There is so much to love about America, and I think we have to add American waiters to the list. As long as you can stifle the giggle reflex, their desire to accommodate your every whim, whilst exuding Moonie-ish levels of happiness and bonhomie AND making you feel like you have ordered better than anyone else ever in the history of restaurants can make for a truly heartening dining experience. I *know* no one can read a menu like I can Chris, but *thank you* for saying so. Now please stop beaming for a second because at this rate your face will be killing you by last orders.

I had never been to Boston before, and it is a sturdy, square-jawed kind of a city. One of America’s insecurities is its youth as a nation, but if there is a state that can claim some serious lineage it is Massachusetts and the surrounding area. Settlers first arrived nearly four hundred years ago and probably found themselves as welcome by the local inhabitants as they would under the present regime. Plus ça change. We walked the Freedom Trail, and attempted to go for dinner in the Union Oyster House, but a wait of over an hour was too long for us, especially with a little one it tow, even if it is the oldest restaurant in America. There is, admittedly, a lot of this about in Boston, including a number of the oldest pubs in America within spitting distance which gave the whole place a slightly disconcerting similarity to central Nottingham.

Finding ourselves in the Italian Quarter, we essentially took pot luck with Aqua Pazza, which the door plaque informed us was ‘a Frank DePasquale concept’, and as it turns out, Frank knows his concepts. Despite a relatively busy marble cocktail bar, a raw bar, shiny glassware and softened lighting of the sort you find in a place where deals are done and assignations, er, assignated, they found us a high chair and made a little family of Brits feel hugely welcome. My daughter even got crayons to eat, which is always a bonus.

Chris, our beloved waiter, would indeed have been mocked by a puppy for his wide-eyed eagerness, but I say this in admiration, not admonition. When you can report back from the kitchen that a certain item can be cooked ‘without removing from the dexterity of the dish’ while keeping a straight face, you have my vote, not to say my undivided attention while I try and work out what the hell you’re talking about.

There is an excellent selection of seafood and Italian accented specials and we ordered fairly simply and quickly – parenthood does tend to mean the luxury of languorous dining is a thing of the past these days. There was some excellent sourdough, which I’m pretty sure Chris took commission on as he kept on bringing it as fast as I could shovel it into my mouth. This was probably a good thing, as the portion sizes were not extravagant, but I’m happy to report the flavours were.

My starter of tuna crudo – flash seared fish with a green curry paste and enough chilli to give it proper attitude – was a refreshing thing of beauty, while my wife’s tartare of the same fish was a similar delight for the taste buds but with the added texture of a natty little wonton cannoli.

Scallops with cauliflower is boring, so I ordered it to see how good the kitchen was. I can cheerfully report the reason this is a classic combination is that it tastes like one, and this was simply the best version I have ever eaten. While portion size in terms of extras may not have been excessive, I’m pretty sure six actual scallops is a pretty good return on a $30 investment and they were cooked to perfection. This was a nutty, brassicy, buttery kind of a dish, with a lot of caramelisation going on. I loved it ever so slightly more than my wife’s lobster roll, which although beautifully indulgent, was still a sandwich, so I won. I should add that the roll came with truffle crisps, which were so good I’m starting a campaign to have them installed as the only crisp flavour allowed from now on. All this was washed down with a ‘frizzante’ (someone’s been Googling) glass of Vermentino which Chris said was ‘possibly his favourite wine ever to go with seafood’. I avoided the temptation to ask him if there was anything he didn’t like, mainly because it really was absolutely bloody lovely.

We should have had dessert, but it was a Friday night, and the restaurant was obviously hotting up for the kind of weekend service that I would be delighted to take my wife to if we hadn’t got a small attention-seeking missile launcher with us. It also allowed us the luxury of leaving an American restaurant without the feeling we were about to burst from conspicuous consumption, which is genuinely the only time this happened in an entire holiday. It wasn’t cheap, but food this good shouldn’t be, and anyway, someone was going to have to pay for Chris’s therapy and the surgery required to return his face to its natural state.

We sauntered off into the night, utterly replete, and were able to return to Boston a few days later and grab an afternoon plate of some of the best oysters I’ve ever had at the Union Oyster House. Service was once again impeccable, and even included a lovely man who brought out a lobster the actual size of my daughter to take photos with her. Twice. It may be a tourist hotspot with plaques all over the place listing all the famous people who’ve been there, but there is a reason for that. People want to go there. And I want to go back. I also want to go back to Aquapazza. And Boston. And America. But I would prefer it if they made Chris President.

Oct ‘18

In these times of heightened sensitivity in the gender wars, it’s probably not a brilliant idea to admit to a little light stalking. Still, at least I’m fessing up, so American conservatives can rest easy I’m unlikely to take my place on the Supreme Court any time soon. The unfortunate recipient of my attentions is the food writer Marina O’Loughlin, who I’ve never actually met, but with whom I like to think I have struck up some sort of relationship via social media, which is exactly the sort of thing a stalker would say. In a very crowded market place, she is undoubtedly the wisest and funniest commentator on the modern restaurant scene in the UK, which is obviously the main reason The Sunday Times poached her from The Guardian and why I therefore had to swallow my anti-Rupert principles and sign up to breach their firewall for my designated two free articles a week. To get my own back I only read one.

Knowing from my own extensive research (/more stalking,) that Marina hails from Glasgow originally and finding myself there for a long weekend at the excellent Stand Comedy Club, I dropped her a line and was rewarded with a couple of recommendations, which has done nothing to diminish my nerdy fanboy status.

Glasgow is such a handsome city. Of course there are parts you wouldn’t want to walk down on a dark night, but there is a reason that Washington DC nicked the template. I walked down Argyll St, bang into the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, just sat around a corner being all magnificent, on my way to The Partick Duck Club. This must be one of the most wonderfully named restaurants I have ever visited, and they explain all about it on their website so I won’t bore you with it here. The food was anything but boring.

Do you remember when cauliflower used to be crap? Overcooked, pale and flaccid or just buried in cheese sauce to make it acceptable? Don’t get me wrong, a good cauliflower cheese is a thing of beauty, but I remember the first time I roasted some in the oven just for the hell of it and suddenly found out it was my favourite vegetable. A bit of chilli and oil and char and hey-presto! That’s exactly what they did here but better with a little crème fraiche, micro herbs and spiced nuts to accentuate the already nutty tones. Simple perfection. I followed it with the duck leg as I felt I had to. Some might say the addition of duck fat fries and a crispy duck egg into which to dip them might have been slightly overdoing it, ducky. I would simply refer them to the name of the bloody restaurant. Not only was this a glorious celebration of a wonderful ingredient, it was lifted to another level by the addition of a pineapple chutney which cut perfectly through the fattier notes and found me in the not unfamiliar position of licking the plate. All this was washed down with a very decent ale I’ve forgotten the name of and meant I had to have a pear frangipane tart with candied orange crème because…well, because.

I could not fault the food, and service was so exemplary that when I dropped a piece of cutlery a waiter came running over with a new fork, not because he’d seen me do it, but because ‘it sounded like a fork’. All this and coffee for just under £40 (excl service) seemed like a steal – O’Loughlin was clearly on fire.

Nonya is a rather different proposition – just around the corner and further proof of why the West End is becoming one of Glasgow’s hottest areas if you want to eat well or punch a hipster (the two often go hand in hand.) While the Duck Club is an all day affair, and still retains a charming pubbiness, Nonya is a little more restauranty, but no less welcoming for all that. It looks like a restaurant – stylishly designed, comfortable without being imposing. And there is some seriously good stuff coming out of the kitchen via South East Asia. Laab spiced chicken heart skewers with a little five spice on the side were exquisite. They were on the menu as bar snacks, which should make your average peanut cower in shame. There were peanuts on the menu too, but they were soy braised with celery and spring onion, so I imagine they held their heads up high. I didn’t bother with them as I was getting a bit carried away further down the menu with a spinach and bamboo dumpling that now holds the prize for the nicest dumpling I have ever eaten – crunchy on the outside, gelationous and beautifully flavoured within, with a jumpy little dipping sauce to hold the whole thing together. A curried venison roti was still listed as a bar snack, but was anything but – the meat and slightly oily, crunchy roti freshened with a chilli, red onion, cucumber and coriander salad that was like being slapped about the chops in a friendly way.

This trick was also pulled off by a (very generous portion of) flash-fried onglet from the Small Plates section of the menu, from whence I also ordered a pork belly, aubergine and black bean hot pot that was more a cuddle than a slap, and all the better for it. I stopped at this point because the walk back to my hotel was really not long enough to work much of this off. This is not the kind of stalking that does much for the waistline.

Clearly you can take the journalist out of Glasgow, but you can’t take Glasgow out of the journalist. It continues to be a favourite city of mine for any number of reasons, and now I have a couple more. Not only that, I also retain a healthy (I hope) appreciation for the talents of one of Mr Murdoch’s finest employees, whom I’m very much hoping will regard this blog as the compliment it is intended to be rather than a cause to apply for some sort of injunction.

Sept ‘18

Well I wasn’t even going to blog it, but as I now find myself with four hours to kill in Oslo airport having just spent £18 on an unexceptional burrito and a bottle of water, I need something to occupy myself, and writing about Estonian cuisine just seems the obvious choice to distract myself from bankruptcy.

I was delighted to find myself back in Tallinn at the Komeediklubi (sorry, fluent Estonian, don’t like to show off,) working for my good friend Andrus Purde. I was even more pleased to find I was travelling with Nick Doody, an exceptional comic and thoroughly good egg whom I have known for nearly twenty years. The only problem was the fact our flight had been at 7am, it was lunchtime, -10 and we really wanted to eat. We took a wander around the Old Town and eventually plumped for Farm, mainly because the menu looked good, and only partly to avoid a man who was asking Nick for money. Once inside I knew we had hit some kind of jackpot simply by virtue of the utterly baffling display of stuffed animals playing cards in the lobby, as though some ambitious Estonian taxidermist had seen one of those old pictures of dogs playing snooker and really decided to up the ante.

I always love it when the guardian of a conspicuously empty restaurant asks if you have a reservation, and then makes quite a play of checking the bookings when it is abundantly clear they could happily sit you at one of about fifty tables, but this was a fairly short-lived amusement, and we were soon shown to a large table near an open, glass-walled kitchen. I wasn’t wild about the décor – it looked as though a department store designer had been handed a brief marked ‘rustic’– but it was neat, tidy and clearly designed to appeal to tourists, which was handy, as that’s essentially what we were.

And I have to say it did appeal, hugely. The menu was a fascinating collection of game, fish, berries, herbs and the heartiness of Eastern European cooking with a Baltic influence. By which I mean there was potentially a lot of sour cream about. There was even a decent vegetarian option of mushroom cutlets, even if I could tell their heart wasn’t really in it. It wasn’t cheap either, with most main courses starting around the teens upwards, and one does tend to get a lot less for one’s Euro these days, so we opted to have mains only. But first we were brought Estonian black bread, baked in house and not something I thought I always appreciated. As I said to Nick, if it looked like cake, it should bloody well taste like cake. Our charming waitress informed us it was best enjoyed with butter and a few flakes of sea salt, although, as Nick pointed out, everything tastes better with butter and a few flakes of sea salt. What I was not expecting was for it to genuinely taste like cake, and really good cake at that. This was helped along merrily with a couple of glasses of local beer – a pilsener for Nick and a ‘red’ beer for me which was a delicious, full bodied challenge to order a second, which we nobly refused to do because, you know, professionalism.

When the mains arrived, possibly my only criticism was the portions were slightly less hearty than the ingredients, but my grilled ox heart with potato and roasted garlic cream was a tender, meaty delight, nicely enlivened by a few smears of juniper and some perfectly cooked yellow beets and green beans. The only slight misstep was a quenelle of tarragon butter that I didn’t think really qualified as a sauce, but then the dish didn’t really need it, and besides, it went very well on a second order of bread. Nick pronounced his pike fillet excellent, if a little bony, but then that is rather like attempting to leave the EU, then finding it was a little more complicated than living up to a slogan on the side of a bus. It is par for the course.

We decide to call it a day at that point despite being mildly tempted by a selection of dairy based desserts that I’m sure would have cleansed our palates admirably. The bill came to €45, including exemplary service, and with this level of cooking really resembled something of a bargain. There is an element of the tourist trap to the place, with its in-house bakery and adjoining café on site, but then if you’re going to trap me somewhere, feed me excellent beer, bread and intriguing flavour combinations while I natter away to an old friend, you are unlikely to find me complaining. We walked back out of the front door to discover three stuffed owls sitting on a grand piano that thankfully no one had started playing while we ate, and I wrote something complimentary in the guest book while our coats were retrieved. I fully intend to return to Farm next time I’m in Tallin, where I very much look forward to enjoying Estonian gastronomy again, if not, possibly, the taxidermy that may well make some of it possible.

March 2018

Well, this was a teeny bit crap, to be honest. I apologise for laying my cards on the table so early, but this is a review, not a whodunnit. I’m also very sorry to anyone from Salt House Tapas who reads this and thinks it’s a bit unfair, mainly because the reason it was a teeny bit crap was, I’m afraid, mostly down to the service. And I want to apologise to them again if that hurts their feelings, because they seemed like lovely people, just not very good at, you know, serving lunch.

I was up in Liverpool for the weekend to play the soon-to-be legendary Hot Water Comedy Club, which seems to be redefining how successful a relatively small club can be – four shows on Saturday including two almost unheard of (for the club circuit) matinees. This is very good news both for comedy, and comedians. They also use social media in a way that is revolutionising how they publicise themselves. It was for this reason I checked out of my AirBnB first thing on Sunday morning, and had a day to kill around town before taping an hour long special for their new YouTube subscription channel that evening.

There’s only so many times in a day you can write out the set list you intend to do before going slightly mad, (especially as events can conspire to alter the running order quite so conspicuously, more of which later,) so I had made a mental note to find somewhere nice for lunch. Having already had a (very good, but very bad) burger in Almost Famous the previous evening and spent most of Sunday nicking the WiFi from Joe and The Juice in John Lewis, my main consideration was finding somewhere that wasn’t playing house and techno at ear-splitting volumes. I don’t even know if they’re called that any more, I just know I don’t want to pay £5.20 for a carrot, apple and ginger juice whilst feeling like it’s 3am at Manumission in 1992.

I had passed Salt House Tapas on my walk to work every night of my stay, so I took the only plausible option on day four and walked in instead. I had already had a good (and sizeable) breakfast at Bill’s around the corner earlier, so there was no need to go full on crazy, however tempting the menu appeared. One of the great joys of tapas, of course, being that you can meander round a menu a fair bit without breaking the bank or the waistband.

I was a little put out to find they had run out of padron peppers – those carbonized, salty packages of goodness which are usually first on my order, but these things happen. There was a three plate plus bread option for £12.95, so I opted for sea bass, tenderstem broccoli and an apple, grape, avocado and rocket salad. And if you know anything about me at all, you’ll know I also ordered a large plate of cured meats that cost more than everything else combined.

There was a bit of confusion while taking the order, mainly down to the waitress struggling a little with my accent. This was nothing to do with a Scouse/London divide. She was, I’m pretty certain, Spanish, and even if her English was a little halting, I’m hardly likely to complain at being served tapas by a Spaniard, especially when the first thing she brought me was some sourdough that was so chewy, crusty and downright delicious I almost didn’t dip it in a good olive oil. I was actually pleased with the small portion as otherwise I could have quite happily scarfed an entire loaf.

This is when the problems began. A beautiful portion of hand carved Iberico D.O.P Bellota ham arrived, and I greedily polished of a few rosy shards. Thing was, it wasn’t what I had ordered as there was no chorizo or salchichón. When I pointed this out, I was rather hoping they might bring them separately and all would be well with the world. But no, dear reader, they took the plate.

*clutches pearls*

Never separate an Al Barrie from his Iberico – the whimper could be heard in the Wirral. But fair enough. A short while later, my sea bass appeared and was really rather good, all crispy skin and succulent flesh cleverly offset with charred leeks and a fruity green olive tapenade. I thought about trying to ration myself til everything else arrived, but rationing is not one of my strong points, and it was all gone even before the replacement charcuterie arrived. If the shoulder was all silky, salty excellence, the chorizo was a little disappointing – slightly dry and not as punchy as it might have been. The saltichón was perfectly serviceable, and I would have been thoroughly content if only everything else had arrived.

By this time, another table had sat down a couple of feet away and ordered. I had finished my charcuterie and watched, a little put out, as their food was delivered. They had prawns, soup, a salad, and something else hot that I couldn’t identify without leaning across and pinching a forkful, which I was sorely tempted to do as my salad and broccoli still hadn’t arrived. Eventually I called another waitress over to ask where they were, and was asked, slightly primly, if I’d been informed that everything was prepared from fresh and arrived in the order it was cooked. I avoided the temptation to point out that a salad needed very little cooking, and spent the next couple of minutes looking pointedly at my neighbours’ plates in a peculiarly British display of non-complaining. My Spanish waitress then came over to explain that everything was prepared from fresh and arrived in the order it was cooked. I wanted to say, “I know. That’s how tapas works,” but I didn’t. I may have been getting a little irritable by now. Eventually my food arrived, but clearly assembling a perfectly simple salad and charring a little broccoli in the mid afternoon lull could only have taken this long if they had forgotten about them. The former was fine (and fresh) and the latter was perfectly acceptable even if the accompanying ‘hazelnut tarator and pumpkin and sesame crumb’ hardly screamed nutty seedy craziness. There was a perfunctory apology for the wait, but what would have been really nice was some ham, bread and sea bass to go with it.

These were not bad ingredients – in some cases they were superb, but the final irritation was still to come when the bill arrived. I had been charged £9 for the plate of ham I had sent back, but not the £13.50 for the plate I eventually received. Being a generally moral sort, I pointed this out, which I think would have been the perfect opportunity to make amends by waiving the extra charge, and this would have been a much happier piece of writing. Instead, an amended bill was brought with the full price now coming to £28. I like to think I’m a generous tipper, and I still left a couple of quid – I’m not a monster – but at £30 for a light lunch, I would suggest Salt House Tapas should do better. Liverpool is a hell of a party town with a thriving restaurant scene, and next time I imagine I will carry on walking past rather than in, rather as the couple who were thrown out of my show later (and then arrested,) probably wish they had done. The staff and management at Hot Water were brilliant, and the fact it hardy disrupted the gig at all was testament to their skill at dealing with a potentially tricky situation. Perhaps they might head down the road to show Salt House Tapas how to handle a much more trivial matter that could have been dealt with very effectively by the simple application of a little common sense.

February 2012

If you asked me for my favourite things to eat, I’m pretty sure Pho would be up there. I was first turned on to this deeply flavoured, hearty but aromatic (in the right hands,) concoction by Anthony Bourdain in one of his books called ‘How I became too cool a chef to bother cooking much anymore,’ or something like that. I don’t mean to be snide – ‘Kitchen Confidential’ was excellent. ‘A Cook’s Tour’ seemed to be exactly what someone who’s worked hard their whole life would do with the opportunities to have a bloody good time success afforded him. So fair play. And he can certainly spot a trend. I don’t know how much it was down to him, but nowadays you can’t move for joints offering beef noodle soups all over the world, from roadside stalls to upmarket malls. I’m now slightly worried there aren’t any left in Vietnam, but until I get round to ticking that particular country off my bucket list, I shall just have to eat their national dish elsewhere. I love it – my wife makes a brilliant one, there are pop ups offering speciality ones, huge chains offering dizzying varieties and what is so fascinating about it is that for what is ostensibly a fairly simple dish, it can accommodate so many permutations.

I eat a lot of Pho. It is comfort food, hangover cure, refreshing, satisfying and reassuring all in one go – all those things derived from the magical Asian alchemy of hot, sour, sweet and salty.

In the interests of full disclosure, I also thought of the word ‘Pholympics’ and decided I wanted to use it.

So, from now on, I’m going to keep a record of the Phos I try, and give them a star rating out of five. As a comedian, I know just how irritating that can be, so I feel it is time to annoy someone else with it. I’m even going to do halves, cos they’re really bloody infuriating. And I’m going to use a soup bowl emoji instead of actual stars, like some kind of irritating broth hipster, and you can’t even punch me because I am living far away inside the magical internet. So there.

1. My Pho, Liverpool.

Bit of a game of two halves this, which seems appropriate. However, as I was up in Liverpool for four days and went twice, that should tell you this funky little eatery is well worth a visit. There are bright murals on the wall, lots of good things on the menu, and a definite ring of authenticity. I have decided that for Pholympics I am always going to order the Phò Tái – with thinly sliced beef, partly for consistency but mainly because I always do anyway. First however, I ordered the tiger prawn summer rolls, a copper-bottomed Viet classic, which looked so amazingly appetizing when they were delivered, I chomped greedily in, only to be surprised by their almost complete tastelessness. This was weird, as everything looked so right, from the juicy little crustaceans in their pancakes, to the chopped red chillies in the dipping sauce. They just tasted a bit meh. Sorry, but that was that.

The pho arrived shortly after and was, well, decent. Not as deeply flavoured a broth as the very best, despite the boast of the ten hour cooking time and the need to taste before adding chillies. I added all my chillies, although, as usual, I then spent quite a lot of time fishing them all out again. Not bad at all, and certainly good enough, cheap enough and close enough to return for lunch the next day, when things took a definite step up. Unfortunately part of this involved a transfer to a fixed high stool that seemed to be ergonomically designed to prevent you from ever getting comfortable. However, some chicken summer rolls were a vast improvement on the previous day’s prawn version, and a plate of crispy chicken wings sent me flying back to a little street stall I used to hit with alarming regularity on a couple of trips I’ve made to Kuala Lumpur. These were excellent, and the soup was better too. Not that the first one was bad, but what this does speak of is a kitchen that makes everything fresh every day, and all I got was a little variety, which is frankly, what we spend most of our lives pining for.

Both bills came in at just under £20, and I’m pretty certain I’ll be popping in next time I’m in Liverpool. I would advise you to do the same. So, maybe not a gold medal to kick off Pholympics, but certainly a decent silver.

🍜 🍜 🍜 and a ½

Feb 2018

2. Pho, Covent Garden

This is the big one. The bells and whistles venture-capitalist-backed-wannabe-mega-chain, the Nandos of the noodle soup world. Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Pret, Leon and every other specialized foodie start up wants to find its niche, expand furiously and make zillionaires of its founders and investors. And that is the society we live in, so you can moan about it whilst singing The Red Flag, or you can nip in between gigs to eat their food. Like many of the aforementioned establishments, Pho wants to be careful it doesn’t go the way of Byron, a huge success story that now appears to be back-pedalling at quite a rate on its initial expansion, and closing a significant number of branches. But hey, what do I know about spreadsheets, economic climates, market share and world domination? I just like soup. And Byron, as it happens.

I first came across Pho in Brighton, and you have to say they do what they do very well. There is an extensive menu of Vietnamese classics and the food is vibrant, fresh and tasty. They have grown quickly, and when you travel like I do, somewhere you are pretty much guaranteed a healthy portion of one of your favourite dishes is surely to be welcomed. I was zipping between gigs in Leicester Square and Drury Lane, hadn’t eaten and had half an hour to kill. My legs practically walked in by themselves.

I have written before (ad nauseum) about my annoyance at music in restaurants. Something in the background is fine, and I do like music – I am aware it can enhance an atmosphere. I just generally don’t like to be overwhelmed by it when I’m eating, especially if I’m with someone and want to have one of those old-fashioned things known as a conversation. I was on my own on this occasion, and I may well just be getting old, but I still don’t quite see why diners need to put up with banging techno quite so regularly. I do realize that the last sentence could quite happily just read ‘I may well just be getting old’ but if I want to turn into my dad, it’s my blog, and I’m very happy to do so. He’s a terribly nice chap.

But this was really about a smash and grab raid for some soup, so maybe the bpm were simply there to speed the process along. The place was full (it was 9:30 on a Saturday night,) but a small corner table was found for me almost immediately, and I ordered without needing to see a menu. The pho was dependably good – excellent, tender beef and a good selection of herbs including proper Thai basil. I was going to moan about the somewhat mingey portion of three bits of chopped chilli, until I chucked them in the broth to find it already had a reasonable kick of its own and promptly picked them out again. I also had a plate of Morning Glory – that fabulous, garlicky water spinach that I could eat by the plateful, but always slightly annoys me by being priced between £6-8, which seems a bit stiff for what is essentially a side order.

I have to say, in this instance, it was also very heavy on sinewy stalks, which may have been a reflection of what was left by the time of night I was eating. It still tasted good, and I suppose may well have given my digestive tract a healthier workout than usual, which has led me to a possible interpretation of how it got its name that I really don’t need to share here. So, not the best, and I do still get slightly irritated by the long handled wooden spoons they insist on giving you for your pho. I know it’s their thing, and I know it was probably what Tristan and Jocinta like, actually ate the soup with in this, uh, fabulous little noodle bar, where they rubbed shoulders with genuine Vietnamese and had their, you know, epiPHOny in downtown Saigon in ’03 – but I’ve never liked them.

That is personal prejudice, as is the fact that I genuinely applaud what Pho does; there is a great atmosphere, service tends towards the impeccable and the pricing is generally reasonable – under £20 for a filling and satisfying meal. I am no fan of chains, but when you’re on the road as much as I am, a good one that does something you like very well is to be treasured. The delightful waitress also gave me two tokens for free Phos at any of their outlets, which not only explains why I will be back sooner than later, it also explains the extra half star they lost on account of some slightly difficult spinach.

🍜🍜🍜🍜

March 2018

3. Pho Wardour St

Walked all the way through the snow on a freezing Monday night to find it closed with no explanation and therefore no way of using one of my vouchers. Had to settle for sushi instead of a warming bowl of pho. No stars/bowls whatsoever as I’m feeling vindictive.

March 2018

4.Sunshine

To the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for what was a lovely month of shows, food and company in a city I have visited a couple of times, but would never say I knew well. There is another blog on the way about some of the fabulous food we ate there, but, as I am updating Pholympics first, I thought it was quite important to mention we appeared to visit Pho heaven while we were there.

My cousin has lived in Australia with his wife and two daughters for many years and kindly offered to put us up for the duration of the Festival. When I asked him where exactly he lived he said,

“Sunshine”,

And I said,

“That sounds nice,”

To which he replied, “Yes. It does.”

Sunshine is not venerated by Melbournians. It is a little loved suburb to which the nickname ‘Scumshine’ has unfortunately been attached, and provided me with quite a nice little opening routine for some of my shows. I think you’re asking for trouble calling somewhere ‘Sunshine’ in the first place, confirmed by the fact there used to be a gritty Aussie soap/drama set there which was rather more The Bill than Downton Abbey. But, in fairness, like all suburbs within a short train ride from a big city, it appears to be on the gentrify, so to speak, and we actually became very fond of it. One of its biggest selling points, apart from the delightful free accommodation afforded us by the kindness of my cousin and his family, was the biggest concentration of Vietnamese restaurants on the high street I have ever seen. I have not been to Hanoi, but I imagine even they would be run close. On my first day I popped into one deli to pick up some Banh Mi for lunch, and on Day 2 we went for Pho at Pho Hien Saigon.

It was absolutely excellent. There were some other dishes on the menu, but we went straight in with some excellent prawn summer rolls and Phò Táis. There were even three sizes. I only ordered the large once, as even I struggled, but the medium was ample and it was as near to a perfect rendition of the dish as I can ever remember eating. There was so much that was good about the place – one of the waitresses slicing up mounds of fiery red chillies in the corner, the tenderest rare steak gently poaching in the broth as you ate, free tea on the tables. I could not fault it.

In fact, it was so unimpeachable, I think we went back about eight times. We developed a routine order, also including some lovely little prawn spring rolls that came with crisp lettuce leaves and a fabulous dipping sauce – mostly fish sauce and chilli, but with shards of carrot and just the perfect combination of sweet, sour, salty and hot to compliment the fish and the pastry. We were in Pho heaven.

Having said how many other restaurants there were, we really should have widened our net further, but once you find perfection, it is difficult to look elsewhere. We tried one other – Côdô, and it just wasn’t anywhere near as good. A greasier, less beefy broth, the noodles a little over cooked, the beef tougher. They had some decent ground beef parcels and water spinach, but I was in love, and it wasn’t with Côdô.

If you are ever in Melbourne, it is unlikely you will make the trip to Sunshine unless you have a specific reason to go, but I would suggest that Pho Hien Saigon really is worth the trip. Hell, typing this from my office in Hertford, I’m even tempted to just jump back on a plane now. You can fault my lack of imagination, but when you have a whole blog dedicated to one type of soup, and you find the perfect incarnation of that soup, you will be fully aware that a lack of imagination is someone else’s problem, and that the five bowls of soup under this review are for Saigon, who could do no wrong in my eyes, and not Côdô, who could. I am already plotting my return to The Melbourne Comedy Festival, and if I’m honest, it’s not entirely for the comedy.

🍜🍜🍜🍜🍜

April 2018

The life of the itinerant comedian is not always* a glamorous one. I think it was Bill Bailey who decided to take a break from the circuit when he realized he had a favourite service station. This will be a familiar sensation to any road warrior – a title a friend of mine laughingly bestows upon us as it sounds a lot better than Waze Guys or Costa Defectives.

You need only a passing acquaintance with Kerouac or Cash to be imbued with the romance of the road, but it is a different beast in the UK. Surrounded as we are by coast, any road trip longer than a day inevitably ends up rather damp. As a result, even the least experienced comedian soon knows our dear, benighted and presently very messed up country better than almost any other profession. Quite early in their career, he or she will have developed preferred routes, haunts and eateries. Many of these are burnt on our cerebellums in perpetuity, or would have been had Google Maps not surgically removed our ability to remember the simplest of directions a few years ago, in much the same way mobile phones robbed us of our memory for numbers the decade before.

My own personal speciality these days is the A1, a hilariously underdeveloped sibling to the M1, which is often quieter and and less given to pile ups and average speed checks than its closest relative. One of my favourite foibles of this resolutely unsexy road are the occasional Sex Shops which regularly pop up either side of it. I have no idea who gets turned on by endless miles of trunk road, but there is clearly a market for those who get to Peterborough and realize they’ve forgotten their butt plugs. There is another one just past Grantham in case you’ve forgotten anything twice, and should you leave your love eggs somewhere (or in someone) up North, there’s another on the southbound carriageway just before the A14. Which must be a relief.

There are also a number of branches of the OK Diner which appear from time to time, giving the entire road the feeling of a slightly tawdry, overlong and under illuminated Las Vegas strip. Sex shops and British diners. It’s half a surprise they don’t just rename it Route 69 and have done.

Now, I have a deep and abiding love for Americana, and America. As it goes through the torments and convulsions with Trump that are not so very different from our own with Brexit, I feel a very great sense of sorrow for the present state of a country I have lived, worked and studied in. I also have an enormous fondness for the diner, whether in the art of Hopper or Hollywood, or the endless cups of coffee I used to consume at Palookah’s in Wilkes-Barre PA, while listening to Lee Dorsey’s Yah-Yah on the table jukebox when I was 18 and lucky enough to be at High School there. I have always been tempted by the OK Diner experience, if only for the resolutely British lack of ambition in its name.

Which is, sadly, where the problem lies. There are many things we British do well, but aping the Americans is not one of them. One only need observe Wimpy, tuition fees or the ongoing inability of British TV to produce a decent nightly topical comedy show (I am still available, dammit,) to prove this. However, a combination of my own inexorable progress around the roadmap of the UK, and a free day during which I discovered the existence of an OK Diner round the corner from my Holiday Inn, just outside Chester, meant I had both the time, and the inclination, to see just how OK the OK experience was. If it was truly awful, at least I could blame the Welsh.

To be fair, while a concrete cluster of Subways, McDonalds, KFC and petrol availability does not scream ‘destination,’ the designers at OK Diner have stuck manfully to the task of furiously ignoring their locale. They have beefed up the décor with exactly the sort of prints and bric a brac that create the sensation of somewhere desperately trying to pretend it’s America whilst resolutely refusing to acknowledge it overlooks the A55. But hey, the welcome was warm, the music towards the acceptable side of the expected and there was a happy bustle around the place. I was plonked into a solo booth, handed a menu and brought some surprisingly pleasant filter coffee.

Health food, it ain’t, but then you knew that. The menu resembles Donald Trump’s bedside reading. You know where you’re at when the item below the All Day breakfast is entitled ‘The Bigger One’. But then again, it’s a diner – if you want quinoa and bircher muesli, you’re in the wrong place. At times like these, it is best to embrace the situation, which is why, despite considering the burritos, pancakes, burgers et al, I ended up ordering the ‘Homefry Hash’ – ‘New potatoes griddled with onions and red peppers served with our tender beef brisket in a sweet and tangy sauce topped with two fried eggs’ – on the basis that, if nothing else, it did at least contain a vegetable. I don’t count the potatoes or the onions, and admittedly I was daring the sauce to be dreadful.

And you know what? It wasn’t. Despite my worst fears, the sauce was neither over sweet nor too tangy – if anything, it was masked rather effectively by the eggs, and some properly cooked down, melting beef brisket that would put many a pop up street food stall to shame. This was genuinely tasty, filling, and a relative snip at £7.25. Throw in a really very good strawberry milkshake, a touch of Elvis and some delightful Welsh waitresses performing some sort of bizarre relay with the condiments until they collapsed into giggles and I couldn’t have been happier.

Hell, I even ordered dessert. Sadly that is where things went awry. I’m pretty sure their ‘Famous Original Cheesecake’ isn’t all that original. It might be famous, but only in the way, say, Ted Bundy is famous. This was a soggy-bottomed, loveless affair that screamed mass-production and stuck to the roof of your mouth in exactly the way you wished it wouldn’t. There are worse things to have stuck to the roof of your mouth than a baked vanilla cheesecake, but what elevated this to the unspeakable was the metallic crime against raspberries that came slathered upon it. A good raspberry sauce is a thing of beauty; this was a maroon atrocity that would make brake fluid feel good about itself. It looked very much as though the sweet tangy sauce I had feared on my main course had been sneakily smuggled on to my pudding as an afterthought in the vague hope I wouldn’t notice. As Monica’s mother once said of Rachel’s British Trifle with mince, it did not taste good.

Which is a shame really, because everything else did. I may have gone in without the greatest of expectations and a possible inclination to write an unpleasantly snobbish hatchet job. However, my bill for a hearty lunch came to a very reasonable £17.95 before service, which was exemplary. The nice ladies of the Chester OK Diner not only made me feel very welcome, they gave a delightful North Welsh slant on the big-hearted Diner waitress that is a staple of every Hollywood movie from The Wild One to Goodfellas. It was Americana via the A55, and you now what? It was OK. I mean, it’s not my favourite, but I left Elvis, and the building, in a very good mood and, as someone once said in another movie, I’ll be back.
January 2018

*very, very rarely.

Having asked our neighbours if they had any tips for a good local restaurant, they were particularly enthusiastic about the Fox and Hounds in Hunsdon. They extolled the virtues of the roasts, the unpretentious gastropubiness and overall quality of the ‘dining experience’ – as they would have described it were they irritating food PRs, which of course they are not. If they were, I would be unlikely to ask their advice, let alone live next door to them.

Luckily, they are highly trustworthy people, and we decided to take them up on their suggestion. What impressed me most initially was phoning to be told that not only did the Fox and Hounds have a table, they also welcomed dogs AND babies. As confirmed terrier owners, and, now, possibly more importantly, parents of a little one whose age we are still counting in weeks rather than months, it is clear priorities have changed. Obviously I still love a glitzy venue, culinary fireworks and the theatre of a well managed service etc etc, but now I will happily eat spam fritters washed down with Nescafé as long as there’s a place to stow the dog, room for the pram, a baby-changing table in the loo and staff who will cluck not scowl at the possibility of the atmosphere being blood-curdled by an unhappy infant at any point.

Let’s face facts – if you’re my daughter, I’d say it’s pretty important you like restaurants if we’re going to get along, so it’s probably best to start the induction early. I mean, her menu options at this stage are entirely milk-based, but there can’t be any harm in giving her an idea of what might be on offer when she has, you know, teeth and stuff. Nothing like building up a sense of anticipation, even though, if she’s anything like her father, I am storing up a world of financial pain in the years to come – “Daddy, what is lobster thermidor?”

When that moment comes I will inevitably be caught in that difficult area between pride and financial embarrassment, but in the meantime, if you are going to introduce anyone, of any age, to the pleasures of eating out, you would be hard pressed to find a better venue than the Fox and Hounds. The only thing that annoyed me was we’d lived twenty minutes away for the past three and a half years and no one had mentioned it before.

In the end, we opted to leave Bagel (yes, even our dog is food-based,) at home, but if you want to get on my good side, opening the door and asking where the dog is, with genuine disappointment in your voice, is as good a way as any. The effect is especially heightened if you do so while standing next to a huge wheel of homemade focaccia dotted with salt crystals and rosemary which it actually took a physical effort to stop myself tearing a chunk from in passing.

We were placed in a cosy little corner of a banquette mere stumbling distance from the bar, all of which is decorated in a way that not only screams good taste, but seems to have been designed specifically to remind you this is both a restaurant, and a pub. There is a whole wall given over to cookbooks, by a large fireplace, and paintwork in a particularly soothing shade of battleship grey. My wife sat perched beneath a print of the Hertfordshire stag who looked down on all below him and saw it was good.

This certainly extended to the menu, which achieved the tricky balancing act of being both original, comforting, and not containing a single item I didn’t want to order. I think the word I’m looking for here is hearty. Black pudding, mushroom and egg, rabbit, pork and veal terrine, oxtail bourguignon, brill on the bone, Hampshire pork belly. There were subtler options – smoked mackerel salad, or a tiger prawn tagliatelle. Vegetarian options looked good at first, even if they did involve goat’s cheese (they always involve goat’s cheese,) although there wasn’t much for the non-carnivore in the mains section. There was, however, plenty of game, (sorry vegetarians,) lots of braising and a whole section FROM THE JOSPER CHARCOAL OVEN which is, unsurprisingly, where we mostly ended up.

I started with French onion soup, on the grounds that something as classic as this is a pretty good barometer of a place as a whole. I was not disappointed. A beautifully rich, meaty jus of a broth, thick with caramelized onions and a certain boozy oomph. If you order port and brandy at the bar, there is every chance you have something of a problematic relationship with alcohol. Stick it in an onion soup, on the other hand, and I’m pretty sure it counts as a seasoning. I might have liked a touch more gruyere on my crouton, but that is nitpicking of the highest order, especially as I had already hovered up a goodly portion of the aforementioned focaccia which tasted every bit as good as it looked.

Special mention at this point must go to my daughter, who was winning awards for snoozing, thus allowing my wife to get herself very much around a generous portion of freshly Jospered squid, scored, grilled and accompanied by a pleasingly citrus chermoula, rich with an irony bite of coriander – really simple, clean cooking, superbly executed.

Our initial desire to go out had been partly fuelled by a mutual desire to find ourselves a decent steak, and we couldn’t ignore the Chateaubriand flirting at us expensively from the menu. If I was being ultra critical, I would say that it veered ever so slightly to the rarer end of medium rare, but if it’s going to veer anywhere, that is the right way to go. With a piece of meat this good it really didn’t matter anyway. I might also say that £64 is quite a stiff price tag for just beef, bernaise, chips and a clutch of watercress, but once again, this was about the quality of the meat. Added to which, ordering a Chateaubriand and complaining about the price is a bit like going on holiday to Dubai and complaining it’s too sunny. At least ordering a Chateaubriand requires some taste in the first place. Also, the chips were epic.

I took a break at this point to discover the men’s loos were decorated with Modern Toss prints, which added ‘sense of humour’ to my growing list of the pub’s achievements. I’m not sure if there was a baby-changing station in there, because my daughter was behaving so beautifully that the next table even commented on it, probably out of relief as much as anything else. Apart from polishing off a bottle, she pretty much slept the entire time. Personally, I think she was just being appreciative of a truly excellent establishment; a view further enhanced by a few more pulls on an excellent Chinook Amber Ale and the dessert menu.

A fairly workmanlike pear and almond tart was rather taken out to dance by an beautifully subtle cinnamon ice cream, but the absolute star was a perfect vanilla pannacotta, all unimpeachable wobble and toothsome rhubarb on the side. This was another classic, perfectly executed, to such an extent that I feel I should mention the chef, James Rix. Not because I know him at all, but because I found his name on the website – he is clearly an absolute master at work and I cannot wait to return and experience some more of his cooking. Service was impeccably attentive and friendly, and the whole operation seems to have pulled off that difficult balancing act of offering fine dining that somehow feels like home-cooking. The bill came to an extremely reasonable £110 including service, (and despite the Chateaubriand.)

Two very happy parents wheeled a miraculously sleepy baby out into the December night, and returned home to let Bagel know we had had a lovely dinner of Spam fritters and Nescafé. I’m not sure she believed us, so I have promised to take her soon, purely to impress the lovely staff at The Fox and Hounds, and not for my own benefit at all. Even if I really needed an excuse to return, which I don’t, I’m pretty sure I can justifiably claim it’s simply an excellent place to settle the baby.

December 2017

In many ways, I would prefer it if 2016 were rerun. Rebooted even, and the present incarnation booted into touch. At the beginning of this year I could still nurture fantasies of seeing David Bowie live, acting with Alan Rickman or swapping jokes with Victoria Wood. Somewhat far-fetched fantasies, admittedly, but technically possible nonetheless. Donald Trump was still more of looming orange buffoon (bouffant?) and 17.4m Brits didn’t have to start most of their sentences with “I’m not racist, but…”

From a personal point of view, though, I can’t really complain. I took the show I wrote about my wife’s treatment for and recovery from breast cancer to Australia, toured it throughout Europe and had my first proper run at London’s Soho Theatre. I ran my first marathon. I have also just completed my first theatre tour of Greece, where, thanks to a slightly bizarre set of circumstances, I now find myself selling more tickets than I do at home. Indeed, the one positive to Brexit for me is that I was away earning Euros the week the pound dipped to its lowest point in 168 years. If you had told me a couple of years ago I would find some tiny level of fame in Greece, I would probably not have believed you. That I have is entirely thanks to my good friend Giorgos Xatzipavlou (George) who asked me to appear in a benefit for Unicef that was shown on Greek TV. I joked at the time that only I could get big in the most screwed up economy in Europe. Little did I realize that a mere eighteen months later, thanks to the foolishness of a significant minority of my countrymen, touring Greece would turn out to be an astute financial proposition.

Athens was to me, for many years, the answer to that question often asked of comedians – “What was your worst gig?” In 2008 I performed at a dreadful corporate to two separate audiences of diplomats’ wives, many of whom didn’t speak English, on either side of a tent in someone’s back garden, sharing a non-existent stage with a full size crystal carriage, a life-size Father Christmas and a faulty microphone. They may have wanted to laugh, but thanks to the enormous amount of Botox and facelifts on display, sadly that was a physical impossibility

Barrie, Botrini & Xatzipavlou

Now, I am far more well-disposed to the place. Athens is a wonderful, vibrant city, and Greece is a thoroughly lovely destination with amazing food, superb hospitality, unique history, delightful people, terrible drivers, dangerous pavements and, very importantly, sold-out theatres.

Thanks to George (and his manager, Alexandros,) we visited Thessaloniki, Athens, Syros, Crete and Patra and it looks very much as though we will be repeating the experience in 2017. The shows were exceptionally good fun, and, as I discovered on my last trip, so was the hospitality. Once again we ate incredibly well, including another memorable trip to the brilliant Botrini’s as mentioned in an earlier blog. We did three dates in Crete, and were lucky enough to have two rather good meals in Heraklion, one of which I thought I would write about here. Not that the first wasn’t pretty exciting too – our hotel had various succulent cuts of lamb roasting around an open fire in its huge dining room, which was also home to an enormous tank housing a rather large crocodile for reasons no one seemed to wish to explain.

The next day however, we took a trip to Knossos and the very impressive Archaeological Museum, then wandered around the city to find something to eat before flying back to the mainland. Parasties may be a slightly unfortunate anagram in English, but in Greek it’s a rather marvelous restaurant, specializing in local, er…specialities. A lot of this stuff is the sort of thing you can get at any taverna in Greece, but there was an attention to detail and an emphasis on quality ingredients here that elevated it to the really rather special. We were sat on a sort of roofless terrace/front room where the décor was comfortable and on the tasteful side of funky. Lots of wood and earthy colours, reflected in little idiosyncrasies like serving the bread on what appeared to be an old roof tile. Not that easy to hand around, but it was excellent bread, so who’s complaining?

We weren’t. A Greek salad arrived, with one of the finest, creamiest fetas I have ever eaten. This tasted good in a way that made you think of the whole process, from field to sheep to milk to plate. I hesitate to use words like organic, because I don’t know if it was, but it was certainly made by someone who knows their feta. George said it was excellent, and George is someone who knows his feta. Dishes then came thick and fast. We were going to Botrini’s that evening, so were attempting restraint, but that is really quite difficult in a Greek restaurant, especially when George is ordering.

Grilled oyster mushrooms (something of a general find this trip) were superb – beautifully woody with the carbonized char of a well-directed flame. Similarly a spinach pie was all blistered outside and moist, tasty greenery within. Dolmadakies were a huge step up from the disappointing versions we’d had at an expensive tourist trap in Chanai a couple of days before – small, succulent and not served anywhere near a heavily tattooed stag night. There was also a very serviceable plate of puréed fava beans with sweetly caramelized onions. For me though, the absolute highlight was a pastrami pie that George insisted we try – all salty meat, melting cheese and perfect filo, although I’m very glad we also had the snails too – a Cretan speciality – swimming in hot olive oil and rosemary.

Having eaten far too much of this, we should not have been surprised when a rather nice marmalade cake was brought, unbidden, as that is just what happens at the end of meals in Greece. A lovely tradition no doubt, but one that has just caused me to loosen my belt on the plane seat I am presently sitting in as I’m fairly sure I am returning from the Mediterranean with rather more than I brought with me.

Pastrami pie

I have no idea how much the meal cost thanks to George’s enormous generosity and almost pathological refusal to allow me to pay for anything. Luckily by the end of the trip I had managed to sneak into a few establishments to get the bill before he realized – much to his consternation as I was apparently using ‘his trick’ which is exactly the sort of underhand deviousness the Greeks have come to expect from the British. Well, the British Museum, anyway.

George’s generosity was reflected in far more than his insistence on paying bills, it was evidenced in his eye for detail on the shows, his (and Alexandros’s) hard work in setting the whole thing up in the first place, and their friendship and hospitality throughout the trip. I have never been made to feel more welcome on my travels and there have been many. Looking at the diary, I can only hope Switzerland, Austria and Hungary are half as delightful in the coming months.

I am a Brit who loves Europe, feels very much part of it and desperately wants to remain within it, no matter what any idiotically binary referendum may have concluded.

As they say in Greece, Efharisto, which means thank you, as being polite to other people, in other countries, in a language other than your own is something we should aspire to, not reject as a weakness in some feeble effort to ‘take back control.’ I appear to have got my country back. Sadly it seems to be the one from the late seventies, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like it very much at the moment. Which is very different from how I feel about Europe in general, and Greece in particular.

Yamas!

Oct 2016

Glastonbury was tremendous as usual this year, if possibly muddier than Michael Gove’s name in the Boris Johnson household(s.) Some people insist the mud makes no difference to their enjoyment, but they are usually lying, still on drugs or watching the television coverage. We had a brilliant time and I thoroughly enjoyed both watching and performing, but after three days of squodging around in ankle-deep gloop, we fancied putting our beautifully toned calves and (trench) feet up for a couple of days somewhere a little more restful. Happily, my wife had secured a job photographing (www.spinkreative.co.uk) a friend’s apartment a couple of hours down the road in the ridiculously picturesque Cornish village of Helford Passage, and presumably on the strength of her free Glastonbury ticket, allowed me to come with her. So, three days at the world’s best festival followed by three days in Cornwall and all tax deductible – wouldn’t it be nice if all business trips dovetailed so conveniently?

Mackerel & Chowder

I defy anyone who comes to Cornwall not to love it and it has been far too long since I’ve spent any time there. Helford Passage might almost have been constructed as an advert for the Cornish Tourist Board, which is going to need all the help it can get now they are realising that if you vote to leave the EU, it is unlikely to continue sending you those nice subsidies you’ve been enjoying for the last forty years. Located at the estuary of the Helford River, like many of the villages in the area, visitors can’t drive right down to the shore as there simply isn’t space. A lot of this is occupied by the quite fantastic Ferryboat Inn, a mere stumble from our small but perfectly formed apartment, which was handy as they also have a small but perfectly formed selection of Cornish Ales on draught. If you were writing your spec for a perfect pub, it is entirely possible you might come up with The Ferryboat all by yourself, but luckily you don’t have to as someone else has already done it for you. Youth unemployment is a huge problem for the area, but one of the upsides is that everywhere we went was staffed by incredibly friendly yet terribly efficient twenty year olds, who probably had more qualifications than most of the people they were serving. Still, if I came from Cornwall I don’t imagine I’d want to leave either.

There is a pool table (but out the back so you won’t get annoyed if you get annoyed by that sort of thing,) plenty of seating at the front to appreciate the views across the estuary, and then casual restaurant style seating throughout the main bar to appreciate the views across the menu. My grilled mackerel was as perfect as taking a mackerel and grilling it could be – crispy skin, juicy flesh packed with flavour and a homemade tartare sauce for which the phrase lip-smacking was probably created. But the star turn was my wife’s chowder, a serious soup with a proper hunk of hake bobbing around in it. To describe flavours this deep as ‘comforting’ seems to be doing them a disservice, but this was so good it would probably have put you to bed and read you a story before doing the washing up. And they brought us chips because ‘they’d just made some’. I mean – come on. A lemon posset topped with a blueberry coulis and candied almonds was again perfectly executed, and two hours into our mini-break I was already considering making an offer on the apartment.

Hell yeah.

When I was a child, I hated going for walks. I never saw the point. I ruined multiple family outings sulking over some cliffs or stomping disconsolately round a monument. My principal objection was that any walk that started and ended at the same point was, logically, a complete waste of everyone’s time, and I still think I had a point, but surely one of the clearest signs of getting older is an enjoyment of walks for their own sake. This is very easily done in Cornwall, and the next day we walked along the coastal path, then doubled back and visited the beautifully maintained Trebah Gardens. There aren’t many sub-tropical gardens of the ooh and ah-ing variety located anywhere else in the UK that aren’t under glass, and it’s one of those places that makes you realize with horror you are considering joining the National Trust. There is also a lovely café doing a small selection of light lunches very well indeed – we both had quiche because it felt like a very quiche place, and they were excellent. There were also Bakewell and treacle tarts with clotted cream to die for. My mum would absolutely adore it, which is a much higher compliment than it sounds.

Megrim sole

In the evening we repaired to The Old Red Lion in nearby Mawnan Smith – another proper pub, with a thatched roof, bar propping locals in the snug and the requisite helpful, youthful staff. I’m not sure I’ve had Megrim Sole before, and while it’s not going to win any beauty contests, it was nicely cooked with a simple lime and caper butter, as was a whole plaice with a garlic and herb version. Desserts were less inspiring – I don’t think I’ll be rushing back for the Triffle (sic) Torte – but it’s certainly not the pub’s fault the main thing I will remember it for is watching England lose to Iceland at Euro2016 in the worst performance I have ever seen. If there’s one thing that’s likely to push the Cornish towards independence, it’s probably the realisation that statistically, they probably now have a big enough population to beat the rest of the country at football.

Crab

We were told one of the highlights of a trip to Helford Passage is taking the ferry across the water to Helford itself and The Shipwright’s Arms. Having decided that thanks to a spot of rain we would instead drive around the river, thus undergoing a forty five minute drive through tiny, winding, overgrown roads to arrive approximately half a mile from where we started, could I heartily recommend the ferry? It’s small, local, and runs on demand from a kiosk outside the Ferryboat Inn. If you get rained on a bit, you’ll live. You’ll still thank me. Helford is probably where they wanted to film Doc Martin but couldn’t because it is even more picturesque than Port Isaac, and The Shipwright has the confidence of a destination that knows what it’s doing and does it very well indeed. My crab starter came with a healthy portion of punchy white and brown meat, granary bread (from Vicky’s Bakery up the road,) and a salad of carrot ribbons, leaves, tomato, cucumber and apple that just seemed to show that whoever was in charge was a grown up who knew what they were doing. A deep fried Cornish brie oozed all over a homemade chutney and everyone was very

Brie

happy, even more so when two perfect portions of fish and chips arrived. They were also accompanied by genuinely pleasant mushy peas – something of a contradiction in terms as far as I’m concerned, but not one I’m likely to complain about.

A little tip if you visit the Tate at St Ives – do check if it’s open first. Sadly it is presently shut til March 2017, which must be handy for the summer trade, but we didn’t mind too much, and happily munched a rather good crayfish salad and a couple of pasties at the kiosk overlooking the beach. The restaurant just above it also looked good, but we wanted to wander off and look at art we couldn’t afford in some of the galleries in town. A stop in Falmouth at the National Maritime Museum on the way back was worthwhile, (if only to snigger at the spelling of Cnut in the Vikings exhibition,) before returning to The Ferryboat for a game of pool and a last meal before leaving the next morning. We shared the seafood platter I’d spotted on our first visit, and although I might have appreciated a couple more oysters for the £38 price tag, picking my way through a plate of crustacea remains one of my absolute favourite occupations, especially if someone has sensibly refused to put any whelks on it. We finished with the lemon posset again and a rather lovely sticky toffee pudding.

There was even a band playing that I quite enjoyed, which is a fairly remarkable achievement. I couldn’t be happier than when I’m dancing around to live music in a field, but if they started playing in a restaurant I’d tell them to sod off. Well, actually I wouldn’t, I’d just glower pointlessly in a corner while my wife tutted at me, but it is highly unlikely I’d consider they were enhancing the experience. These guys were playing a very proficient and unobtrusive brand of jazz, but it is as much a testament to the good taste on offer all over this part of the world that I liked them as much as I did. And we didn’t even have to walk through any mud to get away from them afterwards.

Sticky toffee pudding

July 2016

If you’re interested in booking our friend’s one bed apartment, it’s 16b, Helford Passage at www.holidaycornwall.co.uk. And if you think this counts as advertorial rather than absolutely independent criticism, you’d be completely right. You even get 10% off at The Ferryboat if you tell them you’re staying there.

St. Ives

Last week saw me in Belgium for a couple of days for gigs in Brussels and Antwerp to rooms full of extraordinarily civilized people. While I remain undecided which way I will vote should the proposed in/out referendum on the EU materialize next year (in an unusual example of David Cameron actually keeping one of his promises,) my instinctive leaning towards inclusivity would seem to place me firmly in the ‘Yes’ camp. The behaviour of festive audiences in Belgium compared to the UK, on the other hand, would have me happily voting ‘No’ – on the proviso I can move to the continent and leave Britain and its leery obnoxious drunken Christmas parties to float off into the North Sea whilst gangs of pissed secretaries and Neanderthals with self-esteem issues throw up over the side.

Kidneys and sweetbreads

Pineapple carpaccio & apple tart

I have been a comedian for too long to put up with some of the idiocy we normally get at Christmas time, and something seems to have clicked in my psyche this year whereby I have properly lost my shit twice in the past ten days; once at a moronic heckler in Greenwich and secondly facing down an entire table of boorish builders in High Wycombe. I am not the aggressive type, so I can only blame a confidence that I wouldn’t have been doing this job all over the world for over fifteen years to rooms full of laughing people if I had never said ‘something funny’ (Greenwich.) Similarly I’m pretty sure I’ve got more jokes than Oscar Pistorius has limbs (High Wycombe) which, to be fair, would have been quite a good heckle if I hadn’t been having a very passable gig to the 95% of the room who had been paying attention up until that point. Even so, calling a builder a c**t and offering him out when he is a) drunk and b) surrounded by lots of other drunk builders, is the sort of idiotic behavior I am only likely to indulge in when I’m on stage and adrenaline has taken the place of intelligence. Still, he left, and I remain convinced that on this occasion, he was a c**t, so I’ll chalk that down as a festive win, thank you very much, especially as his boss came to find me afterwards to apologise for his entire company.

Clam, cucumber, kimchi

In Belgium on the other hand, I performed two hour long sets to not one heckle, and generous laughter and applause. That’s a whole hour of me. Twice. And no ‘participation’. Belgians are not just polite, they are clearly also amongst the most patient people on the earth – and all this in a country that thinks nothing of 12% proof beer. God alone knows what havoc that would wreak on the December streets of Leeds or London should it ever spread across the Channel.

Beetroot, capers, thyme

We spent a day in Brussels first, where I had booked a table once again at the wonderful Taverne du Passage, the stunning brasserie where I had a run in with my nemesis in the form of tete de veau a couple of years ago. The resultant blog was the most popular I’ve ever written, but that positivity was somewhat undermined by the fact I had ruined my own meal to write it. This time I was under strict instructions from my wife to order stuff I knew I liked and we had a quite fantastic meal. Rather like Terminus by the Gare du Nord in Paris, this is simply everything a restaurant should be. The only off note was a misunderstanding that meant my wife had scallops instead of snails to start, but as they were ‘probably the best scallops I’ve ever eaten’ we were hardly likely to send them back. I had the best mushrooms I’ve ever eaten (again) on toast that clearly understood everything tastes better cooked in a lot of butter. I still went a little experimental on main course in that I opted for offal, but my veal sweetbreads and kidneys in a mustard sauce were cooked so beautifully I almost got a little teary. After finishing on a perfect apple tart with the most vanilla of ice creams and a delightfully zinging pineapple carpaccio, we paid the €150 bill happily and headed off to look at some Magritte paintings as we were, after all, in Belgium. This was the sort of meal you could have eaten at any decent continental brasserie at any point over the last couple of hundred years except we didn’t. We ate it at the Taverne du Passage, served by the most charming of waiters (even if he didn’t know his snails from his scallops,) and we loved it.

Poultry liver terrine

The next day in Antwerp, we had booked lunch at the two Michelin starred t’Zilte at the top of the magnificent MAS tower. This was one of those settings so imposing you almost felt like an intruder – all the way up to the 9^th floor to a single door behind which lay some fabulous food and a lot of people considerably more wealthy than we are. Luckily the staff were very welcoming, if a little formal, but that was only to be expected given the extraordinary technique on display from the kitchen. I had had a glass of thoroughly smooth Bordeaux in Brussels, but here we stuck to mineral water just to help us appreciate what was put in front of us. I do like a set three-course menu (€68) when the chef clearly has no intention whatsoever of only serving you three courses.

Scallop

Cerviche

A basket of varied and beautiful breads was brought and slowly dispatched through the meal as the first appetizer was put in front of us – malt crackers with a hazelnut sour cream, dotted with a little caviar. The sort of thing Philadelphia and lumpfish roe wants to be when it grows up. This was swiftly followed by cucumber and kimchi clams – all creams and textures (including a little iced puck of cucumber that was a joy to eat.) My only criticism was one of the clams was still gritty, but luckily I am not a Michelin inspector, although, should they be reading, I am very much available, especially over the festive period. The plate was also one of the prettiest imaginable, a theme that continued throughout the meal. This was food as art, and even if I wondered if flavour was sometimes slightly sacrificed to the aesthetic, it was truly impressive stuff. And each dish kept on getting better. Our second appetizer was a delicious concoction of beetroot with capers and thyme, whilst our third (three appetizers! Now that is what I call three courses!) was a sublime disk of ‘poultry liver’ terrine topped with baby onions individually stuffed with langoustine tartar. As my wife said, someone has actually had to stuff each one of these tiny baby onions. This was astonishing attention to detail, and even if a little of you could not help but think ‘what is the point of this?’ you ate it, and realized in that very mouthful the answer to your own question.

Wild duck

Cod

There was no choice of starter, and a complex dish of thinly sliced pumpkin with its seeds, tuna flakes and diced scallop tartare arrived, followed swiftly by another plate with a beautifully cooked single scallop and a scallop foam, ceps and charred chicory. They complimented one another perfectly, especially the earthiness of the vegetables against the sweetness of the seafood, although we both agreed the fishiness of the tuna flakes was an acquired taste we weren’t quite sure we’d managed to acquire.

White chocolate, sea buckthorn

My wild duck main course was another object lesson in plate dressing, with tiny spheres of pear and boudin cutting through the gameiness of the meat and a quite wonderful sauce. My wife is not a duck fan for reasons I simply cannot fathom, but they very kindly brought her a perfectly cooked fillet of translucent cod, with another seafood foam and ceps. Not a million miles away from our starter, but that is hardly a criticism especially considering it was off menu.

Dessert was mind-blowingly good – indeed the only problem I had was that by eating it, it felt a little like destroying a work of art. One made up of white chocolate, textures of sea buckthorn, pistachio, lemongrass shards, wafer thin pastry waves to echo the perspex shapes of the building and a little ginger ale vinaigrette. So, frankly, this was a work of art that needed destroying and we thoroughly enjoyed doing so.

Petit Fours

Excellent coffee was accompanied by two home made truffles and a plate of quite stunning petit fours including some of the best madeleines we have ever been lucky enough to put in our mouths. The bill came in at €200 including service, which may be quite a lot to spend on lunch, but this level of cooking costs money, and for me, it felt like genuine value for money. Especially as, by my reckoning, our three course meal had been nearer eight courses long, and one gritty clam apart, utterly faultless.

My waistline would not let me eat at Taverne du Passage every day, (although I could see myself putting that theory to the test if I did move to Belgium,) and t’Zilte must go down as one of those rare special treats one allows oneself from time to time, but every now and then you do think ‘Hell, it’s Christmas,’ and this is how I like to behave at my Christmas party. Especially if I have to go and do a gig afterwards, which I am delighted to report was awesome in Antwerp, and infinitely preferable to ghastly in Greenwich, or horrible in High Wycombe.

Dec 2015