I’m sure Stratford-upon-Avon has a lot going for it, but it didn’t seem like a particularly throbbing hub of culinary delights. Needing a pre-theatre dinner, and having done some vague research but not much, when I realise that the Royal Shakespeare theatre has a rooftop restaurant with a strong selection of seemingly vegan options (if admittedly not explicitly marked), that seems ideal - it’s where we need to be, they’ll have to get us out by the start of the show, and the menu looked quite ornate. In retrospect, that should have been the first clue - all the hallmarks of a chef who has learnt how to make complicated dishes, but hasn’t learnt why. The bang bang chicken is barely coated and a little tough, although the dressing and the foliage are quite nice. There’s a wide gap between expectation and reality from the menu description of “slow-cooked confit lamb shoulder, bubble and squeak mash, edamame beans, pea and mint salsa, red currant jus” to the plate that eventually lands in front of me. A stolid cuboid of reconstituted lamb does, to give it some credit, fall apart quite easily, but it’s over-salted to the point that I cannot finish what’s left once I’ve exhausted the not overly generous jus. The mash is dried out and seared into a circular mold, losing even more already-lacking moisture from the dish (this seems to be a theme, with Alasdair’s looking very dry and eventually we conclude that the parsley oil mentioned on his menu has been forgotten). The edamame beans and sauce are delicious in a vacuum, but they belong on a different dish entirely, clashing with everything else on the plate. It’s all disappointing enough that I don’t trust any of the desserts enough to move from a 2-course set menu to a 3-course set menu that I’d been anticipating ordering in the first place. The whole ordeal also very much dragged on, which I’d expect better of a restaurant in a theatre explicitly offering this as a pre-theatre set menu. To end on a positive though: in lieu of dessert, I had a tiramisu martini, their twist on an espresso martini with Baileys, Disarrano, and cream, and it was absolutely perfect.