Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Tourist trap on the Cote du Nacre?

Hotel St George, Ouistreham Riva Bella, France

Ferryports are one of the most depressing places in the world. Before the Pope had second thoughts about limbo, and declared that his predecessor had been wrong to assume its existence, I was convinced that the Afterlife's eternal waiting room was like nothing so much as a cross-channel ferryport. Hours of waiting on plastic chairs inside a comfortless and barren hanger of a building, or squirming on the car seat in the dark as everyone else's line of cars moves and yours stays put - that's being in limbo, without a doubt.

So everyone who is consigned to this not-quite purgatorial experience on a regular basis searches for a crumb or two of comfort, by way of some gastronomic compensation. After trying all of the sad and pallid excuses for restaurants clustered round the main car park just before the Brittany Ferries terminal, Pollyanna ventured slightly further into Riva Bella-land and tried the St George.

The night was cold, rainy and Riva Bella itself - the little resort that seems to be invisible to Brits but well-patronised by the French - shuts early. So well before the 7.15 p.m. restaurant opening time, we were huddled in the hotel's tiny bar, squinting at French fashion magazines in the semi-darkness and listening to the screeching of the St George aviary. Roast parrokeet anyone? Yes, please, served 'a point' and silent if possible. A white powder puff was hurtling across the floor and occasionally yapping at the birds, clearly of the mind that saignant or even bleu would do, if only for a bit of peace and quiet.

A member of staff in some form of fancy dress commented gaily - in French - that it was "Noah's Ark in here". Which reminded me of the episode of Fawlty Towers where the hamster beloved by the kitchen staff turns out to be a large and well-fed rat....

Finally allowed into the restaurant, I discover it to be quite empty and utterly silent. An amuse bouche of slivers of what appeared to be gravadlax was delicious, though it would have been nice to have had the wine served with it, and not to have had to wait for a small bread roll until I had almost expired with hunger....though I must admit that it was freshly baked and delicious.

A starter of fish soup was adequate but served lukewarm and the pitiful portion of rouille and cheese - shared between two as well - was a disappointment.

The piece of beef I had chosen as a main course was perfectly cooked (by which I mean it was 'a point' French-style, i.e., medium rare to a Brit). It was tender, flavoursome, everything a piece of beef should be...but it cried out for a more suitable friend on the plate that a large and rather stodgy disc of mashed potato. (In fact, closer scrutiny of them menu revealed several other mains served "Parmentier" i.e., with some mashed spud. Easy on the kitchen, not great on the plate.) There were no other vegetables, and indeed one begins to believe that the mounds of fresh produce piled high in the markets every day are being somehow transformed into something quite different to food....models of Tracy Island perhaps, or the Palace of Versailles made entirely out of root veg.? Has no-one told them about five portions a day? Anyone eating out on a regular basis in France would be lucky to manage five portions in a fortnight.

Come back, haricots verts, all is forgiven. At one point you were ubiquitous, now you are conspicuous by your absence.

I should have mentioned earlier that the staff at the St George speak no English but that the menu is in French with English translations. So when I had ordered the Fondant au Chocolat I had glanced at the translation, as a fondant in France used to be something quite different from the hot pudding which is now almost a cliche in England. (Though the first time I ever ate one, was at the now-defunct and much-mourned Auberge du Pont au Bray, and extremely good it was too.)

I was reassured to see the English words "molten chocolate cake" and ordered it accordingly. I was also heartened by the insistence of the staff that we ordered our desserts at the start of the meal, as a hot chocolate fondant is obviously cooked to order. When it arrived, however, it was the disappointing but traditionally cold (as in icy cold, bring out the Sensodyne) slab of solid mousse. What a blow! And a swizz as well, so that I was at pains to point out to the staff that using words like "molten" of an extremely cold pud might led to heated arguments, or even worse.

They reacted with supercilious sneers - this was a fondant, Madame, no doubt about it, whatever drivel had been written en Anglais, not their responsibility at all.
Fuming, I ate it, feeling like bursting into tears.

The total bill, for two people, including two Kirs and a bottle of Beaujolias Villages, came to 107 euros. (Earlier in the week the ever-reliable Relais de la Poste at St Hilaire du Harcouet has produced another exceptional lunch with a plat du jour of succulent roast smoked pork, as part of the set three-course meal for 14 euros.)

Verdict: value for money - 3/10 service - 2/10 quality of food - 4/10 (for the beef)

Monday, September 21, 2009

Put that in your snap tin? No thanks!

September 2009

The George and Dragon, Wentworth, South Yorkshire

This is a smashing little pub in an historic estate village (the estate in question belonging to the Wentworth family) but unfortunately whoever is responsible for the catering has decided to embrace the kind of pretentiousness that makes Polyanna's blood boil (and perfectly illustrates that fine word butter no parsnips). I make no attempt to reproduce the descriptions of the food (written up on blackboards above the bar) but if I say that someone had clearly decided to have a go at South Yorkshire 'fusion' it may give some indication of what was to come.

I had lunch here with a couple of friends, one of whom happened to be out celebrating his 90th birthday. Not having an enormous appetite, he passed on the starters but I decided I could manage a bowl of vegetable soup and his son could not resist the lure of wild mushrooms in a creamy sauce on toasted brioche. The soup came with some kind of dark brown slobber running in zigzags across the top, and was thick enough to use as wallpaper paste. Which it largely resembled. Or rather, wallpaper paste with salt in it. If I had been a vegetarian I would have worried about the dark brown stuff as well, but as it was, I just worried that I would have to eat some of the enormous bowlful, if only to show willing.

The wild mushrooms were said to be excellent. As we had waited over half an hour for them and the soup, I was glad, but Birthday Boy was ready to eat a scabby donkey by this time. When the mains finally came (and only after I pursued the waitress to ask where they were), we had been waiting for an hour and fifteen minutes and Son of Birthday Boy was driving and could not have another pint. Which was a problem as he had ordered pork medallions on Thai potato salad (no, seriously) with a sweet chilli sauce. And the chilli sauce was hot. Even the dragon would have thought it was hot. It was light-blue-touchpaper-and-retire hot. Which would have been nice to know for those who are of faint heart when it comes to chilli. What the potato salad idea was all about was a mystery, especially as the spuds in question were also hot (by which I mean not cold, as in 'salad').

BB had gammon and egg, which arrived with the egg sitting on top of "pea puree" which in turn completely covered the (gristly) piece of gammon. We had seen this on the menu and thought it was a joke, but someone in the kitchen must have had a warped sense of humour. There was a bowl of chips that would have fed St George for a week, even after a particularly hard stint of slaying.

My beer-battered fish was so ordinary that it made me wish I had opted for one of the other jokes on the blackboards, just to have a laugh, but by now we were all desperate to get home before Son of BB spontaneously combusted. We could not have ordered a pudding in any case, as we had not brought our pyjamas.

I wanted to go into the kitchen and say, "Look here, this is a pub. A pub, right? So whose idea is it to serve up fourth-rate restaurant food of the weirdest kind, and muck up pub standards like gammon and egg? Not to mention make the punters wait this length of time for it." But anyone who could devise that menu and put posh mushy peas under a fried egg has got to be too bonkers to approach, especially as there would have been sharp implements about.
The bill came to over fifty quid, with three glasses of wine, and two pints of beer.

Verdict: value for money - 3/10 service - 0/10 quality of food - 2/10 (for the mushrooms)

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Catching up time....

August 2009

A miscellany

It's been a long time since I had time to think about eating - or rather, write about it. Moving house is not only stressful but it's time-consuming and leaves no room for anything else. The dust still hasn't settled: I have one slipper, the pyjamas are in a box I haven't unpacked yet and most of my cookery books are yet to be located. The plumbers have left, and I now have hot water, but they will be back in a week (and then I will have no loo!). The electrician will be in residence after that. So in the meantime, I will do a quick roundup of meals eaten - usually in haste - over recent months.

The southernmost reaches of God's Own Country provided a couple of surprises. The George and Dragon, in Mexborough of all places, is a lovely homely pub with a friendly landlord, charming bar staff, good beer and a very acceptable pub food menu with real chips, proper shortcrust pastry pies (and a gravyboat) and a steak that is worth eating. Five minutes up the road in the oddly-spelt Cinamon restaurant in Swinton I ate a surprisingly good Lamb Haandi, which was tender, well-spiced and succulent. The Royal Electric Theatre (a former cinema unpromisingly grim from the outside but light, airy and modern within) offered the golden oldies of the Chinese restaurant world - crispy duck, beef with ginger and spring onions and honey roast pork - cooked and served competently.

Further North, the Black Horse at Asquith also offered proper chips. But their steak and kidney pie was almost inedible, with dry, tough, gristly meat, in gravy so salty that I could feel my blood pressure spiralling upwards with every mouthful. Waiting 35 minutes for a puff-pastry topping on a pre-cooked pie filling was not acceptable either. The sad little side dish of tasteless vegetables had clearly been reheated, and there was not a single spud. The excellent chips, strangely, came with the sandwich ordered by my mother-in-law (who kindly donated them to me). The waitress who served us was clearly trained in the Genghis Khan School of Charm. Definitely one to drive past in future, which is a pity as the views are spectacular and in days past it was a hostelry worth making a detour for.

After years of rural living, the idea of having a restaurant on the doors is a novelty. Brio's at Hornbeam Park, on the outskirts of Harrogate, was a Godsend after a stressful stint of unpacking boxes the day after the move. I had an excellent pizza (with my favourite toppings of ham and artichoke obligingly supplied), some good house wine and swift, friendly service. But how much pleasanter it would have been without the horrible brats at the next table! The father and doting grandparents of these spoilt little horrors allowed them to run amok noisily, climb on the comfy seats in a side area with their dirty feet, and throw food onto the floor, entirely unrebuked. In fact, the whole party simply ignored the hideous children as though they were not their responsibility.

After they had left, the poor waiter had to move the table and chairs to clear up the mess, using a dustpan and brush, and then clean the floor as well. When I commented, he said that they were regular customers who behaved like that on every visit. Come on, restaurant managers, put your collective feet down and refuse to put up with this! Customers like me are going to stop going to restaurants when other people's children make eating out a misery.

Further south, an evening flight meant a late arrival at the Premier Inn in Southampton in the pouring rain. With no desire to get wet feet again (and wearing my only pair of dry socks), I broke the habit of a lifetime and ate in the hotel restaurant. The very helpful waitress assured me that the dauphinois potatoes had been made that very day. Who could resist? (The alternative was boiled new potatoes, presumably cooked by Sir Walter Raleigh, and chips frozen at the last ice age.) Indeed, the dauphinois quite possibly had been made within the past 24 hours, but unfortunately with freshly-prepared wallpaper paste. After possibly the worst steak I have ever attempted to eat, I left a plate that looked as though it had received the loaves and fishes treatment - i.e., there was more left on it than when I started.

Breakfast was a more pleasant experience, which was fortunate as I was so hungry that - as one of my cousins used to say - I could have eaten a scabby donkey. Probably the one I pushed round my plate the night before. The croissants were fresh, crisp and I managed three, though I mourned the lack of anything resembling real jam.

That night it poured with rain again and after plodding round Southampton in search of anything more appealing than a kebab shop, a helpful passer-by told me that something resembling a restaurant quarter could be found on Oxford Street, and gave me directions. And so it proved, as the street concerned was almost continental in its dedication to food. After much indecision, I ate at Oxfords - which seemed to be buzzing with happy diners and had a jolly, bistro-type atmosphere.

As usual, when the starter arrived I felt that an invisible short straw had somehow been shoved into my soggy little hand. Surely anyone can produce a decent bruschetta which after all, is little more than tomatoes on toast? These tomatoes were lava-hot and soggy, with that total absence of flavour that only the British seem to be able to achieve. The belly pork that followed was reasonable enough, being tender and moist, with a genuinely crispy layer of cracking on top. But what idiot decided that it should be served on a mound of potatoes and cabbage, with not a drop of gravy or any other kind of lubrication to help it down? The glass of wine I had ordered had to be re-ordered, twice. It only arrived finally after I had almost brought the waitress down with a flying tackle as she passed my table, en route to flirting with the party of blokes at the next one.

The next morning, I looked forward to breakfast only to find that the croissants were dry, hard and were obviously left over from the day before.

Sometimes it's hard to be Pollyanna.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Mayfair madness

Corrigan's, Mayfair - a wet Wednesday night in January

I have to confess that I lurked outside the door of Corrigan's for several minutes feeling like a fourth-former waiting outside the head's office for a bollocking. Perhaps it was the carpet on the steps leading up to the restaurant (does someone actually hoover it?), or maybe it was just that the place looked generally too posh and intimidating for a nondescript female of slender means (but not personage).
I took courage from the fact that the night was young (just after 6.30 pm to be precise) and the place deserted, and that in the midst of a credit crunch, surely a few bob would be welcome even from the likes of Wurzel Gummidge. So I sidled in as unobtrusively as possible and requested "a table for one". (I always attempt to utter these words in a tone of ringing confidence, but they invariably seem to emerge in a craven whisper that suggests I am terribly sorry to put them out, and do feel free to sit me down next to the gents' toilet, and prop the door open with the bog brush whilst they are at it.)
The impossibly glamorous blonde girl with the pen and the Bob Cratchit ledger studied the latter gravely and then told me that as long as I was out by nine I could be accommodated. I sneaked a look round the cavernous interior, as yet entirely deserted, and assured her that by 9 p.m. I would be tucked up in bed watching the telly. She tried not to laugh and handed me over to another sublimely soigné individual, who seated me at a perfectly nice table nowhere near a toilet, but next to a lamp with ostrich legs and feathers but no head. I wondered if ostrich featured on the menu.
Numerous waiters wandered round looking supremely efficient and starched to the eyeballs. You only had to glance at the entire staff to know, with certainly, that there was not a single of flake of dandruff between the lot of them. A lovely young French lad made an appearance, all smiles, and I felt I would have been quite happy to adopt him or failing that, coat him in thyme and breadcrumbs and serve him pink.
Just as I began to think I had been transported to Stepford, a few reassuring little cracks appeared. Human beings did work here after all! I had ordered fish soup, and it arrived followed by a plate of undistinguished amuse bouches. When my bouche was already giddy with enjoyment. And when I had almost finished, bread, with some creamy, luscious unsalted butter. Heavenly bread, which was said to be soda bread by one of the Stepford brigade, but was totally unlike the putty-coloured doorstop dished up by my Aunt Julia in County Mayo. This was dark brown and speckled, moist, moreish and possibly more addictive than the stuff people pay good money to shove up their noses. But it should have come earlier. Much earlier.
The fish soup itself was quite simply the best I have ever had, better than the many bowlsful I have polished off in St Malo, Cancale, and various parts of the Brittany coast. It came in a plain white bowl, a rusty-coloured pool of fishy intensity with a depth of crustacean flavours, a crabby, shellfishy concoction to make one give thanks for living on an island. Every spoonful sang in the mouth. With it there was a bowl of garlic mayonnaise and a couple of perfectly golden, crisp slices of toasted French bread (three would have been better). I tried to make it last, I resisted the urge to lift the whole bowl up to mouth level and slurp it down, and I even managed to swallow the shrieks of delight that threatened to emerge after each spoonful. But I failed to curb the idiot grin that spread across my face, a grin that I was completely unaware of until the couple at the next table started to look at me nervously and mutter. In fact, if the Stepfords had carried in George Clooney reclining on a silver salver and clad only in a strategically-placed crouton, I am afraid I would have reached for the crouton and slathered on the last spoonful of mayonnaise.
At this point the man himself (Corrigan, not Clooney) emerged from the kitchen and sat down with a group of people at the table across the room, a picture of bonhomie. Here was the creator of this paragon of soups, a soup I would gladly eat every day of my life and never tire of. I briefly contemplated making an offer of marriage, discounted it immediately and then weighed up the possibility of kidnapping. With a smaller, lighter chef it might have been an option but this man clearly enjoyed his food - as who would not?
The smiling French lad appeared and enquired if everything was all right. I told him that should I ever be on Death Row, this would be my last order the night before the needle. He looked mystified, as well he might, not being aware that plans had almost been afoot to incarcerate his boss and force him to produce fish soup for all eternity to satisfy the appetites of a crazed Polyanna.
With reluctance I turned to my game suet pudding. Not because it was a disappointment but because the fish soup was now but a memory. The pudding was actually a thing of beauty in its own right, but compared with the soup it was like following Jane Austen with Bridget Jones. It was light, and the thin but plump little mound of suet pastry - full of tender morsels of game - sat in a bowl of rich brown gravy. Very nice. The buttered kale was fine. But the urge to sandbag the chef and drag him back to a hidden lair equipped with a fully-fitted kitchen (and an endless supply of conical sieves) was fading. And a good job too. If I had been able to afford the partridge, it might have been next stop Holloway.
I passed on the desserts, fearing not just the calorie content but the possibility of a life of crime.
I drank a glass of Chablis with the soup and one of Minervois with the game pudding.
The bill came to fifty quid, which seemed quite a lot (but then I am a Yorkshirewoman).
Verdict: value for money - 8/10 service - 7/10 (marked down for the bizarre mix-up over the amuse bouches and the bread) quality of food - 9/10 overall (15/10 for the soup or up there with the angels)

Le Boudin Blanc, Shepherd Market - the following night

Busy, buzzing and much less formal than Corrigan's, this place was full to bursting by 7 pm on the Thursday night I ate there. They managed to squeeze me in and I ordered, guess what, fish soup, more to simply reassure myself that the sublime concoction of the previous night really had been that good.
This time the bread arrived smartly, and the soup followed without much of a delay. With it was some not very gutsy rouille, some rather bland gruyere and some croutons, and it was all perfectly OK. The soup was fine, exactly the same standard as I last had in Granville in a restaurant overlooking the harbour. But it did not make me want to jump on the table and do a song and dance routine.
The confit of duck with a chorizo cassoulet was also pretty good, the skin crispy, the duck meltingly tender. There was possibly a little too much of the cassoulet and the beans could have done with an extra half an hour of cooking, but overall it was a toothsome plateful. With a side order of spinach, and a couple of glasses of wine, I ended up with a bill of forty quid, which is probably good value for Mayfair. And the place itself was jolly, with bags of atmosphere and a buzz.
Verdict: value for money - 8/10 service - 9/10 quality of food - 8/10