Confessions of a Wino

Located in the trendy bustle of West Village New York, this place is the very representation of the feel of the area, in that it is trendy and bustling. Or, if you prefer, loud and packed with too many people.

It’s not just people that are crammed. Tables are less than 2 inches apart in the long line twosome area that we occupied, which has two distinct effects: Firstly, going to the loo requires a military operation that would probably challenge a crack team of US Navy SEALs. We saw numerous accidents including one frustrated guy who needed his steak replacing after it benefited from an impromptu and unwelcome red wine sauce.

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It’s been a while since I slavered over a Dog Point and its Cats’ Piss flavours.  The main reason is that the Wine Society (who I slagged off royally in the same post)  hasn’t stocked it for a while and I have been way too lazy to look elsewhere.

One of the problems of writing about feline urolagnia is where to place the apostrophe.  I mean how many cats do you want to fill your pissoir?  Or is it more pure, and less disgusting, to think of a single cat’s pee as the sole occupant of your bottle?

Actually this is quite tart.  In addition to cats, there is evidence of gooseberry and grapefruit and just a little too much tongue tingling, lip squelching, palate stripping acidity.  Whilst I have since made up with the Society, personally I am a bit disappointed with the wine.  There are much better Kiwi SB’s around at a lower price than the £12.95 that my bank manager credited to the Wine Society.

I’m getting quite used to Opentable.  I don’t always book through the website  (or natty iPhone app) but it isn’t half useful for finding a table at short notice.  Especially in London.  Especially if you want to eat within a caber toss of where you happen to be.  And I happened to be in Lancaster Gate, if you are posh.  Or Bayswater if you are not.

Opentable threw up Angelus on Bathurst St.  Was it to be an homage to a great wine, or a mare?  (“Mayor” – see what I did there? Dicky daughters and all that).

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If ever there was a wine that tasted of strawberries and cream (maybe with some rose hip syrup thrown in), this Anjou Rosé is it.  OK, so rosé is rarely going to make it onto your fine wine baseline, and to make a good food match point you are probably thinking “serving fresh shellfish on a warm, sunny terrace in Monaco”.

But this is not just Wimbledon fortnight, it is barbecue season and for once, Thor has kept his weapon in his pants.  So take advantage of these lazy warm nights and dip your toe, your racquet, or preferably your tongue in the rose coloured water of Anjou.

I got mine from the Wine Society at £6.25 (my balcony cost considerably more even though in Manchester, and not Monaco).  And as a post script may I add that the berry fruit sweetness offers a love-all counterpoint to salty blue cheeses, of the sort you might find on Thor’s weapon.

Since reviews of the Mark Addy across the web seem to have divided opinion, I thought I would split my own personality and visit twice before drawing any conclusions.

On Mayday I returned to my Manchester flat and found blackbirds nesting on the balcony.  What better way to celebrate this joyous event than go to the only place in the city that is serving hand picked (maybe ‘nest robbed’ is a less elegant but more accurate description) gulls’ eggs.

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In the world of dining out, if there is one place in Manchester where you could pretend you are in London, it is on the banks of the dirty Irwell.  I say dirty in the sense that if you jumped in a canal barge and headed south you would find yourself at Old Trafford, home to a certain team that plays in red.

This is exactly what the majority of residents of the hotel were doing on Sunday 8 May.   Not all by boat.  Some chauffeured by limousine, taxi, helicopter or rickshaw.  Chelsea and United fans altogether, all up for the day from London.

But it is more than the famous and rich patronage of the hotel that is capitalesque.   The restaurant ambience, service and food bring to mind upmarket places in Notting Hill and Knightsbridge, rather than Cheetham Hill and Chorlton-cum Hardy.

The River Restaurant is styled a bit like Boxwood Café (RIP) with the atmosphere of Scott’s of Mayfair, only with more daylight flooding in, and a larger ratio of famous faces to plebs.

My choice of aperitif exposed my desire to join the elite, an aspirational effervescent bubble short of London pricing, Billecart-Salmon at £10.50.

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Delighted to see that my WART campaign has hit Portugal with the ever dependable André Ribeirinho writing about the importance of wine serving temperature.

Portugal is one country where I once had to pick a waiter up off the floor as he made a goalkeeping dive to try to prevent me from drinking red wine at an inappropriately warm temperature.  Good stuff!”

You can read André’s article here.

At two separate Wine Society events recently, one wine has stood head and shoulders above the rest for me, and I have been looking for an opportunity to shout it out.

However, it raises a wider issue about wine branding.  When it comes to certain wines (mostly French if I am honest) I like to think that I should be able to choose the original wine over one badged by a retailer.  So am I being immodest to think that I can do better than an institution that has been around since 1874?  Am I <gasps> a “wine snob”?  And worse, an ill-informed one to boot?

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Situated in a lovely part of Amsterdam with a village feel that reminds me of certain parts of New York and London (but with more canals and lower rise buildings), Fred had telephoned ahead to strong-arm them into giving us a good table (on account of it being my birthday).  They delivered on that front, with the best table in the house in the corner of the window.  But did the food and wine follow suit?

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Under the High Line, one of the seven wonders of New York City, where peace and tranquility mix with rare greenery on a former raised platform railway converted to a unique public park, lies a restaurant of some repute.  A place that, although set amongst meatpacking factories, has thoughtfully empathised with, and even beaten a path for other trendy venues to raise the Standard of this eponymously named district of New York City.  And yet a “Grill” that has remarkably few items on the menu that might ever see a char broiler.   For example, I had oysters followed by shrimp fettuccini.  Although I use the word ‘followed’ in a loose literal sense, or perhaps as its own antonym since the main courses arrived before the starters. This was one of a number of service fiascos we experienced when lunching there on the last day of a New York trip.

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