Delicous and very wicked fish and chips.

We had an impromptu meet up with friends last night.  We ended up at the newish fish and chip shop down the road where Peter and I hadn't been before despite it getting very good reactions from friends.  I didn't really want to go as I'm in one of my sporadic trying not to be a total pig periods where I am generally careful about what I eat when I go out, try to exercise as much as possible and try to stay off the booze.  I've been at it for a week and it's all going well.  I went to the gym in the morning and been very productive and according to my heart rate monitor had burned a handy 900 calories or so (I don't usually go on a Tuesday, but as it turned out, it was just as well as no gym would have definitely been a no no for fish and chips!).  After a discussion lasting for about two minutes we ended up at Frankie's Fish Bar and it was really very good. 

The décor is nice and simple with a real feel of a traditional fish restaurant.  The menu is pleasingly small and there's a tiny offering of wine, but we had tea and ginger ale instead.  We all went for the cod and chips which came with home made Tartar sauce and a wedge of lemon - the (Heinz) ketchup, salt & vinegar were on the table.  The seats are at the front of the tiny shop, the hot and smelly frying stuff is right at the back which is a very thoughtful layout as you don't end up hot and smelly during your meal.  If you want a take away you just queue (and queue they did) down the side of the shop.

There's some serious frying history behind this modern chippy, Frank Hayes, the grandfather of the current Frankie's people opened his first fish and chip shop in Stockport in 1949 and served meals there for 19 years! From here he was in the business in one form or another for many years. I think that it's great to have the latest product from such a long and successful line of fryers just down the road!  My waistline might disagree though......


The meals when they arrived were seriously impressive, the fish was golden, crisp and BIG.  Inside the cod was perfectly white and steamy hot and the batter was very nice indeed.  The chips were perfect, no little slimy grey offering here, just golden yumminess.  I ate almost every morsel!

Frankie's Fish Bar
178 Burton Road
West Didsbury
M20 1LH
0161 445 3300

Lunch at Love 2 Eat on Burton Road - Take Two.

I posted a little review of a lunch at a local cafe - Love 2 Eat a while back, you can see it here.  It had been a nice enough pit stop, a first visit to a new venue, but there were a few little things which just stood out for me and spoiled what would been a pretty good lunch.  Anyway, recently I had an email from the owner who had read my review and wanted to invite me and some guests back for another try!  I was very impressed with her response and one day when we had a friend over on a work day, I booked us in and off we went.

We were greeted with great friendliness and shown to a table which had been reserved for us, just inside the door with lots of room to spread out.  The lovely array of cookery books were there and I did get a good look at the Moro one this time!

I went for a baguette which is what I had last time, but on this occasion I chose the hot roast chicken filling as I've always got a soft spot for a bit of roast chick, and I could see them slowly and juicily turning in the rotisserie at the back of the tiny shop.  The menu listing mentioned 'lashings of butter' so I asked for somewhat less than lashings and for the mayo to be served separately (which is how it came anyway).  The boys ordered pies.....any excuse for a pie!

While we were waiting, we were pleasantly surprised by a plate of very nice brown bread, butter and some seriously good olives.  I tried not to eat too much bread before I had my bready main course, but didn't resist very well.  I'll definitely order olives on my return visit, it's one of my pet hates at restaurants and cafes when they promise you deliciously marinated olives, and you can taste that they are just out of the jar with that sort of 'instant' flavour you get.  These had a good dose of cumin seeds.  I do like to taste real, whole seeds on my olives.  Luckily I remembered to take a photo before they all disappeared!

 

My baguette when it arrived looked very tasty indeed, plenty of soft, just roasted chicken, no slimy bits in a slim brown baguette.  The salad was excellent, not a slimy letuce leaf in site, good green beans, little gem type leaves, nice ripe tomatoes and a few rather over rosted hazelnuts, which added a really good and unexpected depth.  The mayo was standard mayo which I don't eat, so I wasn't concerned with it.  I tried to stuff some salad leaves into the baguette as it only contained the chicken (and a very reasonable amount of butter!), but the bread sort of collapsed in a very messy and buttery manner, but I'm not afraid of getting myself messy by eating with my fingers so dug in and made a mess. I'd have liked to have seen some greenery bedded in under the chicken. But I am a pedant.  It was delicious and I ate every little bit.

The boys played with their food and made smiley pies!  They both had steak pies, one had very nice looking new potatoes and the other salad, they said they were very tasty.

Then is was greedy chocolate brownie and tea time for me.  The brownie was very good indeed and ate all of it.....My tea did not come with hot frothy milk this time!

 

So thanks, Penny for reading my original post and inviting me back for another lunch.  I hope you're more happy with this write up!  We'll see you again, perhaps for one of your evening meals next time?

Love 2 Eat
190a Burton Road
West Didsbury
0161 434 7077

Lunch at Love 2 Eat on Burton Road

As the weather was unexpectedly delightful this afternoon with warm sunshine instead of the forecast rain that we popped out for lunch to sit in the sun and watch the world go by.

Silver Apples hadn't quite opened when we got there, so we went a few doors down to the lastest cafe on Burton Road, called Love 2 Eat where we've been meaning to go since it opened, but it's always been full.  It's a tiny little place with four tiny little tables outside and we were lucky enough to find one empty.

The menu is pretty small and on blackboards on the walls inside (there's a proper menu on the website) with sandwiches, soups, pies and the odd casserole.  There's a glass fronted deli counter with cakes and pies all looking tasty.  There's a great collection of cookery books dotted around (even in the tiny, very clean loo out at the back), I could have a jolly good browse through them and have my eye on Moro East for next time.

I went for a hot apple juice cured ham sandwich which came in a nice thin brown baguette and I narrowly avoided the horror of industirally produced coleslaw as I'd spotted it come out to the ladies next to us who also had baguettes.  Our kind waitress instead gave me a portion of really delicious tiny new potatoes drenched in butter with fresh herbs, much nicer than oniony coleslaw smothered in cheap mayo.  There were very nice salad leaves which were almost all manky which was a shame, but for some reason, I did eat them.  The ham was in nice big chunks like it had just been hacked from a propper piece of meat which was a pleasant surprise and was nicely appley but not too sweet.  Some rather odd orange chutney came in a wee espresso cup which once inside the bread with the sad leaves and tasty ham was good.

Being greedy we shared some 'bounty cake' which was a lovely light sponge with little coconutty bits and a rich chocolate icing on the top and in the middle, it was a bit dry but still enjoyable.  The tea somewhat bizarrely, came with little jugs of frothed warm milk, not exactly ideal for tea, but it was okay and we were running a bit late and didn't have time to ask for some more.

Love 2 Eat
190a Burton Road
West Didsbury
0161 434 7077

Lunch at Silver Apples on Orchard Street.

Lunch at Silver Apples on Burton Road in West Didsbury., originally uploaded by Eyeshoot Photography.

We popped out for a quick local lunch with a photographer friend who had delivered to beautiful prints which we'd bought at his latest exhibition.

This was our first visit to Silver Apples and it was very nice indeed. It's lovely and eclectic inside with all sorts of retro posters, photos and books all over the place. There's a mix of furniture with sofas and an upright piano as well. There isn't a menu as such rather a range of blackboards dotted around with lists of sandwiches, salads, pies, hot chocolates and milkshakes.

I had the bagel which you see in the photograph which was healthily stuffed with smoked salmon and cream cheese with a little salad. It was very nice but could have done with a bit of a dose of lemon juice. I couldn't be bothered to ask for some, so my fault really.

The boys had Pieminster pies, one chicken and one minty lamb with a good dollop of mash and mushy peas. We didn't have time for pudding, but there's a very tempting display of home made cakes which may result in a return visit.

Silver Apples on Orchard Street.
Burton Road (corner of Orchard Street)
West Didsbury
Manchester
M20 2LW
Tel: 0161 445 3130

Hot stuff, a Treasury appearance and a little shopping.

We popped into Manchester this morning to brave the shops.  I wanted some jeans and shoes and ended up with jeans and a nice long, sloppy aubergine coloured Merino wool cardigan from Gap.  Not exactly thrilling stuff, but I'll be able to chuck out some similar but dead items of clothing.  The shoes are altogether more of a nightmare, I have fairly big feet which are a strange shape so for me shoe shopping is a dreary experience with shops full of things which I love which either don't exist in my size or they never have it in stock.  I have the worst shoe wardrobe of anyone I know. 

Then we met some chums for lunch, our first plan of Yo Sushi in Selfridges didn't happen as the queue was epic and they'd never have got us four seats together, so we regrouped in Tampopo.  Peter and I had to queue for a while there, but it wasn't too bad and finally we had a very tasty lunch from their excellent value Express Menu which is £6.95 and is actually quite a substantial amount of food.

Pad Krapow Chicken breast quick-fried with red chillies, fresh Asian basil & red pepper.
Served with steamed jasmine rice.
Very tasty and seriously hot!  Washed down with copious quantities of green tea.


Yasai Gyoza Three griddled dumplings of water chestnut, bamboo shoot & carrot, with a soy dip.
A bit of a non event really, but nice enough.

Also, here's another Treasury - many thanks for including my Path Through Moss Print.

Peter Pan

by Masaoms (Inspired by this song)

Chinese Feast.

Tea Anyone

By Fffflowers

I love this Treasury from Fffflowers who's based just up the road from me in Wirral, there are some great items here;  I'm particularly fond of the clothes brush, it's such a lovely old fashioned piece.

We've had another epic meal today, which, thank goodness, I wasn't cooking.  There were 30 of us, all Peter's family plus my parents, for a massive Chinese feast at Glamorous a huge Hong Kong style restaurant in Manchester, all neon, fiber optics and gold.  They have dim sum trolleys circulating and a seemingly never ending range of little steamed and fried morsels.  We were there for hours and finished up with a little light shopping the Wing Yip supermarket below (choi sum, pandan leaves, jasmine tea, chillies for the freezer and sweet chilli sauce).  Then all back to ours for tea and my Christmas day chocolate and chestnut terrine which has almost gone now.  Now we're in front of the telly and I have a stiff g&t in my hand.

Lunch at The Knustford Wine Bar

The Knutsford Wine Bar is one of those local, small town restaurants which seems to have been there forever but never seems to change, which in this case is a good thing. I've been eating there on and off for fifteen years, less in recent times, but it's always been a good bet for a good meal and nice atmosphere. The building was a Century Chapel in the 14th and then a Parish Church, and is full of atmosphere with a lovely big open fire. The ambient temperature is always a bit odd in there as you can get the most awful drafts if you sit just on the edge of the balcony on the ground floor or you can be baked by the fire, but in my experience, if you take a range of clothing. We were sitting sort of behind the door, sort of near the fire and sort of in the vicious updraft area near the end of the balcony, so it was hot/cold/hot/cold.....

Anyway, we were to meet four friends who we don't see nearly enough of for a catch up on the last six months' goings one and they chose the venue.

Our oven and hob had packed up on the Tuesday before and I was very fed up of eating out and eating cold bought stuff from the supermarkets, so I was really looking forward to some good hot food and plenty of crisp green veg.

Here's what I had.

King Prawn Cocktail with crayfish, avocado, sweet peppers and lemon £7.95

This certainly looked the part with the two nicely sized prawns which tasted of pretty much nothing and had the texture of defrosted seafood, you know, that sort of soft slightly spongy mouth feel. The avocado guacamole thing was tasty if messy and the sweet peppers were okay, if nothing special. There was tons of chilled and crisp iceberg lettuce but all the dressing had dribbled down to the bottom of the glass so there was a vague essence of Marie-rose sauce throughout, but a puddle of it below. With some careful salad tossing, I was able to distribute it a bit better. Marie-rose sauce really should be thick and have a bit of cling. Some nice soft but crusty French bread to dip would have been good. But despite my complaints (here, not there), I did enjoy it.

 
Gressingham duck breast with braised lentils, creamed haricot beans, baby onions and orange gremolata - £15.50

This was much more successful. I did ask for the duck to be pink and it wasn't but it was very tender and tasty, so I restrained myself from sending it back. I was too hungry to fuss. The creamed beans were delicious and really creamy, I'm assuming that there was cream added to them and it made a nice change from potato. I always love Puy style lentils and these were good, rich and meaty and the carrots and onions were nice but not particularly exciting. A very nice Sunday lunch main course.
 

 
Chocolate Fondue (perfect for sharing!) - chocolate chip cookies, warm sugared doughnuts, honeycomb, fruit skewers and chocolate brownie and warm chocolate dipping sauce - £9.75

This was Peter's idea......It sort of worked, the chocolate was nice, but far too shallow in it's pot to really dip into, there were no spoons for extra greedy spooning, the honeycomb was so sticky as to be almost inedible, the brownies were yummy, the chocolate chip cookies were shortbread and the fruit skewers were feeble - orange and grape - who wants to dip orange and grape into chocolate? Where were the lovely big strawberries and pineapple? So a sort of fun pudding, but we'd have been better off with some cheese I suspect.

 I've moaned about the food a bit, but there weren't any major horrors, just my normal low level complaints. I didn't get my crisp green veg, just some rather over steamed broccoli as a side dish. Despite this, we had a very enjoyable time with our friends and I'm sure we'll be back again.

Supper at The Market Restaurant.

I guessed the location of my mystery birthday supper last night as Peter gave directions to the cab driver - The Northern Quarter could only mean The Market Restaurant where I hadn't eaten for years. The Market is one of those restaurants which becomes somewhat of an institution after being around for many years from the days when the now super-trendy Northern Quarter was a seriously non-cool and somewhat sad former rag-trade area. I'd always perceived the MR as a bit of a secret hiding in a dodgy part of town and would frequently hear rave reviews about it. I always used to enjoy reading the prettily illustrated menu which was printed in every issue of the now deceased City Life magazine. I recall eccentric opening hours, a lovely quirky interior and mismatched antique glasses and crockery and a great atmosphere with excellent front of house service and of course splendid food.

So I was delighted at the prospect of my first visit after a very long time, it could have been as long as ten years ago when we had an excellent Sunday lunch. We arrived and sat at our choice of table - it was less than half full I think, it's a very small space downstairs with another room upstairs. The bar is in the middle of the room and I sat facing the bar as I like to see what's going on, I like to see what's happening when the staff aren't interacting with customers - I think you get a very good insight into a restaurant this way....

We started off with Henriot Champagne with raspberry liqueur - rather like Kir Royale, but a bit more subtle. It was £7.50 a glass and came in a very pretty Henriot branded glass but it was minute and definitely not worth the money and I'm afraid that we did mention this to our waiter and he very kindly came back and topped up our glasses when we'd polished them off.

We both ordered Gazpacho with goats cheese and basil tortellini (£5.25) I adore gazpacho, it's one of my all time favourite dished, I love to order it in Spain where you get a whole plethora of exciting goodies to sprinkle on to the soup - croutons, garlicky mayonnaise, chopped cucumber, tomato and onion....fun and delicious! I also love to make it, it must the easiest soup in the world to make - just fling gloriously ripe tomatoes, fresh green cucumber, red peppers and garlic (some recipes incorporate bread, but I don't like the slimy result) into the blender and add water to the right consistency, either chunky and rustic or sophisticated and smooth. Then you chill it to within an inch of it's life. The most important thing is that it's super cold, I've even served it with olive oil filled ice cubes to make sure that it's perfect when it arrives at the table. That's the whole point of the dish, like crispy roast potatoes, or a melt in the mouth steak. So imagine my disappointment when it arrived without any goodies to sprinkle and shock horror, was actually tepid if not slightly warm. There were three tortellini and I was disappointed and very surprised to find that it wasn't cooked through, and had that nasty raw flour hard-centered bite to it. I couldn't really taste the goats cheese or basil through the flavour of uncooked flour. So once I'd managed to attract some attention, it went back to the kitchen to be 'made again'. About fifteen minutes later it re-emerged looking exactly the same with the addition of three ice cubes. The soup was still tepid and the tortellini were still uncooked. We drank the soup and left the raw pasta. I refrained from mentioning that the soup was tasteless as I thought that might be a bit much.....but there was no garlic, no punch and no zing. It was a bit like a tinned tomato soup left to cool a bit. The starters were removed from the bill.


The first soup - you can tell the pasta is uncooked just by the lack of 'glisten'.

The second soup - spot the ice-cubes!

For the main course I was going to chose the Pan fried sea bass, vanilla mash, butternut squash, hazelnut crusted scallop (£17.95) as I love sea bass and scallops are always a real treat. While I was pondering two portions of this dish arrived at the table next to us and there was the biggest serving of mash you could imagine with two tiny little fillets of bass - it really didn't look like £17.95's worth so I changed my mind and chose instead Hake wrapped in Parma ham, broccoli puree, roasted potatoes, red wine jus (£15.95) which turned out to be an excellent choice. The portion of hake was very substantial, thick, white and flaky. The Parma ham was just the right side of salty and meaty, the broccoli puree which I didn't fancy at all was lovely. I'd ordered new potatoes rather that roast and they were obviously reheated as they were too soft and squashy, but I didn't really want spuds at all, so wasn't too bothered. Peter had duck which he'd been informed would be cooked pink, but it wasn't. He declined to mention it. We drank a very nice bottle of French Voignier (£18.95) which wasn't sufficiently chilled and had to be put in a wine bucket to cool further, this had to sit on the floor as there wasn't room on the table.



For pudding we both had chocolate mousse which was delicious, very dark and with that lovely French texture which comes from not using cream in the recipe, just eggs and butter (I didn't ask, but it's how the mousse I make at home feels). It was rather bizarrely and pointlessly served with stale popcorn dotted around the plate - I don't know if I missed something there, but I didn't get it at all! We had a glass each of delicious sticky wine - Muscat I think it was, perfectly chilled and seriously yummy.


Then there was the birthday 'cake' which was a shot glass of elderflower Eton mess with a very nice raspberry sorbet and a chorus of Happy Birthday from the two waiters!

So not a perfect evening but a most enjoyable one!

El Bulli, Roses, Spain.

This was, as you can imagine, a totally epic experience. We flew from Liverpool to Barcelona,stayed one night in Barcelona and then travelled the following evening in a rather nice chauffeur driven Mercedes for about 2 hours (the car waited to take us back to Barcelona when we had finished) up the cost to the town of Roses to collect our friends, J&M who had flown in from London earlier that day. From there we drove up and up and round and round some stunningly precipitous roads with amazing views with anticipation building like you wouldn't imagine. Eventually we arrived at our Mecca. El Bulli is a pretty low lying stone building with traditional influences, but it is unmistakably something modern and special. It nestles in a tiny bay backed by pine trees and mountains with the sea lapping at its front.

We were first shown the kitchen which was more like a laboratory than any kitchen I have ever seen, it was silent with dozens of white coated chefs, men and women busily creating their little mysteries. Ferran Adria was there, and M managed to pose for a photo with him - another celebrity portrait for her collection! We were in there for a while and it helped to fuel the anticipation to a fever pitch, we were desperate to get started.

We were led outside to a very pretty 'patio' area overlooking the sea for the first of our many starter dishes. . We started off in style with a ‘welcome aperitif’ which was a cocktail made with Caipirinha, lemon juice and liquid nitrogen! The nitrogen was poured into the mixing bowl with the liquor and juice and stirred and stirred until everything was frozen to a silken slush and then decanted into cut limes.
After this all twenty of these dishes were totally outstanding. The highlights for me were the Spherical Olives which aren’t olives at all, but an incredibly thin membrane of olive coloured something which explodes in the mouth with a gush of olive and garlicky deliciousness. The Knots of Yoghurt were truly bizarre and wonderful; they really were knots of yoghurt with a kind of outer skin which bursts in the mouth with a rush of mozzarella flavoured liquid with a basil leaf.

It was a shame when we were taken inside, as it was pretty perfect outside, but I suppose a more formal atmosphere was necessary for the next session. We proceeded to have thirteen dishes which were followed by ‘Morphings’ which were a stream of puddings.

The food was not surprisingly, sublime, even the things I didn’t like (monkfish livers, oysters, lamb brains, warm walnuts) were all things that I don’t like anyway, but I chose to try (with the exception of the walnuts which were really odd). The predominately vegetarian dishes were by far the best – who’d have thought that El Bulli would turn out to be a vegetarian restaurant! We were very surprised that there was no meat at all, although M had an alternate dish to the lamb’s brains which was a chicken wing confection which she proclaimed “delicious”. The fish was excellent – mackerel, crab, prawn, mussel, monkfish liver and oyster (so I was told!). I don’t know where snails fit it, but they were fabulous too.

Puddings were great fun and the highlight of these was the Milkshake which came in a closed and sealed polystyrene box. Inside was an aerated, frozen vanilla flavoured foam and next to the box was a small plastic bag containing what looked like earth. The earth was in fact caramelized cinnamon which was for sprinkling onto the milkshake! The result was bizarre, rich, light and delicious. We scraped our boxes clean. After all the puds we had a totally unbelievable pudding wine – Olivares 2001 by Bodegas Oliveras @ Jumilla, it was dark, dark red and tasted of intense blackcurrents.

I feel I should mention the wines - J chose the wine from an epic wine list, wine is his forte, so to say that he was content to choose is the understatement of the year, he selected for us a stunning range of Spanish wines. Our first was Chivite Collection 125 Aniversario 2001 by Julian Chivite @ Navarra – we had two bottles of this, followed by Finca Dofi 1994 by Alvaro Palacios @ Priorat and Pagos Viejos 1998 by Artadi-Cosecheros Alaveses from Rioja.

Overall the verdict was that it fulfilled our inflated expectations, we had a ball and didn’t regret the hassle, expense and the general performance of getting there!

J&M who have eaten in comparable restaurants several times said that this was without a doubt the best of the Molecular Cookery type establishments, beating the Fat Duck hands down and even beating Marc Veyrat, although he has the advantage of cooking red meat to die for apparently. His restaurant is next on our wish list.

We felt very lucky indeed to be there at all as it is the most oversubscribed restaurant in the world with 500,000 people chasing just 8,000 places and of course, incredibly grateful to our friends J&M who asked us to share the experience with them!

What did it cost?
Return flights to Barcelona
Two days car parking at Liverpool Airport
Two nights in a Barcelona Hotel
Chauffeur driven Mercedes for 4 hours driving and 5 hours waiting for us.
Supper for the previous night (also fantastic in a totally different way, report on that later)
El Bulli itself – food and wine.

Answer
Worth every penny!

I’ll list here the few things (from the outside starters part of the meal) which escaped my camera:
Carrot ribbons – verbena, ginger and liquorice.
Black olives “oreo” with bitter cream.
Mango disc and black olive.

I haven’t posted all of the pictures here as there are far too many, but you will find them here on my Flickr page. Enjoy!

The Fat Duck, Bray

This meal was part two of our ‘eating the best’ challenge. We were with the same friends who miraculously managed to score a table at El Bulli, the Holy Grail for lovers of fine food everywhere.

We arrived in Bray with perfect timing, just as our friends arrived from Central London, so we were off to a good start. The restaurant is seriously subtle from the outside, just the fabulous logo on a hanging sign. The inside is low ceilinged with beams and really bad abstract paintings in yellows, blues and greens. The place was packed, not bad for a Thursday night.

There were some pretty ordinary but tasty green olives on the table and then no sign of any food for an hour, by which time we had polished off one bottle of stunning Chardonnay and were frankly getting a bit peckish - a bit of bread would have been nice. We questioned the lack of food and were fobbed off with a lame excuse along the lines of "We were waiting for you to choose your wine" which really doesn't make sense as we were all having the tasting menu which is set, apart from a few substitutions and we had ordered and drunk our first bottle. The boys wanted to add one of the A la Carte dishes to their experience, so after a bit of negotiation with the very helpful staff, it was included for them. Perhaps this little deviation from the Fat Duck norm is what really slowed the process down?

Eventually the food started to arrive (we were onto our second bottle of wine by then), the first series of dishes were the appetisers:

The starters

NITRO-GREEN TEA AND LIME MOUSSE


Little frozen nuggets which we were told to eat in one mouthful, lovely silky texture on the outside and runny on the inside. The lime was by far the dominant flavour. No way near as impressive as the El Bulli nitrogen performance.

OYSTER, PASSION FRUIT JELLY


I am no fan of oysters, but this was delicious. Or rather the passion fruit jelly was delicious. The oyster was like oyster.

HORSERADISH CREAM, LAVENDER POMMERY GRAIN MUSTARD ICE CREAM RED CABBAGE GAZPACHO


This was stunning; the mustard made a delicious and beautifully textured ice cream and the gazpacho was a revelation.

JELLY OF QUAIL, LANGOUSTINE CREAM, PARFAIT OF FOIE GRAS


I think that this was my favourite dish on the entire menu. Which is odd as I have only very recently come to eat foie gras and I have a bit of a problem with savoury jellies – it’s a texture thing. The delicate little quenelle of foie gras was delicious, it was sitting on a pale and creamy langoustine cream which broke into dark brown and vibrant green once you dug in to the bowl. Visually stunning and delicious

Then came the main courses

SNAIL PORRIDGE - Jabugo Ham, shaved fennel


The infamous Snail Porridge……I saw this being made on BBC2’s Full on Food a couple of weeks ago, and it looked much nicer than this one did. The snails were much bigger and plumper and were sitting proudly on top of the porridge (perhaps bigger and plumper snails aren’t such a good thing?). Despite this, the porridge was delicious, really herby and I must say that the snails didn’t really taste of much at all. Somewhat overrated. (recipe here, if you feel so inclined!)

ROAST FOIE GRAS - Almond fluid gel, cherry and chamomile


Delicious – I seem to be developing a bit of a taste for Foie Gras! The almonds on this dish were fabulous, really fresh, waxy and crunchy. Almonds were used quite often in the El Bulli meal too – must be a seasonal thing.

SARDINE ON TOAST SORBET - Ballotine of mackerel ‘invertebrate’, marinated daikon


This is the one dish I didn’t have – I can’t stand sardines. The others liked it though.

Substitute dish – FENNEL VELOUTE


Fabulously delicate creamy soup which had an oyster lurking in the depths. Very nice indeed. Much nicer than sardines!

SALMON POACHED WITH LIQUORICE - Asparagus, pink grapefruit, "Manni" olive oil


The salmon was perfectly cooked, very rare and as soft as butter. The liquorice was a jelly-like wrapping around the salmon, dark and glossy and tasting of liquorice root, rather than liquorice sweets. I wasn’t too keen on that. The pink grapefruit complemented it perfectly, and you can never go wrong with asparagus.

POACHED BREAST OF ANJOU PIGEON PANCETTA - Pastilla of its leg, pistachio, cocoa and quatre épices


This was very gamy, very strong, especially the leg. The tiny little leg. The last time I had pastilla (shredded pigeon layered with filo pastry, pistachio nuts and icing sugar and cinnamon), we were in a palace in Marrakech sitting in an outrageous room scattered with rose petals. So it had a lot to beat! This little samosa shaped pastilla didn’t do too badly, a bit more pigeon and a little less deep fried pastry would have been a better ratio. The overall effect of the dish was very very rich and tasty.

Lasagne of Langoustine, with Pig's Trotter and Truffles.


This is the course which the boys wanted from the a la carte menu, the girls paused for breath while they inhaled this rather interesting little offering. Actually I did have a taste and it was beautiful, really melt in the mouth tender, sweet and powerful. Strange and interesting but still tasty.

WHITE CHOCOLATE AND CAVIAR


Delicious chocolate and salty caviar which worked rather well. But then sweet and salt always do.

MRS MARSHALL’S MARGARET CORNET


Fabulously whimsical and very pretty, the crystallised rose petals were divine.

PINE SHERBET FOUNTAIN


Very witty– the dipper was a vanilla pod. It bought back lots of warm fluffy childhood memories.

MANGO AND D0UGLAS FIR PUREE - Bavarois of lychee and mango, blackcurrant sorbet


I have no recollection of the bavarois at all, but recall the sorbet as being about as perfect as a blackcurrant sorbet can be. A big bowl of it would have been nice! Or perhaps some in another Mrs Marshall's Margaret Cornet would be more appropriate.

CARROT AND ORANGE TUILE


A really intense burst of orange, a bit like the Middle Eastern apricot leather but much thinner and crisper.

SMOKED BACON AND EGG ICE CREAM - Pain perdu, tea jelly


Out of all the very strange things I have eaten in the last two weeks, I think this was the strangest, and it was just wrong. Weird for the sake of being weird and slightly disturbing. Mind you, the tea jelly was fantastic.

PARSNIP CONFLAKES WITH PARSNIP MILK


Fabulous packaging, very amusing. The little white flakes were intensely parsnippy and I quite liked them as a gimmick, but I couldn’t face the parsnip milk. The others said it was tasty.

The verdict

A really enjoyable meal, Heston Blumenthal can certainly cook (and in the tiniest kitchen I have ever seen, even by domestic standards). Many of the combinations did seem to be gratuitously odd, but most of them worked with aplomb, some didn’t i.e Bacon and Egg Ice Cream but perhaps that was just me. The service was excellent (apart from my long awaited bread being put on the side plate to my right – the waitress said she was new…..) and the dishes we didn’t fancy were substituted with good grace, M changed four of hers and they smiled graciously even at that! The sommelier (I was reliably informed, that he knew his stuff) and he recommended one bottle out of the four which we greedily enjoyed as well as the glasses of Tokaji with our puddings.

How did it compare to El Bulli? I liked the fact that the main courses here were more substantial so that you could taste a bit more of some of the lovely ingredients (for example the salmon and the second foie gras dish). The packaged puddings were very clever, but so was the El Bulli milkshake, this also tasted divine, much more delicious than sherbet and parsnip cornflakes could ever taste. The sheer cleverness of El Bulli is unbeatable; many of the dishes there left us with smiles on our faces whereas The Fat Duck seems to take itself a bit too seriously. Perhaps the Spanish/British character difference. Bray is one hell of a lot easier to get to than Roses, but that’s neither here nor there really – I’d rather fly to Spain than drive down the M6 and M40 after work.

This makes it sounds like I didn’t really enjoy the Best Restaurant in the World and that would be misleading – it was great. I have been unbelievably lucky to eat at both of these restaurants within two weeks of each other and deciding between them is pretty hard, but I think that for me El Bulli must come out on top.

We will go back to The Fat Duck as I would love to choose from the A la Carte menu, in fact we could go any time we like – because we can, it is only three hours drive away. Chances are that we will never go to El Bulli again; it took four years to get there this time……a true one in a lifetime experience.

If you click on any of the photos, you'll go straight through to my Flickr site where the pictures can be viewed bigger with some more comments. Enjoy and please let me know what you think!

High Street, Bray, Berkshire, SL6 2AQ

Okay, I feel I should write about my recent lunch at Rick Stein's The Seafood Restaurant in Padstow

The restaurant is at the edge of the village (but still in it) just in front of the harbour - there is a car park between them, but hype and expectation filters it out! The main room is not too large, nice and light with fantastic mirrors on the walls and a really interesting selection of paintings. Anyway, enough of the interior design and on to the food.

There were six of us, as Peter had very generously invited his Devon-Relatives to dine with us, which didn't score him many brownie points with me it has to be said. So, the food - it's a really good menu with masses of interesting choices, all fish.

fish & shellfish soup with rouille & parmesan £11.50
This came in a big white tureen as two others had it as well. The flavour was pretty strong, I could taste the crabs in the stock which almost makes it meaty. The rouille was delicious, quite hot and lovely and garlicky, the croutes were a good size and crispy enough so they didn't go soggy too fast (I hate wet bread, I'm not one of nature's dunkers) the parmesan was a bit mean between three of us.....and for the money.

Skate with black butter & capers £25
I had never had skate before, no particular reason, I just always thought it seemed a bit odd. But it was delicious, the flesh comes away from the cartilaginous wing really easily and was really soft and quite dense and there was plenty of it. The black butter sauce smelled totally delicious and reminded me of freshly baked biscuits for some reason. The capers were the little tiny ones, which explode with flavour and offset the sweet butteryness really well. Veg came in little dishes - potatoes, which I didn't bother with and courgettes; again I thought this was a bit mean and some more green veg would have been very welcome.
Peter had monkfish vindaloo!!

hot chocolate fondant with a melting soft centre with vanilla ice cream £8.50
When this pudding is done well, it's the nearest thing to pudding heaven. Two of us were in heaven that afternoon. It was just right with a really thin sponge outer casing and masses of really smooth, dark chocolate sauce just ready to ooze out over the vanilla ice-cream. I didn't share any at all ;-)

Overall Impression
Fish soup - good but have had better, and hotter.
Skate - interesting and enjoyable, I'll have it again.
Pud - divine!

It's a fiercely expensive restaurant, (a recent lunch at Claridges was £450 for four of us with a bottle of champagne, a bottle of £60 wine and pudding wine) The total here for six was £350 with one (cheap) bottle of wine (chosen by Peter's mean brother!) and one glass of champagne (me, of course!). So I felt that we got much more for our dosh at Claridges, and it was more of an experience in the whole with the fantastic and friendly service and the busy buzz of a London Hotel. Stein's had no buzz, because the season had not started, the service was spot on but very impersonal so it's hard to define why it didn't feel perfect. Also the man himself wasn't there, and I imagine that the atmosphere is very different when he is! Don't get me wrong, I had a great time, really enjoyed it, I'm just pondering about the value of expensive 'destination' restaurants.


(this review has been posted in October 2007, as I thought that a visit to one of the UK's premier restaurants should be noted here.....I was in Padstow again recently and the prices are still astronomical with the average main course at £28 and the place was packed out. We ate at Rick Stein's Cafe in the back streets of the town and it was charming, excellent and very friendly service. Still not cheap, but worth every pound!)