Father's Day at the Olive Press and Quarry Mill

The Olive Press, an Italian themed restaurant in Cheadle Hulme, is situated below several floors of offices. It is run by a chap called Paul Heathcote for whom the term ‘celebrity chef’ is used in the local papers. There were no ‘Father’s Day’ themed offers on today but the place is pretty children friendly and, naturally, the young ones were present with their families today of all days. A glass wall where various types of packaged dried pasta were shelved and displayed on the other side came between our table and the chefs.

We had some appetisers of breadsticks, crispy bread with olives, pesto, hummus and a sun dried tomato spread. We recalled Ed liking this on his only other visit here. Sure enough, he also liked it today. I had a main course buffalo mozzarella, cherry tomato and basil pizza, really a plusher version of the margarita but pleasing enough. J had a carbonara which she liked although it was a bit frugal on the bacon. Ed divided his time seeking to be lifted between benches while tending to his lasagne.

Under threes ate free here, and the waitress reminded us that Ed was entitled to a desert. The service was very good. Several weeks ago some staff went through the traumatic experience of being ambushed and held by a bunch of scumbags after one night shift. If that has cast a shadow over the place, it didn’t show this afternoon. Our two courses, drinks & Ed’s meal came to just over £22. This place is worth visiting, especially with the offers available until the end of next month.

After our meal, we went on to Styal Mill, an industrial heritage site. It was sometime later in the afternoon by now so it was more of a whistle stop tour than it would have been. The factory was founded for the spinning of cotton, and one chap on the site volunteered to show us three how one such old machine would have worked. Its chugging and rickety volume caught Ed unaware. He had some scope for walking and we covered the whole area, with the massive working water wheel being the last of our stops. After our walk through here, we had a coffee then caught an electric fuelled float to the top of the hill and walked through the trails back to the car park.