Date registered: 11 September 2011
Well, that was jolly good. The Butcher’s Arms is a proper country pub, honest and comfy. I’m getting heartily sick of walking into gastropubs that turn out to belong to a boutique chain of identikit establishments, walls hung with photos of pheasants and foxhounds, deja vu menus of hand-dived scallops and sticky toffee pudding. So …
It’s a rarified world we foodies live in. With GBM on the telly every year and reams of print on the topic of food it’s easy to forget. But we stopped tonight at the Premier Inn less than two miles from Nottingham’s only Michelin-starred restaurant, the 2 star Restaurant Sat Bains. Asked the receptionist for …
Hm. When a customer tells you that a dish is delicious – really delicious – but that the pork shoulder was seriously over-salted, perhaps you shouldn’t get into a debate with them about whether it was or not? Especially when all seven people at the table agree. “Haha, seven against one, I guess you win!” …
We had a wonderful meal in Saumur, one that really reaffirmed my faith in French cooking after our culinary washout of a trip last year. Unfortunately this wasn’t the meal I’m reviewing here*. I enjoyed dining at Le Gambetta, but it was a frustrating mixture of the jolly good and the merely okay. The restaurant …
The Loire is a big river in a big valley, and so the wine region of the Loire is – you’ve guessed it – big. We didn’t quite appreciate this and probably set out to explore too much of it in one long weekend. So that’s my first piece of advice: if you’re here for …