Amongst the dark satanic mills of Halifax, West Yorkshire, there are indeed some green and pleasant pastures, and nestling in the hills we found Shibden Mill Inn. We once stopped for a quick Sunday lunch on a walking expedition and vowed to go back. On 1 March, Fred had just picked up a brand new Mini Cooper, so a drive out to somewhere remote seemed appropriate.
I went to see Private Lives, the excellent Noël Coward play, at the equally excellent Library Theatre, St Peter’s Square, Manchester. So needing sustenance to prevent my guests having to suffer the slings and arrows of my outrageous belly rumbles, we pulled in to Gio’s on Lower Mosley St, opposite the Midland Hotel.
There is a brilliant pre-theatre menu at £8.95 for two courses. I picked the Insalata Caprese and the Penne Tagliatelli alla Francesca.
Here’s a tip. When you order a pasta dish, always mix and match the pasta with the sauce.
Just down the road from the entrance to the Ritz on Arlington St, just off Piccadilly, you will find Le Caprice, a favourite haunt of the stars for several decades. This part of London is over-endowed with decent restaurants. To quaint northerners like me this seems unfair.
The Wolseley is just round the corner, as is Langan’s Brasserie, Claridge’s, Scott’s of Mayfair, and Fortnum & Mason. Meanwhile in the nearby West End, The Ivy, sister to Le Caprice, is undoubtedly one of the best restos in London despite the nouvellement célèbrés and the nouveaux riche who visit only to be seen rather than to enjoy food and wine. So was Le Caprice, part of the group that owns The Ivy, as good as its sibling?
My last (and first) visit to Fortnum & Mason 1707 Wine Bar was such a success, the very next time I was in London I revisited.
This time my flight comprised three Pinot Noirs and I also added a plate of charcuterie to nibble on. At £13 an American would starve on this dish, but the quality soared. The meat was, interestingly, not Italian, the most notable of a good bunch being Gloucester Old Spot Prosciutto which stood up to any Italian prosciutto I have ever tasted.
The Pinot Noirs were all worthy of drinking, for the record:
Fortnum & Mason Bourgogne Rouge Drouhin 2004 – soft and supple, the most subtle of the three with redcurrants and a creamy finish.
Merricks Creek Pinot Noir Victoria 2004 – a powerful strawberry flavour wine, jammy and louder than Ian Paisley in full rhetorical flow.
Pegasus Bay Pinot Noir Waipara 2004 – the most interesting of the bunch. Cherries and some mineral. A bit like the French one but with a bit of kiwi intensity and sharpness.
I couldn’t resist trying one more wine and was pleased to see the Fortnum & Mason Pomerol Clos Rene 2003 served in a Riedel Bordeaux glass from the Vinum range. Black fruits prevailed in contrast to the red fruited Pinots. A bit of cooked cabbage, quite tannic with a long finish. Quite a serious wine as you might expect
I tolerated some rude treatment from the staff because of the excellent pricing policy, £10 corkage being added to the shop price no matter the value of the wine. Clearly the place to go if you fancy a 1961 Latour.
So I award F & M my top prize for least rip-off wine drinking prices in London wine bars or restaurants.
I also enjoy trying the flights of three wines linked by grape and comparing the different treatments. But next time I think up an award, I really must construct a snappier name.
Finally, you don’t have to drink wine, coffee and tea is available. It is also very quiet, so I use it for meetings when I am in Piccadilly/Mayfair. I used to frequent The Wolseley for this purpose but it is nowadays too busy. Oh well, my secret is out. I’ll have to find somewhere new, now. Ciao.
I am thinking of nominating Lausanne as the most boring city in Europe. Before you ask, yes, I have been to Brussels, but I think Lausanne is to European city life, what Accrington Stanley is to the English Premier League. Lausanne was so boring that our two night stay necessitated a lot of public transport – a train to Morges for the afternoon, a day trip on the ferry to Evian, an evening train to Montreux before waking on the final day and taking the early train to Geneva.
So why stay in Lausanne then? It’s a fair question, thanks for asking. On a previous holiday we had stayed in Evian and done the ferry trip the other way. In doing so, we found a resto in Lausanne which did the most fabulous rosti ever tasted. As I was not running this blog in those days, I had no record of the name or location of this establishment.
So we asked around for the best rosti shop in town and a random camera retailer recommended Brasserie Bavaria.
Our last day in Haute-Nendaz involved a lot of walking. After a lot of walking, refreshment is essential. On the way back to Le Déserteur hotel, I wanted to put in a lost property report at the Police Municipale. Richard had lost a camera and, whilst he didn’t care too much for the money, he was sweating lead bullets over the contents of the digital flash card. For a man who has recently given up biathlons, still goes bull fighting barefoot, and is rumoured to be The Stig you will understand that he doesn’t sweat – ever.
I was invited to Live Earth. What a dilemma. All tickets cost £55. I went free. Should I make a charitable donation to some worthy cause? Which cause exactly? I mean this was not a charity event, it was about awareness, man. Quite a hippy concept really, but played out in the hard commercial word of the new millennium. Some of the messages from the various entertainers who participated were more genuine than others but I have to admit to laughing. It’s not very rock and roll having some pop idol jumping on stage and telling us all not to leave our TVs on standby, before launching into some familiar guitar riff.
There were also doubts about the CO2 created by the event itself. I travelled public transport all the way, only to see the Black Eyed Peas being helicoptered in to Wembley for Al Gore’s denouement.
All in all though, a fantastic day out. It’s not often you get to see such a high class line up. Here’s the pictures:
Firstly my (somewhat feeble) attempt at a panoramic view of Wembley.
Somewhere roughly east of the Eden Project in Cornwall you may stumble across Newquay and Watergate Bay. Here you will find another highly commendable charity establishment. Fifteen Cornwall is Jamie Oliver’s project to give young (and often disadvantaged) young people the opportunity to make something of their lives, by learning how to cook very very expensive food.
As it was the first anniversary of the opening of Fifteen Cornwall and this marked the graduation of the first batch of trainees we thought it would be rude to turn down the opportunity to try the highly popular place. OK then it wasn’t exactly a personal invite from Jamie but it was nice to be there.
A few days in Newquay, Cornwall had me looking and talking like a surfer dude in no time. Fistral Beach is the centre of all (cool) surfing activity in England., So seeing as we were staying at the Headland Hotel next door, why not skip down to the beach and Fistral Blu, a trendy eatery, we thought.
It claims to be fine dining but falls a bit short of that. In fact I was left unsure as to what exactly it was trying to achieve. Do they want surfers fresh from the beach, or the rich and famous of Newquay to drive down to eat?
Deep in Jack the Ripper territory just behind Bishopsgate Police Station lies a dark secret. Whitechapel is legendary for the murders committed by one of the first serial killers to gain notoriety. Nowadays an altogether different cereal is found in the back alleys, and the only murder is evidenced by an occasional squealing lobster.
The back alley known as Widegate Street is where I found Sri Thong, a Thai restaurant with a name that brings back haunting memories of that famous and heinous picture of Peter Stringfellow on the beach.
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