Tonyfinch

Maggie, Time Out gives a red starred thumbs up to La Brocca on West End Lane. No good?

Well it's hard to think of a hobby which calls for more deferred gratification than laying down wines. But another issue could be what is the point? The quality of wines on the market from around the world is so high today compared to 20/30 years ago. Excellent wine is to hand off the shelf at a relatively reasonable cost to anyone who wants it. One can also get the odd or bottle od old wine for that special occasion without too much trouble if you want it. There's absolutely no need to be cellaring your clarets for forty years if you want to drink fine wine, even if you've got the space. OLD wine yes, but there's no virtue in age in itself (and that goes for folk as well as wine)

I'm quite willing to accept that I've drunk the wrong old wines. And not every old wine I've drunk has been awful. Apart from port I've had some lovely old champagnes (30 years +) which have taken on all those wonderful toasty mellow brioche flavours. But after a certain age it is a gamble isn't it. That's why retailers and restaurants sell them at the customer's own risk. With a VERY old wine there's really no telling what you're going to get so it makes them a very risky purchase. I mean unless you've stored them yourself or you know their life history it starts to look like a foolish gamble.

Sounds odd. Oxidization is a major fault in a wine and I'm surprised they were pushing it knowing that. You did right to avoid it.

Well of course Madeira and Port are fortified wines so they are, in effect, preserved in alcohol and therefore able to last for decades. Having said that I recently tasted Cockburn's 1963 Port and thought it was drying out, although the current Cockburn's winemaker disagreed. I have also tasted very old Vouvrays which still had vigour, although again I thought there were signs of oxidization which tainted them for me. I think so much depends on how well the wines have been stored.

Monica, I haven't been to Zaika but there are a number of "upscale" Indian reataurants in London which are attempting to break the old mould and create a new style of Indian cuisine for Western foodies and gain a Michelin star (which Zaika has done). At worst, as at The Cinnamon Club and Tabla,you get a horrible French/Indian hybrid which veers towards Frenchified blandness and prissiness and which I've railed against before on this board. However three of these restaurants I have been to in the last year or so- Bombay Brasserie, Cafe Spice Namaste and Chutney Mary- have all been a mixed bag with some brilliant and original dishes which nevertheless retain a link with regional roots, mixed in with some pretty ordinary ones. I'm sure you'd find the London Indian food scene fascinating. It is incredibly diverse and much of the most vibrant stuff is away from the Centre , in such areas as Whitechapel, Wembley, Southall and East Ham. You really need a seasoned Londoner to point you in the right directions, so, as I say, contact us before you come.

I think the Tallia Mar restaurant, overlooking the Marina, has a connection with Adria as well. This restaurant has the advantage of being one of few that's open on Sunday evenings, although I don't know about the Christmas/New Year period.

We go to Grand Cayman every Easter to visit close friends who work/live there. Rum cake is probably the only thing worth buying there. Everyday thousands of Americans off those massive cruise ships shamble around Georgetown looking for something worth buying and end up going back to their ships with pounds of rum cake. They do plain, coffee, banana, chocolate,and a fruit one I believe. Personally I never think there's enough rum in them and I end up giving a piece a douse from the bottle. But then I'm in it for the rum rather than the cake.

I presume the Brick lane Curry House refers to Brick Lane in London. The curry houses in Brick Lane are strictly for tourists. No Londoner who knows anything about Indian food eats in them. The term "Balti" has nothing whatsoever to do with the regional origins of the chefs or any particular regional food. Avoid.

Love to. Just PM me before you come and we'll fix something up.

I have half a dozen Indian cookbooks and I don't think there's a single recipe containing alcohol in any one of them. Nor do I recall ever eating a dish containing alcohol in any Indian restaurant. Wine vinegar is used in some recipes but that's about as close as it gets. Some indian restaurants in London are producing food to please Michelin star inspectors-Frenchifying in other words. They might use alcohol along the line somewhere but I don't know for sure.

That offer goes for any other e-gulleteer who may be intersted.

Most restaurants calling themselves Balti Houses are indeed outside of London mainly in the Midlands and the North of England. Basically it was a way for bog standard curry houses to re-invent and re-market themselves as there is fierce competition between them in some of these cities. Balti cuisine isn't a cuisine at all and the term doesn't indicate quality in the slightest. Nearly all Indian restaurants in the UK have used woks in their kitchens since they opened. It's just that some bright spark had the idea to use the word for wok as a way of describing the restaurant and then going on to pretend that it denoted a different type of cooking. It doesn't. Steve, I'd be wary of the Lahore Kebab House if I were you. Its been shut down and fined by environmental health inspectors several times over the years and twice this year. Go to New Tayyabs up the road instead. We go there twice a week and know the owners well. If you're interested I'll take you there next time you're over.

If Sketch was really meant for the serious eating brigade why spend all those millions on decor and design? I don't think I could sit there without looking around me and thinking THAT'S where my money is going, rather than what's on the plate. Since I couldn't give a flying fart about the design of a restaurant (as long as its comfortable etc.) I would struggle to justify to myself paying those prices when most of it is patently not going into the food.

Well if Pumkino's head explodes there'll be a lot of pasta flying about. Will it be as it is served in Italy I wonder?

I agree with Mogsob. I just can't "get" old wine at all. By old I mean thirty,forty years or more. And I have tasted a fair amount. Magnolia and I used to belong to a wine club in London where the enthusiastic leader was always opening bottles of 1904 this and 1927 that. They were all clarets and he would proclaim them all to be "great"-" the essence of Margaux, the essence of Pauillac" etc. To me they uniformly tasted like dried out vegetable water. They were HORRIBLE. And I know that many of us felt the same way. But to our leader the fault lay with us.We just didn't get it. Well he was right. We didn't. And I still don't. I did have a bottle of 1978 Chateau Pavie the other day which said a lot to me. But of course this was a mere stripling at 24 years old.

Sorry but that's the working class you're describing and they are despised by all newspapers (and everybody else) The middle classes buy mozarella and River Cafe cookbooks, they most certainlty do NOT eat pie, but fresh pasta with parmesan grated from the lump and a bag of curly salad leaves accompanied by a bottle of Pinot Grigio. The adults go on about how the Harry Potter books are as enjoyable for adults as they are for children and they all dream of being Peter Mayle and having that dream house in Provence.

JD, the average Brit would perceive £5000 being spent on a holiday in Sydney or Tokyo as has having infinitely more value than spending £500 on a meal at Sketch, or any other restaurant. That's because of national value priorities. The Brits will spend on holidays, cars and property. The French will spend on food and clothes. The Italians will spend on clothes,shoes cars and modern art and design. I may be stereotyping but studies on national spending patterns have shown this again and again. The British in general just do not consider hundreds of pounds spent in a restaurant as money well spent,although funnily enough they will pay a lot more for wine than,say, the Spanish who will just refuse to pay more than about £12 per bottle on average. Fay Maschler's use of the words "vulgar" and "decadent" sums up the British attitude. There is something almost indecent, faintly obscene even, in spending this kind of money in a restaurant-but a holiday in Australia! Fabulous. Go for it!

There are certain restaurants-Nobu and The Ivy currently spring to mind-that attract the B-Z celebrity crowd and where people go as much to be seen as to eat. Sketch might well be wise to aim to attract this crowd rather than the "haut cuisine crowd" if it wants to survive at these prices for five years. If it can appeal to them plus the American gastro tourists it may have a chance, but the average Brit recoils instinctively from spending this kind of money in a restaurant and getting 35 of them in per night may well be harder than the guy thinks.

Yes, I can remember the tamales being on the menu but we didn't order them. The 'green' element on the menu was some shredded lettuce and cabbage doused in bottled salad dressing. This was served before the staek as a "starter". The waitresses all looked and spoke like Bonnie Parker's mother from Bonnie and Clyde.

The most amazing steak I've had recently was at Doe's Eat Place in Greenville Mississippi- the most eccentric restaurant I've been to in years. It specialises in steaks or as an alternative you can have-wait for it-spaghetti and meatballs (huh?). The SMALLEST steak available weighs 3 lbs and costs $33. They're cooked in huge steak ovens at the front of the restaurant so as you go in you walk into a furnace. We shared a 3 pounder with potatoes and bread (sic) but felt pretty weedy as the chap next to us polished off a 4 pounder and then proceeded to order and eat a plate of said spaghetti and meatballs. And I thought I was a trencherman!

I just read that labelling laws have changed and the wine can't be labelled "Recioto Della Valpolicella Amarone" any more. It must be labelled "Amarone Della Valpolicella". In the UK Unwins do a decent example which won out at a tasting recently. Can't remember the maker but its around 12 quid.

Well if we're defining important as "influential" then the Agra in Whitfield St. has got to be there or thereabouts. It's now a bog standard curry house but it was the first restaurant in the UK (or so it claims) to serve Tandoori Chicken- possibly the dish that's had more impact than any other on Brtitish eating habits in the last 30 years. I don't think Veerswamy served it before them.

Well if we're defining important as "influential" then the Agra in Whitfield St. has got to be there or thereabouts. It's now a bog standard curry house but it was the firstb restaurant in the UK (or so it claims) to serve Tandoori Chicken- possibly the one dish that's had more impact than any other on Brtitish eating habits in the last 30 years.

I think Beachfan is confusing Amarone with Recioto Della Valpolicella which is sweet and indeed has similarities to Port. Amarone is the dry version of that wine and is recommended for strong meat and game dishes and for cheeses. It will often be labelled as Recioto Della Valpolicella Amarone,so it can easily be confused with the sweeet version if you don't read the label properly.