I’m of the firm opinion that everyone has at least one useful life lesson you could learn from them. Someone I used to know, for instance, was convinced that you could never go wrong taking champagne to somebody’s house: we didn’t agree on much, it turned out, but on this she had a point. My stepmother has a rule, a very wise one, that you should never buy her any Christmas or birthday present she has to dust. I sometimes give her champagne, which combines those two rules nicely.
A married couple I used to know had two excellent customs. One was that using the W word, talking about work, was strictly verboten on Sundays. The other was that, once in a while, one of them could play a joker and opt out of adult life for a whole day. The other one had to make all the decisions – where to go, what to do, what to watch, everything.
I’ve tried to introduce that latter rule into my own life, but without much success. Most of the time my spouse, tired from working to the core of the bone, doesn’t want to make decisions for anybody else. And when she does, she has a bad habit of making plans for me that I just don’t like.
“I think you should stay at home and pack for the move” was Zoë’s suggestion last Friday when I was facing another Saturday on my tod and asked her what I should get up to: I didn’t fancy that at all.
So on a whim, a solo Saturday stretching out in front of me, I thought “fuck it, I’ll go to Oxford”. I headed for the station, and was sitting in C.U.P. having a mocha and making my plans when Zoë texted me. I thought I’d have one last crack at abdicating responsibility.
“I’m going to Oxford but I’m torn between grabbing a late lunch at the Magdalen Arms or trying Sartorelli’s, that pizza place in the Covered Market. What do you think?”
“Have the pizza. You can review it.”
What happened next was a series of some of the happiest events. First, that moment when your train pulls up and it’s mostly empty, no standing in the aisle holding on to the back of someone’s chair, sitting on the luggage rack or slumped in the vestibule. Instead, a leisurely trundle through Oxfordshire, just me, my phone and the music in my headphones. As Larkin puts it, all sense of being in a hurry gone.
Getting off at Oxford I was struck that although it wasn’t quiet – it never is – it wasn’t crazily busy, and as I strolled in, up George Street and Ship Street, I thought how curious it was that I’ve never quite escaped this city, just up the train tracks from home, where I spent three years learning a lot about a little but precious little about life. That used to put me off the place, but now I’ve reached some kind of accommodation with it.
Another glad event followed as I entered the Covered Market. It was that wonderful coincidence that happens when you arrive somewhere very busy literally as somebody else is just leaving, and can jump into their place. So I got a plum spot outside Sartorelli’s at one of the long tables, just by being in the right place at exactly the right time: after that, the queue just grew and grew. If I’d got there five minutes earlier, or later, the day would have had a completely different shape.
The Covered Market has always been one of my favourite spots in Oxford, even back in the early Nineties when I used to stop there to pick up a lunchtime pie from a trader called Ma Baker (Boney M fans, I presume). But its character has been changing in recent years, with many of the traditional traders driven out by high rents: the butchers and fishmongers have left, and on this visit one of the old-school mens’ outfitters had a closing down sign in the window. The likes of Fasta Pasta, who used to do the best ciabatta in the world, are gone too.
But in their place a very different sort of trader is settling in to the market. Although they recently got a little tap room from Botley’s Tap Social, I first noticed the phenomenon a few years back with Teardrop, a micropub offering beer from Church Hanbrewery, a little brewery based out past Witney. They had half a dozen or so beers on cask and keg, and sold charcuterie and the like, and they had a few barrels and tables outside. And then there was a wine bar, Cellar Door, next to it – again, selling wine by the glass. And finally, there was Sartorelli’s along from that, setting up a little ecosystem – wine, beer and pizza all in one little corner of the market.
Sartorelli’s also sprung up out of Church Hanbrewery, first offering pizza at the brewery taproom before opening in the Covered Market in March 2022. And since it opened, every time I’ve been to the Covered Market – usually to buy cheese, or grab a latte from the excellent Colombia Coffee Roasters – I’ve gone past, thought the setup looked great, eyed the pizzas being devoured outside with no small degree of envy. And then sighed. because I had a lunch reservation somewhere else. But on this occasion I was in Oxford with no plans, and this space at a table outside had miraculously come free. When opportunity knocks like that, you don’t send it away.
The very kind couple next to me kept an eye on my stuff and I went up to order. The place was a bustle of activity, with a big wood-fired oven and a menu displayed on the wall that was simple almost to a fault. Fundamentally you can have a margherita for £8.50 and load it with whatever you fancy, at a cost of 50p per topping, or you can have one of their suggested combos. The menu explained that sartorelli means small tailor, and that as far as they were concerned you could tailor your pizza however you like.
I spotted one of the suggestions that mentioned anchovies, ordered it, paid £10.50 and scuttled back to my seat and my bag, gratified that they were still there. My tablemates then kindly agreed to keep looking after my bag while I went to Teardrop and ordered two thirds of their Teardrop Citra on keg. It cost just under four pounds and was absolutely gorgeous – cold, crisp and, I hoped, perfect pizza accompaniment. I went back to my table with my winnings, saw the queue beginning to build and felt like coming here for lunch was turning out to be a very smart decision on my part.
My pizza arrived just over ten minutes later, although I was having such a lovely time that I’d quite happily have waited longer. It came on a metal tray, à la The Last Crumb, but they’d sensibly put paper underneath it which also helped it stay warm longer. Sartorelli’s just gives you a pizza cutter, a napkin and some chilli and garlic oil, so if you’re a cutlery user, their pizza might challenge you. And this was the point where I realised I had completely missed the fact that, on the menu, my pizza was billed as coming with a “sprinkle of rocket”. It was a nice idea, but it was more than a sprinkle, and without cutlery it added a layer of complexity to eating the thing with your hands.
Initially I also wondered whether the rocket might have been used to camouflage the toppings, to conceal any caper or (especially) anchovy-related stinginess that was going on. But once I settled down to eating the pizza, I realised nothing could be further from the truth. It was liberally carpeted with tiny, punchy capers, had a respectable number of plump black olives and, most importantly, plenty of glorious, salty anchovies.
Not only that, but the base was excellent – especially the crust, all blistered, puffy and chewy. I was having an absolutely marvellous time: a bite of the pizza, a sip of the gorgeous beer, an unworthy look up at the queue, still growing, and I felt like I was properly winning at lunch.
I should have stayed for a dessert, really – it’s just ice cream, which they say is “hand crafted to a secret Sartorelli recipe” – but I had my eye on something from Swoon on the High later on, and I also felt guilty depriving punters of a seat. So I ambled off to the Oxford Cheese Company to pick something up for the evening, and then wandered out towards North Oxford in search of one of my favourite pubs in the whole wide world, the Rose And Crown.
I have broken one of the unspoken rules of restaurant reviewing by reviewing the same kind of establishment two weeks running. Last week was Zia Lucia, this week it’s Sartorelli’s: it’s the equivalent of putting two consecutive tracks on a mixtape by the same artist. But I think it’s very instructive in some ways because restaurants aren’t only about quality, or value, or service, or even convenience. They’re also about expectations, and whether they can surprise or delight.
So I expected Zia Lucia to be something special, and although you couldn’t fault their tomato sauce, or their Parma ham, the overall experience was a little underwhelming. And yet on a wooden stool, at a trestle table in the middle of the Covered Market I had a pizza from a place that didn’t shout or brag, but just did an absolutely marvellous job. Excellent craft beer from a place two doors down, a little people watching and hubbub, and an excellent lunch that, all told, set me back just under fifteen pounds.
Experiences like that are reason enough, if you find yourself at a loose end on a Saturday, to hop on a train and take your chances. I’m very glad I did. Besides, I’m asked quite often whether there’s anywhere decent to go for an informal, quickish lunch in Oxford, and now I have an answer for you. I may not have any great life lessons to impart to you – although my stepmother’s rule of thumb is a very good one – but you can usually rely on me for a restaurant recommendation.
I’ve been writing this blog for nearly ten years, and I’ve been moaning that Reading needs a good tapas restaurant for most of them. Certainly I was saying that from the moment, back in September 2013, when I had the misfortune of visiting Picasso just off Caversham Bridge (“one tapas is enough for two people” was the warning sign, looking back). Surely, given the popularity of small plates in general and tapas in particular, someone would give it a bash?
That said, there was a halcyon period, between 2015 and 2018, when Reading was graced with I Love Paella, first in Workhouse Coffee down the Oxford Road, then at The Horn in town, and finally at the Fisherman’s Cottage by the canal. But the owners of the pub decided to let them go, so they could offer their own menu which looked disconcertingly like I Love Paella’s. It didn’t work: the pub closed and changed hands.
And what have we had since then? Numerous restaurants that do good small plates, but only one place, Thames Lido, for tapas (their “poolside bar menu”). I know the Lido has its fans, but having had nothing but inconsistent meals there – and having watched them churn through chefs like it’s nobody’s business – for me that tapas itch remains unscratched.
It’s baffling, because it’s a style of eating that has readily taken root elsewhere. In Bristol you can choose between Bravas, Gambas, Bar 44 or Paco Tapas. London options include Barrafina, Brindisa, Salt Yard and Iberica, and I’ve barely got started. Closer to home Goat On The Roof opened in Newbury last year (I liked it, when I went) and more recently El Cerdo has started trading in Maidenhead, part of its ongoing explosion of interesting-looking new restaurants. And this kind of restaurant keeps coming – Salty Olive, a pintxo restaurant, is opens soon in Wokingham. Yet Reading’s tapas market remains resolutely untapped.
In my experience, great tapas restaurants in this country tend to be run by Brits fanatical about Spain, Spanish culture and Spanish food. Often, rather than recreating what you would get in Andalusia, they set about building a superior re-imagining of it. The 44 Group, run by the Morgan family, is a great example, completely obsessed with produce and producers. Arbequina, down Oxford’s Cowley Road, is another.
Even tapas restaurants which feel more authentically Spanish, more an attempt to create a traditional tapas bar in this country, are often set up by Brits. I’ve always had a huge soft spot for Los Gatos, easily the best restaurant in Swindon, perched up in the Old Town: it’s only in the process of writing this week’s review that I discovered that it, too, was founded by a British couple and named after Malaga’s legendary bar of the same name.
So really, I should have ventured out to Maidenhead this week to try El Cerdo. It fits the bill I’ve just described: the website talks about a love of Spain and Spanish flavours, the menu makes all the right noises. Muddy Stilettos raved about their (no doubt free) food, and it appears – from a look at Companies House – to be owned by Brits. That would be the obvious choice, but who likes obvious choices anyway?
Instead I decided to revisit the one tapas restaurant I can think of that appears, from what I can gather, to be owned by a Spaniard, Wokingham’s Sanpa. It’s been running since 2012, and I visited it back in 2016, when I loved the place. They then moved to a new house (as did I – twice) and our paths diverged. But people get too hung up on the shiny and new, so before I reviewed the shiny and new I decided it was time to get myself to Wokingham with Zoë and see whether the intervening years had been kind to Sanpa.
It’s one of the town’s older buildings, two conjoined cottages, all beams, white walls and cosy, farmhouse-style chairs and tables. The two dining rooms are separated by a hearth and the second gives a view into the open-ish kitchen. It looked homely, not unpleasant but also, in honesty, not drastically different to when I visited this building last in 2016, back when it was home to a restaurant called Jessy’s.
It was also, and this never flatters a dining room, empty. Marie Celeste empty. Not with a few tables settling up, not with reserved signs marking the space of the diners yet to come. Just empty. I don’t know about you, but I always feel guilty if it seems like I’m the only thing standing between staff and an early night.
Despite that the welcome was warm and immediate and it felt like a nice, if cavernous, place to stop on a midweek evening. And looking at the menu I could see plenty of reasons to settle in for a few waves of small plates. Most of it very much looked the part, although a couple of dishes – bacalhau à bras and chicken fajitas – did seem to have wandered across from other restaurants.
Pricing for tapas was all clustered around the eight pound mark – although some dishes were £7.95 and others £7.59 for reasons which seemed capricious at best. The bigger plates – steak, lamb shank, three different kinds of paella – were grouped together under a section endearingly entitled “Other things to order”, even though that literally describes everything on a menu, if you think about it.
My favourite part – and I’ve never seen anything like this before – was a sternly worded box in the bottom left. It said, and I’m quoting verbatim here, Please make sure that you know what this dish looks like or taste (sic) like. Due to the level of controversy and the cost of this dish, we regret to inform you that we will not be able to refund this dish of (sic) your bill if you’re not comfortable with the outcome of your order.
I followed the asterisk, expecting it to be something contentious like octopus, or sweetbreads, but instead found a rib-eye with blue cheese and Rioja sauce. Is steak and potatoes really controversial, or were they playing it safe because it was just shy of twenty-four pounds?
The wine list was okay, if not hugely tempting. I was in the mood for a Spanish beer – always so enjoyable with tapas – but all they had was San Miguel by the bottle. So we decided to grab a jug of sangria and that turned out to be an excellent choice. It was expertly put together to taste as if it had no alcohol in it, even though you knew it did, and if it contained a slug of rum or brandy it was nicely blended and concealed. It tasted, to be honest, like holidays – and what’s not to like about any drink capable of that?
Our first wave of dishes was a decent reflection of the strengths and weaknesses of the kitchen. Bread was bought in but serviceable enough, and the allioli tottered under the weight of an industrial quantity of garlic. But the colour was Hellmans-pale not golden, the consistency woolly, closer to fridge-cold butter than the good stuff. Chorizo in cider came, not as an earthenware dish full of slices of chorizo, caramelised at the edges, rich with juices, but rather as two hulking sausages, plain and unadorned. This didn’t fill me with hope but actually they were terrific, the kind of quality you can’t easily get your hands on in this country.
If that dish didn’t give the bread much to do by way of moppage the next more than made up for it. I’d loved Sanpa’s prawns in garlic on my visit seven years ago and was keen to reacquaint myself with them. They were still very nice indeed, sizzling away in a little skillet surrounded by nuggets of garlic somewhere between golden and crunchy.
This, more than the allioli, felt like the bread’s destiny, to dive and scoop and play in that pool of oil and garlic. I remembered halfway through that I was in the office next day, and felt bad for my colleagues. But if you wanted an illustration of what’s happened over the last seven years you couldn’t find a better one – the dish cost about a pound more than last time, but contained roughly half as many prawns.
Then there was the dish for which I had the highest hopes: panceta a la parilla, described in the menu as “ideal as finger food”. From that I was hoping for little cubes of pork belly, something close to chicharrones. Instead we got three slabs of belly, plainly grilled, without much accompaniment. It wasn’t quite cooked to the point where the fat starts to render and everything gets gloriously sticky, and I found a couple of shards of bone in my piece.
I found myself thinking about what this dish would have been like in the market at Malaga, the whole thing dressed with a little herbs, the tomatoes thicker and tasting properly of tomatoes, as they always do abroad. Abroad they would have been bright with grassy olive oil and scattered with rock salt. Did I think the chef was running on autopilot because he hadn’t bothered to do any of that here, or had I decided that because I could see, through in the open kitchen, that he was cooking with his headphones on?
A meal like this is definitely a game of two halves, and as we cogitated and fine-tuned our next selection of dishes the staff – who were absolutely brilliant throughout, by the way – took our dishes away. I asked our server if she had any recommendations – “you’ve already had quite a few of my favourites” she said, which I liked.
By this point another couple had come in and were sitting the other side of the room, which had the advantage of making me feel like less of a lemon. Again, I worried about all the good restaurants unable to pack them in on a midweek evening; I doubt, back in Reading, Popeyes was having this problem. I felt a moral responsibility to order more dishes – and another jug of sangria, although there was nothing moral about that.
Our second wave of dishes showed the same inconsistency but, if anything, were more disappointing. I’d decided against the patatas bravas, our server’s recommendation, instead picking the patatas con crema de Cabrales. This was the same cheese, by the way, that featured in that Absolutely No Refunds Ribeye. The possible reason for that is that Cabrales is stinky. It is one of the most agricultural blue cheeses there is, perfect with Asturian cider, though pretty good on its own. This potato dish should have been salty and funky – a handful, no less.
And yet the surprisingly dark sauce just didn’t have the oomph, and there wasn’t enough of it. What there was had slipped through the cracks and landed in a pool at the bottom of the dish, rather than coating each crunchy cube of spud. A real shame, because the potatoes themselves were excellent. A good opportunity squandered: was it down to those headphones again?
Albondigas were another recommendation and, again, just missed the mark. The meatballs themselves were genuinely lovely – a coarse mix of pork and beef, clearly handmade and as good as most I’ve tried. But drowning them in a gloopy sauce of tomatoes and peas coated the accomplishment in an emulsifying layer of blah. And I didn’t see the point of putting more cubes of potato at the bottom where they just wound up bedraggled and soggy. The meatballs should have been the star of the show – again, my mind wandered to Malaga and to its marvellous Uvedoble, where the meatballs come perched on a bed of shoestring fries, the meaty juices soaking in, the whole thing unimprovable.
Croquetas were probably the most disappointing thing I ate. These were apparently made with Serrano ham, though good luck finding much of it. They’d been fried to the point where the shell was a permacrust, the inside again woolly rather than silky. Had they been previously frozen? I wouldn’t have bet against it. Just over six pounds for these tiddlers didn’t feel like amazing value (and these days, things being how they are, I don’t talk about value as much as I once did).
Last but not least, a round of goats cheese with tomato jam. This, again, is a dish I remember fondly – this time from I Love Paella – but Sanpa’s was a pale imitation. Maybe it’s because we ate it last of all, but it didn’t have that almost brûlée crust – instead it was a little like cardboard. Underneath the goats cheese was still decent, although I like pretty much any goats cheese, and the tomato jam was a classic, if sweet, combo. But again I felt underwhelmed; I knew Sanpa could get their hands on decent ingredients – the chorizo showed as much – but I didn’t feel like they always did enough with them.
I feel bad saying all this, partly because I wanted so badly to like them and also because, as I said, service was brilliant all night. It takes real skill to be that happy and engaged on a Wednesday in the middle of spring, looking after a restaurant of precisely four customers. But the staff did exactly that, and I imagine they come into their own on a bustling weekend night, when I sincerely hope Sanpa is packed with happy diners. But also, much as I wanted to like them, I couldn’t imagine a Saturday night where I would be among them.
Our meal came to just shy of ninety pounds, not including tip, and tempting though it was to have a pint and a debrief in the Crispin next door, we headed for the station. I found myself simultaneously hoping that Sanpa continued to prosper – I’m sentimental like that – and wondering, if my meal had been representative, how they really could.
“I bet the people who run that restaurant have never been to Arbequina or Bar 44” said Zoë as we boarded our train home.
“No, probably not. But why would they? They’re Spanish, they probably feel they have authenticity on their side.”
“But that’s the point, you have to adapt or die: if they don’t, they might get left behind. Last time you gave them a rating of 8 or something, this time it’s going to be much lower. What will it be like in another five years? And some of the touches in our meal tonight just felt dated. Like that squiggle of balsamic glaze under the goat’s cheese, who does that any more?”
I nodded silently in agreement at my other half, easily a better restaurant critic than I am these days, as the train trundled back to Reading.
Although this guide was written in July 2022and updated numerous times up to and including January 2024, a new and completely revised version is now available dated April 2024. It can be found here.
Last week’s feature on al fresco dining got a fantastic response from you all, and is already, at the time of writing, the most popular piece I’ve published on the blog this year: thank you so much to everybody who read it, commented, recommended it and passed it on. And after the week we’ve had I have high hopes that it will come in handy for a while yet – in fact the weekend it came out I had dinner outside the Lyndhurst one night, Buon Appetito the next. So if reading it made you feel hungry I can assure you that writing it had much the same effect.
Anyway, by contrast this week it’s one of those pieces that’s a bit more niche, that will only interest a handful of you, so apologies in advance for that. But I had such an enjoyable week in Bruges and Ghent last month that I thought it was ripe for a piece, especially because my last guide to Ghent – the first city guide I ever wrote on the blog – is a creaking three and a half years old. Both cities are well worth visiting, both are gorgeous and ridiculously easy to reach by Eurostar and both offer a holiday unmarred by the flight chaos we might well see for the rest of the year.
Of the two I would say Bruges is smaller, quainter and (even) more beautiful, although it’s very touristy and decidedly sleepy of an evening once the coachloads of day trippers have moved on. Ghent is larger and more sprawling, with much more of a big city feel. Its historic parts are reminiscent of Bruges but it also has street art, a modern art gallery, a design museum and more of a craft beer scene outside the traditional Belgian pubs.
As a tourist, you could easily do Bruges in a long weekend, as a beer devotee you could explore it for a lifetime and never tire of the place. Having now made three trips in just over six months, I completely get its magic and understand why it’s captured the hearts of many people I know. If you aren’t nuts about beer, Ghent might keep you occupied longer. But they’re half an hour apart on the train, so you could easily (as I have) make a two centre holiday of both.
Oh, one other thing before I get started – this is only based on places I went to on this year’s visit. So my piece about Ghent from 2018/2019 is potentially still worth a read, it’s just that I can’t vouch for places like Brasserie Du Progres, Oak, Otomat and Barista (I bet they’re great, though). I can however guarantee that the pastries from Himschoot are as gorgeous as they ever were: they’ve even opened a few additional branches since I was there last.
Bruges
1. Bruut
Bruut is in a handsome building next to an absurdly beautiful bridge overlooking the canal, and inside it’s all rather convivial – leather chairs, fetching tiled floors and exposed light fittings. But there are a few al fresco tables by the side of the bridge with a gorgeous view, and that’s where I sat when I had lunch there, one of my meals of the year. Chef Bruno Timperman offers a no-choice, no-substitutions set menu for lunch or dinner and comes out to introduce and talk through many of the dishes himself. And put simply, the man is a wizard: I don’t normally talk about chefs in my blog but this is all very much in his image and it’s very much his show.
Nothing I ate was short of dazzling, and there were almost too many highlights to mention, but a steak tartare made simply with high-grade beef, salt and milk to draw out all the flavour was a tender, mineral miracle. A pre-lunch nibble of prawns, cooked whole and dusted with a vivid raspberry powder was like nothing I’ve ever eaten. And our dessert, cherries halved, hollowed and filled wih rose-coloured chocolate, topped with discs of elderflower jelly and sitting in a cherry gazpacho dotted with cherry balsamic, will live in my memory for a long time. My only regret is not taking up the wine pairing – although in my defence it was only lunchtime, and the beer list has some superb lambics on it which made for an excellent alternative.
I made a repeat visit in January 2023 for dinner and experienced the full whistles and bells experience, although with no booze because I was a little subpar. Not everything worked – a beautiful piece of cod wrapped in crispy nori and topped with caviar was submerged under an icky spooge of what Bruno called “plankton sauce” wasn’t quite my bag – but he served the most tender pigeon I’ve ever eaten, with a pigeon confit ragu wrapped up in a leaf on the side, an astonishing scallop with a Belgian take on XO sauce and a poached pear with yoghurt parfait which made some tried and tested staples seem fresh and new. If you eat one meal in Bruges, go here.
More classic and formal and a little less cutting edge, Assiette Blanche has an attractive wood-panelled dining room and the meal I had there was top notch. They have a set menu or an a la carte (although you can sort of switch between the two) and the set, for dinner, starts at a reasonable forty-four Euros for three courses.
The dishes here are generous – robust but not clumsy, but certainly not a fiddly-plated exercise in nouvelle nonsense. I enjoyed the whole lot but my particular favourite was a monkfish saltimbocca, the flesh firm and pearlescent, the guanciale it was wrapped in providing salt and smoke. The whole thing was on a bed of prawns and fregola, cut through with a dressing sporting just the right amount of vinegar. A white chocolate and rhubarb dessert, complete with a sweet, sticky syrup that spoke of time well spent, wrapped things up with a perfect bow.
On a subsequent visit in October 2022 I tried the set lunch menu, which was both superb and excellent value. And then for good measure I went back in January 2024 to find it still very much firing on all cylinders: a carpaccio of scallops with cauliflower couscous, two hulking wedges of black pudding with apple, pickled beetroot and little dabs of foie creme, a beautiful sabayon with blood orange were all simply knockout. For consistent excellence, Assiette Blanche is probably the first place I would book on a return visit.
Más is only open evenings Wednesday to Saturday, and is walk-ins only, although they very nicely take your number and ring you when they have some space, leaving you free to enjoy a beer somewhere (I had mine at De Garre, where the house triple is 11%: with hindsight not the most sensible choice). It’s worth jumping through those hoops, because Más’ Mexican food is as delicious as it is incongruous, from beautiful cheesy quesadillas to pork belly skewers with salsa, from tacos to their excellent fried chicken.
On our first visit in 2023 we ate up at the bar, and it was reminiscent of some of my happiest meals in more Mediterranean parts of Europe. Returning in 2024 I found that, if anything, the food had got even better. The fried chicken now came with a tomato sauce with a deep touch of mole about it, the quesadillas were even more decadent and all three types of taco we tried were simply brilliant although my favourites remained the shrimp, elevated with little crunchy nuggets of chorizo.
They have cocktails on tap too, apparently, although I’ve never given them a try. They have a good range of beers from Brussels Beer Project, though, which went nicely, and the excellent Lupulus NEIPA which has, to my palate, notes of mango. It pairs perfectly with one of the two desserts on the menu, the “Solero Solero” which tastes exactly as you would expect from the name, only more so.
You might think it’s a little meh to have pizza in Bruges, and you might be right. But I’m yet to find a very traditional restaurant in Bruges that really hit the spot: Gran Kaffee de Passage was a bit hit and miss, the interior better than the food (I’m reliably informed that I should try Brasserie Raymond next time). And you may want somewhere for a good lightish lunch that isn’t a moule frites place: if so, Amuni is for you. Just next to the Burg it’s a stylish space which does excellent pizza – although my favourite thing there was the vitello tonnato which we foolishly ordered to share. It’s far too good to share: make sure you order your own.
Onslow was the discovery of my trip in January 2024, and I absolutely loved it there. Slightly off the beaten track in Bruges’ Sint-Anna district it’s the kind of achingly-cool-without-trying restaurant you wish was just around the corner from you, and I detected some similarities with some of my favourite places in the U.K., like Bristol’s Marmo, along with Ghent’s sadly-closed and much missed de Superette. It’s all plain unshowy tables and bare white walls, but the place had a real verve when I visited.
The menu is made up of a handful of snacks and a bunch of sharing plates, and the bright and affable staff tell you to aim for about four sharing plates between two. We over-ordered with reckless abandon – and zero regrets, because everything was outstanding.
One of my favourite things was yoghurt, positively singing with citrus, smothered in gochujang, crispy chilli and toasted seeds, with toasted naan for dipping. Onslow’s fried chicken is easily the equal of Más’ – big craggy pieces of the stuff executed perfectly with a spiced dip speckled with black and white sesame. A tartiflette pizza was so thin and light it reminded me more of pissaladière, which is emphatically not a bad thing, and beef was served blushing, thinly sliced and served with a sauce of impressive complexity with a hint of help from some Szechuan pepper. A classic old-school dame blanche – just ice cream and chocolate sauce, no cream – was the perfect note to end on.
If I have a more enjoyable meal in 2024 I’ll have done very well for myself, and I will definitely be back. I have to say though that when I do, I will specifically ask for any table other than the tiny cramped corner table they originally put us at: with the table top pressing into my ample middle and the window ledge poking into my back it was like eating in an S shape with a makeshift gastric band fitted. We asked to move the moment a better table came free and I spend some of my time firing sympathetic glances at the poor couple who eventually took our place.
Another 2024 discovery, Goesepitte 43 is a very accomplished restaurant in a handsome townhouse in the south-west of the city. I went there for my final lunch of the holiday, partly because chef Jan Supply offers a no choice 34 Euro set lunch even on Saturdays and I wanted to see if it was any good. It really is, and you eat it in a really beautiful dining room with top-class service: one man covers all front of house, is perfectly bilingual and charm personified.
It’s so nicely judged and a great place to go if you want an excellent lunch where you leave thoroughly satisfied but not stuffed. An amuse bouche something like a mushroom duxelles set the scene nicely, but far better was to come: a risotto with fine herbs, edged with olive oil, was topped with a beautiful slice of parsnip, cooked on their Mibrasa oven (whatever that is), carrying a precious cargo of toasted pine nuts and dill. Pork was served pink on a slab of charred cauliflower, its fractal edges blackened and savoury.
And if I was a little underwhelmed by my chocolate and coffee ganache, it might mostly have been envy from staring at the dame blanche opposite me. Even so, my meal was easily enough of a treat to make me want to explore the a la carte next time. Not only is the wine list great, and the aperitif cocktail equally so, but the drinks list also contains some excellent beer if your tastes skew that way.
Bruges is a beer city, no doubt about it. So you really have to admire the pluck and persistance of Cuvee, a wine bar right in the centre which has been going for something like 20 years. Not only that, but for over 15 of those it has exclusively stocked natural wine, which makes it a true trailblazer in more ways than one. The owner told me all about this as I settled our bill at the end of a hugely enjoyable lunch in January 2024. She said it was especially tough when they switched to natural wine, and that this made them a bit of a figure of fun in Bruges’ food and drink fraternity.
Well, to quote the great Alan Partridge: needless to say, Cuvee has had the last laugh. Because what they’ve built is quite something: a deceptively huge, incredibly tasteful space absolutely packed with cool furniture and gorgeous bottles of wine. There’s space out front for groups, a little snug at the back which would be perfect for drinking with friends and some tables for dining, looking up at the counter.
There is also, I am happy to say, a really terrific menu of the kind of food that goes well with wine. I adored my duck rillette with piccalilli and thin melba toasts, and was blown away by a couple of enormous cheese croquettes, so glossy under their crisp shell, completely different from their distant Iberian cousins. Zoë was hugely taken with a pumpkin and sour cream dip (which also came with naan for dipping: perhaps this is A Thing in Bruges).
But even better was a plate of marinated salmon with thinly sliced spring onion and phenomenal olive oil by natural wine makers Le Coste – quite a paradigm shift for anybody used to pairing smoked salmon with cream cheese or thickly spread salted butter. We left with two bottles of white wine expertly chosen for us by the owner, and a business card. After all, we have a joint stag and hen do to organise and I know just the place for afternoon drinks.
For an actual light lunch, instead of a pizza, I highly recommend the muted but chic Kottee Kaffee. It’s on Ezelstraat, a street with a scattering of tasteful boutiques, and it offers a menu which is sort of Le Pain Quotidien but independent. So there’s lots of lovely bread and salted farmhouse butter, cheeses and charcuterie but the menu offers lots of more brunchy stuff if that’s your bag. Very fetchingly put together, decent value and there’s good coffee too. But perhaps just as winning were the staff and the constant playlist of 90s music, most of which they enjoyed singing along to.
On my first visit at the start of 2023 we asked how long they’d been there and apparently they’ve been open less than a year. You’d never have known. Returning in January 2024 I was delighted to see it thriving, and as stylish and buzzy as ever. This time I tackled something more substantial, their tartiflette which was a glorious, slowly solidifying wodge of potatoes, cream, cheese and little nubbins of sausage. They serve fantastic coffee too – and if you feel even remotely sub-par, their ginger shots will sort you right out.
Bruges has lots of pretty patisseries where the priorities are the cakes and pastries and the coffee, though perfectly pleasant, plays second fiddle. I went to one on my final morning in the city and we waited ages to get served and even longer to get the bill: the pain au chocolat was good, but not that good. Far better, in a little square with some outside space, was Vero Caffè. It also sells excellent squidgy brownies, exactly as you would like them, so it gets my vote. They were absolutely rammed when I returned in January 2024 but still doing superlative coffee – along with a decent carrot cake and sublime dark, fudgy chocolate cake.
Come for the music, stay for the atmosphere! is the slogan of this record shop in the east of the city. Come for the music stay for the coffee, more like, because it served one of my favourite coffees in Bruges. I love places like this – it reminded me of Truck Records, out on Oxford’s Cowley Road – and I’d have happily whiled away longer sitting outside or inside with a good book. They do cocktails and beer too, although precisely how much they expect you to put away before they close at 6pm is anybody’s guess.
A return visit in January 2024 confirmed that it’s simply one of the nicest places to sit nursing a coffee, and I simply love the fact that the coffee is so much better than it needs to be. Make sure you have Shazam installed on your phone before you go to Cherry Picker, because you will end up using it.
On my visit in October 2022 I became a regular visitor to Adriaan for the first coffee of the day and I became thoroughly attached to the place – it’s a tasteful, classy spot, all muted mint green and comfy furniture, the antithesis of craft coffee places in the U.K. and abroad with their reliance on chipboard. The coffee is pretty good, the pastries are spot on and the service is friendly and speedy. Every city break needs a reliable coffee place like this, although you may find yourself channelling Rocky Balboa whenever you mention the place (or that might be just me).
Cafune probably does the best coffee I had in Bruges, and is in a small and likeable spot two doors down from Màs, in a street which also boasts the fantastic and fascinating beer shop Bacchus Cornelius (top tip: head to the back room for the white whales of the Belgian beer world). They roast their own coffee – and very good it is too – and they have a small but comfy space inside, although I got quite attached, figuratively speaking, to their little bench outside.
Just as well, as they were semi-closed for a makeover when I returned in January 2024, only serving takeaway coffee. You could still perch on the bench outside though, so it remains a real happy place in Bruges. One word of warning which applies equally to Cafune and at least one other café in this list – opening days can be a tad random and quixotic, so make sure you have a plan B in case you traipse here only to find them closed.
From hearing Zoë talk about Café Rose Red I was expecting to like it a lot, and I wasn’t disappointed. A rather attractive room, all red walls and roses hanging from the ceiling, it had a decent if not incredible beer list and an interesting range of options on tap. I’d heard good things about the food and so we ordered a few bits and pieces to graze on. The assorted cheese and charcuterie was surprisingly disappointing, but I think the trick is to go for dishes that the kitchen has cooked rather than simply dished up: the kibbeling – battered chunks of fish with a mild, soothing tartare sauce – was the equal of any similar dish I’ve had in Andalusia.
I probably would have liked Café Rose Red a lot more if I’d liked ’t Brugs Beertje a little less, but that was never going to happen. The Little Bear is arguably the Belgian watering hole elevated to its ultimate form, a little conspiratorial place with a great selection on tap and an eye-wateringly brilliant list of bottled beers, including many Belgian breweries I’d never heard of and a “vintage” section which gave you the chance to try dark beers and lambics which had been properly cared for across the best part of a decade. I had a Cuvée Delphine from 2013 by De Struise which had the kind of depth and complexity that haunts your imagination long after you’ve taken your final sip.
But more than the impressive selection, it just felt like the perfect place to stop, drink, eavesdrop, people-watch and potentially get into random conversations. The middle room complete with plaque to original Belgian beer spod Michael Jackson (not that one, a different one) was nice, but the front room was where you wanted to be, at a table with your favourite person, making inroads into that excellent list, in no hurry to be anywhere else. It reminded me of the Retreat in its previous incarnation under Bernie and Jane, when it stocked shedloads of Belgian beers – and always the right glasses to go with them – and it made me miss the Retreat of ten years ago, too.
But either way, whether you were there in a pair or, as I’ve experienced a couple of times, in a big raucous group of beer obsessives, all diving into the depths of the gigantic beer list, congratulating one another on their choices and swapping anecdotes and in jokes, it is for me the epicentre of Bruges, and absolutely not to be missed. It doesn’t have lock-ins per se, but I have no idea when it really closes. On one particularly beautiful evening there we settled up, well past midnight, put our coats on, stepped through the front door, looked back at the golden glow of the windows and thought what the fuck are we doing? We went back in for one last nightcap.
De Kelk, on the other side of the road from Cherry Picker, is quite unlike the other beer places on this list. Although it does have an excellent range of Belgian beer, the list skews more to the wider craft scene with fascinating beers from breweries I’d never come across before. I tried a couple of beautiful DIPAs from Madrid’s Cerveceria Peninsula and Latvia’s Ārpus, and if I’d stayed longer there was plenty more to explore.
The interior is cracking too – a far cry from Belgium’s more traditional pubs with a tiled floor, high leather stools and lighting that’s more speakeasy than boozer, with some random streetlights used to good effect. I also loved the bar snacks, which included some disgraceful keesballen and very creditable jamon serrano. I went back last month and if anything it cemented its place in my affections – it’s brave to be like De Kelk in a city full of brown pubs and Belgian beer, and I wish them every success. Their bottle list contained countless imperial stouts I would dearly have loved to try.
De Windmolen, out past De Kelk at the edge of the city and a stone’s throw from the windmills from which it takes its name, isn’t a place for beer purists. It’s sort of part-pub, part day café and most days it closes at 8pm. The inside is pleasingly eccentric: when we went this month one table was taken up by a very competitive-looking card game. And the beer list skews to bottled triples, although they do have local Brugse Zot on tap and it never disappoints. But for me it’s a special place – especially when I visited in October 2022, and could sit outside, coatless, while the back of my neck was gently baked by the completely unseasonal autumn sunshine. Worth a stop, even if only for the one.
De Windmolen Carmersstraat 135, Brugge
Ghent
1. De Superette
Tragically, Superette closed in late 2022.
Whenever I researched places to eat in Ghent, De Superette always came up but for some reason I’d never taken the plunge and booked a table there. And then on this visit I did and in the run up to going I looked on TripAdvisor (as you do) and had a bit of a wobble. Lots of people said it was overrated, or expensive, or small portions or suchlike.
Well, I overcame my fears and went and was rewarded with a superb meal which made me wonder what all the naysayers were carping about. It’s a bakery by day and pizza place by night, offering a really compact selection of pizzas and a little tasting menu of small plates to start you off. It was the kind of place you wanted to click your fingers and teleport back home, just round the corner from where you lived, and the clientele – a huge range of ages and types of groups – were all clearly having a marvellous time.
And the food was excellent. The small plates were clever, inventive and cracking value – glorious, just-cooked peas with guanciale, a moutabal brimming with smokiness, a clever gazpacho studded with pine nuts. And then the pizzas turned out to be some of the best I’ve had anywhere, all fluffy crust and supercharged clusters of ‘nduja. I left full, happy and determined to return. The table next to us, on the other hand, ordered two pizzas between five. Maybe it’s people like that who complain about small portions: if so, I have a really simple life hack they’re welcome to borrow.
De Lieve featured in my previous guide to Ghent and I’ve eaten there on every single visit. Between my last visit and my latest, though, something happened: De Lieve was recognised by Michelin and awarded a Bib Gourmand, their badge of affordable high quality food. And the De Lieve I went to in 2019 was absolutely the kind of restaurant that gets a Bib Gourmand, but the De Lieve I went to last month feels like the kind of restaurant that’s aiming for a star, and that comes with pluses and minuses.
So it felt like the tables were that little bit closer together, the prices were that little bit sharper and the portions were that little bit smaller. The quality was still top notch, don’t get me wrong – my carpaccio of hamachi was a delicate, pretty, subtle dish, but by the time I finished it (a few seconds later) I was thinking about the bag of paprika Walkers Max back at the apartment and wondering if I’d be breaking into them in the not too distant future.
Fortunately balance was restored with a delicious Basque t-bone with rosemary gratin and a deeply pleasing jus, and a cracking tarte tatin completed an enjoyable, if pricey meal. It felt to me like bumping into a friend after a few years to find they’ve had very good, very expensive plastic surgery done. You know they look great, but in the back of your mind you think was that really necessary? Still, if you’ve never been it’s definitely worth considering on a visit to Ghent: I just miss the days when they had a puck of divine black pudding on the starters menu.
Still my favourite place for traditional Belgian food, De Rechters is a contemporary-looking restaurant which is far better than it needs to be given its plum spot next to St Bavo’s Cathedral. On this occasion, for the first time, I got to sit outside in the sunshine and it made a good meal, if anything, even better. We drank Orval, and Zoë pointed out to me that her beer and mine were bottled on different days, which explained why mine was fizzier than hers: I love it when she goes full Raymond Babbitt about beer like that.
Never having had moules in Belgium – I know, such an oversight – I had some as a starter, cooked simply with thyme and they were plump and fragrant. But next time I’ll go the whole hog and have them as a main with garlic and cream, which for me is the only way really to eat moules, dipping your bread and frites into the sauce until you are truly replete.
The frites, incidentally, were a bit wan on this visit – which is a shame, because frites are something Belgium does better than practically anybody. But the stoverij, beer slow-cooked in beer until the whole thing is a symphony of dark brown, almost-sweet ambrosia, is worth the price of admission alone. You can get frites anywhere but beef like that requires patience and skill, both of which De Rechters has in abundance.
On my holiday in Belgium I tried to learn from previous trips away and put a strict rule in place: one big meal a day. Maybe all of you already do this when you go on holiday, but sadly I’ve never been great at restraint and although it means I’ve eaten some amazing food it does make the post-holiday Monday comedown a downer of epic proportions. What do you mean I can’t have sherry at lunchtime and go to a restaurant? I’ll rail to nobody in particular. Make my own meals? Who does that?
On the plus side, it meant I could discover Ghent’s brunch scene, and that in turn meant a thoroughly worthwhile visit to STEK, an achingly cool cafe halfway between the centre and the modern art gallery. Inside it’s all plants – a lot of monsteras and plenty of other flora I wouldn’t recognise – and outside there’s a serene terrace, a proper secret garden with plenty of space where you feel nowhere near a big city. It reminded me a bit of the surprise you get when you walk through the Boston Tea Party on Bristol’s Park Street to find that massive garden out back or, closer to home, the bang-up job the Collective has done with its outside space.
Since I was embracing lunch and brunch I decided to go the whole hog and order the avo toast. Mine came with superbly crispy, curled, caramelised bacon, a fried egg with the yolk still runny, shoots and leaves and a little side salad and it was as pretty as its surroundings. It tasted phenomenal too, and the coffee wasn’t bad either. Maybe there are pluses to having a lighter lunch after all.
My absolute favourite coffee place of the holiday was Take Five Espresso in the centre of Ghent. I never completely decided whether I preferred being inside, sat up at the big windows watching city life bustling by or outside in the sun (their seating is dead clever, making full use of the public benches on the street). What I did work out though was that their lattes were magnificent and that by the end of my trip it was hard to imagine being caffeinated anywhere else. It was the epitome of café chic and I enjoyed it a great deal. I never tried any of their food, but you can blame Kultur, the excellent bakery next door (and their pain au chocolat) for that.
Clouds In My Coffee is one of the most stylish cafés I’ve seen in roughly a decade of going to Europe and seeking these places out. Quite aside from the Carly Simon reference, which manages not to be naff, the inside is truly gorgeous, like something out of Living Etc. From the street it looks small (and is surprisingly hard to find) but through the back is a wonderfully light, airy extension and beyond that another of those idyllic secret gardens that Ghent cafés seem to all have up their sleeves.
Did I want a coffee? Absolutely. Was my latte delicious? Of course it was. Did I look at the menu and wonder if it was too early for an Aperol Spritz? You bet I did. And did I feel like I was soaking up design tips for the duration of my visit? Yes, along with thinking Why doesn’t Reading have anywhere like this? The only drawback is that Clouds In My Coffee is the epitome of the best house on a bad street: Dampoort, where it lives, is an up and coming part of Ghent that, from my visit, has more upping and coming to do (the cafe’s website calls it a “multicolour fuse”, which I think is nicely poetic). The walk there from the tram stop involved walking through an Aldi car park and, for an awful moment, I thought I’d wandered through a wormhole in space and found myself on the outskirts of Basingstoke. Still worth a visit though, if only to go somewhere that fitted in about as much as I did.
On my first visit to Ghent, at the tail end of autumn 2018, I rather liked Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant, a tall building by the canal (aren’t they all?) with rooms across several floors: the room right at the top reminded me of mid-90s boho drinking culture in a way which somehow summoned up memories of Bar Iguana. But it wasn’t until I went back on a hot July afternoon that I really got what the fuss was about – sitting at a sunny table, overlooking the canal, surrounded by other afternoon revellers of all shapes and sizes it was an extremely agreeable place to while away a few hours and sink a tall, cold Brugse Zot on draft. We don’t have a word, really, for what time spent like that is like but I believe the Dutch describe it as gezellig.
I waxed lyrical about Gitane after previous visits to Ghent, and it’s still one of my favourite watering holes. But, like Het Waterhuis aan de Beerkant, it was a decidedly different experience on a hot and sunny day: everybody was chattering away at tables which fill the street outside and if you’re forced to sit in, as we were, it made for a slightly Marie Celeste moment.
No matter: it’s still a great place for a cosy drink, all wood panels and tiled floor, and if the list is less compendious than those at Ghent’s more feted bars and pubs it makes up for that with some really interesting choices from some of Belgium’s less established breweries. I had a cracking New England IPA from Brouwcompagnie Rolling Hills which married East Flanders and the Eastern Seaboard very harmoniously indeed.
The two other “proper” Belgian pubs in Ghent, both with compendious beer lists, are Trollkelder and Dulle Griet. Both are idiosyncratic to put it lightly – I had a drink sitting outside Trollkelder only slightly put off by the weird models of trolls eyeballing you through the window. I liked Dulle Griet better, although both are an experience and you should at least try a drink in one of them. It’s named after Mad Meg, a figure in Flemish folklore who led an army of women to storm the gates of hell. Whether that explains the decor and all the weird figurines hanging from the ceiling I have no idea (I wouldn’t want to do their dusting, put it that way) but it made for an interesting and characterful place to stop for an afternoon beer, especially as they had Westmalle Dubbel, a Trappist favourite of mine, on draft. Given that they boast over five hundred different beers on their list, you’d probably find something to enjoy here.
HAL 16 is a food hall and brewery out towards the docks, and is a perfect place to visit whether you like beer, food or ideally both. I think it used to just be the tap room for local brewery Dok Brewing, but there have been some changes and it now shares the space with three different food vendors: think Blue Collar, but even more cool. There’s also a branch of the excellent bakery Himschoot just round the corner, terrific coffee from the nearby OR Espresso Bar and a beer shop – De Hopduvel – which sells all the beer (and matching glasses) you could possibly want for your trip home.
I had already bought a Dok Brewing glass from a shop in Bruges by then, because I was already a fan. Dok does some truly lovely beer and there are something like thirty taps at HAL 16, with a mixture of beers brewed on the premises and fascinating stuff from breweries I’d never even heard of: the highlight of this visit was a stunningly dank DIPA from Virginia’s Aslin Beer Company. But the other reason to come here is for the food from RØK (they like their block capitals in this part of town) which smokes and grills meat, hispi cabbage and anything else they think might be good.
On a previous visit in 2019 I had a huge, smoked, blackened pork chop, fresh off the grill, which ducked under the velvet rope and went straight into my gastronomic hall of fame without passing GO or collecting £200. This time round it was all about the lamb neck, tender and moreish, scattered with salt and served with a puddle of aioli and a properly zingy salsa verde. We made the mistake of ordering pizza from another vendor first and then picked up the lamb dish from RØK just before their kitchen closed, but when I return – and I will return – I’m ordering everything on their menu, even if it leads to a Mr Creosote situation.
I try my best, doing this restaurant reviewing lark, to visit places I think are likely to be either good or interesting, or ideally both; with a few notable exceptions, I don’t go anywhere where I think I’m definitely going to have a bad meal. And even if I have my reservations, I try to turn up with an open mind, ready to find the positives in my experience, however difficult that is. Sometimes the gods smile on me and I have a run of beautiful meals, one after the other. And that’s brilliant – exceptional meals are easier to write about, and people enjoy reading about them. Conversely, the worst thing is a run of bad meals. A succession of stinkers. That does rather break the soul.
The worst run I can remember started at the end of 2019. It began with a truly awful dinner at TGI Friday, and continued with the grisly spectacle of doner meat nachos at German Doner Kebab. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was going to the Dairy, the university bar and kitchen just down the road from the MERL. I’d always loved drinking there, especially on a hot day, but the food was bloody awful. That made three cruddy meals on the spin and nearly two months without enjoying a meal on duty: it was the kind of vale of tears that makes you seriously think about chucking the whole thing in.
Then at the start of this year, there was a surprising development: the Dairy published a completely new menu on Instagram. And it made all the right noises – beef came from the University’s farm four miles down the road, eggs were from Beechwood Farm (did you know that Beechwood Farm was run by Reading University alumni? I didn’t) and all the bread was supplied by Waring’s. Not only that, but the menu was full of the kind of things you might actually want to eat. Crispy fried chicken and pickled watermelon burger? Brisket and blue cheese ciabatta? Jerk spiced plantain and halloumi skewers? Count me in!
Something was clearly afoot at the University because a week ago Park House, its bar on campus, published a brand new spring menu. Again, it all looked distinctly tempting, and again the provenance was called out, with the beef coming from the University’s farm and name checks for the excellent Nettlebed Creamery and the Cotswolds’ Hobbs House Bakery. (Not everyone was overjoyed, mind you: I really can’t believe you won’t sell cheesy chips any more, said one comment). Park House has always been one of my very favourite places for a pint in the sunshine, but was it possible that it also offered great, affordable food under the radar? Zoë and I ventured out on a sunny spring evening to put it to the test.
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There is a parallel universe in which this week’s review is of ThaiGrrr!, the Thai place in Queens Walk whose takeaway I so enjoyed earlier in the year. I’d had a tip-off that the place was almost deserted early in the evening, and so I fully intended to pay it a visit and write it up properly. I’d like to live in that parallel universe. But in that parallel universe I didn’t walk into it and think “what in Christ’s name is that smell?”
And it wasn’t just me – Zoë looked at me and said “this place smells like our old cat’s litter tray”. We waited a minute and the stench – no other word would do – did not abate. And it didn’t feel like an odour to which one could, or would want to, acclimatise. I bumped into the person who’d suggested ThaiGrr! the following day at Blue Collar and told him of our experience. “That’s such a shame, it’s never smelled like that when I’ve gone there” he said. Maybe they were having problems with their drains: I imagine at some point I’ll go back and give it another try. A couple of tables were occupied, possibly by people who hadn’t yet realised that they had Covid.
There’s another parallel universe where, having passed on ThaiGrrr!, we walked home and ordered a takeaway for me to review this week. I’d rather like to live in that parallel universe too, but I’m afraid on the way back we walked past Zero Degrees and Zoë, not unreasonably, said “that place has been on your list to re-review for some time”. And looking in the window it was practically deserted. That made it a safe place to review but, with hindsight, I should have taken the hint; when a restaurant that’s been trading for nearly fifteen years is dead on a school night, there’s probably a reason for that.
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Edible Reading 