The Globe Troffers

Liverpool has been transformed in recent years and the city centre is streets ahead of many of its Northern competitors. It has a waterfront which makes all the difference and I think that’s what we’re missing in Leeds.

Anyway, I’m not here to whinge about what we don’t have  in Leeds. We spent a hugely enjoyable weekend in liverpool last weekend with Time and Karen and our dinner on the Saturday night was at Lunya - a relatively new Catalonian restaurant right in the centre, near where we stayed.

It really had the feel of a restaurant abroad and the authentic vibe with live Spanish guitarist and a vibrant, buzzy upstairs room. We opted for the Tapas banquet a) because we were hungry and b) the extensive menu looked daunting and hard work. The set menu Tapas turned out to be a fantastic choice and at £32 a head it was very good value. There was about six or seven courses (I say around because I lost count after the first three) and the food just comes along when you’ve finished the first lot.

The quality of the cooking was as good as anything I’ve had in Spain and certainly rivalled my other favourite Tapas place, Barafina in Soho. Highlights included salt cod croquettes, pardon peppers, cured meats, orangey balck pudding wrapped in Iberico, amazing cured meat platters, cheese with dinky breadsticks, the tiniest and tastiest of mussels, the most garlicky cod cheeks and a cheese plate to dies for featuring the hard to find Cabrales. We ploughed on and even found room for dessert and cheese - don’t ask me how - and all of this was washed down by some rather lovely Spanish Ribero and Rioja.

If you plan a visits to Liverpool, I can highly recommend Lunya - it’s a little piece of Catalonia transported to the land of the scousers.

After our California trip this summer, we got a real taste for mexican food. of course when you’re back in the UK, the first thing you do is try and recreate the feel good food of your holiday. Hands up who’s come back from a sun drenched week in Spain or Italy eating sun soaked tomatoes, artisan cheeses, amazing cured meats and spankingly fresh bread? And what happens when you try and recreate this in our country - you know the rest, it fails.

So we were interested to hear about a new Mexican restaurant that’s opened in Chapel Allerton in Leeds. Chapel A (as it’s known locally) is a real up and coming part of Leeds and in the past year or so has become home to some of the cooler and more interesting places to eat in the city.

Pinche Pinche is one of them.

Housed in a row of shops on the main Harrogate Road, this small, cool and well put together restaurant is cooking up some of the brightest and freshest flavours I’ve tasted for a while. Mexican fell out of favour I think in recent times and some local old school gaffs didn’t do the cuisine any favours. It seems now is a good time to be launching a Mexican food ‘offering’.

The service is laid back and informative, the interior cool Mexicana with day of the dead-esque graphics and not a cactus in sight (except on my plate, but more of that later). The menus were stapled photocopies stapled together (yes, the place is that new) but that was fine and we took the advice of our waiter and ordered lamb and king prawn tacos to kick off and beef enchilada and fish burrito for mains. Sides were plantain and cactus tostada on the advice of our on the money waiter.

Julie has been quite taken with the Tomasina Myers mexican TV show on Channel recently and we have been through the gears on mexican cuisine somewhat over the past weeks. The flavours are simple, fresh and bright and some might say, a little bit samey. Granted, the holy trinity of chilli, coriander and red onion feature heavily all over the menu but I have to say it was spot on - a little of what you fancy and all that. The tacos were hoovered up in record time and special mention goes to the Mango salsa with the king prawns. Julie’s beef enchilada was a plateful of heat and richness and although my fish burrito was the size of a small house brick, it packed plenty of fishy loveliness.

No room for Churros with chocolate (next time) and all of this was washed down with the obligatory mexican beer or two. Food prices are very cheap - starters around £4 and mains between £8-£10. As usual, the more booze you consume the higher the bill. Worth point pointing out that there is a shelf or two of some rather fantastic looking Tequila and if that’s you’r snifter, I recommend an evening there and a taxi.

All in all, this place deserves to do well and delivering great tasting food at good prices in a vibrant atmosphere it should be a huge success.

We spent a very enjoyable day at The Malton Food and Drink Festival last weekend. Opting to start the day in style, we had breakfast at Leeds Bar and Grill (superb, by the way) and then hopped on the train to Malton. Rather than drive we fancied letting the train take the strain. In the end we had to stand all the way to York due to a short train and racegoers. This did not dampen our spirits in any way and we hopped off the train in Malton on a bright and breezy day.

The Festival itself was very well put together with plenty of local producer stalls all set in the picturesque town centre. There were a couple of large demo tents and an excellent beer festival in the local concert hall. Sensibly, near the beer was the hog roast and artisan sausage butty stands to soak up the local ale so we were set for a great afternoon.

One of our favourite producers were there - Sand Hutton Asparagus - and there were a couple of tempting Pimms and Pie stalls that caught my eye and wallet. all in all we felt it was a great event, basking in good weather and very well attended.

Oh, and there was a tank. Well not quite a tank but a reconnaissance vehicle. Still it looked cool and trundled noisily back to base at the end of the day.

Our local pub, The Beulah, has been closed for many, many months. I suspect it became a casualty of people staying at home to drink, the trend for people not wanting to drive too far and increased competition across the food and drink sector. In truth, the previous owners juts didn’t get it right - the food was so-so and even the beer and wine wasn’t even worth writing home (or even a blog) about. In this day and age if you don’t get the basics right, it’s game over.

So we were pleased to see it had re-opened, under brave new management, a few weeks ago. I say brave because I believe the hospitality trade is one of the hardest industries to make a living in these days. It’s always been tough and it’s even tougher these days. We’d heard good reports from other members of the Troffers (’keeping it simple’ ‘generous portions’ etc) so we thought we’d have a wander on and were very pleasantly surprised.

Little cash had been spent on the fabric of the pub, although it was tidy and presentable. We know from Kendells that you don’t need to pour cash into the building initially, just get the food, drink and service right. First up was a very well kept pint of Landlord and those of you who are beer drinkers will know that’s no mean feat in itself. Secondly we ordered a couple of simple midweek dinners: I had a ribeye steak and J had a burger. Both arrived reasonably promptly on plates bursting with food - big salads and twice fried chips (oh yes) completed the picture. I have to say it was very agreeable and great value. The menu is entrepreneurially priced with 2 for £10 Sunday lunch deals and a free bottle of wine with 2 steak meals.

A second pint of Landlord had me thinking we should do this every week and no doubt by the third I’d have been coming every other night. I think it’s well worth all West leeds dwellers supporting this pub with excellent prices and good, solid pub grub on offer. I look forward to many repeat visits.

The first post for quite some time on Troffers - apologies for being so tardy, we’re trying to work out what the best thing for this blog is.

We’d like it to be about the great food experiences we all have and it’s not like we’re not having these, we just need to find our blog Mojo I think.

I well and truly found it last week.

On a business trip to London, I’d finished my meetings and was waiting to meet an old mate in Smithfield. Over a glass of wine I was hungry but we’d not decided what or where to eat. In fact, i wasn’t even sure if he was showing up, but that’s another story. Wandering towards the tube station I happened upon St John Restaurant. I’d alaways wanted to eat here - the legendary chef Fergus Henderson championed ‘nose to tail’ eating and has influenced a generation of chefs. It is a restaurant with a serious reputation, so I gave it a try.

I love off the cuff. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but sometimes it just so works it’s frightening. Tonight was one of those evenings.

The maitre d offered me a table for two and I settled in to a buzzing, relaxed, white dining room. waiting for my dining partner I perused the menu over a glass of the very quaffable house Languedoc red (great value BTW, not over priced). I didn’t wait for my partner - he was late and I just couldn’t wait to get stuck in to the amazingly simple menu. I opted for food I’d never eaten before in my life - starter was Beef bone marrow with parsley salad and main was lamb tongues with white beans.

This is kerpow food - big, bold flavours almost daring you to eat it. Wow.

The bone marrow was the poshest, most sophisticated beef dripping on toast and the lamb tongue was the lambiest thing I’ve ever eaten. The tongue was velvety and intense, meltingly soft and the beef was unctious and tactile, the wet salt adding substantially to the pleasure.

The service was sublime, attentive and invisible, relaxed but fastidious. And the price? Well, put it this way, I’ve had highly ordinary meals at Leeds restaurants that don’t even come close to the quality of this experience. The night I was there, a Monday night, was packed with ordinary folks and international tourists - testament to the amazing food and quality of service. Pitch perfect.

One of the newest restaurants to open in Leeds is Fazenda, which is a Brazilian Rodizio Bar and Grill.

Rodizio refers to a type of restaurant popular in Portugal and Brazil where you pay a fixed price and they just keep serving you meat of all kinds. I’d say that’s a pretty accurate description of what happens at Fazenda in Leeds.

The restaurant is situated in the swanky canal basin area of Leeds by the side of Mint Hotel, very close to the railway station. I’m guessing the location by one of Leeds’ best and most popular hotel pretty much guarantees it a good number of customers.

On the night we dined, it started off pretty quiet but ended up pretty busy for January. The style is perfect for the modern age: pay a flat fee and then eat as much as you like.

The ’starters’ buffet bar contains plenty of green stuff to assuage the guilt you’re bound to feel after eating your own body weight in beef steak. Although the starter buffet was adequate with a good selection of cold meats, including cured ham, the salads looked a little unloved as the real star of this show is meat.

When you’re ready for the meat, you turn over your card (yes, you get a card) to green and it keeps coming. And coming. And coming.

Only when you turn the card back to red does the meaty onslaught subside. In general, the quality of the meat we had was good/very good. Brazilian sausages and chicken were well seasoned and tasty. Of the steak we had, the sirloin and the garlic rump was the best cooked - ie pink - but the rib was a little overcooked for my taste.

Ambitious diners can return to the salad bar and then go for more meat, in fact a large group of guys seemed to be having the time of their lives - this is the perfect place for a group: novel, good fun and above average quality.

All in all, Fazenda is a fun place to have dinner in cool, modern surroundings. Although it has a gimmick at the heart of what it does, it works pretty well. I do think it’s the sort of place you’d go a couple or three times and then perhaps head somewhere else.

At £24 for all you can eat, I think it’s OK value but for me there is a lingering doubt over quality versus quantity. On reflection, I might want to eat just one beautifully cooked steak for £20, cooked just for me, exactly how I like it, rather than a relentless onslaught of bovine protein.

Or maybe that’s just me.

This year’s annual hog roast was held on an unseasonably sunny but chilly November day in Calderdale.

This is our third hog roast and we do seem to be building a fair amount of knowledge around the minutae of roasting a full pig in the open air. It’s a complex job: the temperature has to be taken in to account: too cold and it dramatically affects the cooking time, the wind and its direction can affect the heat from the fire - it’s fraught with difficulties.

The fire was lit at 6am and the pig started off at 7am. Then follows an all day cook with the pig ready to eat at around 7pm. Careful monitoring is required and constant turning is critical unless you want a pig that’s half cooked.

And then there’s the careful handling of the crackling - the ideal scenario is beautifully cooked pork on the inside and fabulously crispy crackling on the outer. I think we pretty much manage to do a good job here and this year we constructed a makeshift foil jacket for our porker to shield the thin back pork from the intense heat that’s needed to finish the pork off.

This year’s beast was a big one - 56 kilos to be precise and this brought its own challenges. That’s a lot of pork to cook through right to the middle and we’ve discovered that meat thermometers are pretty useless in this situation. It’s all about intuition and it’s a lot easier than you think when you spend an entire day cooking a pig. That and a few strategically placed skewers to see if the juice is running clear.

There’s a fair amount of pressure if 90 folk are rocking up a for a few roast pork sandwiches but the Troffers team were up to the task thankfully and we’re already planning next year with our cooking rig refurbishment (Rig 2.1) and plans to cook goat, lamb or even beef. Watch this space.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we know what we’re doing, but we’re certainly getting there!

On one of our visits recently to Norwich we  booked a table at Roger Hickman’s Restaurant. We were celebrating our daughters birthday and were at the last minute joined by our other daughter from London, so a full family outing.

A little background information first. We have previously dined and blogged (check the October 2009 archives) at Adlard’s a Norwich favourite and had a fantastic meal. Roger has taken over the Adlard’s premises and put his own name over the door earlier this year. We met Roger last year at the food festival (also blogged with a picture of Roger at the cookery theatre) and were impressed by his demonstration. At the time he was working at the Holkham estate another popular Norfolk foodie destination. When we found out about Roger’s opening of his own restaurant we decided to book a table.

On the Saturday evening the restaurant was full and had a good atmosphere. We had decided to celebrate in style and opted for the Taster Menu(follow the link) for the table. We had also seen some of the excellent reviews on Trip Advisor regarding the menu, which helped our choice. Taster menu’s are always a good way of letting the chef show you his skills and allowing a varied selection of dishes. To say we were not dissapointed is an understatement. The quality of ingredients, preparation and presentation were all fantastic.  I could go into detail about the individual dishes which are highlighted on the ‘Taster Menu’ link above but put briefly it is a dining experience I would highly recommend.

Unfortunately I was without my camera so appologies for using the web site stock pictures but these definately represent the surroundings and food better than I could on my box brownie.

On this occasion the accolades are spot on. Roger is on top of his craft and presents an excellent dining experience in Norwich. Our new favourite in the area and we shall definately return.

J&L 16.08.10

Another 25th wedding anniversary dinner amongst our Troffer crowd was the reason for an evening at The Yorkshireman Restaurant in Hipperholme, near Halifax.

Tucked away just off the main Brighouse road, we knew of the restaurant from the old days when we lived in Northowram and P&T live just up the road from this locally renowned hidden gem. On the outside it has the look of a pub that’s punching above its weight but from the inside it has the look of an upmarket bistro. First impressions were very good. It was reassuringly busy for a Saturday night and after a couple glasses of Veuve Cliquot we were led to our table.

Having perused the menu whilst in the bar, the food arrived very promptly (which we always like) - the short, manageable menu clearly allows the kitchen to concentrate on getting the food right and onto our plates quickly. The menu consisted of plenty of bistro-style classics and covered the bases well. I opted for the seared scallops and aged beef fillet, other highlights included a very spicy chilli tiger prawn combo (which we all took turns at dipping into), succulent belly pork and meltingly goo calves liver. The pan fried  halibut looked very good too.

Desserts was a trio of loveliness with the liquorice ice cream winning hands down. We missed the cheese unfortunately as we had to make a swift exit to our second engagement of the evening (much in demand, obviously) - I’m told that the cheese board was duly ravaged, again a good sign.

The Yorkshireman is certainly worth a visit if you’re in Calderdale - P&T tells me that they’ve never had a bad meal there and T sets high standards, so that’s praise indeed. On top of this, the prices are pretty good too, with mains less than a fiver and mains £15 (with a supplement for the fillet) and the service was warm and attentive too.

I love Twitter.

There I was travelling down to London for a busy two day stint with nothing planned for the evening. Browsing through Twitter, I noticed that Krista at Neon had a couple of spare places on a wine tasting that evening in London. The last thing I wanted was another dinner for one in central London, so I threw caution to the wind and bagged a ticket. I have to say this level of un-premeditated behaviour is slightly out of character for me, so I was pleased with my devil may care approach on this occasion.

The event was being held at Mien Tay - a Vietnamese restaurant in Battersea. Now I’ve never been to Battersea before and it takes some getting to. During the rush hour it took a good 50 mins - this had better be worth the detour to SW11. The restaurant is modestly placed on Lavender Hill amongst an eclectic mix of bars, shops and takeaways. From the outside, it didn’t look like the kind of place AA Gill had raved about in The Sunday Times recently.

I needn’t have worried.

The event was to ’soft’ launch the new wine list for Mien Tay that has been put together by Willie Lebus and his great team at Bibendum wines. Willie has been working hard to put together a small but perfectly formed wine list for Mien Tay which currently operates a BYO policy on wine. Willie has a bee in his bonnet (quite rightly in my opinion) about wine and oriental/ethnic food. Too quickly we reach for the beer or choose a horribly cheap wine because the food is too challenging. I’ll hold my hand up here and plead guilty but after this evening, I have definitely seen the light.

At the outset, Willie proclaimed that “Short wine lists are the future - and you can quote me on that” and then launched into a passionate tirade agains the “rubbish talked about wine” and he’s on a one man mission to make great wine accessible to all. They’ve even picked out some perfect wine glasses for the wine list - lots of attention to detail, I’m loving that.

The evening consisted of 13 wines matched to 13 dishes on the menu at Mien Tay. Now this sounded just fine at 7.30 when we sat down to eat, after a few glasses of a very refined but lively Prosecco Jeio Valdobbiaddene. It would be a very long blog post if I described every wine and every dish as it all just kept coming.

Here’s what I discovered:

Vietnamese food is beautifully subtle with a rich combination of flavours and textures, imaging Thai and then quadruple it. It was a revelation to me.

Mien Tay’s kitchen led by Chef Su can really cook. No scrub that, they can really, really cook. The fish is testament to that.

The wines Willie had teamed up with the courses were all on the money. For me there wasn’t a bum note - highlights have to be the floral Pino Grigio Dolomiti, the biodynamic Augustinos Sauvignon Blanc, a superbly out of fashion oakey Altos Chardonnay, a bonkers Manzanilla that just worked and a very supple Spy Valley Pinot Noir. Wowzer.

Food-wise, there was much to rave about - steamed sea bass was sublime, shredded mango salad and dried beef was a joy, the pepper squid was leaping off the plate with freshness, endless spring rolls bursting with proper fresh flavour, lamb with lemon grass was gratifying and the sliced beef with watercress and fresh lime salad all delivered punch and sophistication.

The wine added massively to the enjoyment of the food too. If we had ordered beers with this food it quite simply would not have been as good. The wine perfectly matched the food, enhancing the flavours and the enjoyment of each. On the finished menu,  I’d like to see the recommendations by the glass against each course.

It was a real eye opener for me - as a food and wine lover, the alchemy involved in matching wine and food doesn’t always happen and there’s not always honest wine waiters to help with that.

What’s really funny is that I started taking notes at the beginning of the evening (there were professional journos there after all) but by the end of the night, the paper is soaked in wine and sauce and looks like a bunch of chimps have used it for a teacloth. Some of the more sophisticated London food bloggers and writers (I don’t include myself in this august company) were definitely looking a little frayed around the edges by the end of the night, but the formal food and drink tasting just turned into a great night with everyone getting along. The chinese coolie hats helped too.

The other thing that I learnt was that I can take or leave tofu - as a confirmed meat eater, I just don’t see the point of it. For vegetarians I can see the attraction - a food medium that can be cooked and take on flavours, particularly in a restaurant as exciting as this one.

The frustration for me is that this place is not only in London, it’s in a very inaccessible part of London if you’re coming from the North. I can guarantee that if you did make the effort you would not only be rewarded with superb food and wine at a ludicrously low price, you would receive a very warm welcome.

Note: I’ve tried to make my review more around the overall event and less about a blow by blow account - I’ll post links to the other bloggers who where in attendance, for a more accurate representation of the evening!