A lot of money for not a lot!

We should have known things were going to well in Nottingham, on our last evening in the city and with a train to catch by 9pm, we decided to follow an Observer recommendation and try Sinatra’s, which has been recommended by the Observer previously winning an award in their yearly Food Awards.

Sinatra’s looked like a large ‘Picher and Piano’ type wine bar bistro, and we were seated at a table laid nicely but with no linen and only paper napkins. We ordered a white wine (I can’t remember the grape) and were offered a jug of tap water (which I always like), so far so good.

However, the dishes we had chosen had all sold out, so emergency rethink was needed.

For starters I ordered the beef carpaccio and hubby ordered the seafood risotto to be served with a poached egg, my beef carpaccio came as two small slices of rare beef that had been seared (as far as I understand it carpaccio is wafer thin raw beef) and at over £7.00 for the dish would have liked to have seen a few more slices, hubby’s risotto was lovely with a nutty bite and a perfectly cooked poached egg.

For mains I had ordered the assiette of seafood, which was a chipolata size piece of cod wrapped in proscuttio, a small sea bass fillet and a spoonful of risotto about the same size hubby had for his starter, for £18.00 not an impressive amount, and the flavours did nothing to make up for the lack of food. Hubby had chosen the duck served with potato puree and a spring roll, he ordered his duck pink, it came well cooked and dry, and the potato puree was great a nice sharp taste to go with his unfortunately tasteless and dry dish, and the spring roll was fantastic stuffed with duck in a filo pastry roll.

The meal came to an astounding £70.00 + for minimal food and effort, we were not happy and left promptly after paying the bill.

this is a pub?

Although nothing could beat French Living for the amazing food we had a fantastic lunch in what appeared from the outside to be a little local boozer, the Keane’s Head.

Inside the single room bar is light and airy, and the bar maid very friendly, they offer around six changing ales as well as draft Belgian beers and specialist lagers. We entered with no intention to eat but the menu claimed to be a modern mix of Italian and English cooking and the meals we had seen go past persuaded us to give it a go.

We were drinking to recent award winning Pale harvest from local micro brewery Castle Rock, it had just one best bitter at the GBBF 2007. To go with this I chose the sandwich of the day, mortadello with red pesto and mozzarella bake on onion bread, it was served with a generous and interesting side salad with a nice mustard dressing, it has got to be the freshest tasting and most interesting pub sandwich ever offered, it was perfect for lunch light but full of flavour from the red pesto and mortadello. Hubby ordered a made to order scotch egg served with mustard mayonnaise. It came hot sliced in two with a tub of whole grain mustard mayonnaise, the sausage meat was full of flavour and the crust nice and crisp, the only improvement we could suggest it that the egg could be served with a slightly sift yolk, as this yolk had a slight blue to the edges as you often see on boiled eggs that haven’t been rapidly cooled. However, this was an amazing scotch egg and a revelation to eat with a good pint of bitter.

The scotch egg was a reasonable £3.50 ish, and my sandwich was around the same.

heaven is a place in nottingham

Saturday evening in Nottingham and we had spent most of the day looking at the restaurants available, seemed that Nottingham wasn’t short of a restaurant or two. We chose to try French Living, a café and shop by day and basement restaurant by night.

Entry to the restaurant is via a steep spiral staircase, when we entered the cellar room we were greeted by a friendly 'bon soir' and we asked if they had a table for two available, after checking whether we had booked or not (we hadn’t) the waiter offered us a choice of various tables for two, we chose one near the entrance so we could food and people watch all at the same time; after we were seated the restaurant quickly filled up, i recommend booking or getting there early to ensure a table.

The first bottle of wine we ordered was a very smooth drinking sauvignon blanc, the restaurant offered a selection of set menu offers or a total al a carte option, all of the options sounded fantastic but it didn’t take us to long to decide. Hubby went for foie gras served in two ways (as a parfait and pan seared) and for his main course rare fillet steak, I chose tuna fillet seared on one side served with a fantastic dressing and for main I chose duck breast served with a preserved raspberry sauce.

I have to admit I’ve just started drooling again just thinking about the starters. Hubby’s foie gras was amazing, I didn’t try his parfait, but he thought it was rich and smooth, but it was the pan fried foie gras that blew both of us away, it was served rare in the middle, and when you ate a piece it literally exploded with it’s rich buttery taste, hubby said he would have been happy with just this and that the parfait just added to the fantastic starter, my tuna came rare with one quickly seared side I am a big fan of raw tuna from eating sashimi, but this light searing seemed to accentuate the flavour and the dressing just helped, we were in heaven with the starters and we didn’t think it could get much better.

One thing that had attracted us to French Living was that it stated on its menu that it would cook steaks, blue, rare or medium at most; we thought this boded well for the red meat that we ordered.

We ordered a fantastic rose to go with the main courses, we knew that theoretically we should go for red but neither of us fancied it, specially not hubby who is only just coming round to the wonders of red wine.

The main course both came with gratin dauphinois that were almost bitter with the garlic, it was such fantastic taste compared to the normal grease riddled potatoes passed of as grain dauphinois, and roasted vegetable cocktail a fantastic mix of seasonal vegetables, the courgettes were fantastic. So the mains were going well even before got to the meat, and I don’t know which one to mention first, but my duck wins, it came rare – the fat was perfectly cooked and the flesh was rare and melt in the mouth, it was a complete revelation I had never had such tender and tasty duck, the hubby was almost struck dumb, next to beef duck has got to be one of his favourites; it was also one of the most generous portions of duck I’ve ever seen, it was fantastic; and hubby’s steak was perfectly cooked rare and tender, he regretted not ordering it blue as the meat was such good quality. The mains were perfect as were the starters.

Although, fit to burst the desserts were calling to us, hubby went for his idea of heaven a two chocolate mousse that was incredibly light but a great contrast of dark and white chocolate; I went of the crème brulee which was the best I have ever eaten rich and thick and wonderfully creamy with a fantastic vanilla kick, the crispy sugar topping was wafer thin and the bitter toffee taste worked so well. We decided to have a glass of desert wine each with pudding, but the wine was so nice we went on to order a bottle to share.

The waiters were fantastic, the food was wonderful and I can’t wait to get back up to Nottingham to eat there again.

The bill is a bit hazy but I think it was around £100.

Every city should have one........

So for our anniversary we had a last minute dash up to Nottingham for the weekend, we knew nothing about the place, just that we could get a B&B for under £50 and the return train tickets were £17 each.

After wandering around Nottingham for the morning enjoying all the nice pubs and looking at a lot of mouth watering menus for the evening meal, we thought it might be a good idea to eat some lunch. But deciding on a restaurant for the two of us takes a long time and as time dragged on we noticed a world buffet restaurant that offered Chinese, Indian, Italian and some other styles as well for £8 per head which we thought we could try.

The restaurant was laid out nicely with the tables laid with cutlery, wine glasses and napkins, unlike a lot of buffet restaurants. The waitress took our wine order and then returned to show us around the buffet and explain what we needed to do, thinking this was a bit unusual we followed her down into the food area as she explained that we could have stir fries, pasta or pizzas cooked to order, as well as the normal buffet dishes.

We started off by trying the selection of starters, Chinese crab claws, tandoori chicken, mini spring rolls and much more, all of which were nice and fresh and tasted as if they hadn’t been sitting around for ages; the hubby was smitten by the ready made pizza available and tempted by the made to order option but as this was lunch as we were going out for dinner later decided not to risk it, and tucked into the Indian selection with gusto only to stop to complain about the lack of flavour and spice to the chicken bhuna (but that was his only complaint), I succumbed to the made to order stir fry, you select your vegetables and then pass it to the chef and pick what fish or meat you would like added and noodles if you fancy it, I went for lots of veggies with squid and prawn, it was bought over to the table when cooked and it was nice but a bit swamped in what tasted like oyster sauce (which I hadn’t asked for) would have preferred it a bit less swamped but it was still good; I risked going up for some salads whilst hubby got busy with the ice cream, one of many desert options including a chocolate fountain; my salad was a potato salad and was a nice end to the lunch.

The bill came to £30, and we both enjoyed the experience, we would love it if somewhere so reasonable, friendly and tasty could move down to Birmingham, it would solve the eating out with work issue in one swoop.

Paper anniversary............

As it was our wedding anniversary on last Friday and neither of us had arranged anything, we thought we would head up to the local curry house to figure out what we should do with our weekend to celebrate.

Bangla Lounge opened in Harborne just under two years ago replacing what we have been reliably told was a terrible curry house called Café Chilli. It is up a little alley way just next to Mai Thai off the Harborne High Street.

I have to say now that we are frequent visitors to the restaurant, drawn back due to the great food, the cheap prices, and the friendly staff. We walked through the door on a Friday night that was already proving busy and ushered to what we consider to be our regular table. The waiters pull the chairs back for you and then place the napkin on your lap, quite a nice touch for a back street restaurant; I must also point out now that they use linen napkins and linen on the tables which is always a plus sign to me.

We ordered a nice chenin blanc from South Africa at a very reasonable £8.75 (if you’re on a tighter budget the house wine is £7.95 for 752cl or £9.95 for a one litre bottle), and ordered a poppadom each, these come fresh and warm with a selection of mint sauce, onion salad and what tastes like a home-made mango chutney. To start we went for a sharing selection dish of tandoori lamb, chicken and the largest king prawns I’ve ever seen in an Indian Restaurant (although, to call Bangla an Indian restaurant is incorrect the cuisine is Bangladeshi) the starter comes with a side salad and selection of sauces on the plate and at £6.95 you receive a very generous portion. The meats are tender and full of flavour, the lamb chops come pink.

For main courses I chose the Sea bass tawa with extra King prawns, this comes served on a flat style frying pan with a thick rich sweetish sauce, imagine a mix between a pathia and a massala, it was sweet and nicely spiced with just the hint of chilli, the prawns and fish nicely firm and their flavours come through the sauce. Hubby went of a chicken jalfrazi which extra everything, I think it was coriander, tomatoes, onions and probably chillies. He loved it. We shared a lemon and coriander rice, which is fantastically lemony with matches the dishes so well, and the coriander is so refreshing, we also shared a red onion and coriander naan and a batura bread (not on the menu but if you ask they’ll make you anything), we were also given a complimentary side dish of spiced potatoes, tasted like toasted coriander and cumin seeds really gutsy favour.

As it is impossible eat a desert after that much food we decided to have a whiskey each, my step-father is very much into his single malts and recommends a great one that they keep for him, so we set about trying to find it, after hubby had discovered to the bottle we had a generous double each, a great way to finish the meal.

In total for the meal, two bottles of wine and those two double single malts the bill came to £44.50, as well as the complimentary bottle of champagne they gave us to celebrate our anniversary.

In my mind Bangla is the best Indian/curry house in Birmingham.

Another okay chain?

Opinion has been divided in the Eardley household ever since a café rouge opened on the High Street, replacing the over priced rather depressing looking etc etc, which had replaced the superb California Pizza. I’ve only eaten at café rouge a handful of times, and that was normally because it was two for one and cheap – but the last time me and the hubby had tried it, it was in Brindley Place during the Birmingham Jazz festival, and we tried it mainly for the out door seating near the Jazz; and it was terrible, wrong and bad food, surly staff and over priced everything, and I swore never to return. But, hubby wanted to give Harborne’s newest establishment a go, and since he was paying couldn’t really say no!

The restaurant has been decorated to look like every other café rouge, but some how manages to work in this building, it’s much better then its previous incarnations grey colour scheme! The windows at the front of the restaurant can been pulled back letting in a nice burst of fresh air, luckily on a Sunday evening , when we went, the traffic outside is quite minimal.

The menu is obviously a standard menu offered at all café rouges, and I suspect the specials proudly displayed on a board outside of the restaurant as the same as well.

When we entered the restaurant we were warmly greeted by the staff and shown to a nice booth, strangely for a nearly empty restaurant we were seated next to a reserved table (?) wouldn’t it have made more sense to spread us out?

We ordered a sauvignon blanc and perused the menu, hubby chose smoked haddock wrapped in a pancake and topped with cheese for his starter, and I rather boringly went for the bread crumbled camembert with cranberry sauce. I was rather disappointed when my started turned out to be two miniature camemberts which was not how it was described on the menu at all, hubby’s pancake bake was great lovely and smooth, would be great as a comfort dish on a cold night.

For mains I ordered the special sole limonade (I think that is how it is spelt!) which came with French beans and new potatoes. Hubby went of the rib eye steak with French fried, and ordered a house side salad for us to share. My fish was a whole fish, but minus its head which I find a bit disappointing I would rather the waiter asked whether I wanted to head left on or not, but the flesh was firm, but as it was a lemon sole the flavour of the fish was somewhat overwhelmed by the herb butter served with it, the green beans were firm and the potatoes were very nice and waxy; another issue I had was that this was a whole fish (rather a large one) and I would have appreciated a side plate to put the skeleton on so I would manoeuvre the fish a little bit better. Hubby’s steak was ordered rare as always and it came rare (although edging towards medium at the edges) and the fries were fresh, but still French fries. He has very happy with the steak, but strangely the one dish that merited the most praise was the side salad. The salad came in a large bowl and contained the normal salad ingredients as well as green beans and olives; it had a simple but tasty vinaigrette.
For dessert I chose the tarte tatin which came with a nice vanilla ice cream, the tart was nicely spiced with cinnamon but didn’t over power the apples, hubby didn’t go for a desert choosing instead to try a nice port, unfortunately they didn’t have it, he chose instead a white port which depressingly came as a rather over priced 25ml shot rather then a glass which you would expect.

For a chain restaurant I was happy with the quality of the food and the friendliness of the staff, but as there are so many other restaurants out there to be tried I won’t be rushing back there.

In total for the meal and two bottles of wine the bill was in excess of £80.

More Thai then you can possibly eat..........

What’s better for breakfast then an eat as much as you like Thai buffet, especially with the Mother of all hangovers that me and the hubby had after a friend’s wedding party the day before?

In pain and hungry we wondered in to the city centre towards Thai Edge http://www.thaiedge.co.uk/, a restaurant that we had been meaning to try for ages. They offer a Sunday lunch time buffet for about £13 a head.

We entered the restaurant pretty certain that we wouldn’t get a table – it was so full; and whilst waiting for the waiter to notice us got a good eyeful of the buffet selection. The waiter was unfortunately new, but he was friendly and managed to find us a table. We ordered the house dry wine and a couple of glasses of tap water – the house wine was very drinkable.

On the table was a printed menu explaining the dishes, which appears to change each week. It offered two soups, a selection of starter nibbles, a range of hot dishes, and three salads. To start I went for the tom yam soup, always a favourite of mine, and what impressed me about the soup apart from the dedicated waitress serving it for you, rather then messily serving yourself, was the fact that there was barely any room for the soup around the massive king prawns it was fresh and had a lovely amount of spice to it, very restorative after the heavy drinking the night before. Hubby went for a selection of the nibbly starters, fried chicken bits (not battered and with skin still attached!) tender, fresh and crispy all at the same time, sweet corn cake which was like a fried sweet corn pancake, and some nice samosas and miniature spring rolls, all fresh and enjoyable.

For our second assault on the buffet I chose to try the salads and went for the mixed sea food salad, which was loaded with scallops, king prawns, mussels, crab claws, and white fish it had a crispy clean taste and a lovely chilli hit, the fish salad was very similar but served with coated white fish, and the mango salad with cashew nuts offered fresh slices of mango with a light dressing. Hubby went for the hot dishes, trying the duck with tamarind sauce (which must have been good he went back for a least two more helpings), stir fried fish with ginger and onion which disappeared so quickly of his plate and the buffet that I couldn’t try it, and some very satisfactory massamn curry, he also tried to noodles on the buffet which he thought were sweet but not cloying.

Although stuffed after trying all the salad (and having several helpings of the fantastic seafood salad) I thought I would try the cooked to order pad thai noodles, I ordered them with prawn. They were great a sweet but fresh taste loaded with prawns, a lovely way to finish the meal as we couldn’t face any of puddings.

In total the bill came to around £39 for a great lunch, would again recommend this to anyone after some great Thai food in a relaxed atmosphere on a Sunday lunch time, but would warn them to come early as it is very popular.

Mai Thai

Working until 9.00pm on a Friday normally limits the eating out options in Brum (everything seems to close at 10pm) so we attempt to get into the local curry house, but the queue out the door puts us off. Handily at the start of the alleyway that leads to the curry house is a Thai restaurant that we hadn't yet been to, it’s been on the High Street for a couple of years after replacing a fantastic coffee shop/restaurant.

Looking though the glass frontage it looked pretty empty but was still serving so we thought we would give it a go, walking through the door we were warmly welcomed by a waitress and lead through to the back of the restaurant, all the two person tables were arranged in front of a bench/banquet type seat with one chair, hubby got to share the bench with the other diners.

We ordered a nice house sauvignon Blanc, and tucked into the Thai crackers that were placed on the table. We decided to share starters as there were a nice range but we couldn’t decided which ones we fancied; we went for the chicken satay, wrapped king prawns and a pink grapefruit salad with king prawns. The chicken satay was very light and refreshing not as cloying as Chinese chicken satay can be, the wrapped king prawns were fresh and crispy with a wonderful sweet clear vinaigrette, the prawns so fresh the shell on tails were wonderfully crunchy to munch; the pink grapefruit salad was refreshing but would have benefited from a few more prawns.

For mains hubby went for his favourite massaman beef curry and I chose sliced beef in red curry sauce, and to share a pud Thai noodles and fried fragrant rice. Hubby’s massaman curry was rich and lush, he thought it was fantastic, but agreed that my beef was even better in a smooth but fragrant sauce and the beef incredibly tender. The pud Thai was sweet and fresh tasting with the peanuts served to one side – which for me was great as I’m not the biggest peanut fan ever! And the rice was perfectly cooked clean tasting and with a nice bite to it.

Hubby ordered a pudding of honey and ginger ice-cream, which they served with two spoons – and we both agreed that it was a fantastic way to end the meal it was light and refreshing one of the nicest ice-creams I’ve tried.

This restaurant was a nice surprise we haven’t been there before and were pleasantly surprised by the friendly staff and great food. The price range for the three starters, two mains, two side dishes and one pudding with two bottles of wine was around £70.00 excluding tip!

Would recommend this as a great Thai restaurant for those not looking to head into the city centre.

Azzari too

Saturday night in Birmingham, it's raining and we really can't be bothered to head into the city centre to struggle to find somewhere to eat that we can afford and enjoy without booking well in advance or selling ourselves to the devil! So we asked the parents (they eat out even more then we do!) and they suggested that we head over to Bearwood, which is about a thrty minute walk, and try Azzari Too a Jamaican/European fusion restaurant http://www.azzaritoo.co.uk/. We checked the internet review sites and the opinion was divided about whether it was laid back or lazy; so we thought we would give it a go.

Walking to Bearwood after a sunny afternoon it decided to tip it down half way there so we entered the restaurant a bit wet and very early. We were greeted by the staff and shown to a table right next to a family with a couple of children - although the children weren't excessively noisey we wanted a relaxed grown up evening so asked to be moved the staff were very accommodating and found us another table (at this point we were only the second table in there!). The menu was a simple short affair, as was the wine list, and there was an additional specials list. We choose a lovely sauvignon blanc which was around £13, the first bottle disappeared in minutes, it was very tasty but light, so we ordered another! The starters offer individual portions or sharing platters, we chose to share a jerk chicken platter served with paw paw salsa and fried plantain and also rustic bread with roast garlic and olives; the jerk chicken was tender and tasty and very morish, the plantain was sweet and quickly converted hubby to plantain as he hadn't tried it before, the roasted garlic was great and the only quibble would be that a larger bulb would have been better.

For mains hubby went for lamb rump with roasted herb new potatoes, with minted peas and apple jelly; the waitress took his order and walked away from the table only to return minutes later to aplogise for not asking how he would like it cooked, he asked for pink. When the dish came it was piled high with lamb, it was almost hard to see the rest of the dish for the amount of meat, it came pink all the way through - it may have been a bit too pink for some, but then they shouldn't have ordered it pink if that's the case - and he raved about it, he states it was the nicest restaurant lamb he ever had with a lovely covering of fat which just added to the flavour. I ordered off the specials menu and ordered fillet of tilapia fish with a garlic and chilli crust with papaya salad and roasted sweet potato; although i had never heard of tilapia fish i thought i would give it a go; it came as a plate sized fillet roughly an inch thick and firm white flesh, much better tasting and looking then your standard cod(!); the crust was perfectly balanced so occasionally you got bursts of the flavour but not to over power the delicate flavour of the flesh, the roasted sweet potatoes were lovely and the papaya salad added a nice crunch and sweetness to the dish.

As the portions were very generous we decided to skip pudding and ordered a jamaican coffee each, the coffees came in wine glasses with a generous slurp of rum, they were a great way to finish the unusual jamaican/european fusion meal that had been very satisfy and left us plotting to return very soon.

All together the bill came to about £75, and it was well worth it. The only suggestion i would make would be that they add a side dish of fried plantain to the menu as we would have loved to have more.

chain restaurants............

Normally we abhor chain resturants, they normally have identikit food from brake brothers, surly staff that have no idea, and generally seem to be over priced for what you get. We also prefer to support individual businesses whenever possible. However, there is one exception and that is Zizzi http://www.zizzi.co.uk/zizzimenu.html in Harborne, we would not try it anywhere else but when the choice on the High Street is Zizzi or Pizza Express full of the screaming children that seem to fill their branches we would chose Zizzi everytime.

It was an evening after a long day at work for the hubby and a long day on the telephone to talktalk to sort out my complaint for me, and neither of us felt like shopping or cooking, or even going into the city centre for dinner, which left the High Street, which is quite well endowed with restaurants, we have Bangla, Mai Thai, Pizza Express, two gastro type pubs, sliver and spice, imagine, Valentinos, Buonissimo and the new restaurant soon to open called Turners, as well as Zizzi. But we were on a budget so it ruled the majority of the other options out, so Zizzi was decided on; it has been a long time since we've been so it was nice to see that the menu had been updated keeping old favourites and adding some new. They also offer a specials menu, with a selection of starters and mains on it. I chose to try the anti pasta of the specials list which came with a rocket salad and crispy flat bread, the portion was generous and the meats tasty and the presentation was fantastic, the salad and meat were laid out on the flat bread really well. Hubby's went of the crayfish and smoked salmon salad, i'm assuming it was good as it disappeared so quickly and the plate was licked clean there was no chance to steal any (almost!). For mains I went for the four cheese pizza and hubby went for his normal gorgonzola, broccoli and chicken dish which is al forno, he also had a garlic flat bread to dip into his sauce. My pizza was great you could taste each cheese indivually as well as a combination, the base was light and crisp, and the sauce was simple but full of flavour. Hubby's dish was enormous and he adored it, it was rich but you could still taste the individual flavours, and the garlic bread was sprinkled with fresh rosemary which really added to the flavour. We were so full we struggled to finish our second bottle of wine and could not face the thought of pudding. The bill came to £54 (ish) which included bread with oil and vinegar, two bottle of house wine and the two courses each with side dish, and tip. Although, a chain the food is always so fresh and well presented, the staff friendly and the builidng the restaurant is housed in is a lovingly converted old bank building. I would definitely recommned this for anyone especially families looking for a reliable meal out.

Buffet or Hot Pot?

A new chinese buffet restaurant has opened in Birmingham by the law courts. Birmingham is full of chinese buffets but this one caught our attention as it also offers a Japanese hotpot - shabu shabu, it is called MinZu http://minzu.co.uk/default.aspx. We thought we would have a look in and see what it was like, we decided before trying the hotpot we would give the buffet a go.

The restaurant is in an old victorian building by the old law courts in the town centre, it had what looked like original plaster work on the ceiling and some funky modern chandeliers creating a great environment. We wandered in off the street and were greeted by a friendly waiter who was convinced we had met before (we don't think we have!) he showed is to a nicely laid table, and bought over the menu, he explained that to prevent spoiling and wastage of the food it was an order to the table buffet and that they could cook us half portions of any dish we wanted to try. The wine list was reasonable and we ordered a nice Chenin Blanc for £12.50; the menu offered a selection of soups, starters, mains and side dishes. We tried many of the dishes so I won't list them all separately but just to mention the chilli and salt mussels to start - mussels in their shells coated with chilli and salt and fried, they were delicous; the prawn toast came as a selection of normal toast and some which i believe to be crab stick toast, and hubby reckons was king prawn toast - whichever it was still lovely. Jill Gem King Prawns (i think i've spelt that right!) were wonderful shell off king prawns with a fantastic light but tasty coating which even the waitress agreed were her favourite! Although stuffed right at the end of the meal we ordered one last dish of vegetable satay skewers, these were a revelation, the chunks of vegetables had been dipped in a tempura like batter before being cooked and topped with a fantastic satay sauce. The entire meal came to just under £40 and was definitely worth it, we are already planning on taking the parents there and also going back to try the hotpot.

Waiter... there's a hair in my pud!

I really should let the hubby write this review, he's been ranting on about this restaurant since Tuesday night when we subjected ourselves to it, so I'm going write my bit and see if he wants to add anything.

Still in an eating out mood, but then again when aren't we?, we decided to give what used to be an old favourite of ours another go, as it had been over two years since our last disastrous visit. Previously, Chez Jules had been a reliable, friendly and value for money French bistro type restaurant in the city centre, but then a few years ago it appeared they lost their chef and most of the staff, the food went down hill and we gave up going.

On Tueday night we ventured back in, it was a special offer, three course meal with half a bottle of house wine per person for £15, so we thought we would risk it. We entered the restaurant and were greeted by most of the staff (which we thought was a positive start) we were shown to our table which was a wooden table that was considerably worn out and had been painted brown, it was laid with two paper napkins and cutlery that would not have looked out of place at a school canteen (and a very down market one at that!), no wine glasses, side plates, bread knieves, candles; previously the table used to be laid with a red and white checked cloth and an old wine bottle with a candle in it. The set menu was brief but had some choice on it, I decided to order the salad niciose and hubby went for the chicken liver and bacon salad, for main course we both ordered the pork cutlet with blue cheese sauce, with potato dauphinois and an additional side dish of vegetables. After taking our orders the waitress bought over a basket of bread, and a bottle of the house wine which was strangley served in glass beakers, rather then a wine glass, and again the beakers looked like they had just been stolen from a local school canteen. We had obviously scoffed our basket of bread before the starters arrived and we were asked whether we would like some more so we said yes, the starters arrived hubby was pleasantly surprised the chicken livers were cooked so they were just pink and the bacon worked well with it, my started had obviously been prepared well in advance, it was fridge cold, the salad had gone slimey from the dressing and it was made with tinned tuna. About quarter of the way through our starters, the manager came over to ask if... you've guessed it... was everything okay with the food, whilst we were eating(!) he then went on to tell us about what fantastic restaurants he normally ate in, which was a touch biazzare, when he finally left us alone hubby's starter had started to go cold and mine had finally started to warm up.

Again, we had finished the bread with the starters and the waitress again offered a top up of bread, hubby decided that he would like some more so she duly bought another basket over. The main courses arrived and we were a bit disturbed that the pork was served with a steak knife, the chop was swamped in a white sauce and was served with two braised shallots, the potato dauphinois was served in a frying pan and the selection of vegetables were sliced carrots and undercooked cauliflower. The pork was so dry and tough we needed the steak knife to get through it and worryingly the white sauce which claimed to contain blue cheese, seemed to be decidedly lacking in blue cheese but still managed to overpower the pork, the potato dauphinois was made with powdery potatos, no seasoning and the cheese was tasteless.

After enduring the main course we decided the puddings could not get worse, oh how wrong we were. I ordered the cheese board working on the theory that they can not screw up slices of cheese and crackers, and surprisingly they did not, three average slices of cheese, so uninspired crackers and the dollop of what appeared to be a runny homemade chutney with very hard 'bits' in it, kept us entertained trying to work out the ingredients. Hubby's chose the sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce, it came piping hot, so hot that it must have been microwaved and it actually burnt the roof of his mouth, after leaving it to cool down slightly he did start to enjoy it but commented that would have been better with ice cream rather then toffee sauce, however, his enjoyment was rather short lived as halfway through the cake he bit straight into a long black human hair. When the waitress came over we pointed out the human hair and mentioned that it had put hubby of the pud, she must have told the manager who came straight over to us and started apologising, and offering us the chance to have a look around the kitchen and then mentioned that he was really upset about this as it was the first time in ten days (we did not like to ask what it was the first time for in ten days, hair in the food?, a complaint?) - if you have ever seen the Monty Python dirty knife sketch it was almost like that! He did, however, take some money off the bill so the whole tortious affair cost about £32, which included charges for the bread which were not mentioned on the menu or by the waitress when we kept accepting the refills but by this stage we just wanted to get out of the restaurant so we didn't quibble about the bread. After leaving we both agreed that we will not be giving it another go!

Monday Morning

On our last day in Shrewsbury we decide not to eat breakfast at the B&B but to try somewhere in town, this turned out to be a great decision. We discovered Poppy's Tea Rooms and both ordered a English breakfast, it came with black pudding, two sausages, two rashers of bacon, grilled tomatos, baked beans, fried potatos, mushrooms, toast, with tea or coffee. It was well cooked and the food was very tasty and portions were very generous, it definitely set us up for the day.

Again, we spent the day sightseeing, until lunch time when we decided that we finally had some room to spare for lunch. We decided to go to Mad Jack's, we had been tempted by the evening menu but had run out of time, so felt that we should give the lunch menu a go. The interior of the restaurant was modern and stylish, with muslin napkins, tables properly laid and very luxiourious toilets. We ordered a bottle of Chenin Blanc and we were offered water, we requested tap water and almost instantly a jug of iced tap water was bought over. The bread came informally on two small chopping boards and offered a choice of ciabatta or seeded granary. Hubby's decided to try the steak, he ordered it rare, and it came char grilled on the outside and then evenly rare throughout, it was served with homemade chips that he swore blind were cooked in dripping; he could find absolutely nothing wrong with his steak and was in heaven by the look of him. I decided to order the lobster and crayfish tart with samphire and salad; I was astonished when it arrived and was a large thick slice of a tart, I had assumed it would be a small dainty dish, and the salad was a generous bowl full. The tart was very delicous but the crayfish and lobster were very spread out within it, so in someways I would have perferred having a smaller tart but with a more concentrated amount of filling. The samphire was delcious and I would have gladly exchanged some of the generous salad for more samphire. In all my meal was delicious and I really enjoyed it, and hubby was verging on having an affair with his steak. The meal came to around £45, which is dear for a lunch but seemed fair in regards to the quality of the ingredients and surroundings.

Sunday - the day of food!

On the Sunday when we were in Shrewsbury we ate breakfast at the Bed and Breakfast, it was an optional £5 each so we decided to give it a go. It was a typical traditional fry up, not to greasey and generous portions and the coffee was very nice. After breakfast we went sight seeing for a bit before getting caught in a heavy downpour about lunch time.

To shelter from the rain we decided to stop for lunch at Bellstone, a restaurant and hotel,http://www.bellstone-hotel.co.uk/, it had a lovely sounding menu including mains, sandwiches, puddings etc. We had a pint of flowers IPA each and ordered sandwiches, I chose the steak and red onion with aioli on sour dough roll and hubby chose the bellstone club on malted granary bread, and to share we ordered vine tomato and red onion salad.

The sandwiches came with a genrous side salad and a bowl of chips each, hubby's club sandwich was generously filled with a tender and juicy chicken breast and nicely smoked bacon, he claimed that it was the nicest club sandwich he ever had; my steak roll was stuffed with steak pieces that were all perfectly cooked (pink in the middle) and was the most tender steak I have ever had on a sandwich, the chips were fresh and the side salad was generous with a lovely honey and mustard dressing on, and the tomato and red onion salad was tasty and fresh and generous in size. The bill came to about £22 which is dear for lunch time, but was definitely worth it as the sandwiches were fantastic and the ale was well kept.

And believe it or not we still had room for dinner in the evening!

For dinner we chose to go to the Cornhouse http://www.cornhouse.co.uk/, the interior of the restaurant was very typical french style cafe/restaurant, plain walls and various ornaments/bottle strewn around, on Sunday it was hosting part of a Shrewsbury wide art festival and was displaying work by local artists on the walls. As we had not booked we poked our heads round to see if they still had a table available, the waiter who greeted us was very friendly and explained that they were very busy at the moment, but did have room, but could not serve us straight away - as it takes the hubby ages to pick his order - we were not very concerned about this, they showed us to the table bought over a basket of bread, a jug of iced tap water (without being requested) and the wine menu. After a short time to read the wine list they came back to take our wine order and bring us the food menus. The menu was brief but delicous sounding and I chose to go for a starter off the specials menu - smoked trout with horseraddish and potato salad, and hubby went for oriental duck salad with hoi sin sauce, for mains I chose the 10oz sirloin steak after checking that it would come properly rare and not verging on medium rare which came with king prawns and homemade chips, and the hubby went for the new season lamb which came with leak and mustard crumble. My smoked trout starter was a wonderful tower of smoked trout balanced on a potato salad, my only quibble would be that I would have liked the horseradish to be a bit stronger - but that is because I adore horseradish! Hubby's duck salad was delicious the duck was warm and tender, the salad generous and the hoi sin sauce tasty but not over powering. The mains came and I was flabbergasted by the size of my steak and that fact that it was perfectly rare throughout the piece, the king prawns were grilled and were verging on overcooked (but only just!) and the homemade chips were sweet and a very generous portion. Hubby's lamb came pink and came with a large bowl of roasted vegatables (courgettes, aubergine, peppers) which was not mentioned on the menu but were perfectly cooked and extremely tasty. My steak was very flavoursome and had a perfect texture and it was massive, the prawns worked perfectly with it, unfortunately the portions were so generous the portion of homemade chips defeated me. Hubby's lamb was flavoursome and the mash matched the lamb perfectly, but again the portions were so generous his vegatables defeated him. We were so full we could not even face the puddings. I forgot to mention that it was live music night and a very talented gentleman with a guitar seranaded that restaurant whilst we were eating. It created a perfect atmosphere to match the wonderful food, a perfect end to a wonderful day. We dawdled in the restaurant getting through two bottles of a great french wine, that had been imported by the local wine merchants, and three glasses of desert wine. The bill in total came to around £90. We are already planning on returning the next time we are in Shrewbury.

'red meat'

Shrewsbury - I think is my spiritual home.

Three days of real ale and good food was the plan, and Shrewsbury didn't disappoint.

We arrived in Shrewsbury about 11am on Saturday and walked over the bulging river Severn to 'Ye Olde Bucks Head Inn' http://www.bucksheadinn.co.uk/facilities.htm to our home for the next two days, the room was nice, clean with en-suite bathroom but unfortunately no shower.!

After dashing back across town, we were a bit out of breath and thirsty so felt that obvious solution was to start the pub tour right away in a small bar that looked like it was straight out of the seventies; it was the Coach and Horses which turned out to be a fantastic real ale pub with a locally sourced ever changing menu, that had us salivating straight away, but we had only just had breakfast so we had to restrain ourselves. After the fantastic pint of Hanby Cheery bomb - my favourite beer; it was off round the corner to the Admiral Benbow for an update of the golf from the friendly people at the bar, and a sensible half. We followed this with a visit to the Three Fishes on Fish Street, for some great oakham ales, and a wander round to the Yorkshire House for some local IPA and down to the Vaults, a local rock pub, with fantastic Wild Hare on draft and a great sounding home made menu.

Time flew past and it was soon time to go to the Golden Cross Hotel, the restaurant that we had booked for dinner. To sum the restaurant up it was fantastic. We arrived to find the restaurant was an electic mix of styles in a gorgeous medieval setting, there are two rooms to the restaurant and we were shown into the back room, this room was still stylish but not as luxurious looking as the room we had just walked through, so we were a bit disappointed. We were shown to our table, which was a little bit awkard for me and the hubby as we're rather on the larger side and the table legs were in a difficult position so we either had to straddle the leg or squeeze between them -this was to be the only disappointment of the evening. We ordered gin and tonic to start whilst we read the extensive wine list and sumptuous seasonal menu. We decided to order a red, as we knew we would be ordering red meat for our main course, it was a lovely pinotage. The hubby chose to start with chicken liver parfait with red onion marmelade served with toasted brioche, and I chose the grilled fresh sardines served on a nicoise salad on toasted bread; the chicken liver was smooth and tasty which worked perfectly with the sweet brioche and the onion marmelade and my sardines were two grilled sardines on a mixed salad leaves with fresh anchovies, it was delicious but incredibly filling. For our mains hubby went for duck breast with cauliflower mash and baked red cabbage with star anise and I chose the lavender crusted rump of spring lamb served with dauphenoise potatoes & ratatouille, and was very pleased when the waitress checked how I would like the lamb cooked, I chose pink.

I could rant on about the quality of the mains for the rest of the log, but you might get a bit bored, but just to sum up, the hubby claims the duck (which was served perfectly pink/red, through out) was the best he had ever tasted, and the red cabbage was perfect; my lamb came melt in the mouth pink and had just the right amount of lavender subtle but not over powering, and the dauphenoise potatoes were like a perfect millefeuille almost too pretty to eat.

After such fantastic meals we decided to treat ourselves to pudding as well, hubby had a smooth and creamy home made strawberry ice cream served with handmade shortbread (that was melt in the mouth) and local clotted cream, and I had a ginger and lemon cheesecake, that was perfect to cleanse the palate.

For the three courses each, a gin and tonic each and one bottle of wine the bill came to £70.00, which for the high quality seemed amazingly reasonable.

We are already planning our return and hoping to be able to get a room there as well as eating there again.

hiatus!

Due to a impending weekend away in Shrewsbury things have been a bit quiet on the eating out front, although the weekend promises to defintely make up for it. Planning on visiting as many as the 69 real ale pubs that Shrewsbury allegedly homes, so the other half will definitely be in his liquid heaven.

And looking at all the Shrewsbury websites they're not particularly short on restaurants, due to budget constraints we can't go for the super fantastic sounding ones, but planning on eating at The Golden Cross Hotel http://www.goldencrosshotel.co.uk/ which is all medieval and a bit gothic, and have a monthly changing menu from local ingredients, so it promising a fantastic early anniversary dinner - fingers crossed.

However, in the mean time we've been eating budget venues this week, mainly called home, but one is called Big Wok, it's a basic chinese buffet chain http://www.bigwok.co.uk/birmingham.htm that does a lunch for £4.99. This restaurant is in Birmingham's Chinese quarter which might be why it delivers so much more then a standard chinese buffet does. It has the ubiquitous english/chinese dishes - spare ribs, battered chicken, prawn toast, chicken wings, fried rice etc - but it also has steamed dumplings, fried won tons, steamed pak choi, chinese special of the day (which is only every stated in chinese, so it's a bit of a guessing game to try it) chinese soups (again only labelled in chinese) congee, and fish ball noodle soup. It's these chinese specials that make us visit on a regular basis at a lunch time, i feel the fish ball noodle soup is worth the £4.99 by itselft, everything else is a perk!

But is for the evening meal that it really perks up, then if offers a fresh teppanyaki section with tonnes of fresh ingredients to choose from before watching the team of chefs stir fry it in front of you; which you can follow with a selection of fresh sushi, or pay a £1 supplement for a selection of fresh sashimi, not including extended daily chinese specials; for all this extra this price rises to £8.99, but with the house wine at £8.90, it is a bargain night out. But beware it is not romantic, it is fundamentally a big canteen, but for the dedicated people watchers it is fantastic as you are normally right in the thick of tables filled with a wide range of people from the Chavs to the middle class, and every type of ethnic origin possible, a great big melting pot.

Imagine.........

Although this review is kind of retrospective, it's the reason that i'm still sweet talking my liver. The lovely other half took me out to celebrate on Saturday night to a local Japanese cafe, it's run by a bunch on Japanese students who take over the local greasy spoon every Wednesday to Saturday evening after six pm. It is incredibly make-shift, but it is reasonable, bring-your-own and very friendly.

As it's a bring-your-own set up we always make sure that we take plenty of wine with us, always seems that you can drink much more when you're not paying over inflated restaurant prices; so we went armed with just three bottles between the two of us and extraordinarily big bellies!

The place is set up in a kind of tapas style menu, with lots of small dishes available to share or to have as starters and they also do a selection of main course size dishes. Because we hadn't been for such a long time we felt that we should sample the new dishes on the menu as well as few old favourites. To nibble on whilst we decided what to order we had delicious pork dumplings (gyoso - i think?) that were really light in flavour but very moreish as well as some ebi prawns (king prawns in bread crumbs) and some classic tempura king prawns, all served with a chilli dipping sauce and a miso based sauce for the tempura prawns - which is nice enough to drink on its own. Starters we decided to have a prawn bowl, more fantastic prawns in tempura batter with mixed salad leaves and a soy sauce based dressing, and for main course we shared Kimchi Udon Noodles, thick noodles with pickled and spiced cabbage and prawns (can't tell we really like our seafood?) and terriyaki salmon, wich was cooked to perfection. All of this was washed down with our own wine, and the entire bill came to just £55, including corkage.

It was a fantastic laid back evening, and if anyone is ever starving in Harborne I would recommend that they check this place out. Friendly staff and delicious food, what else can you ask for?

After a rather over the top weekend, celebrating passing my first year at university, I'm at home trying to sweet talk my liver into carrying on working for me, at least for a bit longer! It was over a restorative salad that my other-half declared that I should set up a live-space page; however, I don't seem to be able to get the hang of their systems, so decided i may just as well set up a blog...

Deciding on the name was a difficult bit, but food and feet seems to sum up my life at the moment - I have been a life long foody and have just started a degree in Podiatry (chiropody), so between the two that tends to be all I have time for.

So let me just set the scene, I'm based here in Birmingham, which is not generally known for its cuisine apart from Baltis; however, there are some gems out there in the great building site that Birmingham is; and I intend to detail, review and just gibber on about the restaurants and cafes I visit, and when the student loan runs out it may well be a rant about the food the food that I'm cooking!