A trip down the Great North Road - The George in Stamford

12 August 2008

...not quite the Great North Road as I went down the A1, of course, which is much improved now most of the roundabouts have disappeared. I have always hankered after a stay at The George, which, when Stamford was right on the road to the North, was the stopping-off point for just about everyone travelling up and down the country. The building is fascinating, a labyrinth of rooms leading from one to another, each with some interesting architectural feature, with old prints and paintings on the walls and a huge fireplace in the lounge. Each of the tables in the cobbled courtyard has its own pot of herbs as decoration, and the gardens beyond are bright with flowers against a backdrop of old yews and ancient stonework, which is all that remains of the monastic buildings around which the inn was created.
Having missed out on lunch, a couple of scones with clotted cream and homemade strawberry jam made a welcome substitute and provided enough energy for a walk round Stamford, which has been considerably gentrified since I was there last. It is a gem of a place, almost completely lacking in the ugliness to be found on just about every other high street in the country.
I was back at The George in good time for dinner, and there were two restaurants to choose from. The less formal of the two looked perfecting acceptable but I was tempted to try the formal restaurant simply to see what it was like. The menu was traditional English of the old school, with the kind of food that one would expect to find in a gentleman's club - sirloin of beef carved at the table and served with Yorkshire pudding, rack of lamb, and so on.
Prices were outrageously high for somewhere without a single Michelin star, with soup being the cheapest starter on the menu at £6.40. Main courses were priced at around twenty and vegetables were charged as extras. The wines were similarly priced and I ended up with a bottle of Fleurie which was charged at over £25.
The soup was spinach and potato and it came in a tureen which was ceremoniously placed on a side table next to my seat, so that it could be decanted into a bowl. Unfortunately this meant that it blocked the main entrance to the restaurant, so that the poor waitress had to dodge backwards and forwards between entering diners, and finally burnt her fingers on the lid of the tureen trying to dish up the soup. After all this palaver it would be delightful to report that the soup itself was the most delicious that ever dribbled down the back of my throat but it was quite undistinguished, and tasted of nothing in particular. I ate every spoonful glumly thinking of my own version of the same soup, which in my opinion is infinitely superior and costs about a quid a litre to make.
Next was half a Woodbridge duck with sage and onion stuffing and apple sauce. I can say with honesty that I am a sucker for duck, which sounds like the beginning of a tongue twister or the sort of thing the police might have tried to get you say before the invention of the breathalyser. Anyway, if there is duck on the menu I will usually order it because I have memories of some cracking ducky dinners and always live in hope of eating another. On this occasion I was to be disappointed.
Wherever Woodbridge is (and I believe it to be in Suffolk - which, considering that Lincolnshire ducklings were famous in my youth, seems a long way to go for a quacker) this poor duck had had a wasted journey. The breast and leg had been separated but slung on the plate like roadkill, and lay in a puddle of pureed apple which looked (and tasted) suspiciously like the stuff out of a jar. There was a further puddle of brownish lukewarm gravy (which tasted of nothing at all) and towering over the rest, a large square of what looked like bread pudding. This was the stuffing, which looked like the sort of thing like one might enjoy at Her Majesty's pleasure, and had clearly been cut from a huge slab in a catering tin.
A very nice girl them came along with a bowl of assorted vegetables which she proceeded to decant quite unnecessarily onto a sideplate. They were cooked al dente, which is to say, not cooked enough, and shared the same bizarre quality of utter tastelessness that I was beginning to recognise as a speciality of The George's restaurant.
I hacked a good bit of the duck off the bones before I gave up on it, and I also managed to find a morsel of skin that was edible amongst the general flabbiness. But it fell well short of the plate of my imagination, the crisp-skinned, rich dark meat with a tart, grainy-textured sauce of Bramleys on one side and a spoonful of moist sage and onion on the other, the top browned with bits of caramelised onion and sharp with sage, all reclining on an dark-brown reduction of meaty, ducky juices. And it would have gone so well with the Fleurie, which, in fairness, was going down a treat (though so it should considering the mark-up).
The curse of imagination is not to be underestimated. But by now I had got a grip on it and when the trolley creaked along from the other end of that dark oak-panelled dining room, I shook my head at the array of trifles, summer puddings and meringues. The dead hand of the George would have rested on them and sprinkled not stardust but sawdust.

Verdict - dinner only: value for money 0/10 service 9/10 quality of food 2/10

The following morning I had one of the best breakfasts I have ever eaten, with a particularly good scrambled egg - something which seems almost impossible for a hotel kitchen to get right. Perhaps Somerset Maugham was right to say that to dine well in England one must eat breakfast three times a day.

Bistro Saigon, Ilkley

6 August 2008

An almost-empty restaurant normally sounds alarm bells but this is the second time I have eaten in Bistro Saigon with former mother-in-law (now outlaw rather than in-law)and found ourselves to be nearly the only diners present. This is a mystery as the food is excellent, the service cheerful, and though the back of the railway line is not the most salubrious bit of town, the view from the window at least provides entertainment in the form of passers-by.
We ate the set lunch, which was really the usual a la carte but at bargain prices - two courses of food of this quality for under a tenner is not to be sniffed at. I have eaten Vietnamese food before only on the continent, both in France and in Brussels, and this seems the authentic deal as far as I can tell.
My starter of chicken wings was generous - there must have been a eight or nine wings from a very well-nourished bird - with a zesty coating of ginger, spring onions and other aromatic ingredients which revved the tastebuds into overdrive. Initially thinking that I would sensibly eat only half the portion, I soon found myself looking down on a heap of pathetic little bones, which appeared to have been gnawed clean by some starving predator. My only criticism is that the skin could have been crispier so that I could have eaten that as well. And completely blown the diet. Spring rolls come with lettuce leaves and mint, to wrap them in, and a sharp, sweet chilli dip. When I had these in France, they were called 'Nems' and served identically.
Main courses were similarly generous and served with a bowl of rice which had the authentically stickyness that becomes addictive after a while. Chilli beef with peppers was tender, melting, tangy and with a slight kick that didn't frighten the Outlaw. A green chicken curry did rather, being slightly hotter than anticipated. But I found it perfect, the long strips of chicken a perfect textural match for the soft aubergine cubes, which sponge-like had absorbed the flavours of lemongrass and lime. A sweet and sour prawn with pickled vegetables was a little bland and pallid by comparison but the prawns were huge and had the thinnest and lightest coating of batter.
Verdict: value for money 9/10 service 9/10 quality of food 9/10