A Foodies Tour of London (Day 1)

To celebrate our 3rd anniversary, my husband and I have been on a trip to London for a few days this week.

On Sunday we travelled down, dropped off the bags at the hotel and made our way via bus, got off and the wrong stop, tried another bus, and then gave up and jumped in a cab to the Royal Academy of Arts to see the Summer Exhibition. It was an interesting way to spend the afternoon and a few of the pictures really stood out, but as it is supposed to be an "open" exhibition, I was surprised to see how all the submitted works were mostly crushed into two small rooms whereas the major rooms were filled with work from the Royal Academisions. The standout pieces for us were definately the two pieces by David Mach RA, Silver Streak - a very large sculpture of a silver back gorilla made entirely out of coathangers, and my personal favourite, Babel Towers, an enormous collage of photos of buildings and people of clashing styles that come together somehow to make a piece in perfect perspective. Very clever, very beautiful and unfortunately very expensive (not that I have a wall big enough to display it on!) but one of those pictures that you could look at every day for the rest of your life and always see something different in it.

From there we went to Covent Garden to meet my husbands niece and her partner where we briefly watched (through our fingers at certain scary points) an ex cirque du soliel performer, up a large pole held only by rope and four strangers - mad man! We then moved to our first foodie experience of the weekend - dinner in the Real Greek on Long Acre which was, on the whole, disappointing.  The place has a nice feel, if a little Cheers c.1990 with the high chairs and tables (the chairs aren't that comfortable or easy to get in and out of if you're under average height either!), and the menu is good.  That's the good part.

On the negative, the service is abysmal!  It was busy, but not packed out, it was early on a Sunday evening so not peak time, we were given menus straight away but offered no drinks, and then we waited, and waited.  20 minutes later our order was finally taken, 20 minutes later most of it was delivered to table, except for my husbands kofte, which still hadn't arrived when the rest of us had almost finished our souvlaki and there was no waiting staff in sight to even complain to about it.  The souvlaki themselves were not hot enough and were pretty tasteless.  My dessert of Greek Sundae which proported on the menu to be a mix of pistachio and vanilla icecream with nuts, seeds and homemade kataifi was also a big disappointment.  At £5.25 it was quite pricey for what was essentially poor shop bought ice-cream, a couple of pumkin seeds and a bit of honey.  I can only assume that whoever usually made the kataifi had the night off as there was a distinct lack of it in my dessert......  I expected better.  The Real Greek didn't deliver.

A nice walk across Waterloo Bridge in the cool evening breeze followed, a more successful bus journey back to our hotel in the City ready for a mamoth day 2 - details to follow.

Walnut Club Report - Must Try Harder!

Long time no blog, but life has just got in the way recently, however, a REALLY poor meal at the Walnut Club riled me enough to blog again.

8 of us went for our friends birthday meal on Friday, attracted by their caberet night. This was my first (and I have to say upfront it will also be my last) visit to the Walnut Club - the location, over a (now closed) plumbers merchants - never really appealed but for a group do, with post dinner entertainment it seemed like a good option. As they were advertising a 5 10 5 price for the 3 courses it also seemed "reasonable".

The first thing that struck me, is that without windows and the heavy handed use of frosted perspex by an ubertrendy designer - it felt like you were eating dinner inside an ice-cube. I found the decor and booths, claustrophobic and depressing. I also think it's a place with an identity crisis - is it a restaurant, a bar or a nightclub - I'm not sure and what's worse I don't think it is either! The "bar" takes up for too much space and disects the room making the individual booths feel even more isolated. The fixed frosted perspex tables in the booths are the wrong height and make getting in and out of the booths difficult and sitting there for 2 hours gave me back ache - a huge style over practicality mistake by the designer. Our booth was particularly poor as, stuck in a corner to maximise space the layout with 2 tables just didn't work and the gap inbetween the two was not large enough for chairs so we ended up a party of 8 split into 2 tables of 4 unable to converse as a group without the use of sign language.........

For a caberet night, I expected food, with soft background music, followed by a bit more volume and dancing to follow. Which is a concept I think would work. What doesn't, is a split set, starting the first while everyone is still eating with volume that would rival your average heavy metal gig, then a lull when everyone was ready to dance. Good idea, poorly executed.

Then we get to the food, the biggest disappointment of the night. The 5 10 5 menu online has 8 or more options for main and starter, there were only 3 of each on the night (it is worth noting too that the fish and chips, which were undoubtably the best offering are on the £10 online menu, but were actually only £9.50 from the á la carte....). Most of the girls opted for the parsnip soup - which was thick but tasty so I'm told but at £5 a bowl was overpriced, as was everything on their menu. Myself and a friend opted for an á la carte offering of cumin roasted buttersquash and swiss chard salad with goats cheese and toasted flat bread for a wopping £7.50, but I'd heard good reports of the food so expected something spectacular for that price. Needless to say I was very disappointed! The squash was neither cumin flavoured nor roasted - there were 3 slices of it.... The goats cheese was eventually discovered after much digging to be a little "smeer" of mouse plastered to the plate. There was no flat bread and when I questionned the waitress on this, she returned with a cold, stale half of a pitta bread. At this point, I saw no point in complaining - it was a friends special birthday party and I'm often told I'm over critical, so I let it slide and ate it (it was late, I was hungry!)

The first of the mains to arrive was the fish and chips, it looked good, so I was hopefully that my beef cheeks (one of the £10 main options) would be much improved on the starter course. It wasn't! I was already annoyed that all it came with was some roast veg and that I'd had to pay another £3 for chips (the only suitable side dish offered) to make it an actual "meal". I've had beef cheeks before, and properly cooked, long and slow, they are a delightful and very cheap cut of meat. When they are still as tough a boot leather still stock full with all the gelatinous fibers that should have been melted away by the proper cooking process - they are nothing but a chore - one girl who had them found the texture so unpleasant at one point she had to spit them out or be sick! The majority of the girls went for the sweet potato masala, which whilst very tasty was the smallest portion of curry, with an even smaller portion of rice - a HUGE rip off for a tenner.

Now, on a night out, I am NEVER one one turn down a dessert - I love to finish a meal with something sweet and delicious, but on this occassion I was dissappointed by the cooking standards and rip off prices that I passed. As did most of my friends. The only dessert that came, a chocolate creme brulee with strawberry was again astonishingly overpriced at £7 for a very tiny pot of chocolate custard with a single out of season stawberry....

As I said, this was my first and last visit to the Walnut Club - whilst I understand the need for restaurants to make a profit, particularly in this current climate, customers will not, and should not, be forced to accept corner cutting and lazy chefs palming off cheap ingredients if they are not prepared to transform them into something spectacular. I love the cheap cuts of meat - I made a great beef bourguignon for lunch yesterday with beef skirt and shin - mine was meltingly tender - perhaps I should give him my recipe???? End of term report - MUST TRY HARDER.

A Return to The Old Vicarage, Ridgeway

The Old Vicarage at Ridgeway, run by Tessa Bramley, a former telly chef, is currently Sheffield's only Michelin starred eatery, which in a city of around 530,000 people is a pretty poor showing. Our visit there last weekend was our second, the first being some 6 years ago. That visit was my first ever forray into the world of michelin dinning and so there was a huge amount of anticipation on my part and it lived up to my expectations on that occassion in every way, despite us being one of only 2 tables in the dinning room that night.

So, given the opportunity to return again, at someone elses expense, I grasped the chance with both hands but I have to report that my second visit was far less impressive and I was very glad I wasn't actually paying the bill myself.

I'm not sure if it has gone down hill in the 6 years since our first visit, although it was looking shabby around the edges with worn furniture in the lounge, or whether my expectations have just risen given subsequent visits to other great venues like The Ivy but my lasting impression of the evening was one of disappointment.

On the whole, the food was still pretty good, although nothing out of the ordinary and like its surroundings, felt a little dated. I also questionned "local in season asparagus" at the end of July as I haven't seen any English asparagus for a month now and it was everywhere on the menu.

We started, with the customary 'savories' served in the lounge - tiny sweet onion triangles, mini cheese tartlets, marinated olives - all very nice, and then some 70's inspired cheese straws which were dry and bland.

My biggest gripe was the wine list - it may be extensive - Tessa herself boasted that there was over 660 bottles to choose from, but barely any of them were under £50! Now I know it's an expensive restaurant, at £60 a head for 4 courses, and last time we went we paid around £35 for a bottle so knew what we were in for, but for all bottles to start at around £50+ does put pressure on the dinners who have save for such an experience as a special treat.

We were then taken through to the dinning room, and the first thing that hit us was the heat. The Old Vicarage is just that, and a beautiful building it is too, but neither openable windows nor air conditioning on an uncharacteristically hot summer evening and a crammed dinning room do not make for a pleasant dinning experience.

Our first course, a set course, was languistines in an asparagus velouté, apologies for the poor photo but there was too much flash back off the bright white dish. My husband hates shellfood so I got a double bonus of these mouthwatering little morsels which were topped with a tempting mango salsa.

For starters, my husband chose belly pork with more "seasonal" asparagus, a pork and mushroom sausage and smooth and delicious butternut squash puree with softly poached quails eggs. It certainly hit the spot and was one of the more successful dishes of the evening.

I opted for lemon sole, which came sitting on top of a tower of bubble and squeek, with garlic clams, peas and a pea and mint velouté and the now obligatory pea shoot. The fish was perfectly cooked and the clams were a revelation as prior to eating them here I didn't really like them.

For mains, we both opted for meat, beef for me, lamb for him. Again, his was the more sucessful of the two dishes. A delectable slow roast shoulder which had been pressed and cooked with a crisp crust, topped with spinach and slices of lamb fillet. On the side was a potato gratin, girolles and barrel turned courgettes. On the whole a very tasty and considered main. Mine was a little more pedestrian, apart from the unusal little bacon piroshki (dumpling) my steak, slightly rarely than requested, was served with a herby mash that was luke warm at best, with carrots and green beans.

When it came to desserts, my husband opted for the chocolate fondant with homemade custard (the exact same choice as 6 years ago incidentally!) but he is limited by his hatred of fruit a nuts which all the other desserts contained. I had the opposite problem trying to choose between a trio of stawberry desserts, a trio of raspberry desserts (again almost identical to the one I had on my first visit) and a trio of coffee and chocolate so I opted for the latter. The presentation wasn't as elegant as it had been 6 years ago, but the dessert was good - a teardrop of chocolate mousse, a coffee icecream with strange textured chocolate sticks, a tiny bowl of coffee creme brulee which was easily the nicest part of the dessert (and therefore not nearly large enough!) and a strange green sauce that may have been pistachio or maybe mint - it just wasn't distinctively flavoured enough for me or my husband to tell.

We retired back to the lounge for coffee, which was again a shock to the purse strings. 6 years ago, coffee and petit fours came as part of your 4 courses (which was only £45 a head back then btw), now it's an extra £5 a head and the chocolates are no longer home made and were a poor selection that would normally be the ones left in the box....

In total our bill, for 2 people, came to £204. We ordered a taxi, had the rest of bottle of wine re-corked to take home and waited for the taxi to arrive. Our taxi took a while to arrive (well 45 minutes actually) and we were by now the only people left in the restaurant and the fact that we were still there when she wanted to close obviously upset Ms Bramley who made little effort to hide the fact that she was ready for us to go home. Her (very young and slightly over familiar) Maitre D did his best to hurry it along and when it finally arrived it got short shrift from Ms Bramley and almost drove off and left us there. I have to say, this definately left a bitter taste in my mouth on what should have been a wonderful evening. I'm not as keen to make a third visit as I was a second which is a shame, but I do think the Old Vicarage is trading on its star and I believe there are other up and coming eateries in Sheffield now who deserve a visit from the Michelin team such as The Milestone and hopefully there will be others to follow to give Ms Bramley some competition.