So this is my life now, I own a home. And this is one of the reasons why this blog has been so quiet lately, my apologies.
Fairways Garden Centre is located at Clifton in Ashbourne, roughly 16 miles out of Leek (they also have a centre in Macclesfield).
The garden centre itself is lovely but what I was more interested in was whether they had any gluten-free options in their cafe/restaurant upstairs. Gardening is hungry work after all.
The restaurant upstairs is huge by the way.
More and more smaller, independent cafes are becoming more aware of dietary requirements and a lot now do have gluten-free options on their menu. Fairways is probably one of the more clued up places I have visited recently. And here's why.
I was so pleased to see that their menu tells you exactly what gluten-free options they have - and there's not just one or two choices...they are 5 different options for lunch!
The garden centre's selection of cakes and pastries is pretty extensive but they have not forgotten us Coeliacs either - there was gluten-free flapjack or fruit toast on offer. They clearly know what they are doing when it comes to preventing cross-contamination too as the gluten-free items were all individually wrapped to protect them from any gluten crumbs (all the gluten-containing cakes were on big plates where you just helped yourself).
I was also really impressed to see that all the food was clearly labelled and indicated what allergens were present in each one - so for example, the ticket would read "contains wheat, gluten, egg" etc. So helpful! And is probably a result of the new law that came in in December 2014 which means that now all food businesses must provide allergen information for the meals they serve.
If you don't fancy a hearty meal like cottage pie or a roast pork dinner, there are lighter options on the menu suitable for Coeliacs, like the soup, It was great to see there were two soup options. And there's also gluten-free bread if you ask one of the servers behind the counter.
OK, so it wasn't a bread roll, but still I was able to have gluten-free bread with my soup (for me, there's nothing worse than having soup with no bread, you need something to dip in!). In a lot of places there isn't always an option to have gluten-free bread with your soup so Fairways definitely gets the thumbs up from me.
I think it was probably Genius bread (is it sad that I can tell what brand of bread it was?) and tasted great with a bit of butter and dipped in to my carrot and coriander soup.
The soup itself was really tasty, creamy and filling - it really was a massive portion! All the food is homemade, prepared from fresh ingredients on site and they use locally-sourced ingredients too. I have to say I was really impressed, not just with the quality of food, but also their knowledge of dietary requirements and availability of gluten-free options, I would definitely eat here again.
