Buttered parsnips

Put that in your snap tin? No thanks!

2009-09-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

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)

Catching up time....

2009-08-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Mayfair madness

2009-01-23T09:36:00.000-08:00

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

Christmas 2008

2008-12-26T07:12:00.000-08:00

Roast at Borough Market

There were a lot of happy, smiling Christmas revellers at Roast on the day of my visit and it wasn't long before I was one of them. As a fully paid-up carnivore, there was nothing not to like about the place, and plenty of lovely meaty choices to go at. Though I did start with crabcakes and squid, and jolly nice they were too, the squid being very rapidly cooked in a crunchy, crispy coating so that it was perfectly tender. I hate the overcooked rings of inner tube normally dished up as squid but this was the real deal and the crabcakes were yummy little morsels too.
I am happy to say that the belly pork (yes, how predictable I am) was pretty much up to my own standard, tender, moist and rich, cooked so that the fat had melted away and the crackling was, well, cracking. I can also report that the partridges were perfectly cooked as colleague to the left of me ordered them and was somewhat overfaced by the two that appeared so I helped out. There is nothing quite like gnawing on a partridge leg to get one in a Christmassy mood, not a pear tree in sight and a bloody good job too.

Side dishes of veg were universally liked, the red cabbage being a particular favourite. When it came to puddings most of us were too stuffed to even contemplate the menu but I managed a few darkly degenerate spoonfuls of chocolate pot, again to help out a work colleague (I call it teambuilding myself - and now have the waistband to prove it) and it packed enough of a cocoa punch to satisfy even me.

I didn't pay or even see the bill so it would be unfair to give marks out of ten, but I will simply conclude by saying that if anyone out there is going to Roast and wants an extra body to make up the numbers, GET IN TOUCH NOW.

And the view from the windows, no matter where you sit, is great.

Spa town blues

2008-12-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

Oxford Street Brasserie, Harrogate

Apropos the last review, these were the very waiting staff. A young lad who was keen to please but seemed unsure of himself, and a women who gave the impression that she couldn't give a toss, quite frankly, are not the best combination for a restaurant with these prices. Suffice to say that a goat's cheese salad was supplied by a caprine so Lilliputian that one almost needed a microscope to find it on the plate. When it arrived (thankfully not on the table setting in front of me) we all had to resist the urge to burst into guffaws - and then tears. No wonder the miniscule bread rolls disappeared instantly (and were not replaced until asked for, repeatedly).
A ham hock terrine (£6.50) was not particularly hammy or in any way memorable (though at least there was more than one mouthful of it). The only starter that was clearly passing muster was a risotto with lobster or some such, and I vaguely remember that it was the most expensive one ordered. My slow-cooked belly pork was OK, but longer cooking still would have rendered out the remaining fat and made the pork more tender. In short, the stuff I cook at home is miles better. And it costs a fraction of the fourteen quid charged here.
The beef fillet at 25 quid was supposed to be served with truffles but they were of the shy and retiring variety, though the beef itself apparently was "tender". Ah, tenderness - we all need some of that. But doesn't a woman expect that bit more at the top end of the market? At 25 pounds for a portion I would have wanted mine to stride out of the sea like Daniel Craig and transport me with delight. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I have lost the will to describe any more of this meal as it was a less than delightful experience and one that I am happy not to revisit (especially when the bill arrived and we spotted a charge of £5.50 for the initial tiny rolls with butter - which was taken off the bill after spluttering indignation).
As the place was almost empty I would have though a bit of cosseting of customers might have been the order of the day but the milk of human kindness is not the USP here. In fairness, part of the problem was that all four diners were accustomed to eating in France, where bread is offered freely (in every sense of the word) and not doled out as though there had been a massive run on the local bread-bank and only shareholders need apply.
Disappointing.

Verdict: value for money - 3/10 service - 4/10 quality of food - 6/10

More North of the Border

2008-12-11T07:30:00.001-08:00

Two Fat Ladies, Glasgow

A friend who works in Glasgow booked us in here for the earlybird dinner and very glad I was that she did. At £16 for two courses it's not the cheapest offer in town but my grilled sardine fillets were succulent, tasty and fresh, and their pesto dressing was fragrant - though I could have done with a bit more, given the quality of the bread I used to mop it up. Scottish Spice's mushroom tart with goat's cheese was pronounced to be excellent, though I hardly noticed it as I was too interested in my own plate.
The roast breast of chicken in port jus was quite simply the best I have had since the Goods Shed in Canterbury. Tender, full of flavour, perfectly cooked and moist, is how I would have described it if I had not been so busy gobbling it down before shamelessly using my pudding spoon to slurp up all of the posh gravy (OK, jus) which was simply too good to leave on the plate. And the veg was tasty as well - the carrots actually tasted like carrots used to taste when I was a child back before the Black Death.
Scottish Spice was on a diet so did the sensible thing and missed out on a main course, and zoomed straight into pudding with what looked like a pretty tempting take on that weird Scottish staple, cranachan. I passed on the pudding, having wiped my plate with bread to mop up the last tiny drops of the jus/gravy. And very fine bread it was too, all the more toothsome for not receiving a credit on the bill.
Adding on the wine and a bottle of water brought our joint bill up to 47 quid but I was heartened to see that instead of simply charging us for a couple of two-course earlybirds, they had done the decent thing and charged the starter/pudding meal off the a la carte. Without being told to do so. Who says the Scots are mean?
Service was friendly, charming even, helpful and unobtrusive. Though at the time we were there, it was not exactly bustling. But then again I have known places just as quiet, with waiting staff so keen to avoid eye contact that I have almost had to bring them down with a rugby tackle.
When can I go to Glasgow again? It can't be soon enough.

Verdict: value for money - 8/10 service - 9/10 quality of food - 9/10

French Leave

2008-11-23T08:11:00.000-08:00

November 2008

Le Relais de la Poste, St Hilaire du Harcouët, Manche

The Wednesday market at St Hilaire is more subdued than usual, probably because the town recently hosted its annual St Martin fair, which is the second largest in Normandy and enough to exhaust the entire population, never mind the market traders. It still puts a typical English market to shame and despite the grey and grizzly weather, the stallholders are busy grilling sausages and chops over charcoal fires, so that by the time I have worked my way round to the main road again, my stomach is protesting its emptiness.
The Relais de la Poste is one of those bourgeois, comfortable and unpretentious hotels that are so much a feature of French life and yet apparently unknown in Britain. Monsieur le Patron has been bustling through the dining room ever since I have been going there, meeting and greeting and showing diners to their tables. Two serious youngsters in spotless white shirts serve the food, supervised by a waitress of even more serious mien who makes sure they do it exactly right.
I have the fish soup, which I have had many times before, from a menu priced at just over 18 euros. For a little over 14 euros I could have started with the avocado and prawns, which is always a whole, perfectly ripe avocado, sliced across the plate and amply guarded by an array of small pink prawns, with a couple of larger, whiskery ones still in their shells, and lashings of mayonnaise. The menu du jour starts with warm goat's cheese salad, which looks great as well when my neighbours order it. But as I ate a variation of it the day before I go for the fish soup, with grated gruyere and crispy croutons, and a pot of creme fraiche because this is Normandy and the place is groaning with cream. There is a mini tureen of this soup all for me, with a ladle to spoon it into my bowl and I can't resist having two large helpings. It is a russet brown, satisfyingly fishy and with more than a hint of crabby depth and density.
Also on the menu du jour is pot au feu and this too is popular, great slices of beef with carrots and potatoes served with little pots of sauces to add some piquancy. But on my menu there is fillet of porc with sauce Normande, a creamy, cidery pond in which the slices of perfectly cooked pork jostle each other for room, flanked by slices of caramelised apple. Saute potatoes and a heap of tiny courgette cubes cooked with tomato and red peppers mean that by the end of the plateful I am regretfully having to turn down my favourite pudding, the white and dark chocolate mousse. I have eaten a hell of a lot of chocolate mouse and I think my own is pretty good but this one takes some beating. So does the Tarte Tatin, but there is no way that can be accommodated now. As I only have a kir to start with and no wine, I feel pretty virtuous, and clock up a bill in the mid-twenties.

Verdict: value for money - 9/10 service - 9/10 quality of food - 9/10

The Lion d'Or, Fougerolles du Plessis, Mayenne

At 11 euros for a four-course lunch this has to be the best value anywhere given that the menu has a good choice and the price includes red wine or cider. The first course is a self-service buffet and there is an impressive array of salads, pate and cold meat, and fishy offerings. The trick here is not to over-eat, however tempting it might be to have just one more prawn with a dollop of mayonnaise.
There is usually a good selection of meat dishes with one fish and a pasta, weirdly all served with either chips, green salad or flageolet beans (in the winter. like now) or haricots (in the summer). I say weirdly because watching someone tuck into a dish of lasagne with flageolets on the side looks quite bizarre.
On Thursday the choice was roast pork, salmon fillet, pork chop, lamb chop, lasagne, andouillettes or confit de canard for a small supplement. So no need to dither there, then, as I am a sucker for duck (try saying that ten times after glugging down most of a bottle of cidre bouche and you will soon come unstuck and possibly bleeped out). The confit was rich, tender and dropping off the bone and I was unable to stop myself picking up the latter and nibbling every last vestige off with my teeth, no doubt looking like a mediaeval peasant whilst doing so.
The cheeseboard is left on the table for you to help yourself from half a dozen different cheeses, before you heave up your considerably increased bulk to totter across to the chiller cabinet full of puddings. The chocolate mousse here is a winner as well but today there was none, though there was plenty of other stuff instead, including some rather toothsome coffee profiteroles.
By 12.30 the dining room was full and people had spilled over into the bar. The entire room - and it is a large one - was nimbly served by a couple of waitresses who skipped around the place looking incredibly competent and never getting an order wrong.

Verdict: value for money - 10/10 service - 9/10 quality of food - 8/10

Who put the lights out?

2008-09-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

Glasgow Malmaison Hotel

It’s that time of year again for standing in the Scottish Exhibition Centre and imagining the varicose veins forming in each leg. At least at the end of the day one can head back into town and a bit of R and R. The Malmaison in Glasgow fancies itself as a posh hotel but the position it occupies on a bus route, for a service that seem to operate for most of the night, leaves something to be desired. And the double glazing does not do its job.

Nevertheless the food is better than most hotel grub and so it should be at the prices they charge. The first night I ate from the local set menu priced at around 13 quid for two courses (no point trying to check on their website as the link to the .pdf never works) and was pleasantly surprised. The warm crusty bread, butter and tapenade were too tempting not to gobble up and by the time the cream of white onion soup arrived, it was all gone and more had to be ordered. The soup was perfectly smooth and comforting but the parmesan crouton was light on the latter – do be a bit more generous when wielding the grater, chef, or you may as well not bother at all.

The main course portion of slow-cooked shoulder of lamb, seemed to me to be on the stingy side but that could have been because the slice that arrived was so delicious in its soft, sweet succulence that it was simply not enough. The Puy lentils were fine, though not necessarily the best pairing possible, but the sauce was so yummy that the last of the bread was employed to sop it up. A bottle of Australian Shizaz was daylight robbery at 28 quid, but went down very nicely nonetheless.

The following night we went for the a la carte and I started with a salad of pan fried duck, with orange and fennel. If the fennel was present it was in hiding, and the orange only put its hand up at the end, but the salad still went down very well. I suspect the duck to have been cooked quite rare, which was not a problem to me, and the skin was of the requisite crispiness that it could be eaten with pleasure. More squeamish diners could have peered at it in vain, as the light in the basement restaurant is so low that Burke and Hare could be prowling round the outer edges waiting to bag an exiting diner, and no-one would spot them. I usually feel it obligatory to eat steak in Scotland just to see what all the fuss is about, and the medium rare rump tasted as though it was just that (though if I could have verified this by sight I would have felt, inexplicably, more pleasure still). The ‘frites’ were advertised as ‘hand cut’ and were crispy enough for one to shoot off the plate and off into the outer darkness a foot away – probably bringing down Burke or Hare or both. The béarnaise sauce was excellent in taste and consistency, with a real flavour of tarragon, but could have done with being slightly warmer – all right, we don’t want scrambled eggs but it was almost stone cold.

Service both at dinner and at breakfast (you would not believe it but 159 quid does not buy you as much as a bacon butty) was a bit hit and miss. The first night it was particularly slow and Colleague was given lamb rather than risotto (someone had “pressed the wrong button”) so I had almost wolfed mine down before hers finally arrived. The first morning at breakfast we almost had to rugby-tackle a waiter to get an order of toast, whilst the next day it arrived almost immediately but was burnt.

Verdict: value for money - 7/10 service - 6/10 quality of food - 8/10

More of the Great North Road

2008-09-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

Aagrah, Doncaster

This branch of the well-known chain is still run by an extended family based in and around Shipley, and has a reputation for consistency. The staff are unfailingly charming and easy on the eye, and the whole place has an air of comfort, confidence and high staff morale that is a winning combination. Not to mention the food, which is pretty damn good. As it has to be for this place to survive, tucked away up the old Great North Road well out of town - and possibly none the worse for that, given that Doncaster centre after dark can resemble a painting by Hieronymus Bosch but with fatter protagonists.
On this autumnal Sunday I was so hungry that I had to go for the buffet (served from 4.30 p.m. only on Sundays - the usual menu is available from 6). At £11.95 there might be cheaper alternatives around but this has to be the best deal in town because of the quality of the spicing and ingredients, not to mention the choice of what is on offer.
Vegetarians might feel themselves short-charged but there is still an option available at every course and plenty of non-meat or fish dishes on the main menu.
The starter choice was onion bhajis (generous semi-circles of crisp onion slices rather than the usual doughy ball), pieces of boneless chicken thigh in a tangy marinade, shami kebabs and fish. As Dervla Kirwan sultrily announces, "This is not just food..." well, this is Aagrah food, and the kebabs are utterly devoid of a hint of grease or gristle, and everything is so gloriously moreish than it is impossible to resist another slightly blackened char-grilled morsel of chicken. The trick here is to arrive right at the start of the buffet so that the food has not been steaming inside covered dishes and the stuff that should be crisp, still is.
Salads are excellent too, in large bowls with yoghurt dressings and chutneys on the side.
Moving on to mains I pass on the Chicken Korma though it is one of the best around and totally unlike the sugary, sickly preparation that passes for the same in most other 'Indian' restaurants. A Lamb Achar is meltingly tender and has enough of the underlying taste of pickle to cut through the richness of the meat. A Chilli Chicken dish is hot without being fiery, and the chicken itself retains some moistness. A rather nondescript dal comes off second-best to a mushroom aloo which packs a punch and has the most delicious waxy new potatoes. Perfectly cooked basmati rice is offered along with slices of pillowy naan bread so of course I help myself to both.
Puddings look tempting but by now I am forced to remind myself of the fate of Mr Creosote so regretfully waddle to the bar to get the bill and complement the lads on their new uniforms (very fetching and a tighter fit than the old ones).
Verdict: value for money - 10/10 service - 9/10 quality of food - 9/10

Plated not slated

2008-09-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

Ilkley

Martha and Vincent

There is sometimes a fine line between innovatory taste and daft pretension and I am not quite sure which side of it Martha and Vincent lies. I refer not to the food, which on the day I had lunch there was perfectly acceptable, but by the bizarre idea of serving it on what appeared to be slate roof tiles rather than china. Glass is bad enough, and I always feel sorry for the poor restaurateurs who have made the mistake of investing in stacks of glass plates which inevitably develop chips and cracks around the outside edge. The last time I ate from one of these I found myself searching for slivers of glass in the food and hoping that I was not going to end up in outpatients.
But first the bread rolls, tiny and obviously homemade, arrived on a slate and then my starter of chicken liver parfait was dished up on a larger version. The smooth pate was quite delicious, and the toasted brioche slices cosying up to it were warm, fresh and precisely and evenly browned in a way that gladdened the heart, and made one think of someone watching over the grill for the perfect moment of toastiness to arrive. A portion of compote of figs in a side dish was perhaps a little too generous (leaving one hoping that the remainder did not go back into the jar), but it had the right spicy pungency even though it was a little on the sweet side. The sad little collection of leaves completing the slate were an irrelevance, especially as they were unanointed by any hint of dressing.
Mackerel is not something I order very often, having been disappointed in the past, especially in England. But the fillet of fish which arrived next was fresh, toothsome and perfectly cooked, with not a bone to be seen (the careful soul in the kitchen had been busy with his tweezers). The "veloute froth" was creamy, and light, and well, frothy, and the pile of green beans under the fish were surrounded by tiny confit tomatoes which were a perfectly acidic foil to the richness of the mackerel. Thankfully, it was served on a white china plate.
I ate from the set fixed price lunch which at £13.95 is a bit more than the usual budget eats but this is Ilkley and a prime position on The Grove, so there is bound to be a supplement for snob value.
Overall, a good job well done, Martha or Vince or both. But why not save the slates for roof repairs and nip out to British Home Stores for a budget box of crockery?

Verdict - value for money 8/10 service - 7/10 quality of food 8/10

C'est la vie...en Harrogate

2008-09-15T05:23:00.000-07:00

Chez La Vie, Harrogate

I recently tried to explain the name of this restaurant to a French dairy farmer and had to give up in the face of utter mystification. In fact, the name only works for an English-speaker and not very well then. But Chez La Vie itself works pretty well as a restaurant and has become a Harrogate stalwart, never surprising or innovative but utterly reliable. It does a fixed price lunch and early bird menu beloved of those eating on a budget and at £9.50 for two courses and £11.50 for three is as budget as it gets and très bon marché at that.
So I knew what would be on offer on the 'easy lunch' menu - exactly the same as on the 'early bird' and most of the choices have featured on both so long that they might as well be written on tablets of stone. The a la carte is similarly unchanging - this is not the place to come for a seasonally-adjusted tasting menu. If CLV was the only game in town, this could get seriously boring but Harrogate has more restaurants than locals can cope with, and the spare is mopped up by the thriving conference trade.
Dark wood, white tablecloths and baskets of sliced baguette feel very French, even though the excellent bread is accompanied, English style, with little pots of butter. The waiters are French as well, though over the Channel they would never be offering us Pinot Grigio as an aperitif.
My French Onion Soup could have been slightly hotter but nevertheless had been flashed for long enough under a grill so that the gruyere on top was thoroughly melted. The soup was intense, dark and satisfying (though possibly very slightly over-seasoned) and the onions had been cooked long enough to melt into sweetness.
The duck leg that followed was crisp on the outside, richly moist on the inside and falling off the bone. Just what a duck leg is meant to be, the epitome of duck leg, in fact, and though the Madeira sauce it was resting on did not particularly taste of Madeira, it was a good sauce. Maybe not the best sauce to serve with a duck leg, but the only one on offer so I used the last of the bread to mop up the plate.
The real weakness of Chez La Vie is its insistence of serving frozen chips and peas with everything. It is possible to order side dishes and most people do, but this somehow spoils the whole effect of being able to eat two courses for under a tenner - the charm of which gladdens the heart of every Yorkshireman and woman, and to which the lunching classes of Harrogate are by no means immune. Is it impossible to have a few saute potatoes on the side, with perhaps a spoonful of some vegetable morsel that is in season - not boiled like a la Anglaise but messed about with in that way the French have - a puree of carrots, for example, or a gratin of courgettes and tomatoes. But at least CLV would never present its diners with that hideous English invention, the 'selection of vegetables' - the horrible kidney-shaped side dish of steamed vegetables that all taste the same (and why - because they have all been boiled beforehand and are fresh from the microwave) and are fit only for the compost heap.

Verdict - value for money 8/10 service 7/10 quality of food 7/10

Summer's lease

2008-09-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

Well, according to Shakespeare it has "all too short a date", but this year it has been almost non-existent. Clearly, the lease is now up and we are on the brink of autumn, cheated out of even our usual meagre ration of blue sky and sunshine. At the start of what was supposed to be summer, I remember much talk of al fresco eating; we deluded ourselves that we would be sitting outside on sun-drenched pavements, shielded from the heat by bright parasols, sipping chilled white wine and generally living la dolce vita. Outside as I write this, the rain is hammering down yet again and water is running down the lane like a river. The back lawn squelches when I walk on it and the borders look more like the Somme than Yorkshire. My courgettes are rotting on the stems and the slugs have gorged themselves on my French beans.
So now we may as well stop hoping for sunshine and look forward to the cold crisp nights of autumn and the joys of casseroles, soups and comfort food, of wood fires and toasted crumpets.
Speaking of open fires, one great advantage pubs have over restaurants is that very thing. We all dream about finding a country pub with a crackling fire of aromatic wood, with scrubbed wooden tables and welcoming bar staff, and great traditional homely food. Meat pies made with proper shortcrust or suet pastry, silky-smooth, buttery mash, or home-made chips, rich deeply-flavoured gravy; honest substantial food that is a pleasure to eat. And preferably with a border collie lying in front of the fire. One such pub was the Malt Shovel at Brearton, now reinvented as a restaurant in the "Classic French" tradition. That's all very well but what about the classic British tradition? If I want to eat French food I can choose from dozens of restaurants but where am I going to get good pub grub at honest prices (and still be able to play with someone's dog) if not in the British countryside?
Having said that, pubs that are still pubs need to stop trying to be restaurants, or at least, stop charging restaurant prices for food that is definitely not restaurant standard. Last week I was in North Wales for a few days - not an area one associates with high-flying City traders or top earners generally - and every pub I went into was offering food at prices that simply did not represent value for money. A steak and mushroom pie in The Druid at Llanferres cost just under ten pounds (one of the cheapest items on the menu). It arrived in a small dish and consisted of four cubes of stewed steak, with four button mushrooms halves, in a nondescript gravy, topped with a disc of puff pastry. Chucked onto the plate on the side were a few florets of calabrese, overcooked and rather slimy, and some carrot batons. There was also a portion of new potatoes which actually tasted like potatoes and were the best thing about the whole dish. This might have been acceptable (given the great British tradition of putting up with disappointment uncomplainingly) if it had been sensibly priced but the total cost of the ingredients could not have come to more than £1. Where is the sense in that kind of mark-up on a dish that is so easy to prepare and made from cheap ingredients (especially as puff pastry can be bought ready-made from any supermarket)? Several other pubs in the area had menus with identical levels of pricing. What is going on here? Have all the landlords got together to agree how best to fleece the mugs who persist in patronising their hostelries? Or perhaps the legendary Kobe beef has made an appearance in North Wales and I just didn't twig?
Yet only the week before, I went back to Kendell's Bistro in Leeds for another crack at their Pre-Theatre Menu (£12.95 for two courses) - and found complete consistency of quality and service, and great value for money. OK, you might say, but that's a set menu and therefore not comparable. But I could have had a coq au vin from the a la carte menu for nine quid, which still comes in cheaper than my four minuscule cubes of beef.
But I am still hankering after that great pub selling real ale, good wine and traditional pub food to dream about at reasonable prices, which is full of happy customers and their dogs relaxing in front of a blazing fire.
And when I find it again, you can bet that someone comes along, buys it and turns it into a restaurant....

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

2008-08-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-07T03:20:00.001-07:00

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

Kendell's Bistro, Leeds

2008-07-24T01:41:00.001-07:00

23 July 2008

Tucked away down a littered sidestreet behind the costume hire department of the West Yorkshire Playhouse is Kendell's Bistro. Formerly a Tex-Mex called the Cactus Lounge, the semi-basement space is dark but fortunately no prickly pears remain to punctuate the penumbra. Instead are dark wood tables with an assortment of chairs (apparently Leeds diners like their comfort and complained about the original smart but hard seats), and a view into the kitchen where the eponymous Steve Kendell can be seen labouring over a hot stove.
There is history behind Kendell's, and those old enough to remember Paris in Horsforth (as opposed to the other, less well-known one across the Manche) will know that Steve cooked there, and competently too. This place has an air of the old Paris, with enormous blackboards detailing the set pre-theatre menu and a list of a la carte starters and mains, all in French. Steve's girlfriend does front of house very charmingly and apologies for the spelling mistakes on the blackboards which have been professionally written - inexplicably, by a Chinese English teacher.
Quite a few of the most toothsome sounding mains, disappointingly, have 'sold out' written next to them, despite the fact that it is only 6.30 p.m. on a Wednesday evening.
As one of our number loudly proclaims her right to a bus pass, we agree to eat from the set pre-theatre, menu which is no hardship. It is a Girl's night though we are thin on the ground as one of us has moved to France, another to Scotland and one has texted to say she has a bad foot and will be bathing it in gin and tonic for the night. So the only Girls around are French Spice and Old Spice (who hopefully will not be reading this or long-term friendships will be tested).
Meanwhile Charming Girlfriend brings us hot bread "straight from the oven" which is French but not French, because whilst the crust is wonderfully crispy and hard, the interior is moist and steamy. It does not reach the benchmark set by the Goods Shed but I never expect to eat the like of that again.
I opt for the Potage Lyonnais, which arrives in one of those tiny white porcelain tureen, very hot with gruyere still bubbling on top. It is perfect, the onions having that melting consistency that comes from caramelisation followed by long cooking. I wipe the bowl out with the warm home-made bread and look sadly into the empty depths. Over the table, a slice of pate is being devoured so quickly that I miss my chance of getting a taste. Elsewhere diners are tucking into thin slices of rosy smoked salmon in dill sauce, which is the replacement for the 'sold out' sardines.
Two of us go for the lamb (could have been chicken in tarragon sauce) and my request for it to be served pink is smilingly noted - no cheffy tantrums here. Old Spice chooses tomato tart which surprisingly (and deliciously she says) is a filo pastry version. The food is presented well but without any irritating affectation. My lamb chump is rare on the inside, beautifully dark on the outside, and the sauce it reclines on has the right depth of red-winy flavour without overpowering the meat - which tastes satisfyingly lamby. We have considered side dishes but are told that vegetables are provided, (a more grasping restaurateur would have let us order them anyway) and we are also given a small dish of rather runny dauphinoise potatoes.
I passed on the pudding (currently being Diet Spice rather than Polyanna) but a pot au chocolat served in a plain white espresso cup and a tarte au citron were both pronounced to be paragons of their kinds and despatched within nanoseconds. The bill for three of us just topped £60 including a bottle of wine and a couple of aperitifs. Beat that for Yorkshire value.

Verdict: value for money 9/10 service 9/10 quality of food 9/10

A Canterbury Tale: The Goods Shed

2008-05-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

13 May

The Goods Shed, Canterbury

Chaucer's pilgrims probably had to fork out to see the tomb of Thomas a Beckett way back in the fourteenth century, so they would not have been surprised at the seven quid charge to enter the cathedral precincts - but I was. As a commercial exploitation of a religious site, it was a pretty shameless one, and I could not help envisaging a certain sandalled Nazarene striding through the barrier and smashing it down as he went.
What Canterbury would do for a living if Chaucer had not sent his pilgrims off from the Tabard Inn is a mystery. I stayed in the Miller's Arms where my room was called 'The Knight's Tale' and the town was full of Chaucerian references.
There are some beautiful and historic buildings in Canterbury but the Goods Shed is not one of them. Then again, they don't charge you to go in. Once you are in, though, you feel like spending money. The stalls inside the airy interior sell excellent organic meat and fresh vegetables and other goodies. Up a short flight of steps is the restaurant, which uses raw material from this permanent farmers' market to produce a changing daily menu.
I started with a celeriac and harissa soup which was a deliciously unctuous puree spiked with amber slugs of heat. But just before the soup appeared, some hunks of gently steaming bread arrived with a small pot of very cold butter. The crust was crisp and hard, the centre a rich pillow of moist, yeasty perfection.
It was, quite simply, the most delicious bread I have ever eaten. It was made by the baker who has the stall at the bottom of the steps and when I have won the lottery, I shall pay someone to kidnap him and transport him to North Yorkshire.
A main course of pot-roasted chicken with creme fraiche and vegetables was the sort of food you would cook at home. The chicken was flavoursome, brown-skinned and had that chicken-y taste that all chickens had before it was somehow taken out of them. It sat happily on a pile of greens and baby carrots, all the better for having been introduced to each other and the chicken before being put on the plate. Fortunately, I was a very early diner and the only other couple were a good way off, so I could pick the last bits of meat off the bones without feeling too inhibited.
I had no room for a pudding which was down to the gluttony with which I attacked the bread - but there were no regrets on that score. With a couple of glasses of house wine, the bill just topped 30 quid. Or four visits to Canterbury Cathedral if you are daft enough.

Verdict: value for money 8/10 service 9/10 quality of food 9/10

25 March - London- Pasta Plus

2008-03-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

The weather was discouraging and the evening sky threatened wintry rain, so I scuttled along Euston Road and round the corner from the station to one of my usual haunts, Pasta Plus. This family-run restaurant is small but reliable and has a loyal customer base. A mother and daughter run front of house, and father cooks downstairs, serving up traditional Italian food (no pizzas as they have no pizza oven) in an unpretentious and thoroughly satisfying way. A surprisingly smooth and luxurious carrot and lentil soup from the specials board sounded virtuously wholesome but tasted positively sinful. It was followed by a house speciality, Tagliatelle Zia Theresa, which combines thin slivers of pancetta, onion and mushrooms in a creamy, saffron-scented sauce that is guaranteed to put an inch on the waistline as soon as it is eaten. With a couple of glasses of house wine, the bill was £22.40 including a 10% service charge. I paid it very happily.

Verdict: value for money 9/10 service 9/10 quality of food 9/10

3 and 4 March - A Scottish flying visit

2008-03-27T07:04:00.000-07:00

Looking out of the aircraft window, the snow looked pretty deep as we flew up to Inverness, and as perfectly white as icing sugar on a very large and bumpy cake. Inverness itself was smaller than I remember (from a long ago visit in childhood) despite the usual indoor shopping mall. I was booked into a hotel by the river which turned out to be just OK. The taxi driver had recommended a place called The Kitchen, which turned out to be a short stroll from the hotel so I popped in for lunch.
A modern, almost futuristic building, the river views were spectacular, which was more than could be said for the food. Being short of time, I went for the home-made beefburger with thin-cut chips and home-made relish (£5.95). I fondly imagined I would be getting a juicy morsel of Scottish Aberdeen Angus. After waiting for forty minutes, a burnt and misshapen lump of mince arrived, sandwiched between slices of similarly charred ciabatta. The chips were limp and pallid, the relish, a watery salsa with a texture that suggested it might have been home-made but not very recently. The whole thing was inedible and not even hot. A complaint to the waiting staff elicited a startled apology but no reduction was made to the bill.

Verdict: value for money 4/10 service 3/10 quality of food 3/10

In the evening I tried the other recommendation, which was almost directly across the river. The Mustard Seed turned out to be The Kitchen's sister restaurant, a fact that I only absorbed after paying the bill. I asked a passer-by for directions and found that he was the Mustard Seed's Polish barman (Eastern European workers being as common in Inverness as everywhere else in Britain). "Very good restaurant," he beamed, "You go there." So I did.
The odd thing about Scotland is that those involved in the hospitality industry give the impression that they are not very hospitable. In fact, I have frequently been served in such a grudging way that I have imagined that the waiting staff remember me as a mass murderer in a previous life. Except that all their customers can't have been mass murderers. So it proved initially at the Mustard Seed. At 5.20 p.m., the wind was bitingly cold and it was starting to rain, so the thought of a glass of Sauvignon Blanc in a cosy wine bar was tempting. The outer doors were standing open so I pushed the inner door, which yielded, and went in. Immediately I was shooed out again by a manager who huffily told me that they were not open till half-past. At this point I almost gave up but the thought of trudging round the town being booted out of one hostelry after another did not appeal. I stood in the doorway reading their reviews until my patience gave out, then I made another attempt at entry and this time was not rebuffed.
The fire in the middle of the room was very welcome, and the manager seemed to have turned from Mr Hyde back into Dr Jekyll as he suddenly became very charming. The £11.95 menu was supposed to include a glass of wine, but this never appeared as I was charged for the two I drank. But the celeriac soup was velvety, unctuous and altogether delicious, and the steak that followed it was juicy, tender and had the essential beefiness so lacking at lunchtime. The peppercorn sauce packed a hefty punch - perhaps too hefty for some - but the beef stood up to it manfully. The usual bowl of boiled vegetables made its appearance but was no worse than usual. I passed on the pudding and the bill came in at £22.60.

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

The following night I was in Aberdeen, and ate a dismal meal in an Italian restaurant called Poldino's. I arrived to find three poor customers standing outside in the cold, waiting for the place to open, which it should have done at 6 p.m. The nearby church clock was chiming six times, and inside the staff were clearly visible standing by the bar looking out, for all the world like the remnants of an army under siege, doing their best to repel invaders. The clock fell silent but still they glared at their customers, apparently willing them to go away. I looked at the menu and decided to give the place a try if they opened up by the time I had finished reading it. Eventually they opened up, slowly and with scowls on their faces. The food was mediocre. The bill was £21.60 for two undistinguished courses with a carafe or house red, most of which was left undrunk.

Verdict: value for money 2/10 service 2/10 quality of food 3/10

The hotel I stayed in - The Royal - was horrid, with peeling lino on the bathroom floor and a general feeling of grubbiness. I did without a shower the following morning after finding a silverfish in the bath and blood on the showercurtain. When I complained about the latter to the nice foreign receptionist (not mentioning the former as I doubted his English would stretch to 'silverfish'), he looked at me blankly, made a vague apology but again, presented the bill in full.

Broadband blues

2008-02-08T02:41:00.000-08:00

In the time since the last entry, I have discovered the extent of my broadband-dependence: after a two-hour power cut a couple of weeks ago, I restarted the PC to find no connection. The stress of the next few days stripped away the veneer of civilisation, Polyanna and all, and revealed my inner Neanderthal - though we are told that the latter were peaceable creatures so I am being unfair to them.
My line was BT; my ISP, Pipex; my router, Belkin; my online life, therefore, effectively over. Each blamed the other - the power cut being blamed the most, so that brought Powergen into the equation as well. A new router lay there, helpless and inert, its little green light refusing steadfastly to come on. A nice IT man pocketed his cheque and went on his way, head shaking. Then came back twice more, feeling too guilty to cash it before doing everything in his power short of sacrificing a Pipex director (only because none was to hand).
Oh yes, nothing wrong with the line, we have had BT check it. Our server is champing at the bit, ready and willing to send and receive if you can raise your game to make a connection.
So much hand-washing went on that it made Pontius Pilate and Lady Macbeth look like a couple of crusties. My enormous subscription for so called 'business service' level Pipex support was found to be insufficient to persuade them to even call me on the phone. Instead they would text my mobile and require me to ring them, which almost invariably involved being played irritating music for an average of twenty minutes atime. After three days I calculated I had spent at least seven hours on the phone, mostly grinding my teeth whilst on hold. Given the shortage of NHS dentists, this could not go on.
In then end I admitted defeat and signed up to BT - at least them there would be just the one culprit. I still had no connection but that would be their problem. Explaining this to a sales adviser, I was told that as I was now their customer they would check the line themselves.
The next morning, a little light appeared on the router. What a coincidence - the line was now working. That wouldn't be anything to do with the fact that I was now going to be a BT customer, would it?
Then followed the nightmare of getting the BT Home Hub - which meant waiting in for a whole day only to discover - after three calls to BT - that someone had neglected to process my order, despite sending me two text messages instructing me to be in to sign for it, and two letters. A series of calls ensured before any further progress, including one bizarre conversation with someone in an Indian call centre who was operating on a different calendar to everyone else. Eventually it arrived, was installed, worked perfectly - but now I am involved in the process of shifting my old 'narrowband' BT email address to my broadband connection (despite being blithely assured at the start that this would be automatic).
What the hell. It's not like it really matters, I have better things to do that look at a screen all day (oops! that's another centimetre on the nose again!).

A trip to London

2008-01-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

8 and 9 January 2008

The East Coast main line service is now operated by National Express, and as I happened to be on a lunchtime train I thought I would give the restaurant catering a try. The menu was short, which was encouraging, but full of the usual florid – and as it turned out, inaccurate- descriptions of the food, which was not.
The soup (£4.95) was advertised as being made from "British vegetables" but was actually a thick pea puree, and was tasty enough though the top was irritatingly drizzled with oil – on pea soup? Come on, you could at least have waited till we got south of Sheffield. It might also have been nice to have been forewarned about the fact that it was made from dried peas as most people en route to business meetings would probably have thought twice about risking the inevitable after-effects.
Choice of hot food being limited, and expensive, I went for a hot fillet steak sandwich (£7.95) which was supposedly served with salad leaves, handmade crisps and "caramelised onions." The latter were bound together in a lukewarm sweet-sour gloop that tasted like it came from a jar, and would have been better left there. Perhaps the steak was fillet, but whoever had prepared it had botched both the cutting and cooking of it so badly that I felt myself wishing for a cheese toastie. Why must all meat in Britain have all the juiciness cooked out of it? This was well done, not medium rare. The salad leaves lay naked on the plate, unanointed by any suggestion of dressing (my ration of oil had clearly been used up on the soup). Looking at the forlorn heap of rocket and baby spinach conjured up a vision of the macho man in the kitchen – let’s call him Kev – digging into the bag of leaves and throwing a handful down by the side of the gloop, contemptuously growling "rabbit food". How did they persuade Kev to drizzle oil onto the soup?
Total cost: £12.90 (soup and sandwich, mineral water and coffee free if travelling first class)
The days of the curled-up, overpriced British Rail sandwich may be over but they have been replaced by over-spun, poor-quality food that is the modern equivalent.

Verdict: value for money 0/10 service 7/10 quality of food 3/10

Prezzo on Euston Road

In London for two nights (courtesy of the BETT Show), my plan had been to eat on at least one evening at my favourite local, Pasta Plus. But tonight it was inexplicably closed so I trailed back up the street to Prezzo feeling very disappointed. Unreasonably, as it turned out, because the food I ate there was perfectly acceptable.
One thing I like about Italian restaurants is that they generally do not go in for the kind of spin and gastro-porn that has become so common now. Descriptions are less pretentious and so is the food itself. Even a large an relatively impersonal place like Prezzo, opposite busy Euston Station, manages to produce quite reasonably priced food that is enjoyable to eat.
Staff are welcoming and service is swift. The seats around the side of the back room have uncomfortably low back cushions and the heat from the kitchen can be oppressive but on a cold winter night that can be forgiven. Salads are generous, fresh and crisp, and both ready-mixed dressing and oil and vinegar are brought to the table without being having to be requested. Pizzas bases could be a little thinner, but are nevertheless freshly-baked and topped with good-quality ingredients. A request for prosciutto and artichoke on a Margherita was noted without comment. House wines served by the (very generous) glass are the ubiquitous Pinot Grigio and Merlot but none the less pleasant for that.
Total cost: £21.90 (pizza, side salad, 2 glasses house wine, mineral water)

Verdict: value for money 7/10 service 7/10 quality of food and drink 7/10

Olympia

Dotted around the enormous exhibition centre are numerous cafes which are depressingly similar and serve the same expensive snack food to a captive audience of exhibitors. Visitors are free to leave and find more satisfying and satisfactory offerings but those trying to snatch a quick pitstop away from the stand are condemned to a diet of sandwiches, cookies and muffins. Early arrivals looking for breakfast and a comfortable seat can forget it. There is something depressing about the whole catering operation; the supposedly freshly-baked muffins bought the minute the coffee bar opens are as chilled as a penguin’s feet. Plastic containers are everywhere, filled with pre-packed tuna salad, salmon sandwiches and other offerings which all taste of nothing. Well, perhaps of plastic. At least nothing here is drizzled, napped or covered in coulis.
This is the annual BETT Show and it is interesting to make a guess at people’s jobs before speaking to them. Those in suits are either LEA advisors, or managerial staff in universities and colleges. The scruffiest are invariably teachers, though the IT technicians from schoolsrun them a close second, and some of the men look as though they could do with a good wash. The small number of school pupils who find their way in are sartorially leagues ahead of their teachers, some of whom seem to be competing in a Worzel Gummidge contest. What is wrong with them? They complain about the bad behaviour of the kids, but don’t take advantage of the easiest way to gain some respect – by looking like they have a bit of status. When I was a regional education officer, I discovered the power of the suit and was amazed at the difference it made – other people immediately took me more seriously without me having to do a single thing. Dress like one of the lads, by all means, but don’t complain when the lads then treat you like one of them.
One of the helpers on the stand next door is a student and he tells me that he is doing a degree in sonic arts. What will they think of next? Apparently it is all about music and sound effects and he tells me how the Doctor Who theme music was made. I suggest another interesting example is the theme from Inspector Morse, but he has never heard of this. The stand opposite is about GPS timeclocks and I ask them if they can move all the clocks forward to 5.30 p.m. so we can get ready to go home….they laugh at this, and say they’re not that kind of Time Lords. They wish they were; two of them have come from Wisconsin and are jet-lagged. Every other person I speak to is Estonian, or Icelandic or Indian. The foreign teachers tend to be better dressed than their UK counterparts and the Indians look as though they have come straight from Savile Row. My feet are killing me.

A morning at the hospital

2008-01-07T08:12:00.001-08:00

Spent most of the morning at Harrogate Hospital, taking my friend J for a pre-op appointment. Having been to several other hospitals as a visitor or out-patient, I was preparing to be critical - smells of boiled cabbage and urine, grubby floors, nurses lounging around chatting whilst patients expire behind curtains, and being spoken to like an amoeba. But nothing could be further from my un-Pollyanna-ish expectations. All was sparklingly clean, the nurses were as efficient as Gauleiters but as charming as Captain Corellis, and they spoke to us as though we were a couple of nuclear physicists. AND we got cups of coffee from a jolly student nurse who looked like a supermodel but showed no sign of knowing it.
I take it all back. We could have spent a thousand pounds for a consultation and not have experienced better.
Celebrated by having lunch in Chez La Vie, a French restaurant in Harrogate centre very handily situated opposite Waitrose. More charming and friendly people (why can't they be cloned?), though this time French. The set lunch was perfectly nice food (though no parsnips - the French seem to think they are cattle food, along with swedes) for a pittance. Lots of bread at no charge (authentically). My French onion soup was rich, brown and topped (authentically again) with bubbling Gruyere toasts. The confit duck leg was beautifully crisp, and the only criticism I could offer was that the frozen peas would be better replaced by a seasonal vegetable.
It can't last, and won't. Tomorrow I am off to London by train and will no doubt be sitting next to someone with the dreaded vomiting virus.

2008-01-06T07:54:00.000-08:00

They say fine words won't do it, but then we Yorkshire folk don't go in for them anyway. Christmas 2007 is over and it's time to start a new year, with a good hard look at what is happening in and around this sceptered isle. I may be known as a bit of a Polyanna but even I can't avoid the realisation that something is not quite right in 21st-century Britain and I am going to try to have a bash at documenting what I see and hear on my travels. Wish I had done it earlier!