Be Excellent To Each Other

Win! We'd be up for that. Is Rogan cooking full-time in London?

Beexmeet?

Not entirely sure. A couple of those dishes are identical to ones on the L'Enclume menu though, so I suspect he might be.



Sure!

In

It was sheep street but not moons I don't think. Think it began with S, we choose it as it was one of the top rated on trip advisor. It was ok, nothing special.

Edit: scratch that, it was called Oppo.

The best pub food I've ever eaten is in the Hand & Heart in Nottingham. They do the most amazing Sunday dinners; two massive yorkshire puddings, the best roast beef ever.

Plus they have a jazz pianist who plays with his feet.

My best have been:

Benares
Pied a Terre
Le Cirque
The Cliff
Bradley Ogden's
Le Gavroche
Tides
Bibendum
Patterson's
Circo

And probably a few others I've forgotten.

And SO in for a meet at that restaurant thing.

We'd be talking £120 a head with wine (double that for me if we brought our significant others along, which is pretty much a given as mine would probably kill me if I went without her!) I'm up for it though, but it won't be cheap and isn't something people can umm and ahh about and drop out at the last minute

Don't worry, this isn't exactly our first rodeo you know

So far the Beex Gourmand Society has eaten at:

• The Greenhouse (me and Craster)
• The Tamarind (Cras/me/Grim.../+1s)
• Michael Caines @ Abode (Manchester) (Cras/me/Curio/+1s)
• The Square (Cras/me/+1s)
• Le Gavroche (Cras/me/Curio/APoD/+1s)

Maybe some more I haven't been to or have forgotten about.

Then I am in

Punjabi Spice in Hayes opened several months ago, but I've only just got round to going, on the recommendation of a friend. They are lovely and the food is terrific - even my embarassingly fussy sister enjoyed every course. Starter was a great paneer tikka which I had to fight my whole family off to eat. The onions were particularly good - they're obviously using quality ingredients.

Main course was lamb dupiaza, lamb palak, and chicken ... erm... thing. The lamb was tender and full of flavour - the panak in particular was very tasty, and I don't even like spinach. Kulcha naan was generous and surprisingly full of flavour.

Desserts were basically about a dozen different ice creams, but there's plenty of variety and I could genuinely have ordered anything on the dessert menu, which has never happened before.

The service was friendly without being annoying (one of the waiters even gave a lift home to some people at another table), and we had a bit of a chat with the manager, Tej, afterwards. He's running a 50% of almost all food for another week or so, after which he'll still be doing some discounts as he doesn't want to just whack the prices back up again. Nice atmosphere and clean, pleasant setting.

Highly recommended - if you're anywhere near Hayes, you should go and try it soon, and note that it's not in a shitey area of Hayes - it's about as far from Hayes Town as you can get. If you're not near Hayes, I'd say it's still worth looking, because it's the best Indian place I've tried for a very long time.

Could be a surprise entry in my list. The restaurant at Northcote Manor in Lancashire served an incredible 5 course dinner last night. Seven courses tonight - we'll see if that cements its place.

As chain restaurants I quite like Jamie's Italian.

I refuse to give the man any money, so have never eaten in there. Plus when I went past the one in Cardiff once, the chalkboard menu proclaimed the aubergine dumplings were "wicked". Plus plus, no-reservations-accepted policies can go piss up a rope.

Don't sit on the fence... say how you feel.


You can book for 6 or more I think

I ate in the one in Oxford last weekend , reservations online were simple and painless and it was 'nice' food (to me at least) and a reasonable price.

Could have been worse - they could have been "pukka".

The website says:

I guess the "walk in only" scheme didn't go down very well, then.

I'd additionally note that the Cardiff one is opposite a perfectly reasonably family-run Italian restaurant which has been there for several decades, which I have eaten at several times (Giovanni's and Gio's, for Welsh Beexers). I'd really rather give the local small business my cash. But mostly it's just because I find the man so annoying.

Given it was a Saturday night I would have been trying to get a reservation before going out anyway - and there was a queue at the door for people waiting for a table (but since we had a reservation we were in and seated at the time we'd booked).

Me too, the food can be a bit of a lottery though. I had a super thin steak which was lovely, but also a turkey escalope which was awful.

I have only been to the Birmingham one..

But then the Italian restaurants we went to in Italy were amazing....

I went to a couple of italian restaurants in Rome. They were dire. I guess you need to know what you're looking for.

We found 1, but I suppose it is the same in any city

It's worth noting that the easiest to find English restaurants in London are An(g)us Steakhouses. I would imagine Rome would be similar.

I'd imagine the quality of the average Italian restaurant in a tourist area in Rome is quite possibly below that of an average Italian restaurant in Britain. In the former case, the sheer numbers of tourists and a sort of romantic local cuisine halo effect will pull the punters in anyway, regardless of whether a restaurant is terrible or not. Whereas in the latter case, only a restaurant being passably good will keep it in business.

True, don't eat in the squares, and explore...

I've eaten at northcote manor, I thought it was very average. We went just after he won the main course on the great British menu with his hot pot. We ate the 3 courses that he put into the comp and thought it was highly overated.

Ate at one of his pubs recently though, the clog and Billycock and that was superb. Maybe the chef had an offnight.

He's not the chef here anymore, though he owns the place. Very impressed with the food so far, including the prettiest full English I've ever seen.

Substitute Nottingham for Cardiff and it's the same situation.

Why would it be a surprise? I went there in August, my mum wanted to for her 60th, and the Sunday lunch was very good but i'm not really "foodie" enough to have the frame of reference to know how to rank it

The 5 point ranking system

Did it come out on a square plate? 1 point
Did it look nice? 1 point
Did it taste nice? 1 point
Did it stay down? 1 point
Did it come out nice and gently? 1 point

Can we not just use the Craster movie marking system instead ?

Thanks to Zardoz's help, I now know Northcote Manor is a 3.5 star dining experience.

I was expecting good food, but my list so far consists of some of the supposedly best in the country. The dinner I had last night was exceptional, certainly better than places I've been that have cost more than twice as much.

Far less high brow but I'm hearing good things about http://www.meatliquor.com AKA The Meat Wagon darrrrn Sarrrrrrf (LONDON)!

Me too, but I have the same opinion on restaurants you can't book as the Doc.

I've just been reading their tasting menu. I got to this point (second course) and my eyes caught fire. They are instantly on my ban list. Copied verbatim.



In other matters. I too have boycotted Jamies in Canary Wharf due to the new reservation policy. Which reminds me regarding Christmas week. I have dinner at Gaucho's on 30th, but 28th and 29th are free.

Jamie's Italian in the City takes bookings of all sizes, always has, and is very tasty.

Also, I am free on the 28th, and the wife/child combo are in Ireland.

In. Iberica?

Ooh.

Northcote update - 7-course dinner was a huge disappointment. It was like we'd eaten in a totally different restaurant. Odd.

Fucking hell... I'd spend a zillion pounds...

Had the best rump steak ever at the Swan With Two Nicks in Little Bollington on Saturday night. I asked for 'well done' and it was perfick.

Banned.

No.

I've been there for sunday lunch a couple of times. It does indeed rock. However, trying to cram a 7 year old focus between 2 ferraris when I had a raging hangover and the owners looked on was nervy.

You should be banned from going there until you learn how to eat steak though.

Minimum 24 hour ban for this scandalous behaviour