Confessions of a Wino

My day job took me to the City and after a morning of extreme hard work, a lunchtime visit to TKs on Lovat Lane.

Paul Hacker took me so I figured we might be there all afternoon.

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In the interests of fairness in my search for the best cheap Malbec I unearthed this little number at Tesco.

Now you might presume that Anubis comes from Egypt but in fact it is from Middle Earth (aka Argentina).  I can prove this is the case because I discovered that Susana Balbo (aka Balbo Baggins) had a hand in making this wine.

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Southampton Row is a funny old street.  Well funny yes, but mostly old.  It looks like it is stuck in a time warp from the 1960’s and 70’s.

However, there are one or two secret places I know where you can find food amongst the best value in London.  One of them is Old Amalfi.  An unremarkable establishment with tacky decor and no expense wasted on fine table linen or other unimportant items.

However, the food is terrific!

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There isn’t much of a theatre scene in Leeds but what there is, is top notch.  We are privileged to know one of the cast of Opera North (although he never gets us tickets any more).  Leeds Grand Theatre is surely the best theatre outside London for architecture and acoustics (especially since the recent improvements).  The West Yorkshire Playhouse is also pretty good for a modern theatre and puts on some interesting modern pieces.

So where to dine before the show then?

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With apologies to Bob Dylan, I was delighted to read this piece in The Times highlighting the scandal of rip-off restaurant mark-ups on wine.

Don’t pay it – vote with your stomachs and eat (and drink) somewhere else!  Rant Over….

One Sunday a few years ago Sainsbury’s locked my car in their Huddersfield car park causing me massive inconvenience.  Combined with their stock replenishment problems at the time, I swore I would never shop there again.

Regular readers will know that my grudges don’t hold much resolve so last week saw me nipping into Sainsbury’s on Regent Rd in Manchester looking for Malbec.  Ciaran had recommended the So Organic Free Trade one.

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Exactly how many quarters has Manchester got?  Can a city have more than four?  I hear tell in the press of the latest campaign to create an “Irish Quarter” which is bringing England’s second city to the point of fractional incongruence.

Personally, I like the Spanish quarter and one of my fave tapas places is on Deansgate two forward rolls from the new Beetham Tower – Evuna.

Did you know that the Beetham Tower at 47 floors is the highest residential building in Europe.  Has anyone told the residents on floor 36 that the fire brigade can only reach the fourth floor?  Food for thought!

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Oh dear, I am going to sound like AA Gill, (although nowhere near as pretentious obviously, or well educated for that matter).

If there is one thing that makes my blood boil in a restaurant it is when they try to get two tips out of me.  We’ve all seen the drill, you get a long bill with a very discreet line at the bottom adding 10% or 12.5% service.  Then you get presented with the Chip and PIN terminal where the waiter invites you to “add a service charge”.

This is what happened to me when I visited Livebait in Manchester.

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I haven’t managed to get a ticket to see Connie in the hottest show in town just yet.  Connie Fisher’s prize for winning a BBC talent contest was the lead role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic at the London Palladium.

But I thought I would get in the mood anyway by trying an Austrian wine whose reputation seems to be growing faster than The Sound of Music revenues.

My Grüner Veltliner came from the Wine Society’s “Exhibition” Range.

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Would you pay in advance for a crap meal?

No - I wouldn’t either.  However, the wine bar on review here gets away with it because the meal is actually not crap but mainly because the wine list is fantastic.

I had been to the Cork & Bottle on Cranbourn St, near Leicester Square many many times and enjoyed every occasion…well maybe except for the first time I visited, where I couldn’t work out the MO for getting served!

So, since I had started my blog, and I happened to be in London, I thought I would revisit and see how the wine list compared to the last time I was there.  It hadn’t changed at all – excellent!  (although it’s due a change soon to be fair…. come on Don!)

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