Our last night in the UK was at the very nice country house of ODDFELLOWS on the PARK in Cheadle, just 10 minutes from Manchester Airport as we had an am flight and wanted to be nearby. The hotel is charming and the rooms modern, comfortable and very neat and clean.
We headed down to dinner in the Galloping Gourmet not expecting much, and started off with a superb white Terra de Asorei Albarino from Rias Baixas, Spain. The wines here are served in 125ml, 175ml and 250ml carafes which I love and we went for the large size so we could enjoy it before and with our starters. We both chose the King Tiger Prawns that was a superb dish with a huge piece of grilled sourdough bread topped with Smoky Aioli and 5 perfectly poached shrimp and bits of Chorizo that had a nice kick. We were thoroughly impressed, We had made friends with the bartender, Hendrick, earlier in the evening and he came over to help us choose a bottle of red wine and we ended up with a reasonably priced Glenelly 2015 Shiraz from Stellenbosch in South Africa that was nice and smoky and had great depth to pair with our mains as we both ordered the 8 ounce Blackened Spice Beef Burger which came with Blacksticks Blue Cheese(barely enough to even taste), Smoked Bacon, Gem Lettuce, Beef Tomato, a super sauce and Skin-on Fries.
A way overly-mayonnaised Cole Slaw was on the side. The burger was gorgeous, the fries crispy and divine and all could have been forgiven on the mayonnaise had both burgers not been cooked to medium. we specifically asked for medium rare, but it never got through to the kitchen! We did not want them to recook the burgers, so we sulked, finished them and split a yummy Sea Salt Sticky Toffee Pudding with Vanilla Pod Ice Cream that was a slight recovery from the overcooked burgers. The setting is very nice and we enjoyed the hotel, but it's probably not a place I would go back to, unless I had another early flight out of Manchester.
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