JudyB

There are some pictures from our trip there two years ago on Duncan's blog (here) and there should be some more there soon from our more recent visit (April this year).

Looking at the press release, it looks like they have probably resent last year's: I'm guessing that this should probably be Monday 20 April 2009...

Sadly no. There are a few interesting places slightly out of the centre - near where Brasserie Blanc is - but the centre itself is mostly Pizza/Italian chains and theme pubs...

Does Sat Bains still do an a la carte menu at all? The website only seems to list the three prices for the tasting menu and the bespoke menu, with the added proviso that the cheapest tasting menu is only available Tuesday to Thursday...

Slight typo there - the ALC is £98 at the moment.

There is now a press release about this on the BBC website (here). This says that they are cooking a banquet to "honour men and women recently returned from active service in Afghanistan, along with their families..." The full list of chefs taking part is: What it doesn't seem to say is when the banquet will take place, or when the series starts.

Are there national offical guidelines/requirements for SV or is local inspectors who may require data-loggers or records of meat temperatures before serving? There is an an article by Heston from 2005 in response to queries apparently being raised by EH officers. He mentions some of the issues caused by new processes which the inspectors may not understand and also talks about the Fat Duck's approach to ensuring that the food is properly cooked, including monitoring the actual temperature of meat etc. The article also says that they have worked with microbiologists at Reading University to check the cooking processes used. The full article is here for anyone who is interested.

That is a very long time in the future, has Ferran discovered how to live forever? I'm guessing that you meant to say "2011" or "2012"?

I don't know for certain, but in the current climate Marlow is probably not the best of locations for casual trade. Remember that at least two of AWT's pubs were not that far away and at the right time of year The Lamb at least was always busy. At this time of year I think that trade would be down anyway, and a full-blown Michelin starred lunch may be deemed excessive, while a £10 special would not be. There may also be an element, as Erica says, of this pulling in more people who would come back and pay full price.

According to the Independent the manager has not been sacked:

Apparently the chef left Tean too. From JournalLive: And Seaham Hall seem to have retained their star.

I just did a search and I can't see a date yet for this year. Last year it looks like they announced the changes on about 23rd/24th January (see here). ← Another search this evening turned up a report on caterersearch (here) which suggests that the new guide will be announced on Wednesday next week (21st January).

I just did a search and I can't see a date yet for this year. Last year it looks like they announced the changes on about 23rd/24th January (see here).

Bad luck - we had an excellent meal at The Kitchin last Friday. As it happens we had hoped to go to Martin Wishart ourselves, but we left it too late to book. Although we haven't been there ourselves, Martin Wishart is definitely still on our "must visit" list, so if you can I would suggest booking there.

See the "Discretionary Spending" thread here for comments from one of the victims...

How do you know that? ← At a guess Tracy requested a read receipt and got a "receipt" saying that the message was deleted without being read. Unfortunately if the recipient uses Outlook this doesn't mean anything - it is very easy to "read" an email without a read receipt being generated, particularly if you use Outlook's "Preview pane". I think that "your message was deleted without being read" can be generated by Outlook even if the recipient has read receipts turned off, but I'm not certain. The other problem is that if a mailbox is "delegated" to another user then emails may be "read" by more than one person. This means that this message from El Bulli may not even mean that there is no chance of getting a reservation. Personally I request read receipts if I want to know that my email has been received, but I know full well that I will not get one in many cases...

No, unfortunately there is a single British Cheese Festival each year which moves from time to time so it won't be in Cheltenham at all this year. For a couple of years it was at Blenheim Palace, before moving to Cheltenham for a few years, then last year it was at Millets Farm near Abingdon. The Cheese Web website says the following, which may suggest that the move to Cardiff is permanent:

A 2 Pas du Potager is definitely a good choice - we had a very pleasant lunch there a couple of weeks ago. Duncan should be writing up this up soon, together with our other meals in Provence, including Les Florets (Gigondas) and Christian Etienne (Avignon).

Well, we're booked for the end of next week, so we should be able to see at first hand what difference the score of 10 has over the 9 it had on our last visit. It is now 2 (or 3?) years since we last went to the Fat Duck, so the menu should have evolved a bit more since then. Looking back through the old GFG's which I haven't yet thrown out shows that a 10 is not unknown - in the 2005 guide Gordon Ramsay @ Royal Hospital Road had cooking = 10 and was the guide's UK Restaurant of the Year. What isn't clear to me is whether the cooking standard had really dropped by 2006 or if they had revised their criteria.

When we went to Le Meurice a few years back they were doing that, except in our case they accidentally gave Judy the one with the prices (and then quickly switched them round when they realised). It was also memorable as the only restaurant I've ever been to with special handbag stands so you don't have to sully your bag on the carpet. ← From memory I think that we caused this by confusing them. Although they brought the French menus to the tables initially, they thought that we were English and we were asked if we would prefer an English menu. When we said that we were happy with the French version I think that this threw a spanner in the works and I got the menu with prices...

Ignoring the places in Bray, I'm not quite sure where the Good Food Guide recommends, but the following should be worth a visit: l'Ortolan (but closed on Sunday); The Pot Kiln - booking recommended. Another option might be The Vineyard, at Stockcross, although we haven't been there ourselves. I'm sure that there must be many other places at the good pub level.

To be fair to Bapi, last year was for my birthday (not Duncan's), so we went there about a week after Bapi. This year we were apparently there two days before him which did give Duncan a head start.

From a purely selfish viewpoint I have to admit to being disappointed: it has been very nice being forced to choose between visiting Matthew at The Goose and Erica at Fairford when we wanted a reasonably local meal! However, good luck Matthew in the New Forest. Now we just have to work out whether or not a 1.5 hour drive each way is too far for a nice meal...

I think that they said during the SW heat that a relative (his mother?) had died from cancer and that was his motivation for promiting healthy eating. However, I do agree that his "preaching" is way over the top and I think that he would be much more likely to get the public vote if he shut up.

In Bordeaux itself there is La Tupina, which is definitely worth a visit. We stayed just north of the Bay of Arcachon last August and Duncan wrote up a few of the places that we ate on his blog.