Reviews

Please see below for reviews in the local press.

In addition, click the links below to find out more about peoples' views of the Wig & Pen.

About.com    Viewsheffield.co.uk     Tipped.co.uk    Hospitality Interiors magazine
Urban Spoon
Metro Life
17th September 2008

A true taste of paradise

By Tina Jackson

When you round the corner from Sheffield's Campo Lane into Paradise Square, it's like finding yourself in a time warp.  The vast, sloping square, with its cobbled surface and handsome (and listed) 18th-century buildings is rich with history: Methodist leader John Wesley preached here, and the Chartists used it to call for social reform in 1838.

Now home to lawyers and accountancy firms rather than preachers and insurrectionists, Paradise Square has admirably resisted the gaudy trappings of 21st-century commerce.  The remodelled Wig & Pen proves that the 18th and 21st centuries can exist side by side in complete harmony, embracing tradition while being an elegantly contemporary bar and restaurant.

Work began in March to extend the Wig & Pen from its Campo Lane site through to two of Paradise Square's red-brick terraces, and the results - the new bar and restaurant opened during the summer - are entirely successful.  The frontage is unassumingly modest.  There's no attention-seeking signage for this very stylish watering hole, and the tables outside the bar, carefully designed to take the square's slope into account, do not look at all out of place.

Out destination was the Dining Room, which has the intimate ambience of a gentlemen's or private members' club, but without any sense of snooty exclusivity.  Dark wood and paintwork proclaim that aesthetic, but look entirely modern and contemporary in the snug, adjoining chambers, where glinting chandeliers are paired with minimal (but comfortable) leather furniture.

This is the backdrop, though, to the main event: chef Alex Shaw's cooking, which draws together past and present with skill and flair.  Wig & Pen's previous menu, which showed obvious Mediterranean influences, has been jettisoned in favour of British dishes with influences that are not just classic, but in some cases historic - veal kidneys in sherry cream on toast, anyone?  Or London gin and orange syllabub, reinvented with imaginative twists to appeal to a contemporary palate?  Shaw's seasonal new menu is modern and British, but those words are so often used to describe prettily presented versions of bland British comfort food, and these grown-up offerings are for gourmets and hedonists.

Served by a lone waiter who was as elegant and welcoming as his surroundings, I had cheese on toast to start.  Well, I had a very posh version of it: roasted fig and Mrs Rhodes' cheese toasty with port syrup (£6).  Are there any more sensual ingredients in a chef's store cupboard than fully ripe, luscious, crimson figs and rich, red port?  Is anything more comforting than a toasted cheese sandwich with really light bread and a bit of grainy mustard?  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that the sum of all these ingredients was something quite heavenly, although I'd have like it if they'd veered even further on the side of excess and added yet more melted cheese.

My friend went for something simpler: Atlantic prawns with bread and butter, lemon and mayonnaise (£5.50 half pint/£7.25 pint).  The shell-on prawns were the best-possible quality, and so was everything else.  It was an understated triumph, as was his main course: a 21-day dry-aged sirloin with hand-cut chips and home-made ketchup (£16).  Not only was the steak tender and perfect, warmly brown on the outside and tenderly pink and then red inside, but it was also presented in two attractive diagonally cut slices rather than as a toothsome slab of meat.  The fine carafe of heady, garnet-shaded Rioja Crianza (£7) that we drank was the perfect companion.

My main course was so nice to look at that I had to remind myself to eat it.  The pink tones in the grilled red mullet with its accompanying shell-on prawns and red Duke of York potatoes (£16) had such visual appeal that the dish looked like an 18th-century still life.  Accompanied by buttery samphire, it tasted like a delicious and very modern dinner, however.  Although mullet can be a hard fish to cook (if done badly it can taste wet, strong and nasty), this was delicate and exceedingly good. 

Shaw can do puddings with the same swagger as the rest of the menu.  Treacle tart (£5.50) was a rich slab of sticky gorgeousness, served with Longley Farm vanilla ice cream and tangy slices of lightly caramelised orange.  A stack comprised of malted biscuit and dark chocolate mousse accompanied with caramelised pear and vanilla ice cream (£6) was a decadent an offering as its components might suggest.  I quite fancied some cheese as well (£6.95 for two pieces) - some Stinking Bishop to provide a whiffy finale - but couldn't fit anything else in.

Paradise Square couldn't be a more fortuitous location for such divine food.  Good girls and boys may go to heaven, but clever foodie ones will book themselves a table at the Wig & Pen.

 

Sheffield Telegraph
18th July 2008

Fine food at pub that looks
out on Georgian Paradise

By Lesley Draper

The Wig & Pen in Sheffield city centre has opened a dining room with a view back in time. Lesley Draper reports SETTLE back with a glass of something cool, gaze out across well-worn cobbles and prepare to turn back the clock a century or more.

Paradise Square may be synonymous with lawyers, accountants and sober-suited professionals but it was once a bustling hotbed of activity that could surely tell a tale or two... Of John Wesley and his followers, Chartist rioters, cabinet makers and potters, those who frequented the masonic hall, the school and even a ‘house of help' for young women.
It also boasted at least two taverns and that long-forgotten aspect of its history, at least, has been revived with the opening of the Wig & Pen dining room.

The Campo Lane bar and restaurant has been neatly extended backwards to link it with two terrace properties in the historic Georgian Square. Now a couple of steps take you, via an extended bar area, into the back of the building where leather sofas and swivel chairs provide a comfortable, relaxed environment with a bird's eye view of the cobbles.

On a good day, customers can sit out and enjoy the square at benches specially adapted to level out the slope.

Old and new mingle artfully: bold wallpaper and contemporary furnishings offset an original marble fireplace and sash windows.

Burnished oak stairs lead down to the new dining room where 250-year-old flagstones have been sandblasted into 21st century submission. Soft jazz plays through concealed speakers and sunken spotlights cast a soft glow on polished wood tables and Georgian green-painted panelling.

It's impressively chic and laid back - more gentlemen's club than swanky bar - and it clearly sends out the right messages about Sheffield's aspiring status as a culinary destination.

"It's a dump around the hotel but I've discovered this place that looks out across a Georgian square... it's really very pleasant. And I've not had a better meal anywhere," the visiting southerner at the next table tells his wife on the mobile phone.

Food is in the capable hands of head chef Alex Shaw, who has unleashed his creative flair on a menu that dovetails perfectly with the new surroundings.

"I wanted to move away from the Mediterranean route, so I've decided to go very British," he says. "They're not necessarily classics but we're reinventing dishes and focusing on the provenance. We're being quite brave, sticking our necks out with it."

So there's a robust, ‘old English' flavour to the menu with faggots, ham hock, rare breed pork chops and chargrilled feather steak.

Meat is from Yorkshire or Derbyshire, chicken from Lancashire and line-caught fish fresh from Cornwall. Herbs are picked and potatoes dug to order.
The wine list is particularly impressive. Listed by quality (soft/light/fruit, full/ broad/oaky), there is a superb choice in terms of both price and breadth, with more than 50 to choose from, 40 of them available by the 250ml carafe at £4.65-£11.

Alex turns up his nose at the term ‘gastropub'. This is a quality restaurant and the fact is reflected in price, service and all those little extras that turn a meal into an experience.

So we chomp our way through a bowl of marinated olives and a board of bread and butter along with a glass or two of the house red, a wonderfully smooth and rounded Portuguese tinto at £12.95 a bottle.

Faggots seem an appropriate choice in such traditional surroundings, and they prove a good one. Balls of minced pork, good, solid and mercifully without the pig's caul wrapping, are braised in a gravy spiked with Henderson's relish and served with peas. It's gutsy, uninhibited food.

Asparagus, on the other hand, is a pleasantly light start to the meal: tender spears, doused in piquant orange butter and crowned with a soft poached egg.

On to mains and rolled lamb breast is slow-roasted to perfection, absorbing the rich fat and juices as it cooks, to emerge in all its flavoursome glory.

Served with roasted new potatoes and garlicky home-made aioli, it's a simple and appealing dish - but a complete absence of veg means no marks for healthy eating. Even fish and chips come with mushy peas, for goodness sake!

My venison is top notch: two haunch steaks, blushing pink in the middle, matched with a sweet port and orange sauce and mashed celeriac. It comes with a choice of veg or salad and, having been a fan of Alex's salads for years, I go for the latter - a wondrous mix of sunblush tomatoes, artichoke hearts and fragrant leaves more reminiscent of a foraging expedition than a supermarket trip.

As usual, pudding is beyond me but my companion obliges. Syllabub, treacle tart, summer pudding and trifle are all turned down in favour of stem ginger, pineapple and coconut parfait, an inspired combination which is indeed perfect.

We finish the meal with cups of excellent filter coffee. Dinner for two, excluding wine and service, is £50.75.

Verdict: An historic addition to Sheffield's city centre social scene, with food and wine that truly lives up to the location.

Open for food Mon-Fri, 12-2.30pm and 6-9.30pm, Sat 6-9.30pm.