Three in May

As we are going to the Sunday Times Vintage Wine Festival at Old Billingsgate, I do some research in advance on places to eat afterwards.  We now have the Gourmet card which gives money off in various places (mainly the chains), so I look at what is nearby on their list, and come up with Ember in Pudding Lane.

We arrive a little ahead of or 3pm booking, and descend into the basement bar/restaurant.  It’s an odd style – they claim it echoes the Great Fire! – more sleazy than swanky. There are still quite a few people in finishing off lunch (well, it was Friday) -  mainly City types. In a small alcove there is a group of four or five – definitely a space for assignations. At another table, three out of four men are in pink shirts and contrasting ties – the other (the mark?) in a dark blue suit. 

The menu is “East Asian fusion”.  Quite a substantial range.   The wine list is a little scary, with nothing under £30 – we go for the Colombard-Sauvignon from Horgelus in Côte de Gascogne at £31.  After over 50 tastings, one bottle is going to be enough!!

We start with the sesame squid with a sweet paprika mayonnaise – this is an excellently cooked dish, with just enough batter and enough bite. With that we have a prawn and coconut ceviche, with lemongrass and a good chilli hit, and a chorizo and prawn gyoza. Following up, there’s an Indonesian beef rendang, which is rich and spicy as it should be. And a luscious Waygu Koji (mushroom) that is just melt in your mouth.  Plus some jasmine rice.

The service is fine – unobtrusive and efficient – without being friendly.  Our 50%-off food offer saves us £29, so the total (with 12.5% service) comes to £75. We may not have had our most sensitive palettes at work (!), but that seemed like very good value for the interesting food and venue. At full price, we might have thought differently.

 

Meeting up with M&G, and C&G, we’re off to Duck and Rice in Berwick Street, right by the market. The restaurant is up a tight spiral staircase (there’s a bar downstairs), and we are seated right at the back – it’s a little cramped and dark.

We order some wine and sparkling water – a Sauvignon from Touraine at £30 and an Argentinian Malbec (La Colonia) at £32.  The waitress is a little dippy – she pours the wine as if she has never done it before, with the smallest amount for tasting you can imagine. She’s even nervous about pouring the water, having brought a bottle of still first.

We decide to order starters first, and then order mains once we’ve had those – that seems to be a challenging concept for our hostess.  There’s a “monthly specials” list, as well as the standards, but this seems to have passed her by – she gets very confused about anything we order off that.  Luckily, most dishes come with three portions, so cutting these in half means everyone gets a taste of everything.

First to arrive, after the edamame beans, are the venison puffs and the pan-fried pork gyoza. The puffs, though small, are delicious. The gyoza come with a frilly fried surround, but are a little gooey, they could have been fried a bit more. The crispy prawn rolls, looking like Shredded Wheat, come with a tasty mayonnaise and the salt&pepper squid with a chilli dip – both very good. Then there are the jasmine tea-soaked rib bau (bun) – the rib is nice, but the bun a bit too much – and a serviceable vegetable spring roll.

Returning to the menu, we order main dishes, again to share. Duck and Rice had to be one. M fancied kimchi pork, as she’d never tried it. B went for wasabi prawn, G2 kung po chicken and I ordered the chicken claypot but that was “off”, so ended up with the crispy shredded beef.  G1 thought that was enough protein so ordered Gai Lan, an oriental broccoli. We then had a debate about how much rice to order – the kimchi pork came with rice as did the duck and rice (obvs). Dippy suggested that the egg fried rice bowls were small, so we ordered two – we didn’t need that many.

Favourites were the kung po chicken, which had a dense flavour and was quite spicy with caramelised red chillies, followed by the kimchi pork and the wasabi prawns. The duck was OK but the shredded beef was, as so often I think, not that interesting.

In all we had 3 bottles of Sauvignon, plus a couple more glasses and some coffees. Just over £300 for 6 of us was pretty fair.

 

 Down to Lymington to meet up with J&E, S&B. We’re booked into Pebble Beach at Barton-on-Sea, which J and B claim we’d been to before, but I don’t recall at all. It’s a lovely sunny day, and we are glad to sit by the door to the terrace, rather than actually outside in the heat.

Most of the others aren’t drinking much, so it’s down to B and me to get through the Kleine Kalze Chenin Blanc  (£21.50).

E has the set 3-course menu at £24.50: smoked salmon, followed by chicken breast and then ice creams. The rest of us go a la carte. Our choices were king scallops (excellent) and beef carpaccio (fine). Others included Breton fish soup with rouille (deemed to be good), and goat’s cheese curd.

Our mains were lemon sole – a neat portion, nicely done – and stir-fried prawns and monkfish in oyster sauce, which was rather too dominant and salty.  J ordered skate wing with “mussel nage”, which turned out to her disappointment be flakes of skate buried under a mound of mussels and clams in a salty soup. B2’s fish and chips (with extra mushy peas) and S’s mussels were both well-received.

Desserts were a chocolate fondant  (hot and gooey, with honeycomb ice cream, and a cheese selection (at £15.40 a bit pricey).  Afterwards we sit outside on the terrace with splendid views of the sea, the Isle of Wight and the Needles. On such a lovely day, it’s a great place to be. We have some more wine and coffees – though I’ve just noticed they forgot to charge us for those!

The service was friendly and efficient and the atmosphere smart without being stuffy. Total for 6 (two bottles of wine, but excluding the extra wine and coffee) was £224. Despite the skate that is excellent value in such a scenic location. Highly recommended.

To, at and from the Wirral

Just a few quick words about some places we came across during a trip up North for my niece’s 40^th birthday party.

Just off the M42/M5 on the way to Stourbridge, turn off for Clent. There you will find the Bell and Cross, at Holy Cross, county dining pub of the year for Worcestershire. It has a fair sized garden, but the weather was a bit iffy so we sat in one of the many little dining rooms, close enough to the open door to get a nice breeze.  B has the skewer of king prawns with chorizo – a nice skewers of 3 prawns and 3 pieces of spicy chorizo; the “Catalan salad” is nothing special, but the garlic dressing is good.  My choice of sticky shredded black bean chicken seems to be missing its pickled ginger (replaced by beansprouts and sliced carrot) and the accompanying “frazzled noodles” are like pieces of Styrofoam and simply make a mess on the table. All served on trendy slate of course.  With some wine and water, this makes it £42. It’s a handy stopping off point for an interesting lunch – not sure what a full evening meal would be like.

At Parkgate on the Wirral is The Ship.  A friendly pub by the riverside, it has a better than average pub menu. G has the lemon chicken stir fry, B has seafood red Thai curry (good) and I have beef rillettes in a “horseradish crust”.  The crust doesn’t really taste of horseradish, so I leave most of that, and the beef is a little dry, so I’m glad to share some of B’s curry sauce.  About £70 for the three of us with wine.

Lunch next day is at Sheldrakes, further up the coast.  As we arrive we can see there is a wedding party gathering, so we are shown upstairs. It’s a gloriously sunny day so we sit outside. The wedding party is gathered outside, and it turns out to be the actual ceremony, not just the reception.  B has the beef, pine nut and parmesan salad – excellent rare beef, and good accompaniments. G really enjoys his scallops and chorizo, while I have the confit duck tian with pineapple and coriander – also good.  For main G just has a duck tortilla wrap, while B and I share the summer paella – chicken, chorizo and mixed seafood. Plenty of protein and masses of rice, really enjoyable in the sunshine.  The service charge is a bizarrely reasonable 7% - never seen that before! So with 2 bottles of SB and a pint of lager the bill comes to £107 for the three of us.

On the way home, having stopped in Bromsgrove with friends overnight, we decide to stop for lunch at the Greyhound, Besselsleigh near Cumnor, outside Oxford.  It’s a very pretty spot, with lovely flower baskets out the front and an extensive garden out back.  We’re just grabbing a quick lunch en route – B has the salmon niçoise salad and I have a (warm) ham hock salad. Both are very good, and with some drinks we pay £45.  The place was heaving (it was a Sunday lunch), but the service at the bar had been excellent and the food arrived very promptly.

A trio of places around Brighton

 We’re heading for Chichester with M&G, but the traffic forecast is bad, so we head off to Petworth instead. We fetch up at the Angel Inn – nothing much to look at from the outside, but a charming maze of rooms and a lovely garden out the back where we decided to sit in the sunshine. It’s very pleasant in the sunshine, and the mock wasp nests do a fair job of keeping the blighters away. Rather firm steel chairs are much improved when we spot the box of cushions we can use.

G has a pint of Hophead, M a soft drink and B and share the house Sauvignon Blanc. We’re only after a light lunch, so B has the shrimp skewer (good), G has fish and chips (huge, with crisp batter, M a chicken and bacon sandwich, while I have starter size paella and a portion of chips. The chips are excellent, and the paella interesting with tasty chorizo.  £62 all in. Definitely one to visit if you’re in the area.

Back in Hove, we go to the Foragers in the evening. It’s an ordinary looking place in a suburban area, and we’ve been warned there’s a DJ playing there this evening. We’re seated in the back about as far away as we can get, and in practice it’s not an issue.  There’s a special offer on the St Veran at £26, so we go for that.

B has smoked salmon to start (very good) while I have chicken livers, which are rich and warming, M&G have a fish mousse and corned beef hash. For mains B has mussels, in a light wine sauce with barely any cream, the way she likes it. My pink roasted duck does what it says on the tin.  The others have roasted chicken and a very nice piece of hake.

We finish off sharing the cheese plate and G and I have a couple of glasses of Malbec. With the 3 bottles of wine that comes to £190, excluding service. A very fine meal for a backwater place.

The following day we brave the wind to walk along the seafront and then turn up to Hove Place in First Avenue. It is nice and sunny though so we take opportunity to sit in the really nice garden – lucky to get a table really. G has a “Long Blonde” (cue predictable jokes), while the rest of us share the Sugar Loaf, NZ Sauvignon Blanc at £22.

We’re still full from yesterday, so we’re only going for snacks – in principle. B has the macaroni cheese, which comes piping hot and nicely browned. B’s crab cakes are unusual in that although they do have a lot of potato in them, it comes in big identifiable chunks which she can easily separate out and leave. I have the pastrami sandwich, which is very chunky and comes with several gherkins. M insists that we share a pork and black pudding scotch egg. This is cricket ball size and when cut open reveals a lovely bright yellow egg which oozes out over the meat covering – excellent. M herself has a platter of lomo, air-dried lamb, cheese and pickles.

With a second bottle and a second pint, the bill comes to £132, maybe not cheap, but a splendid experience. One worth seeking out.