[Disclosure: I was invited to The Almanack for a complimentary meal for this blog]
You can’t beat a British summer, when you never quite know if you’ll be lounging around in a beer garden sipping cocktails in the sunshine, or snuggled up inside sheltering from the pouring rain and craving a Sunday roast. Which means the wisest option is to choose somewhere that does both, right?
Pure outdoorsy venue and you run the risk of potentially ending up cold, wet and miserable. But choose somewhere with no outside space and you could find yourself furious that you’re potentially missing the only five minutes of summer because you’re stuck inside.
Hence why all the best places these days have both.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Almanack, but I’ve visited various other venues from the Peach Pubs venue over the years. As I’ve said before on this blog, they know how to do things well, and happily I have always had a great experience.
The same goes for my most recent trip, when I headed to the Almanack for a breakfast meeting – getting the chance to try their menu as well as to check out the place firsthand for the first time in a while.
Up at the top end of Kenilworth, it’s as welcoming as I remember. It’s also clearly still a strong favourite with locals, despite being open since 2008 with lots of places arriving in the town since. On a weekday morning it’s busy, with a whole range of people from young mums to dog owners, people doing work-y stuff and everyone in between.
The interior is light and airy, with a central island bar and cafe-style booths, creating all sorts of spaces to suit who you’re with and what the occasion is. There’s the outside space too, where you can sit and watch the world go by on those odd occasions the sun does shine.
The food – and that from Peach’s other destinations – is all about seasonal British produce, whether it’s Devon crab or Jimmy Butler Blythburgh pork, Aubrey Allen beef or English berries.
They’ve just a launched a new summer menu that’s all about fresh flavours. Think barbecue-glazed pork belly with summer slaw, or Devon crab cake with avocado, radish and pea shoots.
Classics on their menu include free-range chicken schnitzel with garlic and parsley butter, peppery rocket, Parmesan and fries, or miso-glazed cod with black rice, choi sum and lime, and as well as hearty stuff like 14-hour slow-cooked beef and ale pie.
We’re here for breakfast – which includes a highly tempting dish of brown crab Hollandaise on an English muffin with baby spinach and poached eggs that nearly has me. As does what I’m fairly sure is their version of a Sausage and Egg McMuffin, though obviously we can’t call it that. And Jimmy Butler’s sausage patty, free-range egg & cheese brioche and brown sauce sounds way better.
I decide to go off-piste, going for American pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. The pancakes are soft – not too big, not too small. The bacon’s cooked properly so it’s got the right crispness, and the mini jug of maple syrup is not too mini that I can’t be over-generous to myself purely to celebrate making it through the morning.
My colleague has a simple bacon bloomer. I think it’s a cop-out to be honest, but he reckons a simple bacon sarnie is a good test. If it is, the Almanack passes, with him praising the freshness of the bread, the crispiness of the bacon, and the general head-nodding of a satisfied punter. Personally I think he should have gone all out and had the McMuffin, but that task will just have to fall to me next time.
There’s a reason why the Almanack is a fixture in Kenilworth, and has been for over 15 years now. Because it does what it says it will, and does it well.
