If you know me well, you would know that pizza and cider would probably feature in the top ten of my ‘favourite things of all time’. When, last year, Tom told me about a restaurant in Weymouth that was opening that served pizzas, pies and the biggest range of ciders you’ve ever seen, I was pretty sold. I find sometimes that menus in restaurants with seemingly endless options can be a bit baffling – I find myself making last minute decisions and being disappointed, or getting food envy over what the person sat next to me is eating. So going out for dinner knowing I’m going to tuck into a delicious pizza and wash it down with one of my favourite ciders, is a good situation for me to be in. Especially when the pizzas are as delicious as they are at The Stable. We’ve been to The Stable in Weymouth several times and it’s always been amazing, so you can imagine how excited I was when an email dropped into my inbox to tell me that they were opening another restaurant down the road from us in Poole and, even better, they wanted to invite us along to the opening.
Really, The Stable is my perfect restaurant – along with a mouthwatering menu of lots of different options of pizzas and pies, both the Weymouth restaurant, and now the Poole one, have a great feel about them. Rustic interiors, long wooden benches, a great atmosphere and beautifully designed menus and artwork make for a pretty awesome dining experience. The building that the new Stable in Poole is based in is absolutely stunning and they’ve done some seriously amazing work turning it into a really lovely place to eat (or drink). We visited on their pre-opening night on Thursday and were greeted with candles burning, their amazing menus hung on the walls and a glass of Prosecco (and a cider for Tom) – which I think you’ll agree is a very good start to an evening indeed.
We chatted to one of the owners of the now chain of restaurants (they have five now, in Bridport, Bath, Bristol, Weymouth and now Poole), Richard, and he told us all about the restaurants and their plans for opening more. As we were chatting we were passed our first taste of their amazing pizzas, a West Country Porker with Bath Pig chorizo (they work with a lot of local, west-country suppliers), tomato and mozzarella. It was utterly delicious as always.
After tucking into the pizza we grabbed a table upstairs. The Poole restaurant is bigger that the Weymouth one and has lots of long wooden benches and communal tables and more wonderful décor. They had some goodie bags for us to take away with Stable teatowels and bottles of cider – definitely one of the most exciting goodie bag inclusions I’ve seen in a long time! Tom’s goodie bag had a bottle of my all time favourite cider in it, Orchard Pig – I might have my eye on nabbing that off him!
Not long after we sat down we were joined by Emma and her husband Nick, on their first joint night out after having baby Huxley in October. We had loads of fun catching up and chatting about our potential American road trip honeymoon (and getting excited about all the food we can eat!) The lovely Stable staff brought over several more pizzas for us to try, including the Lamb Roast (my favourite – lamb, goats cheese, sweet potato, roast onions, tomato and mozzarella), a hawaiian with added avocado and the turkey gobbler – with turkey and roast potatoes! Another hit was the Purbeck Pescatarian, below, which had smoked mackerel and smoked salmon – delish!
After feeling suitably full we moved downstairs to hear a speech from Richard thanking everyone who had been involved in the latest restaurant opening – apparently extensive building work had happened that very afternoon to ready it for the party! The restaurant was absolutely full of people trying the pizzas and ciders and looking understandably excited at the new addition to Poole high street. I personally am already counting down the days until we can go back and I’m thrilled we don’t have to travel as far for our favourite pizzas!
The Stable in Poole opened on Friday and can be found at 2 High Street on Poole Quay.