loudjazz's Profile
Staying at Chesterfield Mayfair in London, need recommendations, please
You should try Murano for lunch, there is an excellent 3 course menu for £27 p.p which is amazing value when you factor in the amuse gueule. carefully cooked food with an Italian accent and cool, professional service in a modern dining room.
I review it on by blog here . http://salvos.co.uk/diary/blog/
In search of Venice/Treviso advice, also agroturismo recommendations in Venice area
Trattoria Antiche Carampane specializes in seafood so may be a little above the budget but, importantly for Venice, I found it great value for money. Spanking fresh fish, the soft shell crabs brought alive and kicking to the table looked amazing.
my blog http://salvos.co.uk/diary/blog/index.php?id=78 has a review of this and another couple of good places in Venice. Buon viaggio.
My favorite restaurants in Florence. Enjoy!!
Salve CJT,
This is from last years visit
TEATRO DEL SALE.
CIRCO-LO CREATIVO D'INTRATTENIMENTO CULTURALE SANT'AMBROGIO
Fabio Picchi, the maestro behind Cibrèo (the celebrated and expensive landmark restaurant in Florence) seems to be colonizing the whole street. We arrived at Via dei Macchi to dine in the ‘Teatro del Sale’, his members club/co-operative, and passed the great Chefs’ other establishments, Cibrèo, Trattoria Cibrèo and Café Cibrèo, all serving true tastes of the region at various price levels but, apparently, the same quality. Well, if the food in those places are of the same standard as the meal we enjoyed at the ‘Teatro del Sale’ I shall look forward to returning to this magical street, though how I will be able to resist the charms of the ‘Teatro’ again I do not know.
Not so much of a meal as an experience.
The place seems to be this socialist chefs’ attempt at creating his utopian ideal of a space for relaxation, contemplation, socialization, education, entertainment, dining and general enjoyment of life.
I was knocked out by this place.
He looks like a crazy culinary alchemist with his shock of white hair and intense demeanor as he patrolled the kitchen and dining room.
His wife has been described as Italy’s answer to Robin Williams! Her theatre company, ‘Compagnia Maria Cassi’ often performs here after dinner but sells out quickly when she performs, often a weeks engagement at a time.
To dine you must become a member and agree to abide by the co-op rules which are sometimes tongue in cheek -you can have membership revoked for not letting others know of any newly discovered great dining experience- and are mostly centre on good manners, tolerance and self discipline.
Reserve a table, only 99 people allowed in nightly. As a member you can also visit for an amazing value for money breakfast or lunch.
The velvet curtains are drawn at 7.30 and we all walked through to a large room with an open kitchen, chefs preparing dinner, open fire pits, hanging copper pans and wood burning ovens.
Help yourself to the dishes on a serving table, chef shouts out the dishes as they are prepared for you to go over a help yourself.
‘Lampredotto with much chilli and salt, 4 minutes, eat it with bread on its own. Fish soup made with fish heads still available, come to the kitchen hatch. Orecchiette with black cabbage, 6 minutes.’
You are encouraged to clear your own plates, waste is rightly frowned upon, help yourself to the wine and water.
I won’t bore you with the dishes, you know them already. Simple homestyle family food with the emphasis on territory, provenance, simplicity, seasonality and culinary Knowledge.
From polenta with butter and cinnamon to casareccie pasta with dogfish, chilli clams, tripe or boiled beans with olive oil, everything was simple yet special. Broccoli puree with anchovies, stewed runner beans and white bean mash were mopped up with Focaccia made with lardo and ‘bones of the dead’- fat soft breadsticks shaped like bones- all baked in the wood burning oven. The spits gave us rabbit, sausage, chicken and roasted chunks of bread that had soaked up the meat juices.
On one visit here my brother was gently chided by the great man himself when he asked for an extra chicken meatball with capers.
‘Only one per member’ growled a twinkly eyed Mr Picchi at the kitchen hatch.
‘Can I get one for my brother, he’s just there?’ said John pointing to me sat at the table directly in front of the hatch, I could hear his reply clearly.
‘It’s like a church; tell him to come here to be annointed’
Livornese fish soup, a rich but plain risotto, misticanza salad, boiled greens with olive oil were also enjoyed before a piece of fruit crostata and coffee from the communal urns.
A couple of members who lived around the corner gave me the recipe for the castaniacco we had tasted, a traditional sweet made with chestnut flour, pine nuts, raisins, rosemary and olive oil but no sugar. Earthy and unusual yet familiar, it reminded me that Christmas was approaching.
At 9.30 the tables disappear and an hour of live entertainment follows. It could be jazz, satire, folk, poetry or anything to finish off a most memorable evening.
The price of 30 euros was all inclusive.
My favorite restaurants in Florence. Enjoy!!
my 3 favourite dining experiences in Florence.
Il Santo Bevitore, just over the river, is a lovely atmospheric room serving great traditional food with a contemporary slant, an interesting wine list, sophisticated and hip without an Italian cliche in sight. Worth booking as it seems to fill up for every service.
Pane e Vino - Modern Italian, the Food was faultless when we ate here.
These are some but not all of the dishes we loved.
Sardines with liquorice, blood orange and fennel. Baked artichoke inside a soft artichoke cream casing. Broad bean soup with sauté chicory and chicory cream. Pasta ‘purse’ filled with burrata cheese and dried tomatoes, chlorophyll oil. Cardoon timbale with mozzarella and Ragusano cheese mousse. Braised beef cheek, oxtail, white beans and black cabbage. Someone really knows how to cook here.
Teatro del Sale
Mentioned often on these boards for good reason , coming here on your first night in Florence is a bit like getting on a topless bus on your first day so you can get an overview of the area. Eating here gives you a chance to try up to 25 different and authentic Tuscan dishes and soak up some proper Italian atmosphere. You can interact with other customers and chefs as you serve yourself from the big Table or the kitchen hatch.
More Info on the meals on my blog - http://salvos.co.uk/diary/blog/
Florence, help --
I agree with CJT, as a lovely Italian experience you cannot beat Teatro del Sale for a great evening out. I also recommend Giovanni's on Via del Moro. Owned by one of the Latini family the food, is very good with a standout dish of Calves brains and artichokes one lunch. Both times I visited (lunchtimes) we were the only foreigners and the dining room was a peaceful and calm oasis.
Squash blossoms in Florence?
If they are in season you will find them in many restaurants with 'meridionale' connections of the South of Italy as most Southern regions make use of them, stuffed with ricotta or mozzarella and various flavourings(anchovies and pecorino being favourites)., then floured, dipped in egg and fried. In Campania they might serve topped with a little 'Napoletana ' sauce like a stuffed pasta dish. You will find pasta and risotto dishes with wilted blossoms and prawns also.
Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna in early January?
You could stay a few days in Bra, the birthplace of the Slow Food Movement, which is a good base for visiting Cuneo with its big food market, the cheese making zone of Castelmagno and the grappa distilleries of the area.
We were given excellent restaurant recommendations and advice by Matteo Ascheri of the Hotel Cantine Ascheri.
This hotel opened in 2005 over the winery of the Ascheri Family, winemakers in the region since the 1800’s. The design, by family friend and architect Marco Poncellini is very modern in a post industrial style with references to the surrounding countryside, mountains and vineyards throughout the building with the use of wood, iron, earthy tones and even glass walls on the outside with earth from each of the 3 vineyards they cultivate. There are cheeky touches like spy hole telescopes in the walls of the rooms focused on the snowy Alps and interesting structures in the distance.
The place is an absolute delight throughout with helpful and courteous staff; I loved the amazing breakfasts where you can try the raw Bra sausage and unpasteurised cheeses as well as superbly cooked breakfasts, home made cakes, preserves and sweet things or freshly churned alpine butter on fresh baked bread.
The rooms are modern and individual with original furnishings and an eye to detail throughout; a library stuffed with books about wine, food and Piedmonte history makes it easy to relax for an hour and immerse yourself in the folklore of the region.
The staff are happy to arrange a visit to the wine making and bottling facility below, which you can glimpse through various windows cut into the floor of the public area.
A bonus of staying at the hotel is the rustic restaurant on the site of the
original Ascheri winery in the courtyard of the grounds called Osteria Murivecchi
Booking is recommended as the 4 atmospheric dining rooms were all pretty full when we arrived on a quiet Tuesday night in town, you can see that the same attention to detail found in the hotel is applied here too.
they have a website - http://www.ascherihotel.it/welcome_eng.lasso
Indian food in [Leeds]
Rajah's on Roundhay road is,I think, the only Indian in Leeds where you can enjoy food cooked in a proper tandoor with real coals. as a lover of real barbecued food it is the only place in the area I can get it.Gas just doesn't do the trick. Could also be the last Indian owned (as opposed to Pakistani/Bangladeshi) er..Indian restaurant in Leeds. Souk, on Leeds Road in Bradford also cooks on charcoal and do a damn fine curried brains dish.
For Indian food in a cool if incongrous setting you must try Bird, a restaurant situated in the new Alea casino by the Royal Armories. The menu has been devised by michelin chef Vineet Batia and, while been a bit 'fusiony', is light and delicious. Oh, it's also cheap as chips!
Mantis shrimp?
You could take a trip to Pescara in Abruzzo on the Adriatic coast of Italy where they seem to go gaga for them. Called 'Pannochie' or 'straccia-vocca' meaning mouth tearers in the local dialect, they are eaten raw ( be careful, it's easy to er, tear your mouth),boiled, in fish stews and pasta dishes where they impart a fabulous flavour.
Venice - Anniversary Dinner
The hand written sign outside the Antiche Carampane reads NO PIZZA, NO LASAGNE, NO TOURIST MENU. This simple statement is not meant to deter tourists as the staff were welcoming and friendly but rather to nail their colours honestly to the mast. Seafood is the stock in trade of this delightful restaurant close to the Rialto Bridge in a neighborhood where premises were used for the ancient trade of prostitution from the 13th century. No longer I hasten to add !
Live soft shell crabs were brought to the table for our perusal and the fried fish was some of the best we had ever tasted, light, crisp and fragrant. Lunch here had the atmoshphere of a tipical local eatery rather than a place just catering to tourists as can often happen in Venice.
Sunday night in Leeds
The chef at Woodlands has now moved on, his sous chef has taken over the kitchen so I don't know what the menu or style of cooking is at the moment. Where are you John?!
On another note I have just returned from the Taste Festival in Millennium Square, Leeds. It is sold out for tomorrow (Saturday) but it is happening on Sunday also. It is worth a trip with chefs like Andrew Pern (Star Inn), Anthony Flynn (Anthony's) Simon Shaw (Gato Negro) all up for a chat and serving small portions of their food. Lots of freebie food and drink around too - very enjoyable, I shall have to return tonight to spend my 'crowns' that you purchase to buy food, I was so full after 3 dishes and a couple of freebies I had to come home for a kip! I've not had such a large portion of fois gras and black pudding (served with caramelised applesand watercress salad) ever served to me in a restaurant, and it was only a fiver (10 crowns) . Bargain.
What are the best restaurants in Marbella?
Here's the dinner report from last nights meal.
I had booked a table by email a week ago at Skina, a small restaurant in the Old Town area of Marbella serving new wave Spanish to a maximum of 14 customers every night.
The tiny dining room is elegant without the faux formality that is found in many restaurants promising ‘fine dining’ along this coastline.
We were warmly welcomed at the door by name, Marco, a young, smart professional offered us a complimentary glass of local Cava while we scanned the menu.
Dainty hand made breadsticks and some kind of large crispbreads with black onion seeds were presented in a very heavy oblong of marble with grooves for the crispbreads (similar to the Italian ‘Mother in Law’s tongues’) and a hole filled with a dip made from pork fat and smoked paprika.
The 4 of us went for the Tasting menu at 48.50 euro a head and we started with a recommended bottle of very nice dry white (Do Ferreiro, 25 euro).
I could go on about this excellent meal so I will.
The cooking was precise modern Spanish with tons of flavour; Marco, one of 2 staff in the room, asked where we were from and it turned out he had worked with 2 friends of mine, Tony and Olga of Anthony’s in Leeds at El Bulli in Roses, talk about small world!
We had a procession of dishes, all memorable and 3 bottles of wine including a red at 35 euros (Finca Valpiedra – ‘scuse me for the lack of wine info but alcohol, visual and taste overload made me miss things in my surreptitiously scribbled notes!) We finished the meal with a digestif similar to grappa and the bill came to 350 euro.
This was the menu degustacion.
Gazpacho served in chilled test tubes and topped with some crystallised stuff (cucumber? Olive oil? not sure)
Fois gras with yoghurt 3 ways (mousse, crunchy niblets, cream) and honey.
Tuna with different raw and cooked textures, micro cucumber, avruga caviar, sweet cucumber salad.
Bronze shiny cube of oxtail with tomato, apricot and soft rocks of olive oil .
Sea bass in high tech plastic bag (en papillotte) with samphire, cherry tomato, fine veg, crispy seaweed? – served in a china hat.
Smoked prawn fritters.
Iberian Pork with candied aubergine, vincotto, blood sausage? and crispy vegetable stuff. The pork looked like a piece of rare beef fillet- dark red and oozing a little blood/juice, however it was pork neck muscle, cooked at low temperature for a long time. The quality of the meat was absolutely exceptional and swoonfully delicious.
An illuminated glass cube that gently changed colour was a pedestal for a bowl of crumbly chocolate, ‘frogspawn’ of violet, apricot mousse in a round skin, crispy sweet bits (unidentified) and soft little cubes redolent of yoghurt.
Chocolate graffiti – 4 ways with chocolate included choc ice jigsaw, balsamic choc mousse and some eucalyptus granita.
We thought it was all over and were outside having a smoke and digestif when another dish/not dish arrived.
Egg custard cube, chocolate with a suspicion of curry and a pot of red fruit fool with raspberries .
Flippin ‘eck it’s just a raspberry.
Are you sure?
Is there something in it?
Nope, just a raspberry – how nice to finish the last mouthful with something unreconstructed..
So, that was dinner at Spina. We all thought it the best meal we have enjoyed on the Costa del Sol. It was a lot of fun and surprisingly unpretentious and casual.
It will be interesting to see how these young restaurateurs get on in the future.
More opinions needed.
Sunday night in Leeds
Sundays in the centre can be desolate.
dunno what to suggest if you think Anthony's and Salvo's are dreary- the opposite is true. The food in Sous le Nez is good, very close to the Quebec you will find Bar and Grill and Chino Latino, both on City square- Bar and Grill (part of a small chain) is big and buzzy with decent brasserie style food and CL serves Japanese inspired small plates. It can be expensive but I have eaten some great food there in the past. It has a 'cool' cocktail bar and D.J's on a weekend with a young crowd (I'm not sure about Sundays)
Bibi's is 100 yards away and is a loud, brash, Art Deco Italian. The food is very hit and miss but is always full and becoming a bit of a party venue for hen parties and the like (cock a doodle doo). If food is not the number 1 requirement on this trip it can be fun for the eye candy alone and it has a bar so you could just have a drink then go to the decent Thai opposite.
Woodlands is a short (3 miles) taxi ride away in a bit of an industrial area and serves contemporary British food, I recently had the best meal I have eaten in Leeds in the last 6 months there, the chef is a good un and has worked with the best.
You are, of course, spot on loobcom, Leeds is the happening vortex of cool in Yorkshire with its own Harvey Nicks but the City closes on Sundays so hipness can be thin on the ground till Monday morning.
The Hi Fi club is good on Sundays with live music and cheap and cheerful Sunday lunch, nice crowd and live music, live bands and free entry on the evening too and just on the edge of the exchange quarter with a whole bunch of cool bars if you are a bar type. Gritty Northern hipsters are content to sup pints and nibble daintily on pickled eggs with pensioners in pubs like the Grove or the Pack horse and enjoy the 'turn' on offer. The Red Chilli has some great dishes, the boiled dumplings, pigs kidneys and blue swimming crab were exceptional but there are some right old gloopy and cheap tasting dishes which spoils it a bit.
Good Luck on your Sunday in Leeds loobcom.
What are the best restaurants in Marbella?
Has anybody been to Skina, C/ Aduar,12 in Marbella? the few reviews I have found (in Spanish) are very good. The menu degustazione is around 50 euros and the style seems to be modern spanish. I have reserved a table for next week and will report.
VENICE FLORENCE POSITANO
in Florence try Pane e Vino, it's a 20 minute walk from Ponte Vecchio but on the other side of the river. Excellent and precisely cooked contemporary Italian food with an interesting wine list and knowledgeable staff.You can see the chefs at work on a couple of screens discretely placed around the walls, lots of plants and greenery make it a very
pleasant dining room . The sardine brochette with liquorice served with blood orange and fennel salad was very good. My favourite place in Florence has got to be Teatro del Sale, here you will get to enjoy the real taste of Tuscany in an exciting setting.Read my blogs (salvos.co.uk/diary/blog) for in depth reviews of my favourite restaurants in Italy.
'Ristoranti della Buona Accoglienza ' is an Association (currently 16 members) of restaurants in Venice that promise regional cooking, seasonal produce,local seafood from the lagoon and game and vegetables from the Po delta. They try to distance themselves from the plethora of establishments with 'International menus' and promote price transparency and a good price/quality balance. I ate at Osteria alle Testiere and Trattoria Antiche Carampane and they were both splendid. Venice is an expensive place of course so these places represent good value for money.they have a site (veneziaristoranti.it) in Italian with good info about the restaurants and also the cuisine and ingredients of the region. Another very good restaurant is Pane vino e San Daniele (get a good map!) run by a Sardinian chef. The desserts in particular were memorable when we visited with a creme caramel made with pumpkin which was outstanding.
If you are driving along the Amalfi Coast and don't mind a longish drive (it is rather beautiful) you could try to make it to 'Pappacarbone' in Cava dei Tirreni near Salerno where one of the rising young stars of Modern Italian cooking, Rocco Iannone, is making his name. Besides working in a couple of starred restaurants in Italy (Don Alfonso and San Domenico) he has worked with Ducasse in France.
Also on the Amalfi drive is "Acquapazza" in Cetara, a charming village that tumbles down to the seashore. We found exemplary service and great seafood, a dish of spelt was made with 'Colatura di alici' which is a speciality of the village and is a type of condiment similar to Garum or Thai fish sauce made from the 'drainings' of salted anchovies. An Excellent restaurant.
Wedding in Italy, where for reception?
I went to my cousins wedding in Cetara on the Amalfi coast a couple of years ago. The reception was at the Hotel Cetus , aperitivi on the veranda and lovely views of the coast.They have a small restaurant serving modern Italian food which was fantastic which would be perfect for a small party, there were 150 guests in the large dining room for the wedding breakfast which was light and airy but big! Our rooms had romantic views of the coast and some of the walls along the corridors are the rock face of the cliff it was built on- cool!
Cetara is not the most touristy of places on the coast but it is a charming little village with 3 great restaurants, all in the Michelin Guide all a few steps away from the small sandy beach (except the hotel which is on the main road above the village). google the hotel for info.
Pro's -typical and traditional Italian atmoshphere and food with great restaurants very close by.Stunning coastline and you can make your Grand Entrance by boat.Also you can all stay in the hotel!
Con's - I don't know how they are at organising a wedding for non Italian speakers as this wedding was very traditional Italian style for traditional Italians!
I got married on the Amalfi coast at the Grand Hotel Excelsior overlooking Amalfi. The food and views of the coastline were stunning and the terraces and cave bar was just perfect however it was 20 years ago and I am not sure how the place is now- I know it was in need of a revamp 5 years ago . The little chapel was in the grounds of the hotel and the priest from the village of Pogerola up the road did the honours.
Weddings in Italy are big business and can be quite expensive. I was at a wedding in Fiesole, overlooking Florence last October which was perfect in every detail. location, food, flowers, drinks, music, bilingual service etc but, I suspect, very expensive! It was all organised by an American wedding planner living in Florence who also conducted the open air ceremony in the grounds of Villa Maiano (where they filmed Tea with Mussloini and Room with a view) overlooking Florence. I can find and forward his details if you like - he was very charming and knowledgable on all things weddingy and Italian.
Hope this has been some use, good luck hunting!
