Forced into trying somewhere new, the Ritz doormen, just along Piccadilly took exception to my smart jeans (yet they tolerate Michael Winner).  The Wolseley had welcomed us the day before (and warned me not to darken their door again in a rush).  And picking on someone nearer my own age, Madonna’s ex-local didn’t appeal.  I wanted wine.

In a frustrated fit of anxiety (that I would have to go to lunch without a wine warm-up) I remembered Selfridges, a mere 10 minute stroll up Park Lane.

The wine bar, cheesily titled “Wonder Bar” has a couple of flaws.  The self serve “juke box” concept is interesting but just about every bottle was empty.  This meant that the two poor guys at the table next to us had to keep asking the waitress to replace the bottle before using their access card to dispense a clumsy beaker-full.

Meanwhile I simply asked her for what turned out to be a super sherry, which was delivered long before their first bottle was ready for action.

The other flaw is the proximity of the bogs.  You are probably thinking I am going to complain about a nasty whiff spoiling my wine time, but quite the reverse.  Ranulph Fiennes (coincidentally his mother is buried next door to mine) would have struggled to find the toilets and it took me longer to get back than the entire length of his last Arctic adventure.  In fairness I didn’t have to resort to hack-sawing off my own fingers.  Although I am sure the sherry might have made such a feat less painful, it could have restricted my future drinking to a single hand.

If you ignore the self serve idea and stick to conventional waiting, and you consume no more wine than requires you to empty your bladder, Selfridges’ Wonder Bar is fine, has an extensive and well priced wine list, and mostly friendly staff.  All in all it’s just not quite the same atmosphere as my favourite.

I appeal to 1707 to open on Sunday lunchtimes again.  The best (and best value) wine bar I have found in London.  And the WCs are closer than a Remington shave.

Selfridges & Co
Wonder Bar
Ground Floor
400, Oxford Street
London, W1A 1AB

T:  0800 123 400
W:  www.selfridges.co.uk

Rope/rattan seats give the room an unusual but otherwise very relaxed air – more  French drawing room than Yorkshire pub. Everywhere you look there are sea tokens:  Lobster baskets, fishing rods, fish plates, and a north sea trawler could have been moored in the pond opposite I suspect.

The menu is geared heavily towards the produce of said trawler with an odd reference to local meats, cheeses and vegetables.

The wine includes English 3 Choirs (£20), Cloudy Bay 2008 (£38) and Laurent Perrier NV at £39. All pretty good value and available to take home by the case at 50% discount which is a clue to the markup and no rip off.

Maybe this is the seafood version of The Angel at Hetton.

I chose a Picpoul de Pinet 2007 at £19.50. Pineapple cubes (sweets), gooseberry, peach and pear – it’s Rio de Janeiro in a glass and super with shellfish thanks to the lemony finish.

Which is just as well since my starter was a cured fish and shellfish platter – a lonely oyster with some mates in the form of a rollmop, prawns and beetroot smoked salmon and anchovies. How can you do something so good on a £19.50 three course menu (£16.50 for two)?

The service was snail paced and friendly rather than formal, which suits me just fine on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but would have irritated on a business lunch. The main course of Black Sheep (Yorkshire’s best brewery) battered fish n chips took 45 minutes to arrive but when it did it was worth the wait. Crisp batter, chips, minted peas, tartare sauce no doubt made from local wild horse radish. Fish n chips served out of newspaper, even when this is printed onto a plate is heartwarming and gives me 1970′s pangs. But this was posh (and I don’t mean in the Victoria Beckham sense) with peas and sauce served in separate boats and fat cut chips (six to be precise) stacked in a haute cuisine Jenga game. Superb food.

Dessert was cheese (Wensleydale of course, and blue, soft and goats), a salty counterpoint to a glass of Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (perfumy and quite high, like vodka jelly).

The macchiato was ……erm well, and the Janneau VSOP at £6.10 is as cheap as I can remember anywhere! I didn’t expect them to be served in the same cup but turned out to be rather nice. Let’s call it an Armagnacciato. Give it a try! I think our waitress invented a new drink and I, for one, will be ordering it again.

Or maybe it wasn’t Armagnac after all?

The total bill for me and Mrs Wino including aperitifs, desserts, coffee and and Armagnacciato was £84.04 including service!  You could get a Jo Baxi up from London, eat, drink and be merry, and fly home by helicopter and still have change from a Claridge’s bill……and the food is just as good.  But you will be lucky to get home before dusk unless the service speeds up, or you live in Iceland in summer.

Wensleydale Heifer, West Witton, North Yorkshire. DL8 4LS
T: +44 1969 622322
E: info@wensleydaleheifer.co.uk
W: www.wensleydaleheifer.co.uk

Still not sure whether to visit this area?  Take a look at the photos below (May 2009) and if they don’t fill you with Beethoven’s 6th then nothing will.

OK, I’ll resort to scaring you into coming.  Here is the Chapel of the infamous Knights Templar.  I wonder if Dan Brown looked under here for the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalen?  On a summer’s afternoon it looks innocent and friendly, but at dusk with crows croaking the background, this would make a Hammer House of Horror look like a nursery rhyme.

Disclosure:  These photos were taken in Britain, in May, in the Yorkshire Dales, and without filters, tampering or remixing.  As one couple we passed on our walk ironically remarked “bugger of a day isn’t it?”

When I saw that Michael Winner had raved about Messrs Maguire in a Sunday Times review I thought I would revisit and try the food again.  It was still ordinary.  But for me, eating is not the point of this place.

Maguire’s prominent frontage makes it a haven for tourists which often points to high prices, low quality and a slight shortage of craic.  A pint of Guinness was a reasonable EUR4.60.  A half pint of Budweiser was an unreasonable EUR3.30, but looking out over the Liffey, with the St James’ Gate brewery little more than a good hurley whack away, why drink anything other than the black stuff?

I have drunk enough of varying quality to know that the pour is the single most critical contributor to a good pint.  I may be a Guinness snob because outside Ireland (where rumours of poor pours can close a place in seconds) I watch bar staff like a hawk to make sure that some effort is placed on getting it right (improbably rare in the UK, sadly).

The Guinness at Messrs Maguire was poured suspiciously quickly but tasted as good as any I have tried, and that is very good indeed.

Maguire’s staff was mostly Irish which is a good sign.  10 years ago in Ireland, all bar staff were Irish.  It was considered a profession and paid a living wage.  However, the Celtic Tiger and European immigration is changing the face of Dublin and bar waiting is gradually being deskilled to a minimum wage job performed by Eastern Europeans.  Whilst the quality of service in general is variable as a result, thankfully most pubs still train their staff rigorously in the noble art of pulling Guinness.

The ground floor bar is friendly but a little tight to eat, the first floor was capacious but full, so we decamped to the top floor after we had ordered.

The whole interior of Messrs Maguire looks and smells solid and reliable.  The fixtures and fittings bear the scars of ghosts of Irish past, sailors who docked at Burgh Quay, traders, layabouts and who knows if even de Valera, Collins, Pearse, Connolly and others enjoyed furtive pints here in 1916.  They may have feasted on an Irish steak cooked medium/well rather than the rare they ordered.  And they may have risked grilled mussels in garlic and breadcrumbs as they plotted the downfall of the British Government.

Ninety eight years later I enjoyed a not so furtive pint, warm friendly atmosphere, good service and a feeling of peace with the world.  Dublin is as relaxed a city as you could visit and sinking into one of Messrs Maguire’s leather seats, it’s difficult to imagine what could improve my mood.  Oh yes, “barman, bring me another Guinness please”.

Messrs Maguire, O’Connell Bridge, Burgh Quay, Dublin 2.
T:  +353 1 6705777
F:  +353 1 6705777
W:  www.messrsmaguire.ie
E:  hickeygroupinfo@gmail.com (please include Messrs Maguire in the title of email).

We passed the Robin Hood, half way round the walk up and down various gritstone edges, and, although not quite as notorious as the fellow it is named after, it looked homely.  At the end of the walk we drove round for a pie and a pint.

The pub is pleasant enough and has a welcoming bar with a stone floor so hikers, dog owners, farmers, industrial chemists and other smelly people are welcome.  Since we were respectably dressed and not too covered in mud, we chose to live it up in the lounge.

After dipping my tongue into a poorly poured pint of Guinness, I noticed Marston’s Pedigree and ordered a pint of that instead.

The food was much better than I expected.  The menu is basic and does not challenge your senses, but is honest fayre at sensible prices.  I saw a Stowell’s wine “machine” so avoided the awkward question about the wine list.

The Robin Hood is simple and unpretentious.  As far from a gastro-pub as you can get.  Most pubs used to be like this in the 1970′s and I think there is plenty of room for this type of offering today.  Quite nostalgic in fact.

For a quick lunch I enjoyed it very much but I did feel a bit guilty about ordering the cottage pie when I remembered one of the locals we encountered on the top of Baslow Edge….

Robin Hood Inn, Chesterfield Road, Baslow, Derbyshire, DE45 1PQ
T: +44 (0)1246 583186, F: +44 (0)1246 583032

In the summer, during peak drinking season, the owners had the balls to shut it down for serious refurbishment and it re-launched recently.  I wanted to go back for another look, so I popped in to watch England refurbish the Kazakhstan football team, eventually wallpapering them by five goals to one.

The lack of marketing alluded to in my previous post is no longer an issue.  A veritable jeraboam of initiatives is threatenting to flood my nearby flat, which by mysterious coincidence is currently being refurbished after a plumbing leak.  Movie Mondays, quiz nights, happy hours, live football, 2-4-1 pizzas, a loyalty card that gives a whopping 10% of your spend back (but only on food), and a snug fully fitted with Nintendo Wii and X-Box.

But it was the trendy bogs that caught my eye.  Perhaps this is what attracts A-list mancunians like Andy Rourke as regulars.

I have visited twice recently and both times it was a busy thriving, cool atmosphere and you can even get Birra Moretti (one of my favourite Italians) on tap.  If you are in the area, pop in for a beer and some reasonably priced scram.  But please leave quietly, I might be asleep!

Binary Bar, 5 Arundel Street, Hulme, Manchester M15 4JR.
T: +44 (0)161 839 6343
E: castlefield@binarybar.co.uk
W: www.binarybar.co.uk

I was told that the management takes all the tips and then chooses how/whether/when to distribute any amounts of cash to staff based on length of service, performance, compliance, diligence etc.  All admirable qualities I am sure but, excuse me, aren’t we the customers supposed to make that judgement?  I leave a tip based on the service I have received.  It is personal and aimed mostly at the waiting staff in the same way that a successful quarterback finds it in his heart to buy a season-end gift for his under-rewarded sporting Maginot Line, the offensive guards and tackles.

Does all the cash get distributed?  “I don’t think so”.  Is there any visibility as to how it is shared?  “No”.

The service was excellent.  Not a blink when I asked for an ice bucket for my red wine.  Prosecco aperitif poured at the table.  Courteous and mostly good looking staff.  OK, the main course took a while to arrive.  My steak was presumably aged while I waited, but I figured this was probably the kitchen’s fault.  I have come to expect superb service from Eastern Europeans and I am glad that they are waiting on most Dubliners as well as Mancunians and Londoners.

I found an interesting oddity on an otherwise plain wine list.  I don’t think the Irish have quite got wine yet, but things are definitely moving.  Dublin city centre ten years ago was full of smoky pubs playing diddlyi music, and lager had recently been introduced just in case the Guinness brewery burned down.  The only place one might dare ask for a cheeky Burgundy was in one of the basement “clubs” on Leeson Street – legendary for many reasons that I won’t disclose here.

Nowadays, wine bars and posh restaurants are more numerous than the ducks on the lake of St Stephen’s Green.  And Dubliners are starting to drink the stuff in quantities that would fill the lake.  My “find” was an Italian Malbec from Veneto.  I found it at www.finewine.ch for SFR19.90 which is about 10 quid. Cornerhouse Grill charges €39 which is about £32 and a theoretical mark-up of 220% – about average.

Gli Aceri Delle Venezie Malbech Paladin 2003 had the usual black cherries and dark chocolate that betray its Argentinean cousins but with loads of smoke, some caramelised fruit and barbecued plums.  Quite tannic for a 5 year old wine which made it a good match for the aged steak served with béarnaise sauce and spicy watercress.  As I am coming to expect, the wine was served waaaaaaaaaay too warm but an ice bucket was sent to my aid like an oenological ambulance.

Crispy Calamari was served “al dente” and was a crunchy, squeaky, tasty starter.  I remember thinking it odd that I was given only a fork, but not so much so as to prompt me to bother asking for a knife.

The bill for three came to €194.  Not bad value for any city centre grill.  The overall experience was enjoyed by all and we went home happy, having deducted the service charge and left a decent cash tip discreetly under a napkin.

Cornerhouse Grill, 17 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2.
T: +353 (0)1 707 9596  F: +353 (0)1 707 9599
E: grill@cornerhousegrill.ie W: www.cornerhousegrill.ie

Heading south, out of the City Centre through the Metropolitan University campus brought us quickly to Maine Road, Moss Side.  Strange sight.  Why is there so much sky?  As boy and man I’ve seen this view so many times and yet there was always a football stadium as a backdrop.  Memories of the smell of Westler’s hot dogs; the slight adrenalin rush running the gauntlet of away fans, on the way from the Social Club past the North Stand; the mere £2.40 for a ticket to stand on the Kippax on a freezing Saturday afternoon.

Everything has changed!  Hot dogs have been replaced by chicken balti pies; away fans are cordoned off; two tickets for the match (hardly ever on a Saturday) retail at £75 and global warming has put paid to freezing one’s proverbials.  Nobody wears a scarf any more!

Another change may not have escaped your notice.  Man City relocated to Eastlands, the City of Manchester Stadium, built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and then completed as our new home the year after.  I don’t think anyone would deny that the new stadium is impressive and a fantastic place to watch football.  But every now and again, we all appreciate a bit of nostalgia.

The interior designers of Saints and Scholars clearly agree – the place is full of bric-a-brac.  An eclectic mix of old bakelite radios, Spanish guitars, antique ice skates and mirrored balls hung around like dormant bats, lurking and watching menacingly as we ate.

Didsbury village is a nice old place.  The Royal Oak was my original lunch target.  Another 1980s memory of a huge cheese counter (a couple of token patés were available for southerners) made for the best ploughman’s lunch this side of Lincolnshire.  Sadly this had been turned into a modern pub and a fromage free zone.

Enjoying a quick couple of pints around the village worked up enough appetite to find a new dining option.

Ordering a glass of (house) Merlot revealed that Saints and Scholars is not a wine place.  A very acidic wine with no tannins or much fruit to speak of.  “Raspberry vinegar” appeared on my notepad.

The food was better to be fair.  More diner than fine dining, we tried a mixed platter of chicken wings, ribs, fried potato skins with chile and cheese.  The wider menu seemed incoherent and influenced from disparate parts of the globe.  I spotted dishes from Greece, France, Italy, Nepal and Morocco.  The American influenced platter was probably a wise choice.

Leaving Didsbury on the bus back to town, I felt like Tom Hanks in Big.  Time to grow up, shake off those old nostalgic memories and get back to real life – shame.

Saints and Scholars is worth a visit for a drink, light snack or easy meal in a slightly weird but sort of funky atmosphere.

Saints and Scholars, 694 Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Manchester. M20 2DN, T: 0161 448 2457

I can learn a lot from Rob’s extensive oenological knowledge base, tucked away inside his cranium.  Because he works in the trade he feels that he shouldn’t review wines on his weblog which is a shame because we could all benefit from his interesting views.

His view of my choice of wine (Stonier Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula 2006 – £32) was that it smelt of fake dog turd, “but it tastes better”.  We both rued the fact that is was rescued from the top of a warm shelf and we immediately asked for an ice bucket.  Chatting with the manager, we learnt that he could not serve red wine at anything cooler than 23°C or the customer sends it straight back.  Shocking.  The customer is always right but in this case I volunteer (and Rob agrees) that the customer is wrong.  Or even if they are right, they are missing out by having to suffer miserable and flabby wine.

The wine was very drinkable but disappeared all too quickly as we put the blogging world to rights in the wee small hours.  I am hoping to attend the European Wine Bloggers Conference in the summer which Rob has a hand in both organising and sponsoring.

If you can’t make the conference, perhaps you might want to try and find us at The Northern Quarter poring over a decent wine list and chatting idly.  The food, although we had already eaten elsewhere, looked good too.

The Northern Quarter. 108, High Street, Manchester M4 1HQ T: 0161 832 7115 W: www.tnq.co.uk

I don’t buy the noncy idea of using one full shell in a pincer movement like a crustacean Pacman, that is for Londoners.  One area you and I probably agree on is that to dispense with the shells in the small waste bowl requires some imagination, some organisation, and demands some artistic endeavour.

The delightfully arranged mussel carcass objet d’art I created at Loaf, was arguably the best looking thing in the place, with the possible exception of a rather fit waitress (ironically from London, I think).  It takes some effort to select the mussels in the right order to create such a pulchritudinous shellfish ensemble.  Unfortunately this does not say a lot about Loaf, a bar that I used to think was one of the coolest on the planet.  Nowadays it is an also ran - Saturday busy, Monday empty – wish-i-woz-a-trendy-bar-under-a-railway-arch-for-celebrities.

Actually, as a bar it’s fine.  Plenty of choice in the beer, cocktail and even (gasp) cheap wine departments.  Food, is merely OK, if that.  The mussels were served in a sauce that was probably created by the Bland Society.  I then ordered some fish that was so memorable I can only remember that I ordered it in plaice of the fried cod (“sorry love, we’ve run out of that”).

It would be rude to compare Loaf to any form of fine dining, when the entire bill for two, including drinks came to less than £20.  At this price we are in McDonalds territory and against that benchmark I would eat at Loaf every time.  However, Loaf is probably better suited for a top quality drinking den, especially on a sunny day, when the outside tables always get packed.

Loaf, Bar Restaurant & Nightclub, 3a to 5 Deansgate Locks, Manchester, M1 5LH.
E: j.argyle@loaf-manchester.co.uk
W: www.loaf-manchester.co.uk incredibly I can’t find a telephone number on the website!