At the beginning of July was my boyfriend’s birthday. This year wasn’t a particularly big birthday so it was always going to be a more quiet affair. After finding out he wasn’t out with his friends on his birthday only 10 days before his birthday, I quickly tried to find somewhere nice that would have a booking on a Saturday night.
Since starting my new job around 6 weeks ago, I go past Graze Inn on the bus every single day. It has always looked awesome so after checking the website, I decided to book here for a lovely birthday meal for him.
Graze Inn sells a mixture of cuisines really, focusing on good food and good ingredients without pigeonholing themselves food wise. Whether you are after meat filled dishes, veggies delights or great cocktails this really is the place to go. Their cocktail bar, Cowshed, is on one side and the restaurant the other. After taking out seats, we swiftly ordered a couple of nice beverages. Some nice beer for him and a strong whiskey based cocktail for me.
The menu offers quite a lot and there was quite a few things I wanted to try off there. We settled for Arancini to start because neither of us has the will to resist it. We ordered the sharing platter and it was nothing short of brilliant. Presented wonderfully in a little basket, there was 4 decent sized Aracini balls each. They were all filled with mozzarella, mascarpone and black truffle and were served alongside a wonderful harissa aioli and a delicious herb creme friache. The creme friache surprised me with how nice it was, I hate creme friache but this was absolutely delicious. Personally I preferred that to the aioli and trust me I surprise myself the most writing that sentence.
After the brilliant starter, came the excellent mains and excellent they really were. My boyfriend opted for The Graze Notorious PIG flatbread, clearly making up for all the meat he’d missed the month before when he’s gone veggie for a while. The flatbread was covered in BBQ pulled pork, crackling, chorizo, ham hock, black pudding, bacon, cheese and apple chutney. I’m sure you can see exactly where it gets it’s name from. Be warned though as the flatbreads are absolutely huge and this one is packed to the brim with meat! My boyfriend gave it a good go but ended up leaving just under a quarter of the flatbread in the end.
Whereas I opted for something fresh, creamy and tasty in the Homemade Gnocchi served with kale pesto, peas and tarragon. The wonderfully potatoey gnocchi, which was huge (!), was made so well and was seasoned perfectly. The sauce was beautiful, so light yet full of flavour and the perfect accompaniment to the gnocchi. I also ordered a side of french beans with confit shallots which had been lightly fried in lots of butter and tasted delicious. My only qualm was at £4 this is an expensive side order to accompany my meal.
After a great starter and a lovely main, we were both understandably stuffed and did not have room for any dessert unfortunately. However, I’m sure we will be back again soon to try more from the menu as there is plenty on there that we saw and would like to try.
It was a brilliant meal and absolutely perfect for my boyfriend’s birthday. The food was good, the ingredients were fresh, the drinks were brilliant and the service was very good. We both had a great time and left happy and full of some excellent food.
Graze Inn is situated at 315-319 Ecclesall Road, Sheffield, S11 8NX
To find out more about Graze Inn visit their website, their Facebook page or you can follow them on Twitter – @GrazeInnSheff
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