Red or White

It is not often that we find a quality restaurant offering a monthly changing menu from a la carte to 'lunch-bites', with an enterprising off-licence and wine club closely interwoven, thus enabling customers to nail several bottles in one go. Not that there is any compulsion to combine both one can dine or buy wine separately as the spirit moves you.

Some years ago I recall visiting a chateau a few miles inland from Calais where they were doing much the same, and if Red or White achieves the same level of popularity they have an undoubted success on their hands.

The restaurant seats 50 and offers a menu that could be described as somewhere between brasserie and gastropub. For dinner you can expect to find a grazing platter, with Chef's selection of flavours for sharing round the table, a good communal dish to break the ice, if there is any, in your party.

Vegetarians will rejoice to find artichoke hearts, with sun dried tomatoes, chargrilled aubergine, buffalo mozzarella and bruchetta. A pressed terrine of ham hock is wrapped in Parma ham, or there is warm chilli spiced lentil du pay.

Main courses of pan roasted duck breast with roasted sweet potato and thyme purée and a port and poached pear jus, or seared tuna loin steak, red onion, crisped caper, watercress salad and a soft boiled egg, set the pace.

A chargrilled rib-eye steak, slow roast plum tomatoes and Béarnaise butter sauce paves the way for the carnivores, or there is flattened tarragon chicken with Moroccan style chickpeas and chive crème fresh. All main courses are served with vegetables, or salad and potatoes.

Puddings range from a warm chocolate opus with apricot coulis, through honey crème brulee, to a handsome selection of British cheeses, with or without a glass of port depending upon how the moment takes you.

Should you wish to choose from any of the stocked wines, you will be asked to pay only the retail price plus £2.50 corkage. They can cater for private functions up to 30, and there is plenty of relaxing space for pre or after dinner drinks.

Lunch is served in the same restaurant with starters designed to serve as a main course if required, with scallop fritters or smoked trout as typical examples, with say, raspberry fool or apple, pear and blackberry crumble with a vanilla ice or clotted cream as two of the more popular puddings.

One of their innovations is a wine lounge where clients can enjoy a glass or a bottle of wine at their leisure. As with the restaurant, choose your wine in the shop and pay only £2.50 corkage. There is also an Annexe available for private hire, with attractive discounts in certain circumstances. Organic wines are taken seriously at Red or White and so whisky with a superb on-line range of single malts and blends.

So as a combination of independent off-licence, restaurant and on licence wine lounge, lovers of both wine and food are offered an unusual combination. For fuller and changing details of what is on offer click on to their very straightforward Website.