Volkswagening our way down the middle lane of the M40, your correspondent and his accomplices were torn about the restaurant in Shrewsbury that most warranted your – and by extension their – attention. Several candidates presented themselves, but ultimately all roads – Google, expert local opinion, the A458 – led to The Peach Tree, a kind of forbidding elder uncle among the eateries of this not-quite-Welsh dwelling.
The early signs are not promising. A vermillion exterior adjacent to the Abbey of this sleepy country market town gives no indication, it's true, of the experience within; but by the time we are settled at the table, Charlotte notices it looks like the victim of a particularly schizophrenic Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen makeover. Everything is jumbled. I think we are in a Tudor barn with low-hanging roof beams; but then the giant speakers, craning their necks over us and working in satanic tandem with vertical heating coils, convince me that, for all the elderly dears here – is Shropshire the oldest of the shires, people-wise? – we have been teleported to Ayia Napa.
So far, then: a sub-medieval dance festival attended by dystopian technology. No wonder the website boasts: "Some interesting historic features and some cosmopolitan twists."
But wait! What's this? Frances emerges from the loo to be confronted by a mid-forties creature covered in curlers. A cosmopolitan twist too far? This mesmerising Medusa begs the question of whether there is a hair salon upstairs. Above the restaurant. The one with the old people and the Tudor roof beams and the raving equipment.
I must say all of this has rather discombobulated the four of us, and when presented with a menu it is a blessed relief. But the incoherence of the interior is reflected in the food.
Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk/
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