Brew Coffee Company - Whiteladies Road

Readers who have read my blog previously will know that I didn’t hold Café Retreat on Whiteladies Road in the best regard and while it is sad when businesses close down, it’s always exciting to see what will spring up in its place especially as Bristol is making such a name for itself in the national food stakes. One only has to look at the last few weeks and the evidence speaks for itself – I’m talking of course about the Bristol Food Connections Festival, Eat Drink Fashion and the Good Food Awards.

But I digress. Café Retreat shut up shop for the last time a couple of weeks ago and this morning, after a paint job and a refurb, Brew Coffee Company threw open its doors to the public. Gone is the bright turquoise façade, replaced by a more muted, timeless taupe and the billowy sheeted ceiling sacrificed for clean lines and a large bar groaning with delicious looking eats.

Joe, my lovely server at Brew, was quick to point out that it was a soft opening and not all of the drinks were available just yet so I’ve made a note to try out the very interesting looking ‘lavender hot chocolate’ next time.

So, let’s move on to the food. How far could they come from supermarket sliced bread and what would appeared to have been sandwich filler from a carton? Polar opposite is the answer.

I chose a slice of hand made slow roasted tomato quiche with a gorgeous, crumbly crust, packed with sweet, delicious tomatoes and a potato salad dressed in a light mustard dressing with cornichons and dill – no claggy mayonnaise to be seen; and a charred cauliflower salad with toasted hazelnuts and pomegranate seeds. Other temptations on offer included an equally delicious looking salmon quiche and a range of freshly made sandwiches and bagels.

As I stood waiting to pay, slabs of rocky road piled high on a dish were brought out but I found myself drawn to a sticky, glorious looking cinnamon roll from Everything Bagels who are opening their first bakery in Bristol soon. I can confirm that not only is it a thing of architectural beauty but it tastes pretty darn good too!

Brew CC might have opted for a soft opening but judging from the diners outside they’ve burst on to the Whiteladies scene with quite a roar. 

Wallfish Bistro

This review also appears on Bristol Bites...

July saw the opening of the new WallfishBistro in Clifton located on the site of Keith Floyd’s fist restaurant. The new owners have an impressive CV having worked for Mark Hix, Rowley Leigh and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall so expectations were high.

My friend, Naomi and I booked in for a fairly early dinner after work and while we started off in an empty restaurant, that certainly wasn’t the case come the end of our meal when every table (including the room downstairs) was occupied.

It’s a cosy space, there’s no getting over that but the greeting is friendly, warm and genuine and the ambient atmosphere tranquil and timeless – no overly twee ‘Nautique’ theme in sight except for our very cute pitcher of water in the shape of a fish that gave a satisfying ‘glug’ as we poured from it – in fact, it’s known as a gluggle jug (Christmas list, here I come!).

We were then presented with our menus that change daily depending on what might be available. Although we had both come for the fish, the vegetarian and meat options were also mouth wateringly tempting serving dishes such as patridge, grouse and Creedy Carver duck.

Naomi and I are both lovers of roasted pork and decided to share the pork crackling appetizer egged on by the enthusiastic sounds of our waitress and the promise of ‘epic crackling’. It came in a ramekin with an accompanying side of gooseberry sauce that was tart and delicious. The crackling itself was epic -  seriously crunchy and we had trouble hearing each other as we made our way through the generous portion but it was well done, appropriately salty and whetted our appetites for the main event.

I am an absolute sucker for a whole crab with oodles of mayonnaise to dip the flesh into but I always make a ridiculous mess – last time I had crab in Weymouth it ended up in my hair, across the room, in my handbag… I felt I couldn’t subject fellow diners to a crab shell shower so I went for the lemon sole with beurre noisette and potatoes.

Naomi went for fillet of bream with cockles, clams and samphire. Both dishes were cooked beautifully – the delicate flavor of the lemon sole wasn’t at all overpowered by the beurre noisette and it was truly a joy to eat. Sometimes the best dishes are the most simple and it was definitely the case here. Naomi’s dish looked spectacular and the flavours complimented each other beautifully. The clams were sweet against the salty samphire and the fish firm and meaty. I think we could have happily eaten both dishes over again.

Absolutely stuffed from our main course, we were determined to not have pudding but the dark chocolate mousse with salted caramel caught both our eyes and we had to go for it. I do love dark chocolate and this was gorgeous. Bitter and rich, the crème fraiche served with it really cut through it but neither of us could taste the salted caramel. Until we got to the bottom of the glass. The caramel existed as it’s own entity in the bottom of the martini glass, not swirled through as I thought it might be and unfortunately it was so salty that it had both of us reaching for our drinks after one mouthful. It was less saucy than solid. More like a softened Toffee Penny from a box of Quality Street dropped into a bowl of Cornish sea salt and was deeply unpleasant. It was such a shame that this was the climax to an otherwise scrumptious meal.

I would definitely go back – there is no doubt that the chef has a very good knowledge of how to cook fish and I’ve eaten enough bad fish dishes in my time to know but I would suggest that the taste of the sea need not be in all of his food…

Meals.co.uk - Takeaway with a difference...

This review also appears on Bristol Bites

Don’t get me wrong. I love cooking. I love making everything from stir fries to stews to big full on roast dinners but sometimes, I don’t want to. Sometimes I wish I could wave a magic wand and POOF, have my dinner appear in front of me. On those nights, the first alternative is to go out for dinner. But what if I don’t want to? What if I’m quite comfortable in my pyjamas; wine /beer /cider in hand with the latest episode of ‘Breaking Bad’ to catch up on? Next alternative is to order food in but truth be told, as my local area is served by the typical big four - Pizza, Indian, Chinese and Kebabs, my taste buds and I are never very excited about the variety the home delivery food market has to offer.

Until now.

Launched in September 2012, Food Couriers set out to change takeaway and home delivery as we know it. Recently rebranded as Meals.co.uk, their aim is to deliver great tasting, freshly cooked quality food from fantastic local restaurants and places where you love going, to your door.

The technology behind the site is mind boggling - it only allows you to see restaurants that serve your particular area, ensures that your order goes straight to the restaurant, all the while co-ordinating the pick up time for your driver to make sure your dinner arrives hot (or fresh, in the case of sashimi!) but for a customer, it couldn’t be easier to use.

The homepage invites you to input your postcode and from there tells you which restaurants are open and available to deliver to you. The range is pretty impressive spanning from Salvatore’s Kitchen to Obento giving you the choice of ordering dishes such as sautéed veal escalope to a grilled fish Bento box. Confirmation of your order is almost instant and Meals.co.uk aim to get your food to you in an hour. Delivery is a separate charge of £4.99 but just think – if you were to go out and eat, a combination of petrol and parking, taxis and babysitters far outweigh that cost and if there are a few of you, the delivery cost split between you is nominal.

One of the niftier functions that caught my eye was the fact that you are able to pre-order either on the day that you want your food or days in advance when you might be arriving home late or have guests round and want food at a particular time.

I popped along to the launch of Meals.co.uk in the beautiful Merchant’s Hall to meet the brains behind the operation and find out a little more about the site and to sample some of the quality food from restaurants signed up to the service.

The evening started with a wine tasting and a lesson in how to pair wines with Asiatic cuisines – very interesting as wines are normally abandoned in favour of beer when eating a curry. According to Richard Davis from DBM Wines, sweetness is the key as the spices in Asian food strip the sugars out of the wine so going for a sweet wine with good acidity will refresh the palate and allow the wine to stand out from the food. As for those looking for a red, choose one with a low tannin level and avoid anything that has been aged in oak as this, combined with spice, will dry the palate.

Meals.co.uk offer a selection of wines as well as beer, cider and non-alcoholic alternatives to be delivered along with your meal – another thing in their quest to offer you a restaurant dining experience in your own home.

From the wine tasting, we were seated for our meal and given a few words by Mark Oakley, one of the founders of the site, who re-iterated their mission to change the face of take-away food and to show that you could have high quality, delicious, healthy alternatives that you would be happy to go to a restaurant and eat.

For my meal, I had chosen a mixed sushi platter and side of Tempura from Obento as it’s practically unheard of to get authentic Japanese food delivered. I also picked it because I was curious to see how well it travelled and if the tempura would still be crispy and whether my hand rolls had fallen apart. Happily I can report that the sushi was still as beautiful when it got to me as when it left the restaurant – I was half expecting the fish to have fallen off the rice and egg roe to be strewn all over the place but all was well and my delicious salmon temaki was intact. As for the tempura it was light, crispy and still warm with a great mix of prawns, aubergine, baby corn and pumpkin.

As the evening drew to a close, I questioned Dotun Olowoporoku, one of the other founders and it’s clear to see that he’s very excited about the future of Meals.co.uk. There’s still a lot of work to do – he hopes to be able to offer customers information on past orders so they can remember which of the many memorable dishes impressed them. He also pondered whether a loyalty scheme might be possible or the re-cycling of old takeaway cartons.

Many more restaurants have signed up to the service but Dotun explained they will take a couple of weeks to go live on the site because of the technology involved. He also hopes to expand the business to Bath soon and from there, who knows? What he does know is that he firmly believes that there is a place in the market for Meals.co.uk and he hopes that Bristol will well and truly embrace it. I think it’s a great service and it gives accessibility to those who may not be able to get to restaurants – those without transport perhaps or parents with young children. From the quality of the food, I for one will be happy to bin my drawer full of takeaway leaflets and enjoy the likes of Siam Harbourside and Byzantium alongside my OH, my bunny slippers and Walter White. 

Bristol Bites

I'm very proud to say that I will be writing a few pieces here and there for Bristol Bites. It's blogs like Emily's that inspired me to start writing again and so am seriously pleased to be able to contribute towards their output.

Am off to my first official outing for them on Thursday so watch this space (and theirs!).

Bengal Raj

This review also features on Bristol Bites - Bristol's biggest food blog...

The first curry house in England opened over 200 years ago and thus began the great British love affair with Indian food. From Queen Victoria to those of us craving a post pub meal on a Friday night, we can’t get enough of the stuff which is why I find it truly astonishing that there are so many bad curry houses about. You know - the ones that serve tiny cubes of meat lost in a luminous sauce topped with a scalding pool of florescent oil. But here in Bristol, we’re blessed enough to have the pick of some very good Indian restaurants, the Bengal Raj being one of them.

Opened in 1998, it was the second of two Indian restaurants opened by four brothers. The first one is the acclaimed and multi awarded Brunel Raj in Clifton Village. The Bengal Raj is situated within a few doors of the excellent Stoke Bishop Fish Bar (it’s sister shop also residing in Clifton Village), and its tranquil location belies the cuisine inside.

I visited the Bengal Raj with my OH, mother and brother at 7.30 on a Friday evening and the first thing I noticed that the inside of the restaurant was a bit beige and entirely different to the more quirky Brunel Raj but it was packed out – surely a good sign! Although busy we weren’t kept waiting at all and our waiter was quick to collect our drink  and food orders.

We opted for popadoms to start with and they came with a fully laden tray of delicious looking dips and pickles – cooling minted yoghurt, fragrant mango chutney, sweetened coconut, sour lime pickle and a very finely diced onion salad.

For our main dishes we ordered a lamb dhansak, chicken tikka rezala, chicken kerala and a chicken achari. My mother ordered the achari but as she rarely finds Indian curries hot enough for her we spoke with the waiter and he offered to take it to the level of a madras but offered more chillis should she need them. We also ordered sides of sag paneer (spinach with Indian cheese) and brinjal bhaji (aubergine) along with a variety of naan breads and a tandoori roti.

Our food was brought to us steaming hot in beautiful hammered curry bowls which our waiter told us were made to order especially for them from a manufacturer in London – they were deceptively large as they were much deeper than ordinary curry bowls which meant the portions were very generous.  All of the dishes smelt wonderful and were extremely appetizing in appearance – no day-glo sauce and certainly no pools of oil floating on the top.

The dhansak was hot, sour and sweet all at the same time with a great depth of flavor and made the perfect pairing with my peshwari naan which was light and fluffy with sesame seeds scattered over the top providing a pleasing texture. The chunks of lamb were tender and meltingly soft, I was able to cut through them with just my spoon.

The chicken dishes were packed full of large pieces of moist chicken breast but most important of all – they all tasted completely different. I’ve been to so many curry houses where the dishes all look the same and barring different ‘heat levels’, all of them taste the same. The rezala was thick and flavoursome with tomato and onion and the kerala was highly spiced with fresh coriander, fennel, cloves and red chillis but could definitely have been hotter.

The achari came and it was delicious – sharper than you would expect as it is cooked with both lemon and lime juices but not in an overly acidic way, just enough to enhance the taste of the other spices and as requested the chef had slipped a few fresh green chillis into it to try and bring up the heat level. Although still not hot enough for my Mum, it was great that they had tried to cater for her and she was very pleased with it – no easy feat, I can assure you!

I’m a massive fan of spinach in general and sag paneer is one of my favourite side dishes – again we were given a generous portion and the iron heavy spinach was cooked with fragrant garlic and lovely chunks of paneer cheese with the texture of firm tofu.

The brinjal bhaji was also delicious – due to it being an aubergine dish, it was understandably quite oily but that was to be expected. Cooked with tomatoes and onions, the smokey aubergine’s white flesh was almost creamy and was delicately flavoured with cumin. The only thing to question was that the tandoori roti was quite soft like a chapatti rather than being crispy on the outside but that might just be down to a regional variation

The dishes were so huge that we had to take a lot of it home with us and the very friendly waiters were more than happy to bag everything up for us. It was a thoroughly enjoyable meal and we will definitely be back to tackle other things on the menu, especially the many cast iron sizzling dishes that we were eyeballing at another table! If you haven’t found your ‘HG’ go-to curry house yet, I urge you to try the Bengal Raj – and wear your stretchiest trousers!