If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you will have seen that last weekend I had three of my favourite bloggers come down to stay with me in Winchester. They arrived Friday night and on the Saturday we explored the city. Of course, we had to find somewhere to stop for lunch and I suggested The Stable which is a pizza, pie and cider restaurant situated on The Square, near the cathedral. I’ve been to this one before but I am also a fan of The Stable in Birmingham. Kariss and Haydy had recently visited one in London and loved it, so happily agreed to go. 

Although the restaurant was fairly busy when we arrived at around 2pm, we were quickly seated upstairs by a window. I absolutely love the interior of the restaurant. It’s hard to believe that this building used to be a grotty bar with sticky dance floors when I was first at university! These days, everything is very rustic looking with wooden furniture and candles everywhere. There’s neon signs up on the walls, the menus are written on chalkboards and it has a great atmosphere.

Our waitress was lovely (unfortunately I didn’t catch her name) but as soon as we sat down she complimented us. She said that we were the best looking group she’d had in that day thanks to our hair! We had that a lot when we were walking around Winchester – that’s what you get when you’ve got four of us with bright, unnatural coloured hair! We ordered our drinks which came out really quickly while we were deciding what to eat.

On the menu

Each of The Stable’s restaurants has a different menu that’s tailored to the particular city that it’s in.It all depends on the ingredients and the cider that are available locally. The pizzas are mostly the same, but they’ll have different names. Each one looked delicious and I had a hard time choosing which one I wanted to go for. In the end, I settled on the The Wykehamist Wailer which is named after William of Wykeham, a former Bishop of Winchester.

“Spicy chopped pork marinated in our homemade Naga chili harissa, red onion, basil leaves, field mushrooms, tomato sauce and mozzarella”

I opted to leave off the red onions and field mushrooms and replace them with herby potatoes. I don’t know what it is about them, but potatoes on pizza is just the best. When the pizza arrived, I found that there was just the right amount of ingredients on the pizza. Generally, I like my pizzas to be fairly cheesy and have just enough toppings to make it tasty, but not so they fall off and make a mess when you try to pick up a slice. The sourdough base was just the right thickness to hold all of the toppings, but was still deliciously crispy. I managed to polish off most of my pizza, but I was eyeing up the desserts as well.

The dessert pizza

I’ve never actually had a dessert pizza before, but anything with Nutella on just makes my mouth water so I had to try it. I couldn’t have managed a full one, so Haydy and I decided to share. Laura went for the brownie, whilst Kariss chose the crumble. I wasn’t sure what to expect when it was brought out – would Nutella work on a pizza base? What’s mascarpone like as a topping?

“Chocolate and hazelnut topping with mascarpone and chopped hazelnuts”

The Nutella Pizza Pudding was the same size as their regular savoury pizzas, however there was a lot less topping. I think if there was as much nutella as there was cheese on their normal pizzas, I wouldn’t have been able to eat it. I found that there was just the right amount of nutella and just enough hazelnuts to give it a crunchy texture. The mascarpone was delicious and gave it a really creamy flavour. I wasn’t sure how it would work as a topping, but it was definitely better than whipped cream or ice cream.