Harvester (Berks) vs The Bell, Eckington (Worcs)

A rueful glance at the clock establishes that this is the kind of hour (4pm) that a decent restaurant is not going to be open at. A rueful glance out of the window establishes that this is the kind of place (Reading West) where, even at a suitable hour, finding a decent restaurant might prove a step too far. I of course exclude Mr. Cod at Cemetery Junction from this assessment; a fine establishment, beloved of students and people alike, but not really the kind of place that a group of four can comfortably sit down in.

And so you search on the interwebzlolfail and you realise that your only choice is Harvester. And you go there expecting everything to be entirely inedible but quickly discover that not only is the food edible, it's also vaguely tasty in a cheap, barbecue-sauce-composed-primarily-of-sugar way. Also, at a fiver a head, it's good value, given that you leave the eaterie with a stomach pregnant with - well - a massive mound of chips. Granted, if you go there every day your life expectancy will be significantly compromised, but as a stop gap, you could do worse. At least, you might be able to were anything else open.

If you were to plump for The Bell at Eckington over a Harvester, you would come away wishing that you'd been in Reading at 4pm and therefore not had a choice in the matter. The Bell at Eckington came recommended by both my father and my brother. Dad likes his steak well done, Jo prizes quantity over all else. I should have known not to eat in The Bell at Eckington. Having now endured The Bell at Eckington, I can pronounce The Bell at Eckington to be the second worst restaurant I have eaten in for some time. Until last month, it was streets ahead, but Cafe Rouge in Southgate has since won the prize with an entrecote, served 45 minutes late, that might have proved inedible had I been able to prise it open.

I digress. The Bell's restaurant is a curious space. Very open, but with a low ceiling and overly intrusive spot lights. I would much rather look at the wholly unrepresentative photos of it on the website than be there.

Perhaps all this is too harsh. Thinking back (and this review is *very* late), the starter wasn't actively unpleasant, just ... bland. Boring. The type of starter you find in restaurants that don't really know or care what they're doing. Thai Battered King Prawns with Sweet Chilli Aioli. The aioli, of course, was not an aioli, being just a sauce and most probably out of a bottle. The Battered King Prawns had nothing of the Thai about them. They were, however, both battered and made of prawns. Relatively inoffensive and of a level with food in a Harvester, though less good value.

What I did find offensive was my sirloin steak. I once had a steak in Greece. In Greece, they overcook beef to the other side of well done, and then throw it in the oven for another half an hour just to make sure. In Greece, however, they do not invite an emphysemic cow to cough its guts up over its dead mate and then put it on a plate for you to eat. In The Bell at Eckington, they do this. Truly, they do. And once you've scooped the gloop safely off the steak and onto the other side of the plate, you begin to understand why. The meat is of inestimably poor quality and cooked more badly than it could have been by a Greek in a Harvester kitchen. And for this, they charge £17.

Let this be a warning to you. If you must go and eat in the provinces, do not seek advice from members of my family.

Tosa, East Finchley

Tiny Japanese restaurant that must not be allowed to become popular. Ignore this review and never go there.

Now I am no connoisseur of Japanese food. I can barely hold a pair of chopsticks between my fat, pudgy, sausage-like fingers, let alone summon up the nimble dexterity needed to employ them. But, more importantly - and I have to let you into a little embarrassing secret here - I don't eat rice. Cannot stand the stuff. It's a hangover from really bad school food that has persisted into my adult life, despite the occasional attempt to introduce it into my diet. The only time I've ever eaten more than a forkful of rice willingly was a strawberry risotto from the now sadly defunct asian fusion restaurant Reform in Edinburgh, and even that most un-rice like rice was a trial. So sushi, nigiri, maki - all of these concepts are as foreign to me as the words themselves.


So as I walked through the door into a cramped room that probably seats 25 people at most, and none of them particularly comfortably, I was expecting a relatively limited choice of foodstuffs on which to gorge myself. Imagine my delight, then, upon discovering that about a 1/4 of the floor space is given over to a large grill on which a chap was tending a quite considerable amount of meat on skewers. If there's one thing that I do understand, it's meat, especially if it's grilled and on a stick. To be fair, Tosa does have a lot more to offer. There are lot of rice-based dishes available, plenty of noodle soups, a decent smattering of sashimi. But by far the most arresting part of the menu is that which deals with products of the grill, which is happily the speciality of the house.


My avoidance of rice does not extend to products made from rice, so lashings of hot sake are very much the order of the day. Sake, when taken in my preferred quantity, induces loss of memory, so I cannot recall the options in their entirety, but I'll give it a bloody good go. Butabara - very simple - pork belly. Nothing else. Pork belly. Roll it in a tiny bit of soy. It is LUSH. Torikawa - chicken skin with salt. Ditto. Kamonegi - succulent duck with spring onion. Shisomaki - juicy, juicy loin of pork with shiso leaf. Uzura bacon - quail eggs wrapped in pork. Sakekama - cheek of salmon. Hotate - scallops. Tebasaki - chicken wing tips. Ox tongue with salt and lemon. Shiitake. Onion. The list keeps going and all of it, to the very last morsel, tastes amazing.


I've a particular liking for the staff as well. They're attentive without being smothering, they keep the sake coming, and they delight in the fact that the fat Englishman orders more skewers every time he comes. Last time round, he did fifteen. Fifteen skewers of food. Admittedly, the skewers aren't huge, but fifteen is still gluttonous overkill and provokes squeals of amusement from the waitresses. My companion, a Greek whose liking for meat equals mine, matched the fifteeen; we washed it all down with about half a litre of sake each, and finished off with two scoops of ice cream - green tea and a particularly refreshing chestnut. So refreshing, in fact, that it was tempting to dip back into the grill menu. All of this and a bill for under £100.


In all honesty, if I could only ever eat at one restaurant for the rest of my life, I'd probably choose Tosa. It doesn't provide the most refined fare, it's scruffy and mildly uncomfortable, and it's a little out of the way. But the tastes - oh my God, the tastes. Hopefully it's out of the way enough to ensure that I'll always have a seat should I turn up on the hoof. Stay away, do you hear me? Stay away. There's nothing for you here.

The Bricklayer's Arms, Flaunden

Country pub fails to live up to the hype

If you're lucky, like me, and have a car, a wife who uncomplainingly acts as chauffeur and a satellite navigation system, then the next best investment you can make will be the latest Good Pub Guide. This will ensure that you're never more than half an hour's drive away from a refreshing pint and a roaring log fire. The guide doesn't pretend to be an expert on food, but it does have an opinion, and it suggested The Bricklayer's Arms in Hertfordshire as its "Dining Pub of the Year". The promise of a variety of guest ales sealed the deal.


Flaunden is a wee village tucked away between Watford and Tring. It's handily placed only a couple of miles off the M25 but suffers not at all from its proximity to a motorway; it's quiet, leafy and serves as a half decent proxy for our favouite villages in the rolling Cotswolds of Gloucestershire. The pub itself is also pretty as a picture; walls clad with ivy, and the interior all rustic charm with exposed beams and brickwork. The bar boasts some very well kept ales - Greene King St. Edmunds is a particular delight - and some very friendly bar staff. Order your locally-sourced and impressively expensive food at the bar, stroll out into the beer garden and wait for the treats to roll.


Except the treats never really do get rolling. Eggs Meurette were impressive, with a dark wine reduction packed with flavour, but the selection of home smoked fish was rather disappointing; edible, but absolutely nothing to write home about. You'd expect more from a pub lauded with awards and featured in the Michelin Guide, but unfortunately that dish set the standard. An aged fillet of beef came criminally overdone and palpably not worth the £23 charged - you could pick up the best steak of your life at Hawskmoor for that. Local pork and sage burger with cheddar, tomato, gherkin, yoghurt and cumin sounded intriguing but turned out to be very dry with a rather insipid and tasteless salad. The sausages and mash were no better than you'd get in a very average pub serving food as a bored afterthought. And so on and so on. Aside from the Meurette, everything else was distinctly underwhelming.


Reviews of this place are generally positive, and so we came back a second time to make sure. We were right first time round. The pub is a delight, the wine list is very good, the beers are kept excellently, and for a drink or three it's thoroughly recommended. Just don't go there hungry; you'll spend a lot of money for a distinct lack of satisfaction.

The Lock, Tottenham

North East London? You what?

If Le Terrazze can be considered unprepossessing (see May’s entry), then The Lock Dining Bar and Grill is right off the descriptive scale. Situated betwixt the industrial unpleasantries of east Edmonton and the urban grit of Walthamstow, and in the shadow of a newly built block of flats that will remain unsold for years to come, it is far from a location you would look to immediately as a centre of culinary excellence. (Unless you have, as does your author, a sneaking admiration for the Colonel’s secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices). Location aside, the building itself has nothing to recommend it; squat, ugly and uninviting, it actively advises you to leave without prejudice. This place will attract very little in the way of passing trade. And that, my darlings, is a crying shame, because hidden away amongst all this dreadful muck and oomskah is an absolute gem of a restaurant.


The interior is a large-ish room with sixteen or so tables that, rather like the exterior, works better by night. In the daytime it’s functional, if uninspiring. Of an evening, lit by candles, you might almost con yourself into believing you’ve escaped the nightmare of north east London that you’ve just rather upsettingly passed through. And then Fabrizio, the impossibly rotund maitre d’, brings you a menu, and suddenly you no longer need to suspend disbelief, because you’ve been whisked into the magical realm of proper food.


I don’t know about you, but I think you can tell an awful lot about what you’re about to eat from the menu. Too many dishes, too many clichés, too ambitious a price, too much verbiage (oh, the hypocrisy, not to mention the shameless *tautology*) and one immediately begins to worry. However, my reaction to something like this


“Poached smoked haddock on a fried Hen egg, frisée tips and herbs, Gavi de Gavi wine reduction and cream sauce”


is one of unrestrained, almost rabid delight. But maybe fish and cream isn’t your thing; perhaps this is more up your street.


“Salad of smoked wood pigeon, black pudding and caramelized pears in St Aubin Rhum Vanille Naturelle”

or

“Sautéed foie gras, savoury bread and butter pudding, pickled beetroot”


Although the above menu items have been cut and pasted direct from the Lock’s website, I confess that I might almost have quoted them verbatim, for I have now become something of a regular. Having eaten here ten, perhaps twelve times over the last couple of years, I have never been served anything less than very good, and frequently the food pushes through into the sublime. It is here that I have eaten lamb, not my favourite meat, so tender, so juicy, so RIGHT, that I almost cried. The haddock detailed is a perfect balance of salty fish, creamy sweetness and just a hint of acidity cutting through from the wine. Even the credit crunch busting “eat for a fiver” menu offers fare far superior to that found at four times the price in a plethora of samey, trappy affairs in town. Though to be honest, if you’ve made the effort to get here, you might as well choose a la carte – with starters at between £4-£7 and mains at £10-£17, this is not a bank breaking experience.


If I have a quibble, it’s that the sweets tend not to sparkle quite as much as the savouries. They’re competent and undeniably tasty, but rarely burst into the truly exquisite. Then again, at five pounds and under, you don’t really have solid grounds for complaint.


The wine list offers sufficient choice and very decent value, and there are some unusual and rather lovely Italians on there. Fabrizio seems as passionate about wine as he is about food, and happily shares his experience and advice.


The Lock might be rather out of the way, but seriously, don’t let that put you off. It’s worth the challenge - the food is superb, the service excellent, and the value undoubtable. If you don’t come here, you’re letting your friends down, you’re letting your family down, you’re letting the fans down; but most of all, you’re letting yourself down.

Donna Rosa, Montepertuso, Italy

A Dose of Mama's Cooking

Should you follow my heartfelt recommendation and choose to visit the Amalfi coast, and thereafter make a subsequent but no less inspired decision to research potential eateries rather than leave it all to chance, then you’ll find that the word on the Trip Advisor forum street is that Donna Rosa is the place to be. "Best pasta ever," she says. "We went there twice!" he exclaims. One reviewer even goes so far as to claim that "the tomatoes are like fruit." High praise indeed.


And so it was at Donna Rosa that we ended up on the last evening of our holiday, mourning the impending disaster of our return to Blighty and hoping to cheer our flagging spirits with one last gastronomic explosion of delight. Even if it didn’t live up to expectations, it had to be better than watching Manchester United spawn a last minute win over Barcelona in the Champions League final and then enduring the gloating texts from glory-hunting friends on an empty stomach.


Getting to Donna Rosa, were you to drive, would be a challenge. Fortunately, though, you’re not driving, and you gaze leisurely out of the window as your taxi lazily glides its way around intestinal roads that wind up, up and yet further still towards Montepertuso, a small mountainside village above Positano. The Amalfi coast is not without its share of pantingly gorgeous vistas, but this drive provides point-and-click friendlies right up there with the best of them. Even without the promise of decent scran at the end of it, the journey would be worth taking by itself.


The view from Donna Rosa is, however, not breathtaking. Either you sit inside, in which case you have no view, or you sit outside, where you face the car park. If, therefore, you’re the kind of screaming arse who patronises restaurants for the sheer romanticism of it all, then you are firmly advised to go and seek your jollies elsewhere. For those of us who are here for the serious business of eating, though, the absence of panorama is wonderfully complimented by the open kitchen; watch with glee the set of processes that Mama undertakes that lead ultimately to the satisfaction of your almost carnal lust for food, and your meal will taste even better.


When choosing your food, take care not to be distracted by the wine list. It is exceptional in range and caters as much for the spending power of Bunterish middling-to-senior public sector managers as it does for your average Texas oil baron (more on this later). In fact, so mesmerised was I by the breadth of options that my choice of food was almost an afterthought. So it was that I carelessly ended up with a starter of seafood salad, a dish staple throughout my holiday. It transpires that one octopus marinated in lemon and olive oil tastes much like another, though this is sine dubio nothing to do with Donna Rosa’s failings and everything to do with the general high quality of food in this stretch of Italy. And of local octopi. Obviously.


Matina went with mussels which vie with octopi, round these parts, for the annual “highest quality seafood” awards. Cooked simply with wine and garlic, they were the biggest, juiciest, most succulent mussels imaginable. Brussels, eat your heart out.


It may seem odd when dining at a restaurant that specialises in fish that I should end up with a main course untouched by sea or river. You can put that down to that damned wine list taunting me with illicit whispers of bottles costing more than my monthly take home. Anyway, having almost forgotten what I’d ordered, a plate arrived with two sausages, a dollop of mash and a wee bit of sauce. As ordered and not especially inspiring. But that first forkful proved to be a genuine “O, Clouds unfold!” moment. How can something so simple taste so other worldly? I’ve thought about this at length and have only one answer. Satan.


The sea bass with pine nuts, raisins and herbs exceeded even the mussels. Devilishly simple, beautifully cooked, wonderfully delicate, it was the best fish that Matina has ever eaten. Kai wasn’t allowed any.


The end of our main course also signalled an improvement in ambience as the couple previously seated next to us relocated inside. Arriving just as we set about our starters, the woman had immediately launched into a farce of indecision around whether to sit inside or outside. Twenty degrees is, apparently, perilously close to inhumane. Eventually, having refused the offer of a restaurant-loaned shawl, our heroine decided to brave the elements, martyrdom thereafter dripping heavy in her every word and mannerism.


Her husband, a man with a voice as loud and irritating as a pneumatic drill at dawn on your day off, then assumed centre stage. Studying the menu he announced, a propos of nothing, “we like wine”. He then beckoned over the impossibly phlegmatic owner-waitress and explained, as contemptuously as possible, that despite his fondness for wine, he knew nothing about “this Italian stuff”. “So I’m going to tell you what type of thing we like,” he continued, “and you’re going to bring it to us.” Maybe I’m just too English and middle class, but I object to people thinking they have the right to behave like boorish wankers just because they’re buying something. The owner found a satisfactory wine without any fuss, so maybe I’m in a minority. Perhaps this is the route to universally good service.


There then followed a remarkable opening conversational gambit. Upon hearing another American voice, our wine lover turned to the table next to him and barked, at a couple finishing dessert, “Are you in oil?” Remarkably, although the chap turned out to be Canadian, not American, he did indeed hold shares in an oil company. So they talked about oil. A lot. Until the Canadians paid up and left, and wine-lover-and-oil-magnate’s wife decided that nineteen degrees, as surely it now was, was absolutely beyond the pale and not to be borne under any circumstance at all.


And so they left us to our desserts. Mine, a wobbling vanilla pannacotta with a raspberry coulis, was a bit like my starter – very nice, but nothing extraordinary. Matina once again lucked out with her choice – a cheese board with an absurd amount of wonderful chutneys, honeys and spreads. Unfortunately, the barrier has been raised, and no cheese board since has proved satisfactory; still, a price worth paying, as was the bill of 140 Euros. Just in case there was any doubt, further value was added through the (admittedly consensual) force feeding of free home made limoncello. Can there be a better way to round off a meal?


There can certainly be no better way to polish off an evening than returning to your hotel to discover that Manchester United have lost in the Champions League final. The bevvy of locals drinking in the lobby seemed utterly perplexed as their English guests capered about the room beaming happily at Manchester’s defeat. Then, slowly, one of them unfurled his brow, flashed a toothy grin and pronounced knowingly, voice thick with grappa, “Ah. You are Liverpool.”

Le Terrazze, Positano, Campania, Italy

Top notch food, great service, unintentionally amusing location, comic cast. What more could you want?

It is feasible, should one be inclined towards frugality in these times of crunching credit, to eat quite cheaply on the Amalfi coast. A plethora of willing pizzerias will serve takeaway tastiness to share at twelve euros or thereabouts. Prefer your carbs in a different format, and you can source almost-al dente pasta for a similar price. Or you might pop along to your local village shop, grab some bufala mozzarella, tomatoes, fresh basil, olive oil, bread and garlic and knock yourself up a feast fit for a king for a mere fiver a head.

Should your spending power be less defined by access to cheap debt than, say, a sizeable inheritance, or honest graft for a capitalist master, you might be less inclined to let the banks’ refusal to lend inhibit your patronisation of expensive restaurants. This is probably a fair assumption if you’re already on the Amalfi coast. Nonetheless, with an exchange rate more evil even than the Italian sun at noon, you might expect a little over and above decent scran for the princely sum of 150 Euros for two. Fortunately, at Le Terrazze in Positano, you get plenty of bang for your buck; some of it comical and unintentional, granted, but it’s good bang nonetheless.

It starts with a recommendation from your hotel receptionist. The receptionist is not to be trusted entirely. She is, for example, singularly unable to read a map or judge distance and time. Furthermore, your attempts to persuade her to book a table at a restaurant that she hasn’t personally recommended are met with a variety of obstructions, the most common of which is “closed for refurbishment”. Nonetheless, she looks like the kind of filly who’s been enticed out to the odd restaurant by would-be coverers, so the recommendation is tentatively accepted.

You’ve seen the restaurant before, of course, albeit from a distance. For an ancient stone tower that juts out from a steep cliff at the end of a long stretch of beach, with access untouched by the modern scourge of natural beauty (tarmac, children, do keep up), the place is curiously unpreposessing in appearance. The beach is entirely dominated by orange Day-glo sun loungers and screeching just-teens, and the building itself by a hideous glass frontage and a ghastly circular metal hand rail.

Despite the recommendation, this is clearly a tourist trap, and you decide to dress appropriately. £4 shorts from the George range at Asda should do the trick.

After idling along the beach gently for three minutes or so you reach the tower, climb some steps, and find yourself quite unexpectedly in some type of bizarre grotto. Hewn out of and bound by rock, with bits of lounging furniture scattered about amongst vases, spots of purple lighting, and an astonishing semi circular bar swathed in neon blue, it’s the kind of place that might make sense at 2am when you’re mashed off your tits. It palpably does not make sense when you’re hungry and looking for some bona fide Italian cooking. Fortunately a chap wearing white pajamas glides out of some hidden cranny and ushers you through Ali Baba’s cave into blazing sunlight and onto another set of steps that leads towards the restaurant entrance.

Pushing blindly through the door you now find yourself, startlingly, in an ostentatious 80’s music video. Stone walls. Soft lighting. White flowers. White grand piano. Cream drapes. Cream pillars. White and cream everything. You half expect David Brent to pop out and start singing “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”. Brent has clearly inspired the waiters’ choice of clothes; like the chap downstairs, they are all bathed in white pajamas, except for the head honcho, whose seniority is clearly marked through a lack of pajamas and an allowance of colour.

It aspires to an understated glamour but comes across as a sort of nouveau riche gaffe trying too hard to be chic. It is, however, undeniably expensively done and, let’s face it, it’s almost impossible, to English eyes, at least, for Italy not to do elegant. Suddenly, with your lobster face and your Asda attire, you feel a little out of place. You are an arse.

The waiter greeting us appeared momentarily discomfited by our less than elegant appearance but quickly recovered. Were you to appear similarly underdressed in many London establishments, you might at best be looked down on, and at worst unceremoniously turfed out. There was no superciliousness here, though. We were seated without reservation (and without a reservation), guided through the intricacies of the menu and looked after superbly throughout.

Ah. The menu. It read well. Well, Matina’s did anyway, since her version came without any indication of cost. At tables housing couples, the menu with prices is very much the province of the man. It is he who emits a little gasp at antipasti options averaging twenty five euros a head. We were reassured by a little sign declaring the restaurant to be Michelin recommended, so decided to stand firm and hold our ground with unwavering stiff upper lips rather than run back out through the door like big namby-pambies. We weren’t, at least, going to suffer food poisoning, even if our wallets were likely to be stripped bare. To be fair, the wine list was decent and more reasonably priced than anticipated. I think we ended up with a 2005 Avignonesi Nobile di Montepulciano; not an inspired choice, really – it could have done with another year or so.

Starters duly arrived, a mouthful was had, and suddenly all was right with the world. Matina’s choice looked essentially like a beautifully sculpted prawn sausage and was amongst the most divine things I’ve ever put in my mouth. No, scratch the “amongst”. It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten and I have no other words to describe it. If I knew more about food, I might be able to tell you what was in it. My own plate was hardly outshone – the crumbliest, flakiest and tastiest fishcakes I’ve ever stuffed into my greedy face. All immaculately and unfussily presented. Food heaven.

Plates are whisked away, a seemly 12 or so minutes’ break between courses allowed for, and the main arrives. Portion sizes appear on the small side – I mean, do I cut the figure of a man on a diet? Feed me properly, please – but turn out to be perfectly judged. Matina’s spaghetti with shellfish is pronounced superb. My own controversial choice of pig wrapped in more bits of pig is exquisitely done; juicy, and full of varied but complementary pig-based flavours. The accompanying potatoes are welcome, if a little uninspiring. Still, every bride (particularly if she’s swine-like) should have as plain a bridesmaid as possible.

The desserts delivered too. Matina eschewed all non-chocolate options. I don’t care for them generally but I was more than impressed with my mouthful of dark chocolate fondant. “Rich, smooth, deep,” he mused, in homage to Masterchef’s Greg. Even more impressed was I with my citrus-based dish, which incorporated an other-worldly fluffy sponge and balanced acidity with sweetness absolutely perfectly. Goodness me.

In between oohing and aahing at the food, we were royally entertained by a diverse clientele. One chap arrived alongside a brunette in a dress as expensive as our garments were cheap. It quickly became apparent (to us, at least, since we discussed the whole affair at length) that the pair had not yet coupled, and she spent the entire meal with a ramrod straight back, coolly appraising her courtier with show-me-the-money eyes. Our man, who had announced himself upon arrival as Bogdanov, and who positively dripped wealth, spent the entire meal showing her the money. Whether or not she showed him anything afterwards is debatable – although her demeanour had softened by the time they left, we suspect that she probably intended to milk him for (and, indeed, only after) a weekend in Monte Carlo or similar.

It was notable and, perhaps, quite deliberate, that no menu was available outside the restaurant as it normally would be. There really is no telling until the very last moment that you’re entering an establishment of some quality, especially given its appearance from the outside. Perhaps they hope to trap tourists, unaware of the prices, through pure embarrassment. It didn’t seem to work, though. At least ten potential diners walked in, saw the menu, and about turned. One twosome had even been seated prior to scurrying away. Three girls left, two returning an hour later with the required funds, hair suspiciously dishevelled. The funniest deserters were the couple that only made it to the top of the stairs. The husband looked through the door and shook his head firmly. His wife clearly liked what she saw and pleaded imploringly to go in, but to no avail as her husband, replete with broom moustache, brusquely walked away. The poor woman wasn't even allowed to step through the door. No milking for him.

And so to the scores.

This was definitively one of the best restaurants we've ever visited. For Kai, it was probably the best. For Matina, though, it wasn't even the best restaurant visited that week... but that's another story. Until then, do as you have been. Tootle pip.