It seems so long since we were able to dine out due to these Covid lockdown restrictions and as our 6th wedding anniversary was coming up we wanted to celebrate and how best to do it than with a takeaway meal. Only not your common or garden Indian or Chinese but the real deal.
Tommy Banks’ Oldstead Restaurant is currently doing up market takeaways. There are 3 different choices: a vegetarian option, a 3 course dinner or a 5 course dinner with wine. Guess which one we opted for.
The Takeaway
We had to order a week in advance and you didn’t have a choice of which day it was arriving on but luckily it arrived on our actual anniversary. My hubby kindly got his credit card out and paid the £120, which for a meal for 2 with a bottle or wine and carriage was not too bad, considering how much we spent when we went and stayed overnight and had the taser menu at Oldstead.
It arrived promptly at 8.30am, luckily my OH was up or we might have slept through the knock on the door.
Tommy had very thoughtfully autographed the box with a sharpie pen. Now I can’t throw the box away, can I!?
Once the box was opened and the natural woolen packaging removed there was a veritable cornucopia of little boxes full of goodies.
We took everything out of the box. It was all labelled very clearly and they’d even provided a tiny pot of egg yolk for you to brush the beef wellington with to make it brown and crispy. Now where on earth is my pasty brush, haven’t used that in years!
Starters
Pre-starter was sourdough bread (a whole loaf) which just needed warming up in the oven for 8 minutes, which we ate with Hafod Cheddar Cheese spread. Lovely start to the meal and of course we had a glass (or two) of champagne to wash it down.
Starter was based on Tommy’s signature Beetroot dish, with seed crackers and fluffy cloud like goats curd cheese. Not enough crackers for my liking as I wanted to eke it out as it was so lovely.
We gave ourselves some time between the starters and the main in order to work up our hunger. So I zapped the QR link on the menu and selected the Spotify playlist which was suggested as back ground music. There were some oldies on it but a lot of new stuff from artists we’d never heard of. Oh dear we are getting old!
Mains
The main course consisted of: beef wellington, duck fat cooked potato rosti, chantenay carrots in a butter sauce, Oldstead greens and beef jus.
The star of the show was of course Beef Wellington. Which, after brushing with the egg yoke, needed to go into a pre heated oven for 10 mins, the potato rosti also needed browning off before putting in the oven to warm through. Another pan for the chantenay carrots in sauce, one for the jus and I decided to steam the greens in a separate pan with a tiny bit of water and butter. My OH pointed out later that I’d used as many saucepans as I would have it I’d cooked it myself. But the flavour wouldn’t have been the same!
On the website was a link to an Instagram page (Made in Oldstead) which shows you photos of how it all should be plated up. I tried! It’s not far off from the real thing.
Wine
In the box was a bottle of red wine which had been paired by Tommy (actually I think it’s his brother who is the wine aficionado). Anyway, it was lovely. I’m not a great red wine fan but this one went so well with the beef, I left my OH to finish it off.
After all that we needed a serious break, and a snooze for someone!
Desserts
A few hours later we ate the tiny pre-pudding pudding, a tiny glass pot with sweet, yet tangy rhubarb, topped with creamy potage type topping. So light, delicate and fragrant. And so lovely I ate it before I could take a photo!
The final ‘piece de resistance’ was the fondant pudding with kernel cream and port reconstituted black cherries. Shame we overcooked slightly (no ooze) it but it did taste wonderful.
Here is the full menu
We would highly recommend this takeaway meal, it was wonderful but can’t wait till we can enjoy the whole restaurant experience once more.