Eating out is often a great experience but sometimes a bit of home grub is best. 
Photo credits: Esteban S
Sometimes I wonder what it is that makes people want to eat out. Maybe its an inability to cook at home or at least a lack of enthusiasm for that activity which was so normal for previous generations. In the UK at least, supermarket ready meals and take aways often allow people to eat reasonably well without the effort of cooking themselves and yet more and more people these days choose to eat in pubs or restaurants on a regular basis.
Special occasions often give rise to a visit to a restaurant for many more people than choose to eat out on a regular basis and I guess in those situations they want to experience something a bit special. Others eat out, I suppose, in order to try something new, or at least different, compared to the sort of food they eat on a daily basis. By different of course, I mean ‘better’.
Is it all about the food though? Are restaurants, especially fine dining restaurants solely the canvas on which a high-end chef can display his artistic creations? If we think about any market town in the UK we can probably identify a former coaching inn where, centuries ago, travellers with their horses could stop for the night and have a decent beer and some nourishing food. In these cases the fore-runners of todays restaurants offered something much more than just grub and arguably its something more important; hospitality! Hospitality is much more than a plate of good food, it’s about a warm welcome and being made to feel a bit special.
Today’s top-drawer restaurants, in my view, are sometimes in danger of forgetting that as they rush to present the latest food trends and showcase the technical skills of the chef and his brigade. Eating out is generally expensive and I’m getting a bit fed up with paying a lot of money to be treated like a spectator at a circus. When I go to a restaurant I go to eat well, to enjoy myself with friends, to admire the skills of the chef and the waiting staff and most importantly I want to be made welcome and to feel as though I am the special one, not the staff, not the chef.
I’m more than delighted that my home region, the North-East of England, is producing some really good and interesting places to eat at every price point. I’ve written about some of them on here from fish and chip shops to Michelin starred restaurants. Recently I booked to visit a 2-starred Michelin place near to Darlington, Co Durham, called the Raby Hunt As the North East of England’s only 2 star restaurant, there is much to admire. In particular the hard work and determination of largely self-taught, former pro-golfer, James Close which has put this former gastro-pub run by his parents, firmly on the culinary map. His philosophy that chefs should ‘eat out more than they do’ is absolutely right.
We’re told that he took his sommelier and front of house manager on an all expenses paid trip to Mirazur, ranked as no 3 in the world and where I celebrated my birthday last year. This is to be applauded and more restaurateurs would do well to emulate this behaviour. There is a similarity between the two restaurants though and I’m afraid its a mixed bag.
The food at the Raby Hunt was excellent, cleverly executed and stunningly presented (although I was left longing for just one ordinary round white pate to replace the over used raised porcelain presentation devices), the dining room is stylish and not over formal and the view of the kitchen from the car park raises expectations as you’re left wondering if they can produce truly great food from such a small space. We had fifteen tiny courses, each enigmatically named on the fixed tasting menu and the service was efficient.
My big gripe with Raby Hunt and to a slightly lesser extent with Mirazur however is one of attitude. It relates back to my opening remarks in this article. Is it just about the food or is it about hospitality? The email I received from Raby Hunt the day before our booking told me they had been tying to reach me on the telephone so that I could confirm my booking and as I’d not answered (I never received the call) they were emailing instead. The opening remarks were “We hope you are looking forward to your reservation…” When we arrived at the restaurant the greeting from the waiter was “Are you looking forward to your dinner at Raby Hunt?”. Catering, however highly rated it might be, is a service industry. Or at least that’s what I thought. Surely they meant to say ‘We are looking forward to welcoming you to the Raby Hunt for dinner tomorrow” and ‘Welcome to the Raby Hunt we hope you have a great evening”. Those two things really put me in a bad mood.
On the whole though I’m happy that my home County has such an interesting restaurant. I hope it will become more customer focussed as time goes by. Chef’s dislike of Trip Advisor is indicative of someone who has a firm idea of what it is he wants to create and that his customers should fit in with that, rather than being critical on the grounds of personal taste (likes and dislikes). It’s the Gordon Ramsey approach and it worked for him but I still think the attitude of Raby Hunt needs to be more welcoming and less superior. If it were I’d go back!
Meanwhile here are some pics of the food.
Ingredients of the salad
Salad
France is a big country with significant regional differences so it is of course almost impossible to generalise about food. In my experience however, as the quality of restaurants in the rest of Europe has risen significantly over the past 20 years or so, France has remained where it always was. Choices, unnecessarily complicated by fixed price menus as well as a ‘carte’ (usually including the same things at a slightly higher price) seldom fail to include Terrine, Tete de Veau, Magret de Canard and everything served with limp leaves, albeit dressed with a fine vinaigrette.
There are of course exceptions and it is possible to find truly delicious food at all price points and in this post I want to highlight a couple from my recent visit to the Indre department in Central France. Each of these establishments offers something bit different, either in terms of the menus themselves or the style of service and I’d be happy to revisit any of them again.
Le Lissier was Hobson’s choice on a wet and cold day spent visiting Aubusson, home of the historic and famous tapestry industry. There was nothing inviting on the outside of the restaurant and had it been a drier and warmer day we may well have searched further afield for somewhere to eat. Inside, the place resembled a bar/cafe that we are used to in Italy more than a restaurant.
The layout was simple, the atmosphere informal. Top of the compliments list for Le Lissier must be the relaxed and friendly welcome by a guy who turned out to be Australian. Despite the place rapidly filling up with diners he took time to chat with us and told how a Tasmanian ended up in the middle of France while he guided us to select a very acceptable bottle of wine. The menu included two particular specialities, Fish and Chips (and they really were proper fish and chips) and a couple of choices of Burgers as well, of course, as the ubiquitous Magret de Canard! Everything was superbly delicious, without pretension and tasting exactly as it was meant to taste. Chefs who can prepare such simple dishes to this standard need an award system all of their own! If you’re ever in Aubusson you must check this place out.
From previous visits to Le Blanc I already knew that it would be difficult to find anywhere to eat and this was especially true over a public holiday (La Toussaint). In fact so desperate was I to eat on a previous visit here that I had to make do with a kebab van in a carpark – and very nice it was too! This time, lunch was found in what looked like a tiny little pizza place (complete with a wood-fired pizza oven) called Pizza Bella In fact it turned out to be quite a large establishment beyond the small shop front and offered menus that went far beyond pizzas and included tartiflette, steaks, fish, kebabs. Service was friendly and the atmosphere warm and festive owing the large number of customers who filled the place with their conversation. We came back again for lighter meal the same evening, and not only because there weren’t many other options.
In Bourges, at a fairly smart looking place, listed on TripAdvisor as ‘fine dining’ and called Le Bourbonnoux there was some pretty awful food which I’ll just post here for you to contemplate. It really was very unpleasant and as I hinted above is more what I have come to expect in many French towns, sadly.
The bread and wine were quite decent and the style of the restaurant raised one’s expectations but the food left a lot to be desired . The picture second from the right, above, is of leaks stuffed with what seemed to be nothing more than chopped egg. The leaks were so stringy they were almost impossible to cut, the egg was tasteless and the whole thing was waterlogged. The beige splurge down the middle of the plate was beyond either comprehension or description. The plate on the right was the cheese dish. Supposedly it was whipped goats cheese with parsley. The acidity of the dish was so high it was almost impossible to eat.
By way of a complete contrast was a restaurant recommended by the owners of the Gite, The Barn at Vijon, where we stayed. The restaurant in question was part of Hotel called La Bonne Auberge Although there are the usual suite of menus (a pet hate) they contain dishes, the descriptions of which excite interest and get the gastric juices flowing. Chef Sylvain Lanusse presents clean elegant plates of modern food with enough flair to make you want to dive in! The restaurant has gained the accolade of a Michelin plate and is well worth a visit. And guess what? I had the most delicious Magret de Canard here which was beautifully cooked to point of being soft and full of flavour.
On the opposite side of the River Saone to the city of Macon, in the Commune of Saint-Laurent-sur-Saone, is the aptly named L’autre rive (the other bank) also with a Michelin Red Guide listing. Its a stylish restaurant with views across the river to Macon and serves gorgeously presented, sophisticated interpretations of the best of French cuisine. Despite this it won’t break the bank and was cheaper than many other places of indeterminate quality we came across during the 7 days in France. The Poulet de Bresse (that Rolls Royce of products) was particularly splendid! Not for nothing has the Bresse Chicken been described as,”the queen of poultry, the poultry of kings”.
I’ve recently returned from a week in the Middle-East, visiting both the State of Israel and Palestine. Its a land which has been fought over many times in history, where territory is still disputed and where, undoubtedly, one state is illegally occupying the territory of another.
The three traditions that occupy these biblical lands (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) all have their own food culture and in some cases rigorous dietary rules. The Jews have their Kosher laws and the Muslims have Halal and these tend to be broadly observed whether or not a person practices their religion. The Christians of course eat everything, even the common enemy to Jews and Muslims, the pig. In Jerusalem, Kosher restaurants display certificates from a Rabbi to indicate they properly observe the food laws and no doubt Muslim eateries do similarly. Certainly you see people checking the certificate before they queue up to buy their chicken wraps. I was delighted, one lunch time, to find a little restaurant run by Palestinian Christians that advertised ham and cheese toasties. Ham, in the East can of course mean turkey or beef ‘ham’ but no, on this occasion it was real ham and all the more lovely for being rare.
Putting these differences to one side though, I think its best to sum the cuisine up as being Levantine. It’s generic to the wider region and very similar to the food I was eating not so long ago in Istanbul. Kebabs of various types, salads flavoured with lots of interesting herbs and the creamiest humus imaginable were all in abundant supply in whatever type of restaurant. The omnipresent and not entirely unwelcome chips had their place too of course, as well as cucumbers, pickled herrings, flat breads, strained yoghurt, nuts, seeds and salty cheese, fried or fresh. I guess the challenge for the gourmand is to find somewhere to eat that’s a bit out of the ordinary, a bit different.
Once such place is The Eucalyptus, located just outside the ancient walls of Jerusalem and close to the Jaffa Gate. Executive Chef Moshe Basson, with family connections in the Veneto area of Italy, is co-owner with his son Ronny. Whilst there is an a’la carte section to the menu, they major on a range of different tasting menus which offer a great opportunity to discover the flavours and textures of the local cuisine. It’s a Kosher restaurant for sure but it cuts across cultural boundaries to create some amazing looking and tasting dishes. The tasting menus each have names such as Queen of Sheba or King Solomon without any indication of which dishes are included, or even how many there will be. The difference in price for each option indicates the difference in the number of courses that will be served. It’s not cheap (nowhere in Jerusalem seemed to be) but it is good.
We were assured that when we came to the end of the meal they would ask us if we were still hungry and if we wanted more, and sure enough, after more courses than I could count or remember the offer came to repeat any of them if we wanted to. The answer was no, simply on the grounds of lack of capacity to eat another morsel!
One negative aspect of the restaurant related to the service, which was otherwise very good and is something that seems to happen more and more these days. Gins and tonic were ordered to sip while the menu was perused but took so long to arrive that by the time they were brought to the table, not only had we ordered and received the wine but the first course had arrived too. This is annoying and does nothing to get the evening off to a relaxing start. They’re forgiven though because of the great food which was brought in an endless procession to the table. I made no effort to interrupt my eating to take notes of what the dishes consisted of or what they were called but I did manage to take a few snaps of some of the courses.
The Rooftop restaurant on top of the Mamilla Hotel in Jerusalem offers some fantastic views over the New and Old Cities but, with the exception of some delicious roasted bone marrow I found the food to be unexceptional and the service very poor indeed. Having waited a very long time to be given a menu or offered a drink we hijacked a passing young waiter who did his very best to help and give us what we needed, despite being very busy and working in a completely different section of the restaurant. Without his initiative we would certainly have made a complaint or indeed left.
Here are a few photographs of some of the food at Rooftop and a few other places in Jerusalem.
The tiny island of Burano floats in the Venetian Lagoon and is famous for its multi-coloured fisherman’s houses and lace making. It’s a very pleasant boat ride out from the main part of Venice.
A few metres from the boat, Osteria “Al Fureghin” serves the typical food of Venice, in the relaxed an informal atmosphere of a canal-side restaurant. Despite recent media reports about the very high prices charged in many of Venice’s bars and restaurants, especially to tourists, this place is much more reasonably priced. It was staffed by a team of young lads with an obvious interest in the food and drink they were serving.
Sarde in Saor is a typical dish with its origins in the time before refrigeration when the fishermen of the Venice area would preserve fish, in this case sardines, by marinating them in onions and white wine vinegar. sometimes, as in this case, it includes raisins and pine nuts too. They make a lovely fresh tasting starter or snack with a glass of crisp dry white wine.
To follow, I ate Fegato alla Veneziana, lovely soft calves liver with white onions, butter and olive oil. Hating, as I do, the polenta with which it was proposed to serve the liver, I opted for chips instead!
I’ve recently returned from my first ever visit to Istanbul. It was also my first visit to Turkey (unless you count once crossing the green line, in Nicosia, into the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which of course doesn’t exist).
Having visited numerous Middle Eastern countries and those of North Africa, I wasn’t expecting this to be a trip that presented me with any particular culinary experiences of note. I was wrong. Not only was I wrong I was wrong in more than one way because the food was modern as well as traditional, prepared with good hygiene and tasty beyond belief, at least in most cases.
A friend informed me that there were plenty of ‘contemporary’ restaurants and arriving as we did on New Year’s Eve, we’d booked into one of them for dinner that evening. Being a roof-top venue, it had lovely views over the Golden Horn to the old city of Constantinople and the food was presented in a very modern style with good flavours. By and large it was local food, successfully elevated in style and presentation using modern techniques. There were lots of powders, purees and creams made from tahini and yoghurt. Salted Yoghurt cream was particularly interesting . Often the down-side of travelling in a predominantly Muslim country is a scarcity of alcohol. This wasn’t the case in Istanbul but in this restaurant in particular the staff lacked knowledge about the wines they served to match the multi-course tasting menu. My suggestion would be to avoid that option and simply choose a wine you like the look of and stick to it throughout. The restaurant is ‘neolokal‘ and well worth a visit to see how Turkish chefs are embracing current culinary trends.
In a simliar vein, but not in my opinion as good, either in terms of food or in particular the service, is Mikla, another roof-top venue with outstanding views over the old city in one direction and the Bosphorus in the other. The food was generally nicely presented but despite appearances I found it quite heavy. The service however was the the most disappointing aspect of this restaurant. Our waiter kept responding to every comment with ‘amazing’ This isn’t helpful when you’ve just told him that the balance between monkfish and white beans on the dish you’ve just eaten wasn’t right! The timing between courses was also somewhat erratic and clearly suited more to the kitchen than the diners. I wouldn’t return here without knowing that something had changed.
We had the Tasting Menu as seen below, despite being tempered by the idea of ‘Bridshit’ being offered on the other menu!
The presentation and style were impressive, as also the views.
Far and away a better culinary experience, in my opinion, was eating kebabs in ordinary restaurants on the street. The standard of cleanliness and service were excellent and the flavour of the roasted, grilled and casseroled meats were amazingly good and way beyond my expectations. Some 35 years or more since I first tasted a Donner Kebab in backstreets of Newcastle, I am now a fully signed-up Kebab fan. The flavour of the dishes I tasted in those everyday restaurants in Istanbul will remain with me long after the memory of the posh-nosh has faded.
21 Queen Street in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is an address with a foodie provenance. It was here that Newcastle’s version of Rick Stein had his original restaurant (it’s since moved to another location) before he took over a myriad of other eating locations in the city.
These days, its home to Dobson & Parnell and I ate there just before Christmas with family members. I’d looked at the menu on-line before making a final decision about where to eat and, frankly, I wasn’t overly impressed. Its seemed to be offering bog-standard bistro type food and didn’t particularly excite me. The reality was somewhat different.
After a drink, in a nearby bar, we arrived to a very warn welcome and were shown to a table at the back of the dining room. It being the season of office parties, there were Christmas crackers on the table – not a good thing! The restaurant though at that stage was quiet and there was only one table which was obviously an office group out for their Christmas shindig. Although they got a bit noisy they soon moved on to a more lively venue.
My starter was black pudding with pickled mushrooms and a poached egg. Tasty enough, it was nothing special. I’d chosen duck breast for my main course and having ordered it ‘pink’, I was, to be honest, expecting something overcooked and grey to arrive. I didn’t take any pictures, apart from the starter, because I didn’t intend to write about this place as my expectations were low. I don’t remember how the duck was served either but do remember than it was perfectly cooked and full of flavour – exceptionally so. And then the moment when I felt a tiny piece of shot in my mouth! This wasn’t intensively farmed duck, it was wild duck shot on the wing by someone with a gun. Wonderful! I felt as though I’d won the lottery. I’ve racked my brain and I’m certain that the menu didn’t say ‘wild duck’. I wonder why not. It makes all the difference in the world to the taste and the texture. It was delicious.
The other great thing about this restaurant was the guy who welcomed us and looked after us throughout the meal. We interrogated him without mercy about his life, work, education and his interest in shooting ducks in Yorkshire and he kept us entertained and looked after us very well. His name is Charles.
If you’re in Newcastle go to this place and don’t be put of by the ‘normal’ of the menu. They obviously know what makes a great product and, unusually for these days they don’t oversell it. In fact understated seems to be the hallmark of Dobson & Parnell. If you end up being served by Charles, you will be very fortunate indeed!
Kaltur began their corporate lives as importers of authentic Spanish products to the UK restaurant and home foodie market and recently they’ve branched out into cooking and serving Spanish cuisine in High Bridge Street in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK.
I’d first read about Kaltur over at Secret Diner, which is a guide to the eateries of the North East of England. As I was due to be in the region for a couple of days in early July I thought I’d give it a try. It being a Thursday evening I didn’t book in advance but was warned by one of my fellow diners that without a reservation we were unlikely to get a table, Newcastle being party central any night of the week. A phone call two minutes later confirmed that they were full, save for three places ‘at the bar’. Well that seemed a shame but we decided it would do as we had no plan B and were feeling ready to eat.
In the event I could not have been happier, if they given us the best table in the house. The restaurant is tiny and these three seats ‘at the bar’, which is really ‘the pass’, gave us a commanding view of the entire place out of the corner of one eye as well as a bird’s eye view of the kitchen and the opportunity to interact with the two chefs who worked in the smallest space imaginable to produce an array of mouthwatering tapas dishes for us to try.
Sometimes you can ascertain whether or not restaurant staff can be trusted, at first sight. In this case all of the guys here, including the off duty waiter who’d called in with his grandfather to have a glass of wine gave us such a warm and friendly welcome that they immediately won our confidence. The menu is extensive and consists of lots of interesting tapas/rationes sized dishes and few main courses. We couldn’t decide what to choose so suggested to the chef that he simply keep passing us little dishes from his side of the ‘bar’ to ours until we tell him to stop.
We ordered a bottle of wine (recommended by the young off-duty guy mentioned earlier) and then battle commenced with a couple of servings of Jamon Iberico Guijelo carved from the leg which was positioned just in front of me at the bar. It was all I could do to stop myself hacking off the occasional slice as the meal progressed. Rosy salty/sweet meat with a delicate aroma typical of the hams from this colder region of Spain and with the taste of the acorns on which the little piggy had dined before sacrificing itself for my pleasure.
This was one of those occasions when it was very easy to simply dive in and start eating whilst forgetting to take a photograph or two to hare with readers. I did manage a few though.
So in summary, this little place goes right to the top of my list of places to eat when I’m in the area. It’s fun, serves great dishes, has a great attitude to food and is very reasonably priced.
Kaltur
8 High Bridge
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 1EN
+44 191 447 4464
Cromane is a sand and shingle spit off one of the Kerry peninsulas in Co Kerry and Jack’s is a restaurant with a fantastic view of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Georgina Campbell hospitality guide to Ireland has named Jack’s as Seafood Restaurant 2017.
Dinner for me started with Oysters Kirkpatrick; fresh oysters cooked with bacon and finished with Tabasco and Worcestershire Sauce. Simple, spicy and delicious.
I followed this with the king of fish, Turbot, which was pan roasted with cabbage (classically Irish), Aubergine and purple Carrot. The flesh was perfectly cooked and tasted as though it had jumped straight from the ocean to the plate. As with dinner at Dingle, a load of other vegetables were served on the side. It seems easily possible to consume the recommended 5 a day in one sitting in Ireland.
For pudding I had the lightest cheesecake I’ve ever had. After all that veg I needed something that wasn’t too heavy and this didn’t disappoint. The flavours of raspberry, ginger and lemon sang out individually and blended together in a very pleasing way.
I’ll definitely return here next time I’m in Kerry for the local food prepared with care and skill and served with a smile and occasional song.
My Kind of Food 