Tag Archives: food and drink

Carluccio’s

One thing we are not short of in Liverpool is Italian food, in various forms from the long standing and rather dated Casa Italia to the swanky Il Forno and San Carlo. Various versions of chain restaurants do pizza in a hurry or cheap Italian eats, however the independent Italian clubs or Tribeca top anything their mass market competitors serve up. Thus when another established chain opens up not only does it have to offer equal quality and value it would have to provide something special to attract me away from my favoured independents.

I know, I know, that’s a bit of a poor way to start a review, to paraphrase myself, if it’s not amazing food and cheap prices I’m not going. Does it have any chance? Honestly, probably not. Its more of a principal based decision, I choose to go to independents because usually they are better, but even if they only equal what is on offer in the well known chains, I prefer to spend my money there than in a big national organisation.

So is the Carluccio’s food superb? No. Are Carluccio’s prices ridiculously cheap? No. Our food was fine on my one visit, starters were a decent bruschetta and reasonable liver pate, a main of anchovy penne with tomato sauce and chilli was a little to hot and lacked any noticeable anchovy. A chicken Milanese, was an escallop breadcrumbed and fried, crunchy and crisp outer layer was good but the inside was over cooked and dry. Puddings followed a similar theme, they were OK, a nice fruit tart and good chocolate mouse. This was all fairly cheap as we had the fixed price menu, all this for £12.70 was good but only really matches the many other fixed price menus about town.

So to sum up, in my opinion, if I wanted Italian food in Liverpool, I would head elsewhere, one of several city centre independents would be my choice. That is not to say the food is bad, its not, it was decent and probably equal to some other places in town. If you want to support independents, as I do, then really I wouldn’t bother with Carluccio’s, however, if you don’t and you’re in town it’s not a bad place to go.

Camp & Furnace, Launch Night and First Impressions

I recently wrote about a few places on a trip to London, eulogising about the new wave of good value and good quality food, the current austere times pushing people away from michelin style food to something a lot kinder on the wallet. I, perhaps, got a bit over excited with my piece about Pitt Cue Co, the best restaurant in the country is an unanswerable debate, but currently it’s the restaurant I would return to over any other, and that makes it pretty damn good in my book. Liverpool I feel is currently experiencing this same dinning phase, Leaf on bold street is always full and the newly opened Luca Libre is somewhere I really like. Further to this, Camp and Furnace has just opened its doors at the end of Jamaica Street in the Baltic Quarter. A sort of mixed used space with an art gallery, cafe/restaurant/eatery, bar and event space, thats not to mention the soon to open luxury vintage caravan camping hotel.

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The Best Restaurant in Britain?

Yesterday I was in quite a cramped little restaurant, sat at the very high bar on a stool that was too short, I felt like young child at a dinner table. I was situated near the door, thus every time someone came in or left I was hit by a chill breeze, this was far from being a comfy dining experience. It was lucky then that the food was so exceptional, one of the best meals I’ve had in a very long time. The restaurant was Pitt Cue Co and, for me at least, it could be one of the best in the country.

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Mishkins, Covent Garden

I know know, your all thinking, “what the hell is he doing bleating on about places in London for”. Well I do love Liverpool, but sometimes there is noting better than a good bit of food tourism, which in my case means walking round London stuffing my face. So should any of you venture south sometime soon, I thought I would be able to help with a few idea should you require some light refreshments.

I just had a fantastic meal at Mishkins, where amongst other things I promised the quite lovely staff that I wouldn’t blog about their place. Clearly that was a big fat lie, as here it is bold as brass on the screen in front of you. Service was brilliant, really friendly and I spent a good hour sitting at the bar chatting to the staff about restaurants, baking bread and food bloggers. For relaxed friendly ambiance it was as good as it gets, especially because I was on my own, it has to go down as one of the best restaurants experiences I’ve had in a long time. Just don’t tell them their Ruben sandwich isn’t quite right, you’ll soon be shoved out the door.

The food was top notch also, great pickled herring with beets tartar, sharp zingy and full of flavour, and due to its rather healthy feel, it mainly consisting of fish and vegetables, I didn’t feel bad ordering a massive pudding. In this case a banana fosters, which is the classic, and brilliant, combination of rum, caramel, banana and vanilla ice-crea

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If you live in London please visit Mishkins, if you don’t live in London go and visit it anyway you won’t be disappointed.

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Lucha Libre

To make an accurate judgement about a meal you need a frame of reference, you need to know what good cooking is, what a good version of the meal your about to eat might be like. All this comes with experience, thus when a waitress at the newly opened Lucha Libre asked “is this the best authentic Mexican food you’ve ever had” I struggled to answer. I’ve eaten quite a bit of poor Tex Mex in my time, but real authentic Mexican, well I’m not actually sure what that is. So is Lucha Libre truly authentic? I don’t know, but at least it’s trying something that isn’t on offer elsewhere in Liverpool.

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The Kitchen

 

The Kitchen is a small, quiet and unassuming cafe, nestled in suburban Mossley Hill, it can be found on Storssdale Road. Tucked away on a quiet street it’s easy to miss, indeed had it not been recommended to me, I would never have known it was there. If you haven’t been the you are also missing out on some dam good food, particularly their sandwiches.

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Liverpool Food and Drink Festival Awards

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It was liverpool food and drink awards last night, and I’ve had this article bouncing around my head for a week or two. I was ready to write it this morning, yet sevenstreets.com beat me to it. They have an excellent article, with a similar view to me on this, not the same but similar. They question the worth of winning one of these awards, the combination of being voted by the public and run as a PR event, are their primary detractors. On the whole I agree with them, I really question the validity of these awards. That is not say I don’t think Liverpool Cheese Company, Lunya or Bold Street Coffee are great, I do. Other awards, however, clearly show the short comings, such as 60 Hope Street being awarded restaurant of excellence in Liverpool, its not even the best restaurant on Hope Street.

The real problem for these awards is not just the public vote, but the limited voting potential. Entries to the vote depend on your restaurant/shop/cafe taking a stall at the Sefton park event. Thus for you even to be in with a chance, you have to drop close to £1000 on a stall with the food and drink festival. Thus this year I couldn’t vote for The Side Door or Salt House Tapas in any category, two very good restaurants that weren’t at the park. It’s this system that ultimately results, in my opinion, in awards of little meaning.

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Liverpool Food and Drink Festival

After months of waiting the Liverpool Food and Drink festival finally arrived, with a two-day launch event at Sefton park, as both a confirmed greedy pig and local resident to the park I felt it was my duty to attend. Sadly I could only make the Saturday, thus I made it my duty to eat multiple breakfasts and lunches before closing time.

Here is a selection of stalls I visited during the day.

Franklins Deli Stall

Franklins Deli Sausage Sandwich

First stop was the Franklins Deli stall for breakfast number 1, a sizeable sausage sandwich, which was a good primer for the rest of the days eating. I had a chat to Adam about his role in the festival, as well as running a very busy stall, he was comparing in one of the demo tents and doing a demonstration himself on the Sunday. I got to sample their salt beef and pork belly that where two available fillings in their sandwiches, both were full of rich meaty flavour, the salt beef being a particular highlight.

Adam Franklin Outside His Stall

After a brief wander round, I felt the hobbit like urge for a second breakfast, and something lighter and more delicate was required. I strolled over to the London Carriage Works stall and found, not only a great selection of food but also a cheery looking Paul Askew. I took this opportunity for some great seafood and also a quick chat. I turned down the fresh oysters, they did look excellent, but they didn’t appeal to me as  an ideal  snack at 11am, I chose the potted shrimp and smoked salmon. The salmon was nice and the shrimp was excellent, a really delicate flavour with fragrant lemon and perfect seasoning, probably the highlight of the day for me.

Potted Shrimp and Smoked Salmon

Talking to Paul, it was clear to see he was an enthusiastic chef but also a practical business man, we discussed the potential for a Michelin star and how he “needs to balance difficult market conditions with what he wants to achieve” and I was pleased to hear that a star was still “a very real aim for the restaurant”.

Paul Askew at the London Carriage Works Stall

As well as stalls run by local cafes/delis/restaurants there were also demo tents, of which I got to catch a talk by Peter Kinsella of Lunya, all about spanish ham. I found this really interesting and it resulted in my buying over ten pounds worth of Iberico ham for my diner that evening. I say diner, it was me sitting alone in a room with a plate of ham and a bottle of Oloroso sherry, but it was as close to a meal as I got that evening.

Peter From Lunya Talking About Ham

The second demo I saw was about bread making, it was OK but I thought it was a little basic, however I do hope it inspires more people to bake their own.

Bread Baking Talk

Next up on my merry-go-round of food was Almond restaurant, Kenny the head chef describes it as a great local restaurant that offers simple food cooked from fresh ingredients. He was a very friendly guy, who really loves what he does, he didn’t offer fancy show boat food, but his cheese cakes looked great and the deep-fried king prawns has lovely light delicate batter and were perfectly seasoned. Almond is now near the top of my list of restaurants to try .

Almond's King Prawns (sorry about crap photography)

The Almond Restaurant Stall

The Malmaison team had clearly decided that they didn’t want to attend an outdoor festival and thus built themselves the nearest thing possible to a complete bar in the middle of a field. It even managed to maintain dim mood lighting in the middle of the day and I have to say, a glass of champagne in the afternoon did not go amiss. The Mal burger on offer also looked great but I had to decline, as by this point I was really struggling to fit anything in.

The Malmaison Bar

Along the way I also had a fantastic sweet Italian Doughnut from The Italian Club stall, it was excellent  and I actually went back and got a second.

Sweet Italian Doughnuts

I also has a quick chat to Steven Burgess of Rhubarb and Custard Catering, I had a great minted pea tartlet and I’m assured that on the Sunday his braised shin beef was the best dish available in the whole festival.

The Rhubarb and Custard Team

This isn’t all the stalls I visited, but really I couldn’t write about them all, it was nice to see most of the restaurants established destinations there. However there was a strange mix with stands like Warburtons the purveyors of terrible bread standing alongside great local businesses. One bad note was a friend of mine got quite serious food poisoning, that she insists was from the 60 Hope Street scallops. Over all I had a really nice day, the atmosphere was very friendly and despite slightly poor weather I think everyone there had a great time, I know I did.

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