One White Horse closes, another one opens #News
Victoria Hayes
9th January 2023
Following the sad news last week that Chester Race course was closing it’s White Horse pub to the public and keeping it for private hires, here’s some good news from another White Horse!
Elite Bistro’s owner Gary Usher has been working hard in the village of Churton, smashing down, cleaning up and renovating The White Horse pub which closed several years ago. He’s also been building relationship with the villagers who regularly turn up to muck in and help out with the project. They are clearly all excited to see what he’s been up to!
The chef and business owner, who has established some of the most popular restaurants in the North West including Sticky Walnut (Hoole) Burnt Truffle (Heswall) and Wreckfish (Liverpool), posted an update on Twitter showing off a new piece of equipment before indicating that opening day could be in the very near future.
Mr Usher said that a new potato rumbler would be moving from Elite Bistro’s headquarters to the The White Horse as he feels one of the most important elements of a good pub is ‘bloody great chips’.
In the clip, the chef says: “Over the years we’ve been really lucky in the restaurant, we’ve made it into the national papers about our chips, believe it or not, and won some silly little awards.
“I think one journalist said that we serve the best chips in the country, I’m not sure about that statement but we love chips and we’ve loved cooking them at the restaurants.
“We can’t wait to be doing them at the pub because it’s something that we believe in so much and I’m just a bit excited about this machine and to be doing these chips at the pub.
“So, I just wanted to show you and we’ll hopefully see you up at The White Horse in Chester in a few weeks’ time.”
Another post from December 27 also discussed the possibility of The White Horse opening soon, with a suggested target of six weeks.
Mr Usher has been overseeing the renovation of the venue since announcing the purchase of the pub in early October. Following the success of Sticky Walnut, all subsequent Elite Bistros have been supported through crowdfunding, with The White Horse’s fund receiving £140,000 from around 800 backers in less than 24 hours in early November.
Whilst a departure from other restaurants in the Elite Bistro’s roster, its founder said at the time: “Our plans at the White Horse are pretty simple, we want to serve great drinks, delicious unpretentious food by a team that love what they do.”