Not so fast

Isn’t it funny how they work in those fast food outlets?

While some people (those who sensibly ask for the ‘normal’ food off the menu) get served immediately, some of us with weird tastes are kept standing there, and standing there, and then standing some more.

That’s the veggie option in burger places. I just don’t understand how one burger can be faster than another. (Unless horse runs that much faster than beans/quorn/soya?)

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get onto that topic here. It’s the chilli cheese bites I’m on about. I ‘never’ buy food from burger places, except sometimes when catching a train, I like the idea of something hot and small and tasty to eat. Chilli cheese bites are good for that. They are also rather slow.

You want them hot, or at least warm, so you don’t want to buy them too soon. On the other hand, it’s not much fun standing there, watching the burger eaters walk away with their food, while I’m wondering if I’ll miss my train.

I would obviously opt to miss the food, if it came to the crunch, but why are they so SLOW?

At the Richmond Tea Rooms

You know facebook? And those fb friends you have that you don’t really know, or whom you’ve never met? One of mine lives locally and she is a Fascinating Aïda fan, just like me. So – obviously – when she recommended a great place for tea, I needed to try it out. Especially as another fb friend happened to mention it soon after.

I decided to wait until I had company, because whether a new place is lovely, or awful, it’s best shared. Finally, Daughter was here, and we were going into Manchester anyway, so I said we’d go to the Richmond Tea Rooms as a treat.

We went. We saw. We liked. Very much. And that’s not just the amount of cake we consumed. It was our kind of place.

When we’d ordered, I let my eyes rove the room to check it all out. And – obviously – there she was. The fb friend I’d never spoken to. So I popped over and introduced myself and we chatted. She and her companions were having their regular ‘office meeting.’ On the red velvet corner sofa! I want job meetings like that.

Anyway, I had to pop back to my Earl Grey, which turned out to be Earl Grey with flavour. None of this wishy-washy stuff some places serve. Daughter tried Assam, which she liked. She had Alice’s Rarebit, which surprisingly – for her – did not contain rabbit. I had a very, very freshly made scone with clotted cream and Tiptree jam. And, a little something afterwards. That Pear Frangipane must have seen me coming. It was pear with almost nothing but marzipan..! It was wow!

Mismatched crockery and lace, table service and generally crazy decorating makes for the perfect place to sit and stare and relax. It’s all pretty Alice-y. They had signs ordering us to Eat and Drink, so we did. One does under such circumstances.

(I did wonder about the lack of hot water, seeing as the tea was leaf tea in pots. But I didn’t wonder for long. Instead of letting the hot water go cold, someone comes round every now and then with fresh hot water, and adds it to your pot.)

And I don’t know if I’d ‘met’ the other guest before. It felt like I had. Almost like old friends. Not facebook ones, but people like me. Only thinner.

Henderson’s

It looked good, Henderson’s Bistro. And it was conveniently placed for anyone already at the Albert Halls in Stirling for the Bloody Scotland book festival. The menu was OK (for me, not for my companion) and the tables and chairs looked nice enough.

But – and there has to be a but – they let themselves down. To me it wasn’t all that obvious I’d want lunch at 3.30 in the afternoon, and despite us saying we’d come for afternoon tea, we were told what the soup of the day was.

That’s once we’d actually sat down, and that took time. There were several free tables, but they needed to clear one for us, and I hope it’s because they felt it was a nicer table. Why did they need to clear it just then, when the place was already quiet? And why so slowly? Once we were seated we worried in case we were never going to see a menu.

The warm scone arrived well before the pot of tea. Very weak tea. Not terribly warm, either. And I was once more made to feel inferior for wanting milk with Earl Grey. The glass of water we asked for didn’t arrive until we reminded them. When a friend joined us, it took a long time for them to notice. Actually, they didn’t. They had to be hailed.

As for paying, that didn’t look like it would happen soon enough for me to get back to my event on time. Our server was gone, and the next waitress could find no evidence of what we’d had.

On the plus side, we sat comfortably for the free hour we had at our disposal, and it was good to meet up with a friend with no dashing all over town.

Is this your first visit to Chiquito?

No. It isn’t.

And I’m beginning to wonder if they could rephrase that. They don’t need to recognise me, because I do realise they see an awful lot of customers during one week, especially during the Edinburgh Festival. But it’s nicer to be treated like a regular, than as the ignorant newbie.

We generally like Chiquito in Edinburgh. It’s well placed for our Charlotte Square induced hunger, and every time we’ve been over the last few years has been good. (Can’t say that about our local Chiquito, unfortunately.) Good friendly service, and good food, for a chain. Reasonable prices.

What really made us return to Chiquito this year, though, was the wifi. We had no internet where we stayed, and the bookfest wifi was slow to impossible for several days. A blogger needs to blog. They even need to read emails and to respond to them. So, setting up office next to the Chimichanga seemed a good solution to us.

Clearly it wasn’t annoying enough to the waitress, to make her remember us two days later. It was useful to us, however. A lifesaver the first day. I don’t know if the answer to attracting diners is to have free wifi, but in this instance it worked with us.

The view from the street outside isn’t bad, either.

Campino

It has become a bit of a holiday tradition to eat pizza at Campino in Varberg.

First you need to get to Varberg, and we don’t always, but most years we do. On some occasions we have forced GP Cousin to come along, and he always panics a little before, but he usually settles after he has ordered.

The pizzas are good, even for non-pizza lovers, and the place is fresh and clean. You can sit outside if the weather is favourable. (I suppose you can even when it isn’t, if you don’t mind.) You just need to make sure you don’t share your lovely pizza with the giant gulls.

I don’t often eat prawn pizzas out, but after I discovered they sprinkle lots of good quality prawns over the pizza after it’s come out of the oven, I often order it.

There are long queues at lunch time. Generally in the evenings too. If you can manage to be hungry some time in-between it will be quieter.

They do all the other ‘fast’ foods people enjoy, as well, but we only ever go for the pizza.

Hungry in Covent Garden

We went to Bistro 1 again, yesterday. Visits haven’t been quite as frequent recently as they first were, but we still like it. Bistro 1 might not be the best, but it’s better than most.

I forget which year it was I took Offspring to Neal Street for the shoe shops. They were old enough to appreciate such things, and they shopped for shoes to an extent that would have had Mother-of-witch and Favourite Aunt weeping with pride, had they only been able to witness this from ‘the other side.’ Perhaps they did?

And then we got hungry, and I didn’t know Covent Garden very well as an area. But I reasoned that there is always a Pizza Hut. There was. Were. Plural. But as we headed towards one, we saw this other place and decided to investigate. Miracle of miracles, it had several things on the menu that Daughter would eat, including one of her most favourite starters. And the prices were good.

What’s more, the waiters were both friendly and efficient. You might get one or the other, but rarely both. The Eastern Mediterranean food, and many vegetarian options, makes a nice change from pizzas, and pizzas, and even pasta, when it’s less good, as it can often be at the cheaper end of eating places. Mezze is great. Moussaka, even for an aubergine hater, is good. The pancake with so much filling that you can’t possibly eat it all, is also fine.

We’ve always had a good meal there. The two course deal is good value, to say nothing of the three courses you won’t have room for. They don’t mess up your evening out by taking too long, and delaying you. Even with a party of twenty at the next table, you’ll get to the theatre on time.

Since we aren’t in London as often as we used to be, and we don’t always require a sit-down meal when we are, we go less often. As I said. But it’s top of the list for when we do need food.

Konditori crawling

That’s a more dignified version of a pub crawl.

Dodo likes having coffee out in Sweden. She reckons it’s one of the best things about this country, and I’m tempted to agree with her. Although, I have to eat something with my coffee (tea in my case), which will be why I sometimes mention large size clothes.

In the ten days Dodo and Son were with us this time, they checked in at so many coffee places on facebook that you could be forgiven for thinking that’s all they did. (And if it was me, I’d keep quiet about it.)

We ‘crawled’ to some places together, and when we did things separately, they managed to fit in an admirable number of coffee holes. At one point I texted to see if they were joining us for pizza for lunch. They would, was the reply, when they’d finished their elevenses.

As for me it’s probably a good thing we are going home today. That Banana Bend I had with my tea on Tuesday morning wasn’t strictly speaking necessary. But it was nice. And it’s funny how people know for a fact that ‘Englishmen’ drink only tea. That will be why the server placed the mug for tea in front of the Resident IT Consultant, although he was eagerly awaiting his coffee.

6th June 2012

That was the wrinkliest shirt I’ve ever seen a policeman wear. Not that I go round checking police shirts, you understand. But once I’d clocked the two police officers listening to the music in Varberg’s Societetspark along with the rest of us, I noticed the shirt which had surely been washed and left to dry all bundled up in the cupboard and then worn with no thought (?) for looks.

Varberg seems to do this 6th June celebrating properly. We only joined the feast towards the end, totally unintentionally. It was yours truly’s birthday, which will be why we were heading to GP Cousin’s home for his birthday party, four days early.

After a breakfast of blueberry pancakes made for me by Dodo and Son, we travelled north. We stopped en route for a late salmon lunch at Laxbutiken in Heberg. (Both we and the salmon were late, although not the same kind of late.) Offspring and Dodo decided to leave the 40 kinds of ice cream for some cold refreshments further north.

It was not easy parking in Varberg on this National Day, but we managed. How come the drivers of special vehicles always seem to get good parking spaces without trying? One pleasure of being in Varberg on a sunny summer’s day (and what a surprise that was!) is checking out all the American cars cruising town.

The biker flying a flag to celebrate my day was also appreciated.

We walked round the castle, decided the ice cream queue was too long, and then sat in the park, enjoying the tail end of the festivities, listening to a girl band. They were good, but we have no name for them.

We had some extra fun getting lost in this small town I’ve visited every summer for 56 years. Trying to drive the wrong way in a one way street was part of the fun. But we eventually got to GP Cousin’s party, after testing the Resident IT Consultant’s talent for turning the car round in tight spaces.

Ate even more food and cake and chatted to relatives, including the rarely encountered cousin of cousin. Finished by driving home along the old coast road, seeing as it was still daylight. Great day, just the way a 6th of June should be.

The decline and fall of a smultronställe

As Son said, ‘what café owner in their right mind decides to close for the day at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon, just as the customers are arriving in droves?’ We knew the answer to that, because it was the place where we were having tea and cake. Partly by cunning and partly by luck we had arrived at 3.30.

Smultronställe is the Swedish for that very special place, somewhere you love and keep returning to. The café mentioned above is not it. But it was.

Let me tell you about Göstas. As long as I can remember, this seaside café with a marvellous view of the beach and the rocks and the water, had been run by the man we called Gösta. Not his real name. He’s a bit of a charmer, rather in the style of a good British pub landlord, perhaps. But the kind of charmer who bakes all his own bread and cakes, serving it with a smile, and still has time to hand out vinegar for children who have been stung by a wasp, or to tell a mildly funny story.

Originally the place consisted of old garden furniture in the grounds of a former glassworks, with a small covered corner, in case of rain. But you can always eat ice cream or drink coffee in the rain, can’t you? We never sat indoors. Gradually Gösta improved on the buildings and bought new furniture and opened a sweetshop on the side, but he still had time for the jokes and his herb garden.

The homemade cake and the made to order sandwiches and the waffles with cream were joined by a couple of ‘proper’ lunch dishes. If the weather was fine, or it was summer, he was open for business. He employed staff to help in high season, but on a sunny weekend in spring or autumn he’d be there looking after things by himself, in case someone turned up.

And of course people turned up. Who wouldn’t want good food, friendly service and a great view? People travelling past would stop, and ‘gangs’ of bikers regularly called in. You’d go for a swim in the sea, and then warm up with coffee, or reward yourself with ice cream. Village troubadour Alf Hambe used it as his local ‘pub.’ You could recognise half the customers at any given time. When we’d arrive in late May, he’d greet us, saying the English had come, so summer must be on its way.

It was really hard not to call in every other day. It was lovely. If it was busy Offspring would help by putting trays away. Gösta ran music evenings in the summer. Sometimes with pretty big names. Sometimes he sang himself. You get the picture.

Then, something happened. We weren’t there, but I believe he got carried away and broke Swedish restaurant rules by selling wine from an outside table, or something, not using a proper cash till. Something like that. Nothing dreadful. Just not following strict rules.

And that was it, in this orderly country. It took about a season to break him. The next summer his family tried to run it as best they could. But they had other things to do, and they weren’t him. And they couldn’t bake.

The summer after that, someone else was renting the premises. It wasn’t the same. Each year it got a little posher and less café-like. Cake nowhere near as good, or generous, and costing a lot more. Staff who were polite, but distant.

I forget how many years it’s been now. Maybe six or seven. The name changed. Two years ago I went for a recce on my own, and worked out you could still have the waffles, and  if the sun was out, it could be ‘quite nice’ still. Last year there were no waffles on the menu, so I asked if that meant they had none. ‘Yes it does!’ the woman replied happily, hammering another nail or two into the coffin of this wonderful café.

Now the old name is back, and the website suggests this is the same lovely establishment it always was. It is now primarily a restaurant with coffee and cake, where before it was a café with a few hot meals. Expensive dinners and plasticky cake. Tea made with lukewarm water and coffee served from a flask.

From a design point of view it’s perfect in almost every way. (Not the ice cream bench covered in nettles, however.) Beautiful furniture, inside and out, pretty plates and candles in the toilets. Well turned out staff.

We went yesterday, thinking it could be nice to sit out with tea and look at the view. The view was still good, but there wasn’t a soul sitting outside (might be because they have blocked the convenient door going out?) until we stepped out. The customers (including a dozen bikers with long memories) who arrived with barely any time to spare before closing, joined us outside. Those who were too late had to turn round and leave. And it was only four on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

We did enjoy the view, but that was all. Maybe we’ll be back next year. For the view and for the memories. Not for the culinary experience. And we will have no difficulty not going every other day.

In retrospect I’m glad we went far too frequently while we still could. At least we have the memories. Gösta’s tosca cake was to die for. But it’s probably the man himself we miss the most.

Little Italy

My cannelloni was fine, and Daughter’s linguini was also fine, except she doesn’t appreciate al dente, but that’s her problem. She loved her starter of deep fried mozzarella and my olives seemed to go on and on. Maybe I got a portion for two?

My mineral water was reliably Italian, albeit expensive. Daughter looked in horror at her measly 200ml of Coke, so it was lucky they also placed a jug of tap water on the table. Except, had I known they would, I’d not have ordered my bottle…

The table. Yes, nice sized tables for two, and sturdy, so it didn’t feel as if the candles would fall off, despite the crush between tables. The restaurant as a whole was nicely, if predictably, decorated in green and red and white, with wood.

There even seemed to be a genuine Italian owning/running the place, which he did efficiently, getting his staff to do as they were told. And the two course lunch was good value at £7.95.

But – you could feel the but coming, couldn’t you? – everything lacked that nice Italian ambience, where you feel welcome and you relax and enjoy your meal, and think to yourself that you will return soon again.

It would have been good if this Italian hadn’t found us outside at 12.25, staring at the Closed sign, while the lunch menu stated it was served every day between 12 and 4. We could see the staff inside. Had they forgotten, or were they relaxing for a while longer?

He waved us in, rather peremptorily. Asked if we’d booked, and ‘graciously’ offered us a table we were lucky to get since we hadn’t. It was probably the worst table in the restaurant. OK, we hadn’t reserved, but we were first. And I had to remain standing holding my coat and bag while the waitress fumbled over lighting the candle, blocking my chair.

Funnily enough, no one who came in had booked, and they were all equally ‘lucky’ in securing their tables. I’d say all tables went in the order of worst first. Which meant that an hour later two pairs of women were lucky enough to be seated at the prime position tables. They did look so much nicer than we did.

So did the students in the middle. Pearl earrings and tidy hair and an escort looking like he was straight out of a film about posh undergraduates. I suppose that’s St Andrews for you. Especially on a Wednesday.

As soon as we’d eaten our nice tasting meal, and didn’t require the dessert menu we were offered the bill and it was clear we were expected to leave. We were intending to, but another five minutes would have achieved a more relaxed way of doing the same thing.

So, nothing wrong at all, really. Apart from not making us feel welcome. But then, tourists don’t return, and students are replaced every few years. And as I said about another recent meal out, we could have gone to Pizza Express instead, all of 30 seconds away.