Kro Piccadilly, Manchester

A quick meal in Manchester the other night brought a visit to Kro in Piccadilly Gardens. I'd never been to any of the Kro bars before, but always thought they might be worth a try. The Piccadilly branch is a big, fairly generic looking space with a big, fairly generic menu extending from breakfast to sandwiches, coffee, cakes, burgers, pasta and so on. The twist are sections devoted to Danish meals and 'Danwiches'. That's short for Danish open sandwiches. See what they did there?

I chose the Gravadlax danwich, described as Scandinavian dill cured salmon with a sweet mustard and dill dressing, an asparagus spear, capers and red onion rings served on brown bloomer. The gravadlax was great, cut thickly with quite a mild, sweet cure. I could have quite happily eaten a plateful of this with just the bread and capers, because the other stuff just got in the way really. Asparagus in November is a waste of time, the raw onion overpowered everything else, and the salad was more frisée than anything else.

What is the point of frisée? I like salad leaves I really do. Rocket, watercress, cos, gem or even iceberg lettuce in certain situations. But frisée. It tastes off virtually nothing, other than a slight back note of bitterness, has an annoying stringy texture and is impossible to chew properly. It's rubbish and pointless. Less of it please. Actually make that none of it.

The chips were shit too. Straight from the freezer and not fried for long enough. Flaccid and lumpen.

The sandwich was £5.95, the chips were an extra £1.20 and a latte another £1.90. Reasonable pricing as there was plenty of good quality fish on the sandwich. I wouldn't rush back, but I'd eat at Kro again. I really enjoyed the gravadlax so wouldn't mind giving the herring plate or mixed fish platter a try. More of the good stuff and less of the bad (yes you, the chips and the frisée).

6/10

One Piccadilly Gardens
Unit A and B
Manchester
M1 1RG

http://www.kro.co.uk/kro-piccadilly

Jaldi Jaldi, Leeds

I love Mumtaz. Proof of my love for Mumtaz can be found in the fact that I dined there on Christmas Day last year. Balls to turkey. Unfortunately I don't love Jaldi Jaldi so much.

In case you've not noticed them popping up all over the place in the last year or two, Jaldi Jaldi is the Mumtaz group's expanding franchised takeaway brand. The idea is a good one in theory: sell Mumtaz curries in conveniently located takeaway outlets.

Disappointingly it doesn't quite stack up because the food isn't that great. Most of the food is pre-made and displayed in the chiller counter, which is fine for curries but not so good for other things if the turnover isn't very rapid. I had some vegetable pakoras to start off with and they were crap. Dry, clarty and with little flavour other than chilli heat, whenever they were freshly fried was a very long time before I got them.

Lamb rogan josh was better, but still a long way below the Mumtaz restaurant standard. I think the Jaldi Jaldi curries are probably the same as those sold under the Mumtaz brand in supermarkets, and if I'm right you're paying a significant premium for the option of someone warming it up for you.

The accompanying chapattis tasted fine, but were a bit dry and crumbly, another tell-tale sign of stuff being served way past its best.

I had high hopes for Jaldi Jaldi, as I've already mentioned I'm a big fan of the Mumtaz restaurants, but this just seems to be more about cashing in on the brand reputation rather than any genuine attempt to sell good food.

I haven't tried any of the other things on the menu (this was my second curry from there though), but the fact that it in addition to curry it lists naan paninis, jumbo wraps, sandwiches, gourmet pasties and pies, chicken and chips, cakes, muffins and sponge pudding and custard says it all really. They're trying to cover all bases and probably not covering any of them particularly well.

The meal cost me around £8.50.

4/10

There are currently fourteen branches. I went to:

Neville Street
Leeds
LS1 4BQ


www.jaldijaldi.com

Red Chilli, Leeds (revisited)

On my last visit to Red Chilli it was a little below par. Things that should have been a full on assault on the senses were a little dull, a little mild. A return visit on Saturday found it right back on form, four of us had a corker of a meal.

I was dining with Red Chilli first-timers, attempting to persuade them that a few pints and a Sichuan feast was a fine alternative to a few pints and a curry. Friends duly persuaded. We'll be back.

Stir-fried french beans with chilli and minced pork is one of my all time favourite Chinese dishes. Heat-blistered beans, al dente, dripping in spicy, porky oil and covered in tender little nuggets of salty meat. Lush.

Gong bao diced chicken with peanuts and dried chilli comes doused in a sweet, spicy sauce. The peanuts and chicken provide a wonderful contrast in textures.

The only dish I'd never ordered before, stir fried frog's legs with big Grandma's chilli sauce. Sweet and spicy again, but this time with the inclusion of black beans which gave it a salty, slightly funky fermented edge. Impossible to eat with chopsticks this, fingers were a must. Messy, sticky fun.

The last, but very much not least of the big dishes, spicy hot poached mutton. A huge vat of broth packed with shards of meat, assorted greens, about a bulb of garlic and copious quantities of dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorns. Lip tingling, meaty, more-ish, sweat-inducing deliciousness.

And finally, a couple of plates of dumplings. They make these fresh so they actually turned up after everything else. The boiled ones were Beijing style minced pork and prawn, and were spot on. Perfectly cooked skins and a moist, fragrant filling.

The others were Guotie, Beijing style minced pork fried dumplings. Equally good skins and filling, and they got the crusty fried exterior just right too.

A fantastic meal all round, and great value. Prices on the menu may not look that cheap, but bear in mind everything is served in enormous portions. The mutton alone could probably have fed a family of four. We finished the lot, and stuffed to the gills toddled off to the next pub, where a bottle of wine was ordered due to lack of room for beer.

The bill came to £17 each including a beer apiece and plenty of boiled rice. We threw in £20 each and left it that, as the service was just as good as the food. It can be inconsistent, but on this form Red Chilli deserves all the accolades it gets. Brilliant.

9/10

6 Great George Street
Leeds
LS1 3DW

http://www.redchillirestaurant.co.uk/

La Rocas, Wakefield

FREEBIE ALERT

I rarely dine out in Wakefield even though that's where I actually live, as it's in such close proximity I never think twice about heading straight into Leeds. That's not to say I wouldn't eat out in Wakefield more often if I found a few places I liked. With that thought in mind an invitation to La Rocas for a night of free tapas sounded like fun.

A small group of six of us went along on Friday and got to sample a fair amount of the menu. We were looked after by Craig (apologies if I have his name wrong, I think it was Craig) who was in charge of front of house for the evening. There was no introduction or little talk from the owners as seems to be the case at many blogger events, but that didn't bother me. It's probably a little ungrateful but I often don't really care about the restaurateurs ethos and vision, I just want to know whether his chefs can cook me a great meal.

I'd love to be able to say we had a great meal, but sadly I'd be lying. Everything we ate was mediocre at best, and some of the dishes were really not very nice at all.

On the plus side, everything on a couple of mixed cold platters was ok, and of the tapas dishes the potatoes were nicely cooked and the pork ribs tender and meaty. Dense, dry meatballs and a jambalaya with overcooked, mushy rice were really a bit grim though.

After dinner we were invited up to the bar to sample a few cocktails. A Long Island iced tea was pretty good, but some of the others contained far too much blue stuff for my taste. Never trust blue food. Or drinks.

The cocktails were a fun end to a night in good company, and we were well looked after by Craig. Thanks to La Rocas for the invitation, I'm just sorry I can't be more positive about the food.


18 Wood Street
Wakefield
West Yorkshire
WF1 2ED

http://www.larocas.co.uk/

Staffordshire Oatcakes

Last weekend a friend reminded me about Staffordshire oatcakes. A conversation over lunch about cheese led on to cheese accompaniments, crackers and oatcakes, and then onto the joys of a Staffordshire oatcake stuffed with bacon, mushrooms and cheese.

If you've never heard of them they're not like the biscuit-y oatcakes you eat with cheese, rather an oat-based pancake. I love oats so I've been wanting to try them for ages, and not having any trips to Stoke planned soon I thought I'd make my own.

I searched the web for recipes, none of which exactly suited the ingredients and time I had available, so I came up with my own hybrid version that turned out very well.

The resulting cakes are thicker than a crepe-style pancake, thinner than an American one, and have a heartier, slightly nutty taste from the oats. They are indeed very good with bacon (or leftover spam, sorry guilty pleasure!), mushrooms and cheese but I also had one for dessert with honey and the leftovers are just about to get warmed up with bacon and beans. They'd work well with anything you'd usually stuff in a pancake.

What you need (makes 6-8 oatcakes):

120g medium oatmeal
120g strong wholemeal flour
250ml milk
250ml water
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sunflower oil
1 x 7g sachet of dried yeast

What to do:

1. Put the milk, water, sugar and yeast in a large bowl and whisk together. Set aside for 5 mins somewhere warm.

2. In another bowl mix together the oatmeal, flour and salt.

3. Pour the dry ingredient mix into the wet, add the tsp of oil and whisk.

4. Put somewhere warm for at least an hour, preferably two.

5. Give the batter a stir and get a frying pan hot. Add a knob of butter to fry them in if you like. It's not necessary in a non-stick pan but as we all know everything is better with butter.

6. Pour a ladle of batter into the pan and roll it round to spread out across the pan surface.

7. When it's gone all bubbly and dried out on the top, flip and fry on the other side.

8. Serve immediately with whatever takes your fancy, or cook a whole batch and pile them up on a plate separated by kitchen paper. They will keep for a couple of days and taste fine warmed up.

1875 Restaurant, Menston

FREEBIE ALERT

On Tuesday night I went along to a bloggers event at 1875 restaurant over in Menston. The night was promoted as an authentic Indian masterclass, so given my obsession with Indian food this wasn't an opportunity I was likely to pass up.

Proprietor Manjinder Singh Sarai led the introductions and talked us through the idea behind the restaurant. It's a fairly straightforward premise; serve proper Indian food as you might find in India, and only employ Indian chefs who've been trained in upmarket establishments in India (the Taj hotel group).

The general idea is to do something different to your average Anglo-Indian restaurant that's run by Pakistanis or Bangladeshis and serves dishes invented in Birmingham and Glasgow. Manjinder even went so far as to claim that 1875 is the most authentically Indian restaurant in the North of England. I'm sure there are other claimants to that title (Hansa's and Prashad perhaps?) but there really aren't that many places breaking the mould.

A word on the menu at this stage. Peculiarly given their dedication to proper Indian food, the menu and website describe 1875 as an Anglo-Indian restaurant (which is how I tend to think of all the bog standard curry houses) and go for a sort of 'big up the British Raj' theme. The spiel on the website states that:

'The year is 1875. The British Raj in India is at its highest and Queen Victoria is the first empress to India. The elite-ranking British officers, wherever they are stationed in India, by default got the very best regional authentic Indian food.'

I've no idea whether the bit about the food is true, but I somehow doubt it. If it's true it rather conjures up images of fawning servants (wallahs of various persuasions) fetching and carrying for an enthroned Brit in a military safari suit sipping on a gin and tonic. I'll bet they didn't get the very best regional authentic Indian food, the locals probably kept it for themselves and it was probably too spicy for our Victorian gent anyway. Manjinder did talk about the Anglo-Indian slant, explaining that it's part of differentiating themselves from all of the other Indian restaurants, but it still seems a bit of a strange idea to me.

Slightly dubious empire related theme aside, we were there for the food. If the food is good, then frankly who cares about that other stuff.

Chef Baljit with his spice tin

I'm happy to report that the food was good, some of it very good. For the masterclass part of the evening we donned aprons and attractive blue hairnets and headed to the kitchen with chef Baljit Singh, where we were shown how to make chapattis, naan breads and chicken tikka. It was apparent that everything is cooked from scratch on site as all of the raw ingredients were there; a big tin full of spices including plenty of whole, unground ones, big tubs of minced ginger and garlic, tins of tomatoes and coconut milk, and absolutely no bright red food colouring.

 a morsel of wonderful naan

The breads we cooked were good, the naan a particular highlight. The perfect combination of a light dough resulting in a thin, crisp finish with loads of little charred bubbles.

chicken tikka - fresh from the tandoor

The chicken was also very good, the use of thigh meat a wise choice for flavour and moistness (although the menu actually states that it's chicken breast). I'd love to have my own tandoor to cook food like this at home, but I'd have to spend my entire salary on gas, chicken and marinade ingredients so it's a rather distant fantasy!

from here comes deliciousness - I want one

After the kitchen showcase we returned to the dining room where Manjinder served us a variety of dishes. To start there were chicken samosas and more of the tikka. The samosas were reminiscent of those I used to buy from Mr Riaz' corner shop on Brudenell Road in Hyde Park, which is a big compliment, because they were bloody great.

Next were the vegetable dishes, a mixed vegetable curry that was a little bland for my tastes and a paneer curry that I really enjoyed. The sauce was hot and the paneer creamy and crumbly, not at all like the tasteless rubbery stuff you often get.

Finally we had the meat dishes, a beef masala and a Goan pork vindaloo. The beef masala was good but the vindaloo was excellent, my favourite dish of the evening. The pork (maybe shoulder?) had obviously been cooked long and slow, and fell apart in moist strands. The sauce was intensely flavoured, tangy with a long lingering garlicky aftertaste. Both of the meat curry sauces reminded me in style of those I ate at Delhi Grill earlier in the year, interesting as the chef at 1875 is from Delhi.

the aftermath - note the lack of leftovers

Overall the standard of food was very high, I enjoyed all of it but the vindaloo and naan bread were the highlights. I could happily sit there with a vat of that curry and a pile of breads and just keep on eating. We received excellent service as you'd expect, but if it's anything like as good on a normal night you'll be well looked after. I would gladly return to 1875 and spend my own money on a meal there.

Thanks to Emma at Culture Vultures for organising the event, thanks to the team at 1875, and thanks to everyone else who was there for the great company. You can find some alternative perspectives on the evening, accompanied by some good photos (yes I know mine are rubbish) here and here.

The 1875 Restaurant
Station Road
Menston
Ilkley
West Yorkshire
LS29 6JH

www.the1875.com

Hinchliffe's Restaurant, Netherton, Huddersfield

Hinchliffe's is one of the new breed of über farm shops appearing in the countryside. Not just a shop selling produce from the farm, but a shop selling produce from the farm, baked goods, beers and wines, expensive pickles and jams of every imaginable variety and all sorts of other posh comestibles. There's also an ice cream counter, a restaurant and an open farm where you can feed the goats and such like.

I'm not sure how I feel about this sort of farm shop. It's a lovely place to visit on a Saturday afternoon, but it's rather removed from what was so great about farm shops in the first place. Namely, the opportunity to buy quality food direct from the producers, cutting out the middle man and all of the other overheads associated with transporting the food, running a nice store to sell it in, marketing it and so forth. This meant you could buy the same food for a far better price than in the regular shops elsewhere.

When the farm shop itself has a large and well appointed store, stocks loads of products made elsewhere and obviously has a not insignificant marketing budget then the prices tend to creep up and not always in line with the quality. We bought cheese, oatcakes and sausages on this visit, all of which were good but not good enough to reflect the premium prices. The oatcakes were a slightly ridiculous £3.25 for an average sized packet.

Things were the same in the restaurant, where all of the food was nice, but no more than that. Hot roast beef and gravy sandwiches were served with dripping fried chips and salad. The beef was served in the keep-the-Yorkshire-pensioners happy style, i.e. very well done but still tender thanks to a good dousing in gravy. Cooked pink would have been far better but I guess that's not what the target audience are after.

The chips were a disappointment because they weren't chips, rather wedges almost veering into roast potato territory. There was a good dripping fried crust, but the innards were a bit mealy as they almost always are when cut so fat. The salad was nicely dressed and was gobbled up rather than being left wilting in the corner of the plate.

I've no idea about anything else on the menu as all four of us ordered the same thing, but the two toddlers with us had sausage and mash which went down a treat judging by the remnants of it all over their mouths, noses, eyebrows and cheeks.

Puddings were ok. A slice of Victoria sponge looked the part but was a little bit dry. The same could be said for a ganache coated chocolate cake with a marmalade filling. A hot chocolate brownie with chocolate sauce and ice cream was the best of the bunch, chocolatey and massive.

On a more positive note, the service was lovely. Friendly, helpful and great with the kids. The food we ate was all rather dull, but maybe there are better things on the menu. I paid around fourteen pounds for the sandwich, cake, a ginger beer, a filter coffee and a tip.

6/10

Hinchliffe’s Farm

Netherton Moor Road
Netherton
Huddersfield
HD4 7LE

http://www.hinchliffes.com/