After celebrating my 70th with friends at the Oxo Tower on the day, we are heading up North to see my brother and the rest of his clan. Due to diaries, we can't all get together on one day, so instead we have two successive lunches.
We travel up to Chester on the Friday and meet up with G&S at The Botanist near the cathedral. I'm a bit reluctant at first as the live music downstairs was very loud, and the stairs to the first floor restaurant looked rather steep. But the others were already there, so we head on up to join them.
The music is much more manageable up here - guitar and keyboards, quite good. It's a very quirky space, with lots of side rooms. Our table had a view downstairs of the cocktail bar. I had tried to book in here for lunch on Saturday, but they said they didn't have room, which seems surprising.
The menu is also quirky, featuring its "Famous Hanging Kebabs". B chooses the Thai Red Prawn with coconut rice, while I go for the lamb kofte and fries. G&S go for the 3 kebab sharing option, prawn, kofte and chicken. This comes with a pile of chips and some coleslaw.
Our kebabs come on a single blade, with a sauce that you could pour through some holes at the top so that it drips down over the food. B and S agree that the prawn kebabs are very good, the spiciness building as you went on. The others are good too - a fun experience.
The desserts are also unusual featuring chocolate chip dough. We decide to go for the sharing option served with strawberries and marshmallows, ice cream, crumb and popping candy plant pot. The presentation of this is fantastic too, a multi-layered basket with the dough in a hot skillet at the bottom.
Saturday lunchtime, we are meeting B's and A's families at The Yard, literally next door to our hotel. With G&S that makes 13 of us. B had quite a tough time making the arrangements, and when we get shown downstairs to our table it's only laid up for 12. The waitress was under the impression it had been booked for 17 and then revised down - which was never the case. Anyway, by squeezing tables together, they do manage to arrange to add another place.
We had had to choose our food in advance, which is never ideal, but those arrangements did work well, with the right food coming out promptly. However, choosing drinks was more problematic, as they had to re-stock - no Guinness, neither of our first two choices of red wine available, and later they had run out of coffee beans! And they had been slow to take drinks orders, as they were serving a 40th birthday group nearby.
The food, however, was said to be good by everyone. I had black pudding with boiled egg in a crispy wrapping and spicy chutney, B had chicken salad, which came with jalapeno peppers and was on the large side. Other choices included bruschetta of salmon, gammon terrine with quail's egg, onion soup, and breads with hummus etc.
For main course I had seafood pasta - 4 prawns, several clams - while B went for sea bass on pea risotto. Both were lovely. Others had steaks, cod, chicken and three other different pastas.
Several people were choosing desserts - chocolate pots, ice cream, sticky toffee pudding - so I decide to have an affogato: ice cream, espresso and amaretto. Very indulgent.
We'd had a couple of bottles of Grillo, and a third choice Nero D'Avolo. No dishes were more than £25, so overall it was a very reasonable price.
In the evening we head to Sleepy Panda for a Chinese. There are just two other people in there, and it was all rather dark. Nonetheless we take a seat and order. Some prawn crackers are delivered. We start with some dim sum: prawn dumpling, pork dumpling. For mains we have crispy beef chilli birds nest - deep-fried beef, tasting just of chilli sauce, in a crispy edible basket - and mixed seafood hot pot. The latter just has a couple of prawns and a lot of yellowy parcels. When we ask it seems these are Japanese tofu, or cheese tofu. Not unpleasant but not seafood.
With one bottle of Chilean SB and 10% service this comes to £78. Service has been fine, but it's not somewhere I'd recommend.
On Sunday we get a taxi to the Wirral, The Ship in Parkgate. There we are seeing E's family - just E&E and three of the kids, plus close friends A&J - 11 in all. G&S booked us into a private room in the centre of the restaurant. It's very pleasant because it has windows to look out on the rest of the place, so it is light and not remote-feeling or corporate.
Drinks service is very swift - we are into our first bottle of SB, a Pato Torronte from Chile - before the others arrive. For some reason, the specialities are Czech dishes, so I decide to go with both. The starter is Smazeny Syr - deep-fried camembert with cranberry and dill. Very nice but especially Czech really. The main course is Hovezi Gulas - beef goulash with dumplings and pickled red onion, inexplicably billed as "light bites". The beef was tasty, but I couldn't get half-way through just one of the dumplings.
B goes for the wild mushrooms on toast, which I'd also been considering. There's a good mix of mushrooms in a creamy sauce together with a truffle parmesan crisp. Her main course is blade of beef, more like pulled beef in red wine gravy.
The camembert was a popular choice. Others included chorizo croquettes, parsnip soup with Bombay butter, a gooey mackerel pate and some bread and oils.
There were roasts on the Sunday menu - we had chicken, beef topside and forestiere Wellington. Also mushroom risottos and seabass.
Desserts included limoncello tiramisu, raspberry ice cream, brownies and sticky toffee pudding. Also a cheese board.
Finally someone had kindly arranged for a birthday cake for me - not the full 70 candles fortunately!
Again a very reasonable bill (10% service, 4 bottles of wine and various beers and soft drinks). And very good, efficient and friendly service.
Later, back in Chester, we cross the road and fetch up in Gate of India. We get a very nice booth; warm feeling throughout. Overwhelming choice on the menu. Papadums come with a huge array of dips, including three types of hot lime pickle. We have a lamb tikka and a meat samosa to start.
These are followed up with chicken dhansak, prawn jalfrezi and pilau rice. Both the lamb and the chicken were in slices rather than chunks, but both were tasty. The prawn dish was seriously hot
Total came to £95 including service and a bottle of very nice Burgundy.
