Food entrepreneur and top chef Cris Cohen is serving up another stir in Staffordshire by launching a new restaurant blending local heritage dishes with quirky creative cooking.
After earning rave reviews and attracting diners from across the globe with his FEASTED Chef’s Table experience in a disused factory in Stoke-on-Trent, the storytelling chef has now brought new flavours to the North Staffordshire market town of Newcastle-under-Lyme.
From the heart of ‘The Potteries’ and Britain’s spiritual home of ceramics, Cohen exploded on to the food scene when he opened FEASTED, a local phenomenon that has grown to attract visitors from Liverpool to London, and the USA to Shanghai.
As a restaurant closely linked to its city, to seasonality and the chemistry of food, it offers a new outlook on dining-out in the post-industrial setting of the former Spode site, one of the most important factories from the Industrial Revolution and the birthplace of bone china.
Now his latest pioneering project, STOCK by FEASTED, has transformed a former travel agent’s shop into a new dining destination serving up vibrant dishes in a cool urban venue where “every bite tells a flavourful story”.
Taking its inspiration from the traditional local dish of Lobby, a stew once eaten by pottery workers, and Oatcakes, another local delicacy associated to The Potteries, STOCK is already proving a hit, even though it has only been open a few weeks.
And in keeping with his innovative ethos, the chef’s newest venture is adding a trendy twist to these traditional treats with the choice of Lobby, or broths, ranging from Japanese Ramen to Vegan Haleem, or Lamb Jam to Jedi.
STOCK also offers other dishes featuring some of the flavours developed at the Chef’s Table, which places a strong emphasis on seasonal produce and where themed menus change regularly. Like his first restaurant, where diners sit down at one long table, his new venue also encourages diners to join shared tables during the day.
Celebrating Stoke-on-Trent and The Potteries and its reputation as a world ‘Capital of Ceramics’, which has been shaped by its production of pottery for centuries, Cohen has worked with a local ceramics company on a new artisan, hand painted design for the business.
Duchess China 1888, which has been manufacturing handmade Fine Bone China in Stoke-on-Trent for 135 years, based the design on an original one from 1930, and as well as being used on STOCK’s crockery, it also adorns the outside of the building.
Details about FEASTED can be found at www.feasted.co.uk and for more on STOCK, visit https://stock-online.co.uk/about
For more information on Stoke-on-Trent as a destination, see www.visitstoke.co.uk