Bickleigh Mill: Restaurant & Bar - Sliders Night

Apologies for duplicating this post which is also appearing on Eating Exeter as well!

The village of Bickleigh. It is geographically almost slap bang in the middle of Devon and sits on the River Exe like it has done since before the Domesday Book. Mentioned in that classic tome as Bicca’s Meadow – I wonder if Mr Bicca could ever have imagined Bickleigh being the destination that it has become now.
In foodie circles, Bickleigh Mill has always been a name related to quality and fine dining. And after being invited down to see exactly what goes on at the Bistro Restaurant & Bar, I couldn’t wait to see for myself what sort of thing we would be eating on one of their themed nights. The night that I particularly wanted to try out was the Sliders night. What is a Slider? Well the menu handily informs us that Sliders are small burgers or sandwiches that are filled with delicious ingredients. Originally featured on menus fromThe White Castle Restaurant in Kansas which is a chain formed in 1921.

Other nights include their Seafood Evening and their Sizzling Steak night,these nights let the chefs really show off. Other times they have a daytime menu, an evening menu and a Sunday menu that looks amazing. There are a few others too, so have a look at their page on the website.
The Bistro is open all day and to evening visitors Thursdays to Saturdays. Evening visitors enter through the shop and in to the restaurant itself. At first glance it looks quite small but when you take a wander around, the restaurant is large with private areas and opportunities for peaceful dining.
The walls are adorned with artwork and items that are for sale too, the exposed traditional stonework really brings home the fact that you’re eating in a Mill and that it was, until the sixties, a working Mill that produced flour from grains supplied by local farmers. Fun fact of the evening was that my wife mentioned Mother-in-law remembered working at Bickleigh Mill in the sixties when she justmoved down from Liverpool. I digress.

Presented with the Sliders Menu, we were able to peruse twelve different types of burgers (see pic) with some classic titles like the Plain Jane and the Ready Eddie burger, but others such as the Gone Fishing and The Teriyaki Mushroom were new ones to me. The cost of the meal included the starter, three sliders of our choice, chips and salad. It did take us a while to decide exactly what we were going to have. In fact it took us so long, we were asked about three times and we were still having a hard time deciding. But in the end the decisions were made and we ordered happily. I went for the Jerk Chicken, The Hay Stack and The Southern Fried Chicken Burger. Madam went for the Hawaiian, Ready Eddie and Little Piggy.

It seems these theme nights are popular, the restaurant filled quickly with diners through the course of the meal and it was easy to see why. When we spied a table being brought their burgers we realised that, even though they were sliders which tend to be smaller than normal burgers. These were pretty much the size of normal burgers, with filling and salad as well.
The first thing to appear was our starter, a well portioned plate of nachos drizzled in sour cream and cheese. They were a perfect little aperitif, anything more than this would have meant far too much food especially when the Sliders appeared.

The burgers, three to a plate, were arranged neatly with name tags to tell what they were. Salad arranged in the middle and a side of chips between two. You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to realise that the portion of chips is just enough to cater for the fact that there is SO MUCH BURGER.

The first thing I realised about these burgers were that the buns were super soft, almost brioche in texture but not sweet. The second thing I realised was the taste of the meat itself. The chicken was perfectly cooked and the burgers were well done and tasted good. The Jerk Chicken came in a delicious BBQ sauce and the Southern Fried Chicken burger was perfectly cooked and seasoned. From across the table the Little Piggy held the award for ‘Best Pulled Pork’ yet in our burger adventures.

Bickleigh Mill sources all of its ingredients locally. The meat comes from surrounding farms and producers and the buns are baked on site by their in-house baker. You’re not going to find many things on your plate that has travelled for miles and miles. With many places that stay local, you can taste the difference and the Bickleigh burgers were certainly different.  As the bun was soft, there was no dissection and reassembling as with many gourmet burgers. For the first time in quite a while I was able to get the whole thing in my mouth without losing every ounce of dignity.

Afterwards we ended up with the dessert menu staring at us temptingly but alas we were both defeated. But don’t worry if you can’t eat the whole meal, you get a box to take away your unfinished burgers.

As a day-out, Bickleigh Mill is a perfect eating and shopping destination. It has a wonderful shop stocked with gifts and locally produced crafts products and a restaurant & bar that allows the destination to expand its appeal to tourists and locals. The food is all locally sourced where possible and, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised at how accessible the menu was. For a place that prides itself with such quality of food it’s not pretentious about its portions and it’s proud of its connections with the local producers.

Bickleigh Mill is located near Tiverton and is easily accessible by bus and car. The nearest station is Tiverton Parkway but there is a bus link from this station which runs regularly.

Eating Exeter were guests of Bickleigh Mill.

Riverside Shopping, Restaurant Bistro & Bar
Bickleigh
Tiverton
Devon 
EX16 8RG

enquiries at bickleighmill.com

Opening Times:
Monday 10am till 5.30pm (Shop and Bistro)
Tuesday 10am till 5.30pm (Shop and Bistro)
Wednesday 10am till 5.30pm (Shop and Bistro) 
Thursday 10am till 7.30pm (Shop and Bistro) plus evening dining in the Bistro until late
Friday 10am till 7.30pm (Shop and Bistro) plus evening dining in the Bistro until late
Saturday 10am till 7.30pm (Shop and Bistro) plus evening dining in the Bistro until late 
Sunday 10am till 5.30pm (Shop and Bistro)

Closes on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but open every other day of the year.

Savers Double Cheese Burger / New York Classic - McDonalds, Everywhere.

As I am currently exploring a theme at present by looking at the low-end of the spectrum in the world of burgers, I have succumbed and ended up at McDonalds a few times in the last month or so.  From here on, its only up.

Burgers are one of the most versatile food groups as they come in so many different shapes and sizes with so many variations of ingredients, type, serving and quality, it is easy to write about them.  Many burger blogs don’t really go to the extremes that BBB has explored; most people know that if you pay anything under £4 for a burger, then it will be a bad idea and you will die inside when you end up in such a place as I did yesterday.

But this is a brave blog, I am a brave blogger who will brave the horrors of McDonalds for my readers.  You are my readership and I doing this for you.

Here are a few facts about McDonalds (thanks businessinsider.com).

1.       If you go anywhere in the world, you will ultimately fall over a McDonalds at some point (that’s one of my facts).

2.       McDonalds sells more than 75 burgers every second internationally.

3.       Its $24 billion revenue makes it the 90^th largest economy in the world.

4.       The Queen of England owns a McDonald’s near Buckingham Palace as part of her vast real estate portfolio

It is a cultural phenomenon, more than just a business.  It has even slipped in to our language with the ‘Mc’ prefix stuck on the beginning of things to insinuate a cheap and mass produced quality. (McJob, McMansion etc…) and to boot, recently Jamie Oliver dubbed McDonalds meat unfit for human consumption so really, yeah…ammonia flavoured, yummy.

McDonalds in Exeter is a focal point for foreign tourists, teenagers and dopes like me who need something very cheap and very quick.  This is what they do best, and no matter how you look at it McDonalds is at the top of their game.

Standing in the queue, (and there is always a queue) is like waiting in some dystopian nightmare where you are about to be handed out your dystopian meal to sit at your dystopian seating area waiting to be dragged away by guards for reeducation.  Thankfully that hasn't happened to me (yet) but this tends to be the overiding feeling.  The service can vary between friendly, apathetic and downright impatient, they can have 5 stars on their badge, 1 star or no stars.  Each time I come here I seem to get a different member of staff, so the argument for cloning McDonalds staff is wearing thin here.

I have to say the taste of what is generally handed to me or thrown at me, is not bad.  The New York Burger which is one of their themed burgers which comes out once a year or so, is actually quite nice.  I know the chemicals have been balanced perfectly, I know it is the result of many hours of R&D, but if they have invested millions of dollars to get the reaction of "hmm this isn't that bad" from me, then they have succeeded. For 40p more you can also have Crispy Potato Things which are like small round waffles made of potato.  Alas there are really not many of them, so yes, not quite as good a value.

The Saver Double Cheese Burger is roughly the same.  Small, squat, thinly garnished with 'stuff' but not inedible.  At £1.50 the 'Below £4.00 and it tastes bad rule' still applies, but this is nicer than other cheap-assed burgers.  I even got two pickled gherkin slices...lucky me.

In conclusion.  I keep finding the McDonalds surprises me with stuff that doesn't taste that bad, but I know it is all an illusion.

The 'Build-A-Burger' - Morrison's In-store Cafe, Exeter

The week before payday is often taken up with inventive ways to eat out for not much.  Catapulted mercilessly into the week, the shock of returning to work meant that after a busy day at the coal face the idea of cooking food let alone deciding what to cook was mostly out of the question.  It didn't matter how much food we had in, it was going to be traumatic given how tired we were feeling and the lack of motivation.

Last week whilst shopping in Morrison's we had noticed that they had revamped their menu and this included the inclusion of a new Build-A-Burger menu which let you construct a burger for £4.  The deal seemed pretty good as it included a drink as well, so what a perfect opportunity to have a look see.

The thing that you have to remember about Morrison's Cafe is that there are a few things they do well.  Fish and Chips is one thing that I have had a few times and on the whole, its been good.  They are normally very speedy in the serving the food, rarely under 10 minutes which is perfect for a filler up before the trauma of food shopping.  Despite a few strange things to appear from behind the till in the past, the polite staff and the service has always been friendly and never anything but pleasant.

So what was the burger going to be like?  Given it is £4 (and remember my Staple Hill Rule 'If you pay £3.25 for a burger it is more than likely going to be horrendous') you get the following.  A cheap burger, a bun, some lettuce and if you paid 60p extra, a slice of cheese...and some chips...did I mention the lettuce? You're meant to get tomato too but given we had waited 30 minutes for our food, I was hardly going to send it back.  One of the options was simply a sauce, hmm... Not really 'building' anything here.

Add a slice of bacon and some cheese for 60p each and you have an averagely priced burger £5.20.  The value part of this isn't really adding up to be honest.  But I mustn't grumble too much as you do get a drink too?

Yes dear readers (have genuinely always wanted to write that and not sound too cliched), we waited so long that I actually noticed people ordering, getting their food and then leaving, and that generally speaking isn't great news.  I then noticed a steady stream of people walking up to the till clutching receipts and looking very annoyed.  It wasn't until after we had become one of those receipt-clutching, stern-faced hungry people stomping up to the till, that we were told that one of the staff hadn't turned up for their shift.  Its strange how anger dissipates to sympathy when you are told that there is a reason why the food has taken so long, and even though I was so hungry I was digesting my own stomach lining it wasn't something I could easily stay annoyed.
They were doing their best, and although one of the checkout girls had been drafted in to serve, it still didn't seem to be quite enough for some diners who were demanding refunds and looking very pissed off.  Free top-ups on our drinks made up for it, but unfortunately the burger wasn't really worth the wait.

These days Burger Addicts like Fatso here (me) are treated to the glories of Gourmet Burgers in more places than ever which are made with good quality meat and have generally good ingredients with lots of thought behind it.  When you get a taste for good meat, it is more obvious when you get a cheap burger bulked out with onion and other bits.  The promise of building a burger is fine, but when you get a tiny burger with a few pitiful options, it makes the whole thing a little hard to swallow.  The chips were nice though but not enough of them...

The Mexican Burger - The Green Ginger, Torquay (Wetherspoons)

Where?: The Green Ginger, Torquay (Wetherspoons)

What?: The Mexican Burger

How much?: £6.99 with alcoholic drink

The Verdict:

Torquay is not known for its a la carte Cuisine.  There are a lot of places that sell fish, there are a lot of cheesy looking bars and a few nice gastro-pubs and some really nice restaurants.  According the Trip Advisor the nicest restaurant to go to in Torquay is The Orange Tree.  It has five green circles and 400 odd reviews and to be frank it looks fantastic.  Closely followed are a whole bunch of other places that really do look nice, but were no where near where we were geographically and monetarily.

So we had to settle for the nearest option which was The Green Ginger.  It is architecturally monosyllabic, grafted on to the side of a shopping centre like some modernist warty appendage.  Which is a great shame because it is really quite a nice place to sit and drink, eat and watch the world go by.

Like most Wetherspoons they have a good selection of Ale, and they had the Gourmet Burgers on offer too. So being the burger-eating type of person that I am, I took the oppurtunity to have another burger from their menu.  Last week it was the Brunch Burger with their rather wonky portion control. and this week it was going to be The Mexican Burger also with dubious portion control.  All four of us had a burger of some sort, and all four of us had varying quantities of chips.  I know I am being anal about this, but how hard can it be?

So what makes this burger a Mexican burger, opposed to anything else.  The answer my friend, is in the large dollop of Guacamole that adorns the whole thing, intermingled rather sparsely with some chillis and a couple of onion rings.  The whole thing held was together with stick and the vast splat of salty green stuff, and a 6oz rather tasteless burger which although cooked well was really like eating polystyrene.

By the end of the meal, the whole thing had collapsed.  I was left with green avacado fingers, the bottom of the burger had disintergrated and the two slices of tomato and 'salad' had ended up on the otherside of the plate.  I hate to say it Wetherspoons, but your Brunch Burger was so much nicer.
Although I found fault in most aspects of the meal, the saving grace was the pint of Fox from Exmoor Brewery which brought back some memories of sitting on Aberystwyth Seafront in a pub called the Glen Gower Hotel, not sure why, just did.

I don't think The Mexican Burger really works, it is tenuously Mexican. It needs more to it, more mince and spices and tomatos and onions.  Just more.  Nearly Wetherspoons, but no cigar.

Jonny Makes a Pasty - The Craft Beer Channel

My old friend Jonny visits The Rashleigh Arms to cook a pasty with meat marinated in Admiral Ale from St Austell Brewery.

Git.

The Brunch Burger - The Imperial (Wetherspoons), Exeter.

Where?: The Imperial, Exeter (JD Wetherspoons)

What?: The Brunch Burger - One of their Gourmet Burgers, with which you get a free drink

How much?: £6.99 with an alcoholic drink, a bit cheaper if you have a soft drink

The Verdict:

For the price, this is one seriously good burger.  They might not be the first name for 'posh nosh' but there are two things that Wetherspoons do well (Real Ale and Cheap Good Burgers) and it comes together in this 1000+ calorie crippling burger that not only hits the spot, but vaporizes it too.

The Imperial was originally built in 1809 and was called Elmfields given the plot of land that had existed before it was built had been covered in Elm Trees.  The Orangery had orignally been attached to Streatham House, just up the hill and was installed in the 1920s.  It was said to have been designed by Brunel.

It is my local geographically speaking, so as a result I end up here most Fridays and some other days too if I am feeling sneaky and it was today that I was feeling sneaky and just had to give in to the ultimate temptation.  They had Hunters Brewery's amazing Crispy Pig, a light session ale that has been at the top of my all time favourite Ales for a while and will be BBB Beer of the week at some point soon.

Get on with it!...

The burger itself was a sight to behold.  Although it seemed strange to arrange the onion rings as they were arranged, I couldn't complain.  Two thick rashers of bacon, cheese, a fried egg on a 6oz beef pattie with a thick cut tomato and some salad.  The burger was cooked well, not incinerated but definitely done a la BBQ.

The chips in Wetherspoons are generally very nice for the price.  A few years ago they changed their recipe which added an extra crispy coating to the chips, so I have been quite a fan of their new variety since this change but 'spoons are not immune from a pet hate of mine.  'Not Enough Chips' syndrome which can ruin a good meal, especially when the other side of the table has more chips than me.

Unfortunately on this occasion the chips felt that they'd been served but the meal had waited for service to get to it, and as a result it wasn't quite as hot as you would expect it to be, but not inedible and the ones that were hot were quite nice.  "Normally they're hotter than this?" I thought. Ah well never mind.

Tori had a BBQ Pulled Pork sandwich which came with infinitely bigger onion rings and many more chips (portion sizes?) but I resisted the urge to steal half of hers as I have learnt from previous cases of Spousal Chip Theft that it doesn't pay and often leads to Chip Wars, which never work out well for me.

So big thumbs up for the drinks and real ales.  Thumbs up for the burger and thumbs up for the BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich.  Thumbs down for the not quite hot chips, and the weird portions.

But ultimately the value of the meal shines through. And without going on about Real Ales too much, there is a lot to be said for Wetherspoons and the encouragement and growth in popularity in the work of Microbreweries.  I've banged on about this over at Eating Exeter, but for all their flaws, 'spoons have certainly proven themselves.

New Design Work! Thanks to Tori Dee Illustration

Eating Exeter's in-house illustrator has just produced some fantastic new pieces of design work for Beer, Burger and Beyond.  Tori Dee has created a couple of new pieces of identity for this fledgling blog, to a very vague brief (mostly umming and murmuring) and I am very pleased with the results.

Her website is currently undergoing some changes, but you can see a portfolio of her work at www.toridee.co.uk and follow her at @toriboard on Twitter & Facebook