Where diners can take stock of traditional Potteries food
Food revolutionary and top chef Cris Cohen, who is earning great reviews and bringing visitors in from around the globe for his FEASTED Chef’s Table experience in a disused factory in Stoke-on-Trent, has delved even deeper into the local food psyche for his latest project.
STOCK, in the North Staffordshire market town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, is based within a former travel agent’s shop.
“It’s almost like being given licence to take influences from all around the world, before it’s served-up on plates which are made here, in The Potteries!” says Cohen.
Passionate about anything and everything connected with the topic of food culture, Cohen has a genuine hunger to connect the “deliciousness of food” with a wider range of “special experiences”. Combining all that with a sense of place, his own unique storytelling, and a belief in “total hospitality”, he is also now looking to roll-out his latest concept further afield in the not-too-distant future.
FEASTED has become such a local phenomenon that’s also attracting visitors from Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and London, as well as America, Canada and Shanghai. Cohen also recently hosted a group of Japanese travel journalists, who were brought in search of something completely different by the national tourist board, VisitBritain.
If FEASTED - based partly on taking diners outside of their comfort zones - is one of the next “big ideas” in dining out, then STOCK is its younger cousin: focusing keenly on North Staffordshire’s food history and heritage.
This enterprise started with a series of popular pop-ups, before opening its doors to the public in March.
It brings a touch of Manchester’s Ancoats to Newcastle-under-Lyme, with diners encouraged to join shared tables throughout the day, and enjoy a menu which has a very healthy emphasis on Lobby and Oatcakes.
By way of explanations, Lobby is a traditional North Staffordshire stew eaten by pottery workers who could not afford freshly prepared food every day; while Staffordshire oatcakes - a kind of savoury pancake usually made from oatmeal, flour and yeast - is a local delicacy associated closely to The Potteries and surrounding areas.
Both are massively popular and, in North Staffordshire, the stuff of legend and debate.
Unsurprisingly where Cohen is concerned, there is a very deliberate blurring of lines between the traditional and the trendy at STOCK. Here, the choice of Lobby (or “broths”) range from Japanese Ramen to Vegan Haleem, or Lamb Jam to Jedi. Its new definition, says Cohen, is: “If Lobby was cool”!
And the oatcakes which feature on the breakfast menu are, in his words, “the most authentic and traditional in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire” - although the use of his sourdough starter recipe in the creation of these oatcakes might well raise a few eyebrows locally.
This is the sort of twist that comes with the territory when dining with Cohen, whose aspirations and opinions soon become clear to anyone who meets, or eats with, him.
It’s food tourism at its finest, and why tourist boards love what he’s doing as much as the people who eat in his restaurants. It’s just surprising to find such a rare and pronounced example of it in Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme.
“The cross pollination between the two restaurants has been phenomenal. It’s all about deliciousness, quirkiness, quality and character,” says Cohen. “And if we can do it here in Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme, we can do it anywhere.”