nickloman

Hey Phil - I think Chat Thai do take bookings? At least I tried for a table tonight by phone and they said they were full. I went to Spice Am I instead which was pretty good but a bit formal for my tastes. I prefer the dirty canteen/street food 'vibe'.

Hey Phil, thanks for the reply. Funny for the only reply to be from a UK forum regular! This page on the Sydney Fish Market tours site suggests that the auction can be over as early as 7:30am. As it turns out I might be able to go there Monday morning for the official tour which starts at 6:50am. It looks like a must-visit for the food obsessive. If I get there, I'll post up how it went. Cheers

Hi Egulleteers Down-Under, Am on a whistlestop tour of Sydney starting tonight. I wanted to check out the wholesale auction at the Sydney Fish Market. I had read in the guidebook that they open to the public at 7am but I am not clear whether you can get a good look at the wholesale auction or if this is just the consumer outlets. I know they run tours but only Mondays/Thursdays when I'm not going to be around. Basically I want to know if getting up to arrive at 7am is going to yield any decent photographic opportunities to see the "real" market at work, or whether I should plan a more leisurely itinerary? Thanks for any speedy replies as tomorrow morning is my last opportunity! Cheers, Nick.

That's fair enough. Giles Coren is worth reading for his prose, although I may not agree with his conclusions. Then you have people like Michael Winner who aren't foodies (although he eats a lot of food), are not good critics and are not good writers either. I find the tension between "mainstream" food writers and the blogosphere quite interesting. As all the main papers are free online these days I don't tend to distinguish between them, and quality dictates what I read. This article in the Telegraph by Diana Henry the other day made me laugh: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/re...n-beauties.html Why not? I am finding my dining choices increasingly dictated by blog posts and forum posts at places like eGullet rather than mainstream food reviews.

The world is full of restaurants serving crap. I'm grateful for every little exception, whatever the ulterior motives may be. ← I suppose, but I feel sadness at what a wasted opportunity this is to really try and raise food standards in motorway service stations. Plus the fact Little Chef will presumably get an uplift in sales because people will have seen all the coverage and stop by, assuming things have been improved and get the same old fare. Conflict of interest: I did have an excellent Olympic breakfast after a very heavy evening at a Little Chef on the Oxford ring road once.

Well he's definitely a foodie, and he's definitely critical of the places he visits! Anyway, my thesis is that being a foodie does not preclude you from being a good critic. And being a very clever writer does also does not make you a good food critic, my case in point being AA Gill who is neither a good critic nor a foodie, but is possibly a good writer.

They are starting to roll it out to more restaurants, see here: What I do wonder about is whether or not this is deliberately timed to coincide with the update on Channel 4: As I think this is a cynical ploy, the timing does look very suspicious, and 3 restaurants is still nothing to write home about when there are still 173 of them serving crap.

Little Chef don't deserve all this publicity just because there's one half-decent one. It's a marketing scam, knowingly executed by a highly cynical management team and we've been duped. They should either roll it out nationwide or shut it down.

Hmm, not sure I agree with that. Notable food critics who probably wouldn't mind being described as 'foodies' include Jay Rayner, Matthew Fort, Jeffrey Steingarten, Steve Plotnicki. Being a foodie doesn't mean you are a good critic, of course, but having a healthy love of eating and exploring the world of food is surely a positive attribute for a food critic. FWIW, I'd much rather read Dos Hermanos than many of the 'broadsheet' food critics.

Looks nice although may be tricky to fit it in this weekend (both in a logistical and gustatory sense)

Off to this part of Wales this weekend. Driving from Birmingham so current itinerary is: eat at the Walnut Tree, Abergavenny on Friday night, stay in Aberareron. Lunch at the Hive on the Quay, off to the Lampeter Food Festival and then dinner at Ty Mawr. Sunday lunch at the Harbormaster and then back home. Sound good?

Definitely consider the revitalised Jyoti's in Hall Green (near Sparkhill) which is a Gujerati indian vegetarian restaurant - so different from your standard triangle fare. It has been recently revamped. Highly recommended. Go for the dhosa and the thali http://www.jyotis.co.uk/ If you want to go farther afield, my new tip is Zeenat Kebabish in Coventry (159 Cambridge Street next to the mosque) - this is an Afghan place which does excellent kebabs (lamb chops to die for) on their charcoal grill. Service is slow so be prepared to wait. No alcohol.

that has to be a mistake--that's like 15 pounds. ← Well the stock is to serve 500 people, but the same weight of star anise as carrots in a stock? That sounds completely wrong to me. Either that or he really want it to taste of star anise

7.5kg of star anise - really?!?!

Ah, sorry, didn't see your questions above. Saleem's has had a makeover since then and doesn't have anything on the walls anymore. In terms of upmarket Indian restaurants, I'd definitely go for Lasans. In terms of your classic Balti place, I'm still searching for it!

Glad to hear you enjoyed it! A couple of updates on Dos Hermanos on Birmingham: http://www.doshermanos.co.uk/2009/05/eatin...brum-curry.html http://www.doshermanos.co.uk/2009/05/eatin...ck-in-brum.html http://www.doshermanos.co.uk/2009/05/eatin...um-edmunds.html Looks like Punjab Paradise needs to be added to my "to try list".

T'would be much better with Jay Rayner instead of Matthew Fort, I reckon. Michel Roux Jr might be a bit too wedded to the idea of "correct" French cooking to judge some of the more left-field attempts which make this show interesting. I'd like to see Fergus Henderson judge. Not just for his quirky style- you know for sure he knows what tastes good and what doesn't.

Be careful not to accidentally go to Al-Faisals Indian-Italian hybrid restaurant!

Good stuff, but we've moved on (a bit) in this country and I'm surprised the balti triangle hasn't considered diversifying the offering a bit. The best Indian (Pakistani/Bangladeshi) food is cooked in the home, and its a shame no-one has made the obvious jump of putting decent home-cooked food on the menu there yet. I would compare it to the situation on Brick Lane which is a row of entirely unexceptional curry houses. You have to go round the back of the hospital to find great food at Tayyab's. We need our own Tayyab's in the Balti triangle. Will try out Kebabish though. I'm told that Zenat Kebabish in Coventry is well worth a visit.

I belive it probably is the best in Birmingham. You do have to choose well though. My tip would be the goat biryani which comes in a clay pot, lid sealed by cooking the rice. And we'd always start with the tasting plate of vegetarian starters. And the rasmalai for dessert is always a hit. Some of the other dishes are a bit 'one-note', and I'd stray away from any of the standards like sag aloo etc. Next time you go, ask them to give you one of their cookbooks which was prepared with U of Warwick to encourage people to cut down on their saturated fat intake. Reading the recipes you can see they go the extra mile, doing things like smoking the curry afterwards for extra flavours. I too would be interested to know if there is really a hidden gem in Sparkhill, or whether its all "tourist curry", i.e. shit.

Surprised you didn't like Lasan. It's one of my favourites. If you want Balti, you really have to go to the Balti Triangle, a few miles south of the city centre. Of the places there, I've tried Jyoti's http://www.jyotis.co.uk/ which if you can get past the rediculous appropriation of the Jamie Oliver brand (he ate there once, and was reasonably positive about it) is a good vegetarian Indian restaurant. Certainly no bells and whistles there, but solid homely cooking. For a very cheap and informal lunch, a meat balti at Saleem's is pretty good (Ladypool Road). People speak highly of Al-Frash and it has won various awards http://www.alfrash.com/ but I was not 100% convinced on my visits that it was up to much. An Indian friend of mine swears that the Haweli on Hagley Road is the best Indian restaurant in Birmingham, but the one time we had a take-away from there, I wasn't particularly convinced. It was fine. http://www.birminghamplus.com/reviews/revi...3&iid=308&uid=6 I have heard good things about Itihaas http://www.itihaas.co.uk/ but not yet been there. Shimla Pinks I agree is pretty poor. I'm afraid I still haven't had the Indian restaurant nirvana that I was expecting when I moved to Brum. Lasans and Jyoti's probably do it for me the best.

Well, the news that Birmingham is a great place to eat is obviously out. Both Purnell's and Turners fully booked tonight. Both doing corking set menus at £32.95 and £25 a head respectively. I might have to cook!!

It's not really within an hour of London either!

Might be a bit far from you, but Windlestraw Lodge is a pretty good eating option in the Borders (would need to call ahead). http://www.windlestraw.co.uk/

Food isn't a strong point of Oxford (city centre) is it?