balex

Cow au vin should be a thing. ( oops I see this is not original )

I have been spending a few days in Sesimbra, a quiet seaside resort near Lisbon which is famous for its seafood restaurants: so yes the seafood and fish are extremely fresh and of excellent quality and very good value but the cooking of the fish is a bit erratic. All of the restaurants have a display of fish on ice and a tank of lobsters, spiny lobsters and crabs, and a charcoal grill out back where some guy does the grilling but if the place is busy or a friend comes by for a chat then your fish is going to be a bit overcooked. The clams and prawns though were always perfect really. By

No I didn’t : I went at short notice and it was full even though it was not yet anointed.

Thanks !

There maybe a topic on Nice already? But it's a hard word to search for at least with my limited technical skills. Don't go to Chantecler. A little run down now that the old lady who owned the Negresco has died. The usual sort of natural wine bars are pretty decent: La Part Des Anges is good, and does some decent charcuterie in a very convivial and relaxed atmosphere. La Merenda is excellent: cheap bouchon type place doing uncompromising provençal and niçois dishes: one wine, cash only, no phone. The main courses on my visit were tripe, andouillette and daube provençale, very good

Kadeau looks pretty good , has anyone here been? I am thinking of having one high Nordic meal, Iluka one evening, maybe a wine bar the other.

Estimar was terrific: I thought much better than RdG. We had anchoas, some sauteed clams with sherry, cold red prawns, a whole grilled sole, some salads, chips and patron peppers, rice pudding. Uniformly excellent; the lenguado was superb, smoky from the grill, perfectly cooked to my taste ( but I like it maybe 30s more cooked than some), amazing seafood. And it was about 250 for 2, with a lot of food, with a bottle of cheap but excellent wine. Just missed the pea season but did get some setas perrichicos (St George's mushrooms) at Via Veneto with some underpriced Roumier. Such good foo

Orange wine I think of as just making red wine but with white grapes.

Via Veneto is the Barcelona restaurant with the Wiltonesque atmosphere and I love it

Thanks - I booked Estimar , it does indeed sound what I am looking for. R d G is fine but I don’t like the atmosphere for some reason and the food last time was slightly sub par.

Any opinion on Estimar? I want to go to a seafood place that is not Marea Alta or Rias de Galicia A

I even wore a tie.

Ok, Le Clarence is really pretty good. Very grand , impeccable service, some decent wine at reasonably sane markups. I got the 5 course option, which was quite a lot of food as each course apart from the cheese course was 5 dishes. The cheese was excellent. The food, was not quite cutting edge insanely delicious, but there were a lot of very good things to eat. Only a few genuinely brown dishes. A few mild asian touches (some XO sauce or something that tasted just like it at one point I think). For example the meat course was some quite young lamb, with an anchovy on top, some squid ink ju

Correct ; but I think only the ground floor was in use that evening , at least no one seemed to be going upstairs.

Botanique was a good recommendation Ppois, thanks. Good wine list, very technically correct and delicious food. I had a terrific pigeon with a really first class sauce, perfect cuisson on the crown which had been roasted with smoky herbs, legs kind of confit separately. Something strange about the lighting or the way the tables are laid out though ..

What’s a good Monday evening choice near the Marais ? Decent but informal.

Its not exactly a secret that the ratio is a lot higher than the version in the Patricia Wells cookbook. 4:1:1 gives a delicious purée which does not taste like the version at LAtelier, at least in London.

500 potato, 250 butter, 250 milk was a bit thick and too buttery, so I put more milk in and fractionally less butter in the final version. I used a ricer which did require a tamis after to get a good texture. With a leg of lamb and some disappointing Haut Brion. But, in a home environment, I prefer a less rich purée that I can eat a lot more of. If it is course number 6 its a different story of course.

Retrograding means keeping the potatoes in hot water for a while and then cooling them; then you cook them as normal but the starch has been retrograde so in principle it wont go gluey and guys guys I am not a complete idiot its just painful to admit that I lost my tamis in a divorce and havent replaced it yet so cut me some slack here I kept the wine cellar ok so dont judge me

Last batch: Monocrom: small natural wine bar with small selection of better than average food. Very low key and relaxed atmosphere. Rias de Galicias: trad seafood, that I felt was not as good as last time. Gresca (the restaurant), very good value long tasting menu with quite a few vegetables, friendly service, good natural wines. A couple of fusiony touches, a very good zucchini curry with a sort of thai curry, a chawan mushi with sea snails, excellent pigeon. And my girlfriend specifically asked me to thank whoever recommended Ideal Cocktail bar, so Wilfred, Thank You!

Can you just retrograde the starch and blend?

Whats the correct ratio of butter to potato for the purée? I was thinking of doing a dinner in his honour. Various unreliable online sources have it as 1 to 4 which seems very low.

Yes, 100 a head is a generous budget -- our meals this trip have been about 200 for 2 with a bottle of decent wine. And a lot of food. Apart from Lasarte and its like, they can eat anywhere.

Agree. But for example, Core in London, which was opened by the chef at Gordon Ramsay's three star place, does among other things a few takes on Irish home cooking, very refined and deconstructed of course. It doesn't work for me, but it's definitely not at all surprising. El Bulli and Noma come from different places, but I am not that interested in those types of food.

10 days in barcelona, with a kitchen. It's way too hot so lunch is just tomatoes and anchovies or tomates and ham, or as today tomatoes and red shrimps from la Boqueria. So far: Gresca bar; delicious and informal, good natural wine list. Amazing cecina, grilled quail, actually everything was pretty good. 2 meals at Xavier Pellicer, who has a new restaurant, mostly vegetables but with some proteins, wonderful food if you like vegetables, and if you don't, don't bother. Marea Alta; we had the full tasting menu which ended up with a whole turbot grilled, via various slightly exotic