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Gordon Ramsay: The Narrow


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Mimi Sheraton reminds me to ask: has anyone visited The Narrow recently?

Yes, last week. It's my local currently. But I was just there for the bar snacks, which don't require advanced reservations. (Thank goodness they brought back the good bar snacks menu at some point. I stopped going over winter when it was all fish or seafood*, plus a scotch egg as options.) They're actually rotating soups of the day now rather than all tomato all the time (much as it was a mighty fine tomato soup.)

The ploughman's was as good as ever, the sausage roll better than I remembered. The potato and leek was very smooth and well-balanced. The chips didn't quite live up to my memory of them, but they weren't bad.

Actual restaurant food still requires reservations in advance and given how close it is, I rarely bother planning that far ahead for it.

* I like fish and seafood, but my partner doesn't eat it, which puts a damper on going there together for a light meal when there's more-or-less nothing else available.

Edited by sworthen (log)
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I ate there in October of last year. An all round pleasant experience. Started off in the bar trying an interesting banana bread ale and had a nice three course dinner in the small restaurant. Wonderful heirloom tomato soup was a memory. Good but not great service but I'll be back there again when we return to London in October. Very pleasant neighourhood for a pre-dinner stroll.

"who needs a wine list when you can get pissed on dessert" Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmares 2005

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  • 2 months later...

Actually I'd be surprised if they were preparing chips from scratch at a pub level operation. Very unusual to do that (stop a minute and think how much sodding time and effort it would take to peel and chip that many spuds). If you were a high end show doing triple cooked chips in extra virgin goose fat perhaps, but not in a pub context. Too high volumes.

J

More Cookbooks than Sense - my new Cookbook blog!
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Actually I'd be surprised if they were preparing chips from scratch at a pub level operation.  Very unusual to do that (stop a minute and think how much sodding time and effort it would take to peel and chip that many spuds).  If you were a high end show doing triple cooked chips in extra virgin goose fat perhaps, but not in a pub context.  Too high volumes.

J

Interesting. Obviously restaurants do have to solve huge logistic problems one way or the other and do things that grandma woulddn't have done. However, I think that beyond the strict necessity, one should do the best not to make the situation worse. Even granting that it's impossible to eat freshly cut chips in a restaurant (which still sounds too sad to be true!), baking them in the sun-warmed water is certainly not a necessity. And even more concerning seems to me the situation with the dairy products: aren't there laws about controlled temperature? Would it really take so much to organise deliveries in a better way than shown in the photos? And what signal does the current method send about the overall standards at the Narrow?

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Apart from tempreture controll, and the passing rat having a bite out of your delivery, there is always a chance that someone will bugger off with it!

I have a nice arrangment with the sandwhich shop opposite.Anything left outside each others places is taken in and looked after.

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Interesting. Obviously restaurants do have to solve huge logistic problems one way or the other and do things that grandma woulddn't have done. However, I think that beyond the strict necessity, one should do the best not to make the situation worse. Even granting that it's impossible to eat freshly cut chips in a restaurant (which still sounds too sad to be true!), baking them in the sun-warmed water is certainly not a necessity. And even more concerning seems to me the situation with the dairy products: aren't there laws about controlled temperature? Would it really take so much to organise deliveries in a better way than shown in the photos? And what signal does the current method send about the overall standards at the Narrow?

I obviously have no interest in defending Big Sweary but there are two separate issues here.

What you have here are photos that would seem reasonable proof that the Narrows uses ready cut chips. That may or may not be a problem depending on your expectations from GRH's 'diffusion' offering - which pointedly doesn't actually bear El Gordo's name.

I rather wish you'd hung about a bit and taken two pictures with time stamps - even sticking a watch on that hand in the frame would have helped - because without it you have photographic evidence of a temporarily unattended delivery.

I'd love to obtain evidence that GordonBalls is leaving his produce out in the sun to rot... so would the tabs... so, for that matter would GRH... but this isn't really it. Any attempt to stretch it into evidence would really leave you wide open to legal demolition.

Though it's great fun, all this is going to do is get some poor bastard of a KP kicked half-to-death in the walk-in and summarily fired.

Shame really. You had me quite excited there for a bit :biggrin:

Tim Hayward

"Anyone who wants to write about food would do well to stay away from

similes and metaphors, because if you're not careful, expressions like

'light as a feather' make their way into your sentences and then where are you?"

Nora Ephron

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