Crackers for Docket 64 #Blog
Briony Wilson
29th October 2018
You may not have heard about the new wine bar that opened up just last week on Northgate Street in Chester, Docket 64. This wonderful place has been opened up by husband and wife duo, Chef Stuart Collins and wife Frances Collins, the two are a hospitality power couple who met when opening the restaurant at the Abode Hotel in Chester for Michael Caines back in 2010. They have since opened and worked in many restaurants around the world including the Middle East and Australia. Back home in England they came and opened up the successful Docket No. 33 in Whitchurch, offering modern, British cuisine with local and international influence. No.64 is a little different for them as it is a wine bar and not a full restaurant offering but they will be doing regular pop ups, for people to sample the wonderful style of food they serve at Whitchurch – if you haven’t yet made the trip across, you should.
After attending the Launch party last week, I decided it was the ideal place for a weekend lunch and with a cheese and wine loving visit from my family, this was the first place on our hit list. When we arrived just after lunchtime on Saturday the place had a great feel about it, with only 1 empty table. The setting is beautiful and has a really relaxed and warm atmosphere and for the first properly cold day of the season I bagged the table next to the fire! Having sampled the crackers at the launch, and basically, not stopped talking about them since, we decided to go for a sharing board. There were several options, but we decided to put our own together with 5 items for £17.50. Being real cheese lovers we went for 4 different local cheeses; Moyden’s Ironbridge (a creamy mild blue, made from Cows Milk), Cenarth Brie (a welsh creamy brie), Rachel (Goats milk, sweet and slightly nutty) and Burt Blue, Cheshire Cheese. For our 5th element we opted for some Cheshire Smoked Pastrami. Everything at Docket’s is as locally sourced as can be with the cheeses either coming direct from local cheese makers or from a few doors down at the Cheese Shop. To compliment the cheeses Stewart makes his own crackers and breads, as well as pickling their own accompaniments.
The crackers are the reason I will keep going back! They provide you with a selection of fennel seed, poppy seed and rock salt crackers, digestive biscuits and homemade bread. They all have a wonderful snap and balanced flavour and delicious on there own or with the cheese, I have suggested that they need to sell them; I always have Christmas presents on my mind! These are not your standard Jacobs cracker selection pack, they are all freshly made on site and by no means are just an accompaniment, they are a triumph in their own right.
All our selections worked well together and with the additions on our board of olives, gherkins, pickled carrots, shallots and a wonderful fruit preserve; I should have asked but was too busy enjoying myself – at a guess I would say plum or quince due to its sweetness. It really pulled everything together as a fabulous meal.
To compliment our lunch, we both enjoyed a reasonably priced glass of Fedele Pinot Grigio, it was the weekend after all, the cheese board was deceptive. Not the huge serves of cheese but lots of special flavours and for self-proclaimed Cheese lovers we left feeling very full and very satisfied. It is true what they say that a bit of something good can go a long way.
So once again, we would like to say thank you to the team at Docket’s for our wonderful lunch and we will be back in again soon! Stock up on those Fennel seed crackers.