Southampton Row is a funny old street. Well funny yes, but mostly old. It looks like it is stuck in a time warp from the 1960’s and 70’s.
However, there are one or two secret places I know where you can find food amongst the best value in London. One of them is Old Amalfi. An unremarkable establishment with tacky decor and no expense wasted on fine table linen or other unimportant items.
However, the food is terrific!
When I turned 18 we did a sort of lad’s rite of passage thing. Some guys did sickly things like inhaling a whole cigar. Others did amateur self harm (but not on Iggy Pop’s scale).
The idea I most admired was the guy who ate a whole pot of jam. This doesn’t sound very rock and roll does it?! But have you ever tried it? The first spoonful is delicious but by the time you are half way through the jar, it is getting sickly to the point of making you gip. In that sense it’s a bit like drinking an Aussie Shiraz.
I saw the musical recently at Leeds Grand Theatre – it was so so. This post is nothing to do with musicals though.
Regular readers will know that I am a new member of the Wine Society in the UK and have been experimenting with various wines, mostly the Society’s own brands.
At £7.50 the Society’s New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc 2006 is less than half the price of Cloudy Bay but way more than half the quality.
There isn’t much of a theatre scene in Leeds but what there is, is top notch.  We are privileged to know one of the cast of Opera North (although he never gets us tickets any more). Leeds Grand Theatre is surely the best theatre outside London for architecture and acoustics (especially since the recent improvements). The West Yorkshire Playhouse is also pretty good for a modern theatre and puts on some interesting modern pieces.
So where to dine before the show then?
With apologies to Bob Dylan, I was delighted to read this piece in The Times highlighting the scandal of rip-off restaurant mark-ups on wine.
Don’t pay it – vote with your stomachs and eat (and drink) somewhere else! Rant Over….
I admire Malbec because it is classy, very tasty and compares well to many old world wines. But there is another Argentinean grape that makes wine so far from the norm it makes me shiver. It’s even better than a cup of tea (or did Boy George already do that line?)
The grape is Torrontés and as far as I know it may have originated from Spain. Now Spain as we know are football’s great under achievers, whereas Argentina cheat, for example the “Hand of God” incident in the 1986 World Cup. So I am going to assume that the grape came from Spain and that the Argies stole it.
One Sunday a few years ago Sainsbury’s locked my car in their Huddersfield car park causing me massive inconvenience. Combined with their stock replenishment problems at the time, I swore I would never shop there again.
Regular readers will know that my grudges don’t hold much resolve so last week saw me nipping into Sainsbury’s on Regent Rd in Manchester looking for Malbec. Ciaran had recommended the So Organic Free Trade one.
I’ve just been looking at www.wineintro.com where there is chart suggesting that white wine should be served between 5 and 11 degrees Celsius, and red wine between 12 and 18 degrees (depending on type). Nearly every wine website and book gives pretty much this advice.
So why does almost every bar/resto serve wine at the wrong temperature then? Here’s why…
Exactly how many quarters has Manchester got? Can a city have more than four? I hear tell in the press of the latest campaign to create an “Irish Quarter” which is bringing England’s second city to the point of fractional incongruence.
Personally, I like the Spanish quarter and one of my fave tapas places is on Deansgate two forward rolls from the new Beetham Tower – Evuna.
Did you know that the Beetham Tower at 47 floors is the highest residential building in Europe. Has anyone told the residents on floor 36 that the fire brigade can only reach the fourth floor? Food for thought!
Have you ever heard of the Fratellis? I bought their new album, Costello Music, recently and I was not impressed. I may be showing my age here, but I have heard it all before. One track sounded like Status Quo, the next was reminiscent of The Clash and the next could have been (maybe was???) written by Ray Davies. One hit wonders, if ever I made such a prediction.
So why did I buy it? Because I heard someone on BBC Radio 2 mention it as the latest thing. And this is broadly the same reason I bought 2003 Bordeaux en primeur.
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