Silversmiths - Review

Here I am! Better late than never! Or maybe that isn't true. Some things would be better if they never happened. Anyway, here is my review of Silversmiths:

WORTHY OF MORE THAN SILVER

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Food Review: Silversmiths

Address: 111 Arundel Street, Sheffield S1



Visit Laura's blog at www.meanmuncher.blogspot.com

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After last week’s little jolly into the world of takeaway, I’m now back in the zone and perhaps most crucially of all, back in a restaurant. I wanted the best: service, ambience, food and company and so I plumped for what can only be described as a celebrity restaurant. Silversmiths is a celebrity because it once played host to a celebrity chef (the sweary one, not the school dinner one), who shouted a lot and told them what to do.

I had booked my table earlier in the day and toyed with the idea of giving myself a pseudonym. This is what restaurant critics sometimes do, you see, so they don’t get superior treatment when the restaurant works out who they are.

Now, unlike those idiots, I would actually love to get preferential treatment and so I considered such false names as “Beyonce” and (to make it a bit more realistic) “Sean Bean”. However, my friend wisely reminded me that I had a duty of care as a reviewer and that I should therefore retain my own name to ensure total anonymity.

Silversmiths is located just behind the Sheffield Hallam students’ union and very near to the train station. The restaurant itself is unusual. There is a long, lone bench, split up into black leather sofas. This means that you dine very publically and very close to others. A man next to me, having just been shown to his seat, exclaimed “This isn’t what I imagined at all! I don’t like it...”

I do like it though. Too many times, I have wrongly assumed restaurant booths to be soundproofed, private chambers where unremitting gossip cannot be overheard by others. Too often, this has not been the case and I would say that restaurant booths are almost entirely responsible for my depleted social circle.

We chose to sample 2 courses for £14.90, which is a deal available on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Both of us decided on mains and desserts - not because there was anything wrong with the starters - but simply because we love a cake.

I went for the cauliflower pie and my friend enjoyed some ‘loose birds’ (I’m too into womens’ lib for the joke in your head). This dish consisted of free-range chicken terrine and Wentworth pheasant terrine, sticky cabbage and creamed leeks. We were both impressed with our mains, although you will need a side or two to share (£2.95 each) to pad it out.

The pie! And peas!

Lads! Loose birds just 4 U!!!

I then had a bit of a Sliding Doors fiasco with the desserts. After spending an age debating between baked vanilla cheesecake and flourless dark chocolate cake, I decided on the chocolate. As if there was some mighty force laughing at my gaffe, the waitress mistakenly brought out the cheesecake and I wish I had accepted it. There was nothing wrong per se with the chocolate cake (apart from the beetroot sorbet, which I think I am too much of a barbarian to ‘get’) but the cheesecake had looked incredible. My friend took a honey and lemon panna cotta and we both agreed that this was a perfect palette-cleanser, wonderfully textured and a sure fire winner.

I would have happily settled for raspberry sorbet but this stuff is BEETROOT!

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