264. Ludlow Food Festival 2022.

 

  The Ludlow Food Festival has had its ups and downs. Two years ago, in the wake of the COVID pandemic, the live event was cancelled and the organisers had to resort to an on-line only festival but at least the show did go on. This year’s was suddenly faced with the nightmare decision of whether to cancel or not in the face of the sudden death of our late Queen and the prolonged period of national mourning which took place as a result. The show went on but with the compromise that the national flag (in this case, curiously I thought, the national flag of England rather than the Union Jack) would be flown at half-mast on the castle’s tower, a minute’s silence was to be held and no music was played during the festival (which to many would be a relief even at ordinary times). The weather was generally moderate and Lucy The Labrador and I had a generally happy time, she sniffing the entire grounds to seek out dropped food and I listening to a good number of the food demonstrations from mostly West Midlands chefs while she snoozed at the edge of the tent.

  The first worthwhile demonstration was by Chris Simpson of the Michelin-starred Pensons’ of the Netherwood Estate on the Herefordshire and Worcestershire border. I have not yet visited Pensons’ and I know that I must.

  Jason Christie, Head of Fermentation at Daylesford Farm Organics, demonstrated, as you would expect, fermentation as well as showing how to cook fish by means different from the chef at the next demonstration I attended, the first on Saturday, that by Stuart Collins of Docket No. 33 in Whitchurch (see Blog 182).

  One speaker who received far too much exposure at the Festival (3 separate demonstrations, one of which would have been quite enough) was Howard Middleton, the Tommy Cooper of British baking, who was last year generally funny in his ineptitude but this year was more a case of ‘you’ve seen him once and you don’t really need to see him again’ (let alone three times). He might have lightened the mood if the Festival had been rather sombre as a result of The Queen’s death but generally it was going along perfectly satisfactorily. People were eating and buying and holding on to their dog leads, Olde England was mourning but still getting on with things including this historic food festival.

  A real highlight of the festival is the Fire and Feast event on the Saturday evening. I attended for the second year having feasted right royally in 2021. As darkness descended on this magical scene (well, magical might not be quite the right word but, with a couple of cocktails inside me, it does convey the thrill I experienced being there with the fires burning and the tables all set up in the ruined banqueting hall) the eighty or so diners settled down to a quite fabulous feast of local smoked cheese and superb local charcuterie with figs and fine bread having previously been served a delicious and lovely piece of kid meat. What followed was astronomically good - supremely delicious and tender beef, of the highest quality, covered in truffle with a potato salad drizzled with an excellent, perfectly spicy chimchurri and served with charred, er, chard and gorgeously sweet carrots. There was a sort of apple crumble to follow with, I think, oats for the crumble but this was not really immensely enjoyable though the apple itself was very good.

  Back to Fishmore Hall where I was staying, at 10PM, the market square almost deserted after a day which had seen thousands of people walking through it to get to the castle.

 Sunday morning brought a double act demonstration by Mark Harris of The Pheasant Inn in Neenton and Reuben Crouch of CSons in Ludlow and Shrewsbury.

  If, like the Edinburgh Festival, Ludlow were to have the Festival’s best joke competition, Crouch and Link would undoubtedly have won with - 

   Reuben Crouch,  “I was going to put all the mushrooms into the pan …”

   Mark Harris, “But there wasn’t mush room!”.

Andy Link of Riverside Inn, Aymestrey gave an interesting overview of the trials and tribulations of recent years and highlighted the dab as a good flat fish to serve.

  He pointed that what you write on a menu really does matter and gave the example that when he featured gurnard on his mention there were very few takers for it but when he changed the fish’s name on the menu to the ancient name of it, sea robin, its popularity as a diners’ choice soared. It was formerly known as the sea-robin because, not surprisingly, its under-thorax is red.

The last demonstration I attended was that by Nick Bennett of Old Downton Lodge outside Ludlow and rather remote. This is another restaurant I have been meaning to visit for a long time. It does not do a lot of covers at any one time and the restaurant’s activity can be heavily influenced by the season, for instance it is heavily booked with the shooting season being upon us.

  Among my purchases were five large bags of Two Farmers crisps (at a very good price of £10 for five) produced in Herefordshire which I think are the tastiest and crispiest crisps I have ever had the pleasure to open a bag of, Two lovely pieces of ceramics from Stych Farm Studios and a copy of Angus D Birdett’s excellent new book A Portrait Of British Cheese which the author kindly signed for me, he being at the book stall at the time I bought it.

My new Stych Farm bowls -

  As Sunday afternoon drew to a close the crowds disappeared and I headed off for the walk back to Fishmore Hall. Sunday roast was on offer for dinner - 

  trout rilette, roast beef with seasonal vegetables and broccoli and leek gratin and what looked like a failed panna cotta with macerated cherries and cherry sorbet. The rillette was very agreeable, the beef was cooked magnificently and was as delicious as that I ate the previously evening at the castle and the accompanying vegetables highly enjoyable though the roast potatoes were not really crispy and I particularly enjoyed the broccoli and leek gratin - the flavour of the leek really shone through and the cheese was very tasty. The dessert was a bit of a hotchpotch (I think I was expecting a panna cotta but I don’t think things turned out as they should have done) but there was plenty of cherry flavour in the sorbet and macerated cherries to ensure satisfaction with it.

  And so to bed. Exhausted by food and exercise. 

  I hope that next year the Festival organisers can come up with some new interesting West Midlands chefs as most of this year’s chefs had been seen before and there are chefs local to Ludlow and nearby who have not yet made an appearance. The festival may be becoming mildly stale not just in the chefs presenting but also the food stalls. Now it seems to be more about alcohol than food - anyone and everyone in the area seems to be making gin and flogging it off at the Festival.

  Still, the grand Sausage Trail remains a great draw as hundreds of people, myself and Lucy included, amble around the town tasting what the local butchers have on offer. This year’s samples were very good but not outstanding and it was difficult to identify a deserving winner but dog and man eventually settled on the fine blushed tomato sausage produced by Carter’s of Ludlow (no relation as far as I know to Carter’s of Moseley).

  So the Ludlow Food Festival, Britain’s original food festival carries on and I have already reserved my room at Fishmore Hall for the second weekend in September 2023.

262. Cork And Tile Portuguese, Stratford-Upon-Avon.

 

  Cork & Tile Portuguese opened in the Fred Winter Centre in the Guild Street back street area of Stratford-Upon-Avon in the spring of 2022. It’s somewhere different to try out when in Stratford as a rest from the lookalike Sheep Street bistros and its attraction is, or should be, that it’s offering a new cuisine for the town - Portuguese.

  The restaurateurs have done their best to give it a Mediterranean feel - pleasing bright decor with sunny yellows, colourful Portuguese ceramics on the walls and authentic Portuguese background music. The place is spacious but the building itself makes it impossible to suspend one’s belief that one is in Stratford and not in a cosy Algarve restaurant, sea breezes wafting around one and the squeal of seabirds eyeing up your grilled sardines. The outside looks like a sports centre and the ceiling of the restaurant - all pipes and tubes - burdens the attempt to bring the Mediterranean to Stratford with an overwhelming industrial feel to it. It’s a shame. The owners have done their best but it’s the wrong building in the wrong location to enable one to really enter into the spirit of what is intended; perhaps if they had been able to acquire a more traditional location on Waterfront looking out towards the Avon then it really would have been quite thrilling to visit. That said they’ve clearly done their best with the location available.

  Good service and a good explanation of what was on offer left one only to wait for one’s choice of dishes from the menu. But there was a second problem. The restaurant has no alcohol license and while one is invited to bring one’s own bottle it would be really rather nice if the restaurant were offering a choice of wines, particularly Portuguese or Iberian, to help conjure up the Lusitanian atmosphere which the building itself denies the diner. In all events, it’s an interesting menu and as starter I chose Gambas com Alho (translated as Garlic prawns with croutons). This was undoubtedly a robust start to the meal; the magnificent prawns were well cooked and tasty and the herb and garlic sauce very enjoyable. The croutons were terrifyingly hard and anyone biting into them without soaking them in the sauce first would be running a serious risk to their dentition. Nevertheless a fine and enjoyable dish.

  For the main course I chose Alheira com Batata a Murro e Grelos (“A classic bread sausage of wild boar and deer meat with crushed new potatoes and turnip greens”). This turned up looking about as rustic as any dish could do, with the vast, slightly unnerving, splendidly phallic bread sausage tied up in an ‘O’ shape and the turnip greens sitting comfortably on 4 or 5 very well cooked but uncrushed new potatoes.

  The ‘classic bread sausage’ is not particularly any more appealing on the inside than it is on the outside. It seems to be largely bread, as described on the menu, with little pieces of chopped protein inside it. It’s rather mushy and while it no doubt does appeal to Portuguese tastes it’s not a sausage that I feel I shall be revisiting. Still interesting to try and I have no complaints to make to the chef on the preparation of the dish.

  I had room for dessert (my proton pump inhibitor is working splendidly). I chose Bolo de Coco e Ananàs) pineapple and coconut cake) served with vanilla ice cream. This was thoroughly satisfying and the cake had a nice texture though the flavour of pineapple was less in evidence than that which came from the coconut. The helping of ice cream was generous though the ice cream was fairly unremarkable and I didn’t really need the strawberry sauce poured on it.

  This restaurant makes a pleasing alternative venue if one is looking for somewhere to eat in Stratford. I shall be interested to see how the restaurant develops in the coming months. It is the second branch of Cork And Tile Portuguese, the original shop being opened in Exeter in July 2019. The chef in Stratford is Ana Natalia. Rating - 🌜🌜

  Stratford is the sort of town where one would expect to find a good number of restaurants which might find their way into the Good Food Guide or the Michelin Guide. The Good Food Guide is very much in flux at the moment and at the moment does not list a single Stratford restaurant in its short list of Midlands restaurants. The nearest restaurant mentioned in the Good Food Guide is the immaculate Cheal’s of Henley. Michelin meanwhile lists three - the single starred Salt, Lambs of Sheep Street and The Woodsman. 

Here is a list of all the Stratford upon Avon restaurants mentioned in the Michelin Guide during its existence as hard copy which is the period 1974 - 2020 and then the subsequent years as an online tool.The years in which each restaurant featured in the Guide are indicated:-

(Da) Giovanni 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Marianne 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Buccaneer 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Bankside 75 76 77

Le Provençal 77 78 79 80 81 82

Christophi’s 77 78 79 80 81

Piper At The Gates of Dawn (floating restaurant) 78 79

The Chase (Ettington) 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 

Marlowe’s Elizabethan Rooms 85

Hill’s 85

Rumours 87

Hussains 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01

Sir Toby’s 90 91 92 93 94 95

Liaison 96

The Boathouse 98 99 00

Desport’s 99 00 01 02 03

Lamb’s 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Restaurant Margaux 02 03 04 05

Hamilton’s Brasserie 05

Malbec (Petit Bistro) 06 07 08 09 10 11

Church Street Townhouse 12 13 14 15 16

Oak Room (Ettingham Park Hotel) 12 13

Waterside Brasserie 12 13 14 15 16 17

Rooftop (Royal Shakespeare Theatre) 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

No 9 Church St 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Baraset Barn (Alveston) 12 13 14 15 16

Woodsman 20 21 22 

Salt 18 19* 20* 21* 22*

  As can be seen, Lamb’s has had by far the longest run on the pages of the Guide (2000-22), followed by Hussain’s which still exists though it has not been listed since 2001. I have visited it twice though several years ago when I found it to be a fairly run-of-the-mill, old fashioned south Asian-style restaurant. However it would be interesting to visit it again now to see if it remains a time capsule or is more grounded now in the 21st century.

261. Indus at Park Regis Hotel.

  

 Waterstones is an irritating shop. The Birmingham multi-storey branch has, of course, a very good range of books to choose from and to peruse reasonably peacefully but every time I visit it seems to be becoming more of a coffee house as the area devoted to displaying books is gradually subsumed by chairs and tables where nice middle class socialists can sit and get a free read and generally muck up a book I might want to buy while lingering  over the single mug of capuccino they purchased two and half hours ago. 

  The coffee emporium component of the shop has now spread out to render the food book section, where I like to search out editions telling the story of eating out, an isolated island which to get to one has to clamber over bearded senescent Corbyn-lookalikes reading opportunistically an available free newspaper or grim professional mothers from Moseley or Harborne letting their three or four accompanying children run riot while occasionally trying to answer the kids’ precocious questions on gender fluidity, the classification of flying dinosaurs or what was really involved in hanging, drawing and quartering.

  But let us not sink too far into reflections on the usefulness of the modern English middle-class, well-educated but not necessarily any good at anything, and instead reflect that per ardua ad altem I did indeed manage to negotiate the barriers of Waterstones coffee area and find my way to the Food section bookshelves. For once there were a few items that took my fancy, including a couple of wafer-thin volumes, one possibly ‘signed by the author’, by that supremely middle class socialist useful for nothing more than writing fine restaurant reviews (and apparently also making music) which would have ensured that he would have been aboard the fourth and final spaceship carrying the remains of mankind abandoning a doomed earth in the final part of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

  So it was that I got my hands on My Dining Hell, such an attractively thin tome that I was unable to resist beginning to read it immediately, and hence, halting only for quite frequent guffaws, I plunged on through the book reading about Rayner’s very worst dining experiences usually in a London dining establishments which, given the prices asked in restaurants there, should have been a lot better.

  It isn’t a good idea to be a restaurant to be visited by someone who likes and is expecting good food on the day that the diner has read My Dining Hell if you are not going to live up to expectations and the Indus in the Park Regis Hotel, at the far end of Broad Street near Five Ways was the dining establishment fated to fall foul of such a diner empowered by the little pink book which rendered to the reader the Thoughts of Jay.

  The Park Regis Hotel itself is an exquisitely confusingly designed building with the reception being located on the fourth floor and the restaurant seeming to occupy the same space as that area in which hotel guests seem likely to be breakfasting - in short, a flawlessly off-putting cafeteria. When I had finally worked out how to access the ‘restaurant’ I presented myself to a woman who seemed surprised to see me even though I had arrived on time in the early evening, one and half hours after the restaurant’s advertised opening time. There were no other diners though it was admittedly quite early in the evening, albeit a Friday. After some conferring with the manager I was directed to a table with comfortable enough chairs and was able to look around at this soulless area little different from an airport cafeteria on a the day of a long advertised airport workers’ strike.

  However the front of house staff were moderately pleasant, a cocktail - a quite reasonable pina colada - was ordered and the menu, slightly grubby and dog-eared and mildly greasy, or was it just waxy?, was presented. An extraordinary document, the likes of which have probably not been seen in a south Asian restaurant before. There was a choice of a fair number of starters which on the look of it seemed surprisingly expensive but the choice of mains was bizarrely inadequate - one seafood, one chicken, one lamb with no choice of sauces plus some vegetarian dishes. This was not looking promising.

  I could not bring myself to order any of the starters purely on the basis of their price - if I had thought they were going to be worth it I might have dipped my toe in the water - but I did order poppadoms and pickles which were not modestly priced - £4. I was served a number of poppadom shards and three little pots of the ‘pickles’ - a really unpleasant mint and coriander yogurt dip, a microscopic quantity of really horrible tomato and onion pickle (what a relief the amount served had not been greater) and a more generous helping of ‘home-made’ reasonable-tasting mango chutney (though the menu did not identify in whose ‘home’ the chutney had been made but of course we must assume this all to be true even though the chutney seemed to have no qualities to distinguish it from something which had originated in a supermarket).

  My main dish made a fairly rapid appearance on the scene. I had a chosen shahi qasbaar murgh (£16) to be consumed with tandoori butter naan (a robust £4). The glistening, reddish-brown curry looked perfectly reasonable in its metal bowl, the tandoori chicken was very nicely cooked - perfectly moist and tasty - though the sauce did not really better many of the sauces on offer at neighbourhood south Asian establishments sold at a fraction of the price. The naan was a good consistency and would have been very enjoyable had there not been a little more burning on it than was tolerable - I really don’t enjoy the flavour of charcoal. I had indicated that I rather fancied a mango lassi after I had finished my cocktail but no-one came to ask me about it when my glass was drained so the restaurant lost that small amount of business. No-one asked me if I wanted any water but some was delivered to the table when I asked about it and it came nicely chilled.

  I thought a sweet dessert might help to cleanse my mouth of the flavour of charcoal. The thing which winged its way to the table was a calamity. I had chosen pistachio ice cream with pecan nut brittle and other random elements including a caramel sauce. This was a real mess and almost entirely inedible. The ice cream was spread out across the middle of the dish centring itself on two inelegant misshapen mounds and was made up of ice cream stuffed with crushed pistachio bits which really had a very unhappy texture and an even worse flavour. The nut brittle was rock hard and far too threatening to the continuing existence of my teeth for me to have more than a tentative first nibble before abandoning the whole as a lost cause. The dessert did however have four sweet small half-strawberries lying on the plate with the rest of it and they were very pleasing though it was a pity that the stuff that shared the plate with them was truly awful.

  By the time this nightmare was over two or three couples had sat down to dine in this depressing, characterless dining room. One couple had ordered the immense ‘Indus non-vegetarian platter for two’ of starters priced at £35 and this actually looked rather good and they polished it off and did not seem displeased with it so it is possible that there is something at Indus in which it is worth indulging.

  For me however, the bill coming to over £46 (1 drink, 1 main, 1 naan, 1 dessert) this was one of the worst meals I have had and stumped up good money for, in a long time. The hotel’s management has opened a restaurant advertised as a dining establishment of quality but its pretensions are far in advance of what it delivers - the atmosphere is awful and the food does not live up to the prices chance. I fear that I shall not visit the banks of this particular Indus again at any time in the future.

Rating - 0.

260. Le Petit Bois

 

  After two lunches at le petit bois travelling restaurant at Herbert’s Yard a couple of weeks (I finally girded up my loins and, at a beautifully sunny English summer lunchtime headed for Moseley, to actually dine at the pretty Gallicly blue le petit bois (the lower case seems to be correct).

  A relaxed, perfectly judged welcome and I was seated in the extremely comfortable chairs at the very adequately sized table in the charming, bright, nicely sized restaurant and making my choices from the sensibly sized but highly interesting menu which included a clever ‘scallop of the day’ option.

   

  And indeed the scallop of the day option was too powerful a temptation to resist and by choosing it I was rewarded with a lovely plate of nicely cooked coquilles with a crispy bacon, a minty pea purée and much accompanying esteval joy. I had already been primed for pleasure by having been served a fine small baton with delicious chicken skin butter and a delightfully cooling, Bourbon and Cuantro-based brise d’été cocktail.

  The main course of hake with peas and wild mushroom macaroni reinforced the metaphorical breeze of summer wafting through the restaurant - quite, quite delicious - few chefs can serve their fish as perfectly as was this piece of hake with the most triumphantly crispy skin I have been served on a piece of fish for years.

  And to finish, a dessert created by the Devil himself - French Colonel - two gorgeous quenelles of light, refreshing lime sorbet made thoroughly wicked by having French vodka poured over them. What a dessert!

  Light and easy and alcoholic just as I like a dessert to be. Perhaps there should have been a biscuit or something with texture to accompany it but frankly I liked the Colonel just as he was 

  For those who wish to indulge themselves to the highest degree, a magnificent fruits de mer platter is available for a minimum of two people (£120 and by the looks of it worth every penny). A pair of ladies celebrating a birthday gave me an opportunity to witness the platter in the flesh (or perhaps, the shell) and I am glad to say they made short  measure of it and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

  The restaurant, owned by Ben Taylor, the Head Chef, and front of house manager, Zsofia Kisgergely, is the successor to their previous Moseley restaurant, Little Blackwood, which they opened in 2018 but which, like other dining establishments, was severely affected by the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic to the extent that it was not financially viable to keep the restaurant open with it shutting in March 2022.. Much of the problem underlying the restaurant’s closure had been related to a dispute with the landlord of the property and after a resolution of the issues Taylor and Kisgergely were able to take possession of the location once more.

  The restaurant’s website says that, “Le Petit Bois is your French country kitchen, in the heart of Moseley” and Taylor and Kisgergely appear to have been very successful in creating this atmosphere in this charming bistro.

Rating:- 🌞🌞