Wined, dined and rested.

Near Castle Cary there is a tastefully luxurious hotel and restaurant complex called The Newt in Somerset; the name suggests that they are leaving open the opportunity to create a Newt in Sussex, Newt in Grimsby, Newt in Tower Hamlets etc, but for now they are only in the beautiful Somerset countryside just outside Castle Cary.

There is much to admire and enjoy about the Newt, and clearly an awful lot of money has been used to develop it to a high standard. (At which point the first rant begins – why do you have to PAY to park in the station car park to access this eatery, and what’s more you have to pay in one of those machines that requires a doctorate in astrophysics to work out, plus you have to cut off half your legs to be able to see the screen?)

So where does Castle Cary station come in? Well if people are going to travel more sustainably and arrive by train to stay at the Newt, an intermediate stage was needed between arriving by train and being transported the 10 minutes or so up the road to the hotel. There was a slightly run-down early 20^th century cheese factory that had been built next to the station to take advantage of the transport possibilities at the time, so this was bought and renovated to become The Creamery, the Newt’s concept of a station café.

Did I say “renovated”? My goodness, this building has been tweaked and polished and designed and moulded into the most beautiful train-themed café and cheese factory (yes, it has brand spanking new cheesemaking equipment on view behind a huge glass wall) that a fevered imagination could come up with.

Everywhere you turn there are those really solid Victorian/Edwardian industrial curved lines, in brick or tile or wood. Look at the window, the corners of the green-tiled bar and the table…..

There is a line of tables with benches, a reference to a railway carriage that makes you smile, every detail carefully crafted ….

You look up and through the skylights you see more curved details…

And when you go to the loo you try to make your hand-washing go on forever as you take in the cleverness of the re-imagining of GWR-green glazed bricks into a long basin….

Actually, going to the loo can take a while too because of the simple fact that the loo doors push inwards instead of pulling outwards – when I went in each woman washing their hands was explaining this detail to the next woman because if you don’t know you spend ages trying to work out how to get in.  Note to self – don’t wait until desperate, not easy to push a door with legs crossed.

In short, what a building. So why am I talking so much about the building and not the food? Mmm, two reasons. Firstly the building is just amazing, you have to go and see it. Secondly the food was so far under expectation that two of my party, enthusiastic consumers of steak, commented that the steak served here was enough to put them off steak forever. 

Let me take you through this particular dish. The steak on the menu is described as “butcher’s cut”, so you don’t know which actual cut it is; fair enough, you think, this bills itself as a “station bistro”, not a Michelin-starred venue.  When the steak arrives there is an initial moment of excitement because it actually looks the right colour for rare or medium rare, rather than the cremated offerings one is so often served in England. (“Rare steak, Madam?  Yes of course – I’ll be back in an hour or so once chef has finished burning it to a crisp.”)

You are given your cutlery and upon asking for a steak knife it is explained to you that you won’t need one. Gosh, that sounds promising. You try a chip. Yum, good chips. You pick up your not-steak knife to cut into the meat and you suddenly understand why the waitress told you there was no need for a steak knife. What you really need is a circular saw, and that might take up a bit of room on the table.  On the occasion that we went most of each steak had to be left.

Other items on the menu include “Lloyd’s lamb merguez sausages” – these are nice sausages, especially if you like salt and are not expecting spicy merguez sausages like the ones you buy in France. The mashed potato that comes with them is superb, and beautifully presented in an architectural spiral (more curves).

The vegetarian / vegan option was roasted smoked aubergine with tomato and flaked almonds, with seasonal vegetables, and there was nothing exactly wrong with it but it was not substantial in either quantity or flavour.

The fish option when I had it was pollock, and I have to say it was correctly cooked and was probably the best dish consumed that evening:

Among the starters, the Newt-produced mozzarella was good, with a nice olive oil from the Newt’s sister establishment Babylonstoren in South Africa, and the glasshouse tomatoes from the Newt with waterlip cheese (a little like feta) were delicious.

The puddings include buffalo milk gelato, which sounds fascinating but actually just tastes like ice cream, a selection of sorbets, and the intriguingly-named “hangop”, which is a Dutch / South African dish in which yoghourt is hung up in a cloth and allowed to drain, and here at the Creamery is whipped and served with lovely Somerset strawberries.

When you look at the dishes that were enjoyed the most, all bar the pollock, which in my opinion was well cooked, they were ones that involved little culinary skill to produce.

The staff at the Creamery are young, polite and charming; there is one detail, however, that grates. If you are still sitting at your table in the last half hour before closing you can expect cleaning of floors and preparation of breakfast tables to go on around you, and staff that have finished their work sitting at tables and chatting while they wait until it’s time to go home. This wouldn’t happen in other service areas – can you imagine an estate agent persuading you to buy a property and just as you were about to sign on the line, they start sweeping the floor and pulling down the blinds? – so why is such rudeness considered acceptable in a catering establishment? You growl resentfully “I wish I was also rude then I’d remove the “optional” service charge from the bill” but the bill is delivered by one of the young, polite and charming serving staff and it just feels churlish. All fine, they get their tip but the customer leaves feeling short-changed, surely not a good feeling to encourage in a clientele that – presumably – you would like to return.

But did I mention that the building is amazing?   I don’t think I mentioned that they have installed a little length of railway line outside and they plan to put a railway carriage there for…. Well, who knows, but as long as it’s all about the design and there are no salty sausages or tough steak on offer, count me in……