Anchorage - Sheffield

After all these years Sheffield still feels a little like home and I'm always glad to be back.  This time to see Kate Tempest at The Plug, not with the boy, but with the blonde!  (Thanks AA Gill.)

When I was a student the height of sophistication was probably Champs on Ecclesall Road, or the Pizza Express on Devonshire Green where one of my male house mates always took his potential conquests if he wanted to impress :-)

Sheffield has changed a lot since those days and one new addition is the glitzy West One Plaza, located at the corner of Fitzwilliam Street and Devonshire Street.  The 'Plaza' felt a little soulless but we went there specifically to check out Anchorage, a bar and 'East Coast Kitchen' which had caught my beady little eye.

http://www.anchoragebar.co.uk/

The menu is extensive and varied with a good selection of American cut steaks and even a meat and cheese Deli counter.  I'm a sucker for a Reuben and so it was a given what I'd have as soon as I clocked one on the menu.  The Anchorage Reuben was the best I've had (although I've not yet fulfilled my dream of a visit to NYC which could change things).  The salt beef especially was darn good.  I wasn't quite so sure about the Blonde's Mac 'N' Cheese burger,which started off very tasty but morphed into a ball of stodge which she was ultimately unable to conquer.

The restaurant, situated upstairs, was quiet when we arrived early on a Saturday evening but quickly filled up.  Service was perhaps a little on the rapid side but friendly and efficient, if a little impersonal.

After eating we retired downstairs to the bar and sampled some of the great beers (I especially liked the Tiny Rebel beer they had on tap and could not resist a bottle of Berliner Kindl).

The cocktail menu looks impressive too.  The atmosphere in the bar was laid back and welcoming, with an exceptionally friendly bouncer, as is the Sheffield way.

Anchorage is so well run and well thought out it almost has the feel of a chain, not in a bad way, just the slick 'thought of everything' ness.  The bar is run by the  Rootstock Trading Company, a Sheffield based events and marketing company who also run a couple of other Sheffield bars and the city's Tramlines festival.  They also manage Monster Energy's presence in Ibiza, which gives you some idea of the level of slickness.  So,while not entirely convincing and authentic, if you suspend your disbelief and go along with the vibe, there is plenty here to make you want to drop anchor for a while.

http://www.tinyrebel.co.uk/

Rick Stein's Seafood Restaurant June 2014

 The boy and I have set up a little gourmet fund, supposedly not to be touched until our 40th birthdays (which are a long way off, obviously!)  However we couldn't resist dipping into the fund during a trip to Devon, as we were staying a short drive (okay four hour round trip but it was worth it) from Rick Stein's famous Seafood Restaurant in Padstow.

http://www.rickstein.com/The-Seafood-Restaurant.html

We went for lunch on a warm sunny Sunday in June.  Padstow was heaving with tourists and
Rick's restaurant was a little oasis on the harbour front.  The restaurant has all the trappings of a high class dining establishment, as well as some pretty out there art on the walls.

We had already decided to go for the sharing 'Fruits de mer' platter; what better way to judge the merits of a seafood restaurant!  Although we didn't order starters we were presented with olives and homemade walnut bread with seaweed butter which was most unusual and delicious.  We sipped a glass of chilled white wine and waited for the main event.  The equipment soon started to arrive...

I have eaten such a platter once before when living and working on the west coast of France.  I was a little anxious about not knowing which implement to use for which crustacean but I needn't have worried, it was all very intuitive...

The platter was piled high with lobster, oysters, mussels, winkles, langoustines and several types of crab - a celebration of seafood, with only shallot vinegar and mayonnaise needed to accompany it.  Other diners turned to look and smile at us as we cracked and picked our way through the pile.  Cheering us on or smirking at our novice shellfish eating skills?  Nah, doubt it,  I think it is one of those things where you just need to go for it....and go for it we did.

It took a while but was one of the most satisfying and celebratory dining experiences i have had, and I must admit to a little decadent thrill at leaving such carnage behind!

We later heard that Rick was around at the restaurant that evening so we were really sorry to have missed meeting him and would like to apologise for the state in which we left his tablecloth.  Definitely a meal worth the pilgrimage - we'll be back if we are ever in the area.

Whilst I'm on Padstow just a quick mention to the Chough bakery (yes you do pronounce it Chuff, which is what caught my eye) http://www.cornishpasty.com/

Where we purchased fabulously fresh pasties to have for supper that night.  Thanks Padstow.

Sensational Sète!

In July we were lucky enough to go to Sète in France for the final weekend of this year's Worldwide festival.  Worldwide is a week long festival curated by Giles Peterson with loads of great music happening day and night in various venues around the town. Sète is a charming Mediterranean port town and a great place to hang out anyway, so add a festival and you've got a winning combination of great music, mega sound systems, cheap wine, friendly people from all over Europe, glorious sunshine and unspoilt beaches.  Not to mention good food!

http://www.worldwidefestival.com/ 

Sure, any boutique festival worth its cider in the UK has an all singing / and dancing / pop up / dress up / gourmet restaurant these days but you will probably pay massively inflated prices for a meal.  Stick with the masses and you will be eating out of cardboard cartons surrounded by overflowing bins.  No matter how much choice is offered by the vans around you (and it can be good) after the third day I always struggle to find something really appealing and may well end up eating mushy peas cold from a can (true fact).  Here you have a great many restaurants to choose from and don't have to suffer the slight indignity of festival food.  

Our day in Sète generally started off with a hangover.  We had brought along a suitcase full of alka seltzer which helped to neutralise this, (alka seltzer makes you bullet proof, I overheard someone exclaim on the beach - so true) as did breakfast in bed at our fabulous little hotel, les Sables d'Or.  Rolled in at 5am and want breakfast at midday?  No problem just call the reception and within two minutes a lovely smiley French lady appears with a tray laden down with good filter coffee, orange juice, bread, croissants, jam, and butter.  RECOMMEND!

http://www.hotel-sablesdor.com/

Thus fortified we'd head to the beach, a short walk away, for a day of music and chilling, stopping en route for gallons of alarmingly cheap rosé wine served from a massive refrigerated tank by a very sarcastic man.  Bliss.

At the beach bar they served big platters of huitres, (oysters) which were amazing, and mussels (not so amazing, still beardy).  We also sampled a delicious octopus pie (like a minced octopus pasty type thing) recommended by a man named Dan who has come to Sète for Worldwide the last four years in a row and is very much in the know. 

On the beach there is music all day and as long as you have your rosé in a plastic glass there is no problem taking it into the festival "bit".  It is a bit stricter at night and at one point we did use a baby to smuggle in a bottle of rum but that is another story...all in all an absolutely blissful time was had by all, I really hope we can return next year and thanks to the friends who suggested we come along :-)

More please Westmorland!

Yep, I've had a rather long break from blogging, I was getting bored and it was feeling like a chore.  I wasn't inspired anymore.  Plus, with a plethora of instagrammers and Facebook foodies to contend with I no longer felt special, my voice was being drowned out in the clamour.  Recently though, with the days growing mercifully longer and lighter, I have once more felt the urge to write about food.  My appetites have been stimulated writing a number of reviews for the Nottingham and Derbyshire Food & Drink Guides.  In the last few months I've eaten at venues as diverse as the Derby Casino, the Ostrich in Longford, A Thai restaurant in Burton and a pub in Nuthall where I sampled a fabulous venison carpaccio and got insulted by the bar staff. (Reviews to follow once the guides have been published!)

I'm glad to be back and will continue in the vein in which I left off, by telling you about anything that inspires or excites me in the world of food and drink.  This week it isn't a recipe or a restaurant but a motorway services on the M6. 

Services suck.  You know what to expect; overpriced Costa Coffee, Krispy Kreme donuts and the horror that is Scotch egg bars (one of these once fuelled me for an entire weekend in Scotland, but that is another story.)

Between Junction 38 and 39 of the M6, near the Cumbrian village of Tebay, you will find a services with a difference.  Westmorland services is the only independently owned and run services in the country and boy, does it show.  We stopped on the way up to Scotland last week for a very impressive breakfast.

We Marvelled at the pleasant, airy canteen space, and ate looking out onto a duck pond.  We used the clean, pleasant toilets, which have showers, a make up area in the ladies and vases full of fresh lilies.  Best of all is the shop.  Not a Scotch egg bar or Rustlers burger in sight, this is one of the best farm shops I've had the pleasure of setting foot in.  Mining a rich vein of local Cumbrian produce, as well as niche groceries from further afield, it has a butcher's counter to die for and rows and rows of homemade pies.  We left laden with organic duck eggs, pheasant sausages and rosemary jelly.

I am almost looking forward to my next slog up the M6 if it means we get to stop here, and I'd thoroughly recommend you make it a pit stop.  We even saw a duck getting on a coach.  Word.

http://www.westmorland.com/tebay-services

Ebi Sushi

Ebi Sushi occupies  unassuming premises on Abbey Street, in a part of Derby that feels strange to me.  In the decade or so that I've lived here the area has been completely reconfigured, houses that friends once lived in have been knocked down and new roads added.  It felt like a slightly odd place to have a restaurant but the good things I'd heard about Ebi Sushi overrode my misgivings about the location.

Once inside you might as well be in Japan, it really is that authentic.  There were four of us and we were seated towards the back of the restaurant, which really is quite small, with the sushi bar running down the right wall as you walk in.  When I phoned to book a table I'd tried to book for six, then five, before managing to secure a table for four.  In the front of the restaurant a party of sixteen Japanese were seated, so on a more usual night they might be able to accommodate a larger booking.

The staff were really friendly and very helpful when it came to ordering, they were happy to make recommendations.  They didn't bat an eyelid at our terrible manners or at the amount of sake we drank.

 

We had a selection of sashimi to start with, then a selection of sushi, before moving on to a cooked course of chicken teriyaki, for which I really felt too full.  Highlights were the tuna belly, scallop sashimi and flying fish roe.  This is food as an art form, so beautifully presented I (almost) didn't want to eat it.  All the fish was exquisitely fresh and apparently the owner goes himself to Billingsgate fish market to select it every day.

 

I'd been reading up on etiquette before our visit and had read that you should use the blunt end of your chop sticks if passing sushi to someone else.  I tried to do this when passing a bit to the boy and dropped sushi in his sake which is probably the biggest faux pas ever.  You're not supposed to cut the sushi up, you should eat the whole piece in one go, fish side down, but we all wanted to taste the different kinds of fish so that rule went out of the window.  Apparently you shouldn't really drink sake with sushi as it is rice and rice, but the hot sake is sooo tasty, we got some to begin the meal and then just kept ordering more!

My experience of sushi encompasses a few trips to the conveyor belt gaudiness of Yo Sushi and the odd M & S lunchtime snack so this was really next level.  The one disappointment was that the big party had consumed all the available edamame beans.  Ebi Susi is the place to take someone special for a meal which has an implicit sense of occasion.  This truly goes down as one of my most memorable meals ever :-)

London on the end of my fork...

Today I am sitting up in bed with a stinker of a cold, and bored of watching episodes of Revenge (my media player keeps buffering, how annoying?) I decided to blog my trip to London last weekend whilst it is still fresh in my mind, because it was certainly a gourmet weekend if ever there was one!

On Friday afternoon I arrived in Peckham when I should have arrived in Camberwell, but no bother, this allowed for a trip to a very nice pub in little brother's former hood; The Montpelier:

http://www.themontpelier.net/index.html

This is a nicely renovated back street boozer just round the corner from Peckham Rye tube station and away from the hustle and bustle of the high street, they even have an in-house cinema.

We then had a long walk home to contend with (in the rain, which may have contributed to the current cold situation) before drying off and heading out into Brixton

We had a drink at the new Craft Beer Co. pub:

http://thecraftbeerco.com/location/brixton-london/

right in the centre of new, trendy Brixton, where the farmer's market is held.  If you like real ale and locally brewed stuff this pub is for you, with a mind boggling selection of beers, lagers and ciders on tap, which change daily.  I tried the Bristolian Pheasant Plucker cider which went down a treat.  They also had very tasty looking bar snacks on display but we were saving our bellies for a feast at Negril in Brixton Hill.

Negril is a no frills bring your own booze Caribbean eatery.  The chicken is all free range and for £25 we got a massive platter for two to share with chicken, coleslaw, chips, plantain, salad, saltfish fritters, chili sauce, rice and peas and delicious gravy.  This isn't an upmarket place (there is one toilet which you reach by going  through the kitchen ) but it was friendly, everyone was having a good time and the staff had a smile and a joke with you, we finished our meal with a bottle of Ting and felt positively festive.

The following morning the rain had gone and it was a beautiful sunny autumnal day as I ventured further afield into London to Caravan Kings Cross for brunch and a catch up with my uni girls.

http://www.caravankingscross.co.uk/

We had great coffee, a couple of glasses of the on tap prosecco and brunch.  I went for a cheesey, spinachy french toast concoction which was lovely and gooey.  Served with crisp, streaky bacon, this was everything brunch should be.  The place had a nice New York village vibe, we were there for hours.  I was sad not to have tried the jalapeno cornbread though, next time.

A few hours and a couple of pints later I had worked up enough of an appetite to be ready for a meal at Sagar, a South Indian Vegetarian restaurant in the heart of Covent Garden.

http://www.sagarveg.co.uk/

This was properly authentic South Indian food, I tried some things I'd never had before including a weird and wonderful curry that contained gherkins!

Finally, I couldn't leave Brixton without having at least one meal in the amazing, vibrant market.  In order to regenerate the market the council let some of the pitches for free for a short period of time and it has attracted scores of restauranters, you can get every cuisine imaginable in here!  We decided to give Okan, a Japanese place, a try, as I'd read about it recently, Time Out having named it as one of their top five cheap eats in the capital.

http://www.okanbrixtonvillage.com/

They specialise in  Okonomiyaki ( a sort of cabbagey pancake - sounds weird but trust me) I had pork and kimchi in mine, it was the best comfort food ever and totally filling, I did read later that they are usually for sharing but we all managed to scoff one each!

I did enjoy my weekend, it was lovely to catch up with good friends and relatives over some fantastic food, I'll be back down again soon, once my waistline and wallet have recovered!

The Droste Effect.

Yes, I've been given more chocolate, this time a selection from Droste's range.  Droste are a Dutch company of long standing, they've been around since 1863 to be precise.  They make quite a range of chocolate products but the thing they are possibly best know for in this country are Newberry Fruits, a large, soft, jelly fruit sweet beloved of grandads the world over (well, mine!)

Droste are quite big in Holland and even have a weird visual effect named after them; "The Droste effect" refers to the recursive picture on their cocoa powder tins, which show a picture of a nurse holding a box of Droste cocoa powder illustrated with a picture of a nurse holding a box of Droste cocoa powder illustrated with a... you get it....mind bending.

Droste pastilles made up the bulk of my selection, a pastille being marginally larger, glossier and more satisfyingly "snappier" than a giant Cadbury's button.  The pastilles come in milk and dark chocolate, and also in a range of 'half and half' mixtures.  The dark chocolate pastilles are very smooth and being high in cocoa and low in dairy are good for those who are lactose intolerant.  The dark and milk mixed pastilles went down well, with the addition of milk chocolate softening the edge of the dark chocolate but retaining the richness.
I really liked the milk chocolate but I think it may be too sweet for some, I think my chocolate palate is used to the extra sugar having lived in Germany for many years where they also like a slightly sweeter milk chocolate.  It isn't anything like as sweet as, say, Galaxy though.

My favourite Droste product by far has to be the XXL pastille with milk chocolate and hazelnut.  This is a chocolate and hazelnut button the size of a digestive biscuit, with snappable grooves to divide it into quarters, a joy to absorb with a cup of tea.

Droste's tagline is "Where tradition meets quality" and I'd certainly agree with that, but alongside the tradition and quality there as a pleasing dose of European quirkiness.  You can buy Droste chocolate online, or I'm reliably informed you can pick it up at T J Morris (Home  Bargains) and B & M stores.  I've still got a fair few pastilles to scoff, but I'll certainly be seeking out some more of the XXL pastilles.  With all this free chocolate and the transition from walking to driving everywhere I fear that I'll be an XXL pastille myself soon, see you down at Slimming World in January...