Sandwich Quest {Volume 3}

Some sandwiches I've eaten recently.

Hot Roast beef cob, Hambridges, Matlock

A traditional butcher's shop effort. Thinly sliced beef, overcooked to dessication then redeemed with a generous slop of dark, lustrous gravy. Satisfying and messy. Sturdier bread would be better, reducing the mess and turning less rapidly to mush. I'd have another though. £2.60.

Bread 5/10

Core filling 6/10

Secondary filling 3/5

Sauces/condiments 3/5

Value 3/5

Service 3/5

S-Factor 7/10

Total 30/50

Doner sandwich, Munich

German doner kebabs are ace. Even the cheapo ones are a far better proposition than their British counterparts. Better salad, better bread and better meat. We win on the chilli sauce front though, spice fiends that we are. About 3 euros. Maybe 4. Can't really remember.

Bread 7/10

Core filling 7/10

Secondary filling 3/5

Sauces/condiments 3/5

Value 4/5

Service 4/5

S-Factor 8/10

Total 36/50

Toasted cheese, Bold Street Coffee, Liverpool

An expertly crafted sandwich, I wrote about it here.

Bread 8/10

Core filling 6/10

Secondary filling 4/5

Sauces/condiments 3/5

Value 4/5

Service 4/5

S-Factor 8/10

Total 37/50

Roast ham and pea hummous, Smythson's Deli, Nottingham

Rubbish. There's nothing worse than somewhere that gets your hopes up then doesn't deliver. A ridiculously meagre effort for around four quid. Roast ham and pea hummous sounds good on paper, and the ingredients might have even been good,  but it's difficult to tell when they're present in such stingy quantities you can barely taste them.

And look at the accompanying crisps and salad. Limp and miniscule, a complete waste of time. If you're in the area there's a Subway next door.

Bread 6/10

Core filling 3/10

Secondary filling 2/5

Sauces/condiments 1/5

Value 1/5

Service 3/5

S-Factor 3/10

Total 19/50

Northern Food on tour: Munchin' in München

Firstly an apology: I know the title of this post is atrocious, but I couldn't resist it. Sorry.

Munich, in common with every other German city I've had the pleasure of visiting, is great. Sausages, beer, attractive parks and squares, a super-efficient transport system with a kiosk selling Jägermeister in every station, friendly locals, and generally pleasant weather. What more could you want from a weekend break?

I was lying about one of the above. The weather. Rarely have I seen so much rain. It chucked it down almost constantly from our arrival on Thursday afternoon to our departure on Sunday night. I'm not talking drizzle here, but genuine soaked through in minutes pissing rain. So a stag weekend of loafing around in biergarten swiftly became a stag weekend loafing around in bierhallen. Not a great deal of difference really, and the news pictures of major flooding in cities less than an hour away made us realise that the persistent damp was little more than a minor inconvenience to our weekend of boozing.

This was my fifth visit to Germany, and let's just say it wasn't the first to have a rather beery focus. As a consequence I haven't got the slightest clue about more refined dining in the country, but I can tell you a thing or two about cheap eats, booze and fast food. Before I waffle on about Munich for a bit, here are my top five tips for cheap eats in Germany:

1) Eat in pubs (or beer gardens, halls or cellars). Entirely stereotypical I know, but you can't beat a good sausage and sauerkraut-fest. The quality is generally high and the prices low.

2) Go Turkish. There are at least 2.5 million people of Turkish origin in Germany, meaning that Turkish is by far the most prevalent non-native cuisine. Turkish food is everywhere, and usually good.

3) If you've risen too late our your lodgings don't provide one, look out for bars or cafes specialising in breakfast. Many of them serve set breakfasts of some generosity. If you go for the works you could be looking at juice, coffee and a colossal basket full of ham, salami, cheeses, bread rolls, pastries, jam, fruit, honey, yoghurt, smoked salmon, rye bread and whatever the hell else they can shoehorn in there.

4) Drink beer on the go. There's no stigma attached to drinking beer anywhere and everywhere in Germany. On the tube, in the streets, at the swimming baths (I kid ye not). May as well get a round in then. Just remember there's probably no stigma attached to it as people tend to behave themselves. High spirits and good cheer are fine. Fighting and puking are not.

5) Of other foreign foodstuffs commonly found, south-east Asian is worth a look (I've had decent Thai and Vietnamese) as is African (Ethiopian seems quite popular). As for Indian, if my sole experience is anything to go by, don't do it. Wait until you get home.

So what of Munich? It generally holds true to the five tips above, though there are clearly some local differences. Beer and sausages are even more popular here than in northern Germany.

The whole Bavarian oompah bands, litres of beer and lederhosen thing isn't just tourist schtick, the locals really seem to love this stuff too. On the weekend that Bayern sealed the treble the city's traditional boozers were heaving, so we kicked things off in true style with bratwurst, sauerkraut (around 7 euros) and a few litres of finest. 

As an aside, don't expect Munich to be full of currywurst, that's more of a Berlin thing, and is certainly more popular in other northern cities than down south. This very closed stall in the Olympic park was the only evidence I saw of the infamous dish.

With your sausages, you'll be needing beer, served here by the half or full litre (6-8 euros for the full, known as ein mass). A litre seems like far too much at first, but you soon get into the swing of things. These were snapped in the Hofbrauhaus, tourist central for all things Bavarian, and home to probably my least favourite of the local beers we tried. My vote goes to Augustiner, whose classic pale lager (Helles) is a thing of crisp, clean beauty.

Munich sells itself as the beer capital of the world (amongst other claimants including Prague and Huddersfield), which may be fair if we're talking in terms of volumes of the stuff drunk, but is rubbish if you're into variety and innovation. There are six breweries in the city, all of whom have been brewing the same four beers (in accordance with the purity laws, the Reinheitsgebot) for the last thousand years, and who between them control the entire drinking market in the city. 

I may have some of the detail wrong there, but you get the gist of it. The ethos is very much 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', so don't come here expecting to drink third pints of super-hopped black IPA. Order up a litre of top quality lager and go with the flow. 

Beer snacks of a non-sausage variety are also available; I'd go for a platter of meats, cheeses and a few giant dough pretzels (around 9 euros a platter, 90 cents a pretzel). If you're lucky the meat platter will include something I can only describe as black pudding haslet. The pretzels are possibly the saltiest thing you'll ever eat, but don't worry you'll have a litre of beer at hand to refresh the palate.

On Friday night we dined at the also touristy but surprisingly good Ratskeller, a huge warren of a place under the Town Hall. This being the full blown traditional German meal of the trip, it had to be Schweinshaxe, or pork knuckle, an enormous great hunk of slow roasted pig, replete with tender meat and crackling (around 18 euros). 

Meat and gravy were splendid, separately served kraut cut the fat a little, but the potato dumplings were the most pointless food stuff ever. Why you'd take some nice mash-able potatoes and work them into something more suited to a round of golf I have no idea.

Fast food time! The döner kebabs in Germany are really quite nice. Honest! Usually served on thicker Turkish bread rather than pitta, and with actual shreds of meat rather than foot long strands of processed elephant leg, you could almost eat one sober. Almost. 3 or 4 euros a pop in Munich.

A pizza and pasta place fifty yards from our hotel proved to be a lifesaver, being near enough to obtain sustenance without getting wet again if you legged it. The quality was genuinely high for the ridiculously low prices. This mushroom stuffed calzone, with a proper chew and char to the dough, cost a mere 3 euros.

Sunday afternoon, almost time for home and the excess is starting to bite. Is there a cuisine better suited to soothing sore heads than Vietnamese? Salty broths, herbs, chilli heat; it's all pure tonic. This little place down the road from the Hauptbahnhof did us proud. Pots of jasmine tea all round.

Vietnamese spring rolls and a couple of salads to start. This shrimp salad was the pick of the bunch, bright and balanced.

Noodle soups to follow. Bun bo was absolutely unbeatable hangover fodder. Savoury broth with some depth, springy noodles, herbal notes. A platter of herbs wouldn't have gone amiss, but at less than 15 euros each for tea, noodles and a bunch of shared starters this was great.

That was Munich, a successful send off for Mr Farrar who weds in July. In summary, the historic beer places are well worth a visit. Go to the Hofbrauhaus once for the experience then head elsewhere. I liked the Augustiner places best. The pubs close early, after which time it's clubs and bars (mostly quite dodgy sports bars on the face of it). The area around Hauptbahnhof (central station) is where most of the cheap hotels are, and is where you'll find good fast food and ethnic eats. I've heard that the parks, squares and beer gardens are delightful, but can't verify this as it never stopped raining. If you suffer the same fate and all else fails you can always go drink Jägermeister on the tube. Prost!

Zeugma, Sheffield

Zeugma is a proper ocakbaşı, a Turkish grill house. It's a small, basic but welcoming restaurant where people come to feast on meat. There are other bits and pieces; salads, dips, stews and pide, but these are really just an overture to the thrill of the grill, which sits in pride of place in full view at the heart of the restaurant.

Our snacky things were an excellent precursor to the kebabs. A generous basket of fresh bread arrived with a dish of little salty olives and gherkin slices, all complimentary and sufficient enough to comprise a starter if you're not being greedy.

We were being greedy, so plates of halloumi and hummous were added to the mix. I can't quite put my finger on why halloumi is such a good thing, but it is. On paper chewy cheese conjures up thoughts of cheese strings or some other horrible, processed muck. In practice halloumi manages to be chewy yet delicious. This had a really more-ish salty sweet flavour to complement that satisfying but slightly strange texture, and worked a treat with the pickles.

Hummous was the best I've eaten in a while, a bit grainy but otherwise creamy and nutty and essential scooping and mopping goodness for the bread.

Iskender kebab was a dreamily calorific concoction of buttery bread smothered in tomato sauce, charred minced lamb kebab slices, smoky grilled peppers and tomatoes, and yoghurt as good as any I've had in a long time. Yoghurt so smooth, creamy, tart and fresh I'm seriously considering calling the restaurant to find out who their supplier is.

The Iskender was a winning combination, but a very rich one, so sharing something a little less full on made sense. Chicken shish was a more staid proposition but still a very accomplished plate of food. Standard Turkish plating of rice, bread, grilled veg and salad, but done well and with wonderful generosity. 

We finished with tea, Turkish for me and apple for A, which was served with a couple of cubes of Turkish delight, a nice touch to end the meal.

Service was swift but we weren't in the least bit rushed even though the place was full. £45 including service for all of the food and a couple of beers. Highly recommended.


9/10

146 London Road
Sheffield
S2 4LT

http://www.zeugmaiki.co.uk

Rowsha, Walkley, Sheffield

I haven't eaten out much over the last few weeks, at least not in the evenings in a restaurant with a bottle of wine sense. A few takeaways and a few quick lunches has been about it, but that's not to say I haven't eaten any good food.

A randomly chosen takeaway last weekend was a really pleasant surprise. Rowsha is a little Lebanese restaurant in Walkley with a very reasonably priced takeaway menu. All sorts of mezzes, hot and cold, can be had for less than four quid and kebab wraps are just three pounds each.

The fattoush was a match for those I ate in the Middle East last year, bright and fresh, the veggies tart with sumac and the bread properly crisped. An absolute bargain at three quid for a large container full.

Falafel and shish taouk (grilled chicken) wraps were both well-made, with more fresh salad and thin, lemony hummous. The chicken was particularly good, beautifully moist with lovely smokey barbecued edges. The only down-side was slightly thick, dry bread.

An unexpected delight, simple food cooked really well. I'd love to return to dine in the restaurant at some point.


8/10

288 South Road
Walkley
Sheffield
S6 3TE

Lokanta, Broomhill, Sheffield

You'll have to excuse me if this post is a little half-arsed, unnecessarily irritable, or just badly written. Please feel free to blame Blogger and the ancient browser on my work laptop, somehow the pair of them have conspired to lose the several hundred words of (allegedly) carefully crafted, thoughtful prose I've just finished writing about Lokanta.

So I'll have to start again. Lokanta, in Broomhill, is a rather smart Turkish restaurant. We ate there by accident, the persistent rain driving us in off the streets before we'd reached our originally intended destination.

Everything on a meze taster plate was proficient if uninspiring. We happily ate the lot but the only memorable thing about it was the excellent freshly baked bread we scooped it up with. One basket was never going to be enough and a second batch was readily provided (as it should be in any proper Turkish place).

Shish kebabs for mains, one lamb and one chicken. Both were made from high quality meat, accurately cooked with a good char from the heat of the grill and succulent insides, still pink for the lamb. A tomatoey chilli sauce, grilled pepper and buttery rice were successful foils for the meat, but the grilled tomato and potatoes weren't really worth the effort.

At just short of £50 for two courses and a single drink each (a large beer and a glass of passable white from the all-Turkish wine list) the bill seemed a little steep. The food was enjoyable but they're definitely charging a premium for the pleasant environment and slick service. That said there's nothing wrong with upgrading the kebab experience once in a while; - we did have a lovely evening.

7/10

478-480 Glossop Road
Broomhill
Sheffield
S10 2QA

http://www.lokanta.co.uk

Kebab week: Tikkas

And finally, to round off kebab week (belatedly, I should have called it kebab fortnight) I bring you tikkas. Apparently the word tikka means simply bits or pieces, so anything will do really. Get some meat, or perhaps even some cheese, marinade it, skewer it and grill it. The essence of a kebab, Indian style.

My recipe isn't agressively spiced as I like something fairly gentle with chicken. It's fragrant rather than fiery, with the flavour of ginger and garam masala to the fore. Chicken thighs are best for this as they're moister and tastier, although they can sometimes go a bit rubbery when you grill them the marinading should take care of that. As an alternative a bit of liver would also work well.

I served these with chapattis, home made raita and a spiced carrot and fennel salad.

This is enough to serve 2 people

For the chicken

400g (about 4) chicken thighs, each one cut into 3 or 4 pieces
large thumb ginger
3-4 cloves garlic
juice large lemon
1 tsp salt
100 ml thick natural yoghurt
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp hot curry powder

 For the carrot and fennel salad

1 head of fennel
2 carrots
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
sunflower oil and salt

1. Throw the chicken pieces into a bowl with the lemon juice and salt. Grate or crush the garlic and ginger and add them to the bowl. Give it a good mix then cover and put in the fridge to marinade for at least an hour, or up to 4.

2. After at least an hour throw in the other marinade ingredients with the chicken (the yoghurt, garam masala, curry powder and turmeric). Give it a good mix up then cover and put back in the fridge to marinade for at least an hour, but overnight will be just fine.

3. Remove the chicken from the fridge at least an hour before you want to cook it, and thread the pieces onto skewers.

4. Make the carrot and fennel salad by thinly slicing the fennel and grating the carrot into a bowl, then heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan and throw in the cumin seeds and mustard seeds. Leave them in the pan until they start to crackle and smell fragrant, then take them off the heat before they burn. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes then stir them through the carrot and fennel and a grind of salt to taste.

5. Heat up the grill and grill your kebabs until they're tender inside and a bit charred on the edges. It will probably take around 7 or 8 minutes in total.

6. Serve immediately with warmed chapattis or naan, the carrot and fennel salad and some home made of shop bought raita.

That's it for kebab week. As well as tikkas I've made koftas, falafel and satay. All delicious in their own way but my favourite has to be the kofta, you just can't beat lamb when it comes to kebabs. Over and out, I'm off for a doner...

Kebab week: Köfte

It's all very well talking about chicken and chickpeas, but I haven't done kebabs justice until there's some lamb involved. There are endless variations on the grilled, ground lamb theme. Every country and region from the Balkans to Central Asia has it's speciality.

I ended up making a bit of a hybrid, Turkish-style kebabs with Greek and Middle eastern accompaniments. The kebabs are closest to Köfte with a bit of Adana kebap thrown in for good measure.

The spicing is quite gentle with these; cumin, garlic and just a hint of chilli supporting the flavour of the meat rather than taking over. The parsley adds a bit of freshness and lightens things up a bit.

I served them plated up Turkish style on a bed of bread with salad, but also with tabbouleh, hummous and tzatziki. Some grilled onions and charred peppers would have been good too.

Makes 4 skewers, enough for a large meal for two

For the kebabs

1lb (450g) ground lamb
1 scant tsp salt
2 tsps ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped

For the tabbouleh

4 large handfuls flat leaf parsley
1 small clove garlic
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp cooked cous cous
salt and pepper
extra virgin olive oil

For the tzatziki

150ml thick yoghurt
quarter of a cucumber
1 clove garlic
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper

Salad, bread and hummous thinned with lemon juice to serve

1. Mix all of the kebab ingredients together in a large bowl, then form the mix around kebab skewers. Put them in the fridge to firm up for half an hour.

2. Make the tabbouleh by chopping the parsley and garlic finely then mixing it up with the lemon juice, zest and cous cous. Add salt, pepper and olive oil to taste.

3. Make the tzatziki by finely chopping the cucumber and garlic, then mixing it up with the yoghurt and lemon juice. If it's still a bit thick add a splash of water. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Grill the kebabs under a hot grill until a bit charred on the edges and just done on the inside. About four or five minutes on either side should do it.

6. Warm two pitta breads under the grill on top of the kebabs so they absorb some of the juice.

7. Prepare two plates with salad and tabbouleh, then sliced pitta bread, then the kebabs, then the tzatziki and hummous.

8. Eat immediately.

Kebab week: Falafel

It's debatable whether falafels can really be classified as a kebab at all. They're not made from meat and they're not grilled. Not a kebab you may say. On the other hand they're often eaten stuffed in a pitta bread with salad and sauces. Is that not a kebab?

Anyhow Wikipedia says they count, and so do I.

Why I've never made falafel before I really don't know. They're ridiculously easy and much nicer than shop bought versions. These were light, moist and really fresh tasting as opposed to the dry, heavy dull specimens you often find. I think the handful of peas really helped.

I don't have a deep fat fryer but a few minutes either side in a centimetre of oil in the frying pan worked fine. I ate them stuffed in pitta with yoghurt sauce, mango and chilli sauce, salad and pickles.

For the falafels, makes 12-14

1 tin chickpeas
2 cloves garlic
1 chilli
2 big handfuls parsley
lots of salt and pepper
handful of freshly shelled peas
1 dsp plain flour

To serve

Pitta bread
lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion
pickled gherkins and chillies
shop bought mango and chilli sauce
yoghurt sauce (greek yoghurt thinned with lemon juice)

1. Blitz all of the falafel ingredients in a food processor, then roll into little balls about 1 inch across.

2. Shallow fry them in a centimetre of hot oil for about 10 minutes, leave to form a good crust before turning otherwise they'll fall to bits. Deep frying them would probably be better if you've got the equipment.

3. Serve immediately in warm pitta bread with salad and sauce.

Kebab week: Chicken satay

This week on Northern Food I shall be celebrating one of humankind's greatest inventions. Not the wheel or the steam engine; not the internet, sliced bread or the Dyson vaccum cleaner; not even the flushing lavatory.

The pinnacle of civilisation is this: the kebab.

Two points of order: firstly I'm using a fairly loose definition of the word 'kebab' as propounded by the internet Oracle. Secondly there will absolutely, categorically not be any processed doner meat involved.

I'm kicking things off with a South-east Asian classic, a kebab usually eaten as a snack or more often, in Europe, as a starter. An appropriate starting point for kebab week.

Chicken satay, little nuggety bits of charred yet juicy chicken in a salty sweet marinade, dipped in a spicy peanut sauce. These are very delicious, and exceedingly more-ish.

I use chicken thigh meat which won't dry out so much as breast and is tastier anyway. I think chicken livers and hearts would also be good if you can get your hands on them. The recipe is probably inauthentic, but it's easy and tastes great so who cares.

This makes enough for about 6 skewers.

For the chicken

3 tbsp dark soy
1/2 tbsp jaggery (palm sugar)
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tbsp oil
salt
2 cloves garlic
1 small lump ginger (2-3cm)
1 tsp turmeric
2 chicken thighs (about 100 g each)

for the peanut sauce

1 1/2 tbsp crunchy peanut butter
1 1/2 tbsp shop bought tamarind sauce
1 tsp garlic ginger mush
1 tsp tsp chilli powder
water to loosen

1. Mash the garlic and ginger to a paste, set aside 1 tsp worth of it then mix the rest up in a bowl with all of the other marinade ingredients except for the chicken.

2. Using scissors, cut the chicken into small pieces about 2 cm across and throw into the marinade.

3. Mix up well and leave to marinade for at least 2 hours, ideally 12.

4. Mix up all of the peanut sauce ingredients in a bowl including the leftover garlic/ginger, then add water and keep mixing until you get a sauce. It should be runny enough to coat the back of a spoon with the excess running off, not sitting there in a big splodge.

5. When you're almost ready to eat thread the chicken onto kebab skewers and grill on the highest setting as close as possible to the heat (or better still, barbecue) until done. They should only take a couple of minutes.

6. Serve immediately with the peanut sauce and cold beer.

Coming soon - stay tuned for falafel. 

Northern Food on tour: Festival food at Latitude

Last year I talked about how much festival food has improved since the dark days of the tinned burger. You'd think with the ongoing obsession with street food that this steady improvement would continue, what with all the dedicated folk selling interesting food from vans and stalls around the country. So how did I get on at Latitude?

Not bad, but could do better I reckon. Maybe I chose unwisely but I think (the much smaller) Standon Calling just edged it. From best to worst, here's what to look out for and what to avoid should you be braving the mud before the summer is out.

Disclaimer: significant consumption of alcohol may have rendered everything in this post misguided, incorrect or at least completely meaningless.

Lamb Kofta, from Kebabylon (£6.50-ish)

I know it doesn't look great, but when did a badly packed kebab ever look great? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and this passed the test. A generously proportioned succulent kofta, interesting salad, bread that wasn't stale and a generous splodge of hummous. Which wasn't really hummous at all, more mashed up chickpeas. No matter, yoghurt sauce, hot sauce, job done.

Malay style lamb and potato curry on noodles, generic Thai and Chinese food stall (£7)

I doubt this was the best quality food I ate all weekend, but it bloody well hit the spot. Probably because there was about 2000 calories in it. A massive meaty carb load backed up with considerable hits of sugar, salt, spice and grease. All things nice effectively.

The lamb was genuinely very tender and quite delicious though, I'm sure of that. A little bit rendang-esque.

Large chilli beef burrito, Flaming Cactus (£7.50)

All aboard the burrito bus. You can't miss it, it's big and silver. I'm thinking a surfeit of carbohydrate may have had something to do with my fondness for this one too. Having said that it wasn't a tedious chore like eating these things often is, the salsa had a zip to it and it wasn't overloaded with rice at the expense of more interesting fillings. Rightly so too at £7.50 a pop.

Margherita pizza, wood-fired pizza place (£6)

This was just a bit too boring. Good texture and nice char to the crust but little flavour in either the mozzarella or the tomato sauce. Little flavour in the chilli oil I administered liberally to liven it up either. Or the basil leaves for that matter.

Footlong dog, Footlong Hot Dog stall (£4)

A bouncy, dense meaty sausage that didn't taste cheap was let down by very stale bread. Shame. Why the hell I put mayo on it I'm not really sure. Most likely a case of 'sauce is free therefore make the best use of it possible'.

Chicken and seafood paella, a Spanish place (£6.50)

The paella of shame. Actually don't call it a paella, it doesn't deserve it. At last year's festival I got real paella, made with meat on the bone and paella rice. This one didn't involve either of those things. Think overcooked savoury rice with dried up bits of chicken breast and added frozen mixed seafood bits. Crap. Sadly I can't remember the name of the stall selling it.

Northern Food on tour: Brno, Czech Republic

Following on from last year's visit to Zadar, my mate Sav's penchant for weekends in random Eastern European budget flight destinations continues. This year the text arrived: Fancy going to Brno in March? Where's that then? Czech Republic. Yeah why not, I like Prague.

And so to Brno. In case you're wondering, it's the historic capital city of Moravia, the Eastern half of the Czech Republic (Prague is in Bohemia to the West). It's hardly on the mainstream tourist trail, but easily could be, as it's really rather lovely. There's plenty of solid central European architecture, a fine castle surrounded by parkland atop a hill, a soaring cathedral and lots of squares to hang about in.

The weather was unseasonably warm and the whole place had a stately, relaxed atmosphere. Busy but with people rather than traffic (probably thanks in part to the 13 tram lines in a city of 400,000 people. Imagine that citizens of Leeds!), it was a pleasure to stroll the streets. It's not exactly nightlife central, but there are loads of good pubs and bars and the locals were friendly and welcoming. Beware the lack of a smoking ban though, stinky clothes are inevitable.

That's my customary travelogue done and dusted, so what of the food? Well that was a pleasant surprise too. Sturdy and rib-sticking as expected, but far higher in quality than I experienced in Prague a few years back. To be fair to Prague, I think we were poorly advised and ended up dining on the most meagre budget possible.

Even more surprising was that both of the pubs we ate in were chains, part of the Pilsner Urquell and Staropramen empires, both themselves part of brewing multinationals. Despite this the food was pretty good, and would easily have put the depressing crap served in most UK chain pubs to shame. I've reviewed each of them in turn below.

The beer was as I expected, good but unremarkable. Good quality lager, cheap and served well is the norm. We paid from 80p up to around £1.40 for a pint.

I did try a couple of more unusual brews, a dark beer in Pivnice pegas and an unfiltered Staropramen in another pub. Both were enjoyable but nothing to shout about.

We had some cheap street food and late night eats too, and even they weren't half bad. A 4am kebab was made from slices of proper pork, far superior to the low grade elephant's leg we're accustomed to in Britain (or at least I think it was, it was 4am so my 'quality radar' may have been off kilter). Anyhow, even if it was crap I did have a pint of lager with it. In a kebab shop, at 4am, in a glass. I love you Czech Republic.

Last but certainly not least there was Smažený sýr, a Czech dish I certainly do know the name of. It means fried cheese, which is what it is. Get a thick slice of cheese, crumb it, deep fry it, eat it in a sandwich. Filthy but delicious.

Would I recommend a visit to Brno? Yes, definitely. Flights from Luton or Stansted. Or if money and time are no object why not take the train via Brussels, Cologne and Prague? Much more fun.

Here are those reviews.

Stopkova plzeňská pivnice

Friday night and we were ravenous. This pivnice (beerhouse) looked like a good option. Very busy, huge, wood floors, good looking plates of food arriving at tables. We'd not eaten since a late lunchtime sandwich at the airport and it was well after nine by the time we arrived here. That in combination with an assumption that 'snacks' meant something not very big caused us to order an obscene quantity of food.

First up were a bowl of soup and two plates of those 'snacks', described as Czech tapas to accompany beer. I can't remember the Czech names for most of this stuff, so I'll stick to descriptions. This was a pan full of pork scratchings, croutons, spring onions and chilli served with half a loaf of bread and a tub of lard. Yes, an actual tub of lard. As I said, sturdy stuff but really quite delicious. The onions and chilli helped to cut through the fat and made the whole thing strangely reminiscent of salt and pepper ribs from the Chinese takeaway. In a good way.

I can verify that lard, chilli and pork scratching sandwiches are indeed a very good accompaniment to cold beer. In the background here you can see the soup; a bowl of chicken broth, also very good and bulked up with both pasta and potatoes.

As I was busying myself with lard butties and Sav was ploughing through what was in essence a massive bowl of chicken stew, the second 'snack' arrived. Three large potato rostis enriched with little nuggets of pork neck, garlicky mayo to dip them in, and some salad for good measure. They were a touch greasy but were good and crunchy and packed with flavour.

Onto the mains. Yes mains. Oops. We'd both chosen the Pilsen goulash. A generous portion of beautifully tender beef (possibly shin?) in a dark glossy, fairly spicy sauce. This was served with knedlicky, the ubiquitous Czech dumplings and some pointless lentil cake type things that were the only bad thing we ate all evening. I can't say I love knedlicky, but they do their job well. That is, to provide stodge and soak up rich, fatty sauces. Chinese food came to mind for the second time that evening, as the dumpling texture is not dissimilar (if a bit heavier) to baozi, the Northern Chinese steamed dough buns.

So yes, we could barely move after that lot, but we enjoyed it. Three pints in there was no more room for beer so we finished things off with large shots of slivovice, evil but strangely delicious damson brandy. Including a tip we paid around £28 for the lot: soup, starters, mains, three (or it might have been four) pints apiece and a round of shots. Fantastic value, good food, decent service and a lively (and not too smoky by Czech standards) atmosphere.

7/10

stopkovaplzenskapivnice.cz

Potrefená Husa

Saturday night brought us here, much more modern and glossy in style, this seemed to be where the beautiful people of Brno came to hang out. The food and drink were pretty much along the same lines though, we went down the beer snacks route again only this time waiting to see how enormous the snacks were before ordering anything else.

A jar of cheese marinated in herbs (mostly thyme) and oil. What's not to like? This was delicious scooped on to bread from a basket containing several varieties including some good rye. There were four different cheeses in the jar, including a particularly nice creamy blue.

To accompany our cheese, a spicy sausage with beans and fried onions. Another success this, the sausage was like a peppery chipolata and with the beans made another great beer snack.

We were still a bit peckish after that, but not quite to 'colossal beef stew with a kilo of boiled dough levels' so ordered the conveniently positioned beef goulash soup instead. Less beef, no dumplings, same taste. Sadly it was terribly oversalted rendering no other flavours discernable and resulting in us necking beer at a rapid rate. Disappointing as the snacks had been excellent.

Service here was friendly if a little slow, and the ventilation was also fairly good so it wasn't too smoky. The bill was around £20 for all the food, three pints each and another bracing round of slivovices.

6/10

http://www.staropramen.cz/husa/brno-zelny-trh/denni-menu