Gary Marshall

interested and pleased to read that the brunning and price are serving decent food still as they are now part of restaurant group plc, frankie and benny's, chiquitos et al

good stuff shaun, best of luck!

it's not new for shaun to do consultancies, and i though he had a few on currently, indeed he's involved with a friend's place afaik. if he is at the walnut tree full time/generally that is indeed good news.

sorry to hear this yesterday too through the grapevine, for the andrew and jaquie and the team and also selfishly as i'm wanting to go for saturday lunch!

Is this a full time cooking venture then? For some reason i thought it was a consultancy? Good if he's back ...

tv couldn't save neil morrissey's pub http://www.harrogateadvertiser.net/harrogatenews/Neil-Morrissey39s-pub-debts.5779136.jp

bloody mary's are for hangover duty only.

and invented by the british too, if you believe the counter story to that of dom perignon.

Lunch yesterday enjoyable but no great fireworks, given the reports around it was as expected. amuse of tete de veau and celeriac remoulade, starters on the table of foie (mine) nice but a bit veiny in parts and not a big portion, two specials of boudin blanc with pistachio crust that were very good crispy exterior and soft inside(eric chavot was guest chef, they were his dishes), and bone marrow with snails and girolles (i think), foie was the weakest dish, others much better. mains were veal for me, very good but it was as billed, a chop with reduced pan juices and a little bit of dauphinoise. Sea bass and barigoule sauce was deemed v good and 2 wild ducks (again chavot, the full duck, legs breasts and a croute) was a more complex dish than our koffman ones. added a trotter to share, liked the crispy pigs ear ? that they stuck on top best, mash very good, trotter very rich as expected , this was a £30 supplement and wasn't a problem for the kitchen. 2 cheeses to share, an uninspired selection, some dedicated bread but none of the accoutrements one generally gets with cheese. desserts of souffle, mango tarte tatin for me (chavot dish) and apple 'pie' apple was best lovely crisp filo pastry , again i think mine was weakest it looked very good but didn't have the requisite caramelised crunch. coffee and 1 plate of P4's a bit stingy given 4 of us, and we'd not exactly underspent! not even 2 each. wine list does have plenty of choice in the £20 something range but you're looking quite a lot more for something interesting, had a nice champagne to start at £65, weinbach riesling for £50 a avigonesi vino nobile de montepulciano £54ish and then an aussie pinot £38 and a gewurztraminer £20-odd with desserts as dessert wines were also v pricy, big list of big bucks wine at the end, quite a long list but nothing of any real age on it. very keen on water selling so switched to jugs in the end. it was a very pleasant afternoon out with excellent company and decent if not earth shattering food, atmosphere is one of a high class wedding reception, quite buzzy, obviously temporary, chairs not 3* standard! and bit fed up of constantly being 'wobbled' as staff walked past my chair the floor moved, lots of staff, most quite good to be fair. had a chat with mr koffman at the end, what a lovely bloke, though after 1800 trotters so far he'll be glad of a rest soon! so as others have surmised, it was an experience, but i'm sure most of the * restos in london would blow it away in VFM terms, but you don't get to meet a legend at the end of a service elsewhere.

Matt tomkinson also retained the star for the goose and got another at his present restaurant montague at beaulieu went when matt was there but not since, it's an attractive restaurant.

no i heard he's done a deal with oxo to take on marco at knorr so he's ok

well, there is an element of truth in that.... yes, let's have a think about that one

long wait for that one.

it's a once a year-ish boys day out with a couple of chef mates, day to day is a little less excessive! On the basis 'lunch'usually ends around 4-ish it's usually just beer time until train at 8pm. That said, i do like a challenge, and some friends have a dinner reservation that night too, maybe do it again

no, and that's the draw though i must admit he doesn't have the same resonance with me as say, a marco return. (if i keep mentioning it, surely one day.....) I do think as a concept the idea of greats coming back for a month is a bloody good one, great bands reunite every few years for a greatest hits, why not chefs?

Having breakfast again there next week, Had some superb ones, well plated and tasted cooked to order, but the last one looked, and tasted like there was basically a load of bain maries in the kitchen full of the various bits and pieces and a kp or waiter just grabbed the items and plonked them on the plate to 'order' provincial hotel stylee. The food was luke warm but not inedible, they forgot black pudding and when it came it too was barely warm, just poor value and a shadow of its former self. However upon being faced with a bill for mid-£40 something for 2 breakfasts, orange juice and teas my inner yorkshire man emerged and i did have a whine, and got the breakfasts comped. So we're going back, got to fill the time before lunch at koffman somehow......

i've heard it's 'veally good' (copyright basil fawlty torquay 1975-ish)

think i'm having the foie and veal, with a trotter for the table.

Is there a decent pub in walking distance of selfridges? got my brekkie booked at the wolseley, just need to find a pub to fill the pre-lunch gap.

ahh, you seem to have a penchant for the expensive rooms bertie, wheras i'll always go for the cheapest (and in the case of angel, then blag an upgrade). i don't tend to spend enough time in the rooms to justify it, i used to go to the star and stay in a b&b in harome for £25 a night, unfortunatley andrew and jacquie now live in it and oddly don't seem too keen to continue the deal!

What are the rooms like now bertie? vis a vis the star for example? Last time we stayed (afew years ago) they hadn't renovated them so they weren't anything special, the refurb was planned shortly after. Last time i looked it seemed quite costly so we took the cheaper option of going there for lunch (which was v good) and staying at the sportsman down the road for the night plus dinner. Result was i wish we spent the extra on the yorke arms, sportsman looks nice but the bar is like a working mens club in layout, food ok, but nothing special, obviously cheaper than yorke arms but sometimes you regret not spending the extra. Same experience last year at angel at hetton, nothing particularly wrong with it but came away thinking 'should have spent a bit more and gone to the star.'

i've been there a couple of times years ago, our hotel was just across the road. first time a very friendly waiter said we have have some fresh porcini and a sea bass in salt. i was of course wary of a gouging, but he produced an excellent meal for us and recommended some value wine too. second time less memorable but the first certainly stuck in my mind as an excellent experience.

A rare saturday night out last week saw us venture into the city (of york) and to an old stalwart,and still imho, the best place to eat in the city centre, and rather embarrassingly for york, it's been that way since it open about 20 years ago, yes there's some good ethinic places now courtesy of akbars and red chilli but for a grown up dinner with proper cooking and a decent wine list you generally have to leave the town centre, if you want a choice of 20 mainly medicore italians though, it's the place. A pre dinner drink in the unspoiled, rather good and i believe camra pub of the year 'the swan' saw a nice pint of copper dragon (i think) then a short ramble across the road-ish to meltons. By 8.30 the place was nicely buzzing, it's low lit and convivial and hums like a decent restaurant should. As we had a birthday to celebrate we opened proceedings with a bottle of joseph perrier at £39, as usual, a nice drop. the starters were a little uninspiring for me comapred to previous visits but in the end a rather intruiging dish of courgette fritter, greek salad and scallops won the day, it was good but where the combo came from, i know not! With our starters we had a 05 grand cru riesling £33-ish i think. Moving on to mains, after some very good bread - the focaccia in particular, most of us went for the rose veal with risotto , mrs m having a slow cooked rump steak with bearnaise (which i had a few weeks prevously), everyone seemed very happy with their choices, the veal was skillfully cooked risotto, fine it, all worked well and washed down with a NZ pinot noir £22 - the burgundies on the list were in absolute terms either a bit young or pricey and there's usually something interesting lurking on the list as michael hjort the owner and wife lucy are very serious about their wines, so it does pay to have a rummage rather than just paying up for a burg i find. they also suggest matches for all the mains as well which is a nice touch. We added a couple of plates of cheese to share which saw 6 small slices of british cheeses and then onto deserts a damson frangipane, for me. filter coffee and water is free and gratis so that finished off the evening, rolling into our taxi at somewhere near midnight, job done four sated and satisifed punters.

a pleasant afternoon out yesterday , a few pints in the gait at millington, a nice locals pub very bustling on sunday lunchtime, with an eminently drinkable golden ale then on to the pipe and glass for a sunday lunch. We had a 3.30 table and by the time we arrived at 3.45 lunch was still in full swing, it's a busy place. menu is quite comprehensive for a sunday, a couple of roasts plus a few others from the ALC and a specials board too. I had a nice salmon dish to start, something i don't eat too much of nowadays but often do at the P&G, it may be the presence of salmon 'scotch eggs' that do it, this was a mix of the scotch egg, smoked and hot smoked salmon, and it was very good indeed. my main of roast pork with black pudding forcemeat came with a nice piped mash plus, good roast potatoes, red cabbage and courgettes with walnuts, a nice diversion from carrots! extra gravy and yorkshire puds were provided for the greedy. Among the best sunday lunches was the tables conclusion. I finished with an old favourite of cinder toffee ice cream with chocolate cinder toffee, a very enjoyable afternoon. on the wine front we took it steady with a spanish white from marques de riscal very drinkable at £17 and a montepulicano for the mains, about £22. we had a quick tour around the new suites which will be opening shortly, they do have a magnificent views over parkland and have been designed as such with nice patio areas with chimneas and full length glass doors to make the most of it, only 2 at the moment but more to come in future years, along with cookery school.

just realised i did't post an earlier meal here, so here it is, with yesterday's lunch to follow.... 4/9/09 One of the many things i like about the pipe and glass is that it is unique amongst most of the decent places in my locale that it opens specially on bank holiday mondays (they are usually closed). hence it is becoming a regular haunt of said days off. Last week no exception, an odd day weatherwise that looked like a proper indoors day turned out to be very warm but over cast which on arrival at the P&G saw us confronted with a front lawn full of punters, people drinking and eating al fresco in the UK, who knew?! Sensible folk that we are i had already anticipated a busy service and called to book a table in the resto at 1.30, and determined to enjoy my time on arriving early, resisted attempts to get our order on early and enjoyed a pleasant half hour in their little pre-restaurant lounge. My starter was a hornsea lobster caesar salad with anchovy beignet and quails egg, I thought this lacked a bit of sauce, but that may be my personal preference for things drowned in caesar dressing when i make it myself, the anchovy was also a bit too salty for the dish, so it was a bit out of balance but there was plenty of lobster and well cooked quails eggs. Sarah had a crab starter that i completely forgot about as i was engrossed in sorting out my salad. For main i had a herbed chicken breast with some air dried ham, and potatoes bonne femme, it also came with a nice buttery beurre blanc -y sauce around the edge , the ham had been fried and was very crisp and the chicken not overdone as i had thought it might but came very moist, perfectly cooked. the cubes of potate, tiny onions and bacon sat in a little pot on the side, all made for quite a pleasant little feast that i washed down with an 05 giradin rully 1er cru at £25. Since their original wine supplier playford ros was taken over by my old supplier house of townend they have switched supply to au bon coeur and corney and barrow and have put together a good looking list both literally, in a nice bound horizontal format and vineously (sp) with some nice wine introductions about producers etc, it certainly shows a lot of time has been lavished over it rather than a quick whizz through a suppliers wholesale list. Desserts were a yorkshire burnt cream for me and parkin ice cream and chocolate cinder toffee for sarah (her main was a decent ploughmans) With a few beers to start we escaped at just over £90. It looks like there will also be some rooms opening shortly, 'autumn' is the launch date of 2 swish sounding suites, which i'd like to try at some point. Not sure if that's overtaken the cookery school or they are doing both. Still one of my favourite places.