Thursday, April 28, 2011

Great building – shame about the food!

Piazza by Anthony, the Corn Exchange, Leeds

A few years ago young Anthony Flinn came home to his Northern roots after a stint at El Bulli and opened a restaurant in the centre of the city. Praises were heaped upon him and before you could say “langoustine foam”, Leeds was riddled with Anthony outlets. Now he retains the original restaurant and operates a brasserie-style eating outlet on the lower level of the old Corn Exchange, flanked by delis selling cheese and charcuterie, chocolate and baked goods. There is a patisserie cafĂ© in the Victoria Quarter and he will cater for your wedding as well. So I was intrigued to sample some of his grub and recently spent an evening at Piazza by Anthony.

Which brings me to my first gripe. Why “piazza”? The basement of a building, even one open to a glass roof on a sunny evening, isn’t a piazza. A piazza is a square where the buzz of urban life is all around you and to be pedantic, it’s in Italy. A cavernous, empty restaurant, silent apart from the hushed whispers of diners reeling in shock at the bill, just doesn’t cut it. The food isn’t Italian either. The whole thing is a mystery.

The other mystery is why the place is still open. The night we ate there it was like the Marie Celeste but without the added interest of being on a boat. One other table was occupied and I really don’t know why, unless it was their first time as well.

Let’s start with the positives. Firstly, the venue itself is fantastic – light, spacious, and with a vaulted transparent roof above which has the feel of a cathedral – and it’s round. I’m not sure why I said “firstly” because there isn’t a secondly. Everything else goes downhill after that.

I will list the negatives in brief, because thinking about how much I paid makes me depressed, so I don’t want to linger on it. The menu is boring. There is hardly anything on it that you want to eat. This is probably a good thing, because when two of us found something we wanted to eat, they only had one of it. The waiter also began by telling us what they didn’t have, which is pretty unusual at six o’ clock in the evening in an empty restaurant. Service is terrible, though the waiters have a kind of jolliness that smacks of desperation – or farce. The prices are too high for what arrives on the plate. And the food is mediocre. (I have never been to El Bulli but I know bull when I am paying for it.)

A couple of us started off by sharing the charcuterie and cheese platter (“with bread baked in our bakery”) and at £8.95 I expected something fairly substantial. The words “charcuterie” and “platter” used in conjunction (along with the price) conjure up a feeling of generosity, an expectation of heaped servings of porky deliciousness to share out and gloat over. What arrived was a small plate with three slices of somewhat dry posh bread, three slivers of cheese and an artfully arranged fan of cold meat and salami on one side, filled out with rabbit food on the other. I think the meat might have been lovely but the wisps provided were just enough to suggest this without being able to confirm it. We had to cut the bread in half, ditto the cheese and meats, and I was so hungry afterwards that I was looking speculatively at the waiter’s leg.

Main courses sounded anything but interesting so I asked said waiter (leg intact) what he could recommend. He told me that he couldn’t recommend anything as waiters weren’t allowed to taste the food. We all looked gobsmacked at this and my jaw actually dropped. Two of us then opted for the pork chop with apple dauphinoise (£11.95), for the waiter to then return with the news that only one pork chop remained in the kitchen. So I switched to a sirloin steak for £15.95, which came with four tiny roasted cherry tomatoes. And nothing else. So I was glad I had ordered chips even though they cost an extra three quid. The steak was well-done and I had asked for it medium rare. I didn’t send it back in case they didn’t have another. I didn’t manage to taste the ham hock risotto to my right, but it looked watery and unpleasant and the person eating it was unimpressed. The pork chop across the table looked all right but uninspiring.

By this time I was exhausted at having to track down a waiter every time we wanted anything. They were all lurking in the bar area, laughing and joking, which reminded me of the nurses chattering at the nursing station in the hospital whilst my mother was dying alone on a side ward. We didn’t order a pudding as we had come to our senses by then, and I was looking forward to going home and making cheese on toast.

Verdict: value for money - 0/10; service - 2/10; quality of food - 2/10.

French leave – or is that leftovers?

The Marquis de Tomberlaine, Champeaux

I have eaten here before, with friends, and enjoyed the food though we had been disappointed that the mist had spoiled the wonderful view of the bay of Mont St Michel. So on a beautifully sunny Sunday lunchtime it seemed the perfect weather to have a meal overlooking the bay. But as a friend of mine is fond of remarking, that was another frog kissed. Or another Frog kissed, given the location.

The restaurant was packed, which is usually a good sign. No-one had any food, which was not. Especially as it was 1 p.m. Normally I find the service in France to be efficient but we sat for ten minutes without the offer of a drink or being given a menu. (We should have left then whilst we were winning.) Finally I managed to bring down a passing waitress with a tackle and we got a couple of kirs. Then we managed to get a menu by much the same means. At the table next to us on my right were a pair of formidable French ladies of a certain age who did not have a menu and had been there longer than us. There was much tutting from mesdames, which sounds a lot more condemnatory when done in French, which had the desired effect of making menus appear.

The windows were wide open to let in some fresh air and the deafening noise and fumes from many passing motorbikes thundering by on the coast road outside. Mont St Michel was invisible behind a haze of what appeared to be smog. The lovely old dining room had been redecorated so as to strip out any vestige of its history apart from the massive fireplace, which looked to be holding up the end wall and had been grudgingly retained.

There was a lot of flitting around of waitresses in an ineffectual way, up and down the packed tables. They brought cutlery of different kinds, then changed plates and place settings, and generally looked very active and stressed whilst not achieving very much. Finally we managed to get one to take the order. After a good twenty minutes, a starter appeared on the other side of the table from me which looked OK (but which was so unmemorable that I can’t remember it) but made me feel glad that I had chosen the fish soup. Which did not arrive. Eventually a large lady in very tight trousers emerged from the direction of the kitchen, breathing heavily and bearing a large copper pan with a ladle sticking out of it. She stopped at my side and grabbed the handle of the ladle purposefully, then looked at my place setting. No bowl. There was another barrage of tutting from my right and mesdames and I exchanged shakes of the head. They still had no food.

Finally I had fish soup. It was good, but not great, and barely hot. The rouille was fine, but unremarkable, as was the gruyere. What a palaver for not very much. Next door’s food had arrived but it was tasted and then tutted at. We all gobbled up our starters and tried to fill up on bread, which was a good thing as it was nearly an hour before any of us got any more food.

My main course was lamb cooked two ways – which turned out to mean, both badly. A couple of tiny cutlets were flanked by some messy bits of leg steak, thrown onto the plate anyhow. It looked like roadkill but roadkill would have been a lot cheaper and probably not as salty. Though come to think of it, winter roadkill would have grit salt on it. Maybe it was roadkill after all. At any rate, some of it was completely raw in the middle and bloody, and other bits were grey and overcooked. It was greasy and pretty much inedible. Served with it, and with all the main courses, was a horrible concoction of mashed potatoes wrapped in overcooked courgette slices. This looked and tasted like leftovers that someone had made a valiant attempt to disguise.

Mesdames had ordered the same main course as me. This time the tutting reached a crescendo and the waitress was called. The ladies gesticulated at their plates, where the roadkill was congealing slowly. This was not restaurant food, they would never serve such bad food at home, it was a disgrace, far too salty, badly cooked. They spoke sadly, with shaking heads, taking it in turns – one would explain the horridness of the food whilst the other would tut. The waitress stood miserably in front of them, muttering apologies. I left almost all of my plateful and told the waitress that it was inedible and oversalted. Mesdames tutted in agreement. The large lady in the tight trousers could be seen to glance nervously at our little corner as she puffed about the room.

Mesdames had chocolate mousse for pudding, and cleared the plate with a minimum of tutting. I had ice cream, based on the assumption that it would be bought in and therefore edible.

It was almost 4 pm when we left and we passed on coffee, having neglected to bring any pyjamas. I paid the bill with my Marks and Spencer credit card to get a few points on it and at least make myself feel that the experience was not entirely negative – at the equivalent of over 80 quid, I might be able to buy some French knickers to remind me never to go there again. There was no apology or offer of discount.

Verdict: value for money - 0/10; service - 0/10; quality of food - 1/10.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Recent roundup

Time to catch up....April 2011

It seems like a very long time since I updated this blog and I have eaten an awful lot of meals since then. I have also been working like a maniac, which has stopped me from writing them up. So here is a quick update….

Cibo, Summertown, Oxford

I ate here on a rainy night in what should have been early spring, but was more like late winter. It was early evening but there was a buzzy atmosphere and a few diners who were obviously regulars. My table had an excellent view of the pizza oven and what came out of it looked pretty good, so I opted for that and a glass of the house red. The pizza was as good as I have had anywhere (including Italy) – crisp thin base, well-flavoured tomato sauce and generous shavings of prosciutto, with a scattering of artichokes. The salad I ordered would have been lovely of someone had remembered to dry the leaves before putting them in the bowl – there was a pool of water in the bottom. I don’t remember what I paid but it seemed very reasonable.

The following night I went into town and ate the Dine with Wine menu at Brasserie Blanc. This was phenomenal value for money, especially as I ordered a glass of champagne for a miniscule extra amount, then topped it off with a glass of house red. Lovely well-flavoured broth, chunky vegetables and fresh bread a butter, followed by meltingly tender casseroled beef with an extra portion of (rather boring) creamed leeks. This little lot came to less than twenty-five quid and I left a happy woman.

The third night I didn’t fare so well – it was back to Summertown (I was staying there and my feet were sore by the end of the third day!) where I went into Portobello just because I liked the look of it. I had a perfectly respectable slice of terrine which would have been fine if there had been another two slices of it. Then I opted for the steak, with bearnaise sauce. This too a while coming and when it arrived, it was perfectly cooked (medium rare) but was cold – in contrast to the bowl of fries, which were hot. It was so cold, in fact, that I sent it back. The fresh steak came and was fine – but by then I had lost my fries, having piled most of them onto the previous plate, which had been whisked away. Did I want more? You bet I did – but did I want to wait while they were cooked, by which time the steak would be cold again. I left feeling disgruntled, especially as the bill was considerably more than I had paid at M. Blanc’s place.

Over the past couple of months I have dropped in on the Bistrot Pierre in Harrogate a few times, not least because the staff are cheery and helpful and the early bird menu is good value. But regretfully I shan’t be dropping in any more mainly because the place is so inconsistent in the quality of its meat. Now, Desperate Dan I ain’t, but I am an unrepentant carnivore and these days there is no excuse for poor quality beef, in particular. The first time I went to BP I had the steak and my companion, as they say in the ghastly local newspaper food reviews, had the same. His bit of beef was lovely – tender, perfectly cooked, a toothsome morsel all round. Mine was supposed to be the same (we had ordered identically) but looked totally different – a thick lump of what looked like topside rather than rump, which the knife simply made no impression on. I wrestled with it until I managed to saw through a piece and found it was impossible to chew. I sent it back and got a new one that was the real thing.

I assumed that there had been a mix-up in the kitchen and someone had mistaken the beef for the bourguignon for a bit of steak (OK, no chef worth his salt would do that, but let’s given them the benefit). A fortnight later, we go again and this time I had the bourguignon itself –and lurking amongst the tender chunks of succulent beef was another slab of dry, tough shoe leather. How bizarre. The third time, I was the lucky one but my poor friend had a piece of steak that was tender at one end and tough at the other. So we have called it a day….I have no idea what is going on in the kitchen there, but perhaps they are recycling the sous chef’s trainers when they get low on beef.