Dinner At The Refurbished Blue Peter, Alvaston, Derby
Published On Thursday 26 Jan 2017 by Sticky Beak
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We were contacted to say that the Blue Peter in Alvaston, Derby had recently undergone a huge refurbishment and asking if we would like to go along and sample the food. Having never visited this part of Derby before we jumped at the chance to go and have a Sticky Beak!
There is plenty of parking, which always gets things off to a good start, and it wasn’t hard to find either. As you walk in there is a large bar area popular with the male after work crowd, I nearly had to put my sunglasses on there was so much fluorescence around!
The atmosphere was lively, but relaxed and friendly with plenty of banter between the men. We wandered up to the bar and said we’d got a table booked and a lovely young lass took us round to the dining area. You would never know that you were in the same place; it was nice and quiet, clean and bright.
I liked the fact that there were several smaller eating areas rather than one single large space, because the Blue Peter is a massive premises that could easily become soul-less. Luckily the General Manager, Daniel Langley, knows his stuff and gave this a lot of careful thought during the planning of the refurbishment. The tables have a nice amount of privacy between them rather than being crammed together which some places succumb to.
As with most places of this ilk (chain establishments, rather than independent traders) the format for ordering food is dead easy. You decide what you want to eat, make a note of the table number and then go to the bar to place your order. The Man Bird returned from ordering with a hand held pager/buzzer gizmo in his hand, which was for when his choice of main was ready.
Part of the refurbishment project included the installation of a brand spanking new Pizza oven, so His Nibs decided to try one of those for his main course and I’d decided to have the Chicken and Rib combo. Before that though we had to choose a starter and this proved a little trickier, but we eventually agreed on the “All Piled High” sharer platter.
This platter comprises Corn nachos, Southern fried Chicken fillets, beer battered Mushrooms and Onion slices, Mac and Cheese balls, dough balls and BBQ Chicken wings with a trio of dips; American style relish, BBQ, and Heinz(TM) Smokey Baconnaise.
My first thought when the lovely Amy brought the platter over was “All piled High? You’re not kidding!” it was brimming over with all sorts of deliciousness. All the batters were crispy, not greasy, and the ones on the Mushrooms and the Southern fried Chicken had a great seasoning to them.
The dough balls were brilliantly fresh and were like warm comforting clouds to chew, really nice. You need to have a sticky glaze on Chicken Wings and the one at Stonehouse Pizza and Carverys Blue Peter site is a perfect example of this with its smoky, sticky version.
The Boy Wonder and I both remarked how fab the Mac and Cheese balls were, and on the fact that our Chick would’ve gone nuts for them had she been with us (unfortunately she had to revise for an exam the next day). If truth be told, this platter could feed 3 people quite easily and it left us both feeling fairly full already at this point!
As well as an extensive menu for the adults, kids (aged 10 and under) are also tempted with a huge variety of dishes on their own menu, with all mains priced at £3.99.I loved the fact that alongside your main course, you can go and have unlimited amounts of chips, vegetables, potatoes and salad, and this applies to children and adults alike. There is a fantastic range of juicy burgers to choose from too as well as the pizzas, pub classics and Carvery.
The Man Birds buzzer proudly heralded the imminent arrival of his Mexican pizza so I trooped off to the Carvery counter to collect my roasted half chicken and baby rack of ribs. The chef asked if I wanted a Yorkshire pud and veg, but I declined saying that I was going to have salad instead.
A great selection of chilled, fresh salad items tempted me including all the usual salad vegetables as well as Pineapple chunks, Cous Cous, pasta salads and croutons. I loaded up my plate with these goodies and went back to the table to find His Nibs chowing down on a wonderful smelling pizza and his token side plate of (?) salad containing slices of raw onion and croutons.
My chicken was lovely and tender and nicely moist and the ribs, whilst not freshly out of a butchers shop, were really nice nonetheless with a great glaze on them. Both items had been cooked freshly and then placed on the hot counter at the Carvery section to await collection so they hadn’t dried out at all or been done en masse.
The freshly made pizza had a gorgeously thin, crispy base and had been bedecked with plenty of toppings, in this case BBQ pulled beef, peppers, red onion and jalapenos with a blanket of sour cream, salsa and guacamole on them. He said that it was delicious, the meat was spicy but not overpowering and there was plenty of flavours in it; but be warned at 12”, they are generous sized to say the least and The Boy didn’t actually manage to finish it all!
Amy had come along to check that everything was going well with our meal and then cleared our plates away a while later. When she asked if we wanted pudding we said that we did, but needed a bit of a breather, so she gave us a short while before coming back.
Initially we were going to have a dessert each, but had to admit that we didn’t think we could manage separate ones so we shared a Rocky Road Sundae between us. It’s a good job we did because this was no teeny tiny sweet sensation. The layers of vanilla flavoured ice cream, Chocolate Brownie cubes, shortbread fingers, mini marshmallows, Belgian chocolate sauce, cream and Cadburys Flake came in an impressively large sundae dish.
We did manage to finish this, but it did take a fair while and every mouthful was delicious. The sundae had been nicely layered with some care, rather than its ingredients just plonked in, and there was a lovely symmetry to the dessert.
A couple of Lavazza Latte coffees brought things to an end, and it was soon time for us to leave the Blue Peter. Destination fine dining it isn’t as you may have gathered from my earlier description of it being a chain establishment, but we really enjoyed our meal there, as did several other families and groups of friends.
So, if you either live in Alvaston or find yourself passing through, you could do a lot worse than come here for your meal; you’ll get a good portion, it’ll be hot and tasty and the staff will welcome you warmly. Hot Wings to this newly refurbished site and its team :)
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