Confessions of a Wino

When I wrote up my notes from the Leeds Restaurant Awards I was noodling why I didn’t spend more time in Leeds’ eateries.  Vowing to put that right, I looked up the programme from the event for some inspiration.  The Olive Tree was well represented and is a somewhat legendary Greek offering with three establishments in the Leeds area.  Not exactly ubiquity, but I generally avoid chains unless they are focussed, and this one is the Leica lens of Greek dining.

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You can take your Japanese/Mediterranean mashups and your Inca/Aboriginal combos and throw them into the duodenal waste bin.  I’ve just discovered the ultimate fusion cuisine dish.

Haggis Pakora.

It’s Auld Lang Syne meets Shah Jehan.  Rabbie Burns meet Mother Theresa.  The Gorbals meets the Taj Mahal.  A proper clash of cultures.

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On my new iPhone I have downloaded an application called AroundMe. It is totally brilliant.  Staying at the Grange, Holborn in London, I simply select Restaurants and AroundMe finds all the local ones, literally within a few hundred yards.  I can then locate my favoured choice on a map and ask for directions, shortcut to its website or quicklink through to dial its telephone number.

I was intrigued by Trattoria Verdi because it was founded in 1964, the year of my birth.  No resto lasts that long unless it has some loyal custos.  The waitresses however, were probably born thirty years later and wore the slightly supercilious, bemused, and yet knowing smile of the receptionist that served Alan Partridge at the Norwich Travel Tavern.

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In the classic comedy series, Fawlty Towers, Basil plans a gourmet night to attract a higher class of clientele to the infamous Torquay hotel.  Kurt, the excellent new chef who fancies Manuel the Spanish waiter played by Andrew Sachs, until recently one of Jonathan Ross’ closest acquaintances, manages to get totally pie-eyed and passes out just before the dinner is supposed to be cooked.  With guests already arriving, local restaurateur, André, comes to the rescue with a three choice menu of duck with orange, duck with cherry or duck surprise (duck with neither orange nor cherry), that never makes it to the table.  The culmination of this disaster scenario is Basil thrashing his Austin 1100 with a branch in one of the funniest, well known and most repeated scenes of the comedy solar system.

So when Alan and Heidi invited us to Casa Mia Grande, a well known Italian restaurant in Chapel Allerton, for a “gourmet evening”, I quivered, took the car for a service, wore my stain proof pants and a shirt that could tolerate red wine spills.

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I’ve been pretty unkind to Stresa.  It is a fabulous location for a quiet holiday and I spent just a few Autumn days there.  Plenty of boating, walking, cycling, even snow skiing a brisk 4 hour walk uphill away.  But I ate out at a few places in the town and mostly found it poor reward for my day’s exercise.

One notable exception was Caffé Torino where a superb meal for two with a bottle of wine cost only £1,340,056, or €54.30 at today’s exchange rate.  The antipasto (below) at €8 is one of the best value plates I have ever seen.

The Italian menu said Tagliere di Salumei di Mottarone which I translated as Viande Sechée or Succulent wind dried mountain pork and cheese from a nearby ski resort.  However the local linguist settled for the dreadfully American Cold cuts which turns this simply beautiful display into a CSI murder victim found in the cellar of a lonely spinster.

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Invited over to Darryl and Jayne’s for a bit of Scouse spicy scram and a few bottles of wine, Darryl was not surprised to see me turn up with a couple of bottles of Riesling.

Our mutual mate, Tony, calls Riesling sugary shite but that is unsurprising from a man whose wine sophistication is measured by the fact that he thinks Beaujolais should be served at 25 degrees centigrade.

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I was kindly invited by the Queen’s Hotel to the Let’s Eat Leeds Leeds Restaurant Awards on 10 November, where I feel the awards counted on public or members’ votes were more representative of my views than those awards chosen by judges and “experts”.  But then again, I am probably a little out of touch with the Leeds scene and really ought to go out more often in this fine city.

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Stresa, majestically overlooking Lago Maggiore, in the foothills of the Italian Alps, should be a gourmand’s dream.  But sadly it caters to every tourist-trapping, pension-grabbing, fruit-juice-slurping, pie-eating, over-eating, day-trip-loving, coach-travelling, lip-smacking, tongue-slavering, downbeat, yester-year tourists from all of England and sometimes Italy.  The Germans are too sensible, or too time constrained to visit, and the Americans are all credit-crunched.

Although a beautiful town, unfortunately one of the best things to come out of Stresa is the regular boat to the islands and in less than an hour, Pallanza, where there is a single restaurant with something worth eating.

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I’ve written before about the rip-off wine mark-ups at the Gaucho Grill (branches in London and Manchester).

Although the wine is outrageously priced, I do pop in occasionally for a top class steak.  And so last week saw me in the Manchester restaurant.  I thought it would be interesting to revisit the wine prices.

In my post of March 2007, I benchmarked a bottle of Susana Balbo Malbec (excellent stuff) at an eye watering mark-up of 250%.  The bottle, available at the time from the Wine Society at £11.95, was marked up to £42.

Time to check out the latest prices.  I checked the Wine Society website and, fair play, it is in stock and still £11.95.  Inflation rate = 0%.

When I checked out the Gaucho Grill wine list, the price has inflated by a Graf Zeppelinistic 22.6% to £51.50.  This now makes the mark-up (against retail price, and one assumes that Gaucho can buy much cheaper) a groin kicking 331%.  By far the highest I have ever seen in any restaurant.

The matured meat may be superb, but I would rather cut my pupils out with a serrated steak knife, than pay these prices.

By all means eat at the Gaucho, but when it comes to wine, just say “NO”.

On a day when fell runners are being rescued from floods in Cumbria, we decided it was an opportune moment to head south into the Peak District, where the weather was balmy by comparison.  An extra hour in bed for the end of British Summer Time?  No chance - just got up an hour earlier to make sure we finished a 6 mile scramble in time for a pub lunch.

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.

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