Tag: restaurants

Pub review: The Plough, Shiplake

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews9 Comments

I still remember the first time I gave out a really good rating on this blog. It was towards the end of 2013, when we were all a lot younger and more carefree, and my blog had been running for just over three months. I wasn’t drunk on the power (next to nobody read the blog in those days) but even so giving out a rating in the high 8s felt like a proper stake in the ground. This is my kind of thing, that rating was saying. Go here on my recommendation and I promise you won’t regret it.

Ten years on, unlike a lot of restaurant reviewers who think their pronouncements should be on tablets of stone – why do so many of them write like they’re on coke? – it still feels like a big thing to say. And a presumptuous one, too: for me, that trepidation about writing a rave review has never quite gone away. Nor has the euphoric relief when anybody visits a restaurant on the back of one of my reviews and tells me they didn’t hate it, let alone loved it. I know the blog’s free, so nobody can ask for a refund, but I can’t give anybody back the money they’ve wasted on a bad meal.

The recipient of that first rave rating, a rating that wasn’t beaten for two whole years, was a gorgeous pub called the Plowden Arms in Shiplake. Run by married couple Matt and Ruth Woodley, it was the most beautiful spot – snug in the winter, with a fantastic garden in a little corner of South Oxfordshire for the summer. The crockery was vintage before everyone jumped on the chintz and retro bandwagon, the menu revived classics from the pages of Mrs Beeton and there was 20s jazz playing all the time. I adored it, and I went there often – with friends, with my partner, with my family, with anybody I could persuade to head to Shiplake.

Just over three years later, the Woodleys left the pub. It reopened under new management, but it wasn’t the same. You looked at the menu and thought that food was just something the management thought it should offer, all function and no passion. It was the first in a long string of disappointments, of places that had the temerity to close despite my loving them. Since then there’s been Dolce Vita and Buon Appetito, and soon there will be the Lyndhurst, but that first one stung. I wish I’d gone more often. As Andy Bernard says in The Office – the funnier version – I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.

When it closed two years later, I wasn’t surprised. It sat vacant by the side of the road, and for a while it looked like it would just be the latest pub to turn into accommodation, the latest community to lose a hub and gain a handful of extra residents with nowhere to drink. It was empty throughout Covid, but then in summer 2021 there was an interesting development: the owners of nearby Orwells announced that they had saved it from near-certain demolition and were going to open it as The Plough in early 2022.

That news was welcomed beyond the narrow confines of Shiplake: Orwells has a lot of fans, and I’m sure they liked the idea of a more affordable, more casual venture from the same people. But then something strange happened in 2022. The Plough didn’t open early that year and at some point – I suspect we’ll never know exactly why – Orwells dropped out of the picture. But the Plough did open, just before Christmas 2022, owned instead by Canadian-born Jill Sikkert, her first hospitality business after a career in interior design. Last month she appointed a new chef, Charlotte Vincent, who has been on Great British Menu and got one of her previous venues into the prestigious Top 50 Gastropubs list four years ago.

All very impressive: who needs Orwells anyway? But I would be the first to admit that the revitalised Plough isn’t the kind of venue I would normally review. A lot of that’s down to accessibility: I know that the countryside around Reading has plenty of food pubs which ordinarily would interest people, like the Dew Drop Inn at Hurley, the Crown at Burchett’s Green or even the Wellington Arms at Baughurst. But as a non-driver who relies on public transport they don’t generally fit my catchment area, so you’re more likely to hear about restaurants near a train station, like Seasonality.

Besides, you don’t need me for those kind of places because they’re the province of the website Muddy Stilettos, which you may know. They love rural gastropubs, and they gush about them in their weirdly infantilised language where things are “yummy” or “scrumptious” and go in their “tummies”, where food and drink are summed up as “scoff and quaff”. Apparently if you like this kind of restaurant you also like twee: I even read one review which referred to something called a “Michelin twinkler”, presumably this is awarded when your scoff and quaff are particularly yummy and scrumptious. Goody gumdrops!

If I say more about Muddy Stilettos – especially that their annual awards are an exercise in epic grift where they get small businesses slogging away to promote their website while giving back nothing in return – I’ll probably get in trouble, so let’s move on. I found myself reviewing the Plough because a very good friend got me one of their vouchers for my birthday last year, so Zoë and I finally found an opportunity to get there on Good Friday, at the end of our holiday, literally days before it expired. So I suppose, technically, I only paid for part of my bill: I wonder if that gives me something in common with Muddy Stilettos?

The makeover the Plough has received is quite something. In its previous incarnation it looked like a pub, like a beloved local that also happened to serve food. Now it is a really gorgeous series of rooms – you can tell Sikkert has a background in interiors – that take advantage of the pub’s good bones, its bricks and beams and parquet floors, but create something much more luxe. That said, the chairs looked better suited to lounging than dining, but that’s probably just me being a bit old-fashioned.

We were seated in a room I remembered well, having eaten in it many times when it was the Plowden Arms, and yet it felt completely familiar and totally different all at once. Even though it was the end of March there was still a nip in the air and the fire was burning, and it felt properly comforting: I can’t wait for summer to come, but I’ll miss the smell of woodsmoke.

The menu is written in that way that was modish a few years back, listing ingredients but nothing else: sea trout pastrami, mussel, apple gremolata, that kind of thing. I know this annoys some people but it didn’t bother me – it was more detailed than other examples I’ve seen and, besides, a little element of surprise when you order dishes can add to the experience. Perhaps I’m just getting soft.

As is the fashion there were snacks, starters, mains and desserts – most of the snacks just over a fiver, the starters just over a tenner, the mains between twenty and twenty six pounds, desserts a tenner. You’ll have your own views about whether that’s steep, but I compared it to what things cost at London Street Brasserie these days and decided to judge it at the end, not the outset.

There’s also a no-choice set lunch menu, twenty-seven fifty for three courses, which didn’t overlap with the main menu. But in honesty I think if you’re going to only offer one option on a menu it has to be more interesting than the likes of swede and carrot soup, so I gave it a miss. The Plough could learn from the likes of Quality Chop House, whose set lunch costs about the same and seriously makes you consider swerving the à la carte. Besides, that voucher was burning a hole in my satchel – in for a penny, in for a pounding, as my fiancée likes to delicately put it.

We got some snacks while we made up our mind about everything else, and they were the first indicator that it wouldn’t all be plain sailing. Homemade focaccia/blue cheese butter was the first thing we tried. Now, I don’t object to minimalist wording provided there isn’t anything significant in the dish it neglects to mention, and so long as what you’re told will be there is actually present and correct.

So the menu really should have said homemade bread/garlic butter, because that, weirdly, is what I got. The picture below is one of the dullest ever to grace my blog, but I put it there for a reason, to demonstrate that this bread wasn’t springy or spongy or aerated. It wasn’t open-crumbed at all. It wasn’t permeated with olive oil, it didn’t have salt or rosemary or anything else to zhuzh it up. The reason it was none of those things is that it wasn’t focaccia.

It was, instead, perfectly serviceable bread. And as for the butter – well, we went from the blue cheese in this must be very subtle to there’s no blue cheese at all in this, is there? before ending up at isn’t this garlic butter? The menu wasn’t just economical with words, it was a little economical with the truth too.

The second snack was a lot more enjoyable. I’ll do away with the stripped down wording from here on in, but this was a clump of battered, fried enoki mushrooms, strewn with shoots, more mushrooms (pickled, I think, but my mind might be playing tricks) and a little Walnut Whip of mushroom ketchup. This was far more like it – wild mushrooms cropped up in a few places on the Plough’s menu, and the mushroom ketchup, lending gorgeous depth, was the star of the show.

But at the risk of nit picking again, the ratio of the enoki to batter was so out of kilter that I felt like I was eating a savoury churro that just happened to have a tiny bit of mushroom in the middle. That said, if it had been described as that on the menu I might still have ordered it. Anyway, it was only a fiver.

The starters proper were more successful, and started to give me an idea of what the kitchen could do. My pork terrine wasn’t bad – a slab of pork, bound up with jamon iberico and strewn with gubbins – cups of onion with thyme crumb nestling in them, and more of those little shoots. I would have preferred some acidity in the mix – a piccalilli, or some caperberries – and without them it was nice but a little well behaved for my liking. A tad too fridge-cold, clean and pristine where it needed to be gutsy.

This came with what was billed as sourdough bread – I wasn’t sure it was sourdough but if anything, it was more open-textured than the focaccia had been. This dish felt sanitised, but it would probably have been a hit with the Muddy Stilettos crowd – every time I read a review by them, the reviewer practically apologises for having three courses and makes a tired joke about undoing the top button of her trousers. I never feel like I have to apologise to you lot for ordering too much food: it’s one of the reasons I’m so fond of you all.

Zoë had chosen scallops, a couple of plump specimens in a puddle of dashi beurre blanc, topped with some kind of sea vegetable whose name I’m sure I used to know but have since forgotten. I wouldn’t have ordered this – I’m not sure beurre blanc is improved by cross-pollinating it with dashi – but Zoë really enjoyed it. Unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to try any, and when I asked her for a more detailed critique she said “I fucking loved it, I’d order it again, what more do you want from me?”.

This will please fans of her expletives, and I know there are a few of you out there, but probably isn’t of practical help. She did eventually tell me under cross-examination that the scallops were beautifully cooked, the contrasting textures managed just right, but that’s all I have for you.

At this point I was feeling slightly underwhelmed, but the Plough rescued things with two exemplary and very different main courses. Fish and chips – just described as “day boat fish”, so I have no idea what it was – was outstanding. A thick cylinder of pearlescent, just-cooked fish was hugged by brilliant, almost ethereal batter. I was allowed to try a bit and it was miles better than I’d been expecting, and weirdly it made me think of my dad. He has a bit of a habit of ordering fish and chips in fancy restaurants, so I’ve seen him try it at Rick Stein’s place in Padstow, at the Beehive in White Waltham and in my opinion, the Plough’s rendition was better than either of those.

The accompaniments were bang on too – excellent peas which were crushed rather than mushy, and a tartare sauce Zoë could tolerate, which meant that it wasn’t quite vinegary enough for me. Having it with fries, although that was clearly communicated on the menu, felt a little strange to me. They were very good fries but, in an inversion of how I feel every time I look in the mirror these days, I’d sooner they had been chunky rather than skinny.

If that covers the pub classics end of the menu, my choice was cheffier and one of the best plates of food I’ve eaten this year. Lamb rump was just stellar – thick and tender, accurately seasoned, the perfect shade of pink with just the most beautiful stripe of fat, the kind of thing I could eat all day. It came with a little of everything wonderful – more onion, this time smoked, chewy and delectable nubbins of Jerusalem artichoke, a sweet and glossy puree, a little jus and, by the looks of this picture, some extra virgin olive oil thrown in for good measure.

Oh, and I neglected to mention my other favourite part of this dish – described as hash browns, they were a couple of golden pyramids of pressed and fried potato that were worth the price of admission by themselves. I truly loved this dish, and it single-handedly justified the trip to Shiplake. A few forkfuls in and that dense non-focaccia and the slightly timid terrine were completely forgotten. All was forgiven: this dish was twenty-six pounds and, I reckon, worth every penny. Even looking down at the picture I can remember how happy it made me.

As it was a little light on the veg I’d ordered some green beans on the side with pickled chilli and soy sauce. They were well enough executed, the beans with a little bite, but I didn’t think they quite worked: the sauce didn’t adhere, so you ended up with a pool of the stuff at the bottom. I’ll go for the ubiquitous hispi cabbage next time.

We both wanted dessert, which is a good sign, and we both wanted the same dessert. So we had it, unrepentantly and without loosening any garments. Again, it was good but not perfect and again, it wasn’t quite as billed. It was allegedly a dark chocolate cheesecake but, for my money, it wasn’t in any way dark. And texturally I didn’t think it entirely worked – that huge layer of chocolate was a tad gelatinous, the base so heavy and thick that you couldn’t get a spoon through it without risking injury to passers-by.

And again, it was a pity because the minor details were all excellent, from the chocolate soil on top to the blobs of yuzu gel and – especially – the warming, boozy cherries. I finished it, because it’s rude not to, but I would have liked something slimmer and more refined. That is something I often say when I look in the mirror, come to think of it.

Replete and satisfied, we asked for our bill and prepared for the trip home. And it would be remiss of me not to mention at this point that – more than once on my visit to the Plough – Zoë had raved about the bathrooms. “Seriously, you have to go to the loo before we leave” she said. “I think they’re some of the best restaurant toilets I’ve ever seen.” So I did, and they were indeed very chic and the handwash smelled magnificent. But, just as with Zoë and those effing scallops, that’s all I can remember. I wish I’d taken a picture.

Our bill for all that food, a non-alcoholic cocktail called a tropical something or other which Zoë found too sweet (and at nine pounds, a little too rich) and a couple of bottles of sparkling mineral water – because I was on antibiotics – came to a hundred and thirty-eight pounds, including a 12.5% service charge. And it feels like an insult to shoehorn the service in here, between the loos and the conclusion, because it was faultless from start to finish. We had just the right level of attention, enthusiasm and smiles from the moment we were greeted to the point where we said goodbye and went out the front door. It made me think what a boon this place must be to genuine locals, although if you live in Shiplake I imagine you had enough to be smug about even before the Plough came along.

I’ve ummed and aahed since about what I made of the Plough, on balance. In the debit column, some of the dishes were underpowered or didn’t work, and the feng shui menu didn’t always reflect what turned up on the plate. I suppose I compare it in some ways to the robust, magical cooking of somewhere like the Bell at Waltham St Lawrence, and it doesn’t quite match that standard. But on the other hand, some of the dishes were exceptional, especially the mains, and the little touches with much of the food show an imagination which quite won me over. And then there’s the room, the welcome, that open fire and – yes, let’s mention them again – those bathrooms.

But the main thing I took from my trip to the Plough was a feeling of being in really capable hands, of a menu that could please almost anybody and managed to walk that very fine line where it was accessible and clever. That’s not an easy balance to strike, and many chefs or restaurants, despite their best intentions, end up falling clumsily on one side or the other. That the Plough has avoided that pitfall, and that the team have created somewhere so universal but sophisticated is a more skilful trick than you might think.

“This is the kind of place we could take your dad and stepmum” said Zoë in the car on the way back to Reading, and that’s as good a summary of its appeal as I can think of: it might mean more if you’d met them, but hopefully you get the drift. I think you could take anybody here for a meal – either for a special occasion or for no reason – and have a properly charming time.

This might not read like an out and out rave, I may not have talked about tummies or the fact that they might be awarded a Michelin twinkler at some point, but regular readers will know that this is me saying I was quietly impressed. This is my kind of thing. Hopefully, if you go here on my recommendation, you won’t regret it.

Nope, still feels presumptuous.

The Plough – 8.0
Plough Lane, Shiplake, RG9 4BX
0118 9403999

https://www.theploughshiplake.co.uk

Restaurant review: Pierre Victoire, Oxford

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews8 Comments

I had to check because I thought my mind might be playing tricks, but there used to be a French restaurant chain called Pierre Victoire, the Côte of its day, thirty years ago. I remember eating in the Nottingham branch when I lived there at the turn of the last century, and I’m pretty sure Reading had one too. Perhaps readers with even longer memories than mine can correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall it was on St Mary’s Butts, where Favourite Chicken is now. Anyway, also around the turn of the century the chain went bust leaving just one outpost, on Little Clarendon Street in Oxford, as the only survivor.

And it’s still going strong.

It’s approaching its thirtieth birthday in a couple of years, and I can’t remember a time in my restaurant-going life, really, when it wasn’t there. It’s been an ever-present across the past two decades, constant as my life has shifted and changed, and I’ve had countless lunches and dinners there, with family and with friends. Back when I didn’t review places outside Reading, it was my venue of choice for eating in Oxford, especially pre-theatre before watching something at the wonderful Oxford Playhouse. But there were more than a few boozy evenings there too: I still remember the horror and confusion of an American friend I lost in the divorce, trying snails for the first time.

Just as my life has changed in that time, the topography of Oxford has too. Little Clarendon Street used to be the epicentre of Oxford, for me, where everything was going on. It had Pierre Victoire, a great little tapas place next door and ice cream café George & Davis opposite, a brilliant interiors shop called Central and another little shop across the way called Ottoman selling cool bits and bobs. At night it was criss-crossed with fairy lights, just a magnificent place to be.

And then the years intervened and other parts of Oxford got more interesting – Jericho just around the corner, Summertown further north, the explosion of interesting restaurants and coffee down the Cowley and Iffley roads. I found myself more likely to have lunch at Arbequina and coffee at Peloton, or to amble down North Parade before a reservation at Pompette. The Westgate, a shopping development that makes the Oracle look sad and tired, altered Oxford’s landscape too. Little Clarendon Street by contrast didn’t really change, both its biggest strength and weakness.

But in recent times the pendulum has swung back, and heading to Pierre Victoire last Saturday for a late solo lunch I was struck by the fact that Little Clarendon Street is having another moment. Central may have closed, but next door social enterprise and excellent café Common Ground was doing a roaring trade. Across the way, The Jericho Cheese Company was full of lactic treats to take home and newish bottle shop and restaurant Wilding, where the Café Rouge of my student days used to be, looked very tempting. And there, familiar and unchanged, was Pierre Victoire: I was surprised by how gladdened I was to see it.

Pierre Victoire only opens for lunch Friday to Sunday nowadays, and it’s a tribute to how popular the place is that when I rang in the week to make a lunch booking pretty much all they had left was a table at quarter to two. And the place was humming with life and conversation when I stepped through the front door. The ground floor dining room goes back a long way and I seem to remember they have another dining room upstairs, or they certainly used to. I’m pretty sure these bare brick walls predate any trend for exposed bricks: it’s that sort of place.

But the tables at the front, with daylight, are the plum ones. Mine, literally tucked behind the front door, had “table for one” written all over it but gave a great view of the room and the happy diners of North Oxford. A table for six was making a meal of settling their bill, and the staff were perfectly attentive and friendly, showing no frustration. A steady stream of diners came in even after me – some with bookings, others chancing their arm on spec. All of the latter were turned away: an establishment this busy at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon has cracked something which eludes many restaurants, including a lot of the ones I review.

Pierre Victoire offers a prix fixe menu for lunch and dinner, and they differ slightly in terms of how much choice you get and the type of dishes: for instance, duck confit is on the lunch menu, while it’s magret de canard for dinner. The price varies too – lunch is about twenty pounds for two courses and twenty-five for three, whereas dinner is closer to thirty and thirty-five. Back when Pierre Victoire was open for weekday lunches I think it was even more affordable, but back when Pierre Victoire was open for weekday lunches literally everything was more affordable: I’m not sure how helpful that comparison is, really.

In any event the menu was full of French classics, many of which I’ve tried over the years – onion soup, chicken liver parfait, moules, escargots, steak frites and so on. I was a little jaded after an evening on the wine with a friend the night before, so I swerved the wine list on this occasion and instead opted for a fortifying Orangina. It came in the classic, original bottle and I wondered, short of Perrier and Fanta Limon, whether any non-alcoholic drink had as great a capacity to transport you as Orangina does. My body needed the sugars, that was for certain. The staff also brought a jug of iced tap water without me having to ask. Either they do this as standard or I looked as off the pace as I felt: either way, it was appreciated.

The other thing they always bring without you having to ask at Pierre Victoire is bread. Not ubiquitous sourdough: sourdough has completely passed Pierre Victoire by, or rather it’s above such things. No, you get a little basket of cheap, plain baguette with some decent butter which came out of the fridge a little too recently. But it’s always ambrosial; like the Orangina, like the hubbub, there’s something of elsewhere about the whole thing. You’re simultaneously mentally very much in Oxford and across the Channel, both of which are pleasant experiences.

My normal order at Pierre Victoire would be the chicken liver parfait, which comes in a little sphere with brioche toast and sweet, sticky, jammy red onion. But I was trying to be less predictable for once, so I chose the one vegan dish on the menu, a fricasée of mushrooms. It came out mere minutes after I’d ordered – I’d forgotten how brisk, how well oiled a machine Pierre Victoire is at lunchtime – and was a lovely and delicate piece of work. The decision to put it in a little chalice of filo pastry was a clever one which added texture, as did resting the whole lot on what I assume was a splodge of butternut squash purée.

I wasn’t sure about the tangle of pea shoots – one or two restaurants I love tend to overuse these as punctuation and I wish they wouldn’t – but overall it worked nicely. The mushrooms themselves, a mixture of wild and button if the menu was to be believed, were in a sauce with cognac and a little sweetness, but I found it slightly thin. It needed the cosseting touch of cream, I reckoned. But then it wouldn’t have been vegan, and that was the box it was ticking on the menu. Even so it was polished off in minutes, and there was just enough bread to mop up the last of the sauce.

If I’d chosen a curveball as a starter, I played safe for the main. I don’t think I’ve ever been to Pierre Victoire for lunch and not seen duck confit on the menu, and it’s rare for me not to order it there. I don’t understand why more places, especially pubs, don’t serve duck confit: it’s so easy to get right and such a joy to eat. There’s always plenty of meat, it always falls off the bone to the point where picking it clean is a meticulous delight and, done well, you get that crispy skin and that subcutaneous, glossy fat. Confit duck, as it happens, is one of the options on the menu for my wedding later in the year, and it will take all my strength not to pick it.

I really love how Pierre Victoire serves duck confit, too, with just the two accompaniments. A brick of rosti, which in this case was maybe a tiny bit too soggy and not crispy enough, and a bitter orange sauce which brought everything together beautifully. Good luck finding duck à l’orange anywhere on a menu these days – it’s one of those relics of the past, at least in this country – but Pierre Victoire’s smart, affordable take on it is all you really need.

It was a perfect, simple pleasure and it made me very glad to be at that table, in that room, in that restaurant, in that city, exactly where I should be. My paperback (an Anne Tyler I’d never read) stayed untouched throughout my meal because when I wasn’t eating, or taking pictures, I was too busy enjoying where I was. Watching the staff, so on it and so harmonious, always in control without being mechanical. And looking at my fellow diners, imagining their stories and their lives outside this little parcel of Saturday afternoon where we all happened to be in the same place.

As I said, Pierre Victoire is nothing if not efficient – I’d be surprised if I was the first customer at that table that lunch service, and I saw other tables turned while I was there. But they never made me feel processed, and I gave the dessert menu serious consideration before deciding to settle up. It’s more compact than the choice for the other two courses, and a crêpe au citron called to me, but not loud enough. My bill for the two courses and that iconic Orangina set me back twenty-two pounds fifty, not including tip. Pierre Victoire maybe isn’t the bargain it once was, but I’m not sure I want restaurants I like to be bargains any more. I want them to survive.

Don’t be fooled by the rating below (I know you’ve probably already scrolled down and checked). Yes, I gave Pierre Victoire a 7.3, but what I would say is that there are 7.3s and then there are 7.3s. There are the expensive restaurants where dinner or lunch costs you the best part of three figures and you think “well, it was okay”, and there are cheap and cheerful places where you come away thinking that your hosts have surpassed, or possibly even transcended, your expectations. And yet Pierre Victoire, would you believe, is neither of those things.

No, what Pierre Victoire is is that rarest of beasts, a truly consistent restaurant. I can honestly say that the last time I went there was every bit as good as this time – and not just that, but every bit as good in exactly the same way. The time before was too, and I dare say the next time will be as well. And there will be a next time, the next instalment in a series of meals that started something like twenty years ago and, if I’m lucky, will go on for many more.

Your mileage may vary, but for my money that’s worth a dozen culinary comets or flashes in the pan. I’d say that every town should have a place like Pierre Victoire, although travelling to Oxford is really no hardship. And I’d almost go one step further and say that every town should have a Pierre Victoire, but that’s dangerous nonsense: it is, as we know, how chains get started. Pierre Victoire doesn’t need that. It’s already been there, done that, got the t-shirt – and then moved on, a long time ago, to far better things.

Pierre Victoire – 7.3
9 Little Clarendon St, Oxford, OX1 2HP
01865 316616

https://pierrevictoire.co.uk

Restaurant review: Masakali

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews

I’ve been asked about Masakali, the Indian restaurant that replaced San Sicario at the bottom of the Caversham Road, ever since it opened last November. I had a fair few messages on social media saying that it looked interesting, and when I’ve put Twitter polls up asking which of Reading’s newest openings I should visit first it’s always picked up a lot of votes. Being an awkward sod I still reviewed Minas Café, Filter Coffee House and Hala Lebanese before getting round to Masakali, but better late than never: here, at last, is the review literally some of you wanted.

I can see why people noticed Masakali. Something about the polish of its website made people dispense with their usual cynicism about yet another restaurant opening at a site which sees a new occupant every few years. The branding felt completely realised, in a way we don’t often see with new independent restaurants here. Masakali means pigeon in Hindi, and the restaurant is apparently partly inspired by A.R. Rahman’s Bollywood song of the same name: some of that might just be marketing guff, but at least they were trying.

The other thing that stood out about Masakali was the menu. Generic Anglo-Indian curries were kept to a minimum, and instead everything looked – on paper at least – properly interesting. No mix and match proliferation of protein and sauce, instead a range of more singular dishes. A few interesting cultural cross-pollinations here and there, like kulcha stuffed with truffle ghee or a chaat apparently topped with Walker’s crisps, but otherwise a good range of regional Indian dishes.

Someone had done their homework. And you know the C word was going to come up eventually, so here it is: the whole thing felt like a land grab for customers of Clay’s Kitchen rather than, say, people who went to the Bina (assuming, of course, that people still go to the Bina).

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Restaurant review: Yo Momoz

On By ediblereadingIn Reviews

Zoë was telling me about an article in the Guardian at the weekend, which said that trading standards was considering outlawing the word “cheeze” to refer to vegan alternatives to cheese. It wasn’t just cheeze in their sights but all the other words in that genre like chick’n, which I’d heard of, and m!lk, which I hadn’t. In case you weren’t sure whether the people who had proposed this were killjoys, the article included a sentence that read “the document says plant-based brands should not use homophones, asterisked characters or other wordplay.” Quite right too – I mean, how dare they? Down with wordplay!

But really, it all feels so needless. The whole point of calling a product, for example, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter is that it’s implicit in the name that it’s not butter. Nobody is being misled, and once you’ve tasted I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, I can’t believe you’d honestly think it was butter, either. It’s easy for contrarians to moan about products branded as “vegan mozzarella”, but surely nobody wants that rebranded as “vegan soft-white balls with a light cheese flavour”, do they? That’s just balls, in the worst sense.

The one thing I do have sympathy with trading standards about, though, is that particular word. Cheeze. Because if I ever sweep to power (and I’m coming to terms with the fact that it looks increasingly unlikely) one of the first things I’d do is outlaw the unnecessary use of fake Zs. This started out in mobile phone shops called things like Fone Bitz – would it kill them to spell either of the words correctly? – but it’s since infected all manner of brand names.

I’ve complained before about a gentleman’s hairdresser called Ladz Barbers, down the Oxford Road. I suppose we should be grateful that they’ve only swapped one of the Ss for a Z: it’s across the road from Biryani Boyzz, which has no such qualms and has swapped a single S for two Zs. That’s inflation for you. There’s also a Biryani Boyzz down the Wokingham Road, not far from Milano’Z Pizza on the other side of the road. I can forgive the apostrophe, but not the capitalisation.

And it turns out there’s also a Milano’Z Pizza down the Oxford Road, so perhaps this particular kind of epically bad spelling is catching. I had a quick Google to confirm all this and Google said Did you mean Milano’s Pizza? I wish I did. At the time of writing the Biryani Boyzz on the Wokingham Road has a hygiene rating of zero: it might not just be the bad spelling that’s contagious.

Anyway, I begin with this crabby, middle-aged rant because the subject of this week’s review is another culprit. I first spotted Yo Momoz, in the Wokingham Road’s Z contagion zone, on my walk back in January from Hala Lebanese, a restaurant which is presumably only weeks away from rebranding as Hala Lebaneze. It’s worth paying attention heading up the Wokingham Road or the Oxford Road because you invariably spot something new, something that wasn’t there last time you checked: it’s how I pass off those trips to Double Barrelled on the number 17 bus as vital research.

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Restaurant review: 1 York Place, Bristol

On By ediblereadingIn ReviewsLeave a comment

It was a brilliant plan, in theory: I was in Bristol in February visiting my friends James and Liz and I thought that the three of us could go to lunch at Bristol’s hottest new restaurant, 1 York Place. It opened in December and I booked a table at the start of the year, excited about being hot off the press and reviewing it before anybody except Bristol’s local papers. What could possibly go wrong?

I’d have got away with it too, if it wasn’t for those pesky national restaurant reviewers. About two weeks before my visit, William Sitwell wrote about the place in the Telegraph. It was a rave review, and to sum up his 600 words on the subject he said it “felt like being pummelled… by endless waves of gorgeous food”. I assume he thinks that being pummelled is a good thing: after all, he did go to a very different kind of school to me.

To compound that sense of being foiled, the Mail On Sunday‘s Tom Parker Bowles went too, less than a week before my visit. His 400-odd words were another panegyric, even if he managed to avoid being spanked by any of the dishes. “What a menu. What a restaurant” he enthused, splitting a £100 main course of hot roast shellfish with his buddy in the process. About £40 a head (without that shellfish platter) said the text at the end, in case you don’t fancy living it up like the King’s stepson.

It was frustrating that those two got there first but at least it meant I was in for an absolute treat. If a pair of rich, entitled, Eton-educated men were in raptures about the place, surely that boded well for my table for three? We wandered the short distance from Clifton Village hungry and with a healthy level of anticipation.

To give you the background, and explain why this restaurant has been so keenly awaited, it’s the latest venture from chef and restaurateur Freddy Bird. Bird trained in London before opening the Lido in Bristol in 2008, followed by its sibling Thames Lido in 2017. He then struck out on his own at a place called littlefrench in Bristol five years ago. Bird is well connected, and has had glowing reviews at every step of the way, along with TV appearances on the likes of Saturday Kitchen and Sunday Brunch.

His reputation even led to the Guardian reviewing Thames Lido back in 2017: in those days you had to be pretty special to lure the Guardian to Reading, of all places. In fact, the Guardian wrote three articles about Thames Lido in just under two months, which is the middle class equivalent of how excited Berkshire Live got about Wendy’s.

It’s an attractive corner plot which was an Italian restaurant in a former life, double aspect with a small dining room on the ground floor and a bigger one down some narrow spiral stairs. Sitwell sniffily dismissed the upper level as “more balcony than room” but actually, with plenty of natural light, I think I’d preferred to have eaten there than in the basement where we were seated. It wasn’t an unattractive room, but it was beige and a tad bland without managing to emulate Scandi chic. The bare tables were knotty pine, not a nineties trend I’d expected to see make a comeback (“what’s wrong with varnish?” was James’ more uncharitable take).

I tend to agree with Parker Bowles about the menu – it’s not often that I see so many dishes I could gladly order, and it made decisions hard. As with my trip to Quality Chop House the previous weekend, it was a menu with a snack section as well as the three traditional courses and actually it was very reminiscent of the London venue: a few dishes – cod’s roe, sweetbreads, schnitzel – had appeared on the last menu I read on duty. Snacks were mostly six to seven quid, starters between ten and fifteen, mains twenty to thirty.

But to give you an idea of how truly difficult it was, here’s a selection of the dishes we missed out on: salt cured foie gras with spiced quince; confit duck with lentils and salsa verde; grilled squid and squid ink bomba rice with aioli; beef, red wine and bone marrow pie. However Freddy Bird might cook, the man knows how to write a menu that makes life tricky.

Liz is an excellent person to review restaurants with because she picks the kind of lighter, sensible options I never would. James is an equally excellent person to review restaurants with because he will gladly pick something different just to give me plenty to write about. On this occasion he told me that he would gladly share the pie with me and I turned that offer down. Over the course of the meal I would slightly come to regret that decision.

But first, wine. It was a good list at 1 York Place, split into sections so you could pick a fresh white, or an aromatic white or what have you. We were torn between three, all from the “textured whites” section – if you know what a textured white wine is you’re streets ahead of me – and our server, uniformly excellent from start to finish, came straight off the fence and told us what to choose. It was a Provençal white, it cost forty-three pounds against a retail price of nineteen and we all liked it a great deal. It was pale in the glass, so I worried that we’d made the wrong choice, but it was beautiful on the palate and went with enough, if not all, of what we’d ordered.

I know people sometimes moan about the length of my reviews, but looking at the 600 and 400 words of my better paid brethren I think there’s something to be said for talking about food at greater length. A dish from the snacks section was described as Sicilian winter tomatoes, smoked pork belly. Parker Bowles described the tomatoes as “pert and firm”, and Sitwell made an awful joke about how Spaniards would feed the dish to vegetarians (he loves vegetarians), concluding with a “tee-hee-hee” which made me wonder if he was the Beano‘s Lord Snooty.

That’s all well and good, but what neither of them had the word count to convey was that this dish was small and, for my money, mislabelled. This was closer to lardo than pork belly, and I think there’s an implication that dishes billed as snacks should be sharable. This wasn’t, and dividing it in three was fiddly and barely worth the bother. Were the tomatoes pert and firm? Not especially. I mean, it was quite nice and all that but for six pounds fifty it was not much for not much.

Much more like it was the cod’s roe, served with fennel to use as a crudité. I’ve come to cod’s roe quite late in life, having been a taramasalata refusenik for many years, but I really loved this and, if anything, I preferred it to Quality Chop House’s version the previous week. I had never considered using fennel to dip in anything, to be honest, but 1 York Place has quite converted me to it as a concept – sweet and crunchy, the aniseed note rendering the roe less cloying.

William Sitwell loved this dish too, although he said that fennel was “the equivalent of a sensible nanny giving one a bollocking”. That’s Sitwell for you, the classic Everyman. There wasn’t quite enough fennel to scoop up all the roe, so I’m glad our server talked us into ordering some bread to account for the last of it. You got five thick slabs of it and a generous quantity of salted butter, at the right temperature, for just under a fiver. I’m not going to include a photo of that: you know what bread looks like.

For me the standout dish of the meal was what came next, fried lamb sweetbreads. They were heaped like profiteroles onto a puddle of bright, beautiful salsa verde, dressed with thin strips of anchovy and crispy sage leaves. This was pretty much all my favourite things on a plate, and all of it was done exceptionally well – the shell of batter light and delicate, the almost racing green salsa verde deep and delicious.

But it wasn’t just me – or James – that adored this dish, because the critics were wowed by it too. Parker Bowles said he didn’t think he’d taste a better dish this year: I eat far less well than he does, but I might not either. He did describe the salsa verde as “brusque” though, which looks great on paper but is about as meaningful as saying that it had a firm handshake. Sitwell said that it “swirled in the mouth like a whirlpool of discovery”, seemingly unaware of quite how gross that sounds. He obviously wasn’t bollocked by that nanny often enough.

As I said, Liz can be relied on to choose options on the menu which I tend to avoid, the sort I would probably order if I was a better person. A prawn and lobster blini fitted that bill admirably and definitely looked the part, topped with ribbons of fennel and fronds of dill. This wouldn’t have been for me – dill is the one herb I’ve never quite taught myself to like – but Liz, who said it was light and fresh, was a big fan.

I had genuinely been torn between a number of mains, particularly the confit duck or the squid, but my decision was made before we ordered when our excellent server walked past with a couple of plates and slowed down so I could rubberneck, a terrible habit I have in all restaurants. “That’s the schnitzel” he said about one particularly attractive-looking dish, and so I decided to forego the other options.

Was it the right decision? Almost. It looked the part, bronzed and crisp-edged, perched on a heap of celeriac remoulade, a fried egg reclining on top, the whole lot festooned with capers. On paper I should have absolutely loved this dish, and yet it wasn’t quite right. For me the veal was a little too thick, the coating a little too brittle, coming away and not adhering. And yet it was soggy at the bottom, which it really shouldn’t have been. The remoulade was beautiful, and most things are improved with an abundance of capers, but for me this missed the mark.

At £28 it was the most expensive main on the menu, and I couldn’t help remembering that the schnitzel at Quality Chop House the previous week had been almost a tenner cheaper. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was better than 1 York Place’s version. Then I remembered the schnitzel that occasionally popped up on the Lyndhurst’s lunch menu that cost ten pounds, and that was certainly better.

The other two dishes showed that Bird likes to stick to the tried and tested. Ox cheek in Pedro Ximenez was on Thames Lido’s menu when the Guardian visited over six years ago and it was present here, the only substitution being cavolo nero for kale. Still, the classics are classics for a reason and James had no complaints. “The potatoes are puréed perfection”, he said. I thought this dish was slightly on the small side, but that might just have been me: “they’re generous portions, aren’t they?” said the server as he plonked this down. In case you care desperately by this stage what William Sitwell thought, he liked this too. It was, apparently, “the blackest, richest ox cheek you can imagine”.

Another dish from the textbook was Liz’s choice, hake with potatoes, celeriac and mussels in a saffron and dill broth. I did have a sense of déjà vu about this but didn’t realise until later why this was: it was very similar to a dish Thames Lido served up when I reviewed it six years ago.

Liz liked this version more than I’d liked the 2018 incarnation – the random chickpeas had been taken out and the dill had been dialled down (I’d forgotten how much Freddy Bird likes dill) and overall she was a fan. “Even though I had two fish dishes I didn’t feel there was any repetition” she said. I’m glad she picked this – my reviews don’t always have enough of interest for you pescatarians out there – but it wouldn’t have been my choice.

None of us fancied one of the sides, Castelfranco, which is the kind of thing Nigel Slater refers to airily as “bitter leaves”. So we ordered the other, roast pumpkin with chilli, butter, sage and walnuts. This wasn’t what I was expecting or hoping for: giant wedges of pumpkin with more crispy sage leaves, a heap of what I assume was Parmesan and a cluster of walnuts. It needed more butter, some chilli – the chilli had gone AWOL – more texture and contrast. It felt like a slog. We left some.

I can nearly always go for a dessert, and I imagine I could usually persuade James to have one too, but the dessert menu was where the magic touch had deserted 1 York Place. I’m sure that it would have much to appeal to many, but for me it was too heavily dependent on hot school dinner type affairs – a steamed golden syrup sponge and a rice pudding were both available – so despite being in the mood for something sweet we called it a day. When William Sitwell went earlier in the month he had a chocolate and dulce de leche tart: if that had still been on the menu I’d be telling you all about it now.

It felt strange to bring the meal to a close so sharply, like closing a book a few chapters from the end, but I’ve never been one for finishing novels I’m not enjoying and I don’t believe in forcing myself to have dessert for the sake of it either, not even on duty. Our meal for three, including ten per cent service, was almost bang on two hundred pounds. Just to compound how lovely the staff were, our server told us to have a lovely rest of the day and up on the ground floor, collecting our coats, we were told that again. The staff were fantastic from start to finish – they should up that ten per cent to twelve and a half.

On the walk back to Liz’s car we compared notes. Liz liked it more than James had, and was happy with her choices. I suspect I liked it about as much as James did, but he naturally scores things lower than I do. “Better than anything Wilson’s would produce and a third of the cost” was his analysis, although it might have been heavy on the hyperbole. But then he’s never forgiven Wilson’s, after heading there based on my review, for serving up an expensive, utterly carb free meal and leaving him ravenous; later that evening James admitted that “better than Wilson’s” was an epithet he’d apply to almost anywhere in Bristol, including Greggs.

And what about me, what did I think? Well, I was a little nonplussed by the whole affair. 1 York Place neatly fits into that category of restaurants – there are quite a few of them – where they are better than a lot of what Reading has to offer but, in the wider scheme of Bristol, nothing special. It is a lovely neighbourhood restaurant but I have a sneaking feeling a lot of that is around it being in a lovely neighbourhood. If I lived nearby I’d still probably end up doing the short walk to Bar 44 or trying out The Clifton, which won a Bib Gourmand recently.

But then I think of the exalted company I’m in, by reviewing the same place as Messrs Sitwell and Parker Bowles the same month they went there. They no doubt know their food better than I do, and of course they also know the chef better than I do. If this was somebody else’s restaurant would they have written the same paeans of praise? Would they have even gone there at all? I don’t know, but it makes me glad I didn’t have to sum up the place in a few hundred words. I’m not sure how anyone could capture a restaurant accurately with so little space to play with. I know I couldn’t. But I’m not sure they did, either.

1 York Place – 7.7
1 York Place, Bristol, BS8 1AH
0117 2447775

https://www.1yorkplace.co.uk