Maze

Arctic crab with mango and pickled mouli

This was a very light first course, which I didn’t really appreciate until the last mouthful, upon which it left a delicious taste of fruity crab, and was much like a super-clean and fresh piece of sushi. The mouli discs were gelatinous circles offering a contast I’m not entirely sure was welcome.

Pollock with mussel beignets and cucumber

Very good, classic styled fish dish with a creamy sauce and to delicious deep fried mussels. The cucumber was in artful little melon-type scoops.

Szechuan-spiced pork belly with pressed apples, kale and onion confit

Expecting a tongue-tingling spice I didn’t receive, these bits of crispy pig were nevertheless marvelously tasty, as pork belly done well always is. The crackling was hard enough to make me wish for a sharper knife but superb in the mouth.

Lamb rump, Slipcote cheese, samphire and pinenuts

An unsual and overpowering taste combination. The very soft, rick Ewe’s milk cheese coupled with a deliciously light medium-rare bit of lamb was a very pleasant surprise, and too the pairing of samphire – a personal favourite of mine but never eaten with anything but fish & seafood previously – made for a great end to a really good meal.

After deliberating over the dessert menu, Craig and I, who had spent much of lunch considering then rejecting healthy options, steered clear of further food. I however took an excellent Macallan 10 year malt that was as smooth as any I’ve drank, whilst he had an amaretto. I then made my way back to the office, well fed. 

HungryHungryHumpo

A Monday in France – Guest Entry

This entry comes from esteemed friend of the Lunch Club, Mr. Luke Weaver. He recently had a special Monday jaunt to France that, upon seeing on Facebook, I wondered if he would recount for these very pages. What follows are his words.

 Unless you have your own private jet, or a role in the millionaire circles, flying over to France for lunch on a Monday must seem like a distant but very nice dream. However, that happened to myself 2 weeks ago. Due to a friend of my girlfriend’s dad needing to put some hours in his pilots log book he asked myself and Dave, Jo’s Dad if we would like to head over Honfleur in France for lunch – and he would fly.

We left from Shobdon near Ludlow on a beautifully bright and sunny Monday morning and headed down to the channel over Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Isle of Wight and the English Channel whilst avoiding the British navy who were doing firing practice in the area. It’s always nice to hear over the radio the air traffic controller that we could be blown to pieces if we went off course, so reassuring.  2 hours later we landed at Honfleur International Airport.

A 10 minute taxi ride and we were down on the harbour-side in Honfleur. However, we hadn’t budgeted on there being a marine festival in Honfleur and a French national holiday – the restaurants were somewhat busier than we had anticipated.

We finally decided on a lovely restaurant which thankfully had a table for 4 outside and we settled down and in my best basic, broken French managed to get 2 Heinekens ordered for Jo’s Dad and myself whilst our pilots stuck to the soft stuff and had every child’s favourite French soft drink, Orangina. I was keen to tuck into 3 courses and my eyes were immediately drawn to my favourite of starters – steak tartare. Tragically though, everyone else was heading straight to mains and then puddings so I bottled the starter and started perusing the main options.

After looking through the plethora of options especially the stupidly long list of Mussel dishes I finally went for the Moules Roquefort after a toss-up between that, Moules Cider or a large steak. The Moules Roquefort option was based around a sublime version of the same dish I enjoyed with one of the co-authors of this blog, HungryHungryHumpo, along with 6 of our very dear school friends in Maubuisson last May. My fellow diners went with the steak option x2 and the fish, with it being mullet.

My Moules Roquefort finally arrived accompanied by a lovely large portion of frites and my worries on portion control were quashed. All that was left now was to see whether they would match up to the ones I had, had 12 months previously……….I wasn’t to be disappointed as each shell gave way to a large meaty morsel with the taste of the cheese and my only disappointment was the lack of sauce, especially given the mountain of quality bread that had accompanied my dish as well as the frites. Upon ploughing through the mussels I finally began to see at the bottom of the pot a glimmer of lovely sauce which had sunk to the bottom. I devoured it with a big smile on my face and soaked the bread and my salty frites into the sauce and I was a very happy young man. These Moules had surpassed any version of this dish I had, had before but I am sure they will be beaten at some point again. The moules were washed down with a lovely bottle of Brouilly which Jo’s Dad had chosen. Whilst some people would be aghast at drinking a red with Moules and a Chablis this Brouilly was quite light actually and went quite nicely with the dish. Anyway, it is always nice to mix things up now and again isn’t it?

For desert I had opted for the crème brulee. Whilst being mostly disappointed with crème brulee in this country with the small portion size that you get at most restaurants here I was delighted to see a mammoth portion of one of my favourite deserts dropped in front of me and I duly dispatched it, it was marvellous! Jo’s Dad went for the Tarte Tartin which also looked very delicious but I never got a chance of trying any! Jo’s Dad’s friend and his co-pilot went for the selection of ice-creams and interestingly the riz au lait (Rice Pudding) which he said was surprisingly tasty.

After polishing off the rest of the wine and a couple of coffees and espressos we headed off for a quick waltz around Honfleur and it is a lovely little town. I managed to pick up 26 macaroons for Jo’s Mum as it was her birthday the next day and as they were only 20 euros and packaged quite wonderfully I considered it a steal. This was reiterated when 24 hours later that she let me try one of them and they were lovely, even more chuffed that all 26 I could choose what flavours went into the pack, I could have chosen from 35+ flavours but I think I chose well.

Just to finish off our day after taking off we headed up the coast to Cherbourg and passed over the top of the American war memorial which looked pretty spectacular from the air and you manage to get an idea of the sheer size of the place, it certainly made you think what those boys had given up.

We landed 2 hours later back in Shobdon and I can confirm that French food is still in good health and as far as I am concerned is still my number 1 cuisine in the world. The whole atmosphere of lunch in a French town is superb and as well as enjoying my lunch I spent as much time people watching and seeing masses of families sitting round a table tucking into large steaks of pots of mussels including the children!! Mondays spent lunching in France I could certainly get used to, best go and get some lotto tickets purchased.

 

Eat St, The Lunch Club date and Mussel Men

Today, as documented below, was historical. Not only for the Chelsea score and subsequent progress to the final of the Champions League, but for what happened at lunch. It was the first time in nearly three years that both members of the Lunch Club shared lunch (of the weekday, recordable variety).

There was hype and preamble in the air. The digital communications channels were awash with noise. 

When we got there (me, somewhat earlier than my dining companion) we both said the briefest hello before falling in line at our respective street food vendors of choice. Like a carnival on a microscopic scale. 

I barely hesitated before placing my order of lychee and coconut moules frites, and staggeringly was shouted encouragement by some fellow eaters nearby, who I later realised were affiliated to the stall in some way. That mattered little however, as I escorted my cardboard box of some of natures finest treats over to a bench and tucked in.

The mussels were fantastic – some huge, meaty monsters that practically filled the shell, as well as some darker little tiddlers – but all unified by a fresh, delicate and lovely taste. My only complaint could be that there were not more – at £6.50 for both mussels & chips (of which there were plenty) this in the upper end of the Eat St. bracket.

There were lovely near-whole lychees in the mix, and a squirt of ketchup for my frites. I didn’t get any spicy chilli notes that the aforementioned afficionado spoke of, though again this was of little consequence – though may have made a great dish even better.

Top marks really. The only thing missing was a sweet, sugary finish. Thus when back in the office I cracked open a packet of Jelly Belly beans – a sweet I once hailed as the world’s finest but attitudes have changed. However today they were more than up to the task, unlike Barcelona.

HungryHungryHumpo