Winot

Thanks for all your suggestions -- sounds like a trip to Books for Cooks is in order. Graham - there's a thread here about organic boxes that might be useful. We're reasonably happy with Abel & Cole. W.

As I'm a city boy who doesn't understand country ways I thought it'd be useful to get a guide to what was in season when. A bit of milling around Foyles and eGullet today has turned up the following; which would you recommend and are there any others? Seasonal Food - Paul Waddington The River Cottage Year - Hugh F-W The Kitchen Diaries - Nigel Slater Thanks. (Andy - feel free to move to Media/News if you feel that's more appropriate)

Not at all - thanks for the review. BTW, is your husband called Mr. Woman?

If so, looks like carelessness.

By coincidence I was reading Elizabeth David the other night on poularde en vessie (From "An Omelette and a Glass of Wine): "A 3-lb Bresse chicken, stuffed with its own liver, a little foie gras and slices of truffle, is tied up inside a pig's bladder and cooked extremely gently in a marmite of barely simmering water for 1 1/2 hours [...] Madame asserted that nothing was easier to cook than this dish - 'What do you mean, why can you not get a pig's bladder in England? You have pigs, do you not?'" Apparently we still have difficulty.

Nah, just getting old

Excellent lunch yesterday: Starters: Turbot, chicory & samphire - a revelation - I had never "got" turbot up to this point. Veal tongue & green sauce - cheeky extra starter - very tender tongue. Others had bone marrow and terrine. Mains: Venison liver & lentils - a first for me - liver v. rare and seared on outside. Quite strong gamey flavour. Portion too large though. Others had forerib of beef (I ate quite a lot of this too). Perfectly rare, wonderful flavour with a good garlicky aioli. Also chorizo, snail and chickpea stew - the kind of dish I cook at home but the best fuck-off stock used here lifted this to another level. Puds - sorbet (too full) and a pear jelly which was wolfed down. Drinks included porter, champagne, martini, Chateauneuf du pape, St Jean de minervois muscat and digestifs, which explained the £90/head bill. Delightful service put up with us till 4pm.

It is traditional in Britain for family members to put aside petty grievances and make an effort to get along for one day a year. By Boxing Day however it all becomes too much and the fighting resumes.

Quick report back -- we were impressed with the food (on the whole) but thought the service a bit lacking for a 1*. No disasters, but slight lack of competence, from the lack of staff to show you to your table (plenty of staff, but obviously not in the right place in the hierarchy) to there being no one around to fetch coats at the end. We had the tasting menu, which is slightly complicated but works well. For £49 you get the same no-choice starter each (scallops in a coconut and chlli sauce on a bed of basil), then a choice of five dishes between you from a la carte menu, one from each of the five sections, which are brought together with rice. You then get a choice of dessert each. We had: - foie gras and oyster salad - red curry of quail dumplings - seared spicy venison with nam pla type sauce - crispy pork curry with tamarind, green beans and duck eggs - smoked fish and coconut soup (we were given a bowl each) - fresh fruit inc. watermelon, saspadillo (sp?), pomelo, pineapple, mango - fresh jackfruit with jackfruit dumplings and jackfruit custard There wasn't anything we didn't enjoy, although the venison wasn't really successful and I couldn't taste the quail in the dumplings. Spicy was pretty assertive (in common with the recipes we've tried in DT's book) and I was snobbishly left wondering how it played with the Eurotrash hen party that had turned up in the stretch Lincoln. I had assumed that the tasting menu would be sequential rather than it being brought together - don't know why, put it down to occidentalism - and was surprised at how large the portions were. With a couple of glasses of house champagne (bit steep at £12.50 -- a half bottle would have only been £4 more) and a good German spatlese at £44, the total bill came to £190 for two including service. Not cheap then, but as noted upthread, Nahm is one of a kind, and I suspect we'll be back.

Not a chain but a genre -- Indian takeaways. Working late, call the place over the road (The City Raj on Farringdon St as it happens) and in 10 mins they've served up a steaming portion of rogan josh, tarka dhal and plain nan bread for £10.75. And pretty decent it was too. Let's hear it for the Great British Indian!

Jonathan - how far away from their shop do these specialist shop owners live? I can see how the long lunchtime closing works if they can pop back home for a meal/siesta. Harder to imagine it working for a UK butcher with a shop in central London and a home 2 hours commute away.

Lots of London journalists writing about the shift due to them and their middle class mates discovering markets. Not sure about the population at large -- I doubt that Tesco are quaking in their boots.

Thanks Andy. Oyster shooter = oyster in shot of spirits? I've always been told that's a *bad* idea...

And for those of us without your detailed knowledge of dining venues, could you give us a clue as to where it is?

Hear hear!

Thought I'd bring this thread to the top as we've got a reservation there on 26 November. So any recent visits? I realise lots of you weren't that impressed but we thought we'd give it a go.

If you're in the City I think 1 Lombard St has just been redone. Edit to say that high-end ennui seems to be a particular eGullet affliction: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...ndpost&p=631976 W.

What do you think Dirk?

Especially as viral marketing doesn't work (pass it on).

I've just come back from a week in Florence and although the food was basically excellent, many of the dishes (esp. the pasta) were far too salty. Perhaps it's an Italian thang.

Of course, it takes so long to get anywhere in London, a group dining together might prefer to meet in the centre. The other factor is proximity to public transport (if you don't want to drive). I live in Brixton and went to Stepping Stone twice and have been to the Food Room once, but I cycle. Otherwise it would probably take longer to get to Queenstown Rd then to W1.

I am insanely jealous. I was in Beijing two weeks ago (clang!) and had the eel and chili dish that Jay mentions in a Sichuan restaurant there and was blown away. Must get down to Blue Thames sometime soon.

The Portuguese deli at the end of Atlantic Rd (opposite M&S) in Brixton have them for £2.40/kg.

Definately, but its well worth following the link. Maybe someone ought to employ Damien Hirst to review restaurants. ← This bit's brilliant: Pure Martin Amis.

Yes it's amazing what they can do with Photoshop these days isn't it.