Tuesday, September 06, 2011

They’ve got guts, these Loiners….(but are they eating them?)

Red Chilli, Leeds

A Loiner is someone from Leeds. Bet you didn’t know that! And if you don’t know about the small but growing restaurant chain that is Red Chilli, now is the time to find out.

Red Chilli is a Chinese restaurants full of Chinese people so you know it’s the real thing. You also know it’s the real thing when you read the menu and it makes the exponents of “nose to tail eating” look like a bunch of wusses.

Forget kidneys or pig’s trotters - this is the real, real thing. Stir-fried pig’s intestine? How many would you like? Five-spice pig’s head is another option, or if you are a fan of surf and turf, you could go for the shredded chicken with jellyfish and spring onion.

For red meat eaters, there’s a stew of sliced ox heart, ox tongue, ox tripe, and “Pork’s Blood” (sic) with beansprouts. So there’s one of your five a day. And four of your worst nightmares. I’m never quite sure whether frog’s legs count as meat or fish but Big Grandma might know – her chilli sauce is all over them on the “home-style” dishes section. There’s not much for vegetarians on the menu but they could try the black fungus with spring onion and garlic. (They could, but I doubt that they will.)

I’m a bit worried about Big Grandma now that I’ve taken her name in vain but at least she won’t know who I am – there were seven of us eating there on Saturday evening and the place was buzzing. We had the crispy duck with pancakes for starters along with some very slippery pork dumplings which were gingery and moreish.

For the mains, we all failed to go the whole hog and copped out by ordering the less scary stuff. Sliced pork belly with chilli was paper-thin pork, all the fat rendered out, deliciously spicy and not at all what we expected – I had imagined an unctuous mass of braised belly in a soupy sauce, but this was even better. A bowl of sliced beef fillet crispy fried in Cantonese sauce was possibly the best dish on the table, the texture of the meat satisfyingly crunchy, with slices of red and green pepper providing a counterpoint. Stir-fried mutton with spring onion was tender and with a depth of flavour which stood up well to the robust saucing.

A bowl of sliced duck with sliced leeks in hoisin sauce was good but not up to the standard of the other dishes (and we chose badly in ordering it, having had the hoisin with duck for a starter) whilst another of chicken was unremarkable.

Portions were generous, even for side dishes such as the soft noodles with beansprouts, and a dish of bok choy (which was slippery enough for a piece to shoot out of the grip of my chopsticks and fly sideways to the floor).

Utterly sated, we passed on the offer of pudding but some of us descended like locusts on the plate of orange segments offered as a (free) palate-cleanser.

Abstention from alcohol is always rewarded by a surprisingly small bill, and tonight was no exception. After several pints of beer in a couple of Leeds city centre pubs, we were all happy to stick with either Chinese tea or water. Consequently, the bill came in at just under £100 for six adults and a very well-behaved child, excluding the tip. Which was generous, like the portions....

Verdict: value for money - 10/10; service - 8/10; quality of food - 8/10.

Red Chilli on Urbanspoon

Monday, September 05, 2011

A weekend on Holy Island - Eric the Lead and friends.

The attraction, I assured my bemused companion, was that when the tide went out, we would be virtually alone on the island. Free to wander the seashore watching the sun descend into the sea behind the castle on the headland, against a sky of apricot and gold. Free to wander into one of the pubs in the village for a quiet pint and a chat with the locals. Free to listen to birdsong and the plaintive cry of seals massed out on the sandbanks….

So it was that we drove north, and further north, and turned right just before we got to Scotland.

And it could have been like that.

Indeed, it would have been like that if there hadn’t been several hundred Vikings camped out there, intent on pillaging and (dare we say it post-Tottenham?) looting, courtesy of English Heritage. Viking men, Viking women and Viking children (the latter clearly wishing they had been allowed to bring their Playstations) – and even the occasional Viking dog.

And with the Vikings came the spectators, their cars clogging up every little road, path and layby, their children shrieking and begging for ice-creams.

During the daytime, when the causeway was open, the Vikings did their Viking thing. They invaded the priory just like they did in AD 793 (when they must have been a lot thinner and consequently faster, or the monks would have had time to get away – even if it meant waiting for the tide to go out). They roared around fighting each other inside - admission charges applying, so that the massed ranks of spectators simply crossed to the opposite hill where they could get a free viewpoint. They set up a camp within the walls, cooking Viking food and making Viking artefacts. (I can’t vouch for the authenticity of these things as (a) I was too tight to pay to get in and (b) don’t remember my previous life as Pollyanna the Berserker.) Then, when the place was an island again, they were off-duty and did what they wanted. Which for most of them meant continuing to be Vikings, even though some of them (the thinner ones) had pink hair and the odd piercing.

There was no getting away from them. All day, their bellows drowned out the seals who gave up plaintively crying and shut up completely, their little faces glumly turning away from the racket. At night, they invaded the pubs so that almost every seat was filled, and amply filled, with a great big wobbly Viking arse. They used up nearly every glass in the bar – though some had brought their own drinking horns, which was obviously a point-scoring exercise.

Point-scoring and the odd bit of gentle pillaging was clearly the only exercise they ever got. Only the children and the younger ones seemed to be of normal size. The rest were not just clinically obese, they were so whale-like that one could not imagine the size of the loom used to spin their authentic garments. A loom that big would have to be housed in an aircraft hanger – one normally used for Jumbo jets.

Their desire for authenticity did not extent to food. Almost without exception, they opted for chips and I saw one (a Vegan Viking?) eat an aubergine. Had they no shame? Surely they should have brought plentiful supplies of sheeps’ stomachs and oatmeal with them?

But I digress. We ate two dinners on Holy Island, fortunately not in the company of Vikings, and both were memorable. Both were also very fishy, and none the worse for that.

The first dinner was at Café Beangoose, a tiny restaurant run by what I imagine to be enthusiastic amateurs rather than professional caterers. The service was a little nervous, the prices were confident – in fact, over-confident. We both had the same thing, a crab salad followed by sea trout. The crab salad was sublime; quenelle-shaped mounds of sparklingly fresh crabmeat, beautifully and simply dressed, with a few segments of pink grapefruit being its only adornment, and a leaf or two of greenery which was frankly superfluous.

The sea trout was fresh and well-cooked, though perhaps had been allowed half a minute too long in the pan. However, whoever plated it up either had a weird sense of humour or disliked me on sight. The piece of fish was placed on top of a heap of sweet pickled cucumber and then surmounted by three cylindrical dark brown shapes which would be instantly recognisable to any dog owner or street cleaner. Fortunately, they turned out on closer inspection to be potatoes (Pink Fir Apple, perhaps?) cooked in their skins and left whole. (Were there no knives in the kitchen?) But it was a nasty shock. The combination of textures and flavours did not delight – the sweet-sour cucumber pickle dominated the dish, and the sea trout and potatoes cried out for a sauce of some kind.

One of us had a pudding – the chocolate brownie - and it was OK. With two glasses of wine and a bottle of beer, the bill came in at £67. At least the place was Viking-free.

The following night we ate at the Manor House Hotel. We had crab again, and perhaps here the Beangoose had the edge; the mixed salad plonked on the side of the plate suggested that little or no thought had been given to how the flavour of the beautifully-fresh crustacean could be best enhanced. But it was nevertheless delicious. And the smiling Czech waitress was efficient and relaxed at the same time.

The fish and chips that followed were superb, though it was a pity that the chips were frozen. But the freshness of the fish and the lightness of the batter made up for this. And the fact that there was a decent pint of beer on handpump was a real advantage. The damage was a full twenty quid less than the previous night with the same drinks, so that was cheering too. And again, the dining room was full of normal-sized people (if the word “normal” is still allowed) who were not wearing homespun and brandishing drinking horns. Best of all was a truly breath-taking view of the castle and the sea. With not a longship in sight.

Verdict:

Café Beangoose
value for money - 6/10; service - 7/10; quality of food - 7/10.

Manor House Hotel
value for money - 9/10; service - 8/10; quality of food - 7/10.




A problem shared.....

Brio, Hornbeam Park, Harrogate

Hornbeam Park is a business park on the outskirts of Harrogate and the unlikely setting for a buzzing (perhaps too buzzing?) Italian restaurant of the kind beloved by families with young children. Lots of young children. You have been warned. If you are a primary school teacher, avoid this place like your would avoid the Early Learning Centre. If you are a Grumpy Old Woman (and I confess to having tendencies in this line myself) be sure to take a double dose of tolerance tablets before leaving home and a deep breath before opening the car-showroom style glass doors and submerging yourself in decibel hell.

In fairness, some of the families do demonstrate a vague awareness that other people are present as well as their own little darlings, though they make few concessions for these unfortunates. A few are downright boorish and inconsiderate. On one earlier occasion, I witnessed a family group of three generations create such a mess that once they had left, the staff had to move the table and get out a sweeping brush and a dustpan. The two children had also climbed over adjoining chairs and left the dirty marks of their adorable little feet, clad in designer trainers, all over the surfaces.

Waiters seem to take it all in their stride and are unfailingly charming, friendly and show no sign of gritted teeth. Unlike some customers, like me, who would happily have battered the whole family to death with a cold calzone.

The food is what you would expect of an Italian restaurant of this kind. There is pasta, pizza, a reasonable range of daily specials and a choice of puddings. But so far I have not had a bad meal (and I have been there on perhaps five occasions) nor met a surly waiter. The service is not always completely efficient but it slips only rarely. But what prompted me to write this review was the last experience I had there, in the company of an old friend who is not quite a vegetarian (she eats fish) but might as well be.

We both fancied pizza but we both hankered after pasta as well. Not hungry enough for a starter after a very late lunch of home-smoked trout, home-grown tomatoes and cucumber and some very dense chocolate cake, we thought a shared main course would do the trick. After a fair bit of bickering, we settled on a dish of Pasta al Sugo Piccante (pasta quills, tomato sauce, peppers, black olives, touch of chilli) and a pizza Margherita with ham and artichokes – the ham on one side, the artichokes on the other.

The waiter had obviously arrived in time to hear some of these deliberations and asked if we intended to share. Yes, definitely.

We had been tucking in to the bread and olives, with some not-too-salty tapenade whilst the discussion had been going on, and glugging some very reasonable Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.

Then two bowls of pasta arrived and the offer of plenty of parmesan. Had they got it wrong? No, because immediately afterwards the pizza appeared, neatly sliced , on two plates. The pasta was neither swamped in sauce, nor insufficiently dressed with it. The sauce was zinging with tomatoey flavour and a chilli punch. The pizza was thin, light and crisp.

We were happy. Even the commotion at the next table seemed more bearable than previously; the small boy sitting in the middle of it squirmed in embarrassment as his friends sang Happy Birthday, and we laughed. We laughed even more when the waiters started another chorus, to embarrass him all over again.

So they do get their own back occasionally…..though the cold Calzone would still be my preferred option.

Verdict: value for money - 8/10; service - 8/10; quality of food - 8/10.
Ambience: 5/10