La Tasca, Meadowhall, Sheffield

It's been a while since I've had a rant on here. I didn't go to La Tasca specifically with a whinge in mind, really I didn't. I went because I was hungry and it was convenient and I'd heard rumours of a revamped menu and attempts at doing things properly and I even got invited to a jamon carving shindig there a while back with the promise of genuine iberico de bellota.

So I went to La Tasca feeling vaguely optimistic that it would have morphed into one of those satisfactory-never-going-to-be-amazing-but-will-do-the-job-once-in-a-while sort of chains, instead of just being completely shit. Well I'm really glad I didn't go to the freebie ham carving night, because it's never much fun moaning about free stuff. If this meal was a fair representation of the place, it's still very much in the completely shit camp.

In photographic order rather than level of crapness I bring you: patatas bravas. Limp, mealy spuds in a sauce tasting exactly like tinned tomatoes with stale smoked paprika stirred through without the benefit of being cooked afterwards. The spanish omelette I couldn't fault as I like eating wodges of the supermarket bought ones (Lidl or Mercadona will do nicely) on my holidays and this was the same as those.

Croquettes were manchego and spinach, not a combo I've ever encountered before (what's wrong with ham or chicken?) but they were at least crisp and greaseless. It was just a shame they tasted of absolutely nothing.

We inadvertently overloaded ourselves with more of the same pappy potatoes by ordering a lamb and potato stew and a portion of octopus with potatoes. Given the headline billing you could reasonably expect lamb and octopus to have been the main ingredient in each dish though. Sadly not.

The lamb amounted to four gristly bits of disappointment in a weak broth with lots and lots of potatoes. The bread on the side was that clever sort of bread that looks like good bread until you eat it and realise it's slightlier crustier aerated Kingsmill in disguise (see also: speciality breads from Asda).

The octopus was predictably chewy (except for the occasional random tender bit) and bland, but at least it came with lots and lots of potatoes.

Last and pretty much equally least; the house green salad. A speciality of Navarra, the Spanish region famed for bull-running and manky mixed leaves in a cheap balsamic dressing.

I'd be a lot more forgiving of the general awfulness of the food if we'd had really great service and it was dirt cheap, but neither was the case. The service approach seemed to be grab whoever's nearest and try your luck. The beer I ordered never arrived and it took ages to get someone to fetch the bill. The dubious positive was the literally less than five minutes it took for all the food to arrive. Some sort of turbo microwave system?

The icing on the cake is that La Tasca is actually quite pricey. We paid about £30 for this load of rubbish. That might not be an expensive meal for two, but it's actually quite a bit more than you'd pay for a comparable meal at a proper tapas place.

In spirit of investigation I've checked the menus for a couple of places I like to make sure I'm not talking bollocks here, and an equivalent six dishes at either the splendid Bar 44 or the excellent Salt House Tapas would cost you slightly less, and would be about fifty times more appetising.

Awful in every way. Don't give them your money.


3/10

http://www.latasca.com/ Sadly everywhere.

Northern Food on tour: Tapas in Malaga

Ever since a trip to Madrid a few years back I've been obsessed with tapas. Tapas done properly that is, a succession of snacks and small plates eaten with drinks, often standing at the bar or perched on stools in a series of different bars. Not tapas in the classic British style, rocking up at La Tasca in a large group, ordering the selection menu and sitting down to get stuck in for a couple of hours. That's a party finger buffet with more seats, not tapas.

Doing it properly is just so much fun. It's such a civilised and convivial way to spend an evening, far more so than the traditional Anglo-Saxon approach to getting pissed. Why not dine with your drinks throughout the evening, having a nibble of something quality here and there, as opposed to the 'segregated stomach lining dinner, neck a load of pints, booze soaking late night kebab' method.

To be fair to us Brits we've come along way in recent years, the concept of dining while drinking is hardly an alien one, but we've a long way to go to match the Spaniards.

On the impression of one half day visit, curtailed in the evening by the need to rise at four the following morning for a stupidly early flight (thanks, as ever, go to Ryanair), Malaga is a fine tapas city. I don't think you'll get the culinary creativity of the Basques or the sheer variety and value on offer in Madrid, but you will be fed very well for a fair price, and you will have a grand time.

I didn't make note of the names and locations of the places we went to, but it's not really necessary. Malaga has a fairly extensive pedestrianised central area that throngs with people in the evening. Just follow the crowds and you can't go far wrong. The atmosphere on the Friday night we were there was wonderful, festive and friendly without the slightest hint of unpleasantness.

Hotspots are around Calle Marquis de Larios (of gin fame, possibly), Calle Granada, Calle Alamos and on all the little alleyways inbetween.

Here are some of the things we ate. I should mention that they do sell green foods as well (you know, vegetables and stuff), it just seems that we forgot to order any on this occasion.

Mini sandwiches that were far more interesting than they look. Two each of asparagus mayo and jamon iberico with some sort of rich mousse. I'm sure it was called mousse de ca, but this doesn't seem to mean anything in translation? It was very smooth and rich, but not livery. Both flavours were delicious, and they cost 1.20 euros for two.

Bacalao (salt cod) blinis. I absolutely adore salt cod in anything, especially anything deep-fried. These weren't deep-fried, but were delicious anyway. The cod had been given a good soaking so it wasn't overly salty and was beautifully textured (imagine good, firm smoked salmon). 1.20 euros each.

Patatas bravas. Got to get the carbs in right? The spuds were expertly fried and the sauce had a good kick to it, though I prefer the tomatoey version to the creamy one here. This was a bit pricey as the place was a restaurant rather than a bar;- 5.80 euros for the racion.

Pinchos! One of pork loin with brie and sweet onion, the other of chorizo with fried quail's egg and roasted pepper. These were probably the best thing we ate, the star being the lovely tender pork loin. 2 euros each.

This was a bit of an accident. We ordered a half racion of what we thought would be shallow fried mushrooms (as in olive oil, garlic, herbs, that sort of thing) and what arrived was a whole racion, meaning a bloody big plateful, of deep fried mushrooms. It turned out that this bar was a freideria, basically a frying bar, where absolutely everything, and I mean everything, was doused in batter and deep-fried.

Not the most exciting plate of food, but I really couldn't fault the outstanding frying skills. To coat a load of sliced mushrooms in a thin, light batter and fry them until perfectly crisp and completely greaseless is no mean feat. Great beer snacks these. 4.80 euros for a full racion, and not much more for the seafood plates.

There didn't seem to be much in the way of freebies on offer in Malaga, but we didn't have the chance to dig very deeply so some of the more hidden away places may come up trumps. Free tapas were limited to crisps and olives where we got anything at all. At the bar pictured above the olives were gratis and the manchego tapa was 2.50 euros.

Drinks are consistently cheap by UK standards, a small beer costing around 1 to 1.50 euros and a glass of wine usually just under 2. Sherry of any variety is always a good bet, being extraordinarily good value in these parts (generally a few cents cheaper than other wine rather than a quid or two more). 

All in all you can return to your bed fully sated and suitably merry for twenty quid. Next time you visit the Costa del Sol remember that there's much more to Malaga than the airport.

Northern Food on tour: Self-catering in Spain again

I wouldn't normally choose to holiday twice in the same place in a matter of months, but thanks to the kindness and generosity of others we found ourselves heading off to Malaga once more for a repeat of last September's festivities.

I'm exceedingly grateful that we did because we had just as much fun this time around, but with the added bonus of a) not having all of our documents and stuff stolen, and b) my making a marriage proposal (accepted, thankfully). Good times.

On the eating and drinking front it was largely another self-catering affair, save for a pizza lunch in Nerja, a very average, touristy menu del dia in Granada, and a mini tapas crawl around Malaga (of which more later). We ate the same sort of thing as last time;- plenty of fresh fruit and salads to balance out the inevitable ham, bread and booze.

I'll not bore you with all the details, but here are a few things that were new discoveries or particularly good in spring rather than autumn.

The seasonal goods were all a month or two ahead of Britain, asparagus and strawberries being in particularly fine nick. We bought both in the supermarket, but later spotted strawberries growing locally and being sold at just three euros for an enormous box full.

As an aside it's interesting to note the lack of variety in the Spanish supermarkets, or at least what I perceived to be so. The number of fresh produce lines must be barely a quarter of what you'd find in the average British supermarket, but things are evidently much more seasonal. Asparagus and strawberries were in abundance in April, but were nowhere to be seen in September. Do we really need to be eating such things year round, expensive and air-freighted from Peru, or should we do as the Spanish seem to and gorge on them for pennies, but only when the right time arrives? On the other hand the lack of variety is definitely just that where some things are concerned. Good luck trying to get fresh herbs in a Spanish supermarket.

What is always readily available, and in wondrous, inexplicable variety in even the crappiest stores, is seafood. Especially shellfish. Bigging up Spain for eating seasonally and locally falls down completely when it comes to seafood, as they'll import the stuff from anywhere on the planet so long as it's good.

A bag of plump raw prawns were outstanding dunked in pungent alioli after flash-frying in olive oil with a good grind of salt and pepper. Beautifully sweet and perky, they were even good enough to make me eat a few Chinese-style;- sucking the juice from the heads. The cost of these little beauties? Seven euros something a kilo, which would be plenty for about six people.

My final and most exciting new discovery, and the one most fittingly Spanish given its use of delicious Andalusian booze, is Pedro Ximenez sherry as dessert ingredient. This is hardly a new idea, but the first time I'd got round to trying it.

Pedro Ximenez, or PX as it's commonly known, is the sweetest of all the sherry wines. It's thick, almost treacly with a complex, raisiny flavour. First attempt was PX poured straight over vanilla ice cream. Very good, but there was better to come.

A few recalcitrant plums were the only rubbish fruit we bought, with dry mealy flesh making it a waste of time eating them raw. Cooking a plum often works wonders though, so I quartered them and baked them slowly (they were in a medium oven for over an hour) with a generous pour of the PX. The result, served with more of the same ice cream, was divine. Tender fruit oozing syrupy, umber juice that was rich in dark, tannic flavour. Writing this is making me crave it now. If you see a strange man in Tesco late at night buying sherry, fruit and ice cream that'll probably be me.

This time around we did a little bit more sightseeing, visiting Granada and Malaga. The former really needs no introduction, the Alhambra is one major destination that absolutely lives up to its billing. It's stunning, just go.

Malaga on the other hand is a little hard done by, it doesn't always get the best press but is really rather lovely, especially on a Friday evening when what seems like the entire population is out on the streets enjoying themselves: talking, strolling and eating and drinking rather well. I'm going to write about that tomorrow.

Northern Food on tour: Self-catering in Spain

My love for all things Spanish was put to the test at the start of last week's holiday. We'd planned a very relaxing week; simple food, sunshine and plenty to read by the pool.

So what we really, really wanted to happen, an hour or so after the plane landed, was for our hire car to be broken into, most of my useful possessions stolen, and then to have lots of fun driving a left hand drive for the first time, around a foreign city on a busy Friday afternoon, racking up the data charges using my phone as an impromptu satnav, attempting to locate a police station and the British consulate.

After two further trips to Malaga, to collect police reports and an emergency passport, some serious relaxation was due. We barely left the villa and didn't eat out at all save for a couple of tapas in a bar outside the consulate and burger and chips at a beach side cafe on the coast.

Moaning aside, sometimes it's nice to self cater on holiday. Sat on our terrace in splendid isolation with nothing and no-one else to worry about was marvellous. Here's my quick guide to eating in Spain.

Drinks

We were on holiday, so let's start with the booze. There has to be sherry. An all rounder that will match virtually any savoury food is a good place to start, I'd go for either a fino or a manzanilla. We drank a bottle of La Guita manzanilla that was happy alongside anything and everything: olives, ham, peppers, clams, chorizo or just a bowl of crisps.

I'm no wine expert but everything else vinous we drank was very good. There was white rioja and red, Albarino, and a couple of bottles of cava at less than three euros a bottle that were better than bottles of champagne I've had costing thirty quid.

Onto the beer, I've no idea whether Spain has a craft beer movement or anything comparable, but I had no intention of finding out. What I want under a blazing sun is icy cold, crisp lager in a glass bottle. Of the major Spanish brands I'd recommend Mahou (the five stars variety in the red bottle).

Finally Spanish cider is worth a shout. A light, refreshing bottle of it from Asturias in Northern Spain is just the job if a cold beer doesn't tickle your fancy.

Snacks

Buy anything salty, pickled, fishy or piggy and serve with sherry and beer as per above. You really cannot go wrong with this formula.

On the ham front I bought 100 grams of iberico de bellota which was enough to last the whole week. Expect to pay over ten euros for 100g of the acorn-fed ham (that's the de bellota stuff, mine was about 11.50) but you can get decent stuff for less than half that price, around 6 or 7 euros for 'de recebo' that's partially acorn fed or 4 or 5 for good quality grain fed, known as 'de cebo'.

Olives here are splendid, I'm not sure there are any finer olives than those grown in Spain (maybe Greece or Italy?). My preference is for fat, meaty gordal olives in brine or perhaps stuffed with anchovies or chilli and citrus. A three euro pot of gordal olives lasted the week with ease.

On the fishy snack front I just had a few boquerones on this trip, plump anchovies marinated in vinegar. They're readily available and also great value. I didn't have any this time round but it's also worth seeking out the dried fish products, mojama (air dried tuna) being the obvious example, though I'm not sure whether it's sustainable or otherwise.

Other than that who doesn't love ploughing through one of those unfeasibly large bags of ready salted crisps so beloved of our continental cousins?

Meat

Spain produces excellent beef, lamb, and of course pork. Weirdly on this trip lamb was conspicuous by its complete absence from anywhere we looked for it. If anyone could shed any light on this mystery I'd love to know why there wasn't any lamb?

Good thick steaks of a stature your rarely see in UK supermarkets are readily available, and in my experience are generally better hung and of higher quality than our supermarket versions. Look for chuleton de buey, basically a beef chop - sirloin often with the bone in. You'll be wanting to slap one of those on the barbecue.

While we're on the subject, a barbecue every night is the way to go in this climate. It's so dry that lighting them is often possible with a single match, far easier than the stiff breeze and damp drizzle British efforts.

Pork-wise if you want to pay extra you can get iberico pork, which is great though not as exciting as it is when cured into hammy things. Fillets (filete de cerdo) have plenty of flavour and make fantastic kebabs. Some of the cheap and nasty pork products are utterly vile though, so I wouldn't mine the bottom end of the market. I inadvertently tried some budget black pudding (morcilla) that was horrid. Stick to the quality stuff and morcilla and chorizo make lovely tapas fried off alone or with a splash of wine.

Vegetables

I'm stating the obvious here, but you really can't go wrong if you stick to the Mediterranean stuff. The peppers, tomatoes and aubergines are all excellent. A dish of veggies baked with herbs, sort of a ratatouille, finished under the grill with a cheesy topping and scooped up with crusty bread, was one of the best meals of the holiday.

Salad vegetables are also very good, I do like a continental schnozzcumber (the little knobbly cukes) and there's a great variety of lettuces and leafy things.

For snacks and starters of a healthier persuasion a bag of little peppers for frying is a good choice, they'll be labelled 'semipicante' which is nonsense in practice. Most of them won't be spicy, the odd one might be.

Last but not least my new favourite way with corn is to barbecue a fat ear until it's just starting to char, then smother it in butter and smoked paprika.

Seafood

The range of seafood that's routinely on sale in Spain is nothing short of astounding. I counted about twenty varieties of shellfish in one large supermarket, at least half of which I'd never even seen before, and that's before you even get started on the crustacea, fish and squidy type things.

We bought clams (almejas) which make a fantastic tapas dish steamed with a glass of sherry and sprinkled with parsley. I also completely ruined an octopus on the barbecue (paprika flavoured rubber bands if you must know) but done properly, Galician style, they're bloody lovely. Look for pulpo a Gallega or pulpo a feira on tapas menus. What you'll get are tender slices of the stuff doused in sea salt, paprika and olive oil.

Fruit

One word: melons. Spanish melons are great. Ripe, sweet and very juicy. An enormous watermelon lasted us the whole week and we still had to chuck half of it away. Nectarines, peaches, plums, greengages and citrus fruits of any type are all marvellous too.

Baked goods

I don't think they're quite as good as the French, but they're still fine bakers in Spain. We ate crusty bread, open textured baguette style stuff and denser pan rustico, the champion sauce mopper. There was also a slightly sweet loaf that we ended up with by accident that reminded me of a French loaf that I think is called gache.

What else?

At breakfast time in Europe there must and shall be Nutella. I know it's just chocolate flavoured sugary oil but it's bloody delicious. Good jam and creamy butter is also a must.

Onwards to lunchtime and I'll confess to a fondness for vacuum packed, pre-cooked tortilla. Warm them up in the oven then serve in wedges with a splash of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. They're really quite nice, and featured in our lunches for most of the week.

We didn't eat a lot of cheese and I've not had a lot of experience with those from Spain. I know they make good cheese, I'm just not sure I've eaten the best of it other than some decent Manchego and Cabrales, a pretty full-on blue that's made from cow's milk blended with sheep or goat's.

Review of the year

I love lists. Give me a Top Ten of Everything book and I'll be happily occupied for hours, or possibly even days. As I've reached the end of almost a full year's blogging I'm going to indulge myself with a review of the year starting off with a list of the best and worst meals I've eaten out, the best thing I've cooked and whatever other miscellaneous categories I happen to think of.

Firstly and in no particular order here's the list. What follows is a rambling and unwieldy commentary on the winners, those who came close and anything else I may choose to waffle on about. You may or more likely may not wish to read it.

Leaving aside the merits of my prose please do support the restaurants, cafés and pubs listed. They are all independents or part of very small chains, all of them are very good at what they do, and all of them deserve continued success in 2012.

The winners (and loser)

• Best meal of the year: Hawksmoor, London

• Coffee shop of the year: Laynes Espresso, Leeds

• Lunch spot of the year: Sunshine Bakery, Leeds

• Best Fish and chips eaten in 2011: The Chippie, Hawes

• Indian meal of the year: The Wee Curry Shop, Glasgow

• Chinese meal of the year: Red Chilli, Leeds and Hunan, Manchester

• Other Asian meal of the year: Thai Aroy Dee, Leeds

• Breakfast of the year: Hawksmoor, London

• Pub meal of the year: The Mark Addy, Salford

• Spanish meal of the year: José, London

• Pub of the year: The Marble Arch, Manchester 

• Holiday meal of the year: Fortuna, Jerusalem, Israel

• Worst meal of the year: The Crown, Rochester

• Best thing I've cooked this year: Damson crumble 

Meal of the year

Nothing else quite came close to the decadence and deliciousness of the breakfast at Hawksmoor. I'd never have guessed the best meal I'd eat all year would be breakfast, but what a breakfast. All the classic components were there, quality ingredients perfectly cooked. Add to that an introduction to the joys of bone marrow, plus two dishes illustrating how anything can be improved with the addition of meat, in the guise of short-rib bubble and squeak and trotter baked beans. I was worried the whole would overwhelm, but it didn't. It was amazing.

Add to that excellent service and a complimentary doughnut that was the best I've ever eaten and I think we have a worthy champion.

Coffee Shop of the year

I only started drinking coffee again in 2011 after a gap of five years or so, so I'm not an aficionado by any stretch of the imagination. I'm hardly a lone voice shouting about Laynes Espresso though, plenty of others who probably know a lot more than me about coffee think it's great. The coffee is fantastic, the baked goods are excellent, service is always efficient and friendly, and apparently the tea is wonderful too though I've yet to try it.

Lunch spot of the year

I've never even been to the Sunshine Bakery. It's in Chapel Allerton and I rarely go there. Just about everything I've bought from them has been at The Source in Leeds market. For a few months earlier in the year they were regular fixtures in the market on a Thursday or Friday. Alas, this is no longer the case. Please come back. Pretty please.

Their sausage rolls and sandwiches and massive buns (read cupcakes) are all lovely. I've not had better in Leeds. They also run a supper club at the Chapel Allerton base, which I'd love to go to in 2012. I just need a date. Form a queue ladies, you might get to see me spill gravy down my front.

Fish and Chips of the year

I'm not sure whether I've eaten more fish and chips in 2011 than usual, or whether writing it down has just made me realise how often I crave the classics. Whichever it is, I've eaten a lot of fish and chips.

What I've also realised is that enjoying fish and chips is, perhaps more than any other food, about the time and the place as much as what you're actually eating. The food quality has to be there for starters, but the location, company, weather and time of year can all conspire to elevate it to the sublime.

It is for these reasons that I enjoyed the best portion of fish and chips all year back in February, at the Chippie in Hawes. Every component of the food was great, a huge fillet of fish in crisp, dry batter, fried to order in beef dripping. Lovely chips and peas. Strong tea. And the occasion. An icy cold lunchtime, well below freezing, the stark beauty of the Dales in winter, a moderate hangover, a group of mates entering the warm fug of the café, taking a seat with a scalding brew and talking nonsense as we waited in anticipation of being fed. As I said, sublime.

Second most memorable of the year, for completely different reasons, was my visit to Stein's in Padstow. I was very happy that the food didn't disappoint and I ate it in a classic fish and chip environment. A lovely summer evening, warm but not hot, sat alone leaning against a bollard aside the working harbour, gazing out across the estuary. A can of fizzy pop to accompany. Splendid.

Honourable mentions also go to Fish& in Leeds and Frankie's Fish Bar in Manchester for serving very good fish and chips if not on such memorable occasions.

Indian meal of the year

As is usual I ate a lot of Indian food over the course of the year, but very little of it was particularly impressive. Strangely I haven't been to most of my stock 'good' curry houses this year, with no visits to either Akbar's or Mumtaz, and visits to Yorkshire's two highly regarded vegetarian Indian restaurants, Prashad and Hansa's will have to wait for another year.

As a consequence neither of 2011's best Indian meals were eaten in Northern England. Best of the lot was this visit to the Wee Curry Shop in Glasgow which served to remind me that Indian vegetarian food is the best vegetarian food in the world. I really want to go to Prashad and Hansa's.

Also very good was a trip to Delhi Grill in London, with their goat handi being the best meat curry I ate all year.

And finally an honourable mention for Azram's Sheesh Mahal, the other of my stock 'good' curry houses that I did visit a couple of times. I didn't blog the second trip but we ordered some of the more unusual menu items and were pleasantly surprised. Consistently worth a visit, I've been going there for over thirteen years now.

Chinese meal of the year

I was going to give this to my most recent meal at Red Chilli, but that seemed a little unfair on Hunan. I didn't take any photos of that meal and it was the second ever post on the blog, so all I can remember is what I actually wrote about it at the time. Lamb hotpot and green chilli stir-fried pork sound like wonderful dishes though, so let's assume the rating of nine was fair and they were.

As for Red Chilli, it can be a little inconsistent particularly at the Leeds branch, but when it's on form as it was on this visit in October it rocks. Sichuan spicy salty numbing deliciousness.

Middle Kingdom, BBQ Handmade Noodles King and Zen Delight were also all very good.

Other Asian meal of the year

Thai Aroy Dee has been a revelation. I've been there three times now, and I've been increasingly impressed with each visit. I wrote up the first two visits here and here, but went again the other day and had the best meal yet. To hammer home the point that it's really, really good here's a quick review of my third meal there.

The first thing to note is that they've translated the Thai menu into English. It's still separate from the regular menu but is now bilingual and titled 'Thai Street Food menu'. We shared four dishes between two of us. Shrimp paste fried rice with all the trimmings was like the fried rice of my dreams. The trimmings comprised cashew nuts, sliced omelette, little chewy bits of what I think were pork and pork fat in a sweet soy sauce, dried shrimp, savagely hot birds-eye chillies and some other stuff I can't remember. All mixed up together it was a deeply savoury, fiercely hot, intensely satisfying melange of textures and tastes. Brilliant.

Northeastern spicy beef salad was actually the least spicy dish of the meal, but beautifully seasoned. Mint, lime and shallots were to the fore, and the beef was full of flavour and very tender.

Rice topped with spicy basil and pork stir-fry brought sweet anise notes of basil with lovely savoury little nuggets of meat.

The final dish was the most adventurous of the lot. Raw prawns dressed in lime, fish sauce, chilli and garlic dressing. I'll admit to being slightly apprehensive about this one, having never eaten prawns completely raw before. It was simple but delicious, being little more than prawns doused in industrial quantities of the advertised ingredients, particularly garlic which was present in half-clove sized chunks. Sounds strange but it worked.

Go to Thai Aroy Dee. Please. If this isn't the best Thai food in Leeds by a country mile I'll eat my hat. With a side order of raw prawns in fish sauce-lime-chilli-garlic dressing.

Other standouts were Korean at Seoul Kimchi and Japanese at Fuji Hiro.

Breakfast of the year

See meal of the year.

Given the overall winner is a special occasion breakfast, designed to impress and not to be eaten every day it seems a little unfair to compare it with the other contenders. Those that serve breakfasts that are cheap and filling, but that still do so in some style. Honourable mentions therefore go to the Koffee Pot in Manchester and to the Greedy Pig in Leeds. Excellent work people, you'd have both been victorious had I not visited Hawksmoor.

Pub meal of the year

I didn't think I'd eaten in many pubs this year until I started checking back through the blog to write this. As it turns out I've eaten in sixteen of them, and most were average at best. Where my pub meals differed from a lot of my dining out is that they were usually unplanned. If you're having a couple of beers with friends, if you're exploring a strange town or for a whole host of other reasons a pub remains the easiest and most obvious choice for a quick meal in this country.

The trouble is unless you've planned ahead and sought out a good one, the majority are mediocre or worse. Standards have certainly improved in the UK, but we're still a long way from the day when you can walk into any old pub and expect a good meal.

The Mark Addy was an exception to the general dross, it was a planned visit but everything we ate there lived up to expectations. The scallops and black pudding were particularly well rendered. They do get a black mark though for serving spam fritters that were made with something other than spam. Spam does NOT come in semi-circles, only in rectangles. We are not that easily fooled.

Spanish meal of the year

Did I mention that I like Spanish ham? The amazing stuff made from black leg pigs that spent their lives feasting on acorns which is possibly the best foodstuff on the planet. Oh yeah, sorry. I think I did.

I've fallen in love with Spanish food. No other European cuisine has gripped me in this way, not Italian, not French. Unlike in 2010 I didn't visit Spain in 2011, but I did get the chance to eat in a few of the best tapas bars in this country.

The Spanish food craze that's hit London in recent years doesn't really seem to have spread up North yet, with the notable exception of Liverpool. Go Liverpool. There are of course Tapas bars in Leeds and Manchester, but none has a menu that reads so well as the London and Liverpool places.

José was the best of the bunch by virtue of its ham and a very fine black pudding dish, but only by a small margin from Barrica and Salt House Tapas.

Pub of the year

This is the prize for the best pub to drink in, rather than eat in. It's about the whole package bar the food. The drinks, the ambience, the location, the crisps.

Photo credit: Bregante

The Marble Arch is just fantastic. The excellent Marble Brewery beers are always well kept and the pub itself is a work of art. The lofty tiled ceiling and walls with their blandishments to drink. Ale! Porter! Gin! The way the floor slopes down toward the solid, crafted bar.

Photo credit: Good Pub Guide

The aspect, alone on its corner plot in a post-industrial proto-regenerated wasteland. The location, perfect for commencement of a crawl back into town. In every way a very worthy winner.

Over in Leeds my favourites are Mr Foley's and the Adelphi. Mr Foley's has the finest selection and most reasonably priced beer in town, excellent chips and football on the telly. The Adelphi is not quite so hot on drinks but has a wonderful historic multi-roomed interior and a great atmosphere.

Holiday meal of the year

2011 brought trips to Croatia, Cornwall, and Jordan and Israel. It was my first time visiting all of these, and I really enjoyed all of them. If I'm honest Cornwall was probably the highlight in terms of the actual places. Looking purely at the food it has to be Israel though.

On the evidence of one week Israel is one of those countries where dining out well is the norm. Planning ahead isn't necessary as chances are wherever you go will be good.

Best of the lot was a meal of a multitude of excellent salads, grilled hanger steak and perfect chips at Fortuna in Jerusalem. The cheeseburger at Kanibar in Haifa was also a highlight.

Worst meal of the year

Nothing has come close to the Crown in Rochester. The best meal of the year may have been eaten down South, but so was the worst.

Managing to combine serving a badly made version of a foodstuff that shouldn't be served in a pub or restaurant in any circumstances, even if made properly (instant mash), with completely offhand and indifferent service, and relatively high prices to boot, The Crown was truly atrocious.

I gave the same rating, in slightly tongue in cheek fashion, to the Sainsbury's Café in Sale, but for a better comparison of complete rubbishness look no further than the restaurant at the Westerwood Hotel in Scotland. An absolute rotter of a steak, small, wan and gristly served with barely edible chips for twenty quid.

Best thing I've cooked this year

Let's not end on the worst meal of the year, so what about the best of my home cooking?

The best thing I cooked in 2011 was a humble damson crumble. It was a thrown together affair, nothing more than fruit, sugar, flour and butter. Sometimes that's all you need. The star of the show was those wonderful damsons. They were divine. Intensely fruity, but also dark and tannin rich. Almost chocolatey. Complimented by a rich, buttery crumble and served piping hot with a dollop of cold, thick cream. Utterly delicious.

I didn't post the recipe because I haven't a clue on the quantities involved. It was guesswork that got lucky. It was along the lines of throw damsons in pan with a load of sugar, then heat up until the juice starts to run. Transfer into a baking dish then top with a crumble made from butter rubbed into sugar and flour. Bake in a medium oven for about half an hour.


That's all folks! See you in 2012.

Where to find the best Spanish food in the North?

I'll warn you now, by the time I've finished writing this post it may well have grown into a long and rambling eulogy to the joys of Spanish food.

I fell in love with Spanish food and the Spanish way of eating as recently as last year. I always had a sneaking suspicion that I was a fan, but had never really experienced Spain properly (Costa's notwithstanding) until I was lucky enough to spend two long weekends in Madrid and Valencia last spring.

Madrid was a revelation. I had planned it as a foodie weekend, with the intention being to explore the bars and immerse ourselves in the tapas culture. I went with high expectations, but never thought I'd be so blown away by the sheer generosity and variety of it all. Madrid bars generally offer a free tapa with every drink ordered and the range is astounding; - peanuts, olives, salt cod & chickpea stew, tuna pastries, manchego cheese, jamón offcuts, braised mushrooms, mussels in white wine, hunks of chorizo, open sandwiches topped with ham, cheese or pate, crisps, pork scratchings; - all of these things and more were served up with small glasses (cañas) of beer, beakers (copas) of wine or glasses of wonderful sherry rarely costing more than a couple of euros apiece and sometimes less. During an evening of barhopping the freebies were supplemented with paid for tapas or sometimes a larger portion (ración) of whatever tickled our fancy. In this way I ate some of the best ham (jamón ibérico de bellota), some of the best seafood (galician style octupus - pulpo a la gallega), some of the best spuds (patatas bravas done perfectly) and some of the best deep fried goods (wonderfully light croquetas de jamón or de bacalao) I have eaten in my life.

We didn't really dine in restaurants in the evenings, preferring to stick to the bar crawls, but did frequent a couple at lunchtime. Generosity, value and quality were once again to the fore, as many bars have a dining room (comedor) offering a set menu at lunch. In the most memorable of these I dined on a nourishing salt cod & spinach soup, a rich, reduced oxtail stew served with (proper home-made not frozen) chips, a large slice of custard flan, half a bottle of passable red and mineral water for the princely sum of eleven euros. None of the food was mindblowing, but it was all cooked on the premises, substantial and tasty. This kind of thing would amaze back home, especially for a tenner, but in Madrid it seems to be pretty much the norm.

Snacks and breakfasts were also in keeping with the rest, in that they were invariably delicious, readily available and great value. Freshly squeezed orange juice, crusty sandwiches de jamón, and of course the magnificent churros with chocolate (freshly fried long doughnut type things with thick, dark, bittersweet chocolate to dip them in), which the Madrileños like to eat in the early hours after a night on the town (slightly classier than your average doner..).

All in all, my brief sojourn in Madrid was nothing short of a foodie awakening. Valencia had a lot to live up to. The first potential pitfall was that the Valencia trip was a stag do, not usually the type of break associated with dining well.

I needn't have worried. It wasn't quite Madrid, but Valencia put up a pretty good fight, giving me reason to believe that any large Spanish city is likely to be worth an eating and drinking weekend. The food highlight of the visit was an outstanding beef chop (chuletón de buey), up there with the best steaks I've ever eaten, and this from a restaurant selected completely at random in the centre of town. Honourable mentions also go to the quality of lamb and pork purchased from the supermarket, the melting-fat deliciousness of a five euro plate of ham scoffed in a scruffy bar in the local town where our villa was situated, and a paella for twelve people served up in a seafront tourist trap that could have been expensive and dire, but was neither.

At this point, if anyone is still reading this, you may have realised that I rather like the food in Spain. You may also have recalled that this post is titled 'Where to find the best Spanish food in the North?', so you may reasonably be wondering why I have waffled on about Spain at such length. So, in a rather roundabout way, to Britain.

In Britain, we don't really do Spanish eating properly. Let us take tapas, as the majority of Spanish restaurants in this country tend to focus on the tapas theme. Tapas restaurants in Britain are not really like tapas bars in Spain. For starters most of them are restaurants, rather than bars, which rather defeats the object in the first place. I don't mind this, as Britain is not Spain. Unless there is some huge, unexpected cultural shift we are not going to have bars in the Spanish style in any significant quantity in British towns and cities. As I've already said, I don't mind this, as bemoaning this fact would be like complaining that you can't get a decent pint of cask ale on every corner in Madrid, i.e. a bit silly.

So if we are going to have to sit down and eat our tapas all in once place what we can do is focus on the quality and value of the food, and in this respect a lot of the tapas places in the UK seem to fit into two camps.

In the first corner is La Tasca and it's ilk. Fairly cheap, but mediocre at best food that I'm pretty sure all comes pre-packaged and frozen for assembly line reheating. I have been to La Tasca twice in the last year or two, neither occasion of my choosing. The first occasion was with a large group of blokes, and the party menu had been pre-ordered. What this means is that they bring out all of the food all at once, on huge platters. This bears no resemblance to tapas, it's basically just a massive, shit buffet (you know the sort of thing; - manky chicken legs and budget frozen garlic bread). The second occasion was after more than a few drinks, when one of our group had 50% off vouchers for the food. As expected it was all dull if not actively bad. I recall that the pork ribs came with a particular recommendation for being tender and delicious. The meat was indeed tender and fell off the bones, but unfortunately was drowning in a horrid brown, gloopy sauce tasting of sugar and artificial smoke-flavour. I am not a fan of La Tasca.

In the second corner is the increasing number of upmarket Spanish places that serve very good food, but at generally very enthusiastic prices. Now I understand that certain Spanish foodstuffs are very pricey because they are the finest, most exquisite of their type (yes I'm looking at you iberico ham), but this does not apply in all cases. Charging six or seven quid for a single scallop or a tortilla (it's just eggs!) is taking the michael however well executed the dish. These are the type of places where you will eat some delicious food, but leave feeling peckish and not even slightly pissed having parted with forty of your finest english pounds. I'm not really sure whether this type of Spanish restaurant has spread to the North in abundance yet, as I haven't sought them out since returning, but their numbers have grown rapidly in London over recent years.

So what am I actually looking for? Some sort of halfway house really. Good quality, well cooked, generous, unpretentious, good value Spanish food. Like in Spain. Sounds like a simple formula, but obviously isn't.

Here is a very short list of places that I have compiled from searching the web and reading a few reviews. I have only been to one of them, so I don't know whether the rest fit the bill or not.

Liverpool - Salt House Tapas

Manchester - El Rincon de Rafa

Ripponden - El Gato Negro Tapas

Leeds - El Bareto

El Rincon and El Bareto look like they are in the Spanish bar style, hence their inclusion. El Gato and Salt House are much more in the new, upmarket pricey mould but are included on my shortlist for their great value lunch deals. El Gato I know is great, because I went a couple of years ago at lunchtime and it was excellent, and Salt House is getting some fine reviews from some trustworthy sources.

All being well I'd like to visit those on my shortlist over the coming months, but would love to hear any comments or suggestions that anyone has to offer. I can't be jetting off to Madrid twice a year, got to satisfy the craving somehow...