The Waterfront, Queensquay, Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a decidedly odd place. I arrived there expecting some Brits (correct, there are lots of the tattooed and generously proportioned variety), a lot of hidden money (also correct as evidenced in the form of multiple PO Boxes, banks and yachts) and a giant rock (giant indeed).

However, it’s a far cry from Monaco, Jersey and other tax dodging rocks. I see now where El Dorado came from. People refer to “The UK” all the time, a sure sign that they haven’t set foot in the “UK” for many a year. It also possesses a Marks and Spencers and all the restaurants offer fish and chips or bizarrely, Toad in the Hole. Does anyone still eat that? There is an ever present sense of the 80s about everything, as if someone in a trench coat wielding a file-o-fax might appear at any given moment.

The old town looks like a slightly Spanish version (add some palm trees) of a British Seaside resort; a bit dilapidated and well, low rent really. A bit of money wouldn’t have gone a miss in the town centre, but instead, Taylor Woodrow of all people have chucked years of resources at the colossally unsubtle Ocean Village. http://www.oceanvillage.gi/leisure.html Ocean Village consists of clusters of marina side concrete frame and blue-glass balconied high rise apartment blocks with retail and bar/restaurant use to the ground floors. There is a KFC and Pizza Express for the homesick, the Celebrity Wine Bar (sadly no celebrities were spotted), an Irish Bar, and a casino at which I squandered £20 Gibraltar pounds rather quickly by loosing at Pontoon. The Casino has a terrace restaurant with seating outside to watch the sun go down over the marina. The food is all two for one and indeed you get what you pay for, no one is there to eat really are they, it’s all about the chips and tables inside. I ate a rather unexciting skewered prawn salad and the rest of the menu is all grilled meat and chips with some curried elements which gives them licence to be “fusion”. In fact it’s all a bit Angus Steakhouse but cheaper, and you get to watch the sunset, so no complaining.

Taylor Woodrow seems to be behind all of the obvious development on the rock including the yacht strewn Queensway Quay, which is a rather more upmarket glamorous affair smelling of new money. There is what looks like a private marina overlooked by terraced Mediterranean style apartments with quality finishes and nicely landscaped. The yachts here are bigger and sleeker (although still not in the proper look-at-me-I’m-an-Oligarch-yacht bracket). There is, though a carrier moored slightly further out with a helipad no less. Queensway Quay has a number of marina side restaurants and bars. The Fish Place is well reviewed due to it’s menu of fresh catch everyday, the bars are favoured by the sailing and racing types but I went for The Waterfront, http://www.gibwaterfront.com/waterfront.html. Not because of anything I’d read or heard about it’s food but simply because they had a TV showing the fate of Paraguay or some such Latin outpost in the world cup and Mr Gorb cannot miss a minute of such a contest. Ho hum.

Anyway it was a reasonably good choice. The Waterfront is styled with a mix of natural stone walls, exposed brickwork and has a slightly nautical theme. It’s all a bit hit and miss in that the industrial ductwork doesn’t quite work with the wooden cubicles and the brickwork and pink accessories. The overall effect is a little bit Jolly Roger. But none the less the food is good. The menu has a good fish and grill selection and the wines weren’t over priced. The cod in cream and chives with crushed potatoes was nicely cooked and

not over seasoned. The grilled meats are a speciality and the steak was pronounced “not outstanding, but substantial”, i.e. the quality versus size debate to which, in my eyes, the answer always depends on how hungry you happen to be. Deserts follow the same pattern, one giant slice of lemon meringue pie appeared but for those who don’t have the appetite there are the wonderful Movenpick ice-creams by the scoop on offer. It’s not going to win any awards but compared to some of the options in the old town or a KFC in Ocean Village then it’s clearly the best place to go. I can see how the yacht owning tax dodgers might like it too.

There are always the monkeys to see, the Pillars of Hercules, St Michaels Cave, the Rock Hotel and also “that petrol station" if you’re Irish.

O’Callaghans Hotel http://www.eliotthotel.com/ just off Main Street, is a nice hotel in a reasonable location with a roof top pool and decent views for a base.

The Masons Arms, Battersea Park Road, SW8 4BT

Battersea is a bit short of everything really, it’s like a wasteland compared with North London. Since I moved here I’ve suddenly gone all middle aged. It’s all Sunday Roasts and Jazz territory. I do try and sound less negative but it creeps up on me.

Pub and bar density isn’t great, attempting a pub crawl would be a short but expensive exercise. Everywhere seems to look the same, in an eerily Stepford pub fashion. The Masons Arms is the prototype for this: a sizable bar and kitchen opposite Battersea Park train station with a gastropub menu and a small outside terrace. So far so good, but expensive, almost eye wateringly expensive in fact. It would seem they may not have realised that this isn’t the Kings Road. Averaging about £14 per main course is a little steep for pub food, even if it is slightly better than average pub food. Sausage and mash shouldn’t cost more than a tenner really now should it? Or have I just got a bit old?
They insist on charging the best part of £6 for a glass of wine. Soft drinks are pricey too.

Finance and budgetary concerns aside, it does have some good points. As a place to sit on giant sofas on a winters night by the fire and drink with friends the Masons scores well. The fish cakes are amongst the best pub fish cakes, I’m an experienced fish cake eater I should know. Occasionally on Friday night lots of people cram in (where they all come from I’ve quite figured out) and a DJ appears, it almost could be described as lively.

But no, these are good things indeed, but hardly too much to ask for. It’s almost as if the licensing department at Wandsworth Council have a template which gets issued to any prospective landlord, “comply with this please or no go”. The Lighthouse, the Price Albert, The Prince of Wales etc etc. They are all the same. I can’t even remember which one is which.

There is a boring homogeneity in this part of London which I don’t see elsewhere. London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world so why is this little patch of South London so uniform? Can we do something different soon please?

Le Pot Lyonnais, Queenstown Road, Battersea SW11

Gorb has decided to come out of retirement. Life has moved on. I’ve done some travelling, changed jobs and moved south of the river. Mr Gorb is still around but I no longer care what he thinks of my spelling, such is life. Rest assured the photography will still be bad.

And so we begin.

Inspiration came from a bad trip to Le Pot Lyonnais. There had been many previous happy and pleasant trips to this little piece of France in Queenstown Road, Battersea. It exists in a void, there isn’t much to eat on Queenstown Road. When I moved to the area I clearly wasn’t thinking straight, however, make the best of what’s in front of you and proceed blindly on.

Le Pot Lyonnais is a French bistro, it’s even run and staffed by real French people, with a menu full of moules, steak baguettes and pomme frites and a wine list of well chosen French wines. There are battered sofas, marble tables and dark wood everywhere. The owner lounges about in Gallic fashion with his red wine and gauloise on the go. The whole place is rather relaxed and sort of Parisian without to much hard work.

We turned up on a Friday night and the waitress managed to throw a pint of larger over Mr Gorb, not just spilt a bit, she actually couldn’t have done better if she tried. Quite spectacular really. We remain relatively good humoured and she clears up, he runs home to change, probably a 20 minute mission. I ask them to hold our food, it appears anyway, I send it back. No one apologises or offers me a drink while I wait (I’ve already got one but that’s not the point). He reappears eventually but the food then takes 20 mins to reappear. We eat and ask for the bill, we pay and leave. Now, I wouldn’t want to seem overly precious but they might have made a bit of an effort, knocked something off the bill or thrown in a coffee or something.

I could blame it on the French and their attitudes. What surprised me most was I didn’t complain. Not a peep. At best, I might have given the impression of being slightly miffed which is rather unlike me. Perhaps I have been living amongst the English for too long. Perhaps it’s nothing to do with stereotypes and I should just not go there anymore.

Spelling & Style

It would appear that Mr Gorb has been reading my blog. He feels it's hard to read and full of spelling mistakes.

I've spent today searching for spelling mistakes, I spell check everything before it goes in. Is it really that bad?

A rather depressed gorb, at least if he'd criticised the photography I'd have understood that, now it really is crap.

The West Cornwall Pasty Co

I love pasties I do. There is nothing to eat at Liverpool Street station, well, that’s actually a gross generalisation, there is a Pontis, McDonalds, Burger King, Ixxy’s Bagels, Costa Coffee etc etc and so the list goes on. There is also a rather good sushi joint but that’s the subject of a whole other post sometime in the future. There is nowhere really nice to sit and eat, but that’s really down to it being a transport hub it’s designed to cater for Londoners on the move. My favourite on the move food is definitely the humble pasty.

The pasty is a work of genius, a very simple concept, far superior to the sandwich. If you think about it every culture has independently invented a pasty, consider the samosa, or spring roll, or burek, or calzone even the fajita and so on. These are actually just pasties. In fact everyone bar the Americans who were too busy eating burgers came up with a form of pasty.

Anyone interested in the history of the pasty (including international versions) investigate

here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_pasty Pasties have magical suggestive powers, anyone who walks past someone else carrying a pasty instantly goes and buys one for themselves.

There are two pasty chains in Liverpool Street, The West Cornwall Pasty Co based just outside at the Bishopsgate entrance or The Cornish Pasty Co who have an outlet on the main concourse. The West Cornwall Pasties are much better, although it’s best to avoid their one if there is heavy football traffic, the Hamilton Hall Weatherspoons opposite is a bit of a flashpoint. They make pasties fresh everyday and varieties range from traditional steak, steak and stilton, Chicken Balti, roasted veggies and cheese and bacon. They even do a pork and cider version which is my current favourite. Pasties need to be eaten on the move with brown sauce. I would eat one everyday for lunch but that would make me fat, so best on Friday’s after the pub for the train home. The West Cornwall pasty people have just won themselves an award for the fastest growing business so we may expect more pasty stalls in London soon. Ditch the burger, pasties are the way forward.

Browns, 9 Islington Green, London, N1 8DU

I went to Browns in Islington for my birthday dinner (well it was actually my third birthday dinner, I like to sting it out) and was let down badly. The food was distinctly average, most of it was cold, even the coffee. It’s not hugely expensive and it’s a relatively nice place to sit and watch the world go by, but this doesn’t ever make up for bad food. It wasn’t over ambitious, the lamb shank was done well but served with cold potatoes, the ceaser salad was nice with the right balance of salad, chicken and dressing but the chicken was too dry, the hot chocolate with rum was also cold but the worst part was the desert.

I never really go in for deserts, I don’t know what came over me but I ordered a sticky toffee pudding with clotted cream. The pudding was passable enough but the clotted cream was simply margarine, probably something along the lines of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. Browns shall have to be cocktails only from now on.

Sacred Cafe, 13 Ganton Street, Off Carnaby Street, London, W1F 9BL

I’m not a great fan of shopping. I get a bit ratty and flustered and can never go “up-west” on a Saturday afternoon. I can just about cope with a Sunday or a late night Thursday excursion otherwise I suffer queue rage and run the risk of throwing a temper tantrum over something ridiculously trivial (usually not being able to take more than three items in to the changing room or not being allowed to keep the hanger after you’ve just shelled out the best part of a hundred notes on one item.) The problem with central London is that there is a dearth of nice places to temporarily escape. The trouble is that every Starbucks and Costa becomes an equally busy and hectic extension of all the shops.

The Sacred Café on Ganton Street just hidden off Carnaby Street is a peaceful of not slightly disturbing place of respite. It’s arranged cleverly over ground and basement levels and has a supply of plentiful cakes, organic and otherwise, teas, coffees and superb hot chocolates. These can all be enjoyed on big sofas in the basement watched over by Tibetan monk statues… obviously. http://www.sacredcafe.co.uk/

Rodizio Rico, 77 – 78 Upper Street, Islington N1 0NU

This is a novel concept, even for London. For want of a better description it’s a Latin American, all-you-can-eat meat feast. I can only guess what the morning deliveries for this place must look like, it’s probably enough to turn the average customer vegetarian.

The concept is as follows: basically, take a table and peruse very short menu i.e. meat feast or fish feast or meat and fish feast together, await plates and begin. Here it gets a little more complicated, there is a central buffet bar full of salads, pastas, potatoes and other side dishes (not that anyone in their right mind really considered a full blown slab of lasagne a mere side dish). Having been here a fair few times I have learnt the hard way to go easy on this bit - just because it’s there does not mean you have to eat all of it. The trick is to wait for the real show.

A team of waiters circulate armed with four foot skewers dripping with huge sides of meat – beef rare to well done, rump, sirloin and fillet, chicken livers, wing and hearts, pork wursts and lamb chops, the choice is endless. It literally just keeps coming. The staff are equipped with huge knives to slice off as little or as much as you want. People must be regularly rolled out the door at the end of the night.

Best not to eat for three days in advance of a visit to Rodizio Rico! http://www.rodizio.co.uk/index.html