I couldn't stay in Cromer last night without trying out No 1 Fish and Chip Restaurant and takeaway, recently opened by Galton Blackiston ( you know; Morston Hall, Michelin Star, Celebrity Chef...) The restaurant is quite big and the takeaway shop is next door.
When you arrive you stand behind a sign which says "please wait to be seated" so I did. The waitress came over and said that she was not allowed to seat me - I thought she was joking, but she wasn't. So I had to wait for the lady in charge to finish taking an order before she showed me to a table.
I was hoping to try the house special - crab cakes - but they had sold out so I ordered plaice and chips and a portion of mushy pea fritters.The printed menu gives more space to the wines on offer than the savoury food but I was driving so had a ginger beer, there are some nice choices of soft drinks. The fish was very fresh - had lovely batter, light and crisp - and very good chips with a portion of homemade tartare sauce on the side. The pea fritters were also tasty and so hot I burnt my mouth eating them. They were served with a mint dip.
The service was a bit shaky from that wait at the start. A few things were forgotton and there were some interesting descriptions of the menu - olives in the tartare sauce.... I don't think so!
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Gor blimey, a trip to the East End last night culminated with a meal under Hoxton station rail arches at Beagle. A restaurant that only opened this year with two rooms - bar and restaurant - both big and noisy. We liked the interesting menu and high quality ingredients used in all of their dishes but their service was some of the best we have experienced; very knowledgeable, very friendly and unpatronising young staff - who are clearly having everything explained to them in the kitchen and probably tasting most of it too - hooray! Mutton was served pink with a plate full of runner beans and anchovy. The Essex Bird in the picture (from Radwinter Wild Game) is partridge, with Jerusalem artichokes and watercress. It's still early in the season for partridge so wait a little longer for the weather to get cold, then they will have a nice layer of fat to make the meat more tender.
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We don't want you all to know about this pub because it's busy enough as it is but we just had a tasty and great value home made lunch here, two courses for £5.70. The bill for four was under thirty pounds - including four drinks from a selection of guest and house ales. We had plaice and chips, chicken veronique (a bit like chicken supreme with grapes, but we didn't find any grapes in ours...) peach mousse with Archers, and bread pudding. There was a dish of fresh veg each; a choice of mashed, chipped or sauted potatoes, and custard or cream on the puddings. When the puddings ran out they put on new ones - hot chocolate pudding or whisky and raspberry trifle. This is how to fill up a pub or restaurant - very friendly staff welcoming lots of older local people who were brought up on this kind of home-made food and who know how good it is.
I love you Tracey - I buy the Independent on Saturday just for you. Now I've got that out of the way let's see where she went. This time she came to eat in Beccles, at Upstairs at Baileys, and gave it four stars (out of five) for the food. With lots of seafood, stews and casseroles and chefs brought over from Barcelona to cook it all. Haven't been there yet but will be going there very soon - when I've remembered where Beccles is.
Imagine our surprise when we went for lunch yesterday at Tom's new restaurant 'Picture' because Tracey reviewed it in the paper on Saturday and I remembered I hadn't been there to see what he is doing after Arbutus (and of course because he was in BSE at the Angel before that) and Giles Coren was there having lunch too! What a buzz! Does this mean that here at simple old suffolkfoodie we are going to places WITH the critics?
Anyhoo, enough about us, look at the food! £15 for a three course lunch with two choices, with free bread and the kind of service we should be expecting everywhere. Our water was replaced three times - as we drank it - without any fuss or hovering, and it was tap water which wasn't charged for either. We had a carafe of house white which was a lovely fruity Chardonnay. I had the plum tomatoes with goats curd salad dressed with merlot vinegar as a starter, the other choice being potato and fennel soup with smoked bacon and parsley. Followed by courgette and oregano risotto with grilled artichoke while the others had Elwy Valley lamb breast, with coco beans and cavalo nero, and for dessert I had marscapone and vanilla yoghurt with redcurrants glistening like rubies on the top, or there was chocolate mousse with scottish raspberries and honeycomb. Yum Yum Yum.
Nice sunny place, wonderful food, great hosts, not very busy on Saturdays (at the moment...) and only 90 minutes from Suffolk - take note - people-who-charge-£15-for-crap-burgers. And Giles Coren is much younger in real life than he looks in the paper - you will have to take my word for it, he left before we could get a picture of what he was eating.
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Had to spend the day at Papworth hospital this week (not as a patient) but long enough to try their breakfast of deep fried sausage, deep fried bread, deep fried mushrooms, black pudding and bacon. But I did have tomatoes and it was only £3.49 for six items.
I've just had a Fab Colchester Adventure!
After throwing myself on the train with one minute to spare (without the luxury of a coffee to enjoy; which while we're on the subject is called a Palamino at Liverpool Street station, ie, what used to be my Bloody Awkward - espresso with a bit of hot milk) I sat feeling pleased with myself for making it, until I realised I was on the wrong train. So in order to avoid a hefty surcharge I had to get off at Colchester and wait for the right train. Luckily it was nearly lunch-time so although I wasn't optimistic I decided to try harder than the baked potato shop and found, to my delight, a kiosk selling hot salt-beef sandwiches (on really nice bread stuffed with pickles and mustard) and fresh watermelon and ginger juice, for under a tenner! Highly recommended. Don't know if he has a website but it's called Culver St Baristas. If I didn't live near Brick Lane where we get salt beef 24/7 I would deliberately get the wrong train just for this.
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ready at the bar
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the different types of rum
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how to make a rum punch
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which is better?
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the judging...
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the winner!
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The perfect thing to do on a hot Saturday afternoon - book a rum tasting at Cottons in Camden. We went for a birthday treat and tasted six rums and two cocktails from all over the Caribbean. With their Global Rum Ambassador Ian Burrell away in Cuba we had the session with Andre, his nephew, who soon had us behind the bar mixing the cocktails. It was one of the best £25 I've ever spent, we left in a VERY good mood!
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They offered us another meal, we went back, it was much nicer.
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welcome cocktails - pisco sours
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the preparation
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ingredients and equipment
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Martin with his new book
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the mixture is ready
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tasting the results
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And what fun it was! On Aldeburgh beach, in a fishermans hut complete with Page Three wallpaper out the back, we had a Pisco Sour - a Peruvian cocktail with enough of a kick to make me give Johny Cakes half of mine because I was driving. Then the masterclass where we made sea bass ceviche under the expert guidance of Martin Morales, whose book we are giving away in our competition and who is our latest Dish of the Day. Then a four course dinner, with another cocktail and shared at two big tables with all the other pop-up diners, including two Peruvian ladies who live in Ipswich and Stowmarket and gave me an even better insight into the food and culture, and who might even be persuaded to do their own food thing in the future.
Things like this don't happen every day in Suffolk - we were very lucky foodies.
Started in Italy after the war when there wasn't much money about - yes, its an old idea - promoted in seventeen countries in the world and recently hi-jacked by Starbucks, here's how it is intended to work.
Choose a nice local independent cafe that has a discreet 'suspended coffee' sign in the window to buy your lunch, buy yourself a sandwich and a coffee. At the same time, pay for an extra coffee, asking for it to be suspended.
Johny Cakes - a man who has lost his job (it happened) is facing being homeless (not quite) and is looking for work, will see the sign that the cafe has out the front, saying they are taking part in suspended coffee, and asks if there are any suspended coffees available. Within five minutes he has a warm drink in his hands, thanks to the anonymous act of kindness of yourself and the cafe. Some places have extended it to food - I would like liver and bacon with mashed potatoes and runner beans please.