A visit to the shop and café can be combined with a walk on nearby Alderley Edge. In other words, visitors can mingle the intense primal flavours of smoked food with a pretty post-prandial promenade through woods.
So what do you get at Cheshire Smokehouse? Lots of lovelies is the answer. The stock here includes a celebrated range of smoked products prepared on-site but also a bounty of baked products including bread, cakes and pies.
The in-house sourdough is recommended. Customers can even stock up on wines, olives, artisan cheeses and posh chocolates, such as Montezuma from Chichester.
Light lunches
Upstairs is the airy and pleasant café with a range of full and light lunches and snacks.
But let's get back to the smoked products, because they provide the real reason for a visit. Be warned though - this is high quality nosh and might prove addictive.
There's smoked ham, bacon, turkey, chicken, duck, trout, mackerel, kippers, cheese and even nuts. A foodie will be delighted by all these products but, if just one impossible choice had to be made, for this writer it would be the Baked Cheshire Ham glazed with honey and muscovado sugar (é16.40 per kilo).
Ooh, baby.
There's a good pedigree to the Cheshire Smokehouse, as it was the present owner's grandfather who started smoking food in Manchester in 1907. That aside, this place looks the part and provides the goods. One final point, with the smokehouse right behind the shop, this excellent establishment is set to be one of the few public places in which smoking will be allowed come summer 2007.
STYLE: Aromatic rustic bliss.
SIGNATURE: Hickory-smoked cashew nuts with black pepper (é1.99 per 100g)
RARE FIND: In-house pork salami with garlic, pepper and fennel (é19.95 per kilo)
Cheshire Smokehouse, Vost Farm, Morley Green, Wilmslow (01625 548499).
Tweet
