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!