The Fishes - Pub Roast of the year SPECIAL INNOVATION AWARD
Pub background: The Fishes is one of six pubs operated by Peach Pub Company. It
is a Greene King lease, which Peach took on in 2005. The pub has a 60-cover restaurant and three acres of grounds. The pub has a wet:dry split of 40:60 and serves an average of 750 covers a week, with an average food spend per head of £20 to £25.
Roast offer: Roast beef, pork, lamb and vegetarian nut roast. Customers can pre-order a family joint of lamb or pork carved onto a platter and served with trimmings. Free top-ups of vegetables are also offered.
Family roasts are available if ordered by mid-week.
The pub also offers a summer Sunday roast for picnic hampers which it sells for customers to enjoy in its three-acre grounds.
On the Sunday menu: Starters and desserts can be ordered from the main menu, and include deli boards and starters of soup of the day, seafood platter of crab, oyster and shell-on prawns, and pressed smoked ham terrine with piccalilli and granary toast.
The menu also offers an either/or section of starters and mains, including sweetcorn, spring onion and tarragon risotto (with or without chicken), smoked haddock rarebit, and rare Aberdeenshire beef with pickled beetroot salad and horseradish cream.
Desserts include glazed vanilla custard, fresh fruit plate and frozen berry yoghurt.
Roast accompaniments: Roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and home-made Yorkshire puddings. Instead of apple sauce, the chefs bake whole Bramley apples to serve with the pork family roast. Crackling is also served with roast pork.
Roast price: £10.50 for a roast dinner and £42 for a family joint which serves four.
Time offered: Sundays until 6pm and on bank holidays.
Average roasts sales per week: 250, including between six to 12 family roasts.
Best-selling roast: Roast beef.
Secret of good gravy? The chefs make one gravy from fresh chicken stock to go with all roasts. Roasting trays are deglazed with a bottle of wine to release the meat juices. Liquid is reduced and the pot matures throughout service, giving a really rich gravy.
A non-meat version is made from scratch to go with the nut roast.
Suppliers: As with all Peach pubs, the Fishes uses Aubrey Allen of Coventry for most of its meat. The beef used for the pub's roasts is Aberdeenshire rump and the shoulders of pork are from Kelmscott Farm on the Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire border.
On the judges' menu:
Starters: Wild mushrooms on Cheddar toast and aubergine fritters, roasted vine tomatoes and green herb relish.
Mains: Pork family roast, roast beef, nut roast.
Desserts: Lemon posset with fresh rasp-
berries and hot chocolate pot with banana ice cream.
Judges' comments: The Fishes was awarded a special innovation award for its family roast concept. "Sharing a roast is an excellent innovative idea, which embodies the traditional value of getting families together to eat a proper Sunday lunch"; "The free extra vegetables is a fabulous idea which I am sure goes a long way with customers"; "The baked apple served with the roast pork is inspired"; "Amazing nut roast."
