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.

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!