Gadds Town House Restaurant Review

Recently I wrote about our stay at Gadds Town House in Durham.  One evening we went for a two course dinner in the hotel restaurant.

I started my meal with the Salmon Threesome which consisted of scottish smoked salmon, cured gravalax and kiln roast salmon served with spiced, buttered brown bread soldiers.  If like me you love salmon, this is a lovely dish.  You get three different, but complementary treatments of top quality salmon.  Buttered brown bread soldiers are the perfect accompaniment too.

My husband was tempted by the Scotch ‘Fish’ Cake.  This was a soft boiled, free range hens egg which was bound in seafood which had been rolled in a spiked crumb mix.  It was served with a caper and gurk mayo.  The egg was soft boiled inside its seafood Scotch egg casing. Melting perfectly into the seafood, the yolk added to and combined with the flavours of the seafood.  So we had a very successful first course.

As my husband isn’t a big beef fan, I often end up choosing a beef option when I eat out. This time I couldn’t resist the draw of some Northumbrian cattle which were well aged having been hung for at least 21 days.  There are a choice of four cuts of steak, so you can pick your favourite.  All the steaks come with hand-cut, triple cooked chips which were very tasty (the husband kept trying to steal them) and sweet red onion rings.  I thought the use of red onion in the onion rings was a good choice and it added a different flavour to using normal, brown onions.

My husband opted for the Roast Duck. It was served sliced and pink with a butternut puree, sticky red cabbage, goose fat potatoes and hedgerow sauce.    The duck was nicely cooked and the red cabbage made an ideal pairing.

We enjoyed eating at Gadds Town House Restaurant so much that we did try to eat there a second night.  Sadly though we’d left it a bit late to ask for a table and we couldn’t be fitted in when we wanted.  So it’s worth booking your table in advance.