Harters

It's usually a truism that you can't get decent fish & chips in southern England. I say that, not just with regional northern pride (the first documented fish & chip shop is in a town 20 minutes drive from here) - but with experience of eating it "down south". However, I will make an exception for Masters Superfish http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/venue/2:1175/masters-super-fish London obviously abounds with restaurants at all levels and from all cuisines and without more information about your needs it's difficult to make recommendations. I really only visit the capital as a tourist so am looking to eat stuff difficult to find nearer home - the "big name" places, of course but also, say, high end Middle Eastern food which is a favourite cuisine but only done casually near me. If your touristing of St Pauls co-incides with lunch, their cafe or restaurant is a worthwhile stop-off, rather than going out of your way for somewhere else.

If lunchtime co-incides with the New Forest, the Masters Builders House at Bucklers Hard will get you very decent pub lunch with a cracking view if the weather is fine. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/133748-bournemouth-salisbury/page__p__1749660__hl__bucklers__fromsearch__1#entry1749660

KOSMOS, FALLOWFIELD There was a time when Loulla Astin seemed to be never off the TV screens – at least here in the North West. There was a time when Kosmos appeared in the Good Food Guide. Of course, these times are some 30 years ago but Kosmos is still doing what it does – serving up a pretty standard set of Greek Cypriot dishes at very reasonable prices to a mainly student customer base. We’d been in Cyprus last year and were interested to see how Kosmos’ set mezze meal compared to the four meals we’d had “over there”. Well, truth be told, not as good as even the most touristy of the four. Now, that’s not to say that the food was bad or that we didn’t have a pleasant evening. It wasn’t and we did. But it lacked a “something”. Or maybe “somethings” – a lack of assertive seasoning and spicing, a loss of absolutely ripe tomatoes and other salad ingredients, a sense that quality was just lacking a tad. First up, a selection of bog standard dips – houmous, tzatziki, taramosalata – tabbouleh and a mixed feta salad. Served with just about enough bread. Nothing offensive here but nothing to interest either – the sort of food you can easily make at home and, most likely, do a better job. Certainly we could. Then the hot “second course” items. A very decent stifado, rich with onions. Rethivia – chickpeas in what was probably the best spicing of the evening – a tomato sauce flavoured heavily with cumin and a punch from chilli and coriander. Another plate of standard mezze fayre – grilled halloumi, a spicy sausage, tender and very tasty lamb meatballs, dolmades (as my partner suggested – not as good as Marks & Sparks), spanakopita (sp?) – crisp non-greasy pastry encasing spinach and a salty feta – and the most enjoyable thing on that plate And the final course – lamb kebabs and rice. Good rice, nicely flavoured with a hint of cinnamon. The kebabs a bit of the curate’s egg – one perfectly cooked and meltingly tender; the other a bit overdone and quite chewy. The mezze costs £18 which is probably not bad value for Manchester but we recalled the far better quality we’d eaten in Cyprus for less than that in euros.

Much as I liked Da Piero, I wouldnt have described it as "Southport area". Best part of 30 miles and an hours drive. By the same token, then, let's throw in Northcote, the various places in Chester and Liverpool and, just about,the bright lights of Manchester.

Clearly not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-12777166

Good Food Guide 3 - so perhaps not up there with some of them but maybe that makes the programme interesting. Funnily enough, it's one of the places I had filed away for a possible lunch off the M5 next time I'm that way.

Me too. Although hot on the heels of the producer of Midsomer Murders living many years in the past, it crossed my mind.......

Just by the by, the above list has it as "Ireland". Is that accurate and it's now the island of Ireland and not just Norn Iron?

Good to see lots of new names. I think I'm rather looking forward to the Welsh one.

PODIUM (at the Hilton) The sub-title of this thread is “Is it possible to eat something nice”. Well, if your first experience of Manchester city centre eating had been Podium, then the answer might well have been “No”. But more of that in a bit. We’d booked here on a TopTable offer. £29 would get us three courses, a bottle of wine for the two of us – and an aperitif in Cloud23 – the cocktail bar on the 23rd floor. Now the bar is a great place. It’s reached by its own lift, with greeter on the ground floor and greeter on the 23rd. The night view is fantastic even if you know you’re looking out onto the less salubrious suburbs of Whalley Range and Moss Side. It’s stylish, with roped off VIP sections at each end of the main bar area. What’s not stylish is when you return to the ground floor Podium restaurant. It’s a big, bland, soulless, corporate box, sparsely populated with customers. The menu is a short list of obviously bargain basement cooking – at the bottom there’s mention of meat coming from Mettricks of Glossop and the Rhug Organic Farm, but there’s no sign of this sort of quality amongst the actual listings. And the half bottle of wine per person has morphed into a glass each. Butternut squash, coconut cream, coriander and chilli soup was OK. The predominant taste was of chilli. This was followed by fish pie, underseasoned and underendowed with seafood, topped with a cheese mash, accompanied by crushed peas and baby carrots. Just the sort of food you might cook at home on a Tuesday night – only you’d probably cook it better. Sardines on toast can be a belter of a little dish. But not here. A couple of bland fillets sat on a slice of that frozen, and then barely baked, pappy baguette. I’m unsure if a mango and pineapple salsa would ever really have lifted it – but certainly not when the “salsa” was just a dice of the fruit. For a main, Toulouse sausage was pleasant enough in a sort of “bought from Lidl” way. It sat on well cooked lentils and what was described as “roast tomato” but tasted as though it was just a hefty dollop of overly sweet puree stirred through the lentils. To finish, cheese was again OK – three indeterminate pieces (one mild goat, a cheddar and something blue with nuts in), chutney and crackers. A cheese plate circa Berni Inn 1980 if you will. A fruit crumble was described as “seasonal” – which it wasn’t – although I suppose blackcurrants must be in season somewhere in the world. It’s not vile food. If your employer had booked you into the hotel and you didn’t want to go out to eat, you wouldn’t starve. But, really, there’s two or three much better offerings in less than 5 minutes walk. That said, taking the cocktail cost into account, this was a cheap “value for money” mid-week outing.

Yes, I think they may be regional. Certainly I think of them as "southern" and our chippies in the north west don't have them. However, I'll swap you your saveloy for our rag pudding.

SWAN INN, KETTLESHULME, CHESHIRE Situated on the Cheshire/Derbyshire border, just outside Whaley Bridge, this is a small pub doing some bloody good food, several cuts above the standard “pub grub”. And, when I say small, I mean small. If you’re going, you’d do well to book. We hadn’t and were lucky to get the only one of about ten tables that was free. There’s a range of sandwiches and snacky things. Gypsies’ eggs perhaps – a chorizo and wine stew, topped with eggs and then baked, or mushrooms on toast. The main menu makes great play of a commitment to fish stating that they are members of the “British Skippers Scheme. This allows any participating trawlers to email details of the days catch to participating members before each catch is landed. We can then reserve stocks through our wholesaler to be delivered and on the plate within 24 hours”. Now that sounds like a great idea! And one of our dishes came off the seafood menu. Whitby-landed baby lemon sole was accurately grilled, the flesh just flaking off the bone. It was topped with a generous serving of sweet brown shrimps, warmed through in a spiced butter. Lovely concept. I toyed with the idea of the Greek rabbit stew or the 22oz rib steak, cooked on the bone, with chips and gravy but it was impossible to resist the obvious pig-fest that featured local pork belly, long cooked and delicious with very crisp crackling. Alongside a local sausage, and chunks of Clonakilty black and white puddings. Both dishes came with separate servings of dauphinoise potato, carrot, crushed cauliflower and leeks. Well worth a visit if you’re in the area.

The Waitrose Organic (or it may just be Free Range) is none too shabby, David. The sort you want alongside a couple of fried eggs and in your part of the world,presumably, an oatcake.

Now I have to say that I hadnt come across the Stockport sausage before (shame on me - as its the home town) but this seems liek one to try out. Website generally looks worth a nosy for the sausage-istas. http://sausagefans.co.uk/stockport-tiddlypig-sausages/

Not sure how possible it'd be for the OP to get Aidell Sausages - they're American aren't they?

A hotel deal that Mrs H has found prompts us to do an overnighter in Nottingham at the end of next month. Booked in at Sat's for dinner and am looking forward to it.

Oh, now this could be a GREAT thread. Now I have to say that I'm pretty much a traditionalist here. So, that means pork and with no "fancy" flavourings. Generally speaking that is - I'm quite partial to a Sainsbury "Sicilian" on a panino with fried peppers and onions. And, as for traditional, I tend to buy at the farmers market so they won't be instantly available if you're not around North Cheshire. However, IMO, the best branded all-round "breakfast" type sausage I know that's easily available at the supermarket is the Porkinson Banger. By mail order (and the farmers market at Ashton under Lyne) is the Cumberland sausage from Border County Foods. Wonderful. Good porky flavour, very peppery. http://www.cumberland-sausage.net/cumberland_sausage.htm

Oh, I wouldnt call the time waiting to get a table a "waste". My meal there was an absolute delight and a wonderful birthday present. That said, I've no need to rush back and eat it all over again. If I did, I'm sure that, for example, the wonderful Mock Turtle Soup would have become just another very nice soup. 'Tis a case of been there, done that, would have bought the T-shirt.

KOREANA, KING STREET WEST The area around Kendals on Deansgate offers a number of decent foody opportunities (of which kutsu's mention of Chicceti is one)and I think the Koreana has been there the longest by a good number of years. However, until recently, it’s not been on my radar. It also seems to be under the radar of the main guidebooks. It’s a pleasant enough room, decorated in a vaguely oriental style and staffed by a young pleasant enough crew. There’s a claim on the website that they serve “traditional” Korean food. However, this was our first time eating the cuisine so have nothing to judge against. We can only judge if it's enjoyable – and, yes, it was, generally speaking. A seafood pancake was thickish, slightly chewy, slightly greasy with a few prawns and bits of spring onion. It came with a soy sauce based dipping sauce which worked well. Pork dumplings were fine – a well flavoured pork mix, encased by pastry which had, I think , been steamed and then lightly fried to crisp it. Perhaps it’s a feature of Korean food but, in contrast to similar Cantonese versions, the dough here was significantly thicker and chewier. What is apparently a feature of traditional Korean dining is that food is meant for sharing. So, although orders are taken from individuals, food will arrive when it’s ready – so one starter arrived two or three minutes before the second. And it happened again with the mains. Bulgogi is possibly the best known of Korean dishes. Even I’d heard of it. Meat is marinated in soy, sesame oil, garlic, a hint of sugar, a hint of chilli. It’s then grilled or pan cooked. I picked pork. It came with lettuce leaves and ssamjang, a thick spicy sauce. You make wraps. It was very good. If I have a criticism, the lettuce hadn’t been properly dried off but at least you knew it had been washed. The other side of the table had ordered a beef gang jung. Small chunks of beef coated to give a crispy coating when fried. The sauce is a tad sweet and a tad spicy. Worked well with the boiled (and fairly sticky) rice. We’d also got a side order of mixed salad and vegetables – cucumber, shredded mooli, cabbage, bean sprouts, a fiery kimchee, and equally fiery dish of chunks of mooli and another dish of very thin seaweed (almost like cellophane and, in truth, so was the taste). And two mussels with the oddest preparation I can think of – served in the shell, they were solid, chewy and tasted a little sweet – almost as if they’d been candied and perhaps they had. These aside, the dishes were really good additions to the meal which was now hitting all the basic tastes – sweet, sour, hot, salty and umami. Oh, very definitely umami. It’s rare that, when visiting any Asian restaurant, that we want desserts but this was an exception. There was something about the meal that made us want something sweet and cold. Now I suspect that ginger ice cream and pomegranate sorbet have absolutely nothing to do with traditional Korean cooking. But they were damn good. Meal, including a couple of beers and a bottle of water, was just over fifty quid,. Really good value. Really good experience.

Other than a career change as sunbeam suggests, there's only one way. Start ringing dead on 10am, two months before. It'll be engaged. Keep trying. Eventually it'll be ringing. You'll hang on for ages. Eventually someone will answer. They'll tell you they're already fully booked for that day. We managed to get there for my 60th - although not on the day. We rang two months to the day. We knew full well that the restaurant would be closed on my actual birthday but asked if we could make a booking for that day. Woman apologises that they are closed that day. Mrs Harters, in her sweetest voice, then asks if it would be possible to book for the next day then. It was.

Me too. There doesnt seem to be too many folk posting reviews these days.

In the end, I can confirm the desert MacD suggested - so it was a ham sandwich when we got home.

I went in 2008, not long after they'd opened. It was a cracking meal - sweetened even further by a 50% TopTable deal. Much, much, better than the usual solo dining I manage on my trips to the National Archives.

You'd hope Bosi would get this right quickly. His previous attempt at the pub landlord, at the Bell, was a cracker. It was a "proper" pub doing "proper", if upscale, pub food. Wimbledon's a bit of a schlep for you for a pub lunch, David?