The Editor and I travelled into The Big Smoke to meet Swedish wine writer Erica Landin in Hawksmoor Spitalfields earlier today. She seemed impressed by our capacity to eat, the general pricing policies of London and the specific pricing policy of Hawksmoor. Fair enough.

Erica’s experience of wine journalism in Sweden is somewhat different to that of mine in the UK and Europe. It seems less involved in getting riotously drunk and telling scandalously ribald anecdotes ‘off the record’ for a start. She seemed moderately impressed that we got through two bottles and a couple of cocktails for lunch; I’m told by the Editor that Swedes have unhealthy attitudes to drinking at lunchtime. Anyway, let’s have a quick look at the food.

Any reservations about the quality of the plum-pudding pig ribs I might have had on my last visit were utterly erased this time. They were absolutely cracking. The combination of melting soft meat and fat along with a richly spiced sauce is quite the winner and, like me, you should go for them every time.

Erica seemed a bit daunted by the towering nature of her burger, but said she liked it even if it did ultimately require utensils to get it into manageable-sized units. I would have been impressed by her asking if she could have both triple-cooked chips and a salad with her burger, but wasn’t because not many salads are worth getting impressed about. Salads are just so unhealthy – JUST SAY NO!

Editor Dani ordered a medium-rare ribeye, double fried eggs, roast bone marrow, macaroni and cheese and stilton hollandaise. So did I. Everything was at the ‘jester’s shoes’ end of the pleasure-spectrum. One forgets quite how good their steaks are, the bone marrow is brillo and served with style, their macaroni and cheese recipe is perfect and, though I don’t think quality meat needs much sauce, I like the hollandaise to add to the M&C for enhanced richness.

The only slight disappointment was the eggs. I know here in Hampshire we have been spoiled with amazing King’s Somborne eggs, but these really do seem to be lacking much in the way of flavour. When you shovel a big lump of animal flesh with a whole yolk on top into your mouth you want there to be serious yolk action coating your meat-filled hole; these did not deliver. More work needed on sourcing top quality ova, I think.

The cocktails were faultlessly perfect and I really felt in the mood to be witty, charming and able to listen to a new friend after knocking back my Fancy Gin Cocktail. This remains the single best martini I have ever consumed on multiple occasions. Sure, you can almost have stronger martinis, possibly, but drinking isn’t a meat-measuring exercise. These FGC’s remain quite heroic and definitely enabling/disabling enough without sacrificing anything in terms of being really nice drinks. Dani had something else, but I missed it because I was busy with my drink and being probed by Erica.

The wines:

Cote-Rote ‘Les Grades Places’ 2004, Domaine Clusel-Roch

Clusel-Roch remain my favourite Cote-Rotie producer and one sniff of this demonstrated why that is so. No silliness with high alcohol here: this clocked in at 12%. No silliness with new oak either; nary a hint of it on the nose which was all about beautifully elegant and refined fruit, which a sophisticated earthy hint and real energy and life. This showed a lot of life and was not showing any signs of falling apart having been from a weaker vintage. A supremely engaging and attractive nose of minimalism and restraint; all about beauty and understated pleasure. I was a bit surprised that when we first opened it the palate seemed a touch tough, but a shake in the decanter and a swirl in the glass sorted that out. It then showed silky, polished tannins, a fine acidity that made it sparkle with life and refined but really deep and complex fruit. The depth of flavour, despite the small-scale of the palate, was amazing – the old vines character really shining through. It was very long, extremely sophisticated and highly pleasurable. The most enjoyable Cote-Rotie I’ve had since the last bottle of this.

Nuits-Saint-Georges Premier Cru la Richemone 2005, Domaine Alain Michelot

This was one of the most reduced red wines I have smelled in years. When it was first popped it honked of Hydrogen Sulphide and I was going to say we shouldn’t drink it. But I risked shaking it and vigorously decanting and it opened a little. But just a little, alas. It remained stinky and reductive, not much fun as far as fruit went at all. Strangely, the texture on the palate was quite nice, silky and reasonably seductive, but I couldn’t get over that nasty reductive character and surreptitiously ordered myself an extra cocktail as I went to ‘strain the vegetables’. I tell you, those Fancy Gin Cocktails would be all you need in the cocktail department if it were not for the rest of Hawksmoor’s brilliant list.

I’ve had a cold for the past week and this little jaunt into London was not only surprisingly manageable, both in terms of viral infection and London-related harassment, but quite a lot of fun as well. OK, I was let down by the Nuits, but the Cote-Rotie was wizard. Hawksmoor always deliver the goods and it was a real delight to meet Erica. I bet we got her more quaquaversal than the chap she was meeting next could manage.

Here’s Hawksmoor’s website

Related posts:

• Hawksmoor (London’s best meat restaurant) has additions to their menu
• Hawksmoor (London’s best meat restaurant) again
• Photos of the wonderful food at Hawksmoor

This was published on Elitistreview

Real ale festivals, there’s only really two ways to approach them. Firstly, you can get roaringly paralytic having imbibed and vomited your body weight in pongy, soupy beer and pongy, acrid cider. Secondly, you can be so overwhelmed by the quantity on offer, with no way of distinguishing between any of it, that you instantly leave, sobbing into your hog-roast. Given the niceness of the city, Editor Daniel and I hoped a third way would be possible at the Winchester real ale festival.

Don’t get me wrong, real ale can be lovely. However, in saying that I feel a bit like I’m justifying Hitler. An awfully large amount of it is just stinking, repellent rubbish that has been made by people with no ability, sense of smell or taste. But when it’s good it is a marvellous drink that will engage and refresh.

I tried eight real ales at the festival and most seemed like they had not been tasted before they had been sold. When I eat or drink something I value taste and aroma and it appeared that the people who made these did not have the same values. A couple were simply anodyne, a few stank and the others were actively unpleasant. It was an awful experience.

Four things were good about the festival, they are (in order of increasing goodness):

Hartland’s Sweet cider was delicious. Fresh and fruity with enough sugar to cover the acetic edge. It was distinctly refreshing and with enough booze (5.8%) that a half pint made me a bit less depressed about the rest of the stuff I’d been sampling.

The butcher Upton’s of Bassett had a brilliant roast pork sandwich as one of the food offerings. They have excellent pig, this was clearly a pampered animal, and it had been prepared with skill. A delicious sandwich.

Dark Star’s American Pale Ale was a brilliant beer. Not at all pongy with lively hoppy bitterness and incredible refreshment value. It wasn’t too soupy and strong, just a total delight to drink and could almost have been worth the excessive amount the festival were charging for drinks. It was a really top beer.

Best of all was leaving.

Related posts:

• Rich and heady
• Some bargain beer
• A nice afternoon drink

This was published on Elitistreview

I have a lot of time for India Pale Ales, and pale ales in general. Indeed, the best beer I’ve ever had was an IPA. Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA, from an excellent pale ale producer, just does not quite live up to the high standard of their less booze-mongous beer.

What I want from an IPA is plenty of booze-value, but not have that showing too overtly because of the hoppy complexity on the nose and extreme bitterness on the palate. Those hops should also provide real complexity on the palate. When they do this, they are brilliant, but this isn’t quite there.

Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA, 7.2% abv

There is a lot of confected, tutti-fruiti fruit on the nose, which isn’t entirely pleasant, but also a strong pine character from the hops, which is better. The booze-level smells quite strong and sweet. On the palate there is a lot of the sweet, confected hops character and, whilst there is plenty of bitterness, it just seems a touch out of balance and lacking complexity. It’s quite nice, but not a super stunning IPA. Could do better.

We had this with Scotch duck eggs. Orbs work a treat with duck eggs which are very rich and have a lot of flavour. Dani kept them lively and hot as something unrepeatable by dosing up the sausagemeat with fresh garlic and red hot tomato chutney. Orbs of fire!

Related posts:

• Mad Goose Pale Ale from the Purity Brewing Company
• Better than yesterday’s attempt
• Pale Ale – my reward for resisting lunch

This was published on Elitistreview

A couple of days ago Editor Daniel and I were extremely fortunate to be invited to the opening night of Hawksmoor Spitalfield’s new bar in their cellar. Once again it demonstrated that boss-men Huw and Will are unswerving in their desire to provide quality venues for good times for their customers.

Let’s make one thing abundantly clear from the start: it’s a great bar. If you want to go somewhere near Liverpool Street for quality drinks and brilliant bar snacks then this is the prime option. You will have a cracking time.

The room itself is the perfect cellar bar. It has enough lighting and mirrors to keep things busy, but also dark painted walls with expansive booths to hide in with your chums. The bar is a polished delight from 60s Paris. You feel you are going to get very improved when you walk in. It got a bit loud when it was full but I think the air-conditioning worked a treat and stopped everyone melting into a communal pool of sweat. It just seems a great place to hang out.

Cocktails are up to the usual Hawksmoor standard of excellence, but the list is not as encyclopaedic as in the restaurant bars – you are going here to drink not read about drinks. The list has some permanent features and a revolving selection from the bar-staff of Hawksmoor. For the opening period this selection has been chosen by Huw and Will from their original 2006 cocktail list. Try the tankard of Cognac, Claret and tea punch; I rather liked it.

Bar snacks are brilliant. Hot dogs and chilli cheese dogs (modelled below by Dani and me respectively) are the greatest hot dogs I have ever tried with brilliant sausages and highly delightful garnishes.

The best of the bar snacks I tried were the shortrib nuggets, which I model below. These are lumps of pork rib meat in cheese fried up in little crispy balls. They are amazing. I said at the time they were the best thing I had ever eaten, which they weren’t, but they were definitely the raccoon’s rude bits.

We also tried some Tamworth Laab which could have been brilliant such was the porky wonderfulness of it, but it needed more fish sauce, lime juice and chilli. Since they were not afraid of making the chilli cheese dogs fiery they could have fuelled this up a bit as well.

Then I’m afraid it all got rather loud and busy for this poor nutcase after a long day tasting wine (report to follow), so we slogged the easy journey back to Winchester. That aside, we had a great time in the bar and we will be returning there on many occasions. They take bookings if you want food but you can just roll up for beezer cocktails and I really wish I could do that right now.

Here is Hawksmoors’ website with all the info.

Related posts:

• Another trip to the excellent Franco Manca
• Hawksmoor Seven Dials – version 2 of London’s best meat restaurant
• More on banh mi in London

This was published on Elitistreview

At the last Hampshire Farmers’ Market Editor Dani and I picked up two bottles of Isle of Wight tomato juice from The Tomato Stall and we thought they’d make great BMs to go with Woodlands Jersey Beef burgers. I present the two greatest recipes for Bloody Marys the world has ever seen.

There are several tricks to BMs, but one of them is certainly not to go over-board with the booze. It ultimately dilutes the flavours of the other ingredients and just provides a burn that is far less satisfying than the ones I’m going to tell you how to achieve. Read on and sweat!

The tomato juice itself was a delight when raw. We had two kinds, the basic red one and a sweeter golden juice. To be honest, there was little to chose between the two, both had fresh acidity and a good, sweet tomato flavour. The fresh flavour of the juice was far better than those piss-awful tomato confections one buys in the supermarket made from concentrated tomato juice – this was the stuff all right.

If you’ve got quality tomato juice you don’t want its flavour diluted so no messing about with ice. The vodka comes out of the freezer and the juice straight from the fridge. No other cooling is required.

So let me present you with:

A winning Bloody Mary recipe

Get a large highball glass and pour in a measure and a half of Absolut pepper vodka. Add a heaped teaspoon of grated horseradish, quarter of a measure of balsamic vinegar and an enthusiastically furious grind of salt and pepper. Mix these up. Fill the glass with your quality tomato juice and mix again. You can have a little taste to check it’s up to standard and adjust levels of balsamic, horseradish, salt and pepper if necessary, but that should be ready to burn.

We drank these with Woodlands Jersey Beef burgers in Reeve the Baker’s best crusty rolls and they worked a treat. The burgers had great meaty, fatty flavours with the most satisfyingly ground texture of almost any burger I’ve had. They just tasted superb and were a delight to eat. I’d recommend using only the best rolls with them, as we did, and some extremely mature Cheddar plus a little bit of mustardy mayonnaise to complete the dish.

Dani suggested most people would have found my winning BMs quite fiery, and I took this as a challenge and immediately upon finishing my burgers I took to the kitchen and started mixing. I devised:

The Bloody Hell Mary

Highball glass with measure and a half of pepper vodka as before. Then 1 dessertspoonful of Perfect Pickles Red Hot Tomato Chutney, an impressively heaped teaspoon of grated horseradish, the most vigorous grind of salt and pepper you can manage – just don’t hold back. Mix these up together, you have to be careful as the chutney is quite dense and you don’t want uneven chutney distribution. Once mixed add you lovely tomato juice, give it a final mix, sip carefully and feel like you are king of the world! I have never had a better BM in my richly booze-infused life. It was a shame we’d already eaten the burgers as these would have been a spiffing match.

I leave you with a picture of my lunchtime delight and he is modeling the Bloody Hell Mary. After that are contact details for the produce providers.

Contact details:
Woodlands Jersey Beef
The Tomato Stall
Email Dwayne at Perfect Pickles
All of these people are usually at the Hampshire Farmers’ Markets.

Related posts:

• Stay awake with a BM
• One of the things I love about France
• The best burger I’ve had in London

This was published on Elitistreview