wood and the walls have white painted tongue and groove cladding up to a picture rail. Above the rail and all over the ceiling was painted in a shade of orangey 'not-quite-terracotta' which had the disturbing effect of making it feel like the ceiling was looming down at you. This was like the reverse of using paint effects to 'lift' the ceiling.
The tables are bare wood - no tablecloths - and the chairs are all mismatched and jumbled up. It looked like there were plenty enough chairs that they could have matched them up on any given table so I can only conclude it was done for effect, though goodness only knows WHAT effect.
I was the first to arrive and the restaurant was empty but for the waiter/maitre d' who was friendly and welcoming and from that famous Mediterranean destination of Cork, with a lovely Irish accent to boot. He assured me they had a 'couple of French chefs' in the kitchen. He showed me to our table in the back corner and brought me a drink whilst I waited for everyone else. In his shoes I would have put us in the window to make the place look busier rather than tucking us out of sight. (Restaurateurs tend to like me because I'll always be willing to sit in the window - mind you, if they knew what I say about them after, they might be spitting in my soup).
The Menu
The Early Diner menu is for orders placed between 6 and 7 pm. It costs £8.95 for two courses or £10.90 for three. There were around half a dozen starters and main courses to choose from with a fish and vegetarian included in the list for each course. Eight of us were eating and despite there being lots of choice, we didn't really explore the full breadth of the options. The split on starters was four for the lobster terrine and four for melon with Parma ham. For mains, we again split down the middle with half going for some kind of steak in Dijon mustard sauce and the others for salmon with pesto cream sauce.
Had we gone a la carte, starters ranged from soup at £3.25 through to smoked salmon and prawns at £5.85. Mains were more expensive with a set of seven dishes at £9.95 on the 'salads and pastas' section (none of which could really be identified as particularly Mediterranean) and other main 'plats' from £9.95 to £15.75. Had I been going a la carte, I would probably have wanted to try the 'Andalucian Fish Stew' which at £13.95 seemed a bit pricey.
The Food
Whilst we waited for the starters we polished off a couple of bowls of olives which tasted as if they were probably tinned. The starters arrived accompanied by baskets of French bread (not brilliant - a bit past its best) and pats of foil wrapped butter. The melon eaters gave lots of 'oohs' and 'aahs' of delight - for goodness sake, it's only melon! I have never really seen the attraction of eating my dessert for a starter. The terrine of lobster was visually very good - three layers in distinctly different colours presented on a bed of mixed leaves with balsamic dressing. The flavours though were a bit strange with little real differentiation between each layer. It was nicely fishy but I wouldn't really have been able to say it was lobster rather than any other kind of sea critter.
The main courses arrived shortly after the starter plates were cleared. At this point, we were still the only diners. The gap between courses was just about right - not too rushed, not too slow.
I had the salmon because the stir fried vegetables with noodles didn't sound very 'Med' to me. The fish was a generously sized slice but was swimming - no pun intended - in far too much sauce. The sauce was a creamy pesto and I really couldn't say that basil is an obvious choice for putting with salmon, especially in a sauce that was very strong. I think it would have worked better as a pesto and tomato sauce instead of pesto and cream. I scraped most of it off the fish and tried to shove it to the side of the plate. The salmon was unfortunately not as fresh as it should been and had that 'off' taste of yesterday's fish. Two large bowls of veg were brought to the table and were excellent. There were baby potatoes boiled in their skins as well as larger boiled potato pieces, red cabbage, carrots and green beans (or something else green, I don't recall but they were all very well cooked). The steak eaters had managed to choose four different versions from rare through to very well done so I'd guess the chefs were cursing them for their contrariness. However, everyone seemed very happy with what they got and if the restaurant had a dog to eat the leftovers, he'd have gone hungry with little more than my pesto cream sauce.
Pudding Time
Sensibly at this point the staff drifted off and left us for ages to ensure we'd need to have puddings. There were three specials on the board and a great selection on the menu. It's rare that I can look at a dessert menu and have more than three that I fancy the look of but I really did struggle to choose. All the deserts were £3.75, as was the cheese alternative. I think that all of these desserts were included in the 3-course menu but I'm not absolutely sure of that. However, despite two good sized courses already under our belts everyone chose to squeeze in a good pud.
Options included apple tarte tatin (isn't tarte tatin always apple???), banana crepes, lemon tart and such traditional French wonders as bread and butter pudding and banoffee pie - each of which is surely as British as beefeaters and bulldogs - and the classic Australian pavlova. More so than on the previous courses, I had to wonder what part of France the chefs in the kitchen had hailed from.
I had the tarte tatin which was disappointing - the apple was soft and grey and hadn't caramelised at all and the pastry was greasy and soggy. The banoffee pies seemed to be going down a storm as was the pavlova. Again, by the time we'd finished there was little more than the pattern left on the plates.
By this point a couple of large groups had taken over the other side of the restaurant and time had ticked on to 8.15pm. With a couple of hours drive ahead of me I made my escape and hit the road whilst the rest of the group stayed until about 9.30 pm.
The Price
I left Jack-the-placement-student £20 with instructions to put any change in the tea fund. Apparently it came to £16 per head. Most of us were drinking soft drinks all evening so this was effectively three courses and either three or four drinks for most people. Very good value, if not the greatest quality.
Would I recommend?
If you can go early I'd say yes - the early bird offer is good value but I really wouldn't have been happy to have paid the £30 a head that it would probably have cost if we'd gone in later. Also it was a good place to take a group - having a set menu meant that nobody could get caught up in the 'he had the starter, I only had one drink' debacle that can so easily arise.
My biggest reservation was that the restaurant clearly has an identity problem - is it French, is it Italian, does it know or care? I really wasn't convinced that they'd got their positioning sorted. The décor was more '1990s Changing Rooms' (i.e. stripped floors and dodgy paint jobs) than Biarritz or Cannes and needs a bit of a rethink. The music they played all evening was good - I was even tempted to ask what the CD was - but it again, was entirely un-Mediterranean. I do believe that if you are going to claim a theme, then you have to live it completely and Eze just haven't done that.
The food was OK but not exceptional - my starter was good, my main course frankly hard to get down and the dessert was poorly done. But everyone else seemed either happy or too polite to let on if they didn't like it so maybe I'm just a bit fussy.
Poland
Italy
Greece