* The John Lewis / Waitrose complex at Ipswich. Not the easiest to find, unexciting but user friendly.
* My kind of cook and cooking – Pub grub could be better
* Places and Plates Enjoyed and not Enjoyed
* As published in 1st March issue of “Coastal Scene” (newspaper and website) – My recipes for Bolognese Sauce and real meat-balls
To the John Lewis Home store and big Waitrose, outside Ipswich for the first time this week. Well designed, easy to navigate and excellently laid out but unexciting. Had in mind to buy a small-medium Le Creuset casserole dish. At the last time of purchasing a like item the cost was about forty quid. Here in 2013, £114.00. No purchase. A helpful chap extolled the virtues of a Panasonic Combi grill-oven-microwave that we had virtually decided on before we went – only £55 more than the casserole for a very useful piece of gear that ought to save us a bit on electricity bills.
Leaving the microwave to be collected later we adjourned to the café-restaurant upstairs, which, like the rest of the place is light, clean and open, offering a reasonable selection of hot and cold dishes, sandwiches, pastries and so forth. . It was busy, with lots of other oldies, girlie lunchers and some families. A lot of diners seemed to opt for a pastry or cake and a beverage. We decided on fish and chips. Very nice bread-crumbed anonymous fish fillets, but woeful saggy-with-a-burnt-edge here and there oven chips. A few miserable dressing-free green leaves and a mini-pot of something that didn’t resemble Tartare Sauce made up the plate. Depressing. Despite the TV progs filled with food features and the pages of newspapers and magazine likewise, we Brits still put up with – and presumably enjoy mediocre food like this. Unimpressive from a firm that has boasted Delia as a food adviser, currently possesses another star (Heston Blumenthal) and is about to engage the talented Kate Middleton.
The Waitrose is big – huge aisles giving the impression of not many customers, disappointing fruit and veg department and overall no excitement whatsoever. I was glad to get back to the homely atmosphere of my local branch in Saxmundham.
Speaking of mediocre food, George T. Emailed and asked me about the best and worst of meals we’ve had in the few months. Not given to huge rich blow-outs or expensive Haute Cuisine I have always thought the most dependable and good food when eating out is where the owner is also the chef, or where the chef is a partner. So many times have Mary and I gone back to a restaurant to find the hired (often at great expense) chef we admired had gone on to bigger and better things and the style and capabilities of the new guy were not to our liking. And so, meals we have enjoyed recently have been those where there is continuity in the kitchen and you judge by the quality of what is put before you rather than the management’s descriptions outside the front door. Yes, I’m biased. It is possible to cook to a formula – as chain restaurants like Prezzo, Wheelers and others prove, but for me it’s the man with the pans who also owns all or part of the place who comes up trumps most often.
Having been away from the UK from 1991 to 2011, the improvement in some catering, notably in small to medium sized hotels is the most noticeable thing. We have eaten very well indeed in hotels in Aldeburgh, Nottingham, Lincoln, Tunbridge Wells, Fareham and Warlingham, all of which deserve more detailed comment, especially the Chez Vous in Warlingham, whose approach to food and cooking deserves more space here, which I shall shortly give it. Pub catering generally I find over-dependent upon bought-in “ready-made” dishes (hence the number of items on the menu) – and here I fault the customer who seems only to want a plate that’s over-flowing with grub, regardless of its provenance. This said, I only recall a couple of REAL clinkers….
Worst Dishes
Mushroom soup, in a major international chain hotel near Newcastle-upon-Tyne resembled and tasted like washing up water with a few spot of grease and a grey morsel of mushroom here and there. A complaint to the waitress prompted a “I won ‘t charge you for the coffees”.
At a seaside hotel which announces itself as the biggest and best hotel in the area, what the menu called a “Ploughman’s Lunch” consisted of two stale soft torpedo-shaped rolls, each seven inches in length, stuffed with grated catering cheese, tomatoes and watery thin ham. Ghastly.
Best Dishes
The cooking at MAIN’s in Yoxford is consistently good. Jason Main cooks within his capabilities, is ingenious in making the usual slightly unusual with innovation here and there. For example; the other evening he offered guinea fowl. Nothing unusual in that, but he had slow cooked the legs to produce a Confit and grilled the breast, thus giving two textures and flavours. Excellent.
Jason Main’s Domaine – a roseate view A stone’s throw from Lincoln Cathedral
Some months ago I reviewed the Castle Hotel Lincoln and its REFORM restaurant where chef Mark Cheseldine holds sway. We enjoyed the dining on a couple of occasions and there is some considerable talent in the cooking. I thought that a suet dumpling of remarkable delicacy, filled with a mixture of finely chopped rabbit and vegetables was a positive masterpiece. Other dishes were all of similarly high quality of ingredients, cooking and presentation.
Also Enjoyed
The catering at the Maltings. The restaurant overlooking a glorious panorama of reed beds, water and sky is open on concert nights and we found the set meals, by the catering arm of Metfield Bakery very good. We also had pre-concert meals at the Plough and Sail shortly after the Burnside twins had taken it over and thought their cooking home-style, fresh, good and good value. This has turned into one of our regular eating-out haunts. Honest, unpretentious, good food, unfussily presented, cheerfully served.
Have a good week!
