Confessions of a Wino

A quiet Italian restaurant in Manchester.  Maybe not the best place to expose one’s ignorance.  I mean, how could I possibly confuse a tacky MTV reality show, with a beautiful lake in the north of Italy?

If, like me, you are over 40, and approaching the early stages of senile dementia, you already know where I am going (although you probably won’t remember by the time I reach the end of this sentence).

So for the record, the Lugana wine region is on the southern shores of Lake Garda, and I would also like to say that….er hang on I’ve forgotten again, where did I park my car?

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Jeff and I were in London for the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley.  Those of you not from Perpignan, Australia or the north of England will not understand Rugby League so let’s move on.  In any case RL was not the only sporting occasion of interest that day.

August Bank Holiday weekend in the UK and Chelsea FC (lucky home win against Portsmouth - David “Calamity” James to thank) knocks the glorious Man City (unlucky defeat away at the Arse) off the top spot of the English Premier League.  So we thought we better nip down to Chelsea and see what all the fuss was about.

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Castlefield is a very trendy part of Manchester that (according to estate agents) has now encompassed formerly ropey areas like Hulme and will probably soon extend to Rusholme and Moss Side.  Location, Location, Location, as they say.

I grew up in Manchester so I am proud to have a flat in Hulme and I refuse to call it Castlefield, (until I decide to sell, of course).  But whatever the address, it is only a short walk to “real” Castlefield and on a sunny August day, where better to take our mates Tony, Jeanette and son Charlie, than to sit outside by the Canal.  Dukes 92 is the obvious choice because it is so popular but it was very exposed and at least two of us appreciated a bit of shade from the midday sun so we chose another place.  We made the choice to choose Choice.  Now if you clicked on the hyperlink you will have reached the most annoying site on the world wide web.  Fortunately, despite this, if you go the restaurant you will find one of the best Sunday lunches in Manchester.

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I wanted Bresse Bleu but I just can’t find it in the UK, so I settled for second best, Cambozola, which is a German Cheese available at any supermarket.

For me, eating a German Blue “Brie” is just plain wrong.  It must be like eating a Dr Oetkers Pizza (you really are having a laugh - An Italian product, made in Germany and sold in England - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha).  I’ve never tried it but surely nobody buys that marketing line?  Have you seen the TV ad?  A loving couple on a first date sat on a suspension bridge in the open air at a fully set table, eating a pizza made in Germany, approximately 1.3 miles from the nearest oven.  I haven’t laughed so much since I found www.hugeurl.com - waging the war against brevity.

But sometimes we can’t always get what we want, so we have to settle for second best.  In my case I can’t afford a decent Barolo so I sampled a bottle of Langhe Nebbiolo de Forville Barbaresco 2005 as my second best.  After tasting the wine I guessed it was from a supermarket at about £4.99.  In fact, online, I found this wine at Majestic at a whopping £7.99.

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I used to live in Bingley, West Yorkshire and frequented Valentino’s many a Friday night.  One of my favourite places for friendly and rustic, if slightly over garlicked and over-buttered fayre.

So when invited back for a birthday party recently, I was interested to see if the old fella was still there.  The welcome was as warm as ever and Valentino remembered me (that’s the thing about an Italian welcome - they are great at pretending they know you, I’m sure he must have wondered who the hell I was.)

Valentino’s was founded in MCMXCV which sounds like a long time ago, but by my reckoning is 1995.  I double checked my Roman maths by going to Google and typing “MCMXCV in Arabic” and the answer was duly computed.  Isn’t Google totally awesome (say this out loud in a nasal teenage American twang).

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Cacophony.  That’s the only word to describe the number and range of restaurants on Charlotte Street.  This bustling part of London seems to be the very epicentre of eating out.  I was dining with someone who knew the area and we agreed on Italian so he suggested Bertorelli’s which I learnt had been founded by the Bertorelli family some 90 years ago.

So I was, frankly, bloody annoyed to find that Chez Gérard Group now owned the restaurant and had turned it into yet another one of their chains.  I’ve always considered Chez Gérard to be high on price and low on quality and you may remember my Livebait experience…  I find most chains, in any case, are a triumph of formula over inspiration, of laziness over perspiration.

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Loose end on a Friday night in Batley, West Yorkshire?  Why not try the world famous Frontier Club?  Many a famous name has played the place - even the Grumbleweeds!

Nothing on the particular Friday I was there, so decided to try the restaurant next door - Zucchini.  I heard it is run by the same people as the excellent but smoky (well, used to be before 1 July 07 English smoking ban) Dolce Vita in Birstall, so we expected great things.

I won’t be going back.  The staff were surly, the wine was too warm and the food was average.

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I’ve just been watching one of my favourite TV programmes, Grand Designs.  Every episode is a tale of hope and of human triumph in the face of considerable adversity.  Best of all it shows that if you have a big plan it is always ten times more difficult to deliver than your worst possible estimate.

Kevin McCloud looks on and commentates in his laconic and smug, but laid back and highly entertaining style.  The thing about “reality” TV is that we can all sit back and smile with the expert, at how dumb the subjects are for not realising that they needed building regs approval for the step they are replacing with one that is 1.5 inches lower than the incumbent broken one.  Meanwhile we are led to believe that the whole project is in jeopardy as a result.

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Staying at the Headland Hotel on Fistral Beach in Newquay you have to just sit and imagine how grand it must have been when first built.  The Edwardians must have enjoyed travelling from London and judging by the elegance of the dining room they dressed for dinner.  They probably dressed for surfing I suspect….

We didn’t exactly dress for dinner but we did feel compelled to look fairly smart.

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(With apologies to anyone who speaks proper Italian out there….)

I was mooching around Deansgate in Manchester looking for a quick bite on my own.  I decided to try Pesto (website under construction at the time of writing).  As best I can make out, this is an Italian take on tapas.  Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought!

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