Gary Marshall

I used to write a lot of the menus Oddly it didn;t leap at me the pheasant sausage roll and the east coast cod gave it away for me. it was also a bit of a mix of garnish, the pheasant sausage roll was with a pheasant main originally so we must have had a few spare! and i think we only had tarte tatin on for a few days so. sounds good though! will have a think about a menu...

blacksmiths inn, westow

L'Arnsbourg? That Sole dish rings a bell and I remember you, Steve and Big Tone eating there a few years ago... ← I expected Gary to get it. Over to you ← i thought it sounded good, didn't realise i'd actually had it

i'm not going to be the first to risk it!

I sent some colleagues there with clients the other night, i must admit to a few nerves as not sure how they'd cope with an 'unusual' menu but they got stuck in and really enjoyed it, and thought it good value for money so they'll be back.

was it very busy? When we went they were just rushed off their feet and it blighted our meal badly, which was a shame as the food looked very good but we just lost interest in the end. I imagine if they aren't too busy a much better time would be had.

i can save you both a lunch with thom, and a long conversation about our lunch at juniper with a single word summation. small clue, it's not 'brilliant'

looks like at anthonys it's the set lunch plus 1/2 bottle of wine

Perhaps there's a moratorium on pun names after the genre was perfected by Fishcoteque (opposite Waterloo Station). ← do they also own bistrotheque ? i can never set foot in there on the name alone.

is it a simon hopkinson menu? hillaire?

don't know how good the food is but the name would put me off anyway. in a village nearby someone took a perfectly decent old pub and re-named it 'the gastro house' and to compound misery painted 'gastro' across the front of the property diagonally in huge letters. Suprisingly it's no longer going.

i think on top table they were advertising a lunch deal which looked suspicously like as you say the set lunch menu, plus a 'sweet gift' or something. Didn't strike as a bargain must go before offer expires type situation. eta yes, i do think they think we are stupid.

i got distracted looking for sauerkraut recipes

have you been?

there's different standards across the english channel, never mind an ocean

yes, i think so , well that was the episode i was thinking of. looking at the website of loves, my how things have changed, they are now offering fish cookery days in their kitchen etc

from memory it was the waitresses uniforms and the ex-shameless tv show receptionist that were the most memorable parts of the divo experience?

sure i've seen this place somewhere, did it have a bit part in an episode of kitchen nightmares? (not as a featured place, somewhere ramsay took an owner?)

1) good point 2) cheeky f'er

who got 3* out of the box? also didn't ramsay do a series which was building up to him getting his 3rd star and didn't get it iirc? that was a campaign!

he might as well have, the queen's taster that he is, on his first visit to the modern (up thread) he was bemoaning the lack of cucumber for his hendricks gin. Even i thought that was a complaint too far.

that's pretty much the story!

don't recall the shredded pigs maw, do recall a cold dish that looked remarkably like, well, sliced cold roast beef. Now was it the aforementioned dish or have i eaten some particularly unpleasant part of a pig that i can now boast about? at least if i'm ordering you can tell it's chicken & cashew nuts

lunch on friday with Bapi & Thom, despite thom's most excellent directions, (keep walking straight down from picadilly, then turn right past the arndale, it's the glass building- unfortunately there's quite a few glass buildings in manchester!). I arrived to find them sat at the bar I suspected harrassing the staff for durian fruit for Bapi's own brand gin that they obviously didn't have at the right temperature, but to be fair having a chat over a bottle of Laurent Perrier, they kindly let me have some too. We had plenty to chat about as they nice staff gently tried to cajole us into ordering/looking at a menu maybe / even making *some* intimation that we were actually there to eat as booked, and not just keep them hanging around all afternoon at our beck and call. Eventually hunger took over and we went downstairs (relatively, when you're six floors up) to the restaurant. We had a nice table by the windows, as you do when they have an inkling you might turn out to be PIA's (this happens quite a lot oddly?) On a cold day the lunch menu looked a marvellous choice with such delights as corned beef hash and toad in the hole but seeing as i'd made a 'special' journey we got stuck into the ALC, which was also very reasonable. I was tempted by the hash but went for scallops and bacon with monkfish and oxtail to follow. The scallops were cooked & wrapped well but could have done with something more excting than a bed of piped mash (and looking at the web menu originally came with roast black pudding, infinitely preferred) to sit on. The monkfish was very good, a decent tranche on the bone, good oxtail and girolles and a well reduced red wine sauce, job well done really. The others seemed contented with theirs which i'm sure they will add. As by this point, we had decided not to go 'mad' so as to afford us a soupcon of stomach space for some of manchester's other culinary delights, we only had two desserts, well i had a steamed marmalade sponge pudding and thom a quince tart (v nice tarte tatin -esque) and bapi played the lady 'no, i don't want a dessert, yes i do want a spoon - and half of your dessert'. On the wine front it's not a bad list, but unfortunately looks a 70% gp-er so there's not a lot for the value hunter but credit for the 1973? cantermerle at £34 on the fine wine list, though unfortunately they were cleaned out of that. After the champagne Laurent perrier 99 (£50) we had a Cave de ribeauville riesling grand cru (£40) which was dee-lish and as the vote was for bordeaux a ch. lanoite st emilion grand cru 03 at err, £60. As you can probably imagine the wine side of the equation was significantly bigger than the food side, but hey, we don't get out much nowadays. We paid up and headed off in a not-very-circular route to to trof for beer, then sam's chophouse for more wine, then grado for sherry and tapas, then more beer, then red chilli for chinese. Then, thankfully, it was time for a sleep on the train.

i was just thinking, he tried to float that not that long ago, and then i read the article