The Beech Tree, Oswestry
Oswestry is always a little bit of an enigma to me, is enigma the right word? I’m not sure, but it’ll do for now. I know what I mean, and I think that’s all that really matters!
I find it a quieter, smaller and a far more quaint town upon visiting than the build up and anticipation of said visit. I always seem to be urging it to be more than it is. I don’t know why? It’s not like it ever disappoints but maybe I just feel like it has way more potential than it shows? I almost urge it to be more of a destination town, it probably already is for most. But then we are a bit spoilt for choice in Shropshire! For my family it kind of is a destination place, a destination for the leisure centre!
It’s a swimming pool with a little more care and attention in comparison to its dated and more grimy Shrewsbury counterpart. The pool is much warmer and way more suitable for toddlers….and more importantly, Dad’s with the swimming abilities of a toddler…..I expend an endless amount of energy trying to stay afloat more than moving forwards. 17 year old lifeguards on alert trying to figure out if there’s been an unexpected shark attack in the deep end. Stand down, it’s just my front crawl!
The town is actually packed with charity shops (the new requirement for our thrfiting family) and some good food spots. A couple of really renowned destination food spots. One very well respected bakery. Packed with layer upon layer of gluten full, buttery laminations, flaking all over the place. Taunting us, waggling their gluten fingers at us with a ‘nah, nah, nahhhh. You can’t have us’.....evil temptress. That’s one destination off our list.
This is far from an Oswestry bashing by the way. I find the town has a lovely warm welcome. It’s clean, tidy and locals always seem happy to be there. But is there enough to make it a regular visit? I am never quite sure?
I suppose this throws out some questions and internal thoughts on the value of things in general. What am I looking for? What’s my expectation? Maybe I am being too harsh on my expectations of Oswestry? But what about the food in Oswestry? Much like any town or any unawarded restaurant or cafe, there aren’t many benchmarks to go off when it comes to expectations. So it quickly all becomes about value for money. The first glance is almost always at the prices on a menu. I would argue that this is actually the primary benchmark for anywhere. Michelin starred, AA rosetted or any other badge of honour. What is that value set around? Is it generosity? Seems like the easy answer but that in itself throws out a million different questions. Starting with ‘what is generosity?’
Many might view it as the literal portion size. An easy trap to fall into; the food is so easily transformed into merely a commodity. Something of monetary value and something therefore we are engrained to view as ‘bang for our buck’ or how much is on our plate regardless of the time taken to make it or the processes involved.
When you’ve worked in hospitality you really get a feel that generosity can take a million forms. The capitalist world we live in drives us to view everything in monetary value, including some of the most beautiful, delicate and culturally rich life breathing necessities like food. A dangerous road to go down, one I often feel like we are already too far down.
Food isn’t the celebration it once was. Day by day it’s becoming more and more of a commodity with less and less value. There’s too much money to be made from such an essential requirement for life. We all have to eat, right? Losing the true value of food in all aspects would be a total disaster. There’s a considered and thoughful side to food that’s slowly slipping away.
Sometime ago I started to have some quite dystopian thoughts about our food future. Powders, sachets, meal replacement tetrapaks and filling stations where we just plug ourselves into a drip, nutrients pumped straight into our blood stream for 5 minutes. Our daily nutritional requirements dished out in scientifically perfect liquid form in a matter of minutes. The future of the dining table is gone from memory! This might seem extreme but it’s actually becoming far too real, far too quickly.
I didn’t quite expect such thoughtfulness to come out of me when I set about writing this but I suppose it’s my long winded way of saying that when it comes to food for me, a small amount of care and attention is where the value lies, it’s so appreciated. If there’s any sort of thoughtfulness involved I like to think I can spot it and I can tell.
People always struggle to cook for me and like with cooking for any chefs, people get it completely wrong. It’s never necessarily about what you cook but how you cook it. You can serve me beans on toast but even the slightest bit of care and attention can take that right to the top of the list of dishes I’ve eaten. A chef’s opinion on this will always be gratitude. We spend our lives thinking about others when it comes to food. To sometimes have that back is heaven to us!
The Beech Tree is a lovely feeling, light, airy, modern cafe in Oswestry with plenty of wood on show - how any good brunch spot should look! (For the benefit of the readers, I originally ‘inserted’ a joke here about my wife’s expectation of ‘wood on show’ but then deleted it. I am really ‘growing’ as a person…….apologies for the other puns there, I have fulfilled that innuendo itch I needed to scratch!....as you were). The cafe seemed quite small but my hunger had blinded all my senses, I didn’t realise there was actually an upstairs. When I finally switched on, I realised that it sounded really busy up there. There isn't any music, it’s always an interesting one for me. Food and music go hand in hand with me. Maybe it’s just the fact that I am so used to overstimulation that my brain can’t cope with the silence? Maybe there was upstairs? Maybe that’s yet another party I didn't get an invite to?
Music aside, it’s got all the lovely feels to it but on first impressions I wasn't blown away by the care and attention at The Beech Tree. The menus were completely crumpled on the table; a tea stain and scorched corner away from looking like a primary school project treasure map. In many ways akin to the pile of receipts I hand over to my accountant on a regular basis. The coffee was fine, Iron & Rose. For me, always fine but of no particular excitement.
When you realise that it isn’t a treasure map and there is no ‘X’ marking the spot, it’s reading the menu that starts The Beech Tree to come into its own. Such an exciting selection of dishes. Temptation on every line. I am an indecisive eater at the best of times but this decision was teetering on the absurdly impossible! I have a bizarre hatred for eggs benedict, eggs royale and whatever the other one is, I don’t know why, I just do. It’s a lonely place to be, there are very few of us ‘anti-benny’s’ around. But even their ‘benny’ comprising of a fishcake is really tempting. Finally a reason to be thankful for the gluten intolerance - I don’t have to eat any humble pie and prove myself wrong, or in this case eat my humble eggs benny!
When you realise that it isn’t a treasure map and there is no ‘X’ marking the spot, it’s reading the menu that starts The Beech Tree to come into its own. Such an exciting selection of dishes. Temptation on every line. I am an indecisive eater at the best of times but this decision was teetering on the absurdly impossible! I have a bizarre hatred for eggs benedict, eggs royale and whatever the other one is, I don’t know why, I just do. It’s a lonely place to be, there are very few of us ‘anti-benny’s’ around. But even their ‘benny’ comprising of a fishcake is really tempting. Finally a reason to be thankful for the gluten intolerance - I don’t have to eat any humble pie and prove myself wrong, or in this case eat my humble eggs benny!
When it comes to the food, it's the care, attention and thoughtfulness that’s in abundance at The Beech Tree. The food took it’s time to come out of the kitchen which is occasionally a blessing in disguise. The hunger hits, the anticipation rises and actually what happens when the food finally arrives, the agonising wait just fades into the utterly insignificant distance and it's all engulfed in a feeling excitement. 100% ready to eat! This is of course providing the food arrives with sufficient care and attention - something that oozes off the plates at The Beech Tree.
My excitement for the food was very well demonstrated by the perfectly poached eggs. Bursting over at the gentlest of nudges! The colours on the plate of Turkish eggs was almost too much to take in. The rare time that a black plate actually works. The perfect back drop for the clean white of the yoghurt and egg whites being interrupted with the bursting flow of those bright yellow yolks and drizzles of dark red chilli oil forming a sort of pathway for your eyes to take in all the wonder. Green and purple leaves were the perfect choice that just add to the splendour. They say you eat with your eyes. I must have devoured this dish about 10 times before I got close to shoveling in my first mouthful. Clapping your eyes on dishes like this start a sort of cascade reaction. A chain reaction where my brain is demanding confirmation of its deliciousness. The salivation floodgates wide open. A bottom jaw numbing effect, it’s set to wide open.
There are very few better feelings than the instant gratification that your eyes were right! The heat of the chilli, the cool of the yoghurt, the richness of the eggs. It’s a magic combination. It’s balanced but never at a flat line. There’s excitement everywhere. All the better to have some bread to mop it all up. Albeit wishing more than anything to have the flatbread the menu promised, I had to make do with some gluten free bread. An unrelenting life sentence in this gluten intolerant prison.
The masala potatoes followed suit. Spicing balance just right. A lovely heat, balanced nicely with mushrooms and potatoes in abundance. Perfectly cooked eggs, this time fried. Crispy on the bottom, perfectly runny yolks. It all brings texture into the fray - even more lovely balance.
The food at The Beech Tree was generous in so many ways, mostly in the best way possible, with care and attention. Thoughtfulness for the diner and the person actually eating. Brilliantly balanced flavours, textures and component parts. Neither dish we ate left us wanting more or less of anything……apart from maybe another entire plate of each to take home! The food was well worth the wait from what I suspect was a rightfully busy kitchen! It would maybe benefit from some of the care and attention from the kitchen creeping out into the front of house and service side of things but I would take that food over some neat looking menus any day!
Without question this will be a new regular spot for our trips to Oswestry and another great reason to visit!
