Sunday 29th August - lazy foodie day

Been a bit of a lazy day today... Darling Wife had an urge to bake a sponge with the new electric whisk I bought her yesterday, so she did a Victoria sponge with a filling of raspberry and mascarpone. The girl done good! A light texture with a good flavour. The filling of late British raspberries was so full of summer flavour, a great way to celebrate the end of the raspberry season.

Then our meal for the day was a lovely jubbly roast of Pork fillet with a garlic and rosemary crust we had roasted chantenay carrots, and new potatoes with honey, garlic and rosemary and a puree of celeriac, potato and bramley apple and the plate was finished off with a cheesy courgette goo. We also enjoyed a splendid bottle of 2008 Roaring Meg Pinot Noir from Otago, N.Z. Not an intentional food match but a surprisingly good one!

The Pigs, Edgefield, Holt, North Norfolk, 21st & 22nd August 2010

This return visit only served to confirm my impressions as stated in my first post about "The Pigs".

We were up in Holt for an afternoon, and happened to be unable to avoid a visit to "The Pigs", so we stopped off en route and decided on a light lunch(!).

I drank "The Pigs" own beer "Edgefield Old Spot" brewed on their behalf by the local Wolf brewery. A wonderful, flavoursome citrus & hoppy ale. The Darling Wife drank good old "Aspalls Draught Cider".

We chose to nibble on a helping of home cooked scratchings while waiting for our food. These were delicious, though they were mildly overcooked so there was more a flavour of burnt skin than scratchings. Still, they were tasty!

As a starter we decided to share a portion of "Piggy Pieces" a dish which varies from portion to portion, depending on what food is in stock. It tends to consist of a selection of sausage, kidney, liver, pigs ear, crackling, pork rillette, with some sort of chutney or sauce. All cooked to perfection, hugely flavoursome and well seasoned. It does tend to take you by surprise when the plate arrives and you see how much food there is! You thank your lucky stars that you are sharing one between two!

So, for main course the Darling Wife chose the splendid sounding "Perfick Porks Pork, Apple and Sage Burger" served in a toasted english muffin, apple chutney, baby gem, egdefield slaw and hand-cut chips. This went down with great relish and I know that the Darling Wife felt that it was the best, most flavoursome burger she had ever had. The meat was not only excellent tasting, but also pleasantly moist and of excellent consistency. I failed to take up the offer of a mouthful to try ( I had more than enough food to keep me occupied), so cannot comment for myself, though I did try the chips; these tasted heavenly, a really good fresh potato flavour, enhanced by the skins being left on. However I did feel that they needed a bit more crunch.

I repeated my order of last the time we visited; "The Three Pigs" Slow cooked belly of perfick pork served with smokey bacon beans, apple chutney, black pudding & crackling. This is the pigs signature dish, and wow what a dish! There is little more to say about this dish than I did last time, so for a full review, I simply direct you to my earlier posting. How they manage to achieve such perfection in the belly, I do not know, the meat simply falls apart when you show it the knife, it tasted sublime, with its excellent balance of salt and fat. The Black pudding is like none other that I have ever tasted!

As we munched our way through this feast I ruminated on how to tell the Darling Wife that after we had been to our (incredible) concert that evening we would not be returning to base. I had decided that we were to stay at The Pigs and had booked their new room at the top of the Pub called "The Pig Sty" (or "The Sty in the Sky" as it says on the bedroom door).

The room was large with a huge bathroom and an eight foot bed. Apparently the only 8ft bed in Norfolk. Well, yes, the bed was wonderfully huge, and extraordinarily comfortable, but the room, being in the attic of an old pub had sloping ceilings which meant that one could only really get into the bed via the foot of the bed.

The bathroom was great, with underfloor heating and a large bath with separate drench shower. There was a Bang and Olufsen radio hardwired into the bathroom. The only real let-down was the bath itself; although it was quite large and obviously intended for two, it wasn't quite large enough to be comfortable. The main disappointment was the fact that it was made in plastic and not enamelled. This was a distinct let down as the whole quality of the rest of the room was really good, it was very comfortable and pleasantly decorated, spacious and well equipped.

Good tea and coffee was available in the room, with a kettle and other bits and pieces. There was just one problem, good milk was available in the fridge on the first floor landing, which is of course preferable to UHT milk, but it does mean that one must be dressed to go to the fridge, it would be handy if a dressing gown was supplied in the bathroom.

One fantastic little quirk was that there was a beer pump serving "Edgefield Old Spot" on the first floor landing with an honesty box. This proved splendid for quenching the thirst first thing in the morning before tea and before going down to breakfast! Not sure the Darling Wife approved, but one couldn't possibly not make use of the facility while it was on offer.

So, Breakfast! We both chose the 15 mile breakfast - a cooked breakfast where all ingredients are sourced from within a 15 mile radius. This consists of delicious flavoursome sausage, black pudding, a free range double yolker and smokey bacon beans on toast. The egg was perfectly cooked in butter, keeping the yolks nicely runny. However, neither of us were truly satisfied with it, the smokey bacon beans could definitely have done with more bacon. I had hoped to enjoy more of a traditional English fry-up and missed the bacon, and tomato etc etc. Darling Wife felt she would have been happier with the pancake or rarebit. It was while eating breakfast that we spied the lunch time offering - full beef or pork roast! How could we possibly not!

So we went for a not terribly long walk from Blakeney to Cley across the marshes and back via the road. Although it was only about 4 miles, we did walk at quite a speed so it was better exercise than it might have been. We had a bit of a potter about in the car and then returned mid afternoon to "The Pigs" for our roast sirloin of beef, served with all the usual trimmings - cabbage, red cabbage, roast potatoes, roast carrots and assorted root veg, home made horseradish cream, yorkshire pudding, all swimming in a delicious beef sauce.

This was the best Pub "Sunday roast" I have ever had, but it did serve to remind me that roasts are best had at home. Unfortunately it is nigh impossible for pubs and restaurants to consistently serve a roast to punters arriving in drips and drabs the whole afternoon, and to retain that home cooked quality. The potatoes tasted wonderful, but were soft and had lost their crunch, the yorkshire puds were well done on the outside but were stodgy and semi cooked inside, they still tasted wonderful, but it was a little bit heavy going to swallow them. I take my hat off to the chefs for turning out such perfectly cooked beef - still nicely rare, full of flavour. The cabbages were served at perfection, the red cabbage (not usually a favourite for me) was al dente, not too vinegary and still a vibrant purple colour. Again we were nearly beaten by the substantial portion sizes, but we battled through and were somewhat upset by the realisation that we ought not go for a pudding.

The guilt we felt at the thought of not being able to sample a Pigs Pudding for the third visit in a row, was eventually put behind us when we ordered "The Pigs hot chocolate fudge sundae" to share. We waited a good while before placing our order in order to make space... and it was definitely the best decision! When it arrived we both groaned at the sheer size of the thing; a vast serving of home made vanilla ice cream, with hot chocolate sauce, chocolate brownies, salted peanuts, cinder toffee and popping candy. Utterly divine - nothing else to say about it!

My Rating: Food: 8.5/10, Accommodation: 8/10, Drink: 8/10

Go to http://www.thepigs.co.uk/
See http://www.wolfbrewery.com/
See http://www.norfolkconcerts.org/
See http://www.aspall.co.uk/

Byfords, Holt. 19th June 2008

The Darling Wife has been looking forward to eating at Byfords for months and we were pleased to find time to go.

The restaurant has a delightful ambiance and lots of wonderful character, the building dates back as far as the 15th century in parts and there is a wealth of flint, red-brick and exposed timbers.

Upon arriving one is slightly confusingly directed to the middle of the restaurant to be shown to one's table. We were placed in a bay-window overlooking the square outside, a slight squeeze but a pleasant table.

Quite a good touch is the help-yourself table full of roasted peanuts, olives and breads with oils and balsamic vinegar. However it is not that well placed in the middle of the main thoroughfare of the establishment, and we did struggle to get to the table due to ill mannered fellow diners who were unaware of the custom of queuing!

We ordered a couple of glasses of Adnams Pink Champagne and settled down to choose from the tempting menu. Our champagne appeared with a most welcome jug of iced tap water.

Unfortunately neither of us was really very hungry, so we opted to share a couple of items from the tapas menu; Tempura King Prawns with Rocket and a tartare/mayonnaise sauce, and, Pork Rillette with melba toast.

It did seem to take an age for our tapas to arrive. When it did, we were pleased with the prawns, though the sauce was a little lack-lustre and the Rillette was pleasant tasting and absolutely fine. There were flecks of orange in there, which we initially thought would be apricot, though the flavour and sweetness was undetectable so we then settled on it being carrot. The melba toast was not really toasted, more warmed-through and there were only two rather small slices of baguette, so, a quick trip to the bread table was in order.

After a fairly lengthy wait our main courses arrived. Darling Wife had chosen the Steak and Chips Salad and I ordered a "posh" Parma ham Pizza. This is where it all fell apart.

The Darling Wifes salad didn't go down well, the honey & mustard dressing was not to her liking and too much of the red onion compote. Darling Wife felt that the combination was an unsuccessful concept. And the sauteed potatoes were not terribly flavoursome. It is quite possible that it was simply a poor choice and that it would be a success with some other diners.

My "Posh Pizza" sounded mouthwatering and tempted me away from all the other tasty sounding options. Regrettably it was a complete disaster. We regularly eat in several of the large chains which now cover the nation and I usually choose a Pizza as they are hard to get wrong and can be really enjoyable, never have I had a Pizza as bad as this from any restaurant.

The pizza was described as Parma Ham, Chorizo, Milano Salami, Red Pepper, Italian Ragu, Mozzarella, Rocket on a hand-thrown thin crust authentic pizza base made and baked on-site. This should be a recipe for great success.

I think the chief problem was the ragu. Apart from being heavily laden with red onions (which will never go down well with me!), it was simply too wet. The amount of liquid made the base of the pizza turn into a bit of a goo; the texture was rather off-putting. The ragu also contained large chunks of either courgette or aubergine (hard to tell quite which in the tomato sauce), which while perfectly acceptable ingredients in a ragu, just didn't seem to work. One other thing which surprised me was the chorizo which I expected to be of the smaller-thicker sliced variety, as it was the large thin-sliced pieces were entirely covered by cheese and simply warmed through rather than cooked or crispy.

I don't intend to slate this restaurant. I think it could be a wonderful dining experience, the salad was a poor choice for the Darling Wife and the Pizza was something they ought to redesign. I did notice that the menu allowed one to make one's own pizza using pesto as a base-sauce instead of the ragu - I might go along this route next time. Pizza is hard to get wrong and if national chains can do them really well then so should the likes of Byfords with their undoubtedly superior ingredients and cooks.

Byfords also operate a deli, a cafe, a B&B and do outside catering, looking at their publicity material it all looks lovely, though I did think perhaps they were a little overpriced, even allowing for the fact that North Norfolk tends to be a costly area to stay. I think that this establishment will do well to re-examine the basics of what they offer - they have been lauded with praise, rave reviews and awards for some time, consequently their prices have risen (though the restaurant prices seem to have remained fair) and their standards appear to have slipped.

Overall this is a good establishment, we intend to make a return visit before too long to see if things can be as good as the reputation suggests.

Go to http://www.byfords.org.uk/ for more info.

My rating: 4or5/10

Hare & Tortoise - Brunswick Centre, Bloomsbury. 1st June 2010

Before I begin, I have to admit to not being terribly keen on Japanese food on the whole, consequently I am hard to please when it comes to Japanese restaurants and this may turn out to be more of a whinge about Japanese establishments as a whole.

I find this whenever we eat somewhere like this; service is poor, you sit on benches with strangers, the acoustics are terrible, music is blaring out of some over-exercised p.a. system. Food turns up in an odd order (more on this in a minute), it takes an age to attract the attention of the staff and even settling-up becomes a drawn out affair.

O.K. so, I can accept that there are cultural differences between the way we eat in restaurants in the West and the way they do in Japan, and these have been brought over along with the food to add an air of authenticity. Or, have they? Is it not simply that it is cheaper and perhaps more speedy to expect us to be happy that food arrives at different times and in different orders?

On to the food:
We asked for a glass of tap water each - they seemed surprised when we were not content with receiving just the one glass.

The Darling Wife ordered Sake Sashimi (raw salmon) and Tempura battered Soft Shell Crab, she seemed happy with this (she likes Japanese foods and seems unusually happy to ignore the short-comings). It seems they were supposed to be served together as the crab arrived about four minutes after the Sashimi and was plonked down alongside.

I ordered Ebi Tempura (deep fried prawns with a dashi-based dipping sauce) to be followed by Roast Duck and rice. My prawns arrived about two minutes after the Darling Wife's second batch arrived, they were good (can you go wrong with deep fried prawns - bar over cooking?) but the dipping sauce was totally without flavour (had the menu been more clearly presented I might have noticed another option among the side dishes, for the same, but with sweet chili, which would have been great). The next problem was that my "main course" arrived alongside my "starter" and so had to cool down while I ate the prawns. The duck, was, judging by its appearance, not only roasted, but had been deep-fried. On inspection, I think this happened at the start of the cooking process. The meat was dry and not very flavoursome, it had clearly spent a little time in a marinade as there was a hint of ginger about it. The rice was cooked satisfactorily (if a little over done for my liking, but it was fine), but where was the sauce? I'm not exaggerating when I say that there was only a tea-spoon full of sauce underneath the duck. It did not appear to have any flavour, but there was so little of it; how could one tell?!

It takes an awful lot for me to decline to finish my food, but I was so disappointed and irritated that I handed it over to the Darling Wife when she announced that she was still peckish. I am something of a human dustbin - this was a first!

So, what I want to know is:

1. Why does the ambiance have to be so poor?
2. Why is it so hard to serve both diners with their food at the same time, and in the correct order?
3. Why was my duck and rice so poor?
4. Why is the service so inattentive?

I also wonder why it is that we seem to be happy to accept this poor service? The Darling Wife is usually lightning quick to jump down the throat of restaurant staff if things are not absolutely satisfactory, and it tends to make me squirm with embarrassment. Why, therefore, is she so happy to accept it in these eateries? It is not just the Darling Wife either, it seems she is entirely in the mainstream in having lower expectations of Japanese restaurants than she does of Western restaurants and indeed Thai and Indian too.

Quite baffling!

For info: http://www.hareandtortoise.co.uk/ they have several restaurants around London.

My rating - 2/10 (only because the Darling Wife was contented (which is the main thing!!))

BBQ 30th May 2010

Just had a typical British BBQ - spent the whole time dodging showers!

On Friday evening I made up the burgers and left them to give them lots of time for the flavours to infuse.... Yummy!

I did two sorts of burgers; Beef with garlic, basil, red chili and mozzarella. And Lamb with garlic and rosemary.

The beef ones were successful though I think I needed less garlic and more mozzarella - all in all a good result.

The lamb burgers were good, but too much garlic. The rosemary was completely knocked out by the garlic.

Otherwise all good - we had a spicy cous cous with peppers, lemon, chili, garlic and a few odds and sods! And we also had cumbrian sausages, guacamole, lambs lettuce, watercress, granary rolls and a few other bits and bobs. Not a bad effort!

Just about managed to keep out of the rain too.

Davis's Restaurant @ The Yeats Tavern, Drumcliff, Co. Sligo, Ireland

The Darling Wife took me to this restaurant in rural Ireland specialising in local seafood for a birthday treat last year (conveniently it fitted it with a weekend visit to attend the wedding of a schoolfriend).

The wide-ranging menu made selecting rather a tough task but we finally settled upon starters of Irish Oak Smoked Salmon, served with homemade chive pancakes and créme fraiche (for me) and Local Fresh Crab Claws served hot with butter to dip (for the Darling Wife , about which she has frequently reminisced and described as "heavenly").

We both choose a main course of Fillet of Lemon Sole stuffed with fresh crab meat (for the Darling Wife) and prawns (for me), white wine sauce & gratinated cheese. These were excellent although very rich.

We should have stopped there but the Darling Wife had arranged a chocolate brownie (my favourite) with ice-cream and a birthday candle for us to share in lieu of a birthday cake!

We had a wonderful bottle of wine from their extensive wine list though for some reason it escapes me now - probably a Chablis or a Sancerre.

http://www.yeatstavernrestaurant.com/

My Rating: 8/10

The Pigs, Edgefield, North Norfolk

Well, here we go. I've been thinking for a while that it was time I started a bit of a blog on my foodie escapades! We (the Darling Wife and I) went to The Pigs at Edgefield a few months back and it was one of the more memorable food experiences we have had.

We had been advised that it was well worth a visit and so we dropped in one evening on the way home from a day in North Norfolk. We were far from disappointed!

The Pigs is a real foodie haven. It won Country Pub of the Year - "Country Life" Awards 2009. All food is made freshly in the kitchens using the best local ingredients that Norfolk has to offer. You can even turn up with locally sourced ingredients and barter for a pint! We were warmly greeted by a busy but enthusiastic barman who having found us a table and supplied us with some great local ale and home-made scratchings, patiently waited while we dribbled our way through the menu.

We started off by sharing "Piggy Pieces" - a tasty homage to some of the best and most often missed bits of the pig, consisting of pigs ear, heart, liver, tongue, spleen and various other offal bits. Yum!

Then, I had the "Three Pigs" with the mustard mash and Darling Wife had the "Rosemary roasted chicken breast". The "Three Pigs" consists of slow cooked belly of pork, smoky bacon beans, apple chutney, black pudding and crackling. This is The Pigs signature dish and what a great statement of all they strive to do! The belly was the best I've ever come across the balance of the salty/smokey beans with the apple chutney was excellent and I don't believe I've tasted better black pudding anywhere. My only complaint was that there was actually too much food and had we planned to have three courses each we would have had to retire halfway through the second act.

Darling Wife's Rosemary roasted chicken breast comes with crispy dry cured bacon, buttered leeks & lemon and thyme mash. She seemed most taken with it, but showed a degree of jealousy for my choice. It seems the chicken was a little less flavoursome than expected, and let down an otherwise excellent dish. The mash was a great success! She felt that perhaps there was a need for more rosemary and that it might work better without the skin.

After managing to fit this lot in we were in no state to try the puds and so we look forward to a return trip to right the situation!

I recommend a visit to their site in order to get the appetite worked up:
http://www.thepigs.org.uk/

My rating: 8/10