Category: British

Christmas Dinner at the Bua Garden, Spain

In the small municipality of Casares the Bus Garden restaurant overlooks a short 9 hole golf course with views down over the ocean. Ordering a turkey roast dinner in Spain is a bit risky but the Bua Garden made a great job with a 5 course menu to accompany...

Sunday Roast at The Mitre, Holland Park

The Mitre is a Greene King restaurant but under its Metropolitan pub company and so is unidentifiable as a GK venue when you first arrive. It had favourable ratings for its roast dinners online so amongst my table we tried the Pork, Chicken & Beef roasts. They all came...

Pie at the Sanctuary pub

The Sanctuary pub in Tothill Street, Westminster, together with its adjacent hotel, is owned by Fuller’s. That means it specializes in pies. It does a bar special of 3 pies each accompanied by a recommended ale. This time, however, the choice was for a five-spice duck pie, which came...

Caramel and sea-salt biscuits from Harrod’s

Christmas is a time when you indulge in nice stuff you might go easy on at other times. Among my best this year I was given a box of “all butter, caramel & sea-salt biscuits” (aka cookies) from Harrod’s. They were crumbly, sweet and firm without being too hard....

Gordon Ramsay at Bread Street Kitchen

Trying to find an ad-hoc table in the evening around Christmas time in the City of London is rather laborious due to the extreme amount of parties (most of the banks and insurance companies book out whole bars), we decided to go up-market. After getting turned away from Barbecoa we...

Honey roasted Ham this Christmas

  This Christmas was full of the usual treats, Turkey, Mince Pies and family arguments but on boxing day i love to cook a Gammon joint with honey. It’s important to get a piece of Gammon with the rind intact. You start by scoring the rind in a diamond...

Lamb and onion pie with English vegetables

It could be diced lamb, but this time I chose minced lamb. I pre-cooked it on the hob until it was brown, then spooned off the fatty liquid. I fried the chopped red onions in a separate pan, then added them to the mince with a little water, powdered...

Duck at the Varsity in Cambridge

The Varsity restaurant is the Cambridge twin of Trinity restaurant, and it came first. I began with chicken liver paté with walnut bread and shallot jam, and went on to pan-fried duck breast with pommes croquettes, parsnip and roasted red chicory. The duck serving was huge, thick and nicely...

Savoy in style

It was quite a meal at the Savoy. First came lobster bisque, though I tasted one of the Dorset snails a companion ordered. Then came beef Wellington, medium rare with Vichy carrots. The piece de résistance was the crepe suzette. First butter and squeezed oranges, then Grand Marnier and...

Oh dear, d’Arry’s – Cambridge

I went to d’Arry’s in Cambridge in October to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my Cambridge MPhil. Its a restaurant that we used to frequent regularly, until the service got so slow we had to leave one evening without evening (the gap between the starter and main courses was...