endless autumn

I think there is a good fish and chip shop on the quay in Anstruther, just down from St Andrews, and there is a wonderful old place on the way up in the car - The Peat Inn: http://www.thepeatinn.co.uk/

I thought they were called pfifferling: what does that mean?

Yes, ceps proliferate in the Landes, Bas-Pyrenees and Pyrenees Orientales. I can never find them near the village in France (near Andorra) as the subsistent locals plunder the woods as soon as anything pops up. (Bizarrely, however, they leave all pieds de mouton (Hedgehog fungus), coulemelles (parasols), and even girolles grown in the wrong conditions: they must be small, grown under pine and no bigger than a couple of inches across.) The chanterelles (girolles) which I collect are usually from broad-leaved trees: has anyone perceived a difference in taste between these and the pine-dwellers?

This is an amazing season for mushrooms in the south of the UK; but it is ceps, not chanterelles which are popping up everywhere. As for chanterelles, here are a few of my favourite combinations: Pigeon, peas, bacon, chanterelles Rabbit stuffed with chanterelles and dried apricot Middle Eastern Lamb with chanterelle pilaff (Sort of) Beef Stroganoff with just cream, butter, onion and chanterelles Chanterelle Brioche Chanterelle Croissants Chanterelle Vodka Sea Trout with chanterelles and samphire lots of other things too. I love them, especially since I am a keen mycophile but also red-green colourblind: they are one of the few mushrooms I can spot without trouble.

I was planning to visit 1880 in any case and the fact that there was a lastminute.com discount was coincidental. It was clear that we weren't receiving exactly the same food as I had read about in reviews and on these boards and that I had seen on the menus outside the restaurant but I accepted that if I had chosen to be a bit of a cheapskate I could expect a different meal. What I don't think anyone should expect (or tolerate) is a series of dishes which are not just different but inferior, which Conor's comments tacitly admit. Of course I can judge the restaurant on the food I was given: in the most minimal sense, we have certainly reached the conclusion that you shouldn't order a special offer menu at 1880 as it will not show the kitchen in its best light. I don't see the point in a kitchen turning out anything which is not of the highest possible standard as it will only serve to piss the customers off.

I think I'm in the minority about 1880: I very much enjoyed the place but thought the food was uninspiring. Service was everything you could hope it to be (and a little bit more than you wanted); the wine list was dull; the decor was wonderfully OTT. The highlight of the meal was a little cup of leek and potato soup: simple but packed with flavour. What disappointed me was: the dullness of the Seabass with mussels and chive cream sauce; the random, poorly chopped, poorly cooked wild mushrooms with the surprisingly fishy salmon; the so-what-ness of the first little dessert (lemon drink with popping candy and a floaty bit of sorbet/ice cream). The mark-up on the wine wasn't too objectionable - it was c. 3 times high street price - but the selection under £40 was lamentable and I didn't feel the sommelier was much help. (If I set an upper limit on a wine, I am not likely to nearly double it just because a more expensive bottle is 'very good'.) A few of the wines towards the bottom of the list seem to have sold out too: it might be an idea to replace them. Water was poured characteristically aggressively: must get another bottle down them asap! We were given a second bottle without asking, which I suppose is standard in many places, but I don't see the harm in asking whether we would actually like one. We also had the fun of having our wine glasses repositioned whenever we moved them; this didn't irritate me - I just find it baffling, but when there are enough staff to employ (at least) two people as human tables, they have to find something to do. In the restaurant, the staff are clearly very well-drilled and everything runs like clockwork, but the people in the bar are almost useless. They didn't know if they had any eaux de vie and if they did how much they were. I was happy with a coffee and an embarrassing conversation with the smooooooth pianist. Sorry - this sounds like a massive moan. I had a good time at 1880, but I thought the food would be central to my memory of the place and it is anything but. I was interested to see how the formula of several small courses would compare to places I have been abroad with the same approach, but in the end I found myself trying to forget the food, and merely drinking revelling in the embroidered tiger cushions, gilt-swan chairs and gloriously overattentive service.

I am by no means an expert on Barcelona: bcnchef (of cinc sentits), nerdgirl, pedro, asola and many others know infinitely more than me. You will find, however, that the same names keep coming back: comerc 24, sauc, alkimia, cata 1.81... I hope you have a wonderful time. And I'm very glad you will be visiting Hisop.

I don't think Rock & Sole Plaice is any good: I still think that the chips should be soggy, but those at R&SP are horrible, misshapen greenish things which don't even have any decent vinegar to accompany them: just industrial acetic acid, caramel colouring and water. The fish is fine, but it's pricey for what it is.

Thanks to Jordi, I headed down to Hisop for lunch on Tuesday. I do not have many reference points in Spain against which to judge it (Tragabuches, little Arzak) but it needn't be set in context: it excels in its own right. Everything was perfectly judged: service, food, welcome, wine. The room (for those of you who are interested) is clean, spare, sparse: white walls, brick ceiling, test tubes of roses, black and red lacquered cupboards. We were just about the only people there; then again, we were just about the only people in Eixample - everyone else was on holiday. We chose the menu gourmand (a snip at E$43): Warm cockles with pureed melon soup and rosemary infusion Raw sardines/anchovies (can't remember) with raspberries, deep fried bones and strawberry soup Scallop with crispy pork and green almond cream (menjaron?) Hake with dried tomato, goats cheese sorbet, aubergine puree and anchovy sauce Duck with pineapple, girolles and saffron some cheese (a chalky smoked Basque cheese, a little bowl of tupi, membrillo etc.) Mint infusion with Caiprinha sorbet Cuban: cold cocoa, warm banana, tiger nut sorbet With this we drank a white Priorat from Clos Nelin (with a couple of glasses of Duquesa PX to finish). The food was faultless: all the combinations (perhaps with the exception of the sardine/anchovy dish) were natural, though unexpected; all worked; all felt as if they should be paired with each other more often. The menu doesn't bristle with innovation but that is to its credit: it is restrained but original. The maitre d' and chef were both good company: not starchy and gladhanding but warm, friendly and perfectly informal. I usually dread a chatty waiter. Hisop would be booked out for weeks in advance if it were in London, but I imagine many places could make that claim. Anyway, I don't want in London as it gives me an excuse (and reason enough) to go back to Barcelona.

The village my parents live in in the Pyrenees have just had their annual Cargolade (to follow two paellas and a couple of m'chouis: they have a fete most weeks). Three thousand snails, some barely gritted, some barely cooked, and lots of allioli/ aioli. Litres of rough VRAC wine helped to make the event pass smoothly.

Sofra's OK and dirt cheap. They should be OK for vegetarians given it's Turkish.

The wines look extremely boring to me. I also dislike the way you cannot search for what you want, merely follow their suggestions. Malcolm Gluck's site advertised the £20 off offer for a while which was amusing since the only two wines from there he used to list both scored around 12 points. £20 = at most four bottles of bad wine: just invite four friends round to dinner and for the same amount spent you will have one fun evening plus four bad bottles of wine.

I think you need to live in Marylebone: La Fromagerie, Paul Bakery, Ginger Pig, weekly Farmers' Market, Blagden Fishmongers (and -shh!- Waitrose) on your doorstep. Golden Hind chippie, Topkapi Palace for old-school Turkish (never been there, and frankly, I doubt it's amazing) and plenty of other ethnic options easily accessible. Plus: you're in the centre of town and close to Regent's Park.

I haven't tried it, but this site - The Organic Farmers Market - has some good producers, though its title is nauseatingly bourgeois.

Thanks for the recommendations - I think I will have to buy a couple of bottles of Finca Sandoval. I wonder if what they say about dogs and their owners holds true for wines: I imagine Finca Sandoval to be austere, complex, correct... I'm a huge fan of sherries and try to buy any bottle which I haven't seen before (though this would doubtless be a dangerous policy at Lavinia). Palo Cortado is my favourite style: I had nice little bottle of Gutierrez Colosia last night.

I plan to pop into Lavinia in Barcelona to have a nose around. I have very limited knowledge of Spanish wine: I am familiar with the big names, famous regions and reams of sherries but know little about less famous regions/ varieties/ producers. The Lavinia website doesn't seem comprehensive or particularly well put-together: if anyone has any recommendations, they'd be hugely appreciated.

I have a one or two inch thick unglazed terracotta paving slab/tile which I got for a couple of quid in a garden centre. It takes a good 3/4 hour to warm up but produces great bread.

Caterer is unremittingly dry and has far too many photos of new industrial kitchen paraphenalia to be of interest: it has only once made me even smile with an uncharacteristically amusing April Fool's interview for Last Supper with a chef hoping to emulate Cage's 4'33'' on a plate. Restaurant is more fun though less up to date for news. The features are much better. OFM is flabby, full of mistakes and Nigel Slater: an awful combination. Occasionally it's interesting, mostly it's vacuous. The FT Weekend is the best supplement in any of the broadsheets: in-depth, concise, and broadly independent of PR.

If your legs were frozen they are likely to have come from not-so-great birds, bred quickly and killed very young. Their legs are proportionally smaller than more naturally-reared birds and so will have absorbed more salt given their larger surface area/volume ratio. You do not need to bury your legs in salt: a rough layer underneath and a similar amount on top (3 tablespoons or so) should do it.

Try Garsons. I haven't been there (and it sounds not as homespun/charming as the place you visited) but it has a very good range.

My parents have a house in the Pyrenees about 80km from Perpignan. We have been visiting restaurants, markets, butchers, boulangeries, vineyards etc. in the Pyrenees Orientales for about ten years. However, the Roussillon seems to come a poor second to Catalunya (of which it is notionally a part) when it comes to food; there are plenty of good local products - Ceret cherries, Collioure anchovies, Pyrenean lamb, Rose des Pyrenees Veal, superb ceps, girolles, pieds de mouton and so on - but the cooking is not of a particularly high standard. There are a couple of starred places in Collioure, St Cyprien, the Auberge du Vieux Puits up near Narbonne, but these aren't necessarily my preference. The area is not a rich one (one of the poorest regions of France meets one of the richest in Spain at the border) but economics cannot explain a general low standard of cooking. Is the region as barren as I have found it, or am I missing something?

Gordons is legendary. The food is the scariest I have ever seen; the wine is usually at an inappropriate temperature and the place is full of aging commuters having a quick bevy with a naughty secretary before getting on the train home to their depressing, stale lives. It's enormous fun and delightfully seedy.

I haven't been to Putney Bridge but of the other two I'd strongly recommend Midsummer House. M Meunier & Daniel Clifford's approaches are vey very different: Morgan M is more delicate, balanced, less showy; Midsummer House is big bangs of flavour, unexpected combinations, more theatrical, more intricate. Problem, though: Midsummer closes for the second half of August, so that might shape your choice.

Thanks Victor: I'm not sure if I will be able to drag my girlfriend out of town, but I'll try. I'd love to try Can Fabes. If she digs her heels in, however, I'd very much appreciate any options in town... bcnchef: are you open?

I will in be in Barcelona from Sunday 22 August until Tuesday 24 August. A bad time to eat out. I've absorbed recommendations from this board (thank you) and visited guia campsa etc but find that most (if not quite all) of the restaurants I would have liked to visit restaurants will be shut. Does anyone know of any which will be open (eg alkimia, cinc sentits, sauc etc.)? Sorry to rely on you as my concierges...