Food review: Dough and oil, Shrewsbury

For amazing food in lovely surroundings there’s one place that will tick all the boxes. Andy Richardson finds a cool restaurant that does the job. . .

Let’s start with the puns. And let’s give credit where credit is due – correctly genuflecting to the brilliant and witty team at Dough and Oil rather than pretending we were bright enough to come up with them.

Okay. Sitting comfortably. Then we’ll shoot.

Rather than go corporate, Dough and Oil has gone bonkers. So its walls, Twitter feed and the owner’s underwear (we made that bit up – he probably wears very nice pants) are emblazoned with such motifs as: Oil Is Well, Let’s Dough It, Oil Or Nothing, Dough It Good, It’s All I Wanna Dough, or, our personal favourite and almost certainly not a tribute to Lionel Richie, Oil Night Long.

Dontcha just love a place that doesn’t take itself too seriously. We do. But things we love even more are places that serve brilliant food, places that have outstanding service, places that don’t rip off their customers and places that provide a warm and convivial atmosphere in which to share good times with friends.

We’re still not over our late-2017 brush with greatness – yes, that interview with Marco Pierre White (and we’re sorry for showing off and name-dropping so early into the year, but it was Marco Flipping Pierre Flipping White) – and we’re still following the tao of MPW. For those who don’t follow Weekend religiously – and we’re onto you, Mrs Bannon, of Dudley, we know where you live and we’ll be round each Saturday to check you’ve bought a copy – MPW told us this: “The most important parts are of a great night out are – a) environment, b) service, and, c) food.”

On all counts, Dough & Oil measures up like an £800 million, 222 metre-long superyacht. That, incidentally, is indeed the length and cost of the world’s biggest superyacht, which is a full 40 metres more than the former champ, the Azzam, which is owned by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE. But we’re talking pizza and I digress. Sorry. Let’s Dough The Review. (That one was ours, obvs).

Dough and Oil is located on the slow walk into Shrewsbury from the town’s railway station. It’s the coolest restaurant in Shropshire. It’s a little bit like the brilliant Spuntino, in London’s Rupert Street, which offers 27 stools and a popcorn machine – but no phone. Spuntino has distressed décor, the hippest staff in town and serves brilliant food. As does Dough and Oil.

There are raggedy chairs, lots of wire fencing – we don’t know why, but it looks hellish good – and long benches for bearded, Bon Iver-loving dudes who want to chow down on sourdough pizza or bad ass bagels while drinking a foaming tankard of craft beer. Nice.

The USP is pretty simple: all things baked plus craft beer and cocktails. And that’s it. Unlike every other new restaurant in Shrewsbury during the past two years, Dough and Oil doesn’t serve nothingburgers and limp fries: it’s all about the bake.

So, during the day, you’re likely to get Scandanavian open-faced sourdough sandwiches with beetroot cured salmon, house cream cheese and pickled radishes; or pastrami with swiss cheese, sauerkraut, gherkins, rocket and Russian dressing. Boom.

There are brilliant cakes – a pecan pie was so good that I was forced, yes, forced to buy a millionaire’s shortbread to make sure that too passed muster. And it did. And there’s a wide selection of beers so fashionable that they sashay down the catwalk, wiggling their hips and lips while beer drinkers gawp like dunderheads at a beauty parade. The beer, let me tell you, is good.

I took my kid for a midweek supper and we were bowled over. Service was exceptional, the food was so good I’m already planning my next visit and the room was a blast. There were three waiters and a cook – though I think one of the waiters was an owner who refused to go home because he loves the place so much, just like us. They all seemed to be sporting a whole body’s worth of tattoos as well as brilliant hair. There was a time when having a tattoo meant you were a) really hard, or, b) a former sailor who met a nice girl in Beunos Aires and did something silly while in drink. These days, tattoos mean, a) you’re probably a chef, and, b) you know your way around a seven-hour, slow-cooked pork belly. We sat at a corner table and listened to a brilliant soundtrack of soul and Motown classics while one of the snap-back-cap-wearing waiters bust moves behind the counter. If ever his career as a barrista, waiter and snap-back-cap-wearer comes to a standstill, he’ll doubtless find work as a street dancer. He was brilliant.

We ate pizza, obvs, with the nipper eating a mini margo – sourdough crust, tomato sauce, mozzarella – while his old man ate a spicy nduja sausage number so spicy and fierce that I thought I might need a fire engine to cool me down. It was brilliant. I finished the nipper’s pizza crusts while developing a food baby all of my own. They were marvellous. The sourdough had a tang that verged on piquant. The bake was as good as the bread made at Bakehouse 2.0/Shrewsbury Bread and they, frankly, are brilliant.

So, all boxes ticked. Environment – tip top. Eating at Dough and Oil is like getting a VIP pass to some exclusive, backstreet joint in Soho that’s known only by a gourmandising cognoscenti. The environment is great: cool tunes, great dancers, smart interior design and a waspish sense of humour.

The food is outstanding – the sourdough is wonderful, the toppings smart (fennel sausage, anyone, or lettuce – it works, honestly), while the beer selection is as good as you’ll find at a Camra-award-winning beer fest.

And the staff are proper, knockdown brilliant. They cared like people who’ve ploughed their life savings into their dream and really, really, really, really, really want people to have a good time because their lives depend on it.

Shrewsbury has a bunch of great places in which to eat: there’s great bistro food at Csons, in Shrewsbury; one-off inspirations from Chris Burt, at Mytton and Mermaid and high quality fine dining from Harri Alun Williams at Lion + Pheasant, for starters. And though Dough and Oil does something completely different, it is set to become a people’s favourite that’s in a league of its own when it comes to pizza.

Previously, Ludlow’s Pizza Ten had my vote as the county’s best. But Dough and Oil is a step up. The menu and concept are very different, but the pizzas are better, the staff are ahead of the game and its puns are better than those written by the award-winning staff on your favourite local newspaper.

To put it simply, it mops the flour with every one else. Boom boom.