Farrington’s Farm Shop, in Farrington Gurney, is an amazing place for families and foodies alike. We hadn’t been since having the little one, so decided to head back a few weeks ago to explore the place with fresh eyes.
As well as the farm shop, there’s also a variety of shops, a fish and chip shop, a few farm animals, a farm-themed play area and a soft play place – as well as their Udder Room Café, which is open seven days a week serving cooked breakfasts, jacket potatoes, quiches, soups, salads, cakes and more.
Essentially, it’s all about honest, home-cooked food in a relaxed and family-friendly environment, which is just what we were after.
Walking in, we were shown to a table straight away, with our waitress choosing somewhere we were able to park the buggy too – an added bonus. We were in the front section of the dining room, in the same section of the building as the food counters – head through past the toilets and there’s a separate, larger dining room out the back which has a much cosier feel with its wooden beamed ceiling and plenty of natural light. Our server was on hand with a highchair straight away too, keeping the little person out of mischief.
It’s only recently that the Farrington’s team have introduced table service – previously you had to head to the counter to place your order, taking a table number as you did.
Our choice wasn’t hard: a farmhouse breakfast (£8.20) for Chris, and a slice of quiche and salad (£7.75) for me.
The breakfast was enormous: half a slice of fried bread (there’s the option of toast, too), a sausage, your choice of eggs, beans, two rashers of bacon, tomato, mushrooms and fried potatoes. The sausage and bacon were the stars of the show (as you’d hope at a farm shop café), the former rich and meaty and bursting with flavour, the latter nicely crisped round the edges and well-cured. Everything else, he said, was what you’d expect from a standard cooked breakfast – although he did describe the fried potatoes as “a bit school dinner-like”.
I’ve had a Farrington’s quiche before, so I knew what to expect. As well as a green salad, you can choose three more of their daily salad specials to add to your plate for your £7.75 spend – and for me it was the spicy rice, a mustard and fennel-infused potato salad, and an apple, grape and celery concoction.
The quiche was very tasty indeed – a combination of three cheeses and a spike of onion that carried right through – a beautiful consistency too. The pastry was a little soft but it was full of flavour.
The salads, as they normally are at Farrington’s Farm Shop, were well-executed and varied. The spicy rice was actually fairly mild, and studded with dried fruit, while the crunch of the fruity, mayo-enveloped option added a bit of bite. It was the potato salad that I loved the most, though, with the potency of the mustard and fennel tempered slightly by the cooling mayo dressing.
The piece de resistance was what we took home as a bit of a naughty post-lunch treat. Around Easter time, Farrington’s Farm Shop is known for its chocolate Scotch eggs: small filled chocolate eggs enveloped in a flavoured brownie and rolled in chocolate.
We managed to get in there just before they sold out, nabbing the final chocolate orange Scotch egg from the deli counter. Priced at £3.50 (I think – my focus was more on the chocolate than the price…), it was a true work of art: the size of a regular Scotch egg, but revealing something far more decadent when we cut into it.
A caramel-filled chocolate egg was tucked inside underneath a generous layer of incredibly moist, dense chocolate orange brownie, and the whole lot was set off with white chocolate sprinkles. Insanely delicious – I definitely recommend heading over there around Easter time to sample one (or a few…)
The Udder Room Café at Farrington’s Farm Shop isn’t fancy, but a good, honest place to grab a bite to eat if you’re in the area. Alternatively, do what we did and make a trip out of it: with the farm shop, the animals, the shops, the play area and the soft play (where we headed for a short while after lunch), there’s plenty to keep families entertained. We’ll be back…
