Petit Glou - Light & Fresh Lunch Packed With Quality Produce
It was Shrewsbury Restaurant Week a short while ago (SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT: I wrote a few blogs on it, go check them out). It inspired me to finally get started on a project that I have been desperate to do for a while. To try to get out and about in Shrewsbury, eating and drinking in places I don’t usually manage to get to!
Petit Glou is a prime example of this. For those of you that don’t know, Petit Glou (means little glug in French (fact check please) is the sister wine bar and cafe to Glou Glou (Castelgates) who are cousins to the original natural wine shop Iron & Rose…….simple, right?!
Iron & Rose started downstairs in our award winning Market Hall (big cheer if you’re from Shrewsbury), specialising in super delicious, thoughtfully and sustainably sourced natural wine. They opened a wine bar (Glou Glou) and then when the opportunity arose, they took themselves upstairs in the market and expanded the wine shop into a wine shop and adjoining Cafe/Wine Bar, Petit Glou. As the name suggests, it’s very much a smaller, lighter and more day time version of Glou Glou (somewhere I adore by the way).
All of these places are packed with vibes! They just get it. They’ve chucked out the stuffy, snotty, kind of classist system when it comes to wine. They’ve got rid of all the etiquette nonsense and they focus entirely on serving great wines and making wine accessible for everyone. As far as wine goes, my favourite part about these places is that they aren’t afraid to serve things that aren’t necessarily crowd pleasers. They go well outside the (wine) box at times, which is what is so utterly joyous about it. They have wines for everyone. Challenges for everyone. They almost seem to also set themselves a challenge of converting the haters too. Walk in with a ‘I don’t like Chardonnay’ attitude (I am writing this very much from experience of being ‘that guy’) and be presented with about 5 delicious Chardonnays that you will love! Then listen and learn about why you ‘think’ you hate Chardonnay and get an insight into wine making and the wine industry as a whole. Also learn that different Chardonnays from different parts of the world have different characters, why and how you can now tell a Chardonnay that you will enjoy and most importantly why forging wine opinions based on £4.99 bottles of Blossom Hill from Wetherspoons in 2012 isn’t the best route to becoming a so called connoisseur……
Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to be talking about the wine……you see this has been my problem when it comes to Petit Glou. I always end up heading straight to the wine. Desperately trying to get the good stuff, without it I will never forget the demons of another day of parenting and self employment. Wildly crawling up the stairs of the Market Hall as fast as I can like a zombie from the Walking Dead desperately hunting it’s prey!
So while I am very (very) familiar with Iron & Rose, I rarely sit in Petit Glou. If I do, it is usually for a quick glass of fizz when me and my Wife have somehow managed to dump the kids somewhere for an hour in the day. We need a quick hit of the good stuff, in case there is a phone call; we can’t afford to waste time. Down the hatch, back on the road……..in terms of food, we might get a little bowl of nibbles. Some lovely smoked almonds or habas fritas to help digest the lovely fizz but never much more….
Thankfully that’s changed. I actually went in for lunch.
They have a nice little range of options actually. From the aforementioned nibbles and selections of house made bread to little small plates of lovely houmous and cheese fondue. Of course they serve cheese and meats - what self respecting wine bar wouldn’t, but these are all locally sourced and a great advert for the Shropshire food scene. The main feature of the menu are the ‘Paninos’ and some salads. I have never heard anything called a Panino, it sounds a term my 4 year old would coin for a Panini but it definitely isn’t a typo. An assumption that its an Italian sandwich similar to a Panini is quickly confirmed on a google search…..I do not want to look like a sandwich fool………
The menu definitely offers something for everyone. I love the pick n’ mix cheese and meat - as a customer, choice is the name of the game these days and you can select exactly how much you want. There’s no-one forcing my charcuterie and cheese agenda, pushing me into a £30 debt for a board of food that I don’t necessarily want. That being said, and being very generously offered the choice, we chose not to have any cheese or meat……..
That’s partially a lie. We did have some cheese but in the form of fondue. One of the most pleasurable forms of cheese. Offering 3 cheeses, unsurprisingly it was cheesy but surprisingly it was very light. Maybe too light? I’m on the fence with that. I usually make my fondue thick enough to lay bricks with and strong enough to make people wonder if it is anything BUT cheese. Demanding an Instagrammable cheese pull that I can never capture because I’m too busy trying to lift the heavy cheese with two hands, the camera just ends up on the table facing the ceiling, capturing the odd glance of a flared nostril as I strain to lift the dense dairy…. The kind of cheesy that induces the heartburn from merely smelling the molten goodness…..so maybe that’s just a me problem. What the lightness does however, is give you a fondue consumption super power - I could guzzle this stuff down all day long! It comes with some really lovely mushrooms that add a bit of richness and earthiness to it all. A lovely light indulgence! But not a fondue that is going to make you feel naughty (if that’s what you’re into). The fondue also offered my first glance at their house made focaccia. We flirted enough that I knew I needed some more of it.
The next stop was straight to the Panino’s. Which for some reason really rolls off the tongue well and makes me want to shout ‘PANIIINNNNOOOOS’ a la football hooligan………
Great sandwiches start with great bread! The house made focaccia was everything you want focaccia to be. I once worked with an Italian chef who passionately spoke about ciabatta being the best bread in the whole world. Bemused, the rest of the kitchen looked on before everyone chimed in to let him know that it wasn’t even the best bread in Italy! All hail the Focaccia!…….I do think we could learn something from Giorgio and the rest of the Italian food culture. Their passion is incredible. They will risk death to convince you that whatever is from their region in Italy is the best in the world. You have to admire it. I mean, you don’t really see Garry from Accrington on a mission to Turin to convince the Northern Italians that his Nan’s Hot Pot is the greatest stew on Earth. But why shouldn’t he? I support you Garry. I stand with you! Go get em tiger!…….I mean, the Italians are right though, it’s not even the best stew in England……….
Where were we up to with the Paninos?………..the bread. Excellent, as per the taster we had with the fondue. It’s been slowly proven for 18 hours and its 18 hours well spent. Light, fluffy, crispy, oily. It’s well made focaccia - even Giorgio would have loved it!……..If great sandwiches start with great bread, they definitely then rely on great produce to fill them. These ticked all the boxes. We had the Rotisserie Chicken & Tarragon and the ‘Glou’ Yorker. The chicken was tender and soft with some nice flavours around it and the tarragon mayo was everything you want it to be! You cannot argue with homemade mayo. It’s the sort of delicious that gives you Hellman’s regrets when you’re at home and makes you really consider that you should be making it more often! The Glou Yorker is packed with some Wild Street Kitchen Venison Pastrami……my love for everything these guys do is endless but this venison pastrami is total fire! Its just about the most sustainable meat you can get and we should all be eating more of it, go check these dudes out!
The final piece in the sandwich puzzle is always some sort of pickles. While my 1/4 German wife has just about improved every single aspect of my life, one of the things I hold most dear is how much I now love a pickle. Everything’s gone from butter and cream to mustard and vinegar. Low and behold, these sandwiches are packed with delicious homemade pickles. It’s acidity that’s the key flavour profile most people miss! They added the perfect balance to the bread and the fillings! All in all, great sandwiches. £10 a pop is a fair price, they are a really good size, decent amounts of fillings and when you consider the quality of the produce, really worth a go! They also come with a lovely crunchy, fresh side salad, one of my favourite parts of the entire lunch (and that is not doing the sandwich a disservice, quite the opposite) - a brave chef adds raw, shaved fennel into a salad in Shropshire, a brave and very much correct chef! Lovely!
My only question with the sandwiches is that there isn’t a cheese option? People do love a cheesy sandwich. Discussions at the table led to an idea of using the cheese fondue as a sandwich dip………Portobello Mushroom & Charred Leek Panino with Cheese Fondue on the side please…….secret menu hack unlocked…….I’ll be trying that soon…….
I was eating with my friend George, we were on our way to Brighton for a lairy weekend of middle aged debauchery (nice wine, good conversation and bed by 9) so we thought we better fill up. We weren’t likely to have a middle class meal for at least another 6-8 hours. So we also tried the Warm ‘Fall’ Salad - houmous or hummus? (I’m Houmous, is that right? Petit Glou is Hummus, I hope I’m not insulting a culture with that?), roasted squash, crispy chickpeas, marinated kale, pickled red onions and gremolata - all very nicely and neatly presented. On large I have an issue with houmous in Shrewsbury. Everyone (apart from a handful of places) packs it with far too much garlic and nowhere near enough tahini or lemon juice, so its just overpowering, heavy, hard to consume and kind of lumpy.
Almost as if as a town we are trying to ward off sesame loving vampires. I was more than happy with the restraint shown in Petit Glou when it came to the garlic. You knew it was there but it wouldn’t compromise my chances of kissing a vampire later that night. As with the rest of the meal, all the flavours were lovely, light, fresh and clearly all the food was freshly made. My qualm came with the word ‘warm’ on the menu. Unfortunately everything was fridge cold. This is a long way from being a deal breaker for me, but the dish would have really benefited from being room temperature. I actually mentioned this to the guys and they pointed out that it actually was served at room temperature, it just so happened to be about 2C that day and the Market Hall is genuinely freezing cold! That’s a tough one to solve in an already tiny kitchen but they are working on it. From my experience, you’ll crack that problem after months of trialling different things, right when the sun starts to come out and everything warms up!
A glass of vino would have gone down a storm. Really would have given us a sort of Sex and The City vibe (George is definitely Samantha) to lunch but we were both driving. A rare situation for me in any of the Iron & Rose family but comfortably solved by a delicious range of teas. I had a minty effort and George an Earl Grey - both lovely. I’m trying to think of the last time we both had a non-boozy drink together. In over 20 years of close friendship, I genuinely can’t remember. So maybe both having tea is our boujee?
It’s amazing how conditioned and blinkered we can become to places. Always associating Petit Glou with Iron & Rose meant I’d ignored the lunch offering and always assumed I would buy a bottle to take home or have a glass of wine, ergo missing out on both lovely lunches and cracking tea - both of which I love as much as wine!
Don’t be like me, don’t forget the delicious things they are doing up there and give it a try. Carlotta is cooking up some really delicious, Italian influenced stuff and I feel like there is a lot more to come from these guys!
In my opinion they offer something different, lighter and fresher than other places in town while also being plenty fulfilling and their focus on both quality and locality of produce is second to none! It’s a lovely way to celebrate the amazing produce we have in Shropshire! Their approach is considered, conscientious and most importantly delicious with a menu that has something for everyone and every appetite!……….and don’t forget to pick up a bottle on the way out…….
They are serving their lunches in Petit Glou Thursday - Saturday from 12 - well worth a visit. Also keep an eye on events at Glou Glou. Carlotta is banging out lots of events there. I’ve seen risotto and pasta nights recently and I have never been let down with a visit to Glou Glou!
