Salerno's Italian - Tewkesbury

What happens when you collect 40 members of a single family together for a weekend? Apart from the drinking, carousing and general merrymaking, there is invariably quite a lot of 'discussion' about, well everything really. By 'discussion' I mean the kind of conversation which is about somewhat time sensitive topics, like 'we should eat dinner' but which usually doesn't actually result in any physical action.

Mrs P, the Child and I went to such an event last December and were caught in the family roundabout whose pull to inaction is stronger than the USS Enterprises tractor beam. Quangos were created, I expect there were sub-committees voted upon before finally we found ourselves in Salerno's with a splinter group who had braved the consternation of the main party and dared to leave the hotel before everyone had agreed.

Salerno's is a small family run Italian place on Tewkesbury high street, really nothing to look at from the outside but on the inside it was homely and bright with warm colours throughout giving a rustic feel. This was not high-end dining but rather wanted to give a cosy cuddle on a Friday night.

I started, as I usually do, by asking the waiter where he kept his Limoncello. His answer? 'In the fridge but we can put it in the freezer if you want'. Yes my friend, I do want. If you know where it should be, why do you put it anywhere else??

I chose the chicken risotto and Mrs P chose the seafood spaghetti. One of us chose correctly, I'll give you a hint - it was me. Both plates looked pretty good, certainly as good as a blog standard Italian restaurant in Tewkesbury could hope for. The risotto was nice, seasoned well with some lovely big shards of parmesan. The peas brought a lovely sweetness counterpoint to the salty cheese. The spaghetti was dried rather than fresh but it was the sauce that just lacked any punch. Mrs P had to add more salt which is almost unheard of. The whole table certainly ate and drank well with several bottles of wine for an almost reasonable thirty pounds per person for mains, drinks and puds to share. 

It all sounds pretty good right? Not too bad? OK? Wrong. This place was bad, so bad their Nonna and Nonno would be ashamed. Why? They served their Limoncello from the fridge. 'But Rob!' I hear you cry, 'calm down, plenty of bad Italian restaurants serve their Limoncello from the fridge, you don't break your foot off in their arse! Give these guys a break'. And I would have done, I really would if it wasn't for one fact: they knew. They knew it should have been in the freezer and they still didn't do it. For shame, shame on them.

http://salernoitalianrestaurant.co.uk

Best Western Wittekindshof - Dortmund

Happy New Year one and all - I hope you, as I did, indulged to capacity over the Festive period and you are, as I am, fully committed to returning to the laugh-a-minute reality of the office. Oh yes, fully committed and living the dream.

I have a couple of other posts lined up as I hope to re-invigorate this blog after tailing off slightly towards the end of last year, although moving house did take up more time/effort/mental capacity than I was expecting. But in the meantime I should finish off a couple that are hanging over from 2014. You may remember I went to Dortmund at the beginning of December and I was pleased to see that our standard hotel had had a makeover. As an aside, we do seem to end up at Best Western quite a lot these days although a few years ago I know that the Holiday Inn group were favoured. For me, the Best Western hotels have certainly improved over the last few years and are at least more interesting than a Holiday Inn!

Anyway, I had one meal there and I took a snap of the German menu with it's English translation:

Anyone fancy some Sunchoke or Rutabaga? Now, while I have eaten many things, those are not among them. A clear case of Google translate gone mental it seems.

In the end I couldn't resist the pull of a good sunchoke (or artichoke for you and me) with quail and I went with that. It was nice and creamy with the quail and paprika bringing in a needed depth. In general it was soft, warming and not bad at all. It didn't look very pretty but at least they gave it a go with some odd green powder and a flash of balsamic reduction.

Then a half decent steak with dauphinaise potatoes, a weird herby baked tomato and nasty, nasty whipped, flavoured butter. I wonder if you can guess what I liked/didn't like about this dish? At least the steak was cooked and seasoned well. All in all, what with the plastic antler chandelier, fur lined bar stools, amusing menu, nice soup, weird tomatoes and horrid whipped butter, I would say that this place does it's job and after all that, I still managed to find time for some decent local beer. And they come in one and a half pint steins - boom. 

Emil - Dortmund

Have you ever eaten Veal? You might have, you are a bunch of adventurous food loving experimenters after all. I was always told that veal was quite possibly the worst meat in the world, unspeakably cruel and a horrendous thing to support by eating.

I've got a horrible suspicion that I ate veal last week.

The light (and the photo) was poor but since this spectre of doubt has crept over me, I have done some research and come to the conclusion that, yes it probably was veal and no it probably wasn't the good kind. Now I have to live with myself. My only saving grace is that, according to Wikipedia, the really, really bad kind has been banned since 2007, so I feel that rather than hiding away in shame and contrition maybe, just maybe, I can talk about it here.

Ooh, it was bloody delicious... all juicy and lovely. So soft and tender, it was like eating a pork chop but all beefy instead. Mmm, the plate was seasoned well with a great crust and the salad was nicely mixed if a little astringently dressed. My dining companions all ordered side dishes but I refrained knowing that additional carbs would only serve to push me off the wrong side of the culinary knife edge that is awake vs. asleep. Veal as it used to be is clearly a 'very bad thing', and it's higher welfare diversification have gone some way to dispelling that. But from where I was sitting, that was one goddamn great steak.

But we've got ahead of ourselves. First there was this:

A tomato-y type amuse bouche that my German colleagues scoffed at but I, being the obviously more travelled edible explorer tucked in. it wasn't great. Couscous isn't much at the best of times and I would hesitate before giving it away as a mark of your quality of cooking, even if it was for free. Bland and tomato sweet both at the same time, the best thing about it was that it was gone quickly.

Then the starters, these were quite interesting. Big cakes of raw meat (very German) with a quails egg, were placed next to weird wasabi mousse cheese cakes (as far away from German as I could imagine) with a quenelle of quince or fig paste (not sure on the translation and also not sure on the German heritage). These were not bad actually, and I enjoyed them - less so the wasabi cheese cake which had as much wasabi in it as my shoe. 

But finally, the talking point of the whole evening was, according to my Continental brethren, a joke so funny that it went on for hours. Literally hours. Seriously. All night. 

Behold:

'nuff said.

www.emil-dortmund.de/

Jamaica Patty Company - Leicester Square(ish)

Good grief, is it Christmas again? How quickly do the seasons change as here we are again, mobilising the family into a weekend of Christmas cheer that usually kicks off our Holiday season. We are a little early and a little thrifty this year due to the packed nature of our December 2014 but nevertheless, we were determined to have as much Christmas Spirit as possible.

As ever, we attended a West End Show (Billy Elliot this year - a little unexpectedly sweary perhaps but thankfully that went straight over the Childs head), but unfortunately that left no cash left for proper grubs (boo!). Not to be dismissed from our annual trip without any new experience however, I took a stand and dived into the Jamaica Patty Company for some Jerk chicken to warm up the cold afternoon.

Despite being a very disconcerting colour and a suspiciously familiar shape, the patty was really rather good. The colour clearly came from some kind of sweet potato which had been blended into the pastry in some kind of diabolical alliance but which was totally delicious. The chicken filling was warming but not hot and the taste of the jerk was certainly there even if it wasn't as fiery as I would have preferred. That said, the spice blend was still punchy and so tasty that Mrs P and the Child both had a few bites as the pasty-ahem-patty was passed around.

Their menu isn't exactly busting at the seams but there were quite a few options including curried goat or ackee and saltfish which I would like to try although that said,I've had saltfish before and found it very... salty. I have no idea if there are any more of these (a quick Google says not) or if any more are planned but I can certainly recommend having a go at this one. for 4 quid in central London, this is a decent snack to keep you on the go.

http://www.jamaicapatty.co.uk

Twisty potatoes - Oxford

WHAT IS THAT??

So exclaimed The Child as we rounded a corner and came face to face with a leaning tower of deep-fried-potato-heart-attack-on-a-stick. I was momentarily lost for words myself as I had neither seen nor experienced such a thing before. Mrs P gallantly stepped up to describe (what we assumed should be called) the snack; 'It's a deep fried, battered twisty potato. On a stick.'

And that, dear reader, was exactly what it was. Freshly spun, the potato was teased onto a skewer as long as my arm, covered with thick batter and dropped into the longest deep fat fryer I've ever seen. After a few cholesterol enhancing minutes, it was removed and I was asked: 'Cheese or onion flavour?' I then replied 'Which is the nicest?' and the young man behind the greasy counter gave me the dead eyed stare of a student working on Saturday when he clearly wanted to be somewhere, anywhere, else. 'My boss says it's the same flavour that they use in Walkers', he replied. 

'In that case, can I have both?' I respond, and the two pots were dutifully sprinkled liberally over the hot batter. At this point, I should say that we had literally just stepped out of Pizza Express having had lunch and so this was the sheer definition of an impulse purchase.

Despite our already groaning stomachs, we tucked into this new genre of chip determined to experience this amazing looking helter skelter. First impressions were clear, if these flavourings came from Mr Walkers factory, it was in a 99:1 ratio in favour of Professor MSG. Battered potato is quite an experience, The potato was thin and the batter was well seasoned but I have to question the sanity of the man who took a greasy deep fried chip, battered it and thought to themselves 'well it's tasty but it just doesn't look very exciting...'

Final Verdict: I can totally see these taking hold at festivals or the <ahem> classier seaside resorts, but I'm not sure it will ever replace the British love of the chip.

Lisbon - Portugal

Well, it's been a long month hasn't it. Not very much happened really apart from a week's business trip to Lisbon. Usually these trips are fairly hedonistic in nature involving an outrageous amount of drinking, eating and hangovers. But not this year. This year I was good and severely limited my intake to one alcoholic beverage per day, due in the main to this:

www.toughmudder.co.uk

I will soon be finding exactly how much mettle I can maintain, but until that happens, let's talk Lisbon. Primarily the week consisted of buffet breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Not incredibly inspiring I think you'll agree. The best part of which was the little private giggle I had every time we got to desert, perhaps not everything translates as expected:

The highlight of the week was supposed to be our company trip out to Bica do Sapato, a restaurant with a serious reputation. With John Malkovich was patron, this is a celeb heavy establishment with chefs coming with multiple michelin starred histories. But I'm afraid that all this was for naught. I have significant sympathy for the kitchen to cater for 50 hungry people at the same time but the menu was I'm afraid, just very dull.

For example, we first had some white goo. 

This, after some deliberation, was decided to be some kind of creamy cauliflower sauce. Not exactly a taste explosion. Under the goo, we were promised salt cod, which I understand is a speciality of the area. Perhaps there was a shortage, perhaps the kitchen made a mistake or perhaps they actually intended to replace the salt cod with chickpeas but in any event it wasn't pleasant and there wasn't much cod. The green ring around the outside was basil oil by the way. Yes, I thought that was odd too.

My main choice was pig cheek stew. The pork had been stewed down well and pulled apart easily, the mash was... mash. But the salt content was high, so high in fact that others on my table refused to eat theirs at all. All in all, bad, bad, bad.

We were all glad to get on to the puds and I had a Frey Bentos tin put down in front of me. On further examination, the lid revealed a lemon creme brulee which was actually pretty nice, but I would have certainly preferred a thicker caramel top. By the look of the website this restaurant would have charged us an absolute fortune for the evening but I'm afraid it was lost on me. Waiting staff were attentive and pleasant, the decor was painfully modern, complete with miss matching chairs and uncomfortably low tables but without good food, what's the point? 

I would love to go back to Lisbon, but without work and I'm fairly sure I could get a better plate of grub!!

Random pictures of Lisbon:

Oh, and I also found a can of Antarctica that I couldn't resist:

You would think it tasted of cherries right? Wrong, it tasted of Brazilian chemicals.

http://www.bicadosapato.com/

The Banana Tree - Milton Keynes

As Mrs P and The Child will confirm without a moments hesitation or fear of reprisal, I do not like surprises. Surprises are not fun, surprises are not exciting and surprises invariably lead to someone getting upset or drunk, usually both and probably not in that order. This is doubly unfortunate because Mrs P demands surprises at regular (but not predictably regular) intervals. That is not to say I don't like new experiences; I love to have new things, try new tastes and go to new places but surely it is patently obvious that all new adventures should be carefully considered and prepared for. A measure of expectation is clearly necessary for surviving life's events, isn't it?

It was in this spirit of this mentality that I turned to our smiling waitress and said:

'These herb wraps, how herby are they? I don't like herbs.'

As you can imagine, the smiled faltered a little while she paused and considered how to answer.

'Don't worry, you'll love them. They're really popular.'

Hmmm, I think I'll be the judge of that thankyouverymuch. I therefore felt forced to order them. I had feared a soggy, parsley and oregano infused slice of carbohydrate inspired, corporately approved tortilla. What I got was a lettuce leaf and a whole lot of fun!

The meat balls were beautifully crisp on the outside and moist on the inside, the Vietnamese crunchy salad was great and the fresh coriander being the 'herbs' of which the menu spoke. I bloody love coriander and this was fresh and strong as you like. It was however the dipping sauce that really brought the whole thing alive though, tangy with vinegar, sweet and hot all at the same time, it was a great balance.

Mrs P enjoyed some Satay chicken which was good. A decent portion of chicken as well meant enjoying some fresh produce that didn't seem like a token green leaf that had been unwillingly forced onto the plate. It was tasty and the satay sauce was creamy as well as providing a flavour punch. The plate also had tiny little bamboo pockets containing some sticky rice which were great fun to ping across the table at each other!

For mains I enjoyed a noodle soup

 which was fine but no different to what you can find in Wagamama. Mrs P was the one who struck gold with her crispy chicken, dressed salad, more sticky rice and odd balls.

Lovely and fresh tasting this would have been a fab continuation from my starter. Very Vietnamese (as qualified as I am to say this having read books about the subject but never actually going to the place) , this was a winner from crispy chicken top to individual prawn cracker toe.

Mrs P couldn't resist the pud menu of a gooey chocky fondant. The fresh passion fruit on top of the ice cream was really tart and played the whole thing up beautifully.

Even the camera was starting to get a bit foggy by this time so we paid up and made our weary way. The Banana Tree puts gratuity on the bill automatically which I 100% disagree with, and I very nearly asked them to take it off. I almost always give between 10 to 15% tip depending on how happy/drunk I am but for it to be assumed really does get my slow roasted goat.

So that's The Banana Tree in Milton Keynes. It is apparently the only one in the country with a dedicated bar. It's certainly the only bar that I've ever seen with personal hammocks which, while undeniably cool, do make it rather difficult to talk to other people as you swing, twist and otherwise try to haul yourself back into a sensible seating position all the while sipping on a cocktail with an amusing straw and umbrella perched on the top.

£50 quid for two including drinks (£55 with annoyingly included tip).

http://www.bananatree.co.uk/