BS: Restaurant Reviews

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Aug 18 - 02:25 PM

Hello there Mike!

Hope you have a lovely time in North Yorkshire. And I'm jealous of all those fish and chips you'll be eating! Enjoy!

There's a chippie in Lenwade (village quite near to ours) which only opens on certain days of the week. The queues are long, but the food is well worth waiting for. Our lovely neighbour goes over there in her car and gets us ours along with hers. (She's a real gem!)

How weird Jos to drink through an actual straw!
I don't much like straws. I like to get my mouth right into a drink (bit like a pig in a trough I suppose!)
But as a child, we used to make that awful gurgling sound with our school milk at the end of the bottle. The teacher used to get very cross, which only made us do it all the more (little blighters).

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Aug 18 - 05:59 PM

A very good thing about Bury black pudding (and I come from Radcliffe, nobbut a cockstride away from Bury) is that it's much lower in fat than many other examples, though you wouldn't know it. I often buy a whole one from Waitrose, where it was on offer for £1.19 last week. I skin it, slice it into oval bits and fry it hotly in butter for a few minutes. Nirvana is obtained if you can get a soft middle with a bit of crisp on the outside. Get it to that point then chuck a couple of eggs in the pan. My God, beat THAT. Put to one side for a minute while you fry a slice of bread in the fat. A breakfast fit for a king, but only justifiable if you have some physical activity coming up later that day.

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 03:15 AM

My wife won't have it in the house, I only get it at hotels which serve cooked breakfasts. And though it may say "Bury black pudding" on the breakfast menu, who knows really?

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Mr Red
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 03:32 AM

On a rare family gathering we were over-persuaded to go to the Crown in Bray** (because it had better food!).
So I checked the menu. They had a Sunday menu which differed not a jot from Sat or Mon-Fri. And it turned-out to be out of date by the time we were there. Lots of twee names and nothing was just pork or beef. And only one thing I remotely wanted to eat. This is not unusual. So I chose a ploughmans' Lunch and the only thing cooked was the sausage roll and what they put in the meat was not listed (or eaten). Served on wooden platters, which (see below) looked well scrubbed.

I knew what to expect as this was a "Fat Duck" restaurant. To my credit I resisted the temptation to add when ordering "Hold the poison" - I like to be somewhat less predictable. (for those not familiar, it is owned by Heston Blumenthal a celebrity chef who specialises in really bizarre pairings of tastes and one day his clients went down with serious food poisoning)

**the Crown at Bray (twee names throughout) but very presentable and well organised. And pricey. And not the swankiest pub in town - the Roux Brothers own the one by the river.

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Will Fly
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 03:59 AM

I remember standing on the cliff, next to the "Dracula" church in Whitby, overlooking the river and the town. All I could smell was the combined output from all the chippies!

Eliza, when you were in Scotland, did you ever go to The Ubuquitous Chip in Byres Road? It's almost an institution, having been there many years, and serves wonderful food. We're off to Glasgow (my childhood home) at the end of September, and will be celebrating our wedding anniversary (52 years) with a meal there. Byres Road and the West End in general was pretty spartan in the late 40s and early 50s. Quite different now, with a host of great places to eat.

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Senoufou
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 05:52 AM

Yes yes Will Fly!!! I remember The Ubiquitous Chip very well indeed!
They served casserole of venison, which I tasted for the first time. It was a bit tough and strong-flavoured, but very nice. Quite a posh place. Many of its customers were Glasgow University lecturers/professors.
(I had a boyfriend who was doing his PhD in Virology, working in a small lab off Byres Road, and it was he who took me to the Ubiquitous Chip.)
There was also a cinema nearby called the Grosvenor. And a posh hotel on the corner with the Great Western Road called the Grosvenor Hotel. He took me to all these places, then I dumped him. Shame really...

I once accompanied a Skye lassie (flatmate and colleague) down to the Glasgow Western Infirmary on Dumbarton Road as she had acute tonsillitis (could hardly breathe). While waiting in A&E, two drunks covered in blood were wheeled in. They'd been fighting savagely and the Police were accompanying them. I was amused to watch them still fighting as best they could with their fists from their adjoining wheelchairs, foaming at the mouth, shouting and swearing like Rab C Nesbitt. They kept bellowing, "See you? F*** you ya bastard!" at each other. I found this very funny.

Once installed in the hospital,Janet was recovering on a ward after the operation, and while visiting her, I encountered the Steam Beetle Man.
That's the Weegies' name for Pest Control Officer. Janet's bedside locker was swarming with cockroaches (steam beetles), and this chap with a torch came to investigate.

Glasgow was brilliant. I spent most of my time there laughing like a drain!

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 07:02 AM

I used to eat in the Ubiquitous Chip regularly 30 years ago. It's unrecognizable now, and not in a good way.

On the other hand, the University Café in Byres Road is just about the same as it was 100 years ago. And the Vietnamese place in Ruthven Lane is good.

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 07:07 AM

A very good thing about Bury black pudding [...] is that it's much lower in fat than many other examples, though you wouldn't know it.

For them as needs to know: the only British source of gluten-free black pudding I know of is the butcher in the high street in Haddington, who makes his own and only sells it through his own shop. Most morcilla is gluten-free but's going to be out post-Brexit.

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Senoufou
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 07:12 AM

Ooooh I love black pudding! But it has to have small lumps of tasty fat in it. And be only lightly cooked so one can taste the blood.
(I'm just off to polish my fangs)

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: KarenH
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 07:53 AM

"It looked like a salad bowl designed for a ruminant with four stomachs."

(Jay Rayner).

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 08:30 AM

Jack, this is the issue that I think hasn't hit home to most people, there will be a serious shortage of quality foods if we do leave the EU without a deal. At the moment you can get Morcilla by mail order from Brindisa. I have a variety of other sources which supply continental foods. I can get Roquefort cheese, Parma and Serrano ham in ALDI. A disruption to supplies will be a serious inconvenience, if not more. Will we have to buy from smugglers? I don't think people can possibly have thought this through.

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 09:46 AM

One of Jay's finest, that one, Karen!

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 01:25 PM

Aha! Morcilla: that was it, in my omelette/cowpat! And I had thought morcilla was a type of mushroom!
Up here, people seem to favour Stornoway black pudding, but then they will go and put it with such delicacies as scallops: drowns all the flavour of the latter, as did the chorizo chucked all over an otherwise nice sea bass that I had in a posh restaurant in Edinburgh (mothers' day treat, so I couldn't say too much!)

And Sen and Will, the other Glasgow chippie of world renown is the Blue Lagoon, near Central Station: last time there was dusappointing: haddock like boot leather!

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Senoufou
Date: 29 Aug 18 - 05:03 PM

Tattie, I wasn't often in the area near Central Station, but I do remember the viaduct there being laughingly called 'The Hieland Man's Umbrella' (Harry Lauder song) as folk from the Highlands and Islands tended to congregate underneath it while waiting to meet up.

In Scotland, fish-and-chips was invariably called a 'fish supper'.
When I was teaching, I often bought a 'white pudding supper' or a 'black pudding supper' for lunch. The lady would always ask, "Salt and sauce hen?" I don't remember vinegar being offered, just brown sauce rather like HP sauce.

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 05:23 AM

The Blue Lagoons all specialized in serving vast quantities of cold grease. The only places I would be less likely to go back to are the Teviot student union in Edinburgh and a Mongolian takeaway in Manchester, both of which gave me food poisoning.

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 30 Aug 18 - 05:14 PM

Aye, salt'n'sauce is the default in Embra! I usually decline both!

Subject: RE: BS: Restaurant Reviews
From: KarenH
Date: 14 Oct 18 - 05:41 AM

"It’s one long, perfectly lit Jack Vettriano painting, only without the butler randomly holding an umbrella or the undercurrent of faux eroticism"


Not sure I understand the difference between true eroticism and the faux variety. Can any Vettriano experts enlighten me?