the Blackhouse grill - Chester

Blackhouse Restaurant and Bar as the name suggests, is a fulsome nod to that classic grill preoccupation - the glorious steak, along side of which runs a healthy obsession with the freshest of produce from our seas. They make no apology for offering a combination of popular requests and old favourites.

No ultra-nouvelle cuisine or chef's mad experiment in minimalism here, you will not be sent away with a tasting menu rattling against your rib-cage and in desperate need of a dictionary and a proper meal.

The key to Blackhouse is in the quality of the ingredients; all of their beasty-based foods are sourced only from farmers whose wellies are splattered in honest, hormone-free muck, and are in possession of a healthy, ruddy-glow, a clear indicator of time spent chasing live stock around the pasture. Similarly, their sea-produce, while not exactly required to be still jumping up and down on the plate or intoning 'ahoy there matey' as proof of provenance is as fresh as the proverbial daisy. The quality of the meal is in the base produce - the chefs will lightly threaten the produce with a little heat and then arrange it - simply.

However, simplicity and restraint in the kitchen need not necessarily mean Calvinistic frugality in the choice of ingredients, indeed, the menu, written in plain-speak - lists such blatant temptations as; lobster, ostrich, suckling pig and oysters and that almost mythical, super-pampered delicacy of the meat world - Kobe beef.

And while the atmosphere is reassuringly lively and yet comfortably decorous the underlying mantra remains; restraint in the kitchen, care and thought in the choice of produce, and a desire to be recognised as an honest refuge for the restrained hedonist.

They were nominated and won the Best Large Restaurant at the annual Chester Food and Drink Festival Gala Dinner in 2008.