Polpetto, London

We're just back from a few days spent down South which was very nice indeed.  We got to spend time with friends and family and, of course, we made sure that we got to eat.  Although London has a distressing habit of encompassing far more nice restaurants than two people can possibly cover in a limited amount of time.  Sigh.

We decided to go to Polpetto and, in doing so, have now officially managed to have a meal at each of Russell Norman's London outlets.  I've been irritatingly enthusiastic about him before on numerous occasions - see here or here or even here.  Finishing the set has long been a cherished goal of my husband, who believes in completism (and, as such, is doing his best to visit every single Brewdog bar.  The fact that they've opened one in Brazil is a constant source of annoyance to him).

Anyway, Polpetto.  I'm not sure that I've much to add other than what I have said about Norman's restaurants before.  They're not high end dining, the decor tends towards slightly shabby whimsy, the staff towards the achingly cool.  The food is, in my experience, always delicious.

Whoever was cooking on Monday night was skilled in the art of perfect protein.  Grilled octopus skewers were the absolute highlight of the evening, the meat all at once dense and tender.  Ribbons of flank steak, tangled with aubergine and lamb's lettuce, melted on contact with the tongue.  Squid, thinly robed in batter and fried, had just the right amount of silky bounce.

Octopus!

Elsewhere there was a pizzete, the base bubbled and blistered, the top, liberally cheesed which is always a good thing.  And an orange semifreddo, liberally scattered with great, golden chunks of honeycomb which reminded me of the sophisticated lovechild of a Chocolate Orange and a Crunchie, There may have been plate licking.

Semifreddo

Sure, it's not setting the world on fire and since Polpo et al opened, the "small plate" dining experience has become somewhat ubiquitous.  I mean, we're even doing it in Yorkshire now. But it's all good stuff and I, for one, am very happy to hear that Polpo might be looking for a permanent home in Leeds.  It's the type of food that I will never tire of eating - honest, robust and tasty.

Polpetto
11 Berwick Street
London
W1F 0PL
020 7439 8627

Day 2: Sterling/Glasgow - stepping out

According to my Fitbit, I have walked nearly 13,000 steps already today. Given that on a normal, deskbound day I might not even break the back of 3,000 this is one hell of an improvement. My feet are hot and dusty of sole and making their disapproval known through the medium of aching. But keeping vaguely active is hopefully the key to keeping any holiday weight gain to a minimum.

Last night we spent in Sterling where we enjoyed a decent curry followed by a wee dram in an adorable little pub that looked like it had been set up in someone's living room. Albeit someone who owned several hundred bottles of whisky.

And then this morning we skipped across to Glasgow. On the agenda: modern art and Mackintosh. Oh, and ticking off the new Glasgow Brewdog bar, Doghouse, which is situated in the Merchant City part of the, er, city. Yes, that is a second Brewdog in two days and there will be another one tomorrow. I would judge us too. The food here was lovely though - smoked meats and the kind of side dishes that you expect to see on Triple D. We shared a small portion of pulled pork, Mac and cheese and house pickles.

I continue to find new things to love about Glasgow; it's a fascinating, varied city jostling with amazing architecture. Edinburgh is more immediately beautiful but Glasgow, the scrappy younger* sibling is, I think, more endearing.

*(I actually don't know whether Glasgow is the younger city but I'm ignoring fact for the purposes of metaphor).

Day 1: Stirling - tears & beers

Going on holiday is a wonderful thing, but before we can leave we have to drop the cat off and this is a Traumatic Moment.

I don't know what was more pathetic: the piteous mewing as we made the short drive, or the full grown woman actually in tears as she said goodbye to her furball. Luckily, despite having the unenviable task of manoeuvring her in to her travel box, D was more sanguine.

Anyway, that done and we were off to the first stop on our whistlestop tour: Stirling. We have actually visited before but were compelled to come back because Scottish beer company Brewdog have opened a bar here. D is an avid Brewdog fan and dreams of the day when he can say that he has visited all of their establishments. I am fond of their Punk IPA so am generally happy to accompany him. Although, since they have a bar in Brazil, a country to which I have no desire to travel, his dream may never be fulfilled.

Stirling has a castle - but I am afraid that sticky and grumpy from an extremely close four hours in the car - we baulked at the £30 entrance fee. Instead, we had a wander around the pretty cobbled streets which sit above the town centre, and visited a lovely church in which King James VI of Scotland, who later became King of England, was both christened and crowned.

The first meal of the holiday was, of course, lunch in Brewdog. £5 will get you a decent toastie with salad and sweet potato fries (I could have done without the fries to be honest) and I am still curious as to what part of my subconscious induced me to order veggie haggis - in general, veggie haggis is a concept of which I heartily disapprove. Nevertheless, this was actually quite tasty and provided good ballast for the inevitable glass of beer.

Foodie Abroad: Nottingham

While we primarily went Nottingham-wards in order to have dinner at Restaurant Sat Bains (an early birthday present from the parents - thank you again M&D!) we decided to make a bit of a trip of it and spend a day and night in the city itself.

Gargoyle at Nottingham Castle

Clearly, one of our main goals was to check out some of Nottingham's eating and drinking establishments.  We're predictable like that.

Since we were there of D's birthday, I deemed it extremely important that we should have cake.  And according to some foodies in the know on Twitter, the place to go for cake in Nottingham is The Pudding Pantry.  Judging by the number of people squeezed in, the general populace agrees.  Unfortunately, said general populace had eaten most of the cake and the available range was smaller than we might have hoped.  Nevertheless, the butterscotch tart (apparently a local dish) and the cheesecake brownie (less of a local dish) were very nice indeed, and the reasonably priced bottle of Prosecco alongside went down a treat.  The tables were a little close together for ultimate comfort but it did mean that I got to eyeball other dishes and the American style pancakes looked very good indeed.  I'd go back for breakfast.

Prosecco

Butterscotch tart

Increasingly when we visit a new city we turn to Tony Naylor of the Guardian who has written a series of British city budget eat guides.  His tips thus far have been pretty good and I commend them to your attention.  On his recommendation we visited The Junkyard which was a great venue for good beer and people watching and had a light supper at Edin's Kitchen - a fabulously eccentric little cafe that did a fine line in toasties and well priced, if a little rough and ready, red wine.  We tried to go to Oscar and Rosie's but were turned away having failed to book.  That's fair enough on a Friday night, but the large venue was completely empty when we turned up and we were looking to be in and out in half an hour (we had a film to catch).   The concept of turning tables (as opposed to turning away patrons) appeared to be slightly lost on them.

Finally, no visit to a new city is complete without a trip to the resident Brewdog. D is such a fan that he now owns shares in the company!  And, indeed, the bars seldom disappoint and the wonderful beers never do.  Brewdog Nottingham don't have a kitchen but, even so, managed to knock out a fine meat, cheese and "stuff" platter - perfect for stomach lining.

Glasgow Eats

The first time that I went to Glasgow, I very much enjoyed The Ubiquitous Chip - which appears to be fairly ubiquitous as the city's go-to restaurant recommendation - but was not generally enamoured of the rest of it.  This summer we spent two nights there and had a splendid time.  It is too easy to think of Glasgow as Edinburgh's poor relation; it is less obviously pretty but it has a rough and tumble charm of its own that I just didn't appreciate the first time around.

Of course, our biggest priority was to make sure we got in some good food while there.  We already knew that we wanted to pay a return visit to The Chip, which took care of the first night, and it was just as lovely as before.  Highlights included a roast pork belly dish, with charred Baby Gem, butternut squash salsa and smoked onion cream:

And a white chocolate bavarois with raspberry fool and pistachio crumble.  White chocolate and raspberry is such a lovely combination, don't you think?  And this had the most beautiful, airy texture - like Angel Delight as made by actual angels.

If you are looking for a good spot for breakfast, and aren't too fussed about comfy seats, then you need to get down to Babu Street Kitchen.  It is Bombay street food with a Scottish influence - might sound weird, but tastes delicious.  D went for the bacon and omelette chapatti wrap:

While I had bhurji pau - spicy scrambled eggs on a toasted, buttered roll - which is a dish that I am determined to recreate at home.  It was zingy with ginger and chilli and just what I needed to blast away the cobwebs:

I'm only sorry we didn't make it there for lunch as that looked pretty special too - next time, Babu, next time!

Breakfast can only keep you going for so long though, and our second evening saw us roll up at a venue called The Meat Bar which had endeared itself to us by a) being just down the road from our hotel and b) being called The Meat Bar.  It's one of those faux dirty joints that are all over the place at the moment specialising in steaks and ribs and burgers and as far as all that went, it was jolly nice.  I had a smoked brisket sandwich which had a good punch of peaty flavour through the tender meat, while D opted for a burger which was satisfyingly messy.  Special mention must go to our shared dessert though, which was a salted caramel ice cream sundae topped with crumbled crispy bacon:

What can I say!  It kind of worked!

Finally though.  Possibly the foodie highlight of the entire trip and something that has been missing from my life for far too long.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the deep fried pickle:

There's not really much to say beyond the fact it's a slice of pickle.  In tempura batter.  Deep fried.  Hot, crispy, salty, sour...these babies were things of beauty and joys forever - and a very firm thank you to Glasgow's Brewdog for introducing us and possibly removing five years from my current life expectancy.

Brewdog - beer for punks and Dirty Americana

 

 

I'm finally beginning to see the point of real ale and the game changer for me was Punk IPA by Brewdog.  An independent Scottish brewery, in business since 2007, Brewdog not only produce interesting, complex beers but they open bars that people like us (definitely not punks but with a slightly anarchic streak well concealed by our middle class jumpers and sensible shoes) really love to drink in.  It's a crying shame that the Leeds branch is so blooming small - it's very, very hard to get a table.  We've been drinking our way around the others though and can reveal that Birmingham might be the best one.  Or possible Shepherd's Bush.  Or Camden.  Or Glasgow.

 

Our local bar has had a Brewdog tasting which was exceptionally reasonably priced and a great introduction to the different products so it's worth keeping an eye out to see if somewhere near you is running something similar.  Punk IPA remains my favourite but I did enjoy tasting some of the others.  Like wine, these sorts of beers can have quite complex flavour profiles.  Brewdog are also slightly notorious for producing the some of the world's strongest ever beer; my brother actually shared a bottle of Sink the Bismark (41%) with us a couple of years back and it is really interesting stuff - much more akin to a whisky than a beer and definitely not one for downing by the pint.

 

The other thing that I have really enjoyed about the Brewdog bars is the food - for a well priced, tasty lunch they've proved a pretty safe bet.  We recently had pulled pork and cheesy fries in Shepherd's Bush:

 

 

 

And, just last weekend, beer battered Cajun chicken and a mushroom and halloumi burger in Manchester with seriously good sweet potato fries (apologies for the yellowness - I had a weird filter on.  The burgers were just the right amount of yellow in real life):

 

 

The menu appears to vary slightly from venue to venue but is all in the style that D called "Dirty Americana" - barbecue, lots of meat, judicious hits of spice, really scrummy stuff.

 

Whether you're a beer fan or more of a beer semi-virgin like me (although can one be a semi-virgin?  It's probably a bit of an all or nothing state of being) this is definitely a chain to check out. 

 

(NB:  On reading this back it came across a little bit like a sponsored post - and I almost wish that I could say that this was because then I would probably have a load of bottles of Punk in the fridge, but it isn't.  I just really, really like Brewdog and want to spread the love.)