Northern Food on tour: a weekend in Amsterdam

So I went to Amsterdam. On a stag weekend. Not the best recipe for a weekend of fine dining obviously, but that's not to say we didn't sample a few Dutch specialities, of both the good quality and the utter filth variety. I was in charge of the whole shebang, being in the honourable position of best man, so I'd managed to sneak some interesting food and drink options into the itinerary.

They're quite partial to a deep-fried beer snack, the Dutch. Virtually every pub and bar offers an assortment of goodies for soaking up the booze. Filo pastry type things stuffed with mince or cheese, spring rolls, and bitterballen, little round croquettes with an unidentifiable meaty filling.

This platter of delights was a fairly typical example. It may look like an Iceland party pack, but who doesn't like fried stuff and beer.

And where might you get your fill of fried stuff after the pub kitchen's have closed? Why from the legendary FEBO of course, automated vending machines for croquettes and burgers and god knows what else.

There are branches of FEBO all over Amsterdam, but it turns out the one up the street (FErdinand BOlstraat) from our hotel is the original. I couldn't tell you quite how rank the average vending machine takeaway is, because I only went near the place after a few (too many) ales. All I can say is that there's photographic evidence of me filling my face with one of their treats and looking like I'm really bloody enjoying it. My money's on the satekroket. De lekkerste!

Er right, I did say we ate some quality stuff too. There seemed to be a fairly good supply of eat-in bakeries and casual brunch type places dotted about the city. We ate breakfast at Omelegg two days in a row, so successful were they at easing our hangovers. Good coffee, freshly squeezed juice and damn fine omelettes with that lovely light, fluffy texture I always fail to recreate at home.

Interest on the booze front (not that lager and Jagermeister are uninteresting of course) took the form of a beer tasting at t'Arendsnest, a bar serving only Dutch beer. Did you know there are more than 50 breweries in the Netherlands? Me neither.

There's certainly a whole lot more to Dutch beer than mass market piss (yes Heineken and friends, I am talking about you), but I can't say I fell in love with any of the beers we tasted. The first, a crisp, dry lager in a blue bottle was a classy session drinking option, but after that there were a couple I wasn't keen on at all.

Things progressed with increasing strength, so my memory is a little sketchy, but I'm fairly confident the final beer, pictured below, was the best. It was a big beast, a Belgian tripel (or quadrupel?) in style, dark red in colour with a big hit of fruit and booze. 

The big meal of the trip was a visit to restaurant Djago for a rijsttafel, an Indonesian Dutch colonial meal basically comprising a set buffet of everything on the menu with your rice.

Giant prawn crackers to start, with two types of sambal. These were ace, like the sturdier Thai style prawn crackers but enormous.

And then the dishes started to arrive. Little pots of salads and relishes first; cucumber and onion; carrot and cabbage; roasted peanuts and roasted, shredded coconut. All probably designed with textural contrast in mind as much as taste.

There were stewed meat dishes, a beef rendang and something porky....

and chicken, curried beansprouts and curried eggs.

...and dense, clove spiked meatballs, and cold gado gado, and platters of chicken satay and some things I can't remember. There was a lot of food.

I enjoyed the experience more than the food if I'm honest. The meatballs aside (which I wasn't keen on anyway) everything else tasted a bit same-y, each dish a minor variation on the very sweet/salty/a little bit spicy/a lot of peanuts theme. After a while I was willing for a less sugary dish to appear.

I'm glad we went though, rijsttafel is a uniquely Dutch invention so not something you'll encounter much elsewhere, and it was good to try some Indonesian food for the first time I can remember. 

Anything else I should tell you about Amsterdam? 

The chips are good. Flemish style chip stands are plentiful and never less than satisfying. The pre-fried chips are always given their second dunk in the fat to order, before being served in cones with a choice from dozens of sauces ranging from classic mayo to satay or chilli cheese.

It's very flat. Attractive but flat. The complete absence of aspect, the lack of a view beyond the next street corner was giving me fen fever by day three. Or maybe my brain was just stag-do-frazzled by that point. Either way I like hills, but I'll certainly return for a more cultural visit as Amsterdam packs a hell of a lot in to what's actually quite a small place. A weekend of culture and chips beckons. 

It's a good place for a stag weekend. But you knew that already right? Happily we all made it home in one piece and now, a few weeks later the wedding has passed off with great success too!

The Info

http://www.arendsnest.nl/ Dutch beer bar on Herengracht. Very informative beer tasting sessions. 20 euros for six beers.

http://www.febodelekkerste.nl/ FEBO. All over the place. Don't do it. Unless you're very pissed. If this is the case 10/10. Cheap.

http://www.omelegg.com/ on Ferdinand Bolstraat in the De Pijp area. 8/10 for omelettes (about 6-7 euros), coffee and OJ, but avoid the shit English style breakfasts.

http://www.restaurantdjago.nl/ south of De Pijp. 6/10 for rijsttafel (24 euros for the option we had). Lovely service though.

www.mikesbiketoursamsterdam.com nothing to do with food, but these guys do good bike tours for a fair price.

Northern Food on Tour: Self-catering in France

I really don't have a great deal to say about the things I ate and drank in France the other week. We kept it very, very simple.

Crusty bread

Peasant food, as Jamie Oliver might have it.... 'You see these rural types, dressed in rags, barely a centime to their names, and they'll have been down the marche and bought just three simple ingredients; bread, cheese and wine, from which they'll conjure up the most amazing meal. It's called bread, cheese and wine. Now why can't you do that, you fat English plebeians?' That's how I imagine he'd have it anyway.

Rillettes: food of the Gods

And that's what I ate and drank for most of the week (I say I rather than we, as my better half is pregnant. I tried not to gloat, really I did). Crusty bread, oozing cheese and the unexpectedly good local red. There were a few salads too, with plenty of tomatoes. And not much in the way of charcuterie but loads of rillettes. If you've not had rillettes before think very coarse, extra fatty potted meat. Eat slices of baguette smothered in the stuff and topped with cornichons for added bite. Ooh yeah.

Oozing Perail

The best two cheeses of the trip were both local-ish, being from neighbouring departements (we stayed in a gite in the Tarn region, an hour or so east of Toulouse). Both were of the typical French mouldy rind, oozy paste school of cheese. Perail a sheep's and Rocamadour a goat's, though neither were stridently sheepy or goaty, probably as I think they're eaten very young.

Plus de vin rouge (the finest wine known to humanity)

The best wine? A recycled plastic water bottle filled from a van sporting an assortment of hoses and pipes by a jolly, gesticulating Frenchman at the weekly market in the local town. It was a red from the Gaillac wine region just down the road, and proved an inspired purchase at two euros ten a litre. I'm crap at describing wine, so bear with me here, it was very fruity tasting, actually slightly grapey which is rare, but with none of that overbearing sense of Ribena you get with, say, a mass market Aussie Shiraz. Very fruity but still subtle, dry on the palate but not from a big whack of tannin. I'll stop now. It was very nice.

Need spring onions, honey, game, spices and melons? No problem.

The market in the local town, Realmont, was outstandingly good. There were stalls for literally everything. On the food front alone there were stalls devoted solely to things as wide ranging as salt cod, spring onions and vanilla, as well as the full complement of greengrocers, charcuterers, butchers, bakers and so on. If it hadn't been on the Wednesday morning with only three days of our holiday remaining I'd have gone wild.

French

It was just so splendidly French too. The sense of locality and terroir and the genuine importance of market day and the relaxed, good life and all that stuff the French are supposedly famous for. Groups of men standing around in berets smoking Gauloises and saying bof! a lot. That sort of thing.

Old and French

I might be gushing somewhat (and exaggerating), but there is something captivating about market day in an attractive country town in France. It seems daft to describe it as really French, it being in French France and all, but take England as a comparison. No town in England is quite so resolutely, so stereotypically English as a French town is French (except perhaps London, which is in the curious position of being by far the most and the least English place in England).

I haven't got a discernible photo of my steak and chips, so here's one of our lovely (French) garden

Enough musing on the nature of Frenchness, and a final word on the food, which I've realised as I write is going to turn into more of the same. We only ate out a few times all holiday, but I really enjoyed it when we did. Not because the food was special or amazing or even very interesting, but because it was done properly. Steak or a duck breast, chips and salad will make most people happy if the meat is singed on the outside, pink within, the chips are thin and crisp and the salad leaves are dressed.

That's all it takes to make me smile anyway, and on this trip it was perfect every time. We could still learn a thing or two about getting these basics right over on this side of the channel (meat somehow overcooked despite having little evidence of contact with anything very hot, mealy chips and undressed salad sound familiar to anyone?).

still French

In summary, having just re-read what I've written, I think France maybe regaining its crown from Spain as my favoured holiday eating destination. If you ever get the chance to visit the Tarn region or anywhere nearby, then I'd thoroughly recommend it. The countryside is all rolling hills and wooded valleys, and the towns are ancient, pretty and sport an interesting architectural style combining bricks with half timbering (imagine Castleford crossed with Stratford-upon-Avon. Or maybe don't).

Beans and sossidges

Finally, one last thing that I've just remembered. Tinned cassoulet is ace. I'm sure it's not quite up to the standards of a home made version, but I wasn't keen on spending my holiday soaking beans and confit-ing duck, so the tin had to suffice. If you liked tinned beans and sausages, you'll like tinned cassoulet. It's like a super premium version where the sausages have been upgraded and a duck leg thrown in for good measure. With bonus duck fat.

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!

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: New Year in London part 2

Here's part two of my round-up of our trip to London over new year. In addition to the meatballs, skewers, bao, bacon, coffee, pizza, pasta, French toast and fry-ups we managed to squeeze in a couple of meals in swankier establishments.


Clos Maggiore, Covent Garden

Clos Maggiore is a rare beast, especially in this part of town. A restaurant that's obviously chasing the tourist pound, but that hasn't lost sight of what makes a good restaurant in the first place: good food.

If you're lucky enough, as we were completely by chance, to get a table in the conservatory, then it lives up to the 'most romantic restaurant in London' hype. The prettiness of the room is backed up by service that's formal without being intrusive.

The food is French, but not very French if you're ordering from the set menus which could just as well be British, in that they wouldn't look out of place in any pub with aspirations to quality food. Beef cheeks, sticky toffee pud and so on.

Which is exactly what I ate for main and dessert, after a starter of house pickled herring with potato and dill salad. The herring was a fine plump specimen, bigger than any rollmop I've ever seen, pickled very assertively, the acidity balanced by a very creamy potato salad.

Across the table Jerusalem artichoke soup with a poached egg and truffle oil didn't have quite the same balance, being rich and creamy with extra rich and creamy. I only had the one mouthful, any more would have been too much for me and A couldn't manage half of it.

The aforementioned beef cheeks followed by sticky toffee pudding were both exemplary, if unexciting. The cheeks were excellent, collapsing into gelatinous shreds of loveliness at the touch of a fork.

Ice creams, served on a slightly unnerving bright green meringue, were well made as were the petit fours served with coffee. The blueberry financier was the pick of the bunch, my least favourite the pineapple macaron. There was nothing wrong with it texture wise, it just didn't taste of pineapple or anything much.

At £23.50 for three courses with half a bottle of wine (red, French, drinkable, can't remember the details) this really was exceptional value for the standard of food and service in this location. As I mentioned earlier the food on the set menus isn't dissimilar to what you'd get in a good food pub, with one notable difference: it would cost you more in the pub.

A fifty-odd quid bill was of course ratcheted up to closer to £90 by the time we'd added a couple of glasses of fizz, sides and coffees, but what the hell we were on holiday. Worth it and recommended.

8/10

33 King Street
Covent Garden
London
WC2E 8JD

http://www.closmaggiore.com




The Delaunay, Aldwych

The Delaunay, sister restaurant to the more famous Wolseley with which it shares virtually the same menu, is a splendid place at which to take afternoon tea. I would imagine it's also a splendid place to go for a burger, or for breakfast, or for a platter of oysters, or for apple strudel and ice cream, or for any one of the myriad options available. Being such a jack of all trades can be problematic, but these places are on a scale grand enough to pull it off.

Afternoon tea for us, and it was very nearly the best I've ever had, the crucial matter of the scones letting the side down. They were fresh, and very light, but sort of disintegrated into a very claggy mush in the mouth, sticking in your teeth like Wotsits (just the texture, they weren't cheesy). The strawberry jam was also lacking in flavour.

Everything else was wonderful. The sandwiches, all five varieties, demonstrated good attention to detail, and were worth the effort in their own right rather than being pre-cake filler as is often the case. Lovely soft bread, delicate fillings and high quality butter. We had an extra round of the cucumber just because we could.

The cakes were also all spot on, with some unusual variants like a rosewater and lemon battenberg and a clementine tart. If I had to pick a favourite it would have to be the chocolate hazelnut eclair, an absolutely delightful confection of feather-light choux pastry and  creamy, nutty (like Nutella only better) goodness.

At £22.50 per person the full afternoon tea isn't cheap, but is far better value than the equivalent at any of the top hotels. The quality here is just as high and the atmosphere a lot livelier and more fun than the sometimes ossified environment of a posh hotel dining room (I think they would call it refined, at times such places feel more like 'funeral parlour' to me). Exceedingly good, except for those scones.

Oh yeah, and we drank Earl Grey, which was nice, and they had cool tea strainers with the little cup to catch the drips on a hinge. Nifty.

8/10

55 Aldwych
London
WC2B 4BB

http://www.thedelaunay.com/