New Harbour Restaurant, Newquay

I had forgotten to take my guide book to Newquay so we snuck in to WHSmith in Newquay town centre to read up on which were the recommended place for lunch. And this was the suggestion…being a mainly fish type restaurant and I am after all on holiday with Neil! The restaurant itself nestles in Newquay harbour and after a little while hanging about outside waiting for someone to invite us in (we weren't sure if we could just go and plonk ourselves down at a table or we needed to be shown to one) we decided on going into the covered terrace on the basis that we wouldn't be disturbed by people smoking on the outside tables – oh, the hazards of a smoking ban!

We finally got ourselves noticed by one of the waiting staff and went and sat down at a table. I'm going to be generous and just put the stickiness of the table down to the sea salt. We then waited a good while longer before being able to catch the attention of some other waiting staff and get them to bring us a menu and order something to drink. You'll be detecting a pattern by now, won't you?

Eventually we got to give our order from the rally very pleasant menu. I, remembering the success of my sardines bruschetta at Pescatori's the other week ordered the sardines on toast with chilli and chorizo for starters and Neil had the devilled whitebait with Lime yoghurt.

So there was I imagining some crisp toast with some fresh sardines and chorizo and slivers of fresh chilli all cooked up in some olive oil type juices and what I go was a chunk of brown bread that was burnt around the edges but seemingly unacquainted with the grill in the middle. I believe there were a couple of fresh sardines on top but it was hard to tell as they were drowned by a luke warm tomato sauce in which were red chunks of something. I have no idea what happened to the chilli. And this is the thing that really annoys me, I don't like tomato sauce with my sardines. I don't like it in tins and I certainly don't want my sardines ruined by it. At no point in the menu did it mention tomato sauce, which was the most voluminous ingredient on the dish.

Grrrr!

The Dressed crabs with potato salad redeemed the restaurant a little for me. To be fair the potato salad was a little below average and the salad wasn't dressed but the crab sprinkled with the juice of the half lime that was served with it was sublime.

I had the house Sauvignon Blanc but was unimpressed.

Two Courses plus two glasses of wine £50

New Harbour Restaurant
Quay St
Newquay
Cornwall

Rick Stein’s Fish & Chips…

are lovely! We arrived in Padstow's South Quay 5 minutes after closing time in the fish and chip restaurant so got some take out;I had sea bream and Neil had haddock. We both had some mushy peas and a pot of tartare sauce to share. We wandered over to the quay and sat down on the quayside watched by an opportunistic gull.

We both agreed that this was the best fish and chips that we had ever had! (Despite having a really, really good haddock in The Peat Spade Inn a couple of nights before). The fish was lovely but the chips were really, really good. The bit that topped it al off though was Chalky's Bite; a rather strong but wonderfully smooth and tasty lager created in partnership with the local brewery Sharp. Neil was only allowed a sip of mine to taste as he was driving, but on our way out of Padstow we pooped by the store and bought a six pack more!

I'll say one thing..Rick Stein has got Padstow all sewn up. It's a lovely place, much more my cup of tea than say, Newquay where we went a couple of days later. We also bought for dinner that night a couple of salmon fishcakes from the deli counter in Rick Stein's store and a couple of slices of passion fruit tart from the Rick Stein Patisserie in the centre of town.

Rick Stein's Fish & Chip Shop
South Quay
Padstow
Cornwall

About £20 for 2, including a bottle of beer a posh apple juice.

River Cottage Canteen

We were very lucky when we arrived in Axminster after a leisurely two hour drive from Longstock in Hampshire. We found a free parking space just outside the object of our detour : The River Cottage Canteen.

I had read up about the River Cottage canteen and determined that Axminster was not so far out of way on our trip down to North Cornwall. The River Cottage shop is lovely, if a bit pricey but and we are still chomping our way through the fruitcake we bought there. I can also thoroughly recommend the River Cottage yoghurts. They even sold round courgettes there, which you won't find in even the poshest supermarkets!

The canteen itself was light and airy, had that sort of high ceilinged canteen acoustics and had a really, really good selection of soft drinks including the Luscombe fruit juice range. Neil being a bit of a fan of apple juice branched out into apple and elderflower and I had some elderflower bubbly (which included the surprise ingredient of wine vinegar!).

We were up for two courses which you could just about create from the very egalitarian choice from the blackboard. I had one of the loveliest, tastiest, sweetest tomato and basil salads I ever had (including yellow tomatoes) but although I asked for no bread, I got bread with it and to tell you the truth the lady delivering my meal looked a bit stern and I thought I might get told off if I mentioned this!

Neil then went on to have the meatballs with pitta bread etc, which went down pretty damn fast and I had the cheese plate. Half of which went uneaten as it was blue cheese and I don't like blue cheese. I should have mentioned when I ordered it (you go up to the counter to order and the ladies there weren't stern at all) but then I thought they could have warned me; or is my dislike of blue cheese unusual?

I also thought they could have told me what the cheeses were, so that if I had liked them I could have gone and bought some at the cheese counter in the shop.

I did round lunch of with a moist and scrummy lemon cake – I have a feeling it was a lemon and syrup cake or a really, really drizzly lemon drizzle cake. What ever it was, I liked it!

River Cottage Canteen & Local Produce Store
Trinity Square
Axminster

2 course lunch for two, a cake and plentiful soft drinks £43.

The Peat Spade Inn

We're in Cornwall for a week's holiday, but we decided to escape London on the Thursday night instead of leaving first thing on Friday morning. This led to us having a wholly leisurely trip down here.

Our Thursday night escape route was via The Peat Spade Inn, a gorgeous gastro pub nestling in a Hampshire village with rooms attached. I discovered it, as I often do with places such as this via Alistair Sawdays' website. I booked a room for two and dinner for 8.30pm.

Firstly the rooms which are not the largest and are reminiscent of the kind of room that you will find at a Hotel Du Vin, at £120 per night, including breakfast they are not cheap, but not quite as expensive as the Hotel Du Vin either. The bed was one of the most comfortable I have ever slept in (and many others judging by the comments in the room's very own visitors book) and the bathroom was lovely and is now the model for an en suite bathroom I may choose to put in any future house that I may own (if there's room for an en suite!!).

We started off the evening, having dumped our overnight bags at the bar, my shoulder muscles started to relax and I realised that I was on holiday!

The menu was seasonal and very English. There was a good range of fish (always a plus if you're going to be eating with Neil) plus some of my favourites such a pork belly and steak frites with béarnaise sauce. There was a great wine list; just the sort I like all separated into countries and regions and each with a paragraph describing the wine. Certainly, someone at this place loves their wine and if you're like me, interested in trying new things but not always knowing where to start it's just what you need. In any case, we did, as so often, start at the antipodean end of the wine list and choose a rather lovely Hunter Valley Verdhelo (Cockfoster's Ghost 2006).

We ordered at the bar and were taken to our table once our starters were ready, which had a great view of the rest of the restaurant but sadly a little to close to a table with a rather loud, frankly rather unpleasant, snobby woman. That said, I suspect the whole restaurant felt themselves rather close to her. Unfortunately we had to take our wine list with us and had to wait some time with food in front of and had to ask to order our wine…by the time we attracted someone's attention we Neil had nearly finished his soup (I had stopped eating as I can't eat without something to drink, even if it's just water beside me).

Neil had ploughed on with his starter of Cucumber & Mint Sauce with Horseradish cream because it was just so gorgeous! I had the same but only ate half of it as there was probably enough in the bowl for lunch, not just a starter! It was sublime and the horseradish was a perfect foil to the coolness of the soup.

Despite a couple of very tempting specials, we both went for the comfort option of Haddock and Chips. The haddock was excellent in a light, savoury beer batter…no greasiness in sight. There was homemade tartare sauce where I was able to feel the crunch of a shallot against the creaminess of the fish. Sublime! Neil is a great fan of mushy peas and there were light and lovely but the chips were a bit of a disappointment to me. They were more 'fries' than the sort of chips that go best with fish and to my mind there were we little bit too well fried.

My Eton Mess when down a treat after all that, I loved the meringue in it and Neil's selection of sorbets included his first ever apple sorbet, which has now gone on my list of sorbets to make at home!

Breakfast the next morning started off with Dorset cereals, coffee, orange juice, the choice of fruit salad or cooked breakfast and it was all lovely. I could have done with a little card menu to see what the options were but it was hearty and well cooked. In fact, I was set up for the day and not nearly as hungry enough when we arrived at the River Cottage's Canteen in Axminster for lunch!

I would definitely recommend if you are driving down to the West Country from London that you break your journey on the first night at The Peat Spade Inn. They need to pay a bit more attention to training their charming waiting staff but it is welcoming, there is good food, you can see the stars in the sky as you step out to go to your room and it is set in a bucolic Hampshire village with thatched cottages and a river nearby. In fact, the Peat Spade Inn also acts as abase for fishing, which is not my bag but could be yours.

 

The Peat Spade Inn
Village Street
Longstock
Stockbridge
Hampshire

01264 810612

Room, drinks, dinner, wine and breakfast for two about £200.

 

Pescatori, Dover Street

On Monday, Neil and I went to Pescatori on Dover St, Mayfair for an early dinner before going on to a movie at the Curzon Mayfair.

Now, Neil is a bit of a fish fiend and so when I arrived and scanned the menu I immediately questioned why he had never suggested we should eat there before. Apparently, he has come here with clients before; it would seem, like Petrus that this is a restaurant that he takes clients to, in order to impress them rather than girlfriends! Or at least not immediately.

The basic deal at Pescatori’s is for the diner to have some fish for starter, followed by a bit more fish for main.

There are some vegetarian options and if memory serves me right, 3 meat dishes, however if fish is not your thing then don’t go.

If fish is your thing, then you have entered one of the anterooms to paradise. If you are a fan of Italian food and you like fish then you are, in fact, sorted.

The waiting staff are attentive and friendly. One of the benchmarks that I use for waiting staff is the left handed cutlery test. I am acutely left handed and have a habit of changing the cutlery around at my place seating soon after I sit down. It tends to create consternation amongst waiting staff: you can see concern flicker over their faces as they wonder if they are going mad as they seem to have set the table the wrong way round and they certainly don’t remember doing it. What they then do (some can’t cope and carry on changing the setting back to be right handed) and whether they smile and set your next bit of cutlery left or right handed is a good sign to me of their ‘customer focus’.

The guys at Pescatori passed.

For starters, Neil and I both had the special of sardine bruschetta; the fresh tomato of the regular bruschetta was kept and the sardine fillets were sublime. I wolfed this down with the help of a perfectly respectable glass of Pouilly Fume. If I had a criticism to make it is that I could have done with a little bit more bread under the tomato and sardines, but I am picking. I would gladly eat an identical sardine bruschetta every day for a week!

Neil then went on to have the Dover crab and salmon fishcakes with a side order of green beans and I had the pennette with Dover crab and mange tout.

To be honest I could have eaten most of the dishes on the menu and the combinations were novel but delicious sounding, with a smattering of classics like Neil’s fishcake.

My pennette was cooked to perfection, the crab was divine and I could even taste the wonderful seasonal freshness of the mange tout. In ordering I had been worried that the mange tout would find its way to the bottom of the dish and not cling to the pasta like a good sauce should. However, they had solved this conundrum by slicing the mange tout finely and so each mouthful was a combination of pennette, crab and mange tout as promised.

This food was the stuff of summer. The stuff of seashore restaurants on the Amalfi coast and it was what I yearn to reproduce in my own attempts of Italian cooking. I am not there yet, in my own kitchen so I may have to come back a few times to Pescatori until I crack it!!

The dessert menu was standard Italian deserts with a couple of interesting additions. I went for the hazelnut ice-cream with Baileys, a dish that I used to have every lunch on an Italian holiday a few years ago. And this ice-cream was the only place where Pescatori fell down. It seemed to me that the ice-cream had at some point thawed and been refrozen. I could detect a couple of ice crystal but the worst bit was that someone had seemed to pour a couple of teaspoons of sand into the mix. It was very disappointing.

The wine list was respectable with a good range of European and New World wines but not the longest list in the world. The side dishes likewise were what you expect: green beans, new potatoes, rocket with parmesan; because, lets face it, if you’re here, you’re here for the fish.

I was surprised at how quiet the restaurant was, even though it was a Monday night. The clientele seemed to be ‘walk in’s and business people staying at nearby hotels with the odd tourist and we were there from 7pm until about 8.45pm. However, it may be that this is one of those restaurants that makes its money with lunch time business trade and perhaps the Charlotte Street branch fare better. The interior was not very Italian (new oak panelling) but it did have lovely crisp white table linen, which I love in a restaurant.

Still, I think it is definitely worth booking and I am already compiling a list of people to go here again with. I’m not ready to start a star rating with my restaurant reviews yet but this is definitely a restaurant to recommend, as long as you like fish!

Pescatori

11 Dover Street

Mayfair

London W1

Meal for two with a bottle of wine and some water: around £100




iPhone apps for Foodies

Hat tip to Cheese and Biscuits for two things:

One if you own an iPhone, then you must down load the a neat little iPhone application called Urban Spoon. You choose the area of London, the type of cuisine and the price and it comes up with an idea of where you might want to go...don't like the suggestion and you can just shake the iPhone and it comes up with an alternative!

It's cool! I've just spent 10 minutes testing it on restaurants in Crystal Palace (of which there are many and varied)

To download it you just need to go to your App Store on your iPhone (assuming you're using version 2 of the iPhone software and search for Urban Spoon.

Secondly:

Cheese & Biscuits also has the very natty Google Blog Review, which you can see on my sidebar underneath my picture.

It is very easy to install and I think it's great.

Now, I have to just write that restaurant review i've been meaning to.

In the Bag: Chicken, Peas and Parmesan

The excellent A Slice of Cherry Pie blog, co-hosts the monthly In the Bag competition, where all those who wish to take part are challenged to come up with a meal using seasonal ingredients.

Well, I decided on chicken breasts wrapped in pancetta, with one of my favourites, pea, mint and avocado salad and parmesan mash.

The Chicken with pancetta is just as easy as easy can be..I just take a chicken breast and wrap the rashers of bacon around it (tucking the edges underneath) and mill some black pepper over it and pop it in the oven. By cooking the chicken in the pancetta (you could use streaky bacon if you wanted to, but the Italian version of this cut of the pig is usually sliced thinner and obviously is cured differently) the fat melts and keeps the chicken breast nice and moist.

When you take the pan out of the oven there will be all sorts of scrummy, bacony cooking juices which I just drizzle over the sliced up chicken breasts.

The salad is one that I have been making for years from Nigella Lawson's excellent How to Eat. Put olive oil, white wine vinegar, chopped mint and a little sugar in a bowl to make the dressing.

You then quickly cook the peas and pop them in the dressing and leave them there for a while until you're ready to serve. The trick (and Nigella doesn't mention it in her book) is to quickly run the peas under cold water once you've cooked them. That way they will stay green and not go that funny moss green, mushy pea colour.

When the mash and the chicken are cooked then quickly chop up your avocado, add some chicory leaves and some baby salad leaves and mix! I don't normally serve it on the plate as I did here, but in a bowl. The sweetness of the peas, with the mint and the softness of the avocado is lush!

The parmesan mash is just very simple (yes, I used the potatoes that I had dug up at the weekend) potatoes, milk, butter and parmesan.

I then attempted to do something a bit flashy and bake them in little metal pots that have been lined with olive oil breadcrumbs and more parmesan (you could use ramekins, if you wanted to I guess, but I prefer the slope of the pots) but my mash was too soft and flopped a bit when they came out. Next time I won't add any milk, just butter or maybe olive oil!

Still, the mash may not have looked exactly how I wanted to but did benefit from the second cooking in breadcrumbs and cheese!

It was delicious!!