Rugby weekend in Cardiff

 A guest posting from a regular reader. The contributor's views on the rugby are his own and not necessarily endorsed by Chompers..

My son PS and I are in Cardiff for the Wales v England 2023 Home International.  We have booked dinner at Asador 44 Spanish Grill and wine bar located near the Millennium Stadium.

It's the evening before the game and the restaurant district is buzzing.  We receive a warm welcome and are guided  towards the rear of the restaurant.  Decor is very pleasant and in keeping with a bistro atmosphere

We study the menu - it’s not that extensive possibly as its rugby International weekend but it looks good, although the cost could easily run away.  

Two toro blancos wet our appetites, followed by starters of salchichon iberico ham £7.50 and salmon £9. Both tasty although the ham is round slices and somewhat understated.  It should be round - just that I was expecting something different!

We decide on the aged Pembrokeshire sirloin steak sharing platter at £65.  Celeriac, fries and a beef and rioja sauce accompany.  Rather than a whole bottle, we choose 2 glasses of decent red at £12ea. It's a long weekend! The aged steak about nine 1/4" slices in total is cooked crisp on outside and rare inside. It is deliciously tasty and beautifully tender.  The sauce adds more flavour. Overall the best steak I've had for some time.  The red wine milu roble ribera del duero is excellent.

We opt for sweets: crema catalana, a  Spanish version of creme brulee at £16 accompanied by 2 glasses of Micaela cream desert wine at £10.

The total bill with service  comes to £170. All in all an excellent meal with good attentive service. We recommend Asador for lunch or evenings.

Park House Restaurant and Wine Bar (website unavailable)

 It's Saturday evening and we've just finished watching England beat Wales at the Principality Stadium Cardiff.  Dinner has been booked at the Park House, that purports to be a fine dining restaurant. 

It's a little jaunt from the city centre but not too far away.  On arrival we see what it was in its day: probably a large mansion style  house or more likely hotel.  

We ring the bell at what appears to be the main entrance to the side wondering what's inside.  Decor is very much like a gothic mansion with lots of oak panelling. Hushed silence seems to be the watchword. The atmosphere reminds me of the reading room in a gentlemen’s club.

We are shown upstairs to a large dining room with circular tables.  We are early but note that only one other table in the room is occupied.  Our big round table could seat 6 or more but there's just 2 of us.

The principal waiter appears, welcomes us and talks us through the menu options.  We were considering the 9 course taster but learn that it's not available as a large party upstairs is having it. 

That leaves a 6 course taster or a la carte menu which looks a tad limited but includes several of the same dishes. So we both opt for the taster and wine flight.  We decline the more expensive flight for Icon wines priced at £59.

Service is brisk, delivered by two attentive but quiet waitresses, plus the main waiter who also acts as sommelier.  All very gentile and hushed.  Pin drops come to mind.

We order some sparkling English wine to kick off the evening.  Very nice. 2 x 200ml at £12 ea.

The first course, endive with apple celery walnut chutney duly arrives and our sommelier introduces and explains the first wine he has chosen - classic cuvee Nytimber Sussex.  It's a good match and we both enjoy the somewhat smallish glasses.  

Second course is confit dry aged Pembrokeshire pork belly with apple smoked eel and Lyonnaise onion.  Very tasty and generous but quite rich as it’s belly of pork.  Our wine is 2019 Old Vine Chenin Blanc Olifantsberg, Western Cape SA.  Again very pleasant.  With these flights you always want a second glass...

Third course in fairly quick succession is diver caught Orkney scallop with caper raisin cauliflower and vadouvan - delightful, and perfectly cooked.  Accompanying wine is Australian - 2021 Hen and chicken chardonnay, Larry Cherubino.  Excellent.

Fourth course arrives: dry aged Pembrokeshire beef.  It’s the highlight of the meal for me and deliciously tasty.  2019 Reserve Barossa Shiraz, Berton, Barossa Valley Australia.  An excellent match.  We had beef yesterday despite me thinking Wales is all about lamb!

At this stage there's an optional cheese tasting plate at £12 but we're beginning to sense the beckoning plimsoll line so we both decline.

Next up is the “boiled egg” - to be honest I forget what exactly this is  but recall it's sort of a chocolate fondant thing.

Finally we have Apple Sable Breton blackberry tart with a glass of 2015 Marsanne Cane Cut Tahbilk South Australia to cap it off.  It’s a classic French pudding. By this time we both feel well satisfied. 

The 6 course taster was £59 ea, the flight £35 ea. Plus a bottle of still water at £3.50.  With 12% service and £1.23 carbon free dining (??), the total comes to £243.67. 

For me quite an expensive meal but overall of very satisfying quality and delightful presentation, if not mind blowingly outstanding.  But at £59 for 6 courses very good vfm I think. Excellent service and a very attentive and friendly sommelier.  Nice to know what you're drinking and why. 

A nice round up to a great rugby weekend in Cardiff.

 

Return to No 97

In the year or so since we first went to No 97,  we have been back a couple of times, once in a group of 5 and once on Valentine's Day. Each time was good, but not special, with the emphasis seemingly on the presentation rather than the flavour. 

B decides we should go there again after the farmer's market, which goes on outside. She booked a table, but in fact there is plenty of room when arrive. Others do arrive later though. This time we are in the main restaurant on the ground floor, a nice enough room, but with rather strange plastic flowers over the bar ("counter"). 

As usual there is a limited choice of three options per course, one of which is vegetarian. After an amuse bouche of cod roe on crackers, B has the spiced gin cured salmon to start. This is quite a thick slab, more like sashimi. Typically beautiful, but very tasty indeed. My starter is lamb loin, half-a-dozen slices, with aubergine caviar. This is stunning. It is so tender and moist with really great flavour. Both dishes appeared to be small, but are so full of taste that we savour them and find they are plenty. The vegetarian starter was "virtual" ravioli - not sure what that was!

B's main was chicken breast, which I always think is a waste of a choice when eating out. This comes with a truffle "bitter ball", shredded chicken I think. Both elements are really good, the chicken also flavourful. My main is the sea bass, apparently with crab bouillabaisse, though I didn't notice that. "Saffron potatoes" turns out to be one delicate disc. At first I think the fish is more interesting than usual, but as I go on it seems rather too "fishy", not the delicate taste of sea bass you usually expect.  Again the presentation is delicate and wonderful.  We also have the lettuce, speck and boiled egg salad. This is quite a contrast. A big mass of leaves, meat and egg slapped together in a bowl with a heavy dressing. It looked like it had been prepared in a totally different kitchen. 

Dessert is either cheese for a supplement or a dark chocolate tart with popcorn and "Guinness", so we have one of those to share, with a "pop-tini" (vodka, coffee liqueur and popcorn syrup) to complement it. We just ordered one drink, thinking you would pour it over the tart, but the charming waiter insists on bringing us one each, in elegant glasses. It is a lovely, powerful drink. The tart itself looks fantastic with the popcorn on top, and is good bitter flavour, The "Guinness" is a small pot of chocolate mousse with cream on top. 

As I mentioned, the waiter has been very friendly, helpful and generous. The background music is quite low, late 60s classics with the occasional foray into early 70s. We had two bottles of their cheapest wine, a fruity Verdejo, at £28 each. Sparkling water is free. So at £27 for two courses and £32 for three, the bill comes to £140, good value, especially if like the table next to us you are Instagramming every dish. 

Three recent excursions

 We're meeting up with T&K again, and after some deliberation have settled on El Pirata Mayfair, off Piccadilly, near Shepherd Market. We'd been a couple of times before, but it seems we also went with them after a wine-tasting - which we have no recollection of!

It's very busy again, and I give my name for the booking - only for T to point out he booked it, so is described by the waiter as "the fantastic Mr S" - but we are lucky to be shown to a table by the window. Even downstairs is pretty full - it is very lively. We do manage to flag down a waiter to order some wine - B and I have an SB "Inurrieta Blanco" (£31) while they have a red Tarima Organico (£30). 

We explore the menu and eventually settle on nine dishes plus some bread. In the end, the chipironnes (grilled baby squid with chickpeas stew) is "off",  First to arrive was the plate of 8 anchovies - only T and I tuck into those,  These were soon followed by the two croquettes dishes - ham and chicken - and the asparagus. Croquettes are fine, if not special, but the asparagus with tomato and manchego is really nicely cooked al dente. Next were the mussels and chorizo (small pieces) and two portions of gambas pil-pil (inevitably). Both really good - nicely charred garlic with the pil-pil. Garlic chicken and chorizo in red wine round off the order. The chorizo is good, but the garlic chicken a little dull, in a rather dark sauce. 

After a little pause, we order some more gambas and a plate of cheese, and re-order the bread which hadn't arrived. There are four different cheeses in the selection and it comes with quince jelly and little breadsticks. The garlic dip with the bread is also good. With this we have a second bottle of the red. 

Service is the increasingly common 13.5%. But they didn't charge us for the bread. So we end up with a total of £216. The waiters have been jolly and service pretty good for such a busy lunchtime. Very good lunch.

After a shopping trip to Kingston we head to a Vietnamese restaurant B had spotted online - Pho. This is part of a chain, with a dozen or so in and around London and others across the country.  When we get there - about 2pm on a Saturday - the place is heaving and it's not clear that we'll get a table. As the waitress goes to look, a small group comes in behind us and asks if we have a reservation, as they do. Well, you'll still have to wait. 

We get a table towards the back of the restaurant, near the back window, so quite pleasant. It takes a little while to flag down a waitress to order wine, but it comes fairly quickly after that - a French Viognier at £22.50. There's a very interesting range of starters on the menu - we order the pork meatballs, seafood spring roll and mango salad. But the mango salad is "off" so we have crispy squid instead.  We also order prawn crackers to keep us going.

The meatballs are very tasty, with lemongrass, and the peanut sauce we choose to have with it has a subtle kick that creeps up on you. The squid, as is often the case, is good while still hot, but looses its appeal a bit after that. They are small pieces, nicely cooked in thin batter, not at all rubbery, though I would have preferred garlic in the mayonnaise rather than lime. The spring roll accompanied by Vietnamese fish sauce is the least interesting despite apparently having king prawn and crab in it. The crackers don't appear at first, then the waitress tells us that they were hunting the store-room for sweet chilli sauce to go with them. Shortly later, the chef comes to tell us and the lads at the table next to us that they didn't have the sauce, but offered us a choice of ones he could do. The others choose the sriracha one, so we go with that too. It is very spicy indeed. 

The main course menu is dominated - appropriately enough - by pho dishes, though there are a few stir fries and curries too. B chooses the house version with prawns, chicken and steak, while I go for the steak and garlic one.  They are big steaming bowls of broth with loads of noodles, plus herbs to add to taste, to be eaten messily with chopsticks and a bamboo spoon. Not one for a first date.  The broth is excellent, and there is plenty of protein in both, though a couple of the pieces of steak in mine are rather tough. Far too many noodles to stand a chance of getting through them. 

With a second bottle of wine the bill comes to a bit over £100, including 12.5% service. The service has been good despite the unavailability of a couple of things, so I'm happy to fill in the feedback questionnaire at the end. An interesting lunch.

The following week we visit the Cezanne exhibition at Tate Modern. We're quite late so our favourite tapas nearby isn't open and our researches have not been very successful at finding anywhere else interesting. We settle on The Refinery, round the back on Southwark Street. It's a big place, but not very full when we arrive - though the waiter says they were busy earlier and are fully booked this evening. A good place for work groups I'd imagine - they do lots of cocktails. The wine list is fairly varied, but we just order the South African Chenin Blanc at £24. 

B fancies the venison scotch egg, but they don't have that, so we have the salt and pepper squid and the chicken skewers instead. The squid comes as quite a large portion, with lemon mayonnaise this time but it is rather rubbery.  The skewers come with "hot honey" - with a chilli kick - interesting, but rather too sweet. 

Main courses are crispy duck salad for B and chalkstream trout for me plus a side order of "Roman" fries, with parmesan and truffle. The salad is quite large, with a good amount of duck and a wide range of supplements - beansprouts, wonton and peanuts. But it is more crispy than duck. My trout though is very good indeed. Slightly undercooked perhaps, but with a lovely crust and lots of flavour.   

The service has been good and the music I think you might call "technobeat" - not too loud, though I'd guess it would be louder in the evening. We have a nice table by the window, so the feel has been good. Sparkling water and a second bottle of wine, a 50p charity donation and 12.5% service brings the bill to over £120. Probably the least good value of the three, but a reasonable enough option in an area surprisingly short on mid-range places.