Fitzherbert Arms, Swynnerton
My introduction to this beautifully renovated country pub near Stone in Staffordshire was a top-notch lunch with, as the star of the show, an unexpectedly impressive – and enormous – pork chop. Combining traditional with modern in both character and its food offering, The Fitzherbert Arms rightly deserves its reputation for quality food and drink.
Perusing my ever-growing list of Staffordshire pubs, restaurants, producers and suppliers I want to check out, for a recent lunch I plumped for The Fitzherbert Arms in Swynnerton, four miles from the market town of Stone.
Reopened in 2016 after a major refurbishment undertaken by its new owners, I could see from the tasty looking dishes popping up on my social media feeds that I had to investigate, and the opportunity came one weekday lunchtime after walking the dog at nearby Downs Banks. Happily, The Fitzherbert Arms is dog friendly in the bar and snug as well as having a covered terrace and a hedged garden.
I didn’t see the pub in its old guise, which by all accounts had become rather unloved. But I can tell you that The Fitzherbert Arms today sympathetically combines the old and the new in a characterful, welcoming atmosphere that manages to be traditional without falling into ye olde worlde cliche. View photo gallery here.
The food offering combines the traditional and the modern too. Choose from ‘Fitz Favourites’ like handmade steak burger, local ale battered haddock, steaks and homemade pies, or head over to dishes with a modern British feel such as braised pig cheek with apple and balsamic glaze served with crispy squid.
Besides starters, sharing plates and platters, I loved that The Fitz serves up reasonably priced, tempting nibbles like wild boar & chorizo sausage roll and homemade onion bhaji Scotch egg.
Mondays to Saturdays, 12.00-5.30pm, there’s also a lunch specials menu from which you can select a nibble plus a lunchtime main for just £12.95 – excellent value for the standard of cooking we experienced. There’s a good range of sandwiches too.
A PROMISING BEGINNING
For my starter I chose, from the standard menu, Pan Seared Scallops served with pickled courgette and samphire, lemon and brown shrimp butter (£9.95).
Having recently returned from a two week stay on Anglesey where I’d eaten more than my fair share of seafood, including scallops at least twice, I think the ones at The Fitz just bested those. All were cooked with great skill, but here the searing on the outside was taken just that little bit further, which is exactly how I like them. Inside, the scallops were perfect for me too, with the accurate cooking meaning they were neither over nor underdone.
The vegetables were delicious in their sweet pickle liquor, still having good bite, but with any intrusive rawness gone. I think the growing trend to include lightly pickled veg is an excellent one, giving a layer of taste and texture that can really add interest to a dish, and they proved the point here. A tangle of pea shoots over the scallops provided freshness.
The lemon and brown shrimp butter was exactly as you’d hope. Shrimpy. Buttery. Rich and delicious with a lemony tang.
My partner chose his starter and main course from the Lunch Specials so was able to take advantage of the £12.95 deal. First off were Pork and Leek Porkies with maple and mustard (£4.25 if not eaten with a main from the Specials). This was a generous portion of cute little sausages, served in a dinky cast iron pot.
As usual, we had a taste of each other’s food, and I can confirm that the sausages were quality specimens – good and porky, lightened with the freshness of leek – and with a well judged balanced of sweet and savoury in the maple and mustard dressing. If just popping in for a pint and a snack, I could imagine sharing a pot of these, as a change from the usual bag of pork scratchings. Hold on, who am I kidding? I would jealously guard and keep the entire pot of porkies all to myself, no sharing.
MAIN COURSES
The porky pleasure continued in my main course of 12oz Pork Chop with sage butter, spring onion mash, creamed spring cabbage and bacon (£14.95).
I expect we’ve all got a pretty good idea of what we’re going to get if we order an 8oz or 10oz steak. But what does a 12oz pork chop look like?
Answer: enormous.
You can’t really tell from the angle I’ve taken the photo, but this pork chop was the biggest I’d ever seen. Wide in the horizontal plane yes but, oh my, the sheer depth of the thing! I really should have taken a photo of the side view but hey, I’m Moorlands Eater, not Moorlands Photographer, and my urge to tuck in can sometimes greedily push aside other considerations.
I was relieved that the dish came with an equally enormous and impressive looking steak knife-slash-pig butchering implement as I assumed this monster would require some serious sawing.
Wrong. The beast was perfectly cooked, tender and moist – not an easy thing to do with such a large, thick chop. I could’ve easily gotten away with the standard knife provided or, lord knows, maybe even a butter knife, so soft was the flavourful meat.
With the pork chop the star of the show, the accompaniments were spot on too (although I can’t recall tasting any of the sage butter referred to in the menu description). There were plenty of spring onions in the firm mash and the pile of bright green spring cabbage, lightly cooked, fresh and vibrant, was fabulous in its cloak of creamy sauce. I particularly liked the smokiness which the lardons of bacon gave to the sauce, adding depth and another layer of flavour to the creaminess.
To summarize: a memorable plate of food that stays with you long after the eating of it.
Following a dish where there’s so much to talk about, what can one say about my partner’s choice, from the Lunch Specials, of chicken and leek pie, chips and veg? (£9.95 without the lunchtime deal).
Actually, quite a bit, because in lesser establishments this apparently simple meal can be something of a nightmare: bought-in pies, dry filling, heavy pastry and the dreaded frozen chips.
Happily, at The Fitzherbert Arms, it was a fine example of what proper, simple pub grub should be and, sometimes, that’s all you really want.
The pie was well-filled, plenty of meat, veg and gravy, with a puff pastry top. The chips, made from Cheshire potatoes, were extremely good. Maybe there could have been a little more veg to balance the dish, but there was nothing wrong with the buttered mange tout, leeks and green beans that were there.
DESSERT
Despite such a hearty main course, I resolved to have pudding anyway. Just in the interests of research, you understand.
However, unusually for me I was defeated by a pudding. Not normally someone who could be accused of having ‘eyes bigger than my belly’, I nevertheless couldn’t quite finish the Fitz Mess (£5.25) .
The Fitz Mess was a sort of cross between Eton Mess (whipped cream, broken meringues, fruit) and trifle. Besides lots of cream and big chunks of meringue it included, layered in a glass and with a long sundae spoon to dig in, rhubarb, custard, gingerbread AND biscuits. Now do you see why even I was defeated?
I thought this a very good idea for a pudding, but it was let down by the rhubarb. What was needed to balance the rich, creamy, biscuity, cakiness was some well cooked, soft, sweet-yet-tart chunks of rhubarb. Unfortunately the rhubarb was in small slices, still pretty crunchy, and so didn’t provide the fruity balance you need in a Mess or a trifle.
I really wanted to love this pudding as, in theory, it’s a great idea and everything except the rhubarb was very good. On the menu it’s described as ‘Our Famous Fitz Mess’, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s usually as good as everything else we ate.
My partner’s dessert of Strawberry Pannacotta with homemade pink peppercorn shortbread (£5.50) was beautiful on its blue-grey plate.
The subtly strawberry-flavoured pannacotta had just the right amount of wobble and its delicate baby pink colour looked very pretty topped with slices of bright red, intensely flavoured strawberries. More of the excellent strawberries were dotted about the plate, coated in a luscious strawberry sauce.
The pink peppercorns in the crisp shortbread added a welcome savoury, gentle warmth to this quite sweet, but pleasing, dessert.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
The reputation for good food and drink which The Fitzherbert Arms has developed in a relatively short time seems to me very well deserved.
In virtually everything we ate there was close attention to detail and the use of quality ingredients, much of it seasonal, and which they aim to source from local suppliers. Without exception, we found the staff to be friendly, welcoming and efficient.
Besides their food offering, there’s a good range of local beers, all from within 35 miles of the pub, including their own Swynnerton Stout, brewed by Staffordshire’s Titanic Brewery, and Fitzherbert Best Bitter brewed in Cheshire by Weetwood. There’s an excellent range of wines and port too, many available by the glass.
The Fitzherbert Arms is part of Cheshire Cat Pubs & Bars which doesn’t regard itself as a chain, but rather seeks to create individual pubs with their own unique character and food and drink offerings. They specialize in reopening closed pubs or giving failing ones new life and, judging by what’s on offer at The Fitzherbert Arms, I’d say they’re doing a grand job.