BertieWooster

So the answer to that earlier question about getting critics up to review restaurants is obviously 'rave about it on egullet'. Ripponden, shoes and tapas. What more could anyone want? Bet it puts the house prices up.

*Waves back* Cheers Thom ← oooh, you are so asking for trouble. Le Mont cafe indeed.

*waves*. Ach-hem.

Hmm, that sounds like a good idea

What made me go purple at panacea was charging 200 quids for a bottle of grey goose. I know its nice, but not that nice. Oh and chocolate mint martinis. There are two drinks made with mint, both of them classics, why make more?

uhhr, yes, my comment was aimed at myself, not at you Fisherman. Surely I don't have to stick a damn smilie after everything? be assured, if I'm aiming barbs at you, you'd know. Its like being attacked with a wet lamb. And the market meets long and lazy lunch as well as anywhere. Harr-umph.

<puts on broken record> Market Restaurant in the Northern QUarter. NOt sure about the cheese, but you'll get the rest, wed-fri only though I think </lifts stylus>

Okay, booked for Sunday lunch during a five day trip round the Cotswolds and surrounding, was going for the fat Duck, but as we were eating at LCS on the Tuesday night, went for the more traditional pub stuff. Late by fifteen minutes due to the impossibility of parking in Bray (not that we weren't warned, so no fault of anyone). Slight confusion over table booking, as they'd got the wrong name, sorted quickly. Drinks order given downstairs. restaurant upstairs 2/3 full, including table of eight who'd got in there just before us. However, though orders were taken after them, the one nice thing was jumping us ahead in the serving stakes which was cool and sensible. From the current menu at the website. Ten minutes later still no order taken, or, indeed, anyone approahced us. Drinks arrived after about fifteen, then came to take order. We could see into the area where the servers were, it was clear that the two very nice lasses employed weren't allowed to take orders, which left it all on one bloke. I had smoked salmon, can't for the life remember what Mrs W. had. Both were fine, salmon as good but straight-forward as you'd expect (missed others' addition of scrambled egg!). Consulted over Mrs W's dairy problems, they said they'd get back to us, and no one did--chased, things fine, but would have been nice to have been told. It being Sunday, Mrs. W. had the roast lamb special for mains, I had the bream plus some of the famous 'only contribution to British cooking' triple-cooked chips. Arrived after twenty minutes. No chips. No chips. No chips. Lamb WAS superb, excellent slices, rare, juicy everything meat-eaters like. Roasties were numbered just two, veg with it was tepid at best. No chips. The bream was beautifully cooked but, well, boring in the extreme (okay my fault, it did what it'd said on the menu). though the fennel was great. The chips arrived about 2/3 of the way through. okay. Ordered second round of drinks about half way through, which never arrived. No dessert, ten minutes trying to attract someone's attention to get the bill. The bill includes extra drinks (in no way ironically not even the drinks we'd ordered and not got). New bill. Home. Possibly because we'd been so looking forward to it I accept, but distinctly less than it could or should have been, and, indeed, less than many other pubs that do food. Uninventive, the delays didn't help. Etc. Maybe we should have gone for the puddings and hotpots, but Sunday lunch is roast time innit?

Sorry, Hinds head.

Ate there at the weekend for the first time, so have nothing to compare it with. But distinctly underwhelmed. Dodgy slow service, wrong orders, wrong bill, food v.v. boring in one case, cold veg, etc etc. Not within spitting distance of good country food-pubs (Star, Angel at Hetton, Five Mile House, Blacksmiths)

Different when there's unlimited jackpots though. No point there being another casino in town. Course, Beswick really isn't comparable to Las Vegas. Atlantic City perhaps.

for the umpteenth time, Matthew Fort selects his top ten restaurants. http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2007/...don.restaurants And the 'Three Fishes'?? I'm a great fan of Howarth, and think Northcote is spiffing, but I've eaten four times at the Three Fishes and been distinctly underwhelmed each time.

Is he still there? Rumours were he'd left already? Scratch that, he is.

Its a lot less likely to happen now, of course. Ingall and co. didn't get to be stinkingly rich by throwing money at things that don't work. Maybe in the new casino site?

"I love the smell of joss-sticks in the morning"

Hmm, but the historical rule of thumb of 'the north' is from the Mersey to the Humber. Which could leave Cheshire (south of the Mersey) in the midlands. The actual boundary between Northumbria as was and Mercia is at Dore in western Sheffield/Derbyshire, anywhere south of that must be part of the midlands. It's when they start defining areas by East and West I get confused. West Yorkshire is quite easily defined as Eastern England if one takes the Penines as the divide. North Yorkshire heads further west than West Yorkshire, and (of course) really includes much of eastern Lancashire. And then what happens when the Earth's magnetic flow reverses once more?

the dining pub of the year award was awarded about a week before we took over, this years good food guide entry though is all our own work and we have maintained our entries in the good pub guide, alistair sawdays & michelin red book & pubs and inns. ← and all well deserved of course

All deserved too. I like mash, so had no complaints on that front! (but wasn't the Good Pub Guide award from before you took over?) Back in March I think, there's an English Heritage day at Wharram Percy that will doubtless be extremely wet, so will need a nice warm bar to recover from in.

I've already said mine, Box Tree and Mr UNderhill's. No conception of why either has a star (or is still in business come to that)

The worst Michelin starred place in the UK could get some debate...

How do you get past the minimum wage on that one? That's £4 an hour officially, as potentially you could have no bookings on a shift Indeed, but surely you're breaking the law, and any employee who left in high or low dudgeon would have a very good tribunal case. Sorry, I'm probably missing something here... Course, in NYC and the US generally many places don't pay the waiting staff at all, bt the tipping culture is greater there (and many of the staff are non-green carded immigrants from weird places like England) We aim at about 25% of sales for wages, but its a massively different operation of course. How far up does the sharing of tips go? Presumably the Chef is on profit-related bonus rather than tip-sharing...

I don't know if we have any lawyers on here, but is it actually legal for them to ban it? My understanding is that, apart from any temporary bans on "unsafe" products (such as beef when BSE is a worry), it is not legal for any individual EU country to ban a product that can legally be sold elsewhere in the EU. In other words, neither York nor the UK can ban Foie Gras while it is legal to be sold in a country such as France. ← No, that's the point I made in the original post. While it appears that he's calling for banning, he obviously can't ban it (and neither can the city council as a whole) so is calling for restaurants not to stock it. Which will be about as much use in stopping people eating it as a storm in a chocolate teapot

As Heathcote is planning three or four openings of his 'Olive Press' concept (a down-market chain Italian) in the next six months, I doubt a) he cares and b) he's even noticed. A review of food hygiene standards at The Olive Press can be found here http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/new...victimised.html

Chorlton surely? But you're right of course. I've always been drunk when I leave there, so my geographical sense goes out the window.

But surely if the staff don't care, then it isn't the sort of place that should get within a whisker of a Michelin as the atmosphere and service standards would presumably be lower? Though I suppose one can be professional without being passionate. But I always feel the passion levels for the staff are what really marks out a v.good place from just a good, professional, one.