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.

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

Oh, I do like to be beside....

Pier 17
St Peter Port, Guernsey

I spent the previous night in Paignton at a hotel straight out of a sitcom, where the average age of the clientele made me feel more like a teenager than a woman looking forward to the imminent arrival of her bus pass. There I ordered scallops as a starter but without the advertised chorizo. Once the plate arrived, the overpowering taste and aroma of paprika and the residue of orange oil immediately betrayed the fact that said chorizo has simply been removed from the dish. When I tasted it, I wished I had told them to keep the chorizo and get rid of the scallops. Or at least, just get rid of those grey, bouncy bits of rubber. The menu did not state that they were diver-caught but any diver attempting such a catch would need one of those American baseball gloves and a firm grip. They defied chewing and ricocheted around the mouth like sandy, sea-flavoured midget gems, reminiscent of the sweets beloved of Harry Potter and his classmates.

I came out of the restaurant shuddering, and then started back in horror to see a miniature baby elephant writhing in its death-throes in the foyer, bizarrely displayed on an enormous glass coffee table. It was horridly realistic and its position just outside the bar was obviously designed to make guests feel the need for a stiff drink. Or several.

So it was with a rush of optimism that I ordered scallops again the very next night at Pier 17, a crab and scallop Thermidor, to be exact. Though the crab was largely conspicuous by its absence, the glistening little scallops were a joy. Pearly and succulent, they were cooked just enough to render them opaquely toothsome but without any hint of that toughness which is the penalty of a moment too long in the pan. The sauce was creamy, unctuous, with a hint of marine saltiness and the faintest suggestion of parmesan. I mopped it all up with some very moreish bread.

Honey roasted duck with roasted vegetables followed and was devoured with appreciation. The duck was perfectly pink, and the vegetables cooked to complement the meat which perched on them, rather than the usual hideous microwaved side-dish of tasteless boiled rabbit food. I don’t remember what I paid but it wasn’t extortionately expensive. I would have had a pudding but I ate too much lovely bread with the irresistible sauce on my starter.

Service was helpful and smiling without being sycophantic, and efficient. What more could you want? A view of the sea. I didn’t get one of those but I did get the very last table on a walk-in at 7 in the evening midweek. Well done, Pier 17.

Verdict: value for money - 7/10; service - 9/10; quality of food - 8/10.

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 café 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.

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.