Piecaramba! — Restaurant in Winchester

This was my first visit since hearing about Piecaramba at the end of last year, and I had been meaning to visit for a while. The location in Parchment Street is not the busiest, but it seemed to be doing okay at the time I visited. The interior is compact - capacity is probably around 20, on a mixture of 2 person, 4 person, and 6 person tables, plus a couple of "bar" seats. At the time I walked through the door, only one table was free.

The decor is pure comic book geek - with plenty of comics available to read while you wait or eat.

The only issue I had was that when full, it does get a bit steamy and warm.

The menu continues the comic book theme, both the graphic style and the play on words names of some of pies - Chick Norris anyone? With a name like Piecaramba, it's obviously all about the pies, and with over twenty different pies, including a number of vegan options, there are plenty to chose from.

Once you pick your pie, you have to decide how you want it, for example:

For your pies only - just the pie Pie meal - pie, choice of mash, minty peas, onion gravy or pie liquor Pie and Mighty meal - the pie meal, plus crispy shallots and West Country cheddar

There are additional options for two and three stacked pies.

The usual suspects for hot drinks are available, and builders tea is available by the pint mug.

I went for the Parchment Street Pie - with partridge, pheasant, and venison - as a Pie and Mighty Meal, along with a pint of tea.

The tea appeared first, with a small jug of milk and a little pot to put the teabag in. I don't know what brand of tea they were using, but it appeared to be whole leaf and was good and strong.

I believe I only had to wait about 10 minutes for my meal to come out, and I wasn't disappointed. A perfect combination of creamy mash potato, minty peas, shortcrust pastry, crispy shallots, grated cheddar, and a jug of onion gravy. Everything was perfectly cooked and there was a healthy amount of meat in the pie, which was just as tasty as I expected.

My eyes were probably a little larger than my stomach, but I did manage to get through the lot!

The service was excellent, and I will...

This restaurant is absolute nerd heaven - for the delicious food, and the deliriously geeky décor. It's a wonderfully simple concept - you order a pie, you choose mushy peas or baked beans, and you pick your desired variety of mash and gravy. This allows for some really fun mixing and matching, and you really can't go wrong with anything on the menu. They have a special Christmas menu (!) and I particularly recommend the 'Hognamy!' pie - it's hog roast pig with spiced apple sauce and sage and onion stuffing, and it tastes amazing. The crust is delicious, and the filling is plentiful - the meal filled me up for a whole day of sightseeing around Winchester. I also had a smoothie, which was made fresh and tasted great.

So now, the decor! When I first passed the front of the restaurant I assumed it was some sort of comic or hobby shop, and was surprised when I realised it was! But thankfully the décor is the real deal - every inch of every wall is plastered with a reference to some nerd property, and the bathroom is a shrine to all things Star Wars. As a big Star Wars fan myself I particularly appreciated the selection of novelisations and 90s EU novels (alas, I had no time to read them).

All in all, this was a really delightful spot - eccentric, fun and friendly, with very reasonable prices and absolutely amazing food....

We had a mixed bag of a visit. I had booked a table but when we turned up it looked like they had lost our booking. Instead of letting us know what happened, they sat us at a table next to a noisy slushie machine that had been reserved by someone else who hadn't shown up. No one came to take our orders until we asked about moving to newly vacated table that has a games console on it. The food itself was good and there was a good selection of interesting drinks. Eventually a different table left and we were able to play on the console attached to that table. There are only 6 tables in the restaurant but the tables were left dirty for quite a while after their diners left. We weren't offered new drinks once we had finished and I noticed other diners waiting a long time to get their bill and pay. We also had to go up to the till to get anyone's attention for our bill. The setup is great and if you are a party of 4 or more you will probably get a table with a console but the service really let it down for us. We were also shown how to leave a tip on the card reader which felt quite cheeky when we had hardly had any...