Vivian Mallinson

A clue? The answer: it was Marco Pierre White at the Oak Room. Someone else have a go...

Okay one from about 1998: salad of lobster with herbs, tomato confit, sauce cocktail escalope of sea bass with caviar, velouté of champagne caramelised pineapple with vanilla

The Walnut Tree Inn

Interestingly, the last time I ate at La Tante Claire, M Koffmann was offering a truffle soufflé for dessert...the one dish of his I ever tried that I didn't enjoy Jon's point about being overloaded by the time you get to the dessert course is an apt one for me...also perhaps with traditional patisserie we are more used to a strict set of rules and a limited palette of flavours, so blue/wrong notes jar more ?

The thing that interested me about Midsummer House (where I took in said tarte tatin) was that the use of different terminology for the carte and the tasting menu, so 'honey glazed pork belly with seared scallops and truffled crushed potatoes' (or whatever it was) on the carte was described on the tasting menu simply as 'pork belly', and a freebie not on the carte but described by the waiter as 'coffee jelly with foam of ceps' was listed on the menu as 'coffee and ceps'. As I think was mentioned on the original thread, the restaurant is the midst of attempting a transition from more traditional cuisine to one more open to the influence of 'molecular gastronomy', and a certain embarrassment (is that the right word?) was evident both in the service and the menu descriptions. The foam with the tarte tatin didn't strike me as pretentiously described on the menu as such, but I did think that the chef should have had the confidence in the main component not to feel it needed its 'avant garde' accompaniment (which added nothing at all to the dish)...I guess that is an example of pretentiousness, yes... There is a whole question about how far you have to go if you are going to offer supposedly 'daring' food...if you are going to present a basically classical dish with an unusual twist, it had better make sense in classical terms, eg Pierre Koffman's venison with chocolate and raspberry vinegar sauce, and not be incongruous in its overall effect, eg Midsummer House salmon with white chocolate and caviar...I think??

damn and I had my clue worked out and everything...

Yippee! What about Caesar salad £7.25 Shepherd's pie £10.75 bubble & squeak £2.75 Eton mess with raspberries £7.50

Bibendum

I was very sorry to see the end of Markwicks, it was one of my favourite restaurants ever. There are plenty of places in Bristol where you can experience solid, competent, slightly overpriced, slightly unmemorable cooking: Bell's Diner, Riverstation, Quartier Vert et al. I've been to Boca Nova once and loved it, Red Snapper once and hated it. Not tried Deasons yet, was put off by Jay Rayner's review in the paper a while back. 'The Algerian place on Chandos Road': is that Okra? I had a tagine there which wasn't very nice. I no longer live in Bristol but I still shop at Bristol Sweet Mart for Asian ingredients and Vine Trail for keenly priced French wine.

My top European lager is Zywiec from Poland. Nice and resinous and a bit rough around the edges, which I like. It matches the cuisine perfectly, too.

I was there with my wife a couple of nights ago. At the end of the evening they brought a visitors book to our table. It just happened to fall open on the page with an entry for one 'ANDY LYNES', resident of 'EGULLET.COM'. Which reminded me that I had not visited this site for some weeks... Overall, I'd concur with your excellent review. There does seem to be an air of transition about this restaurant and if I should find myself in Cambridge in a year or so, I'll be sure to return there. Foodwise, we took the pork belly, which was very pleasing, and an exemplary seared foie gras with sauce Perigueux. There was then just a slightly overlong wait for the next course, during which I visited the loo and was there entertained by a remarkable etching depicting an ithyphallic youth and his steatopygous mate somewhat in the manner of certain Attic pottery. Unfortunately I've forgotten the name of the artist. Not fancying the pigeon, we both opted for fish for our main courses. My wife enjoyed sea bass with tapenade, roast tomatoes and pesto, while I took the salmon with caviar and white chocolate sauce. The sauce was pleasant enough, but did little to enhance the fish. I would probably have preferred a beurre blanc or something. The garnish of almond and cauliflower was overseasoned, and if I had one criticism of Mr Clifford's cooking, it would be that the food in general was either slightly too sweet or too salty. The definite highlight of the evening was pudding: a magisterial tarte tatin (for 2), one of the best I've ever sampled. It came with good ice cream, and a tasty but superfluous garlic, cinnamon and bay leaf foam. Another mild complaint? The markups on the wine. Some relatively junior Savennieres were priced at over £50, as was Pelorus, and a particular Alsatian Gewurztraminer I'd recently seen on a list in Bristol at £28 was about £70. For the first time in a long time we contemplated sticking to water.

The few Tannat (aka Harriague) varietals I have tasted from Uruguay have been very good - deep and spicy - although they appear to require at least a couple of years of bottle age. Can't quite recall the name of the producer I especially liked - Arano (sp?) I think.

A short visit to Marseille. This time, we decided to check out a couple of the mainstream dining options in the Vieux Port. To wit: Le Miramar In the 20 years since I first visited Marseille, the Vieux Port has been reincarnated at least twice, while Le Miramar has probably not changed much since it opened in the 1960s. Certainly everything was as I remembered from my last meal there some years ago, including the cramped seating and the charmingly gruff manner of co-proprietor Pierre Minguella, who oversees la salle while his brother Jean-Michel does the cooking. I liked the look of the bream which was being shown to another customer, but my wife wanted bouillabaisse, which they will only make for two or more people, and I had enjoyed it previously, so that was what we ordered. Miramar's is supposed to be the definitive version of this dish in Marseille. However, the first part, the soup, was poor: over-acidic and tasting as if someone had been incautious with the saffron. Disappointing also was the presentation of the fish, which was flashed in front of us and then whisked over to the other side of the room to be put on plates by a waiter. Despite this it was a sensation to eat, being of lipsmacking texture and flavour, most notably the conger eel. Interestingly most of the other clients appeared to be Martigues plutocrats dining exclusively on fillet steak and Philip Morris. The wine list contained a dismal selection of overpriced bottles from Cassis, Coteaux d'Aix and Corsica, but we found a comparatively cheap bottle of Chablis premier cru which coped well enough with the food. To follow the bouillabaisse, we both ordered something called 'pavé de la Canebière'. Although I must say I thought the description an unhappy one, as it reminded me of all the dogshit covering that street. In the event it was quite a nice slab of chocolate gunge with a pleasing liquorice scented crème anglaise. Une Table Au Sud A couple of doors down from Le Miramar is this place, which was opened in the late 1990s by a young chef from Toulouse called Lionel Lévy, who was promptly dubbed by Gault Millau or someone as a 'young Turk of French cuisine' or something. We ate there twice a couple of years ago off the 180FF (as I think it then was) menu and had a memorable meal of stuffed courgette flower fritters, bream with red peppers, and a raspberry macaroon. M. Lévy, who seems to spend a lot of time in the dining room, struck me as a very pleasant, thoughtful fellow. So I was looking forward to returning. However, first impressions on this visit were all negative. The dining room has recently been gussied up, with a profligate use of mirrors and aluminium and faux opulent carpet. From the menu (now 35 euros) we both started with an unmemorable salad of marinaded fish with mixed leaves, followed by roast pigeon with caramelised endive. The pigeon itself was not pleasant: overcooked and overseasoned. However M. Lévy was partially forgiven as he appears to be one of the few chefs who knows the secret of a perfectly cooked endive. We then took a cheese course with the remainder of our very good Bandol, which the sommelier persuaded me to have instead of my original choice of Graillot's Crozes Hermitage. The cheese - there were various things there but all I can remember is something that was innocently described as a sheep's cheese from near Sartène. On smelling this item, I was subjectively reminded of the scene in Asterix where the pirates complain to the Roman prefect that their ship has been blown up by an explosive device disguised as a Corsican cheese. It had an overpowering savour of kerosene and wet mouflon. Pudding was something called millefeuille of aubergine: three slices of dried, candied aubergine interleaved with some sort of compote. The aubergine was like a particularly chewy piece of biltong; I was fearful for my teeth. Later, while we were drinking what tasted suspiciously like decaffeinated coffee, M. Lévy came by and congratulated himself on his inventive use of vegetables and unusual ingredients in desserts. He described one of his other 'specialities' which he regretted that we had not had a chance to try: if I understood correctly, it was composed of roast tomatoes stuffed with Rice Crispies and tomato jam. I was sorry to have missed out on that too.

This when I was a child was a source of much Sunday lunchtime controversy until my sister proved to us that a 50:50 blend of oil and fat is best, synthesising as it does all the virtues of the other two. If you can also try the Third Way, I would be interested to know what you think.

Two other producers are well worth looking out for: Suffrène and Gros' Noré. I usually find they outshine the better-known domaines.