Tribble Tasting by Arrangement

Allium's "Anything But Turkey" Game menu

2011-12-23T16:02:00.001Z

game liver cone

*****

home made charcuterie

*****

pigeon, salsify ‘branch’, wood blewitts

*****

rabbit ravioli

*****

squirrel kiev

*****

venison shoulder

*****

wild boar

*****

cheeses from the south-west

*****

sloe gin jelly

*****

forest floor

On Wednesday we had an excellent meal at Allium in Fairford. They were doing a special turkey-free menu with pigeon, rabbit, grey squirrel (and a contribution to the Red Squirrel Survival Trust), venison and wild boar.

All the courses were excellent: beautifully cooked pigeon, ravioli of rabbit on a carrot puree. A special highlights was the squirrel kiev (the beetroot and hazelnut made a lovely combination and the squirrel leg itself was tender inside a crispy shell). The venison shoulder was slow cooked and meltingly soft. The wild boar was really wild, quite clearly a different texture not just a pig with a fancy name.

The cheese course had a select of 8 local cheeses. From left to right (as far as I can remember) was a lavender goat, a brie style cheese, a cheese made in the same manner as stinking bishop but rolled in nettles instead of with a washed rind, a cheddar style cheese and one similar to pecorino, then a blue cheese from the maker of the brie style one and finally some stinking bishop. Comparing the third and the last was very interesting: the one with nettles tasted very similar to the stinking bishop but much gentler and without the whack in the face you get from the washed rind.

Pre-dessert was ice cream and jelly but probably not as served at kids parties (sloe-gin jelly and pear sorbet) and finally the Forest Floor dessert with a praline pine cone and lemon thyme yoghurt ice cream on a malted cake and chocolate soil.

More photographs on Picasa.

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Tsonga jumps the net as Dimitrov falls to the ground. Excellent match at #wimbledon yesterday, watch out for Dimitrov in the future.

2011-06-24T07:43:00.001+01:00

Yes, sometimes winning players really do jump over the net, it isn't
just a myth. Amazingly I managed to get this picture at just the right
moment.

Great day at Wimbledon yesterday, slightly marred by the rain delays
but that's all part of the fun.

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Sous-vide duck eggs with local asparagus

2011-04-10T14:52:00.001+01:00

For lunch today we had slow cooked duck eggs and local asparagus (from Peachcroft Farm). Also (but not pictured) was some shop bought hollandaise to add a bit of sharpness.

According to a lot of the sous-vide information you cannot cook green vegetables that way because they lose too much colour with the long cooking times. I followed a suggestion I found on one website by vacuum sealing the asparagus and then just putting the bags in boiling water for 5 minutes. I think it keeps more of the asparagus flavour that way, but when I get around to it I plan to try a blind taste test.

The duck eggs were cooked at 62.5C for an indeterminate time. After 55 minutes I was about to drop the asparagus into boiling water but a neighbours burglar alarm going off delayed them by 20 minutes or so spent finding the key-holder and disabling the alarm. The wonder of slow cooked eggs is that the extra time makes no difference to the outcome: they still come out with thick cooked yolks and quivering whites.

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Photographs from TEDxObserver

2011-03-20T10:34:00.002Z

These are the pictures I took at TEDxObserver yesterday: talks which made us all laugh and cry (and jump up and down).

https://picasaweb.google.com/kupuguy/TEDxObserver#

Thank you to the Observer for organising this.

See http://www.guardian.co.uk/tedx for more details about the event.

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A tale of two cheeks

2011-01-21T13:32:00.001Z

I've put the sous vide magic through an autotune cycle which took around 3 hours. The temperature graph now looks much better with an initial overshoot of around 0.6C and eventually settling down to about +/-0.2C. For a cheap slow cooker, albeit one with an expensive external control box, I think that is pretty impressive. There's no dip on this chart because I added the meat right at the beginning, but that also means it started off a bit cooler and took longer to get up to temperature.

I noticed at the weekend that our local Waitrose was selling ox cheeks. This is probably some sort of mistake on their part that they'll rectify as soon as they spot it. They sold cured pig cheeks for a couple of weeks last year but I haven't seen them since. I bought two weighing about 1lb each and decided to cook them at the same time but with different flavourings.

For one cheek I used a beer marinade: some onion and carrot softened and then most of a small bottle of Leffe Brune. I let the beer reduce by about half and also made sure the vegetable were fully cooked as I don't expect they would cook any further in the water bath. Next I poured the beer into a bowl lined with cling film and froze it: my vacuum sealer won't seal anything liquid. Then I put cheek, frozen beer, and the vegetables into a vacuum bag. For next time, I now know I should have frozen (or discarded) the vegetables also: there was just too much liquid left in them so I had a real battle to seal the bag but got there eventually by vacuum sealing it and then immediately adding another seal on top before it had time to leak.

The second cheek I used a variant on a rub suggested by Chris Amirault for short ribs: salt, pepper, dried porcini (blitzed to a powder). He mixed it to a paste with some vinegar and added a little beef fat for flavour. I mixed it to a paste with some goose fat and added a dash of frozen vinegar.

Both cheeks then went into the water bath at 60C for around 33 hours.

The mushroom cheek unfortunately didn't go perfectly: it might have been the meat but I suspect my goose fat must have picked up some thermophilic bacteria that just loved 60C. I could tell it wasn't quite right by a whiff of something cheesy when I removed it from the water. When I removed it from the bag it didn't smell too bad and tasted great, however by the time we'd eaten the whole house smelled like a ripe French cheese. Fortunately the bacteria that grow at that temperature are mostly harmless, so we survived. But for next time before doing any really long times I'm going to briefly dip the meat in near boiling water and also heat any dodgy fat I plan to use.

The cheek itself was tasty and tender: it had a slightly peculiar texture, slow cooked but still with something similar to medium rare.

We decided to let the beer cheek cook for a touch longer so gave it another 12 hours and the next morning put it in an ice bath and then in the fridge. Amazingly given the fight I'd had sealing it the bag stayed sealed and I was able to reheat it for dinner a couple of evenings later. The texture this time was definitely more cooked, though I couldn't say how much of that was down to the extra cooking time and how much to the different flavourings. The most amazing thing though was the startling red colour: slow cooked meat does turn red (see McGee for the full details of the chemical reactions), but the beer marinade was quite black when I put it in. Over time the sauce had turned red along with the meat.

Conclusions: Ability to seal bags: just about ok. Maintaining a stable low temperature over a long time period: check. Bacterial control: needs to try harder.

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More SousVide geeky experiments

2011-01-13T18:58:00.001Z

I still haven't had time to put the SousVideMagic through it's auto-tune, but before I do that I wanted to see how well (or otherwise) it performed with the suggested settings from the manual, so it seemed a good idea to draw a graph of the temperatures while actually cooking something.

Unfortunately the SousVideMagic doesn't record a history of what happens, and fortunately I'm not quite geeky enough to site there for 2 hours writing down the current temperature every 20 seconds so instead I took a time lapse video (1 second of video=2 minutes) of the SousVideMagic while cooking dinner and used that to draw a graph:

The set point was 57C but with the settings I'm using just now there's an overshoot of 1.7C. I added two vacuum packed steaks just before the 45 minute mark (which should be obvious from the graph) and left them in for a little under an hour. They were finished with 1 minute each side in a hot frying pan. I left the camera going for a while longer but unfortunately not long enough to see how far below the set point the cooker got before heating up again.

57C was a bit on the high side (at least when it became 58.7 it was). The steaks were mostly grey. :( They were still reasonably juicy just not as good as they should have been.

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timelapse.mpg (1804 KB)

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Eggsperimenting with a Sous Vide Magic

2011-01-11T08:57:00.001Z

For Christmas this year I was given a Sous Vide Magic temperature controller (TM-1500D) and a slow cooker.

The idea is that a dumb slow cooker combined with a sophisticated controller gives the equivalent of a precision water bath, but at much lower cost. Also (importantly for home cooks), the slow cooker is smaller than a water bath and the sous vide controller can be put away easily. The downside is that there are more wires to get tangled and the controller needs to be calibrated to match the heating device. Unlike a thermostat the sous vide controller will vary the power supplied to the cooker and (in theory) produce much less temperature variation.

The extra thermometer in the photograph was just for comparison and it also nicely demonstrates the difference between accuracy and precision. The sous vide controller has a precision of 0.1C and seems to register about 1C higher than the thermometer. My other digital thermometer also has a precision of 0.1C and registers about 1C higher again than the sous vide controller.

For the first experiment the manual suggests trying the default settings for the device and slow cooking some eggs. That sounds sensible as it doesn't cost much to chuck the eggs if it goes wrong. Unfortunately the default settings are for a commercial rice cooker, and a slow cooker behaves rather differently. I set the desired temperature to 64C but it actually stabilised just under 60C. I added the eggs anyway (partly thinking that putting them in before reaching temperature would reduce the chance of cracking, though as you can see in the photo one of them did in fact crack slightly).

After about an hour at 60C I got fed up waiting, boosted the 'set temperature' to 74C until the cooker reached 64C and then reduced it back to 64C. The temperature overshot by 0.9C and then gradually dropped back towards 64C. I gave the eggs a further 20 minutes with the result you can see. Amazingly (and probably completely unrepeatably) the result appears to be a pretty decent slow cooked egg.

Peeling the eggs is interesting: the white is set enough to hold together, but once you've got big enough hole in the shell the whole egg just flows straight out.

For the second attempt I changed the parameters to some the manual suggested for a 4 quart slow cooker. The one I've got is 6.5l so that seemed the closest match in the manual. I set a target of 60C and got much better results with the slow cooker hitting a peak of 61.4C and then slowly dropping back towards the target. With a bit more guess work I should be able to reduce the overshoot. It's probably best if I try the autotune function but the manual says it takes a long time so that might have to wait until the weekend.

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Adventures in the snow

2010-12-18T16:23:00.001Z

Last night was Judy's work's Christmas party. To celebrate 25 years of
the internet they'd hired the Ashmoleum Museum so we decided the best
option was for me to leave my car in the Park and Ride, get a taxi
home and collect the car this morning.

Step one went to plan: we had a great time at the party (though the
disco was definitely too loud). Step two went a bit wayward: the taxi
we'd booked two days before for 11:30pm was replaced by an SMS
suggesting we phone another company. Fortunately the replacement taxi
turned up fairly promptly (it was about -5C but we retreated back into
the museum gift shop while we waited). We got home without further
problem: at this point it was just cold. I did notice though as we
passed the park and ride that my car was glowing gently: courtesy
light left on, oops.

Saturday morning: light dusting of snow. The plan was to do the weekly
shop and then go up to the Park & Ride and collect my car. By the time
we got to Waitrose it was snowing solidly. By the time we left
Waitrose the snow was thick on the roads. We got to the top of the
hill out of Abingdon before the driver refused to go any further, so I
got out at the bus stop while she (sensible person) turned round and
slid back down the hill.

The bus to the park and ride was slow but steady. More concerning was
that the ring road in the opposite direction appeared to be
stationary. 6 inches of snow on the car, and as fast as I cleared it
more fell, but once I'd got the windows mostly clear I tried to set
off. I've got an MX5, which is rear wheel drive, and snow and rear
wheel drive don't really mix. No matter how hard I tried (and I had
dug away the snow at ground level), I couldn't get out of the parking
space. All that happened was that the back end slid towards the car on
the left. After a couple of goes I went and commandeered a volunteer
from the P&R waiting room and he tried pushing while I continued to go
nowhere except dangerously close to the next car.

Abandoning the car, I joined the people in the waiting room to try to
get a bus back to Abingdon. No buses appeared either way, and the
traffic in the Abingdon direction was virtually static. I did venture
out briefly to push another car (rear wheel drivers stick together!)
as far as the entrance. The chap in charge of the waiting room was
pointedly advising people that he couldn't advise them to drive out of
the entrance, but he was sure they would understand him. There was
unanimous agreement that the guy trying to get out with a rear wheel
drive must be mad, but also applause when he finally made it onto the
main road.

Eventually I gave up and set out to walk to Oxford Station (2 miles).
It would have been a very nice walk if it hadn't been snowing: a few
vehicles passed me on the way in to Oxford, but I passed all of them
again around Folly Bridge where the traffic was stationary both ways.
Much of the way I just walked up the road as that was firm packed snow
while the pavement was a bit lumpy (and surprisingly crowded). I
really did appreciate the people with wheeled cases as they
effectively acted as snow ploughs along the pavement.

From Oxford Station I got a train to Didcot though I still don't know
which train it was. The departure board said it was the 12.07 but it
might have been the 12.37. Either way it sat a while ('no driver' was
the reason given) and finally left about 12.49.

At Didcot I waited a bit over an hour for a bus that never turned up.
The traffic was moving in Didcot, and the bus for the opposite
direction arrived pretty much on time. He had no idea where his
colleague would be (but was quite clear that the bus was running). I
had a long chat with a chap who was waiting for the same bus and
hoping to get to Abingdon. He was carrying skis, but since he was
taking them to have bindings fitted they were no use whatsoever.
Eventually he got a train to Radley (walking distance from Abingdon)
and I gave up waiting and walked home: just over 3 miles through the
snow. The expected bus did not pass me anywhere along the way.

It's still snowing, so I have no idea when I'm going to see my car
again but at least I managed to turn off that light!

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Christmas tasting at Summertown Wine Cafe

2010-12-16T09:40:00.001Z

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It's that time of year again when we need to stock up on some more wine. So this was the annual Christmas tasting at the Summertown Wine Cafe. A slightly different format this year: 20 wine tastes for £8 plus another couple of wines thrown in. Actually I find that a bit strange since choosing 20 from 27 can hardly save them a massive amount. Last year's format was basically serve yourself though so maybe some people were pouring more than just tastes.
Anyway, all god fun.

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UNDER PRESSURE AT PEMBROKE

2010-09-18T17:09:00.000+01:00

My memories of food at Pembroke College Cambridge are not all good. There was the time I returned my lunch because I really didn't think seafood should be furry, and there were dubious rumours about the chips. But that's all an unreasonable number of years ago. Last night I was back for a reunion dinner and it's fair to say that the cooking has changed out of all recognition (and massively for the better). Here's last night's menu:

Salad of citrus-cured wild Salmon, Crayfish, pea mousse and fennel

Best end of Lamb with confit shoulder, Provençal vegetables, baby spinach, basil lamb jus and baby fondant potatoes.

Sumac Strawberries and cream with white chocolate sponge cake and plum wine jelly.

Coffee and dessert

The wines were a Sancerre with the fish, a very nice Rasteau with the lamb (and refilled for the strawberries and cream) and Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh (sweet white), Château Potensac Medoc (claret) and Quinta do Noval (port) at dessert. (In case anyone is confused, the dessert course is a selection of fruit bowls and quite separate from the sweet course).

The menu doesn't really do justice to the presentation which was excellent for a large event. There was just a minor glitch with one element missed off some of the strawberry course (my friends on either side were somewhat surprised when their plates disappeared before they'd had a chance for a mouthful, but they were quickly replaced).

Sadly I didn't take pictures, but I've now discovered the kitchen even has its own blog UNDER PRESSURE AT PEMBROKE: A lunch for the Master which has more than 1000 pictures of Pembroke food. Now I've just got to think of an excuse to exercise those dining rights that I've never taken advantage of...

Hertog Jan, Brugge, Belgium

2010-07-28T21:30:00.001+01:00

Spoiler Alert: this article may contain spoilers for a very original and sometimes downright surprising menu. If you are planning to go you might want to stop reading here. If you aren't planning a visit to Belgium in the near future you might want to review your plans, check your bank account and then stop reading. If you're a vegetarian keep right on reading but be warned that there is mention of goose liver.

Restaurant Hertog Jan frankly isn't in the most exciting setting. Although it’s beside a moderately busy road on the outskirts of Brugge, the restaurant itself has an open airy feel. On one side of the building is a narrow lean-to conservatory with tables for two, glass to the garden and large windows back through the dining room with the larger tables and on the other end a mostly glass wall onto the kitchen which itself seemed to be mostly glass to the outside. So initially we could watch the activity in the kitchen although our view was limited as other tables filled up.

Immediately on sitting down we were presented with a hedgehog of bread with butter and olive oil, then a macaroon of cherry, with goose liver centre on a cola crisp.

Next was a small bowl of goose liver, freeze dried raspberry and rose petal frozen spheres. Just as we were beginning to wonder the menus arrived. The appetizers kept coming: asparagus cream, langoustine jelly, herring roe and a whole little egg yolk then an interesting parmesan cream topped with a parmesan cracker and powdered tomato. Some of the earlier plates were cleared to make way for a potato foam topped with cheese, coffee, and vanilla: kind of like eating a baked potato with a cup of coffee but not very.

At this point we moved onto the menu proper with the arrival of a glass of Kabinett oozing flowers with every sniff or sip to accompany a dish of white asparagus and radish on pickled gherkins with a ponzo vinaigrette.

Dish number two was langoustine with a crayfish sauce and accompanied by a white cotes du Rhone (strong melon or peach notes).

The third course was preceded by the arrival of a slightly strangely shaped glass which left us wondering slightly until we saw the same glasses being filled at a nearby table with Kriek Boon, leaving us only to ponder which of the dishes from the menu would be best matched by beer. The answer of course was the lobster: what else would go with a dish of lobster and cherries but a cherry beer.

Fourth course was smoked eel with red beet and woodland strawberries. The wine was a dry Australian Semillon.

Fifth course was duck, and a wine from near Nice with Syrah, Grenache, and some white wine grape whose name I didn't catch. The duck was accompanied by crunchy quinoa, tiny mushrooms, fava beans and some pureed beans.

Sixth and final(ish) was dessert. First up was a very green course combining green apples, sorrel ice, and pistachio puree garnished with elderflowers. The coils of apple were intriguing as we tried to work out how you cut such a long strip from an apple such that it unrolls to a neat rectangle but still has skin all along one edge.

The next dish left us both grinning and giggling. It looked innocuous enough though the gentle crackling sound it was making was perhaps not quite normal for a dessert. The macaroons though, as soon as you put one or even part of one in you mouth dissolved instantly into a burst of gas with a most surprising pressure and jets of vapour out of each nostril. I may be tempting fate by saying I found this most original: it has a certain similarity to the green tea mousse from the Fat Duck, but these macaroons seemed much more stable and packed a much bigger hit. According to the waiter (though I think his English was being tested somewhat) they were macaroons of egg white baked in the oven and then soaked in liquid nitrogen.

As we were finishing this a third dessert turned up, echoes of the pre starters with new plates displacing the old. This one was passion fruit and pineapple.

Nearing the end now: green tea, chocolates (the white one is Fisherman's Friend flavour, can't remember the others. The some caramel tubes and more chocolate. Finally the return of the cherry and cola macaroons took us neatly full circle.

Eating Sushi with a spoon

2010-05-21T13:57:00.002+01:00

I recently twittered a picture of our canteen's 'Sushi and Noddles', which as I quickly found out was a never to be repeated experience. As my friend Jo put it "You are not supposed to have to eat sushi with a spoon." Last night I learned an exception to that otherwise excellent rule.

We were fortunate enough to be invited to a test run for a new menu at Restaurant Allium in Fairford. James and Erica Graham have made big changes to the menu, and a few of the new dishes are somewhat surprising but this one really stood out:

This tasty looking sushi is, believe it or not, one of the new desserts. From top left, clockwise this box contains: banana teriyaki (very messy if you try to pick it up with your fingers), something that looks like salmon eggs but I think is actually grapefruit spheres, watermelon on sweet rice, deep fried ice-cream, and a melon roll. In the middle are ginger, soy sauce with maple syrup, and cucumber. The whole ensemble really plays with your mind: not just because it looks like sushi, but also because (especially with the ginger and soy) at lot of the tastes are similar too, and yet it is a dessert.

Other highlights: my starter of smoked venison tartare was salty and smoky and nicely complemented by some fresh berries, blackcurrant leather and a cherry crisp; Judy had a main course of turbot with clams and an oyster with a 'pearl' of liquid mussel.

There were perhaps a few areas on some of the dishes that could be tweaked: one of our table wasn't impressed by a baked potato jelly, and maybe the blackcurrant leather could have been a bit less leathery, but I think all the plates ended up cleared.

I should probably note that as this was a special test run of the menu we weren't actually paying but I expect we'll go back and do it again as paying guests soon.

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Mr Underhill's at Dinham Weir

2010-05-18T20:58:00.002+01:00

For our break in Ludlow we stayed at Mr Underhill's. That meant we had a reasonable walk up and down the hill the first evening to La Becasse, but the walk for the second evening was just downstairs to the dining room.

The style is definitely a bit more traditional than at La Becasse (but still excellent). Mr Underhill’s offers a single market menu (though they do substitute courses where necessary). The menu came personalised with our name at the top and accompanied by olives, gougeres and flatbreads.

After we were shown to our table there was an amuse of a cone of marinated smoked salmon, (but neither of us took a picture) and then the first ‘proper’ course was an Almond veloute with graphs and Pedro Ximinez. One minor criticism is that I did feel about this point, with the entire restaurant seated at about the same time, the initial service seemed a little bit rushed.

Duck liver custard ‘10 + carrot cream & lemongrass glaze: smooth and creamy.

1st pickings of Bridgnorth asparagus with lemon crumb & smokey soft egg sauce.

The main course was a beautifully tender slow roasted fillet of Mortimer Forest venison:

The dessert, cheese and dessert wine menus turned up. A nice touch was the option of a sharing platter for the cheese.

Pre-dessert was Plum 'sponge' with star anise ice cream, then for the actual dessert, I had a hot rhubarb fondant and Judy had poached pear with fudge ice cream.

La Becasse, Ludlow

2010-04-29T19:11:00.001+01:00

On Friday evening we watched Chef Will Holland winning his heat on Great British Menu and then wandered over the hill in central Ludlow to his restaurant, La Becasse, to try his cooking for ourselves. Actually it's not the first time we've sampled his cooking: we've been to l'Ortolan while he was there under Alan Murchison, but this was our first visit to the restaurant he runs himself.

There was a choice of three menus that we studied while relaxing over a drink in the courtyard garden: gourmand (i.e. tasting), a la carte, or surprise. No prizes for guessing which one we went for.

Wine with a surprise menu is tricky, but (although it isn't listed as an option on the menu) they will do matched tasting glasses, so that was alright. The descriptions of the dishes are based on my notes (we didn't ask for a copy of what they'd served) so what follows may be inaccurate in places.

After a scotch quail egg appetizer we started with a very interesting and imaginative tomato appetizer: a variety of tomato, a powerful tomato sorbet, confit tomato, melon, cucumber foam, and pickled cucumber. This was accompanied by a Fino sherry.

Next was a mackerel tartare, smoked aubergine puree, onion rings and Indian bread. Wine was a Sauvignon & Viognier blend from SW France. The mackerel was very nice though we weren't quite sure how the bread fitted in.

Third course was heralded by a Gewürztraminer to accompany a Foie Gras terrine on toasted orange brioche with marmalade, sweet wine jellies and pear balls. We noted one of the tables next to us which asked to be told about this dish (or at least the equivalent from one of the other menus) in French were told that the jellies were Sauternes.

Fourth course was a dish of surf clams, cauliflower carpaccio with a cheese sauce and zingy lemon zest and peppercorns all sitting on a strip of green (parsley) pasta. There was a lot of variety to this dish with different flavour combinations at different points. Definitely this one was a big hit with us both. The accompanying wine was a Spanish Albarino: lemony and a bit of oak.

Fish course was Halibut with a Parmesan crust, Jersey Royal Sag Aloo and interesting foam and a nice sharp sauce (checking the a la carte menu that was probably the lime emulsion and coconut velouté). The accompanying wine was a French blend of Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, and Viognier.

Switching to red wine, a Madiran, we had Herefordshire sirloin with an interesting potato and bone marrow pudding, and some tasty braised Herefordshire snails and wilted wild garlic.

Cheese course next: a garlicky Ragstone goats cheese mousse, raspberry puree, and a nicely tangy beetroot jelly accompanied by a glass of Madeira. On the subject of cheese, there was a cheese trolley tempting plenty of the other tables; the top of the trolley opened to reveal the cheese and every time this happened a blast of cheese aromas swept round the room (and probably tempted another table to go for the extra course).

Next was a pre dessert, a passion fruit custard topped by a cucumber granite and a little piece of crystallised angelica. (They omitted the angelica for one nearby diner who had asked for gluten free: nice to know they spend the time to read the ingredients of such things in detail).

Dessert #1, very good was a creamy liquorice panacotta (not too strong on the liquorice), carrot cake, yoghurt sabayon and was served with a sweet Jurançon wine.

Dessert #2 was a chocolate and beetroot cake, white beetroot ice cream and beetroot spaghetti. This was alright but Judy wasn't convinced by it. Pedro Ximinez sherry as the accompaniment brought back childhood memories of eating large handfuls of raisins (only with more alcohol).

We finished with some tea and retreated upstairs to the lounge which was pleasantly cooler then after paying walked back over the hill.

Ashmolean Dining Room, Oxford

2010-03-08T22:05:00.001Z

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford recently underwent a £60 million rebuild. The new museum has a much more open feel, and to top it all off they’ve added a restaurant in a glass box on the roof, so we had to visit.

Finding the restaurant in the evening is an interesting exercise: during the day the access is through the magnificent facade at the front of the museum, but in the evening entry is through the staff entrance off St. Giles. The side entrance has a reception desk and someone to take coats and show you to the lift up to the rooftop restaurant, but it still looks more like a staff entrance than the entrance to a restaurant. In the lift there was a board (presumably just for the evenings) sellotaped over the floor buttons leaving only the ground floor and roof accessible.

The restaurant itself has been set well back on the roof. This is probably essential as it hides the modern structure from street level view, but it does somewhat restrict the view. In fact after dark the Randolph hotel opposite is really the only obvious outside feature (but the lampshades reflecting in the window gave a most interesting effect). As museum restaurants go, the rooftop idea is great but I think the Tower Restaurant in the Museum of Scotland beats it hands down.

The food isn’t overly fancy but tasted good (menu at http://ashmoleandiningroom.com/menus). I did feel though that some of the dishes could have benefited from a more ambitious presentation: my white Jerusalem risotto starter served on a flat white plate with flowery border really cried out to be served in something like a coloured bowl.

Service was good, except that when the waitress took our order for pre-dinner drinks she also took away the wine list so we had to ask her to return it.

Magdalen Arms

2010-02-07T15:00:00.002Z

The Magdalen Arms in Oxford recently re-opened metamorphosing in the process from a rowdy sports bar to a local gastro pub. We went along on a Friday evening to check it out. Booking in advance seems to be pretty nearly essential (although they did manage to accommodate some friends of ours who went on spec on a Wednesday evening). Sadly the annoying habit of fitting in multiple sittings seems to have spread from London so we had a two hour time limit on the table: plenty of time, and we were warned when we booked, but on the whole we prefer not to be limited. A plus point is that most unusually for Oxford there is plenty street parking in the area.

Despite the emphasis on the food this is still a local pub and even the restaurant area is more pub than restaurant with bare (and wobbly) tables. The menu is simple and straightforward, vegetables are seasonal (there’s a board outside asking local allotment holders to swap their produce for beer), and there’s a good selection of slow-cooked meat dishes on the menu such as the seven hour lamb in portions for 3 to 5 people to share.

With only two of us we couldn’t go for the sharing lamb (I guess we could, but that would have been greedy). For starters Judy enjoyed a tasty seafood bourride while I had pork and rabbit rillettes (which tasted good, but they didn’t need to have left in a rabbit bone: I’d have believed it had real rabbit without it). My main course was rare roast venison (pink but extremely tender) with a semolina gnocchi and red cabbage cooked with bacon. Judy had braised ox cheek slowly cooked until it was falling apart. Portion sizes were generous, so we went for lighter puddings: a buttermilk pudding with quince for me and vanilla ice cream with sherry for Judy.

Bread was really nice sourdough, but we did feel the two very small complimentary pieces were a bit parsimonious. A refill of bread (four slightly bigger pieces) for £1 was worth the money, but I’d have been happier if it was all charged or all included, half and half just didn’t feel right.

The wine list included a good selection available in half litre carafes: always my preferred size for two of us dining out together.

Champagne Lanson Tasting

2009-10-21T08:30:00.004+01:00

The email from Summertown Wine Cafe promised great things:

“Tom Stevenson - a fellow member of the Summertown Wine Cafe - sent me the most amazing offer last week. As the world's most respected authority on Champagne and author of both the Sotheby's and Christie's Wine Encyclopedias Tom gets to taste a lot of very good Champagne. In this case he has been asked by Lanson to give London's top sommeliers a masterclass on the best of their library stock of Vintage Champagnes back to 1976. In order to confirm which ones he will present, he has been sent 10 Magnums (one went missing in transit!) Once he has tasted each there will be about 14.5 litres of Vintage Champagne to be finished off: could I think of anyone who'd like to join him to drink it up?”

One really unusual feature was that some of the wines were the same vintage but different dates of disgorgement (that's the process where they remove the yeast from the champagne by freezing the bottle neck), so this seemed like a unique chance to compare the differences made both by vintage and disgorgement. It also said “No need to book, just come along”, yeah, right. We turned up in what we thought was plenty of time. The members' parking was full, Summertown streets were full. We got parked eventually and arrived spot on 7pm. The cafe was packed and we just sneaked in under the wire: we'd decided just to go for one tasting (Judy was driving so she just got a small sip from each glass), and I'm pretty sure we we got the last one. That tasting itself was a bit hectic: some people had obviously come in and paid earlier and then were turning up at random times during the evening which I think made it almost impossible for the staff to know whether they were going to have enough or not. (Quote: I'll just start at number 5. Sorry, we're out of number 5) The wines, and my thoughts (sorry but I'm not good at flowery wine language so don't expect too much) were:

Lanson Vintage 1996 (Magnum) Disgorged 2009 September. I thought this was light and lemony, nothing special but a nice drink.
Lanson Vintage 1995 (Magnum) Disgorded 2009 June. Actually it said 2006 on this bottle too, but apparently the cork had revealed it was actually 2005 mislabelled. I thought this one had quite a metallic undertone and didn't like it much.
Lanson Vintage 1988 (Magnum) Disgorged 2009. This had a bit more depth and a nice biscuity flavour.
Lanson Vintage 1985 (Magnum) Disgorged 2009. This was good, and I think tasted like I expect champagne to taste.
Lanson Vintage 1982 (750ml) Disgorged 1999. A chance here to compare with the next one two bottles of the same vintage but different sizes and dates. This one was very nice but quite unusual: Judy said it reminded her of coffee: I think I agree, there was a distinct creaminess with a slight underlying bitterness. A bit of peach too perhaps.
Lanson Vintage 1982 (Magnum) Disgorged 2008. Really not nice at all. Nothing like the other 1982.
Lanson 1979 (Magnum) Disgorged 1999. Very good depth and a nice biscuity flavour. The best champagne I'd ever tasted until
Lanson 1979 (Magnum) Disgorged 1986ish (they were'nt exactly sure). More rounded than the previous one: those extra 13ish years after disgorging had let it oxidise a little more. This was my favourite of the evening.
Lanson Vintage 1976 (Magnum) Disgorged 2008. Very nice and interesting champagne, but to my now more experienced palate(!) I'd say leave it in the bottle a few more years.
Lanson Vintage 1976 (Magnum) Disgorged 1999. Probably comes in second place for me after number 8.

All I can say is wow. That was £20 well spent.

Millennium Restaurant, San Francisco

2009-06-03T20:54:00.001+01:00

I was in San Francisco with a colleague for the Google conference last week and the Thursday night after the conference had ended we needed somewhere to eat. I appealed for suggestions on Twitter and my friend Jo suggested the Millennium Restaurant. It looked interesting so we decided to give it a go.

Millennium is a vegetarian restaurant. Neither Andrew nor myself are vegetarians, but we didn’t see that should stop us. Unfortunately we had to go to the conference party on Wednesday so we couldn’t take advantage of Millennium’s ‘bring a carnivore and get 25% discount’ on Wednesday evenings :( but for the Thursday evening we had the option of the ‘May Market’ menu. The menu, BTW wasn’t just vegetarian: it was entirely vegan which goes to show you can have an interesting and varied diet as a vegan (although I guess that it takes a lot of effort). I assume the matched wines are also vegetarian though I must admit I didn’t actually ask.

1st Course: Chilled Indian Spiced Cucumber & Galia Melon Soup. methi spiced apricot salad, coconut mustard seed cream. Gewurztraminer, Husch, Anderson Valley, Mendocino, CA, 06

I felt that the mildly curry spiced soup was an extremely good match with the wine. Also in the picture you can see the remains of the bread which came with a black bean spread, and my non-alcoholic sour cherry, lime and tonic aperitif.

2nd Course: Hemp Crusted Fried Squash Blossoms. creamed corn & leeks, chipotle-orange oil. Sauvignon Blanc, Domaine Sylvain Bailly, Quincy, Loire, France, 07

We both agreed that this was the best course: crispy crunchy squash flowers and the first of the season’s corn.

3rd Course: Indian Spice Crusted Portobello Mushroom. cream kidney bean masala, currant, orange & cashew brown rice pilaf with cauliflower & spring onion, sweet-spicy apricot glaze, cabbage, carrot & cardamom pickle. Syrah, Navarro Vineyard, Mendocino, Ca, 05

Black Eyed Pea Zucchini Cakes. grilled porcini mushroom, pozole rojo with roasted carrots, potato & lambs quarter, marinated radish & chile. Zinfandel, Quivira, Dry Creek Valley, Ca, 06

Andrew had the mushroom (but I got to photograph it first). To be honest I think the Portobello mushroom looks the better dish: the black eyed zucchini cakes look a little bit, err, black. But anything with porcini has to be worthwhile and both main courses were pretty tasty.

Dessert: Almond shortcake. ginger-coconut cream, seasonal berries & stone fruit, lemongrass scented aprium-blackberry sauce, Thai basil crème anglaise. Muscat de Rivesaltes, Chateau de Jau, Languedoc, France 05

The shortcake might have been better a bit thinner, but otherwise a nice dessert.

Bottom line: Millennium is well worth visiting, even for the carnivores amongst us (and if as a result we lose a few of our numbers to the vegetarian side I’m sure there will be some small furry animals sleeping a bit easier). I have only a couple of complaints: the lighting isn’t bright enough for easy photography and given that the couple at the table next to us were both busy snapping their food they really should offer special tables for the snappers among us. The other problem is that 5,500 miles really is a bit far for regular visits :(

Restaurant Nathan Outlaw

2009-04-26T14:09:00.001+01:00

Restaurant Nathan Outlaw is another restaurant we visited previously. Here there’s been no simplification of the menu: in fact a 7 course tasting menu has appeared with matched wines.

A large part of the attraction at Nathan Outlaw’s is the setting which is quite fabulously stunning. If it’s a nice day then you can have afternoon tea on the veranda (as we did).

We started with champagne and nibbles then were led to our table: no, not the one in the picture, even Cornwall is a little bit chilly in April to eat dinner outside, but the view over the estuary was taken from our table.

The amuse was a chilled almond soup with olive oil and was served with a glass of something fizzy, but I didn’t write down what (and sneakily since the amuse didn’t count as one of the 7 courses the wine wasn’t on the printed menu either).

Fish courses: Lemon Sole, Wild Garlic Potato Dumplings with Lemon & Olive Oil Sauce (Chablis accompanying) followed by Cured Salmon, Marinated Beetroot Risotto, Horseradish and Dill (Framingham Pinot Noir) followed by Brill, Mushrooms, Kale, Parsley and Garlic (Brezeme 2006 – Marsanne and Viognier).

Two meat courses: Duck with Smoked Duck Pancake, Butternut Squash and Plum Sauce (Chateauneuf du Pape 2005, Clos St. Michel) and then Lamb, Young Garlic, Thyme and Roast Onions (Napanook 1999).

Finally two desserts: first Lime and Vanilla Curd, Shortbread and Mango Sorbet served (because they hadn’t found a wine that was a good match) with a Summer Cocktail.

and finally Peanut Mousse with Banana Ice Cream and Espresso Syrup (Condrieu, Les Fleurs d’Automne):

and just in case I didn’t stress the scenery enough here’s the view from the hotel in the morning before the mist had all burned off:

See the rest of my Cornwall photo’s on Picasa.

Paul Ainsworth at Number 6 Restaurant

2009-04-26T13:42:00.001+01:00

Number 6 in Padstow has recently simplified the menu somewhat since our previous visit. Several people we talked to thought this was a good thing as they are now being looked on locally as a place to visit when you want a meal out, rather than just somewhere for a special occasion.

The good news though is the quality is still very high. I had Goose Liver Pate with toasted Sourdough (although I found the sourdough a bit too salty, but the pate was very nice). Judy’s starter was Scallops and chicken wings. For main course I had the Bream while Judy had an oxtail pudding. For dessert we took the scary platter option with some of everything on possibly the longest plate I’ve seen.

Ig Nobel Prizes

2009-03-08T15:14:00.001Z

We spent yesterday afternoon at the first of the 2009 Ig Nobel UK Tour in Oxford (part of the National Science and Engineering Week): upcoming appearances if you are quick are in Newcastle, Portsmouth, Bristol and London.

The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded each year to 10 individuals or groups for research which makes you laugh and then makes you think. The UK tour involves an introductory talk from Marc Abrahams (the man behind the Ig Nobels) about some of the past winners, and some short talks (strictly limited to 5 minutes each) from some of the winners. Audience participation is an important part of the event: at the actual award ceremony timekeeping is performed by an eight year old girl, but in her absence the entire third row of the audience were drafted in to replace her (using a different but equally effective technique). We sat in the third row, so were kept busy throughout the proceedings.

The introduction included a toast (more audience participation) of Coca Cola drunk to honour the 2008 winners of the Chemistry prize. The prize was shared between two teams on of which proved that Coca Cola is an effective spermicide, while the others proved that it is not.

The other speakers (and there will be a different selection of speakers at each event) kicked off with Charles Spence, one of the authors of “The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips” which was excellent as being a foodie topic gives me at least a passing excuse for blogging about this. The experiment in which each volunteer was made to eat 180 Pringles of varying ages over the course of an hour while wearing headphones that played various noises that affected their perception of the freshness of the crisps. This research has been put into practice by Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck where a seafood dish is accompanied by an iPod playing the sound of seagulls. From personal experience I can say that dish tastes good but I can’t say I’m sure whether the seagulls enhance it (and I lent the iPod to a lady at the next table who wasn’t having that dish but was dying to know what I was listening to).

Julian Vincent then entertained us all with his description of how by mathematically modelling a woodpecker he was able to design an inertialess hammer, Fiona Barclay (one of the constructors of the Periodic Table Table: a four-legged piece of furniture that contains (nearly) all the elements of the periodic table) described her adventures in purchasing some of the more exotic elements, in particular buying plutonium in Covent Garden.

John Troyer described how few of US states have laws that outlaw necrophilia (and in Minnesota it is illegal only when witnessed by a third party). Fortunately we found the UK makes it illegal in most, but surprisingly not all, situations.

Finally Dan Meyer, author of a paper on the medical side effects of sword swallowing described in great detail just what can go wrong, most often when swallowing unusual or multiple swords (in particular he warned us against attempting to swallow a violin bow). He was allowed to overrun his allotted time and managed to fit in a live demonstration (with audience participation).

Bistro l'Industrie, L'Isle sur la Sorgue

2008-09-16T20:45:00.001+01:00

L'Isle sur la Sorgue has several good restaurants, but one of our 'must visit' destinations is the Bistro l'Industrie.

Most of the seating is right next to the river and just across the road from the bistro itself: this picture was taken from our table.

Pizzas are excellent, cooked in a wood fired oven.

The daily special dessert: buttery almond puff pastry, and underneath pears in chocolate sauce.

El Bulli, 14th June, 2008

2008-07-02T21:55:00.001+01:00

Although we had an evening booking we thought we'd check out El Bulli for ourselves in the morning. The El Bulli emails all say "don't use satnav" and it was fairly obvious why: my Nokia n810 showed a yellow road from the hotel (Almadraba Park Hotel) across to Cala Montjoi, and yellow generally means a reasonable road but when the surface gave out we decided to turn round and go the other way (the local tourist train goes that way but evidently not any other traffic). The other way (not marked at all on our printed map) involved a trip right back into Roses and then follow signs to El Bulli along a narrow winding road so we were quite glad that the evening trip could be left to a professional. Half way along we suddenly found ourselves with a view over the hotel looking almost close enough to touch and then shortly after met the other end of the 'forest road'.

El Bulli itself is down off one side of the road with just enough roadside parking for a few tourists to stop and admire the views.

For the evening we booked a taxi a nice lady who (judging by her pink scented business card) was call Paqui (the other name on the card was Fernando but I'm sure that wasn't her). Judy wasn't entirely convinced by her reaction that she'd actually driven to El Bulli before (so much for leaving it to the professionals) but she got us there in good shape (about 25 minutes drive, 32 euro). It turns out that for a 7:30 booking they don't let anyone in until 7:30 so when we arrived there was a queue outside (and we were very thankful that we hadn't been booked in for the night before with its torrential downpour).

After a quick tour of the kitchen we were served a group of appetizers (and glasses of Cava) on the terrace:

Cherry kirsch: the was a 'welcome drink' a lovely cherry foam with cocoa nibs in it

shiso soft candy

pinenut and chocolate bon bons - these were very interesting. There was a hard shell when you picked them up, but in the mouth they were completely soft.

spherical olives - an green skin round an intensely olive flavours liquid centre

nori-Trias

"averantos"

Tomato biscuit - a very intense tomato flavour

Pekin crêpes - we were told to eat immediately, so I did. No photo as a result. Unbelievably crunchy.

To accompany the meal we ordered a bottle of white Chateauneuf: in fact a Chateau de Beaucastel Vielle Vignes Blanc 2000 which I think was definitely a cut above the average white CdP.

Moving inside the next courses were:

mint leaf with coconut - A mint flavoured wafer and some coconut.

black sesame sponge cake with miso - this is a very fluffy sponge.

"brazo de gitano" - beetroot and yoghurt. They didn't tell us to eat in one bite (though I later heard them tell other tables), so I got beetroot pink fingers.

Grilled strawberry - one of my favourites. A hot strawberry with an intense gin flavour inside. Sadly I again forgot to take a picture.

"munster" - hot cheese in a crispy shell.

LYO-cream - a cream foam which we both liked, and Judy commented was a very unusual texture, followed by carbonara sauce. The bacon flavour was in the liquid sauce with cubes of parmesan releasing their flavour at the end.

buffalo milk - reminiscent of breakfast. A bowl of milk with freeze dried alpine strawberries and basil powder floating on the surface and gorgonzola honey in the bottom. As bowls of milk go this beats the Fat Duck's parsnip cornflakes hands down.

mandarine flower/pumpkin oil with mandarine seeds

lulo - purees of some fruit similar to passion fruit but a very tart flavour topped with frozen shavings of foie gras served from ice with frozen spoons.

savory/spun egg with egg yolk gnocchis

mushroom canape

the soup 2008 - letters burst into elderflower soup with a ginger syrup around them. Very nice but what wasn't so nice was that by this time Judy was getting a chilly draft. We changed seats which helped a bit and the staff turned up the heating but it took a while to make much difference (it wasn't just our table: Judy noticed a lady at another table putting on a cardigan).

game meat canapé - foie gras on a crisp base of game and chocolate.

peas 2008 - I wasn't overly impressed by this and prefer the broad bean dish with a similar concept that we had recently at Hibiscus. I think the problem was that at least for me the 'ham' flavour came through mainly as saltiness.

asparagus with miso - but I did enjoy this one.

gnocchi of polenta with coffee and safran yuba

sea anemone 2008 - neither of us liked this at all. There was something in the sauce that was extremely bitter and peppery. I don't know what it was: both the brains and the anemone fished out on their own tasted fine, but the sauce was most off-putting. Presumably some people liked this: I spotted another table swapping plates of this, but whether it was 'if you don't like it can I have it', or 'here I'll make it look like you at least ate some' I couldn't tell.

crustaceans eel - I was ok with this, but Judy didn't like whatever it was they had done with the eel.

abalone - abalone with ham and dainty tiny mushrooms. Ok, but a bit too salty.

castanets - We neither of us managed to comprehend the complicated description of the meat. Perhaps if we had we'd have enjoyed it more. Ok but nothing to write home about.

cypress honey with fresh mozarella and blueberry ganacha - also dried blackcurrants and coffee. This was very nice.

"trufitas" - crisp chocolate truffles served in cocoa powder, liquid centres with real truffle.

Solera - sherry based desert. Pastilles with liquid PX centres, sherry ice cream under a crisp sponge cover.

Also for Judy a surprise 'birthday cake' with a candle on top.

Tea was accompanied by Morphings (:::pastel:::, grosella, yoghurt, gelé). The first of these came with a giant egg with 'best before' date for the meal and we also got the menus (mine in English, Judy's in Spanish with each course ticked off as they served it.

Our taxi arrived and we headed outside: rather than sit inside her car Paqui was out taking photographs through the kitchen window (so I guess she hadn't been there much before: anyone else going to El Bulli who wants to help her complete her photo collection can contact her on 608 637 992).

We're glad we went, but to be honest the savoury courses had rather too many that either didn't inspire us or we just didn't like.

Rafa's

2008-07-02T21:54:00.001+01:00

Anthony Bourdain in 'Decoding Ferran Adria' said of Rafa's:

ok, so we are going to probably Ferran´s favorite restaurant on earth, it’s called Rafas, it’s all about fish, cooked very simply by a dedicated maniac who tells me he doesn’t want anymore business, he, he… there’s not enough great fish in the world to handle the business he has, so I am not going to tell you exactly where this place is. Eat your heart out.

It wouldn't matter if he told you where it was (it's in the middle of Roses on Carrer Sant Sebastià "across the street from Snack-Mar"): you will still have problems finding it and a downpour didn't help as we tried to work out whether we were actually at the right place. Despite the language issues (we speak no Spanish, and the lady in Rafa's claimed to have little English), we had an excellent meal here.

We asked just to be given a selection of the dishes on offer: Anchovies marinated in a peppery olive oil served with toasted bread with garlic and tomatoes. Meaty and spiky sea snails. Garlicky clams. Sauteed tiny squid in garlicky oil. Gambas with a salt and pepper coating. Prawns likewise.

After all that we were offered some fish and went for something described as 'the same family as tuna, but with white flesh, and really local': on the bill it came up as negrito. We blinked and missed seeing it cooked: it must have taken all of 3 seconds to turn it to delicious melting and juicy slices. Also being sold as steaks meant we didn't overdo it: the next table were being offered a sole which weighed in at 1.8kg. One of the other fish on offer was over 3kg.

To accompany all of this we had a bottle of a local wine: Castillo Parelada Rosada: it tasted like strawberry juice but with enough acidity for the seafood.

So not a meal to help with '5 a day', just honest simple fishy things.

We parked in the sea-front car park: it may be the local custom, but its the first parking I've seen charge by the minute (0.035 euro/minute), that isn't quite as odd as the parking at Cadaques the next day which was 0.03595 euro/min!

Birthday treat (Sat Bains revisited)

2008-06-08T18:29:00.001+01:00

It was my birthday and this year Judy treated me to a visit to Sat Bains Restaurant. Unlike our last visit it was gloriously sunny this time: the pet rabbits had the run of the courtyard garden, as did we for some tea with raspberry and olive oil cake with lemon curd.

Our package included a bottle of champagne (served with oysters in the lounge) followed by the surprise menu and accompanying wines. Here's what I think was the full menu reconstructed partly from my notes and partly from the hand-written (but not entirely legible) menu we were given at the end of the meal. I've listed the wines alongside the courses where they were served although they also carried on to the next course or two and the Mademoiselle was a decanter full.

Aperitif: Champagne, Oyster with Tabasco & Worcestershire sauce, Tempura Oyster with lemon mayonnaise
Squid-orzo-alphonso-coriander;
sweetcorn soup, foie gras, popcorn, pickled girolles;
melon, tomato, balsamic, olive oil;
salt cod croquette
        Sauvignon Blanc (N.Z., North Island)
Breads: treacle and paprika, lincolnshire butter.
Monkfish, Wagyu beef "carpaccio", "soy truffle" shoots, mussel juice
        Chardonnay (Adelaide Hills)
Crab "Brown Bread and Butter", sea herbs, grapefruit
Rabbit "Not From The Garden", salsify, ash "Noma"
        Pinot Gris (Oregon)
Lemon Sole, Abbey Park asparagus "Raw - Cooked", Bellota Ham
Goosnargh Duck, Foie Gras Royale, pumpkin salad, cocoa, cumin fudge, birch sap
        Mademoiselle (3rd growth Medoc)
Wild sorrel granita
Rose veal from Shropshire with morels, broad beans, jersey royal, jus gras
Fig, pine nut ice cream, aged parmesan
Cheeses from Premier (Eric) (Ticklemore, Tunworth, Langres AOC, Lincolnshire poacher, Maroilles 'La Cave', Cropwell Bishop stilton)
Pineapple, fennel, coconut and lime foam
Chocolate "Fruit and Nut", yoghurt
        Maury & Chenin blanc (S.W. Aus)
Caramelised Peach, raspberry, basil and sage
"TASTE - TEXTURE - TEMPERATURE"
Tea and chocolates

It's hard to pick out the best bits, there were only a few things which one or other of us weren't quite convinced by: we both loved the melting Wagyu beef, but Judy thought the accompanying truffle was a bit harsh when eaten separately. The crab with brown bread ice cream was very nice, but I found sometimes the grapefruit jarred slightly. The rabbit was excellent (but we didn't really need the reassurance in the title: I'm sure the garden bunnies wouldn't have been nearly as lean). The duck was excellent accompanied by 'texture of pumpkin': puree, sliced, and seeds. The chocolate was Judy's favourite dessert while mine was the peach.

Next morning we counted the rabbits (there were still two) and had an excellent breakfast (the home made muesli is very good).

We also found time to visit a couple of slightly peculiar stately homes. On our way up we stopped at Calke Abbey which was given to the National Trust on condition that they can repair but not restore it, so it is a strange mix of lavishly furnished rooms and ruins with wallpaper peeling from the walls. Also stuffed or mounted animals and birds everywhere. The last owner wanted it preserved as it was so that people would know what happens to a national treasure when the government doesn't provide the money for its upkeep, but I don't understand why, if he was so concerned, he waited until after his death to give it to the NT.

We spent the next morning at Wollaton Park (and Wollaton Hall "one of the finest Elizabethan houses in England"). This is run by Nottingham council (and now contains the Nottingham natural history museum). The formal gardens have something of a public park feel, perhaps lacking some of the care that National Trust properties manage. From the outside the house is impressive. Inside is a bit strange, a few rooms replicate the Elizabethan decor, but with cardboard cutout mantelpiece ornaments and video screens that spring to life with costumed characters telling you their life stories as you walk past. In other rooms are of course yet more stuffed and mounted animals and birds (but at least here there are labels telling you what they are). The great hall, while almost empty, is the most impressive part inside the building (actually the prospect room may also be impressive but that's only on a guided tour which we skipped).

Summertown Wine Cafe

2008-05-29T21:46:00.001+01:00

Our wine cellar was a bit low on white and rosé, so on Sunday we paid a visit to the Summertown Wine Café in North Oxford (I'd heard it was a good place to go for some interesting wines). It's a combination wine shop, wine bar and café, with a wine list of about three dozen wines including 12 wines in the monthly selection. There's only cold food (such as olives, cheese, freshly sliced Serrano ham) but I have heard they're happy to plate up a pizza from Mama Mia's across the road. They sell wine by the glass, carafe, and bottle, but the monthly selection is also available as a tasting session for £5 or free if you buy at least 2 bottles. Needless to say that's the option we went for.

The monthly selection ranged from one to avoid (Skouloudis White: "a blend of ancient grapes from the Greek island of Evia", no thanks), a few we thought were ok, to some really nice ones (most of the list!). We also were given a couple of samples from the 'superstar selection' for comparison and bought a case of 12 bottles which means I get 10% discount on future purchases, the chance to paint a bottle in my own unartistic style and an invite back to help choose next month's selection.

Wednesday evening saw us return for the tasting panel. The car park is interesting: it's a 3x2 grid of spaces, but with the 3 along the road occupied, the other three are inaccessible (well nearly, I managed to squeeze into the end on of the back 3 leaving the other 2 spaces completely surrounded).

For the tasting we were given a list of 24 wines in 6 blocks of 4 and asked to mark our number 1 and 2 choices for each then left to get on with sampling the 24 bottles circulating around the bar. Now, remembering that I wanted to still be able to drive at the end of it, we kept to the minimal possible splashes in the glasses, and did them 2 at a time (switching glasses), but it still took a good long time to work our way down the list. I can't remember the individual wines, but the groups were Rieslings, summer whites, rosés, Pinot Noir, Shiraz, and Carménère. The early groups we found easy to choose our 2 favourites (although not always the same ones), but the reds were much harder: I could have happily gone for anything from the last two sections.

Maze

2008-05-29T21:45:00.001+01:00

We first visited Maze a year and a half ago, and thought the food was good, and liked the tapas style but the evening was spoiled by the noxious smoke spreading from the bar through the (non-smoking) restaurant, so we resolved not to return until after the smoking ban had come in. Finally though we felt the time for a return visit had come.

Jason Atherton certainly doesn't disappoint with the quality of food and the variety of dishes. If I have a complaint it would be with the 'wine flights' which seem rather small and pricey for what you get. We stuck with the chef's selection from the menu which simplified the decisions somewhat: 7 courses with choices for 4 of them. I think though we'll need to go back again a bit sooner this time so we can try a different selection.

Patterson's Restaurant

2008-05-17T18:09:00.001+01:00

Patterson's Restaurant is just round the corner from Hibiscus, so we went there the next night and were not disappointed. Judy started with hot smoked salmon and risotto with confit duck, while I had slow roast pork belly, red cabbage, scallop and cauliflower puree. The portion sizes were generous, as was the kitchen in sending us out an extra course of squab with foie gras parfait. Sadly for my photography skills the lighting was too subdued for much photography (I don't like to annoy other customers by using the flash too much), so just a couple: Judy's main course saddle of lamb (I had duck), and the somewhat distracting battle playing out in the lobster tank.

Hibiscus

2008-05-03T17:28:00.002+01:00

Oak panelling in the restaurant is (as a member of staff told a table near us) supposed to resemble the original Shropshire restaurant whilst being a bit lighter. I appreciated the strip of mirror which meant that although sitting with my back to the restaurant I had a great view of the table in the middle which was a focus for the staff with orders under the glass top, wine bottles on top, and trays with dishes to be served placed beside it.

The menu options included A la Carte and Taste of Spring options, but we chose the '7 course surprise menu', leaving it up to the chef Claude Bosi to decide what we would eat. One catch with a surprise menu is that it is all but impossible to choose suitable wines, so while I know a lot of people think that the 'matching wines' option is a bit of a cop out, I do think it is a reasonable choice here.

To begin with was an amuse: Cucumber & Pineapple soda with black pepper. This was an interesting drink (and several tables seemed unsure whether to drink it or eat it with a spoon). There were some globules in the bottom of the glass, but whilst providing a textural variation, they weren't strongly flavoured.

We've seen restaurants where they parade a lobster round the restaurant before serving it, but this is the first one to bring round the asparagus. The next course was Wye Valley asparagus oak smoked, and the rest of the evening was sporadically punctuated by the aroma as another smoke filled basket of asparagus was brought out to be admired before returning plated up with crushed truffled egg. The accompanying wine was Henri Bourgeouis Sauvignon Blanc 2006.

Next up was a spring onion ravioli with broad beans and a broad bean puree (in a blob, so it looked like a bean until you tried to eat it).
The ravioli was surprisingly citrussy rather than being notably oniony — that's another danger of surprise menus: you have to rely on the accuracy of the description given or remembered. Checking on the 'Taste of Spring' menu afterwards it was described as spring onion and lime which explains the citrus.

The next course was undoubtedly one of the stars: halibut, spring vegetables and a pickled cucumber puree. There were subtle oriental flavours neatly balancing the fish. Accompanying it we had a white burgundy, Leflaive Mâcon-Verzé 2006.

Bridging the gap from fish to main we had a dish of mutton with octopus carpacchio and a lychee puree accompanied by Malmaison Pinot Noir 2006. It was definitely a nice combination although Judy wasn't sure exactly what the octopus did for flavour, it seemed more of a textural thing.

We thought we were approaching the main course as a viciously sharp knife was set out, but there was another dish coming up first so we could admire the knife handles while savouring another great combination: foie gras ice-cream on a brioche emulsion with a brioche tuile and a glass of I Capitelli, Anselm 2005.

The main course was roast saddle of kid, beans, turnips, and an onion and lemongrass puree (those oriental flavours again) served with a shepherd's pie and a glass of Chateau Franc-Maillet Pomerol, 1998.

Pre-dessert was a celeriac mousse with framboise puree (the staff showing here a determination to drop into French given half a chance) with black pepper. Mixing traditionally savoury ingredients into a sweet course is obviously a favourite of the chef: the main dessert (accompanied by Muscat de Minervois) was a white asparagus tarte, curd cheese ice cream emulsion and black olive tuile, again a bit of a surprising flavour for a sweet tarte but nonetheless successful.

Wine of another colour (l'Ortolan)

2008-04-30T19:50:00.001+01:00

On Easter Sunday we had lunch at l'Ortolan restaurant, in Shinfield. It was a nice meal, the rabbit terrine especially, but what really struck me was the section in the wine list headed 'Orange Wines'. Now I've occasionally come across other odd categories in wine lists (clairet which is listed in Bordeaux as a style part way between rosé and red comes to mind although the clairet bottles themselves sometimes get confused and claim to be rosé).
These were (as the menu explained) wines made from white grapes but left to ferment on the skins as for red wines. The result is an interesting wine with more tannin than other whites and a most unusual colour. After discussing it with the sommelier we chose (and enjoyed) the la Stoppa Ageno.
Frustratingly Google doesn't give any indication of the term 'orange wine' being used elsewhere, so while I can find plenty of comments about the particular wine we tried I can't find anything about the style in general.

chez pim: Menu for Hope 4

2007-12-11T18:38:00.000Z

chez pim: Menu for Hope 4 Menu for Hope is an online raffle in aid of the UN World Food Programme. There are lots of great prizes to be won such as a dinner for 2 from Heston Blumenthal, partnering Jay Rayner reviewing a restaurant, wine tastings, books and other food related items.

Pot Kiln, Frilsham

2007-09-29T14:32:00.001+01:00

The Pot Kiln at Frilsham is a gastropub run by TV chef Mike Robinson (and anyone who is reading this blog because they know me through the Python community may know his brother Andy Robinson of Reportlab).

Game features prominently on the menu, and much of it is shot by Mike himself (according to the menu he shoots about 90% of the venison). The local deer also feature round the walls of the restaurant. The local nature is stressed throughout the menu, including vegetables from the pub's garden, and mushrooms from the local woods in season (though not unfortunately on the day we visited).

The food was excellent, especially my lemon tart which was sharp and wobbly. Comparing my rabbit main with the rabbit dish I enjoyed a few weeks earlier shows the difference in approach: whereas the Cherwell boathouse dressed it up as a sort of sausage, Mike isn't afraid to serve it bones and all (I think I managed to reassemble half a skeleton on my plate).

I've seen reviews which say that while the food is good the service at the Pot Kiln can be a bit lackluster, but at least on the night we visited that wasn't our experience. Our waitress was keen to explain further any dishes. She also spent time reading through the menu with descriptions and opinions for a blind lady sitting near us and eating alone, and for another table who had a vegetarian she pointed out the (not entirely obvious on the menu) vegetarian main course, but also made suggestions of other things they could do off menu (such as doing a tart with some freshly picked mushrooms which would be appearing on the next day's menu). Sadly her efforts seem to have been wasted as next time I looked round the staff were clearing and re-setting that table.

She was stumped once, when the single lady asked whether it was true that at Easter the Pot Kiln serves bunny in chocolate sauce, but fortunately Mike was nearby to confirm it. Mike was in on the evening of our visit preparing for the his outside catering business to cater for a party of 200 the following evening, but he also found time to come round the restaurant a few times during the evening and chat to some of the tables before rushing outside to check the wood-fired oven where the bread was baking.

Sassy (Mike's dog) also came round a few times to check whether we were enjoying our meals, and even offered to help us finish them, but we declined to share with her.

Ubuntu isn't just an operating system

2007-09-29T13:13:00.001+01:00

Here's one for the geeks. You can now buy a fairtrade cola in the UK, and it's called 'Ubuntu'. When I asked about the name, they said they are hoping to push the operating system off the top hit on Google searches for the name. Best of luck to them.

Actually it tastes pretty decent. Watch out for it to appear in a shop near you (so far the only place I know that stocks it is the canteen at work, so not a lot of use for most people). Most info on the Ubuntu Trading website.

Cherwell Boathouse, Oxford

2007-09-12T18:38:00.000+01:00

We hadn't been to the Cherwell Boathouse for quite some time. It has a lovely setting by the punt hire in North Oxford, but I've heard some people expressing doubts about the food quality.

My starter was potted pigs head followed by loin of rabbit for the main course. I'm never terribly convinced by purple carrots: they don't taste any different than ordinary carrots and once cooked just look kind of brown round the outside, but apart from the gimmick factor the rabbit was very nice. Judy enjoyed smoked duck to start and then 18 hour belly of pork with a beetroot mousse which was a rather startling bright pink.

My dessert with an iced damson parfait was fine, although the 'poppy seed crunch' was a bit too reminiscent of the thick slab of sugar stuck into my dessert when we visited The Lemon Tree. Judy wasn't impressed by her nectarine tart tatin and said so when the waitress asked how we were finding the desserts. According to the waitress the desserts were new on the menu and might need tuning so she went off to the kitchen to tell the chef and also didn't charge us for Judy's dessert (that was the restaurant's decision: we didn't ask not to pay). It's nice to see that they take feedback seriously: I still have memories of one place where the waitress asked us how the food was and then had to be called back from the far side of the restaurant to hear the answer!

Abbey House Gardens

2007-09-12T18:34:00.001+01:00

A rare non-food post for a change: at the weekend we went to the Abbey House Gardens in Malmesbury and I thought some of my photos came out quite well so I'm go to blog them anyway.

It isn't entirely off topic - there were plenty of fruit trees mixed into the beds (and some rather striking purple apples with tall spikes set through them in the third picture above), also a Celtic cross garden of herbs, and enormous koi carp in a 'stew pond' (so named because the monks usually had a holding tank not far from the kitchens to keep the fish for Friday's stew although this one appears to be purely for show).

The gardens are currently hosting an exhibition of British Sculpture which added considerably to the interest (the 'black sticks through apple tree' is presumably normally just an ordinary tree). Also the whole garden seems to have been designed to be extremely photogenic especially the upper, more formal area as a series of rooms opening up one after another.

The other somewhat unusual feature of the garden is that the owners are known as 'the naked gardeners' and while they are normally dressed during opening hours a few days each year are designated 'clothes optional' when visitors are invited to strip off if they wish. The day we visited was one such, and it was quite interesting seeing how the clothed and unclothed groups interacted: some people turned back at the entrance, but most clothed visitors seemed unworried by the unclothed ones and vice versa.

BTW, the scarecrows in my last photo aren't part of the sculpture exhibition: we noticed that Malmesbury has a scarecrow trail round the town, and I think these two outside the entrance to the garden represent the garden's owners.

Grain de Sel

2007-09-10T22:17:00.001+01:00

On the last evening of our holiday we drove inland to Brive la Gaillarde and after leaving the car to be loaded onto the train had the evening free. We'd decided that 'La Potinière' from the Michelin guide looked worth investigating (and crucially was in easy walking distance of the station), but when we investigated we found it had changed name and owner to 'Grain de Sel'.

A nice feature in this restaurant was that the kitchen was open to view from our table (or at least the part of the kitchen which prepared the hot dishes: the cold plates came up from downstairs).

The other nice thing was that dinner for two, including a glass of champagne and wine came to £56. I know it isn't fair to compare prices in France and the UK, but this came across to me as very good value.

Eating our way round Bordeaux

2007-09-09T15:38:00.001+01:00

I'm not going to try to do a blow by blow account of every restaurant we visited on holiday, but here are a few selected points.

As you might expect, there's a lot of seafood in the coastal towns. We had a really good Moules Frites: small mussels cooked with bacon and served in a giant pottery mussel shell at Le Mirador in Cap Ferret. It's an easy restaurant to find: just head south down the cape, if there is anything but sand and water to the south of you keep on going. The photos below show 'before' and 'after' (I like to leave my moules tidy).

More seafood a few days later at Le Pinasse Café, Cap Ferret, but it wasn't only seafood as I had a a duck plate which did everything but quack (the other dishes are a mussel and orange gateau, fresh cod, and bream):

The next pictures are completely unrelated to food, but when we first ventured into the centre of Bordeaux we were intrigued by this mysterious cloud across the road from the car park.

All became clear when we returned in the afternoon. This is 'Miroir d'eau des quais', a massive expanse of water only about 1cm deep, but exerting a magnetic attraction to any children in the vicinity (and a few adults).

Back to the food, we had lunch in Bordeaux at a pub serving such traditional dishes as Welsh Rarebit (if you're wondering, I had the Jarret aux lentilles with Blanche de Bruges). The English and Irish influences seem widespread through Bordeaux:

I included this photo of a chicken, langoustine and crayfish dish from the restaurant at the holiday village where we were staying mostly because I comment on the peculiar torture (albeit post mortem) inflicted on langoustine throughout the region where they are forced to impale themselves on their own claws.

Also on the menu most evenings was an early evening aperitif in the bar: half a dozen oysters and a glass of wine for €5:

And here (roughly speaking) is where the oysters originated. The Basin d'Arcachon has oyster farms everywhere:

The area where we stayed wasn't exactly overflowing with top-notch restaurants, but we did have a pretty nice meal at Le Saint Eloi, Ares.

This was roast pigeon with garlic. The elements from left to right are half a roast pigeon sitting on a potato rosti with some wild mushrooms, a glass filled with mashed potato and truffles with some crisped ham on top, and the other half of the pigeon on a rosti and mushrooms topped with a skewered roast garlic clove and what appeared at first sight to be a large mushroom but was actually some sculpted roast potato. So the chef appears to have something of a potato fixation (Judy's beef had the rosti, mushrooms and disguised roast potato but not the mash), but it all tasted nice.

For dessert I had miroir de chocolat, as pictured above the only really suprising element was the candied carrot strips. Judy had a somewhat scary looking craquante de frais. we had to take two pictures to show it off to its best:

La Tupina

2007-09-09T13:53:00.001+01:00

La Tupina is a bistro in the centre of Bordeaux which, as they have no hesitation in letting you know both on the website and on information cards by the front door was voted 2nd best bistro in the world by the New York Herald Tribune.

The first thing you see when you walk in the front door of La Tupina is a table covered with meat and vegetables in front of an open fireplace. There is nothing subtle or dainty about either the location or the cooking, just honest good food.

La Tupina is obviously well used to serving tourists, so we were presented with menus in English: something which is often more of a hindrance than a help, but thankfully here the translations weren't too far off. Judy went for Scallops served with cepes while I had foie gras which came with a nice sharp puree of tomatoes which nicely set off the richness. (If you think that foie gras should be banned, then my advice would be to avoid the whole South-West of France: you can't produce foie without also producing duck or goose breasts, confit, and fat, and avoiding all of these would be difficult in a restaurant such as this.)

My main course of slow cooked lamb was accompanied by a large pot of beans, while Judy had Tournedos of duck breast served with chips cooked in duck fat.

One thing which was pretty obvious was that this isn't a restaurant which does 'dainty' and the cheese course continued the rustic theme with a massive slice of toasted bread sprinkled with fiery garlic oil.

We skipped on the coffee, but that didn't stop them bringing us a plate of merveilles and canelles.

Lemon Tree, Oxford

2007-08-15T19:25:00.001+01:00

I wanted to go out for a meal on Thursday evening (new ~~car~~toy to play with!), so we decided to try the Lemon Tree on the Woodstock Road in Oxford, although that may be considered a slightly odd choice given that we knew that the access to the car park is notable for the paint scrapes down the walls either side.

The restaurant has a nice clean airy feel to it (especially on a summer evening with the doors to the patio wide open. We declined the option of eating outside though (and some others who accepted that option came in again pretty sharpish, it really wasn't quite warm enough). The staff were friendly. Some of the wines are available in 500ml carafes (which I consider a more sensible size than a half or full bottle when one of us is driving). The only thing wrong in fact was the food.

Not all of the food was bad: my starter of pigeon breast with violet mash was as described: the violet mash was a bit strange (I don't know what they had coloured it with as it didn't taste of anything apart from mashed potato), but nothing much wrong with that or the pigeon apart from a bit of lead shot. Judy liked her duck salad, she said it was sweetish, but balanced.

The main courses, on the other hand lacked balance. I had 'monkfish with pickled summer vegetables'. The summer vegetables were carrots (not exactly summery) and peppers, but the overwhelming flavour was not the pickled vegetables but the syrupy sweet orange pepper reduction swirled round the plate. Fish and sweet are not a combination found very often, and now I know why.

Judy's main course (Guinea fowl breast with asparagus, parsnip puree and orange & thyme jus) fared slightly better, but she found the orange sauce too sweet (I begin to detect a theme here), and couldn't detect the thyme. She also wondered what the chef had against the asparagus that it had to be massacred.

For dessert Judy had the tarte tatin, 4 apple halves on some undercooked pastry and (just in case the caramelised apple wasn't sweet enough) a meringue on the side. I went for chocolate tart with rhubarb cream from the specials board, but a chocolate pudding turned up instead. Fortunately it was quickly replaced and wasn't bad though being garnished with a shard of bullet proof caramel with sesame seeds and nuts didn't really help it.

Sadly I don't think we'll be hurrying back to the Lemon Tree.

The Goose, Britwell Salome

2007-08-06T20:57:00.001+01:00

Matthew Tomkinson, the chef at The Goose, contacted me recently to point out that we hadn't been to visit his restaurant. This wasn't deliberate (there are only so many times we can eat out in a month), but we wasted no time remedying this oversight and booked in for Friday the 20th July.

Actually we tossed a figurative coin to decide whether to to go to The Goose, or Allium in Fairford that evening. Fortunately for us we got it right as the rains came down that day, but sadly we're going to have to wait to September for our next visit to Allium as they were flooded out and are now closed for redecoration.

We could have been satisfied choosing from the menu, but Matthew offered to do a tasting menu if we were interested, and after a second or two of indecision that's what we chose.

Leek & Potato Soup with poached egg and soldiers

Salmon rolled in herbs, fromage blanc and avruga, pea shoots and granary toasts

Croquette of Pig's trotter, caper and raisin puree on a tomato salad

Halibut steak with mussels and herb gnocchi

Cornish Lamb, sweetbread, liver, pea puree and summer vegetables

Cheese, chutney, biscuits, apricot and walnut bread

Dark chocolate torte, vanilla ice cream

Raspberry sponge, raspberry sorbet, lemon verbena

Tea and petit fours

Highlights of the meal included the impressively bright green of the soup cut by a runny egg yolk, the low temperature salmon, and the unctuous pigs trotter parcel (reminiscent of pieds et paquets) complimented nicely by the caper puree. Lamb for the main course invited comparison with the main course from the week before (but I'm not saying which was better).

There was little to complain about, though Judy thought that slicing rasperries in half for a garnish was a bit twee, and you'll notice from the picture that the chap serving the tea forgot to bring any cups. Otherwise an excellent meal from a restaurant on its way up, and as always it was nice to be able to put a face to someone I'd only met online before.

le Champignon Sauvage

2007-07-18T22:09:00.001+01:00

We recently (ok, middle of July but it took me some time to write it up) paid a visit to one of our favourite restaurants: le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham.

We started with a couple of glasses of champagne and some cheesy nibbles while perusing the menu and the wine list. We didn't actually have to choose anything from the menu though as David had very kindly offered to cook for us, so our only responsibility was to select some wine.

Menu:

Veloute of lovage with salt cod

Scallops with artichokes

Lobster with cauliflower and smoked almonds

Sea bass, squid, confit pigs trotter with sea purslane

Pigeon breast with snails.

Roasted lamb with sweetbread, onion cooked in eucalyptus, peas

Rice pudding scented with geranium

and another pudding I can't remember, but cribbing from another web write-up it might have been "Molasses parfait, bergamot cream, orange and liquorice sorbet."

Everything was really, really good, but the elements which stick in my mind were the smoked almonds with the lobster, and the pigs trotter confit with the sea bass. The petit fours eventually defeated us, but we got to take them away in a doggie napkin.

I'm afraid my usual dubious photographic skills let me down entirely this time, so I've pasted in a slide-show of the first few courses and the petit fours. Everything in between came out blurred. :(

The other highlight of the evening was that after we had finished eating David sat down and chatted with us for quite a while in the lounge. It's really nice to be able to talk to someone as knowledgeable and enthusiastic about his food.

Pixar's Ratatouille: rat-a-too-ee

2007-06-30T12:28:00.001+01:00

Pixar's latest film (just out in the US, but here in the UK we have to wait until October) is the story of a rat gourmand in a Parisian restaurant.

Visit the film's website for trailers and podcast snippets (and even a 9 minute extract) about how it was made. I especially like the one where the animators describe how they were all sent for cookery lessons so they would at least know how to hold knives or pans.

This definitely looks like it is not a film to be missed.

Restaurant Sat Bains

2007-06-17T20:43:00.001+01:00

For Judy's birthday we decided on a visit to Sat and Amanda Bains's restaurant in Nottingham. The restaurant is in slightly odd location: just off some main roads, down a lane leading nowhere, and surrounded by electricity pylons, but we didn't have any trouble finding it, and once there it is a surprisingly peaceful location.

We booked in to stay overnight and stayed in the 'Charles II' room with four poster bed, open fire and a private patio. After settling in we had tea in the lounge, accompanied by cake and lemon curd. We just stuck with ordinary tea, but they offer an interesting selection of teas and coffees including Cornish Earl Grey, and Kopi Luwak (coffee passed through a civet cat). We also went for a walk in the garden, stopping to chat to the rabbits and Sat and Amanda.

The package we had booked meant we didn't have to make any hard choices. So we started with Champagne and Oysters (natural with lemon and tabasco, and tempura with lemon mayonnaise) in the lounge.

On to the tasting menu itself, and there is quite an emphasis on fun with no fewer than 5 introductory items not on the menu itself (actually we didn't get to see a menu before the meal so we didn't quite know what to expect next although having read Bapi's account of his visit in eGullet most of it wasn't too suprising.

First up were a carrot, apple and ginger 'tonic', and a green gazpacho. Both of these were served in little bottles, one to drink as a shot and the other to pour over the bread in the bowl. As you can see from the photos, a lot of things are served on slate tiles which must be something of a challenge with large tables (the group of 7 across the room got a slate with 14 bottles balanced on it).

The second round of amuse had a chicken liver parfait with popcorn, a lovely foamy creamy butternut squash soup with pumpkin seeds, and a shrimp tempura with a spray containing yuzu (the challenge here being to work out whether to spray the shrimps and the tablecloth or to use it as a breath freshener.

On to the starters proper, and first up was the fabulous 'Duck Egg 62°C, Bellota ham, PX sherry, peas' as featured on 'Great British Menu'. The slow poached egg had a trembling barely set (and hard to catch) white and runny yolk. the peas come in several forms: as peas, sorbet, and pea shoots. To accompany this was an Australian Riesling (Mount Horrocks).

Next up, the sommelier James gave us a couple of glasses of Sauternes, which gave a clue to the dish that was about to arrive. "Foie gras 'emulsified', fine beans - granola, banana caramel".

The fish course was salmon (cooked sous vide, so still soft and translucent) served with purees of avocado and almond and some smoked roe. The matched wine was a premier cru chablis.

The main meat course was "Spring lamb, young vegetables, goats cheese, lamb gravy" accompanied by Ata Rangi Célèbre 2002, a blend of Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon from New Zealand. (Isn't the internet wonderful where you can look up the wines you had after the meal? I'm not sure my other half would be too happy though if I took a laptop along to the meal with me: the camera and notebook are about as much as I can hope to get away with.) Anyway, back to the food: the goat's cheese is an unusual choice, but its sharpness complemented the lamp nicely: too much and it could have been overpowering but this was just right.

The cheese (or perhaps 'savoury'?) course was "Cheese on toast": brie and shavings of summer truffle on granary toast.

Pudding started with a pre-dessert of pineapple foam, frozen yoghurt, toffee and dots of liquorice on the top. Judy thought the toffee was perhaps a bit overpowering.

The first main dessert was a chocolate mousse with a jelly (or pastille) of olive oil and sea salt and violets, the accompanying wine was 15 year old Maury.

Finally on the menu were strawberries and cream with almonds and pistachios (accompanied by Loupiac 2003).

Breakfast was very good too: the muesli was pre-soaked and served with yoghurt and bananas, toast included crumpets.

Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, Marina Villa Hotel, Fowey

2007-06-09T18:40:00.000+01:00

The only problem with the Marina Villa Hotel is finding it. Drive down into the centre of Fowey, and turn right onto the Esplanade. If you haven't studied the map in advance and turn left (we did!) then you have a long detour along very narrow roads before you eventually get back to the top of the town and ready for a second attempt. On the second attempt we spotted the signs and turned right. Even this led to marital disagreement though: I was cursing the ridiculously small text on the sign, Judy seemed to think the text was a reasonable size (although not very easy to read). Later I went back and took a photo so you can decide for yourselves who was right.

Oh alright, we both were.

Checking in is interesting too: you can stop right outside the front door of the hotel to unload, but if you do, then you have completely blocked the road. Fortunately we'd only stacked up a couple of cars behind us by the time we had unloaded, and the chap from reception got in the passenger seat to navigate me up to the parking garage.

Once we had unpacked and had a walk round the town we tried to make ourselves a cup of tea but found that the hotel had omitted to supply our room with any cups. No matter: a quick call down to reception and the missing cups arrived with an invitation to have some complimentary tea on the terrace overlooking the bay. Note to self: if they remember the cups next time - hide them. The view really is stunning (the photo is actually from our dinner table, but you see what I mean).

Anyway, on to the menu.

First up was an amuse of spring pea soup with mint oil.

Starters were Ox Tongue with Anchovies, Capers, Tarragon and Mint (and Judy thinks there were also nasturtium leaves in there). She had half expected just slices of ox tongue but it came as small fritters.

I had the Squab Pigeon with Chocolate, Figs and Spice, and Potato Cake. After the initial hit of chocolate the sauce becomes intensely savoury and the pigeon was meltingly tender.

For the main course there was Black Bream with Saffron Pasta, Crab, Olive Oil and Grapefruit, and I had the Rose Veal with Cauliflower, Sage and Onion, and Mushrooms

Judy liked both the texture and flavour of the crab ravioli, and she also thought the bed of assorted beans was very good.

My veal was also cooked just to perfection.

Next up we had a pre-dessert of strawberries and candied black olives with vanilla ice cream. An unusual combination, but I think it worked. The candying process seemed to have removed the bitterness from the olives giving quite an unusual effect.

The desserts were an English Toffee Parfait with Green Apples, and a Plum Tart with Bay Leaf ice cream. There was quite an interesting texture to the apples: it looked like a cooked apple mixture but the pieces of apple were crisp. There was a subtle flavour to the toffee, not too sweet or overpowering. My Plum Tart had tart plums and the ice cream was unusual but very nice.

We washed all of this down with a bottle of white Chateauneuf du Pape: Chateau de Beaucastel 2003. Having Googled for stockists of this wine I see that the restaurant markup isn't too bad: £36-40 retail, £65 in the restaurant.

Finally we had coffee and petit fours in the lounge to finish.

Overall, this was an excellent finish to our break in Cornwall. We last experienced Nathan Outlaw's cooking in his days at the Black Pig in Rock, it's a bit hard remembering details from back then, but he is still using fresh seasonal ingredients to excellent effect. I expect the trail of Michelin stars will follow him to this stunning new location.

Margot's Bistro

2007-06-08T18:01:00.000+01:00

Thursday evening we started with a glass of wine at BinTwo overlooking the harbour and then on to Margot's Bistro.

Dos hermanos may have a different opinion about No.6, but so far as Margot's is concerned there is complete agreement. This is very good cooking, and also very hard to book: June was fully booked before the end of May, and July and August aren't far behind (compare this with the Seafood restaurant which, this week, was advertising vacancies available every night except Wednesday). To be fair, the Seafood does have a lot more covers, many staff and packs in two sittings in the evening. Margot's is smaller and you'll get the full attention of Adrian, and his staff of about two.

On the Tasting Menu we found:

Peppered squid with local asparagus
Mushroom and Chorizo risotto
Mackerel with cucumber salad
Sea Bass
Sticky Toffee Pudding
Poached Pear, Jelly, Clotted Cream

Ok, technically the sea bass wasn't on the menu, there was only one and it came with the promise of being really fresh (according to Adrian he had one from the same boat last week and when he tried to trim off the fins it woke up and started trying to escape the kitchen). The recipe for the risotto is on the Margot's website, maybe I should try to replicate and report back how I get on: Judy reckons the choice of chorizo could be crucial, and I bet I don't find any as good. I'd also like to point out that we only had one of those puddings each: we aren't as greedy as all that. The poached pear with wobbly muscat jelly is a really great dessert: several of the other tables were also busy praising it.

For those who have been to Margot's previously but not recently, you'll want to know that the toilet is currently decorated with thank-you letters from the local school for their bread-making lessons, and a photo demonstrating just how to make the best of all those AA rosette awards.

Stein's Fish and Chips

2007-06-07T16:30:00.000+01:00

From the sublime to the surreal.

Last night we ate at Stein's Fish and Chip shop. The surreal bit is that while the sit-down side of the operation stretches to real cutlery and wine glasses, all of the food arrives in the same cardboard boxes as the carryout. For starters we had half a dozen oysters each (and a bottle of muscadet). For mains it was battered monkfish, and battered plaice both with chips and some creamy tartare sauce. Nice fish, simply done.

They don't seem to stretch to pudding, which is a bit odd as it surely can't be that hard to batter a Mars bar?

No bookings. Fortunately we arrived just seconds before the party of eight...

Ripley's, St. Merryn

2007-06-06T16:19:00.000+01:00

Another day in Padstow, another restaurant. This time we ventured a little way out of town to Ripley's in St. Merryn. Ripley's is one of Cornwall's few restaurants to hold a Michelin star, but for all that it seems surprisingly informal.

One slightly sour note to the evening: just after we had arrived, about 7:35, a party of 8 arrived who had booked for 8:30. They were obviously not pleased when the staff told them that while they could ask the kitchen if they could accomodate their early arrival they couldn't guarantee to serve them earlier than their booked time. After making various protestations about some of their party having a long way to travel later, and retreating outside for 5 minutes or so (presumably to discuss their options) they grudgingly came in and settled at their table. For goodness sake folks, if you are going to eat at a nice restaurant then at least treat the staff with some respect. Handling a party of 8 with a kitchen staff of 2 can't be child's play at the best of times, so don't mess them about gratuitously.

The menu is fairly short, with about half the dishes featuring fish. For starters we had the Red mullet and a Crab mayonnaise with cockles. For mains it was Turbot with a prawn bisque, and John Dory with samphire and capers.

One way to tell a good restaurant is by the quality of the vegetables they serve. Here the side dish of broccoli, cabbage, asparagus, peas and broad beans was seasonal, interesting, and well prepared. Another marker is the thought that has gone into the bread. Here we had a granary baguette and a rosemary focaccia served with oil and some seeds to dip it in, very nice. The fish was excellently prepared, and was kept simple enough to avoid distractions. Padstow is best know for The Seafood restaurant, and we've been there in the past and enjoyed it immensely, but if you are in the area and only have time for one fish restaurant I'd put Ripley's above it in my list.

Instead of dessert we went for some cheese: Cornish blue, and a washed rind sheep's cheese whose name temporarily escapes me.

No. 6, Padstow

2007-06-05T16:16:00.000+01:00

So, you're taking a break in Padstow; where would you go for a birthday dinner? Yes, I know, when you think of Padstow, there really is only one choice, but unfortunately Margot's is closed on Mondays so we went for our second choice: the excellent No. 6.

They do a range of menus (and even hopefully offered a vegetarian menu to everyone, although as Judy noted that wasn't until after they had served some appetizers with foie gras pate centre stage).

Seeing as it was my birthday we went for the tasting menu. The layout of the menu was somewhat unusual with the primary ingredient of each course picked out in bold and then the details underneath. Someone also seems to have mislaid the shift key.

Menu Prestige lobster
carnaroli risotto, roasted stepper point lobster, pink grapefruit, mascarpone and basil
pinot grigio 'merca trevigiana' 2006 - villa sandi, veneto, italy
chicken
crispy chicken wings, pickled apple and vanilla, sweet corn and english pea shoots
pinot noir 2004 - seven terraces, foxes island, marlborough, new zealand
turbot
turbot from falmouth bay, newlyn crab, orange cous cous, pickled beetroot and smoked aubergine
macon uchizy 2005 - domaine talmard, burgundy, france
torte campagnarde
torte of alsace bacon, rabbit and venison, artichokes barigoule, salsify and creamed jus gras
springhill merlot 2004 - rvine wines, eden valley, south australia
cheese (optional: we skipped)
pink grapefruit
pink grapefruit and vodka sorbet, orange jelly and cracking candy
domaine de noble 2002, loupiac, bordeaux, france
banana
caramelised banana, chocolate and banoffee milkshake
chilled galliano - smooth vanilla liqueur
bread
warm madagascan vanilla bread and butter pudding
tokaji aszu 2000 - 5 puttonyos - royal tokaji company, hungary
coffee and petits fours
(ninety pounds including wines)

The first course was also possibly the star of the whole show. A really nice lobster risotto with soft juicy chunks of lobster served in a tiny copper pan. The pan made a lovely bit of presentation: the lady at the table next to us was intrigued because she had the same dish served from the a la carte and that just came (albeit in a significantly larger portion) on a plain white plate.

Next up were the crispy chicken wings (although if that plural is accurate they must have been very small chickens) on a bed of sweetcorn which unfortunately you can't see because they poured the apple sauce over it.

I can see that they wanted to provide a bit of variety by separating the fish dishes by the chicken, but that did mean a bit of a jarring shift in gear from the pinot noir to the macon. The crab, by the way, is hiding in the cous cous.

There was a choice for the main course, but we both opted for the rabbit and venison in pastry (the alternative was duckling with stuffed lettuce). Bacon, rabbit and venison makes a lovely deeply flavoured mixture.

At this point things the pace picked up considerably. The wines arrived in bulk, as did the pre-desserts. A couple at a nearby table obviously thought they had escaped as after starter, mains and cheese they declined any dessert, but along with their bill arrived the pre-dessert and petits fours. We weren't overly convinced by the cracking candy (or space dust as it is more commonly known) in the sorbet. I don't know if they didn't have enough, or if it perhaps went a bit soggy, but there wasn't quite the same effect of your head exploding as we've had before in other desserts (or in the case of the Fat Duck in a main course).

The main dessert (bread and butter pudding was so good I didn't hold off long enough for a photo. If you want to see it go along for yourself.

l'Ortolan, The Chef's Table

2006-06-06T18:19:00.000+01:00

This is a report on l'Ortolan from June 2006, but as I've just created my new food blog I thought I would add some content already written. Some original content should be along shortly. Judy agreed to take me somewhere slightly different for my birthday, so we went to l'Ortolan, but rather than just booking a table in the restaurant we booked the 'Chef's table'.

There are other restaurants offering a chef's table, but l'Ortolan in Shinfield is both more accessible to us, and was high on our list of restaurants that we hadn't been to recently enough. The table is limited to two people (although they have plans to rebuild that part of the kitchen to allow four people).

The description on the website is:

An experience definitely not for the faint hearted!! The relative comfort of the evening ends with pre dinner drinks and canapés - you will not see a menu or wine list, simply asked your likes and dislikes before being whisked off to the kitchen. Alan and his team will take you on a culinary journey, the evening will feature Alan's signatures dishes accompanied by a glass of wine carefully selected by our Sommelier - Stephen Nisbet.

I would add to that 'hot, loud, and absolutely fascinating'.

The comfortable part of the evening involved a glass of Pommery 'summertime' champagne on the terrace outside the restaurant with canapés of Teriyaki chicken, Scotch eggs, curried popcorn, cheese straws, salmon mousse and fish goujons with herb mayonnaise.

After this we were led into the kitchen and seated at the (small) bench-like table next to the door and facing the area where most of the plating-up happens. We were introduced to Alan Murchison who explained somewhat how the kitchen works. He also said we were in for a busy evening as they had two large parties (of 10 and 16), and several other tables including one with a journalist, and one with head chef Will's parents. Our menu for the evening was (note to self: if you want to write things up afterwards, always write them down at the time, otherwise you'll have problems remembering, especially after all that wine):

Fillet of blue fin tuna 'nicoise' (with tomato, green beans, tapenade, and a quails egg sitting on a new potato)
Salmon confit with beetroot
Salad of avocado & asparagus, Parma ham, lemon oil dressing
Foie Gras, Marinated cherry and spiced fig, Pain d'Epices sandwich
Pan fried scallops, cauliflower purée, alsace bacon & curry oil
Duck & foie gras ballotine, chicory jam, dubonnet & orange sauce
Twice baked cheese soufflé, toasted hazelnut & rocket salad, pinot noir jelly, pickled mushrooms.
Creme brulee
Grenadine jellied berries, mascarpone, raspberry granite
Champagne & rhubarb charlotte, Apple, rhubarb & ginger crumble, Rhubarb sorbet
Coffee with Petit Fours

I think maybe the salmon confit with beetroot was my favourite, although the tuna was also excellent. The duck/foie gras ballotine was possibly the weakest of the dishes we were served: nothing wrong with it as such but it didn't really excite me as much as some of the others.

The foie gras 'sandwich' was a bit of an engineering miracle, and therefore a bit hard to know where to attack. Sometimes foie gras dishes can end up being two sweet, but there was enough sharpness from the cherry and fig.

Each course was also accompanied by a wine selected by the sommelier Stephen Nisbet. Since I didn't write them all down at the time, this part is a bit sketchier (and gets sketchier as the evening progressed). In fact it may be downright wrong in places: Pommery vintage champagne (with the tuna), an unoaked chardonnay from West Australia (salmon), something from Sicily which was mostly a local grape variety (avocado & asparagus), an Alsace sweet Gewurztraminer (foie gras).

With the scallops he gave us each a different wine: I got a Chenin Blanc and I think Judy's was another (less sweet) gewurztraminer. We swapped half way through, and I think I got the better deal there because while both wines were very good with the scallops either individually or switching the direction I went, the switch in the other direction didn't really work. Then a Pinot Noir from Burgundy with the duck, a sweet red Rivesaltes with the souffle, and I think it was a Saussignac with the Rhubarb dessert. Stephen gave us quite a bit of information about each wine, some of which may have sunk in.

To begin with we got quite a lot of description from Alan. It is quite different seeing the dishes actually being assembled rather than the usual experience in a Michelin starred restaurant where you only get to see the finished article. They make it seem so easy as lots of identikit plates are assembled, but the constant fine tuning, trimming and tasting shows that it isn't easy at all. I'd thought previously that the way it worked was that the dishes were finished off and then someone would shout out 'service' to get the serving staff to come and collect the dishes; at least at l'Ortolan it works the other way round though: 'service' is a call for the waiting staff to come and be ready to take the dishes when they are finished, so there is no hanging around: as soon as it has been approved it is sent out. (Except that is for the dishes destined for Will's parents: they went out via the pastry section so that Will could double-check them for himself.)

As the evening went on things got pretty hectic, and there was occasional strong language when things didn't go quite right. The scallop starter seemed to be the most popular, but there were also a string of foie gras, pork, rabbit, and turbot dishes. The large party were on a set menu: 16 of everything at each course, but still obviously a massive undertaking. Through all of this were a steady stream of dishes which made the short trip across to our table.

It wasn't until we reached the coffee (for which we retreated to the lounge) that we realised just how hot the kitchen had become.

l'Ortolan is still on our list of restaurants to visit again soon, but next time I think we'll go for the quiet efficient calm of the dining room, not that we didn't enjoy the excitement of the kitchen, but knowing something of what is going on behind the scenes should make it even better.