Hanky
Panky Pancakes
20 Commonhall Street
Chester, UK
Yeah,
so I went a bit mad going out for food last week! I had heard of
Hanky Panky Pancakes from a couple of tweets, my lunch partner had
also expressed an interest in going so along we hopped on Monday
lunchtime. Hanky Panky is in a quiet side street location in Chester.
It’d be great if they could get an A-board on the main street they
annexe to increase footfall to them
It’s
a lovely place, clean, bright and inviting, with artwork and
postcards on the walls and a cool café/relaxing atmosphere. Staff
attended to us quickly with a friendly hello and handed us the menus.
The menu is small and well rounded with vegetarian, meat and fish
options on the savoury side and some seriously delicious dessert
options (I’m sooo having cherry one sometime, yum!). What is
impressive is the drinks menu – beer, wine, extensive amount of
soft drinks (they stock Fentiman’s, which is just the quirkiest
drinks brand going!), all reasonably priced and well presented in the
menu.
I
opted for a Fisherman’s Friend – a simple galette (pancake) with
smoked salmon, rocket and chives, crème fraiche and lemon. Couldn’t
resist a Fentiman’s so I had the orange. It’s no normal orange,
it’s Seville orange and Mandarin with herbs and it’s sparkling.
Super weird but so so refreshing! My friend had a simple tomato and
black pepper pancake and an Americano.
Food
was super fast to arrive from the kitchen (which is open and you can
see the chef, who is really friendly, cooking away), and was
presented beautifully. The pancakes were thin and perfectly cooked
with a great flavour that was able to support the filling well. The
smoked salmon was plentiful and slightly warmed by the pancake which
was lovely. Big pile of rocket and chives with a generous blob of
crème fraiche topped the whole thing off. Now I’m not a big fan of
rocket, but I have to say, with the crème fraiche and salmon, the
peppery flavour wasn’t overpowering and it balanced the whole dish
really well. The orange drink I had accompanied it really well,
cleansing my palette as I went. My friend said her pancake was also
very enjoyable; she got a lot of tomato on it with a generous amount
of black pepper. We pretty much wolfed them and unashamedly so.
Overall,
it was somewhere I definitely intend to visit again (ok, I visited it
again and had the same pancake yesterday...ha!) and take other people
to. The owner is really friendly, the staff take great pride in
making sure you have a good experience, the place is so comfortable
and relaxing to sit in and because it’s down a side street, it’s
quiet, too. But that could cause problems if we don’t get the word
out about this place – so get down Commonhall Street, get into
Hanky Panky and experience great food!
----
Tiffany
I absolutely LOVE pancake houses, you can go to one in every single town, anywhere, and you will never get anything like that one you're in, its amazing, this place looks great too, i love the campy/kitch look its got going for it, stuff like that is just as important as the food itself, seriously loving this one.
ReplyDelete