dallardice

Yes, I can think of several instances where a xx15 or xx45 booking would be relevant. Pre- or post- theatre, perhaps. When one member of the party is arriving by train at xx55. After a meeting which ends at xx00. OK, none of these is really critical and in most cases I'd be happy to wait until the next half-hour if a restaurant suggested it. In fact, in my experience it's not unusual for me to ask for, say, 8pm and be offered 8.15 because the restaurant doesn't want too many people showing up at once. But I'd share Jay's mystification at them managing arrival times when a restaurant isn't busy. So yes, I can understand asking for a xx15 booking. In most cases it wouldn't bother me if they suggested xx30 instead. But I too would be surprised to find an empty restaurant after such a conversation.

...and our meal last night was truly excellent. Went for the tasting menu: - Gazpacho with tomato sorbet and pesto Fantastic tomato taste, very fresh. I'm not a huge gazpacho fan but this was excellent - Ravioli of snail/Ballotine of Foie gras I had the ravioli - two large ravioli with chunky snail, spinach, poachd garlic and a great, rich chianti sauce. The foie gras also went down well - Red mullet in a light lobster broth Very well-cooked - nicely flaky - but probably the least inspired of the courses. Very nice, but not exceptional - Rabbit with lemon confit/Lamb The rabbit was a revelation - the lemon confit really cutting through the sweetness of the rabbit. Probably the best rabbit dish I've had. - Rice pudding with raspbeery sorbet Pre-dessert - Chocolate molleux/apricot and rosemary tart THe chocolate molleux (sp?) referred to frequently here was indeed sensational - you can choose from two different types of chocolate and I went for the 70% valrhona. I was informed that the rosemary was a fascinating and worthwhile addition to at tatin-ish apricot tart. Service was excellent throughout, almost too fast through the early courses but no longeurs and was friendly and efficient. Probably got a bit more attention following our abortive trip last weekend. We went for the matching wines which were good without being dramartically impressive - I would probably go for a bottle of white and a bottle of red next time. Bill came to £179 for two tasting menus with matching wines, two bottles of Hildon and four glasses of Banyuls (no matching wines with the desserts). Initial reaction was this was quite pricey for the location but bearing in mind it isn't that far from the Almeida where we can spend £150 for much less interesting (but well-executed) food it does seem reasonable. We'll be back.

Went to Morgan M tonight at long last to give it a try... ...got there at our booked time of 7.15 (we booked late), got the sense that all was not going well... at 7.45 Morgan came out and announced that massive power cuts across the area meant thet his kitchen was without power, and LEB were not expecting service to be restored until 10.30, so he was reluctantly going to close the restaurant for the evening. We're going to try again next Saturday at 7.45. We ended up at the Almeida, just round the corner from us, which was good as usual. We're big fans, we shared a dorade royale and had a very relaxed evening albeit rather less gastronomically adventurous than the one we were hoping for...

Had a very nice piece of goats cheese, roasted pepper and cherry tomato quiche from there for lunch yesterday, takeawy. The menu looks rather eclectic, lots of salads, and it's not especially cheap, but looks like a useful addition. Don't know about Carluccio's where Spam is, but in the Islington one you could get cold meats, cheese, pastries and bread (including some rather delish fruit tarts). Too early to judge, but for me I suspect Ottolenghi might have the upper hand for variety and innovation.

UK viewers with digital who missed this might like to know that it's being repeated on E4 starting 22nd June.

Off to Riga for a quick visit at the end of next month. Anyone any particular suggestions to visit or avoid? Seems like it's not properly on the tourist route yet as there aren't many guide books either. But some personal recommendations would be good.

The magazine itself does point out that the people surveyed this year differed in part from the people surveyed last year, so movements up and down reflect differences in taste rather than necessarily an improvement/decrease in individual standards. Which is not quite what you're looking for, but a step towards it.

Another thanks to everyone for the great, detailed reviews. We ate at El Bulli last year and determined that we were going to take a year off from the stress of trying to get a reservation; now I regret it. Well, there's always next year, unless I try to grab a cancellation.

Just back from CT - fabulous city, fabulous food - here's where we ate: Savoy Cabbage - a good restaurant, but our biggest disappointment. Great ingredients, but I felt inexpertly matched (a delicately-flavoured zebra carpaccio was completely overwhelmed by a huge pile of rocket and pear & ginger salsa). Also disappointing service - seemed to be no-one who could really advise on wine. Jinga - best meal we had in CT itself. Fascinating Asian-ish flavours, great service. Madame Zingara - a CT institution. Wacky decor and service, but great fun, and the chilli-chocolate steak is worth a try. Cheep and very cheerful. Five Flies - great room, and sparklingly-fresh seafood. The sorbets were worth trying. La Colombe, (in Constantia Uitsig) - great French-African fusion. SA ingredients done in a fine Provence style. The toughest place to get into, we were lucky to get a cancellation. Ocean Basket (Kloof St) - this is a chain, but we didn't know that when we ate here on our first night in town. Just great seafood - particularly sensational tiger prawns and langoustines. Our CT hosts said this is where locals eat, the food's often close to the quality in some of the flashier seafood restaurants, but with no view and half the price. Arnold's (Kloof St) - our only average meal. African menu, off-hand service. All in all though, we absolutely loved Cape Town and truly - we had no bad meals. La Colombe was the only meal which broke the R1000 barrier for two (and in most places, we had three courses, aperitif, one or two bottles of wine and digestif). Service was almost uniformly excellent, very friendly, we're planning our next trip...

Put myself on the waitlist for Rhodes 24 in its opening week. They called the day before to say a table had opened up.

I'm a Wine Society member too and they're great on French wines, OK on the rest of "old world" and not very good on "new world" - what they stock is generally OK to ggod, but there isn't the range/depth of their European wines. Elsewhere I like Majestic and have been pained to see the very rapid decline in Oddbins: my local shop was refurbished last year, which increased the floor space and halved the range. Tried Virgin Wines for a panic purchase before Christmas: they claim to deliver in a 1-hour slot in London. They don't (or didn't) - and the wines were disappointing too.

Sadly Minogue's in Liverpool Rd in Islington closed a few years back. A real Irish bar completely overwhelmed by the plague of O'Neills and the like.

Natalia, Thanks very much for your contribution. Please understand that I wrote what I was told and I understand that this may not necessarily be the truth.. there are many sides to every story. I did like Paolo very much and was sorry when I heard that Maurizio had left. I was impressed by Latium but I also want to experience for myself what Paolo is like now; I look forward to my next visit there to see how Paolo has evolved too. Can you tell us how Paolo has moved on and what is the same, and what is different at Paolo? I do wish the management and staff at Paolo all the best; it was not my intent to malign them.

Ate here last night post-theatre: table for 5 at 10.15. A wonderful evening. Much of the menu is familiar from Paolo, but even better here. Crostini to start, then I had a sea bass carpaccio with green beans and new potatoes. A wonderful, fresh, zingy starter. Then the fish ravioli - monkfish, brill, salmon and tuna. Main of venison with polenta and glazed chestnuts was the only thing I think didn't quite come off - it was delicious, but suffered from comparision with the wonderful Assiette of Venison I'd had at Almeida earlier in the week. A perfect poached pear with divine white chocolate bavarois completed the evening. A lively evening, so wasn't paying as much attention to the food as usual, but a great meal. Five bottles of wine, 4 courses for all of us, aperitifs and water came to a shade over £300 which I thought was great value. (I remember at Paolo the prices crept up quite steadily over the first few months, so will be interested to watch here). We were the last in the dining room at 12.30 but Antonio was at pains not to rush us and as we started preparing to leave he wanted to make sure that we hadn't felt rushed. He said he and Maurizio had been planning to open a restaurant for the last 4 or 5 years when they found the right spot. He also said that the chef had latterly felt very constrained by being encouraged to reduce ingredient prices at Paolo whereas at Latium he was able to buy better quality produce.

Ate here last night. I'd echo the praise for the food that vytoh applies above, and both tasting menus were excellent. I was surprised, however, that the restaurant only offers the two tasting menus, with no a la carte menu. The only choice to be made is "Delicious" or "Wicked", and how many wines you would like to taste (there is also a conventional wine list, which we didn't look at). The tasting menus are made up of five "tastes" each, 2 or 3 mouthfuls, and the wine tastes are 75ml each. The service is very prompt, almost too prompt, with the courses coming more quickly than we were able to drink the wine tastes (and we're not normally slow). We enjoyed the experience very much, but between the two of us we had all the savoury dishes they offer. I don't know how often they will change the menus, but much as we enjoyed the dishes we had, I'd like to try something different next time.

Check out www.thebigsmokedebate.com to help influence the Mayor one way or the other on an overall smoking ban in restaurants and other public places in London. A restaurant's smoking policy can be a make or break for me - a fabulous meal, top class service and winning ambience can all be extinguished if 4 people at the next door table light up and the restaurant isn't properly air-conditioned or the tables are too close together. Ban it all I say. (However, I recognise that others have differing opinions, so if you still want to light up in restaurants, then go to the website and say so)

To answer my own question, acoording to the Virgin Atlantic website, the second place for KK's to be available in the UK will be the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse for Upper Class passengers at Heathrow T3. I expect this will be donuts shipped from Harrods and not a new bakery.

Anyone hear anything about further stores? I hear that the queues at Harrods at weekends are a sight to behold. Can't be long before others roll-out.

Sorry to see Morelli leave Paolo - it was our staple for great meals in Fitzrovia. Looking forward to reports of Paolo now, and this new place.

The Exhibition cases or even just a case of the Society's wines are a good place to start. If you can get yourself to Stevenage then you can browse in their Showroom, which we have often found an easier way to browse than using the list. Somehow it's much easier to make up a mixed case of 12 bottles you fancy from off-the-shelf (a la Majestic) rather than from the list. Order a couple of the Society or Exhibition cases to pick up at the same time and you'll save a few quid on delivery too. As to recommending particular wines, that's difficult without knowing your tastes. We tend to buy from their special offers, where you can get some very good bargains, and in-bond burgundies and rhones - you can get on their mailing list and buy in-bond, keep them in the members' reserves at Stevenage, and then take them out when they're ready, several years later. A good way of buying wines that would be too expensive to buy off-the-shelf. We find TWS best on 'old world', where it's built up years of contact with small providers. It's strongest on French, particularly Bordeaux, although it's starting to get a good range of the new Vin de Pays coming up from Languedoc-Rousillon. It's somewhat weak on the new world, and although it now has a reasonable range of US and Australian wines, they're not as good value nor will you find the gems you would get in their French or Spanish list.

It certainly wasn't my impression last week that much of the food was going back uneaten. The diners seemed to be having a very positive experience which was not just driven by being in a 'special' restaurant. I was struck by how different the atmosphere was from other very upmarket restaurants I have visited - very much a sense of exploration, of keen interest in the food rather than the more usual, less-focused buzz of being in a hip restaurant. Was everything tasty? No, not everything, but everything was interesting. I would say there were only two courses I found truly un-tasty: the oysters (which I'm not generally fond of, but was keen to try El Bulli's take on them) and the narcissus (narcissi?) flowers. Neither of them were actively unpleasant but just less successful. Put it this way - after the hassle of organising a booking, and the associated costs in travelling to Roses jsut for this meal, if the meal had been as unsuccessful as your reports suggest, we wouldn't be planning to go again next year. At the end of the meal we felt full but not over-stuffed, satisfied that we'd had a fascinating and satisfying meal. I wouldn't want to eat that food every night; but once a year doesn't quite seem often enough. Incidentally, one thing I forgot to add to any of my postings above: I can thoroughly recommend the Hotel Terraza in Roses. The weekend we were going, the Almadraba Park had a 3-night minimum stay, so we took a junior suite (€210) at the Terraza instead, and it was very nice indeed, in a very stripped-down, modern blond wood style. We'll stay there again when we go back to Roses.

Yes, I remember stores in Glasgow and London. In fact, the London store I recall (at Piccadilly Circus, almost next door to Burger King - oh what gourmet delights!) was there quite recently.

Like you and Bux I have a very low tolerance for having an empty wineglass when there's still wine in the bottle. I knew I'd read on one posting about this policy before but couldn't track down that posting before I wrote mine. I found it curious, rather than annoying; we were never, ever left with empty glasses despite the small top-ups, but I felt the policy somewhat 'makework'. Alex (my partner) thought that they probably wanted us to savour the wine in the same way as the food - lots of little tastes - but I'm not sure that isn't over-analysing. We never felt in need of a large pouring but I would say that we drank less over this meal than we probably would if we'd been in command of our own bottle.... at a different type of meal, that might have bothered me more, but here the wine was definitely second-fiddle to the food and so it didn't worry me.

Té de Rosas al Jengibre, Miel y Melocotón The “welcome cocktail”. A warm tea with roses, ginger, peach and pearls of honey. Served with a rose to sniff to accentuate the rose scent of the tea. Patatas con Aceituna Negra y Acido Citrico Thin, crisp (Pringle-sized) slivers of potato with a deep tangy citric flavour. ---- Crema de Cacahuete con Tostados Two crispbreads served with a little tube of fabulously creamy El Bulli peanut butter with two little bowls, one of crushed peanuts, one of salt. Obleas de Frambuesa Translucent red discs of pure raspberry flavour, infused with basil Oreja de Conejo Crujiente Crispy rabbit’s ear Ruibarbo a la Pimentia A long thin strand (8in) of rhubarb tossed in mixed pepper Témpura de Limón con Regaliz Spicy lemon peel tempura ---- Caviar Imitación el Bulli A little tin labelled Iranian caviar, stamped ‘Imitation of el Bulli’. Little pearls, with exactly the texture of caviar, tasting of melon, passion-fruit and mint. ---- Cerezas al Jamón One large cherry each, served on stalk, coated in some sort of ham jelly ---- Sobres de Piel de Pollo a la Flor de Azahar Fantastically savoury crispy crepes with chicken skin scented with orange flower ---- Sardinas bronceadas “Suntanned sardines” – flattened sardine fillets infused with tomato ---- Gelée de Lentejas con Aire de Foie-Gras y Mazapan de Almendreas Frescas My favourite course – a cup, topped with the essence of foie gras with a deeply unctuous lentil jelly underneath. Just at the lip of the cup was a disc of fresh, sweet marzipan, which – oddly – perfectly complemented the richness of the foie gras and lentils ---- Sopa de Pomelo con Sésamo Negra al Estragón The strangest course. A warm pink grapefruit soup drizzled with deep salty sesame oil infused with tarragon. Strongly bitter and challenging, but with a sweet moreishness. ---- Aire de Zanahoria con Concentrado de Mandarina The lightest possible carrot and mandarin foam – not so much eaten as inhaled ---- Yema de Guisantes ‘Pea egg-yolk’: two bright green egg yolks, served on spoons. Swallowed whole, provided a refreshing pea-and-ham blast of flavour. ---- Nardos con Melón y Fruta de la Pasión Four small narcissus flowers served with warm melon in a passion-fruit gravy. This I thought one of the less successful courses, partly because of the strangeness of melon served warm, but also because it largely repeated the melon and passion fruit combination of the caviar. ---- Tamarind and curry candy-floss Small servings of sweet candyfloss, with an intense flavour of tamarind and curry at its core ---- Canelón de Buey de Mar con Crema de Aceite de Calabaza A long thin cannelloni filled with spider crab, served with an acidulated pumpkin cream. ---- Ostras con Ostras y Trufas de Nuez de Macadamia Three thinly-sliced oysters, served with oyster-shaped balls of yoghurt and nuts, and tiny, concentrated cubes of lemon ---- Toro de Atún Confitado con Aciete de Atún Two domino-sized pieces of Tuna, with a tuna cream ---- Sepietas con sus Huevas About six baby cuttlefish, served in its ink with its caviar ---- Espardenyes con Mentaiko y Ruibarbo Sliced sea cucumber, with strands of rhubarb, topped with a tomato and cod roe dressing ---- Canelón de Trufa de Verano con Tuétano y Sesos de Conejo Summer truffle cannelloni filled with veal marrowbone, served with four pieces of rabbit brain. (Four pieces, or four brains? I’m not sure how big a rabbit brain is) ---- 2m de Spaghetto de Parmesano It looked like spaghetti, and one end was invitingly lifted onto the side of the plate. We were asked to cover up with our napkins, take the end into our mouth, and suck hard… the spaghetti was actually pure parmesan, with the last few inches infused with balsamic vinegar ---- Crépes de Coco y Vinagre de Módena The lightest, creamiest coconut crepes with dots of balsamic vinegar ---- Bola de Nieve con Fresas de Bosque, Rosas y Limon A snowball, scented with roses and lemon, filled with the smallest, sweetest wild strawberries ---- ‘English bread’ Frozen air, in the shape of a white processed loaf (hence its name). Pure white chocolate joy, dusted with yoghurt powder. Sensationally light and sweet. ---- Truffle lollipops Lollipops of chocolate truffle dipped in chocolate ---- Sweet baguette A baguette, presented in a dated bag as if from a French boulangerie, but when one tried to break a piece off it turned out to be completely hollow. Coated in sugar and cinnamon We drank cava as an aperitif, a Sancerre (very reasonably priced at €49) with most of the meal and then a Spanish late-harvest Muscat with the sweet courses. The wine serving policy was somewhat unusual, as the topping-up was done very frequently but in very small amounts – almost a sip or two at a time. Even the aperitif of ‘a glass of cava’ was served in about four or five pours. Service was excellent, and seemed from those around us to be available in English, Spanish, Catalan, French and German. The first few courses seemed somewhat rushed, but we sat down at 8pm (one of the first tables to be seated) and we left just before midnight, following a visit to the kitchen and a brief chat with Ferran Adria.

Just back from a weekend on the Costa Brava, having made the pilgrimage to El Bulli for dinner on Saturday night. The meal did impress and entertain me greatly, and certainly ranks among the most memorable meals I've ever had. One thing that struck me is that with just one or two exceptions every course differed from that described in The Daily Gullet article. There were certainly common themes - for example, our 'air' was carrot and mandarin, and the rabbit brains turned up with a truffle canneloni with veal marrowbone - but it's clear that Adria continues to evolve his menu over the course of the season. I'd love to write up the courses, but to be honest, I don't think I have either the time or the skill. I will try and return to this thread later in the week and post some highlights if people are interested. One thing worth noting - humourously, I asked one of the staff when the bookings would open for next year. She said that they were considering how to handle bookings for next year since January 15th this year had been chaotic. She suggested we check later in the year.