Shrewsbury Restaurant Week - The Rest Of The Week Top Picks 2024
Shrewsbury Restaurant Week is up and running! 38 different restaurants, cafes, bars and food joints are sticking on specials, offers and deals to help showcase the amazing food scene in Shrewsbury!
You might have seen my previous blog about what’s going on on Monday in Shrewsbury and where I think is worth a punt! Mondays are tricky as not all the places are open but as the week progresses, Shrewsbury Restaurant Week will only get better and better. More places are open, serving up some seriously delicious stuff!
Remember the plan, grab your loyalty cards, get stamped in each place you go to, collect 5 stamps, get entered into a prize draw to win a 3 course meal for 2 at a restaurant of your choice or a £100 voucher for a takeaway joint that’s involved! It’s a pretty generous and mega offer!
If you’ve been following my coverage of this, you’ll know that I am focussing on using this week to be a little more adventurous with my food choices and trying places I haven’t been before. Maximising the discounts, offers and specials to expand my mind a little and hunt out some great food that has been eluding me for no other reason than my own lack of adventure!
What I am looking for is unqiue and great value for money experiences. What I have loved so far is seeing just how many different styles of deals/offers/specials have been listed! Plenty of businesses are getting super innovative with their thinking; something that I think is so important in the current climate. Sometimes survival is about being outside the box!
Don’t forget the places I have already called out on my Monday list - Outset Coffee, Hopefully Coffee, Cafe On The Severn, Osteria v2.0 and Cromwell’s Tap House - these joints are open all week, so please don’t think these are just for Mondays! Cafe On The Severn is a Monday-Friday joint so don’t leave this one until the weekend!
Anyway, time to get deep into it! Remember the brief, unique and/or amazing value for money………..
Here are my top picks for the rest of Shrewsbury Restaurant Week (in no particular order)
Prince Rupert Hotel, Butcher Row - Order A Starter & Main, Get A Free Dessert!
There’s a hidden gem I already know exists in Shrewsbury!
This hotel, for some reason that completely eludes me, is holding a secret. It’s keeping it’s cards close to its chest. Refusing to play them and I just don’t know why! I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. It’s like something out of a nonsensical dream. They are hiding a Shropshire star (not the newspaper) and I just don’t understand why they aren’t lighting the sky with the news! Everyone should be talking about it but it’s not being reported or posted anywhere.
What they are hiding is one of Shropshire’s best and most consistent chefs! You might recognise the name Gareth Howarth……Masterchef The Professionals, winning 3 rosettes at The Haughmond…….ring any bells?
Well he is back! And in Shrewsbury Town Centre! His food is brilliant, always delicious and probably most impressively, he is brilliantly consistent!
For me, consistency is one of the most overlooked and underrated skills in the kitchen. It is so important to be able to repeat your high standards over and over. I cannot tell you how hard it is to actually achieve….I see it as one of my own biggest stumbling blocks!
You have to be unrelenting in your standards and unwilling to accept anything that isn’t just right. You can’t achieve 3 Rosettes without maintaining a consistently brilliant standard!
The Hotel now has a real chef on board, this place should be on everyone’s radar and something we should all the getting behind and supporting!
The hotels comms are awful! Their Facebook is out of date, Instagram is basically non-existent and their website doesn’t have up to date info - so this might be an old school phone call if you are after any info or want to book! This is all definitely forgivable for a delicious hidden gem! Even more forgivable to get a free dessert!!!!
The food is in his typical fine dining-y style, looks incredible as expected and sounds utterly delicious! I always get excited when a menu reads well, then the picture fit the bill!
I’m booking at table for later in the week - I cannot wait!
St Vincent, Fish St - Dish & Drink £10 or 2 Dishes £10
A relative newbie to our town and offering some serious value on their offer.
In this country (massive generalisation incoming!!!), I feel like we get very blinkered with our eating habits. If we are going out for a meal, it must be at set meal times, it must be 3 courses and we must leave sufficiently stuffed. What I love about this offer is not only its value for money but also a chance to eat a little differently!
The chance to rock up with £10 in your pocket and leave having had a lovely glass of wine and something lovely to eat with it. There is something really special and quite continental about eating like that. You go to most places in Europe and it’s what all the happiest people are doing. Maybe having one plate and a drink and moving on. Or maybe just taking an hour to yourself to sit, think, read a book, exist, simply have a moment in our crazy busy lives. Eating out doesn’t have to be crazy expensive or overly lavish. It can be as simple as a glass of wine and a small plate of something!
I have been to St Vincent for a glass of wine before. I was terrified of the scale and size of the wine list but that is mostly because I am awful with food decisions - I panic that I’m going to get it wrong so much more comfortable with a smaller choice; but I really enjoyed the setting, the wine was lovely and the staff and service were excellent. I haven’t tried the food, so this feels like the perfect upgrade to add a plate of food to a lovely glass of wine!
Moreish Worldfoods, Market Hall - 3 Dishes for £15
Variety is the spice of life, right? Well if that’s the case, then it is an absolute crime that I haven’t been to eat at Moreish yet.
I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more of an involvement from the market hall eateries. We have such an amazing range on offer, I would have thought a few more would sign up?! I get really blinkered in the market hall, I always end up in the same places, never trying anything else and that is why I still haven’t eaten at Moreish!
What a better opportunity to scope somewhere out than to be able to try 3 different dishes for £15. I hope there is a choice of dishes so I get to pick and choose, but for this price it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I think I am right in saying that Nat and the team got voted Best Food in the market hall awards (fact check please) which is unbelievably high praise when you take into account how yummy our market hall is! If they didn’t, I know they won something, so……..
You might remember Black Box Spices - a little spice place in the market hall. That was also Nat’s and is now amalgamated into the cafe so you can also buy all the delicious world flavours and flavour bombs to take home with you. They are also members of my beloved Slow Food group so you know Nat is doing everything right with her sourcing and being generally responsible with the food she serves.
This offer is a great chance to experience a huge variety of food and really get to grips with what Nat serves. Also being able to buy some delicious spices to take home, it might just get you in the kitchen a little more often! Perfect!
CSons, Milk St - Mystery Menu (Thurs Only) & Drinks Competition
I was really focussing on not listing my usual haunts on this list. Remember this is all about broadening my horizons. Something unique and great value!
Then CSons popped up offering one of the most unique and great value experiences!
Just about anyone who’s been to Shropshire will know what CSons are all about. Good quality, locally sourced, globally inspired deliciousness - so I won’t bore you with that…….
With such a diverse food world that we all live in, we can get far too caught up with making our own decisions and having choices. All of us are too pre-determined in what we want to eat and how we want to eat. Essentially I feel like we are all a little too picky, purely out of privilege.
This offer is pure relief for this terrible decision maker! Basically, I don’t have to choose….absolute winner! And how exciting is it to put your dinner in the hands of the experts and let them do the decision making!
This is exactly what the CSons mystery meals are all about. You don’t know what you’re going to get - I find that absolutely exhilarating and also totally unique for Shrewsbury! This isn’t really taking a chance, you know it’s going to be delicious, it always is at CSons but this does give you the chance to experience a totally new dining experience, and who knows, you might just discover your new favourite food, flavour, cuisine or dish!
If you have the accompanying drinks flight, you’ll be entered into a prize draw on the night and you have the chance of getting your drinks for free! Exciting stuff!
Plantkind, Milk St - 15% Off When Ordering Online (Use Code: RESTWEEK15
When it comes to food, for me value for money can manifest itself in a few ways. It might be the generosity of portion sizes or it could be the actual flavour. The sort of £/flavour ratio.
What you get at Plantkind is both! Generous portions, absolutely packed with flavour. It’s an education in plant based cooking, without the reliance on meat substitutes and alternatives.
I am absolutely convinced that this place would convert any hardened ‘must have meat with every meal’ meat eater into exploring more plant based options.
Their style is laid back, comforting, flavour packed food. Plant based but not preachy in anyway, which makes it super approachable for anyone who isn’t sure if the plant based diet is for them. A huge range of flavours, colours, ingredients, and textures on offer in every single dish they serve. They absolutely blew up last year when they started opening a little later on Fridays, with specific special menus changing monthly and now they are branching into pop-ups in a few places in town (there’s one in December actually).
Notorious for their falafel boxes and wraps and now with their delicious regularly changing specials, maybe their biggest secret is the delicious, really affordable speciality filter coffee they serve out of an unassuming coffee pot brewing behind the counter. Another value for money string to their incredibly affordable bow!
With seriously responsible and exciting cooking and flavour delivery, they are unbelievably good value at full price, with 15% off, it’s teetering on the verge of ridiculous. So get online and get that food ordered!
Kanu Poke, Roushill - Autumn Specials & Pre-Winter Dish Sampling
These guys are down as a bit of my wild card. As a restaurant they really intrigue me. Thinking about it, they are probably a prime example of where deep down, this place might challenge my senses a little too much. Maybe this is why I still haven’t made it into eat yet?
What I love about Kanu Poke is the journey. I remember when they started out (I think it was pre-Covid? Covid has totally messed up my concept of time) they were a delivery only place. Banging out a lovely fresh poke bowls; light relief to the far too prominent greasy takeaways in Shrewsbury.
It got popular enough that they decided to delve into a permanent residence. I love this. This is how long lasting, strong food businesses are built. They are built on proper foundations. It takes time to build trust, to build your brand, to get customers to trust you with their hard earned cash. Too many businesses look for a quick start and just chuck a ton of money in on day 1. A quick fire plan to get a business up and running, plastering over a terrible, often totally unrealistic business plan with expensive renovations and setting themselves an impossible task from day dot to get the bank account back into the green.
They’ve built a business out of a passion and you can tell. Everyone always looks so happy! I love the colours and the energy of the place, even if it maybe does feel a little like the set of SpongeBob Squarepants! From the outside, it looks and feels authentic to the owners and without question looks totally unique!
A plant based restaurant that definitely transfers the energy, colours and authenticity into the food and decor. Even if it might seem a little garish for me (rich coming from the guy who wears rainbow trousers and braces, walking around town like a poor man’s Mork or a 70s kids TV presenter…not a Yew Tree one….a friendly one!), I do think that this is a seriously unique place that would be worth a shot. You’ll have a chance to try some unique specials and also have a peek at some of their winter menu! A great teaser that will likely get you to book again for a few weeks time!
Best Of The Rest…….Basically, All Of It!
I have highlighted a few of the offers that are available this week - the ones that I think are really offering some great value and unique experiences. But the reality is, when you look at the full list of participants (link below to Original Shrewsbury), there isn’t really any offers that are better or worse than others. We should all be celebrating every single place that has gotten involved with this amazing plan. Deep diving into these restaurants has been so much fun for me and has really highlighted just how high the standards of food are in our town and how spoilt we are to have such a diverse selection to choose from. There really is something for everyone. The hospitality trade relies on collaboration and there really shouldn’t be any competition in this town. There is definitely room for everyone and definitely enough hungry customers to go around!
All 38 of these restaurants, cafes, bakeries and shops deserve a visit, they all deserve a mention, but I would be here all week just writing this blog and however much I would genuinely love to celebrate our town like that, I won’t love that as much as actually going and eating and experiencing these places!
So explore the full list, go and try something new, get out of your comfort zones, get those loyalty cards charged up and get them stamped up to the max!
Llisten to my recommendations or don’t, but you should definitely use this week to go and try something new. Get out of your comfort zone! Go and try to find your new favourite meal, cuisine, restaurant, ingredients, whatever.
We should also all be saying a huge thank you to Original Shrewsbury for putting this together! Such an amazing plan and would have taken some serious leg work to get going!
We should all be really proud of our wonderful town!
FULL LIST OF OFFERS:
https://originalshrewsbury.co.uk/shrewsbury-restaurant-week-the-menu
