Valvona and Crolla, Edinburgh

When I was at Oxford I remember being really impressed by Valvona and Crolla’s wine list. When we found out they had a highly thought-of cafe in Edinburgh I was terribly keen to go. The wine selection didn’t seem so thrilling, our waitress was hopeless, but the food was damned good.

When you walk in to Valvona and Crolla it is easy to be impressed by all the food they have in their delicatessen. With high-class ingredients knocking around like that you expect the food they serve to be really rather good. Get further back in the shop where they have wine and things are a little less pleasing, not such a wide selection. This disappointed me somewhat. Right at the very back they have the dining area, which is quite big and was pretty much empty when we visited.

Once we had scored a table Daniel and I left Leena whilst we went to choose some wines. They have a very reasonable policy of charging £6 corkage per bottle you buy in the shop at normal retail prices. A nice change not to be robbed when drinking wine in an Edinburgh restaurant. We chose a Valpolicella-type wine, Palazzo della Torre from Allegrini, which was perfectly acceptable. I was very pleased to see Delta Vineyards Pinot Noir from New Zealand knocking around, as I’d heard this was a complete bargain for a very drinkable Pinot Noir. We purchased a bottle of that as well and it was a good buy.

We retired back to the dining room and examined the menu. It looked good, and made Daniel and I feel so hungry we decided to order an one more course than Leena. Sadly, this really confused our waitress. She didn’t seem to understand that we wanted three courses (not including dessert) and asked if we wanted two of them served at the same time. She then tried to open our wines. She had been issued with a totally useless corkscrew which she handled with the ineptitude of someone who had never seen a bottle of wine before. I had to give her tips on using the corkscrew and she still managed to break the Palazzo della Torre cork in two. Well done the New Zealand wine industry for embracing screw-caps!

Our starters arrived reasonably quickly. Leena had a mozzarella caprese salad. It was great that the mozzarella and tomatoes were not at fridge temperature, and so they carried their flavours well. The buffalo mozzarella was really very good indeed. Daniel ordered a plate of Italian charcuterie, which also came with some tomatoes, roast peppers and aubergine, a small amount of the excellent mozzarella and a mountain of rocket. All the ingredients were very pleasing apart from the aubergine and rocket which were a bit dull. I had bresaola with shaved parmesan and rocket. I could have done without so much rocket, I don’t care for rabbit food (who does?), but the bresaola was quite delicious and there was plenty of quality parmesan on it. All good stuff.

Daniel and I moved on to our pasta course, except that our waitress had not taken Daniel’s order correctly and rather than getting pasta with smoked salmon he just got a plate of smoked salmon. She apologised profusely and said we would not be charged for the wrong dish. Daniel thought it was some of the best farmed salmon he had ever eaten. My pasta, penne with bacon and tomato sauce, was quite delicious and there was plenty of it. I horsed it down with great enjoyment.

By this time we had finished our wine and we decided to get a bottle of Allegrini Amarone Classico to have with our main courses. Our waitress looked so worried about opening another bottle she had to call for help. They really should issue their staff with decent corkscrews if they are serious about their wine. The Amarone itself was quite pleasing.

Daniel had a rib eye steak which seemed of good size and quality. It was very well prepared, cooked exactly as he had asked for. Leena and I chose a breaded veal escalope which in fact turned out to be two veal escalopes of quite reasonable size each. Perhaps the veal was a tiny bit tough, but they tasted delicious. Neither of us could finish our second escalope, but Daniel gladly helped out.

The food was good and we chose interesting wine, but it was a bit of a drag to be served by someone so hopeless. Perhaps they cannot get the skilled staff to work on Sundays. It was worth visiting, though, and I would gladly return. They have another cafe in the department store Jenner’s in a slightly more central location.

Contact details are on their website.

Tomorrow’s report from Edinburgh will be a review of Tailend restaurant and fish bar.

The National Health Service have set up a swine ‘flu helpline.

I called it but all I heard was crackling.

The Atrium, Edinburgh

The Atrium is situated in a theatre and bar complex and it looked like the kind of place where all of Edinburgh’s super-cool people go to dine. We are super-cool, so it suited.

Once again, as I poured over the extensive wine list I was totally scandalised by the mark-ups. Sure, there was some good stuff there, but I don’t see why I should pay 4-5 times the retail price for a bottle just for the pleasure of having someone else open it for me. I’m quite good at opening bottles of wine, you know? We finally settled on a bottle of Tamar Ridge Pinot Gris, which was adequate, and a perfectly drinkable bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet Rouge Premier Cru Morgeot from Roger Belland.

Then I turned my attention to the menu. It looked good. They clearly cared about the quality of ingredients as they listed the producers who supplied them; all good local stuff. Daniel’s mother, Leena, had flown over to join us for the weekend, and the three of us all decided to try different things so we could thoroughly assess the quality of the food. We were quite surprised that even the vegetarian main course sounded slightly interesting, not that any of us were bonkers enough to order it.

After we had ordered we were left for a while sitting around like ham sandwiches at Jewish weddings, there were three large groups in and they seemed a tad rushed off their feet. When I collared a waitress and asked if we were allowed bread she looked appalled at how long we had been waiting and went to give the kitchen staff a piece of her mind. After that, the meal was well-paced with no more waiting for unnecessarily long periods.

The amuse-bouche, a little cup of cream of onion soup, was nice enough, but not the most thrilling food imaginable. We were keen to move onto the menu proper as we had ordered stuff which sounded more interesting.

Daniel started off with a ham-hock terrine with sauce Gribiche. It was bursting with piggy flavours and had a good texture. Leena’s smoked salmon with anchovy creme fraiche was even better. It can often be a slightly dull starter but this was a brilliant exception, totally delicious with a great texture. I am pleased to report that my starter eclipsed both of these. Seared Sound of Gigha scallops with Stornoway black pudding. The scallops were wonderfully well cooked, seared on the outside and meltingly raw in the middle, and black pudding is a great accompaniment to scallops. I would have preferred the black pudding to be a tiny bit less cooked, but I feel I am being picky saying this as it was a great dish.

I am still slightly shocked to report that I ordered the organic roast chicken with pommes dauphinoise as a main course. Chicken is normally the most staggeringly dull thing it is possible to order on a restaurant menu, but I thought I would give it a try. It was rather tasty, but very slightly dry. Top pommes dauphinoise, though. The dish was good enough so that it was not a mistake to order, but better chicken is cooked at home. Daniel had a fillet steak with mustard Arran potato mash, which was really rather good, although I thought it was not a patch on Hawksmoor’s best offerings. The mash was buttery and not too strongly flavoured with mustard. Lucky, lucky Leena chose what was the best prepared monkfish I have ever tried; so tender it just melted in one’s mouth. Completely brilliant.

By this point I was stuffed so skipped the desserts, but I did try Daniel and Leena’s choices. Again, Leena chose fantastically well, an apple tarte tatin with calvados ice cream. The tarte was better than even those I have had at Gordon Ramsay, totally lovely, with flavourful ice cream. Daniel’s bread and butter pudding with apricots and raisins was also a complete success. He preferred it to the tarte tatin, but I am afraid he was wrong. He says, “No I wasn’t!”

It was a great pleasure to dine on such excellent ingredients cooked with obvious skill. Well worth a visit should you be in Edinburgh. They have a bargain lunch menu should you wish to try that.

Contact details are on their website.

Tomorrow’s report from Edinburgh will be a review of lunch at Valvona and Crolla.

The Kitchin, Edinburgh

The Kitchin was recommended to us as one of Edinburgh’s best dining establishments; Kitchin being the surname of the couple who run it. It has quite an elegant dining room (although I wish they wouldn’t play background music) so we had good thoughts as we sat down.

Then we read the wine list. Daniel laughed at my yelps and grunts of disbelief. The mark-ups would make even the greediest London sommelier squeal with uncontrollable delight. Are the locals, who have a reputation for being frugal, really willing to pay such ludicrous prices or is wine only chosen by tourists? We picked an incredibly simple (and so rather dull) Brundlmayer Gruner Veltliner which was vaguely insulting to have to pay £32 for, and a perfectly acceptable bottle of Sancerre Rouge from Lucien Crochet, which clocked in at £41. Phew! They just about served their purpose and we didn’t want to get robbed buying anything grander.

I then turned my attention to the menu, and my mood began to lift immediately, there were lots of things I fancied. In view of this, we decided to go for the £60 surprise tasting menu. We chose well.

As an amuse-bouche they served a chilled beetroot soup with horseradish creme fraiche and tiny cubes of apple. The outstanding quality about it was the clarity of flavours. I would have liked a touch more horseradish creme fraiche, as I really like the stuff, but the balance was perfectly fine as it was.

My mood was improved even further when the next course was presented; a carpaccio of scallops served with apple, dried cranberry and citrus dressing. The scallops were not fridge-cold, so they carried their rich, mouth-coating flavour brilliantly. The accompaniments balanced the flavours of the scallops wonderfully. This was properly good food so by this stage it was clear we were in the hands of an accomplished chef.

When we we told the next dish was razor clams (‘spoots’ in the local lingo), my heart sank. Whenever I’ve had these in the UK they are invariably tough as old boots with bugger-all flavour. Not tonight. The key with them, it seems, it to slice them up into thin little discs and cook them hilariously quickly. They were totally delicious, and worked well with the accompanying miniscule cubes of vegetables and chorizo with a sliver of confit lime. Brilliant, brilliant, lemon brilliant*.

As the next dish was brought to the table a subtle aroma of garlic filled the room. It was organic snails from Devon with Frog’s legs served with a wild garlic sauce. I love snails and these were cooked with skill and style. The frogs legs were meltingly tender and perfectly matched by the quite delicious sauce. Another hit.

The piece of red mullet that came with the next course was vanishingly small, but was cooked with skill. However, we both preferred the crab-stuffed squid ink ravioli that came with them. Incredible concentration of both flavours. Yum.

Finally a red wine-friendly dish came along. Rump and crispy belly of lamb served with a piece of kidney and a compote of red onions. The lamb was top meat, particularly the slow-cooked then crisped-up belly, and it was all prepared with obvious care. Surprisingly the kidney did not taste of piss, and was quite nice.

The selection of desserts were also really well made, a souffle was particularly tasty. We could have chosen a cheese course instead for an extra tenner, and it did look like they had a serious cheese trolley, but the desserts served us just fine.

Apart from the horror of the wine-list mark-ups we really enjoyed the experience. A good dining room, excellent, local ingredients prepared with class and imagination; those are the kinds of things that make us happy. Worth a visit should you be in Edinburgh, a really good one star.

Contact details, menus and the like are on their website.

Tomorrow’s report from Edinburgh will be a review of The Atrium.

*To understand this joke I suggest you watch the film ‘In The Loop’ by Armando Iannucci. It is a hilarious film.

I recently blogged about simple pleasures; the cafe Two Thin Laddies in Edinburgh delivers them very well.

I was a bit worried when we walked in, it seemed as if it was going to be only free-trade, organic, vegan, leftist-shite food. We were relieved when we looked at the menu and saw it was packed with meaty offerings and they were clearly proud of using high-quality, local ingredients. They had a good range of breakfast offerings, and also some more substantial dishes for lunch and dinner.

Being a man of simple tastes, I chose a humble bacon roll both times we went (with butter and HP sauce, obviously). The bacon was freaking excellent as was the bread; I bloody loved them. Daniel was pleased with his first bacon and egg roll, but preferred the bacon and sausage roll we had on our second visit. We agreed on the quality of the bacon, and he said the sausages were quite superior to any he had experienced in any previous British cafe.

It may have been only a cafe, but lovely bacon, good sausages and great bread can charm. We enjoyed it.

I’ll be writing up the other restaurants we visited in Edinburgh over the next few days, and there were some great ones, so do come back and check them out.

One meal we cook quite regularly is a simple affair, but it is one of those really pleasing things with are just a total hoot to eat: grilled prawns with aioli.

You will obviously need a good source of raw prawns; we get ours from Borough Market. Don’t get super-massive ones as they don’t taste as good, about 7-8cm long is just fine. 800g-1kg of prawns will do for two hungry people as a main meal.

It just takes a few minutes to grill each side of the prawns (as in, turn them over when one side is cooked) under a hot grill. Don’t overcook them, you want them to be moist and flavoursome. They are done when they turn completely pink and a very few of them start have hints of black bits of char on them. Once they are cooked pour into a big bowl and start peeling (when they’ve cooled down a bit).

Serve with some good bread and loads of super-tasty aioli, the recipe for which is here. Dipping just cooked prawns in garlicy aioli makes the experience most enjoyable. You’ll want to have extra aioli on bread, because it tastes great. It is a simple meal, but often they are the best.

I am as English as the day is long and therefore I like little pleasures. When someone offers an English person a cup of tea they will respond with the enthusiasm of someone who has just been given a thousand pounds. I think this is a fine and noble trait; it is good to be happy, even it is only a little thing that cheers you up.

I was thinking about this character of the English when I was so pleased with my lunch. The ‘priced like Harrods’ shop in my development has some really nice bread and so for lunch I made cheese and onion sandwiches. Sandwiches don’t get much simpler than cheese and onion. My mood was just getting better and better as I made them and when I got to eat I bloody loved them. Little pleasures. I feel I am back on top form when I can be made so happy by something as simple as a cheese and onion sandwich.

Last night I went to Hawksmoor for the third time this year (you can read my original review here). The basic message I feel I should express first is that it is a totally brilliant restaurant.

I felt incredibly fortunate when I received an email inviting me back there. All of my previous meals there have been greatly enjoyable. This one promised to be a hoot as well; it was a comparative tasting of different breeds of beef. Sounded totally fascinating, how could I refuse?

Keen as I was to experience different breeds of meat, I got there early. This gave me an excellent opportunity to prop up their bar and have a couple of cocktails. Once again the daiquiri no. 2 was totally wonderful, but was eclipsed by a super-top-bunny-grade Pegu Club cocktail. Their cocktail list is a thrilling journey into the 1920s, and I felt I did rather well with my options.

When my fellow beef tasters and I retired to the dining room we were issued with tasting sheets for the beef: there were 17 different breeds and cuts of meat on it. I laughed like a drain, it was clearly going to be a hilariously interesting experience. As we all poured over the tasting sheets we were served a rather nice glass of innocuously fruity punch, which slipped down a treat. Once again, this showed that they take their drinks seriously.

We started off the meal with sirloin steak from five different breeds cooked medium/rare. The Sussex beef from Northfield Farm was a tad gamey with a reasonably complex flavour, pretty good but probably my least favourite of the sirloins. Next up was Hereford, also from Northfield Farm. This had really subtle, complex flavours, classy and sophisticated. I wrote ‘Lovely, really lovely’. An Angus/Charolais cross produced meat that was quite rich and fatty, with a good persistence of flavour. I thought it was quite special. An old favourite follows, South Devon breed from the wonderful Wild Beef Company. Its flavour was incredibly deep with a powerful meatiness, stylish and totally pleasing. The final sirloin was Longhorn beef from the Ginger Pig which had been dry aged for 35 days; this is the normal beef that Hawksmoor sell. This was super high grade kit. Completely brilliant with an amazingly deep, powerful flavour. I don’t eat sirloin that often, but such was the quality of these pieces of meat I may well be ordering more sirloin in the future.

Next came rib eye steaks. I love rib eye steaks and after the obscenely wonderful food porn that we started off with I was on the edge of my seat looking forward to these steaks. A Hereford steak from Rare blew my socks off with its brilliant, incredible flavour; really rich and stylish. Top bunny. Aberdeen Angus from Rare had a bit of a strange texture, with reasonable flavour but not terribly demanding; it was OK but not great. More interesting was a modern crossbreed called Ridings Reserve. It was fatty and strong with an excellent persistence of flavour. The final offering in this flight was once again Hawksmoor’s usual breed, Longhorn from the Ginger Pig. The texture was really satisfying and it tasted lovely.

Yet more rib eye steaks were to follow so by this time I was chortling with uncontrollable mirth. An Aberdeen Angus rib eye from Select was a bit dull and cheesy, I didn’t go for it. Another modern cross, Casterbridge from Fairfax had an intriguing, slightly spicy taste. It was a bit nutty and quite interesting. Once again, a piece of Hereford beef (from Fairfax) was toe-curlingly good. I wrote ‘Wow, this is amazing! Great flavour that is really complex. Great. Obscenely good.’ A Galloway breed from Farmer Sharp was densely meaty, with a grassy, classy edge. Pretty damned good. The final rib eye came from a Hereford Cross supplied by Graig Farm Organics. Reasonably interesting, I suppose, but the straight Hereford delivered the goods more reliably. Life really smiles on one when one gets to try beef this good.

Two steaks to finish off were the world’s biggest rump steak and a flatiron steak from an Aberdeen Angus (West Cork) breed supplied by Jack O’Shea. The massive rump steak was rich and buttery, with a good grassy character and a nice, long finish. I haven’t had that many flatiron steaks, I found this one to have an intriguing, rich, powerful flavour. Quiet fascinating, thrilling even, and cooked to total perfection, which always helps.

So which were my favourite? The two breeds that stood out for me were the Hereford and the Longhorn which (pleasingly) Hawksmoor usually sell as their main breed. Both of these charmed and titillated me in a way that the others didn’t quite manage. They were all cooked with great skill on their charcoal grill. Rarely have I had so much fun with meat.

Obviously, I love Hawksmoor. You’ll love it too. A couple of weeks back I got my mother to trek in from Oxford and go there. I have also got a few friends to turn up. Everyone has been wowed by the place and described their meals to me with the passion of people who have had a great time. It is really worth turning up on a Monday as you can take along your own wine and pay a Lady Godiva (fiver) corkage. It is a great place, totally top meat, lovely cocktails and staff who are friendly and efficient. You will not go wrong here.

Contact details on their website.

I love fish and chips, a fantastic meal which suits the requirements for a quick lunch very well. With mushy peas, obviously. Yesterday my local establishment, the Fish and Grill on the market square in Woolwich, shocked and appalled me with the shit they had the temerity to serve.

I've been there before and had some good stuff, but this time there was a new moronic, rancid fool doing the cooking and as soon as I gave him my order for the fifth time I knew things would just be awful.

The bloke before me in the queue ordered kebab meat and chips. Moron food fryer pours the contents of the kebab meat container over the chips, flooding them with filthy water. At this point I just wanted to run.

I got my fish, chips and mushy peas and so impressively bad at cooking was the food fryer that he even managed to cock up the mushy peas. He had over-cooked them so they had a worrying, tough, dry, green layer on top. The fish was so badly over-cooked that it was in dry lumps, with quite terrifyingly greasy, fat-soaked batter. The chips were also soaked with this filthy grease, and had the consistency of something that had been lightly steamed rather than fried.

I wanted to vomit.

I will never go there again. The bastards.

I just had a piece of wonderful Lincolnshire Poacher from Neal's Yard Cheese Shop in Borough Market, this reminded me of the 'Borough Market shopping experience'. It is a great place to get very high quality ingredients and generally marvelous food, but most of the drips who go there generally piss me off.

We shall take as an example what happened in the cheese shop. We had to queue for a few minutes and whilst this was happening I watched the person who was already at the counter. He tasted about half a dozen cheeses and then purchased 80g of Cheddar. What a freaking joke! 80g of cheese, why bother? It was practically transparent there was so little of it.

This is the general shopping experience in Borough Market: there are so many people dripping around after free tastes of nice stuff who, if pressured to buy something, get a microscopic amount of food. I wish they'd just sod off and let those of use who are actually going shopping there have fewer interminable queues and huge crowds of people to deal with. People don't go to the supermarket as a spectator sport, why should London's best market be any different?

Tonight we held a modest little dinner party for my mother and stepfather. For a change, it wasn't terribly wine-tastic, as the food was of the unsophisticated kind. It was terribly good, though. We cooked Boston baked beans:

And wonderful Sicilian sausages from Sillfield farm:

You can tell those are good sausages because they go pink when you cook them: meaty goodness!

It was not the most refined of dining experiences, but the food slipped down a treat. I have to say it is also nice not to be feeling violently ill, as I have for the past ten days or so.