Tuesday 22 January 2019

49. Pizza In Stratford.


  I had a sudden thought this morning, where has foam gone? Not all that long ago you couldn't have a meal in a smart place without drowning in foam. And now, I can't think of a meal I have eaten recently which has had little bubbly splashes of liquid on it. The cycle of fashion, what goes around comes around and, conversely, what goes around goes away again and, I assume, what goes around will eventually come around again, has turned and foam has passed away - the bubble has burst you might say. Au revoir, or is it Adieu, Foam. Perhaps now we can also say goodbye to unfoamy smears of sauce on plates, often so small that a single taste of them is just about all there is to have any idea of what ingredient they derive from.
  Perhaps we can return to a nice, generous amount of sauce which can still be made to look pretty but isn't so tiny in volume that it's identity remains a mystery. A sauce, a gravy, something to add the final sparkle to fine meat or fish and the other hangers on lurking on the plate or piece of slate or whatever on which the  dish has been served.


  I was interested to read in The Sunday Telegraph this weekend that the founder of the Pizza Express chain of restaurants, Pierre Boizot, had died just before last Christmas, on 5 December 2018. A review of the restaurants described how Boizot had taken on the lease of a 'struggling Soho joint called PizzaExpress' in 1965 and how he had been a 'true pathfinder, realising how this humble Neapolitan foodstuff could be made the basis of a contemporary, cosmopolitan and even a mildly swinging experience, a groovy cavalcade of primary colours, Paolozzi murals and ... live jazz'. 
  Coincidently, a dining companion and I, having limited time to fill up before setting off to see the brilliant production of A Christmas Carol at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon that evening, decided to go along to sample the delights of the Stratford branch of Pizza Express in Ely Street just 2 days after Boizot had died. Our dining place opportunities were limited as my fellow theatregoer has long convinced himself that anywhere that serves spicy food is intolerable to him and that being a well-established penny pincher - physically and psychologically well suited to have offered himself to play Scrooge that night had Aden Gilliat been taken ill and unable to play the leading roll on stage - Pizza Express offered a good opportunity for a relatively inexpensive but filling meal.
  It was ofcourse a Friday evening just before Christmas and the place was pretty full of middle class parents with their noisy offspring waiting to be fed like young gannets lined up on a cliff-face. It won't be the first time that I have stated my lack of love for Italian food in general and my specific disregard for pizzas but here I was hoping to oblige my Dickensian friend. Of course, my friend wanted to save money by sharing a pizza and, having not eaten since breakfast, I thought it would be a good idea to have something extra to ensure that I would feel comfortably replete. I ordered some cheesy garlic bread at a surprisingly high price and was served, almost in a blink, some not very enjoyable bread in a smaller sized helping than I might otherwise expected given the price paid.
  We ordered our pizza, naturally at about the lowest price that was available on the menu, and devoid of any ingredient that would have rendered it even vaguely spicy to fit in with my friend's tastes, and tucked into our demi-pizzas. We chose a 'La Reine' which is described thus:- 'prosciutto cotto, black olives, closed-cup mushrooms, mozzarella and tomato on a Romana base'. It was admirably dull but edible. It was delivered to the table super quickly, showing that the restaurant was capable of living up to the name of Pizza Express. The meal passed quickly and uninterestingly but given our intention to eat reasonably cheaply and without any ingredient which might have any degree of flavour - well I suppose the 3 half-olives were mildly tasty - the restaurant can hardly be blamed for that.
  I was left feeling that, 2 days after its founder's death, Pizza Express hadn't really left me with an overwhelming urge to return for a second visit but the crowds of families with their well-scrubbed offspring seemed to be quite happy there so I am happy to leave the place to that particular clientele.
  The Telegraph article gave Pizza Express a generous 7 out of 10. There's no accounting for taste.

Saturday 19 January 2019

48. No. 9 Church Street.


  I visit and stay in Stratford-upon-Avon very regularly usually, but not always, to visit the Royal Shakespeare Theatre to see what outrage against the Bard's plays has been perpetrated on this occasion as the Royal Shakespeare Company comes more and more mired in increasingly extravagant political correctness and total silliness. Ofcourse other playwrights are used to promote the RSC's obsession with exaggerated equality - the grimmest recent example being a plainly puerile assault on Molière in which some not very talented actors performed in a dire production of Citizen Khan meets Tartuffe.
  Sometimes I like to pass a couple of days in Stratford, even though it's less than 20 miles from my home at the southern edge of Birmingham, and that gives me an evening to fume at what the RSC is up to and another to calm down and try the food at one of the several restaurants to be found in this most famous of Warwickshire towns. For several years now I've been a happy diner from time to time at No. 9 Church Street, in Stratford's old town area, just across from King Edward's School where Shakespeare had a short-lived education and a short walk from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare's body is buried along with several members of his family.
  This is the tenth anniversary year of Wayne Thomson's comfortable restaurant which has a good turnover of dishes so that it's possible to always try something new and appealing on every visit. Wayne Thompson was born in Cornwall but brought up in Warwick and trained at Stratford-upon-Avon College before working at some prestigious restaurants such as those at The Savoy and Claridge's under authorities such as Alain Ducasse and Anthony Demeter. On returning to the Midlands he took up his first head chef post at Nailcote Hall Hotel at Berkswell and later was head chef at the New Hall Hotel near Sutton Coldfield.


  On my most recent visit to No. 9 Church Street I found that apart from the changing menu everything else was comfortably familiar. The food at this restaurant which has a Michelin Plate and is listed in The Good Food Guide is the product of good, solid cooking without the fireworks which modern Michelin starred restaurants might be expected to deliver to achieve that award. The plating up was a little short of the glamorous which we have come to expect in some restaurants and the main course dish in particular looked less than perfect with the bisque unevenly spread (it might have benefitted from the bisque being served in a small jug to be added at the table on serving) and a rather too large a lump of angel hair noodles overwhelming the piece of sea bream visually.
  I started off with a neat and tasty, but not dramatically delicious, warm game pie served with some mild chicory and appealing pickled rhubarb. Again there was a slight dowdiness about its visual display but all in all it was an enjoyable enough dish.
  The strong-flavoured sea bream was toned down by its accompanying south-east Asian ingredients, the most effective being the bites of ginger which cut through the strong fishy taste. There were also prawns and spring onion and undetectable chilli but for me there were a few too many noodles which can be quite tiresome to eat.
  I rounded off with a gorgeously alcoholic rum baba served with mint, little cubes of pineapple and a pina colada ice cream which had a slightly too aggressive flavour.
  No. 9 Church Street remains a pleasing place to dine when in Stratford but I wonder if it would benefit from a little thought being given to giving it a not-very-dramatic 10 year reboot. Well, just an idea but when you've got the trendy Michelin-starred Salt moving in next door to you, you don't really want to look like a fusty old uncle posing by his chic young nephew.


Saturday 12 January 2019

47. Colour, Light And Locusts - It Must Be The Nineteen Eighties.


  It's not often that a reflection on a visit to one of Birmingham's new restaurant would start off with a picture of the restaurant's floor and some photographs of the wallpaper in the men's lavatories but this is Nocturnal Animals and the floor and the gent's loos' wallpaper says everything you need to know about this wonderful new dining place in the heart of Birmingham. Well perhaps not quite since it says nothing about the food though as the sign over the pass area says, "It's only f---ing food".
  People will often talk about their dining experience and Nocturnal Animals is certainly an experience with a capital E and a capital experience it is. The restaurant floor is colourful and the gents' lavatories wallpaper would be almost genteel until inspected more closely when one discovers that the design features rather unusual viewpoints of the sights of Edinburgh. The gents' loos also have a mysterious black hand emerging from the wall which looks like it ought to be shaken but let's face it, you just don't know where it's been. So bemused by it was I that I forgot to take a photograph of it.




  Before getting to the restaurant and its floor and loos you must ofcourse enter through the ground floor bar with its migraine-inducing floor and bright lights and then passing down a white, light flooded passage which makes you feel you've had a cardiac arrest and are now entering a new astral plane and then go downstairs to the restaurant proper, much of it black like its mother ship in the Jewellery Quarter but with much more light to make the place look like it's much more fun, and be greeted delightfully and seated in an instantly comfortable chair. By this time the cocktail you've selected from a rather funky menu given to you upstairs is doing its work very well and you realise just what fun Nocturnal Animals is. The 1980s music is helping to merry you along as well. A quick trip to the loo involves going down another exotic corridor with its strip lighting forever changing colour making you feel quite certain you have arrived in Wonderland.






  So, at last, the menu. And the excitement reaches its peak as you discover just what Nocturnal Animals is going to feed to you. The lunch menu said 'dinner' so I take it that the food and prices are the same at all times of the day. There are two choices - a shorter menu for a very reasonable £28 or the full menu for £55. We chose the short menu only to change our minds when we were thoroughly delighted by the delicious first course which was a sort of cauliflower satay. The cauliflower was the first dish to appear not being preceded by bread be it the ubiquitous sourdough or any other type for that matter nor any amuses bouches, pleasingly.
  A parade of interesting confections followed - some quail in a south Asian setting made tasty with tamarind and boosted by a pleasant little samosa. This colourful dish was made visually more striking by being served on a plastic plate of swirling white and red. I was starting to get the fun of eating at Nocturnal Animals.






  Onwards through a tough little piece of octopus with sweetness and sourness as well as garlicness and then on to another plastic plate, this time of swirling blue and white, on which was sitting some far eastern flavoured salmon. Then some fine pork belly made sweet and sticky with the Chef's version of a barbecue sauce and a perfect blob of yuzu flavour which countered the fat of the pork. I am not a fan of pork belly but this was an enjoyable way to serve it - like an upmarket spare rib but with more meat and no bone.




  And so to the highly flavoured 180 day aged sirloin on a mildly curried sauce and thoroughly enjoyable black garlic gnocchi with the whole course finely completed with lovely slices of pickled carrot. Again all the colour was rendered vibrant served as the course was on another one of those splendid blue and white plastic plates. Such fun.


  The dessert was served on another spectacular plastic plate which looked like a black napkin laid out on the table with a form of mildly flavoured tiramisu lying on it though if I had been served it without knowing how it was described on the menu I would not have used the word tiramisu. The three locusts placed on the dish didn't seem to lend an air of Italian authenticity either.
  Of course the restaurant owner Alex Claridge's initial fame in Birmingham came with the spark of near-notoriety he lit when citric-flavoured ants were lined up on his cheese tartlet dessert when The Wilderness lurked, moss and all, in Dudley Street. So perhaps it wasn't too surprising to find a new species of insect seeking attention on another rather elegant pudding. Sadly, the ants fitted in very well while the locusts just looked out-of-place and tasted rather unpleasant, especially the after-taste, though they certainly had a crunch to them though I would have been happy to have not experienced that particular bit of added texture. Clever people who want to direct our lives having lost ground in the Brexit referendum are currently telling us that we should eat insects rather than meat as they are a more environment friendly source of protein. I can hardly believe that the idea is going to catch on in Birmingham after my locust bejewelled dessert.
  So there we have it, daytime creatures eating lunch at Nocturnal Animals, named apparently not after badgers and slow lorises (though it could be argued that I and my dining companion could be easily compared with that latter creature) but after the well-thought of 2016 film which features a lot 1980s music as is to be heard in the restaurant. The restaurant is also offering a twist on traditional English high teas which sounds interesting and would be well worth trying if they're as much fun as the lunches. The kitchen staff are led by former Professional Masterchef competitor and pastry chef Brett Connor with the cocktails menu being devised by James Bowker.
  The Japanese/Far Eastern theme so trendy at the moment dominates many of the dishes so I  suppose we must live with the fashion until it has run its course which I suppose it will. I wonder if English pies and roasts are all the rage in Japan at the moment.




Wednesday 2 January 2019

46. Gin From The Cotswolds. Where else?


  The White Knight household had a joyous arrival this morning. A package was delivered much to my surprise as it contained items which I had forgotten that I'd ordered just before Christmas. Tearing away the packaging I revealed 2 delightful bottles of special gins from the Cotswold Distillery situated towards the southern-most tip of the Warwickshire countryside at Stourton near Shipston-on-Stour.
  My first experience of Cotswolds Gin must have been soon after the Distillery was opened in 2014.
I was having dinner at the excellent No 33 The Scullery in Stratford-upon-Avon and I spotted the bottle of Cotswolds Gin on the shelf of the tiny bar in the very narrow little restaurant which itself had only recently opened. I couldn't resist trying it with the recommended accompaniment of Fevertree tonic as it was produced in a local Warwickshire Distillery and my first experience of the flavour is savoured to this day. That Christmas everyone I knew was given a bottle of Cotswold Gin as their present and my present to myself was two bottles which I viewed as being well-deserved. Since that happy time of discovery Cotswolds Distillery has expanded into making whiskys and specialist gins.
  An early specialist gin was 1616 which is said to pay homage to William Shakespeare and to be the distillery's interpretation of what gins would have been like in Shakespeare's time when gins were largely made in Holland. I remember buying a bottle which had newly arrived in the impressive little wine and spirit merchant's shop on Henley Street in Stratford, Vinology, which is situated close by Shakespeare's birthplace and which the very helpful owner admitted he had not yet had chance to sample himself and so he could not really tell me his impression of it. I splashed out on a bottle of it anyway and first sampled it with friends who were visiting me prior to going out to Purnell's for my birthday dinner. 
  I really should have read the instructions as 1616 certainly is not a gin and tonic gin, made as we are told by historic methods using a combination pure wheat spirit, distilled malt wines and gin botanicals including juniper, coriander, angelica, orange peel, cassia, nutmeg and allspice. The spirit is distilled in red wine casks and diluted to 46% strength. If I had read the instructions I would have known that this drink would have been best served by itself on ice or with ginger or ginger beer. Still, a memorable drink from Cotswald's Distillery.


  And so to the package which arrived today with the two new Cotswolds Gins safely wrapped but rapidly unwrapped. The first bottle was Baharat which is said to be a tribute to those inhabitants of the Cotswolds area who lived in Georgian and Victorian times and who set out from their Midlands homes to travel the world and bring back  various treasures and flavours from their journeys.
  Baharat is produced by adding a combination of middle eastern spices to juniper and wheat spirit, the spices including cumin, coriander, chilli, cardamom, clove, black pepper and sweet citrus oil. It is recommended to be drunk (this time I read the instructions) as a gin and tonic garnished with a slice of orange peel perhaps half dipped in chilli flakes or with ginger ale in place of the tonic. Mmmm ...


  The second bottle contained Cotswolds Ginger Gin which contains Cotswolds Dry Gin casked for 3 months and then sweet Valencia orange peel is added to the matured gin with candied root ginger which soak in the gin for several weeks. Final sweetening is carried out with the addition of honey and the whole is diluted to 46% for bottling. Recommendations for serving suggested that it is best served as it is or on ice or with a few drops of Angostura Bitters or with warmed apple juice. Again, mmmmm .....


  With this little collection in the gin cabinet it looks like being a rather comfortable winter. And all of it made in the west midlands.