Under 40s will find it hard to believe, but dining out has not always been so in vogue. My childhood caught the end of the movie-going era. Any self respecting date was played out in the back row while some Woody Allen film droned on in the background. Nowadays, sharing a rib of beef and some polite chatter has replaced a silent and clumsy fumble in the dark. How times have changed.

So, if silver service is the new silver screen, why not turn a former cinema into a temple to new hedonism? The Daffodil, in the trendy Montpellier suburb of Cheltenham, has carefully, and extremely cleverly, avoided both kitsch and cliché in a fabulous piece of interior design that has retained the art deco character and soul of a local picture house, and yet made it a very pleasant space in which to dine.

The balcony has become a bar whose discreet booths overlook the stalls, which are now the dining floor. Focus is directed to the main event, the former screen, which has been opened up to reveal the pass.

There is also a small stage at the front which, on the Saturday we had lunch, was used to present a live jazz trio. A relaxed soundtrack to a silent but impressive matinée from the kitchen.

As good as the interior design is, and there is something new to appreciate every time you look up, like the chairs with half leather backs that brought traditional stalls seating to mind, it is not there to distract from the food. Dish of the day for me was a bang-in-season rhubarb trifle. But I could have picked the creamy spicy soup, the home made bread, or juicy pink lamb.

The wine list was pretty interesting. I’m a big fan of Michel Chapoutier and when his Crozes-Hermitage La Petite Ruche arrived too warm, the waiter plucked one directly from the cellar at exactly 16 degrees. It is a definite trend that UK restaurants are finally starting to pick up on the importance of wine temperature, despite blissful public ignorance. At £40 the multiple is a pretty steep 230% against an average retail price of around £12. And whilst I am wheeling out my wine markup bandwagon, with dessert, I ordered a glass of Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, only £3, but served in a 50ml measure – some people I know call that an eye-glass. But this is the only complaint I can find in an otherwise perfect easy afternoon scram. In any case, the Chapoutier is highly recommended with lamb, and the rich Syrah grape combined with a smooth vanilla finish was a perfect match for a parsnip soup combining the same creamy turmeric flavours. Made in the Rhone Valley at 13% ABV, its merits are not only spiciness but delicate and fragrant undertones. About as far from its cousin, the Aussie Shiraz blockbuster, as it is possible to travel.

The bill for two came to £121, which included three courses with a glass of champagne, a double Armagnac, a glass of dessert wine (smaller than the Armagnac), teas/coffees, the wine and service. Taken as a whole this is good value for one of the most pleasant afternoons I have spent in a long time.

The Daffodil
18-20 Suffolk Parade
Cheltenham
GL50 2AE
T: +44 (0)1242 700 055
F: +44 (0)1242 700 088
E: eat@thedaffodil.com
W: www.thedaffodil.com

The menu is as basic as it gets for a steakhouse. I mean, so basic that regulars of Goodman and Hawksmoor would walk straight out. Of more concern, however, is the wine list. Four wines from the ‘steak friendly’ section (for there were only four) were barely named, let alone afforded the courtesy of their year of birth.

I suppose it might have made a difference if my throat hadn’t been scorched by inflamed rocket fuel masquerading as a Bloody Mary. A short Hallelujah moment when wine two: ‘Catena Malbec’ arrived as the genuine article. Sadly not the Zapata or Alta, but real Catena,, from the year of our Lord 2009. At £32, well marked up for a wine you can often find for less than a tenner retail, but as reliable as ever once given 10 minutes in an ice bucket with the sole purpose of bringing the temperature down from ‘skillet’ to ‘chopping board’.

A freshly fallen shroud of virgin snow generally comes with more seasoning than a Black & Blue T-bone. The ‘mixed’ salad was much better dressed. In fact so much so that snow would have been no more likely to penetrate the thick winter coat of grated cheddar and walnuts than a rocket-propelled Bloody Mary of mass destruction. Underneath its robes, the salad actually wore Janet Reger underwear in the form of the zingy salad dressing which was the only sign of a bit of bully in a steep bear market cycle.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are targeting the wrong corporates. Banks are teddy bears compared to steak massacring chainsaws like this. We deserve better and I am going to camp outside my local Lehman’s branch until Goodman gives me my own table.

Perhaps I am harsh. Looking over a fabulous Black & Blue terrace, laughing faces sheltering from the autumn clouds, under parasols warmed by planet threatening electric heaters, that all the same look comforting and cuddly, everyone outside was having a ball. None of them were eating. If I should ever start smoking again, Black and Blue will be my first port of call for an al fresco tipple. If I am after food, I think I’ll stick to Hawksmoor, Goodman and Redhook, and hell yeah, wine prices aside, even Gaucho Grills.

Black & Blue
37 Berners Street
London
W1T 3NB
T: +44 7436 0451
W: Www.blackandbluerestaurants.com

(Visited November 2011)

The Star at Harome is just such a warming and friendly establishment but with the added bonus of being a restaurant that serves game, fish and fine wines. Oh and it has won just about every “best gastro pub” award going including, at one point, a Michelin star. It’s grouse season and I might just be in heaven. I am going to pay a celestial price too, £111 (a Nelson) plus service is more than a trifle in this part of the world.

Seated in the impossibly twee bar with ragtime jazz and opera inconveniencing the eardrums, the menu reveals my favourite game bird served in British Standard style – game chips, bread sauce, water-cress, redcurrant jelly. It being Yorkshire, a big bowl of duck fat roast potatoes and a mixed veg pan are added to the table. As a resident of God’s own county, and having been here long enough to know that Tykes rate their food primarily on quantity, I had anticipated this and exercised my right not to order a starter.

The game bird was a bit pissed off when I badgered her to chill my Fleurie (the cheapest Burgundy on the list was £54, which is a poor effort in grouse season) to drinking temperature. “I’ll put it in the fridge sir”, an ice bucket would be fine. But actually, erm, just rocks? Why is it so hard to get an ice bucket with a little aqua so it actually chills the wine?

The “young” grouse came without fuss although off the bone. I don’t think it was as well hung as one I ate at Le Café Anglais a couple of weeks ago. It was overcooked by comparison, and the duck fat roasties were not as crisp. But eating grouse looking out on the moor where it was shot adds a certain reverence and makes such preferences seem petty, especially when the shootist sat at the bar has just parked his Purdey near your table. And actually, grouse done medium has its own merits, especially in a rich gravy with whole tart redcurrants setting the saliva glands to ‘flush’.

A cheese board from the “British Isles” was extensive and impressive. Who needs French cheese? Cornish Yarg is always good in my experience, but a salty blue goat’s cheese by the name of Truckwell???? was my favourite of 4 random selections.

The 2009 Fleurie La Madone, a pretty rich £32.95 by the way, was a bit jammy, but of the redcurrant variety so went perfectly with the game. Not well matched to cheese though, so a glass of Austrian Trockenbeerenauslese (something the waiter was surprised I could pronounce) at £12.50, was the honey to the bee. Simply liquefied nectar.

A strange mix of genuine local farmers ordering a swift G &T on the way home, local ‘Lords’ desperately trying to dress in country house style, but looking more like they came from Del Boy’s manor, combined with random tourists, and a 60 year old bloke from Hampshire with his Dad, make for an eclectic but enjoyable craic. Yorkshire is a bit like France. You might not like the people but you have to love the way of life and this attracts outsiders by the coach load.

The Star at Harome is everything that’s good about Yorkshire, without the people. How did the South find out about this place?

The Star at Harome
Near Helmsley
North Yorkshire
YO62 5JE

T: +44 1439 770397
E: reservations@thestarinnatharome.co.uk
W: www.thestaratharome.co.uk

Not content with opening a bistro, a champagne bar, a fromagerie, and a café/patisserie, Flinn has now thrust American cuisine into this arty setting, otherwise populated by eclectic and bohemian shops of the sort your lost cousin from Hebden Bridge would sacrifice a goat to be seen in.

With the help of the Flinns (other family members are part of the team including his dad, Anthony Snr, who does “the finance”) and the retail footfall they have encouraged, even generated, this building is back to its beautiful, stunning, decadent self.

I love the brasserie, “Anthony’s Piazza” (even though I consistently whinge about the wine serving). It fits pulchritudinously into this cavernous space like a dreamy Watership Down meadow under a crisp night sky. Ideal for a first date, an evening meal gives you the opportunity to stare upwards at the faux stars on the high domed roof, while eating bistro classics like Baked Cod, Pork Tenderloin or Côte de Boeuf. Hardly the place for cheap and cheerful American fast food then. Yet here we are in the same space, sitting in Rib Shakk, under the Victorian arches, looking at a pig-filled board as big as a Turner painting, and to a man who is Hank Marvin, just as beautiful.

But before we get too excited, let’s clear the bad news. Despite the glorious setting, which contemporaneously brings to mind the best of Charles Dickens and Colonel Sanders, the delivery is a little cheap. Although the motto of Rib Shakk appears to be “It ain’t a sin to get sauce on your chin”, it would still be nice to have something to wipe it off with. The box of “Medicated Izal” style napkins and miniscule fresh-wipes don’t quite cut it. On retreating to the washrooms, I was just on the cusp of giving up and walking out with wet digits, when the hand dryers suddenly spluttered into life. Toothpicks would also be nice in a place where one of the prime objectives is to get meat stuck between your molars. But these are mere details that will hopefully get resolved.

The main issue is that Rib Shakk is stuck half way between a self-serve fast food outlet and a full service resto. I certainly felt a bit awkward, and I wondered if the staff thought I was trying to do an impression of Lee Evans (Norman Wisdom if you are maturing in years). First, you are invited to sit down and the waitress provides menus. You are then asked to go to the till to order and pay. This includes drinks and salads, the latter of which you are asked to “build” yourself from the counter. Returning to your table with salad, you then wait for drinks and food to arrive. A table for two is barely big enough to accommodate an enormous wooden platter, so don’t order one each.

Personally I think it would work better as a diner type concept. I had to get up mid-meal to go to the counter to order a second glass of a cheap but cheerful Merlot, reach into my pockets for the change, nearly drop my wine glass out of my sticky fingers on the walk back – and I’m still picking bits of mustard and cider BBQ sauce off my remaining coins (I know. I don’t spend them readily).

Maybe this is another thing that will get ironed out. In the meantime, I’ll put up with my complaints for the mucky, piggy, dirty, delicious food that is produced. It is a joyful eating experience that is difficult to call “fast food” since the meat is marinated and then slow cooked for up to seven loving hours. I can’t comment on authenticity as I have never eaten in a US equivalent. I can tell you that I munched on crisp fresh salads, smooth buttery corn cobs, moreishly seasoned fries and pork ribs that with the addition of a “mopping sauce” turned a sow’s chest into silky pursed lips. The only food fault I could find was some rather spongy chicken wings. Tasted great but with the texture of frogs’ legs, before they are cooked.

Slaving away at the burners on the night of my visit was the boss. It’s fun to watch Anthony Flinn, whose rubber tyred culinary journey has taken him from El Bulli to a bit of Bully, carefully plate up (or more accurately, board up) rib stacks, jaunty towers of corn on the cob, intriguingly constructed mounds of fries, and precisely planted buckets of wings. There is a final discerning, and in some ways contemptuous, glance at the board as if checking his tie on the way out of the house. Does it look just so? Is the composition correct? Are the ribs on the golden section?

I don’t wish Nando’s any ill will, but walking back to the car park, it was almost a shame to see the Portuguese napalmed chicken specialist full of Yorkshire folk. In one sense, I wanted to yell at the people of Leeds – you can get much better barbecued food! In another, it is a wake-up call for Rib Shakk, that a few bolts need tightening if, as stated, there is an ambition to emulate Nando’s success as a nationwide chain. The two are on a price par although you’re probably going to end up with a larger bill at Rib Shakk because whilst chicken is cheap, pork and beef are for life. We had enough ribs and chicken wings to test the waistband of Joey out of Friends’ eating pants, and the bill for two including drinks was about £40.

A Tweet up meeting is planned for January, 2012. Fancy joining us? Simply connect to Derek Hardy or me on Twitter, or leave a comment below. No offence taken if you don’t fancy it, but make sure you try Flinn’s meat yourself. Whilst there is a need for tweaking, there is plenty good enough about Rib Shakk to make an exploratory visit mandatory.

Rib Shakk Leeds
Piazza by Anthony
The Corn Exchange
Call Lane
Leeds
LS1 7BR
E: leeds@ribshakk.com
W: http://www.ribshakk.com/

How to Drink at Christmas by Victoria Moore is a book that promises to guide you to beverage Elysium.  What to drink when, and with what, cocktail recipes (including some interesting non-alcoholic ones), which brands of champagnes and spirits you should choose, non-specific anecdotes and advice.  Tory winos will recognise the author as the Daily Telegraph wine critic. The book opens with a chapter on how to stock your drinks cabinet for the festive season. This is the only problem with giving this book as a gift.  By the time the wrapping paper is crumpled on the floor, it is too late to take the otherwise excellent advice.  £9.99 Granta.

Most winos are also foodies. If your wino friend likes Champagne, Muscadet, Picpoul de Pinet or Guinness, there is a better than evens chance they also like oysters. Knowing ones natives from ones rocks is a basic test that even those without testicular cancer will pass. But can they tell you where to eat the best oysters in London? How much of your RDA of B12 or zinc is contained within an oyster serving? Or how, in a suicidal mood, it is possible to simultaneously slash your wrists whilst shucking your molluscs. What about recipes for serving them, or (sacrilegiously) cooking them? Or simply where to buy them. The London Oyster Guide by Colin Pressdee is an invaluable bivalve companion for all shellfish afficionados. I would, however, start from the presumption that some of the restaurant reviews are sponsored. £12.99, Graffeg, or see www.londonoysterguide.com.

Did you know you can give a Wine Society Membership as a gift?  If you can afford to invest £40 of your Xmas budget on your wino friend, then this may well be the best money you ever spent.  Surely they will repay you with an odd bottle, or at least invites to their parties where you should find many a decent wine being served.  No Jacob’s Creek here. £40, The Wine Society.

Glasses are very important indeed. Not just for winos over 40, who need them simply to examine the stuff they are drinking. Georg Riedel has assumed an ethereal reputation for designing the must have wine glasses of my generation.  Riedel Vinum is the BMW of stemware and will have most winos slurping and gurgling happily. UK prices tend to be about £15 per glass which is about the price of a BMW key ring, but much better value. If you are unsure which model to buy, this post will help.

If your budget is at the other end of the scale there are many gadgetty type gifts such as corkscrews, wine thermometers etc.  One super-cheap option that caught my eye is a decanter cleaning pack.  Basically a small box of ball bearings that you swirl around your decanter to remove wine stains etc.  Just go The Wine Society website and search for “Magic Balls” (no, really!). £2.95.

Happy shopping!

The charm of Barcelona is not in its town planning, at street level, anyway. A block layout that absorbs the worst of Paris and misses the best of Manhattan whilst in some ways resembling both. Drop a local on a random street corner and it will take several minutes for them to work out where they are. Yet, in Gaudi’s Sagrada Família, the Catalan capital boasts possibly the most incredible piece of world architecture of any epoch, and it’s not even finished yet.

People who think cathedrals are monuments to God, overlook the inconvenient truth that they are temples to civic ego. To be a credible European city in the post Jesus Christ era, is impossible without a Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, a St Paul’s Cathedral, a St Peter’s Basilica. The sort of buildings where cost is not even considered in the rush for mountainous scale, and infinite detail. It is this sort of competition that drives people of mere citizen status to go to the gym, to save up for an amazing dress, to spend untold hours of hard labour on the beach working up the perfect tan, and to eat at places like Catalana.

Typical Catalonian tapas is the order of the day. Pan con tomate, Iberian hams, squid done various ways, tortilla cake. It was served with efficiency and friendliness, but another inconvenient truth is that the food is better in places round the corner.

If you want to be seen with the right breasts, chests and vests, Cervecería Catalana fits the bill. If you want to be fed well I would recommend Mesón Cinco Jotas round the corner where you can see this sort of carving action, and without queuing, eat the most incredible food. Providing you are prepared to sit with mere muggles, of course.

Cervecería Catalana
C/ MALLORCA, 236
08013‎ Barcelona Spain
T: +34 932 160 368

I can’t fault the food and, at £27 for three generous courses, it stands up to the Sunday lunch value test, in London at least. The service is also impeccable, if a little sterile. I will take issue with the wine list, which is expensive to the point of leaving you with the distasteful feeling of having been ripped off. £44 for a low rent, screw cap, Blaufränkisch that stings of balsamic and glacé cherries is poor value, even at the “cheap” end of the list.

The decor is a little strange but I guess, in an area of London where you can buy a shotgun and a pair of plaid breeches, from a shop next door to one that sells 7ft high Ming vases, the locals probably feel at home. But I feel justified in my disappointment at the lack of game, and notably grouse, on this late August menu, in a place where dark duck feather lampshades shed amber light over dingy booths (which, a couple of districts to the east would have illuminated illicit poker games), and pictures of Hooray Henries pointing their Purdeys all over the shop with gay abandon adorn the walls.

Sitting eating in Corrigan’s I could have been randomly transmogrified, without even noticing, to The Ivy, Scott’s or The Boxwood Café (RIP), although at least the surviving brace in that list have some defining quirks: In the latter case, the Star Wars shellfish bar, and the former, Gestapo style service.

Talking of service, on vociferous enquiry, I discovered that the mandatory “optional” 12.5% goes to the house, so I hope that, like me, you will have that removed and leave a cash tip.

Apart from that foible, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Corrigan’s if you like this type of stuffy high end dining (and I am far from allergic). I guess I just expected a bit more craic from an Irishman.

If James Bond were to dine in London today, he wouldn’t take his Danish bird to Corrigan’s.  I suggest that, unlike a review quoted on the Corrigan’s website, he might still prefer Scott’s down the road, where he might at the very least meet the ghost of his creator.

Corrigan’s, Mayfair
28 Upper Grosvenor Street,
London
W1K 7EH
T: 0207 499 9943
E: reservations@Corrigansmayfair.com
W:  www.corrigansmayfair.com

£125.40 plus service for 3 course Sunday lunch for two with wine and coffees.

Compared to London in the best of times and the worst of times, Exeter city is beautiful, but only within a guillotine blade width of the cathedral. And in this tale of two cities, Exeter is almost uninhabited. But like most of provincial England, the restaurant scenery is so familiar and populous it could be Stockport, or Slough,  Scunthorpe or Staines. Desperately avoiding chain store massacres, I chanced upon Coal, which was bucking the trend on a late summer Tuesday evening, in that trade was brisk and I didn’t recognise the name from the FTSE brands directory.

The menu is sort of Argentinean/Mexican fusion; the wine list mainly predictable but with some interesting South Americans.

I ordered whitebait to start. The accompanying glass of Muscadet, let’s be kind, tasted of vinegar. At least it was balsamic I suppose which, to its credit, added an acetic piquancy to the heavily breaded sprats which looked to have been perfectly frazzled in dirty engine oil. Hunger was a great sauce and not having eaten all day….I admit I polished them off, on the assumption I could always find some Milk of Magnesia later.

A decent 12oz T-bone steak with all the trimmings in London is likely to cost you about half a hundred quid. I got one with a large glass of Etchart Privado Malbec for less than a pony.

Two vinegar drenched, yet dry, mushrooms looked on enviously at 3 juicy grilled cherry tomatoes. I needed the steak knife to cut through the tip tray sized portion of congealed cow by-product (possibly Emmental) that concealed, or maybe more accurately, congealed the potatoes “gratin”. Not good.

The beef that I had tentatively ordered medium-rare, but came rare (not complaining!), was the evening’s highlight. Well seasoned and with a charcoal trellis pattern that revealed the smoky cattle-branded flavours that I love in a well cooked steak, the fillet bit was soft, juicy, mouth-watering. The sirloin which represented the remaining 85% of the steak was equally saliva-generating and both were washed down with a fine, fruity, and not overly tannic wine that was served at approximately the right temperature, which is a massive plus for me.

OK, so fans of Hawksmoor and Goodman are unlikely to drive down the A30 to try this otherwise average place. But if you do by chance find yourself in the West Country, you could do worse than explore your carnivorous tendencies here. It might not be a far, far better thing that you do, than you have ever done, and it is doubtful that you will get the best rest you have ever known. However, unlike Sydney Carton, there is a better than evens chance that only the meat will be guillotined, or hung.

Coal Grill & Bar
18, Bedford St
Princesshay Square
Exeter
EX1 1GJ
T: +44 1392 420070
W: www.coalgrillandbar.co.uk

Also (frustratingly) branches at Bristol, Basingstoke, Guildford, Wimbledon, and even bloody Sheffield! At least you can get good steak knives there.

By contrast, the interior of the Blue Bicycle is very Bohemian with ultramarine water glasses, Van Gogh sunflower coloured walls, and Lautrec painted mirrors. A little reminiscent of the label of a Hahn Estates Cycles Gladiator wine, and no doubt inspired by the same genre of painting.

The menu is quite interesting but the specials board blew me away. A starter of scallops, sat yawningly and predictably on black pudding, was much less boring than it sounds. Tomato chutney and sweet glazed onions brought the LS Lowry out of a pudding noir that, although the restaurant claimed was from Yorkshire, was of a quality that is rarely found outside Bury Market, Lancs.

Food is always nicer when eaten with proper instruments and what better than solid silver forks and bone handled knives. The wine glasses were unremarkable but the wine list was Gaucho Grill in reverse. My Ropiteau Chablis, at £29 outbid the cheapest wine I can remember seeing at Gaucho, Leeds where we ate the night before. Grapefruit, dark sugar, dry and flinty it went great with scallops and stone bass, which as it happened was my choice of main.

To cut to the chase, the only disappointments were dry falafel with my bass, and soggy crackling with Fred’s pork belly. Otherwise the whole meal, including wine was faultless.

However, the sting is in the tail. The prices are pretty steep for Yorkshire, in terms of food. Expect to pay £10 for a starter, twenty for main, and £7.50 for a dessert. The wine list is such good value that it makes up for the difference so your overall bill will be 50% of a capital experience. Nonetheless, I decided to pay the £100 bill (inc service for two) and decamp elsewhere for a coffee and Armagnac,

When in York, do as the Lancastrians do and pilfer, rape, and pillage the bicycles. Especially the blue ones. Then cycle over to this funky, fab foodie place for some fine scram, but bring your credit card….and a pair of boxing gloves.

The Blue Bicycle
34 Fossgate, York
YO1 9TA.
T:  +44 (0) 1904 673990
W:  www.thebluebicycle.com

Scalini Fedeli is such a high end Italian, it could be the Silvio Berlusconi of restaurants. As I walk in, I imagine Wall St bankers taking their prey to be softened up with an expensive Chianti before mugging them for an eye-watering commission.

I reckon the waiting staff are in on the act.  They look impressively like Spatz Domino’s henchmen. I wouldn’t dare send anything back. Having said that, ruthlessly efficient and courteous. One of the themes of NYC service that has changed since my last visit 18 months ago (and one small part of me regrets this) is the tolerance, politeness, and friendliness you can nowadays expect even in the diners and delis.  Is there an economic down cycle or something?

Lots of seafood on the menu. I started with shrimps swimming in garlic and followed up with monkfish tails with gnocchi swimming, this time, in cream and fennel. Both delicious.

I am starting to learn that the way to avoid wine bills that Bernie Madoff could barely have afforded in his heyday, is to drink it by the glass rather than order a bottle. Most restaurants stock sensibly priced, representative and interesting choices. Three glasses of Dogajolo, an Italian white blend, came to $39 which compares well to bottles, of which there might have been only half a dozen of each colour that didn’t trouble the hundred numerator.

Even with careful wine choices and adding tax and service, don’t expect to eat here for less than about $125 per head. That, however, stands up fairly well to high end London places of a similar tone and cuisine and, therefore, represents value for money in my opinion for a place of this quality.

Please avoid the tiresome Flash ridden website though – just ring, or book on Opentable.

Scalini Fedeli
165 Duane Street (between Greenwich & Hudson)
New York, NY 10013
T:  +1 212 528 0400
W:  www.scalinifedeli.com