http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/29/snails-are-not-fast-food

Buy them prepared. Its not worth the effort unless you are doing it large scale.

By the way, add snails and shitake mushrooms (both chopped up) to your liver terrine – works especially well with course texture game pate or chopped liver. For extra richness, fry the chopped mushroom and snail in a small amount of butter, flambee with calvados or pernod then fold a little double cream into the mixture before adding it to your “liver” recipe. Sorry, but if you add this mixture to chopped liver, it is no longer kosher.

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June 2011

Address: 128 West Street, Marlow, SL7 2BP

Telephone number: 01628 482277

Website: www.thehandandflowers.co.uk

Date of last visits:  26 January 2010, 10 February 2010, 8 May 2010

Date of this visit: 29 June 2011

Approximate cost per head: Set lunch £12.50 for 2 courses. Most starters around £9+ and main courses around £20+. Be prepared to spend £50 a head including drinks.

Comments on wine list/beer:  Greene King IPA, Abbotts (£3.80 a pint) , and Morlandson tap. Wine list very comprehensive. Massive mark-ups on some wines. Very good  French Country wines at a decent price

Cusine: Innovative cooking – British and French

Likes and dislikers: For the price you charge, can we please have a table cloth?

Summary:

It has been a year since my last visit. The food is as good as ever, the prices have gone up, the freebies of whitebait and breads are still there.  There is now no choice for the set lunch. The place is still full for a Wednesday lunch time.

This time I went with ex-colleagues from work.

One of us had the set lunch and the rest of us ordered from the a la carte.

We started off with a Becks (£4 a bottle) and Abbot ale. Abbot is probably the best ale that Greene King brews at present. Morlands was also on tap but this is the Greene King version from Bury St Edmonds and not Abingdon. I last had a pint of Morlands at the Elephant and Castle in Hurst and it was all right.

Three of my friends had the Cesar’s salad from the set lunch. They all enjoyed it. I had the calf sweet bread ($9.95)served with barley and sweet corn in some form of brown gravy. The sweetbread was bread crumbed and fried – absolutely brilliant.  The suce with the bits were all right but the barley was hard – unsoaked. Was this a mistake?

For main course, R had the ballotine of chicken from the set lunch whilst the rest of us had the fish and chips (£13.90) from the a la carte menu – I gathered that fish and chips are only served at lunch time.

Lets start with the chicken. It was a full leg served in a small cast iron frying pan with puy lentils in it. R thought very highly of it but I noticed that the chicken still had the bone in it. I know this place has a Michelin star but ballotine is definitely off the bone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballotine

The rest of us had the fish and chips with the chef’s version of triple cooked chip (£4 for a side order) , pea puree and very chunky tartare sauce. This was as good as ever and it was served on a wooden board.  I rate the fish and chips here as one of the best in the world. I also had a good one in Hong Kong – it was with tempura battered and deep fried in clarified butter.

For desserts, R had the banana fool from the set lunch, I (Ian not me) had the treacle tart and P had the hot chocolate wille – yes he did!

With coffee, tea and a bottle of white Bergerac (Tour de Gendres £30.55) , the bill came to £151 excluding tips for 4.

Looking around, most people had the steak, trotter or lamb bun from the a la carte. The other places good for trotters are: Forburary Restaurant and China Palace – both at Reading. You can get Zampone (trotter sausage) from the Italian Continental Store in Maidenhead

This place is on my “A” list!

If you are a foodie flying in or out of  Heathrow, this and The Royal Oak (Paley Street) are the place to stop for lunch. You will never get into The Fat Duck with less than 3 months notice. The Water Side Inn is a possibility if you fancy paying £100 a head!

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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/black-gold-in-the-west-australian-hills/story-fn44w9hc-1226080730522

Does it taste the same? Chinese truffles are significantly inferior. Like wine it is the land (terra)

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June 2011

http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/food-drink/eight-extraordinary-uses-for-bicarbonate-of-soda-blog-16-lovefood.html

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June 2011

Address: 78 Upper Village Road, Sunninghill, Berkshire SL5 7AQ

Telephone number: 01344 622763

Website: N/A. Try http://www.ascotmatters.co.uk/component/content/article/108-advertisers/1557-la-cloche-at-the-carpenters-arms-sunninghill but the menu is out of date.

Date of visit: 24 June 2011

Approximate cost per head: A la Carte – around £20 for 2 courses . Good value set lunch.

Comments on wine list/beer: Sharp Doom Bar on tap. Decent “French” list with some good value carafes (500ml). A few decent “cru” class wines and their seconds. There are some good value wines.

Special note: no food on Mondays

Cuisine: French

Likes and dislikes: all good!

Summary:

The Lion in Teddington has finally got planning permission to re-vamp the interior.

I thought that I should visit the mother ship to see what the Lion might become.

The Carpenters Arms is down a windy road with car parked on both sides.

The pub itself is divided into two halves. One half is set up for dining whilst the other half is for drinking. There is a well laid out garden outside. Within the dining room, it is bare top with paper napkin – no linen.

The room is full of pictures that can only be describe as French – escargots, cheese pantry etc. There are brown lacquered tables and red cushion chairs – much smarter than your normal bare tables in a pub.

For lunch they offered a two course lunch for £10.95 and a three course version for £13.95. They also do sandwiches, croque monsieur or madam, escargots and a fish soup etc.

The set lunch was quite inviting with several salads and the mains include steak au proive, hache etc.

I started off with the chicory salad with croutons and walnuts. It was near perfect with an excellent dressing. I then had Lyon sausage with haricot beans. The sausage was coarse cut with a strong after taste of pepper. Throughout the meal, there was plenty of pan.

I felt greedy and went for a third course of formage. I had a slice of tomme, some ripe camembert and something like a morbier but there was no charcoal inside the cheese. It was served with walnuts, quince paste and bread. Pleasant but nothing special – I was expecting some unusual French cheese.

The wine list was interesting and hopefully, when The Lion re-opens, it will have the same list.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/dining/pisco-makes-the-trip-north.html?_r=1&ref=dining

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June 2011

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/summer-guide2011/Video+cocktail+season/4988123/story.html

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June 2011

http://www.japancentre.com/recipes/177

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June 2011

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/made-in-lancashire-the-german-pizza-thats-devouring-italy-2299940.html

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June 2011

Address: The Square, Yattendon, RG18 0UF

Telephone number: 01635 201 305

Website: http://www.royaloakyattendon.co.uk/

Date of visit: 21 June 2011

Approximate cost per head: most main courses under £20. Set lunch £11.50 for 2 courses

Comments on wine list/beer: Pretty good wine list, the 96 Guraud Larose at £99 is a steal. West Berkshire on tap. In fact, the brewery and shop is only 20 meters away!

Cuisine: Good plain cooking – I think.

Likes and dislikes: Nothing to complain about and nothing to rave about

Summary:

I was invited to lunch at the Pot Kiln by my old colleagues A and C. When we got there, we discovered that it is closed on a Tuesday.

Anyway, The Royal Oak is less than a mile away in Yattendon.

I have not visited Yattendon for over 20 years. When I was last here, Egon Ronay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Ronay owned The Royal Oak.

Under the new owner, the inside is more pub like and the prices lower – yes, under Egon it was expensive.

We all had the set lunch – 2 dishes per course to choose from. A and C had coca cola whilst I went for a pint of black rat – scrumpy at 6.5% alcohol. I quite like it and had a second pint.

For starters it was soup of the day or asparagus on crispy polenta with shaven parmesan and poached egg with hollandaise sauce. We all opted for this. However, within 5 minutes, we were told that they had no asparagus and would substitute the asparagus with leeks.

When it came, it was nicely presented and the polenta was more like toast than a wedge. The poached egg was runny – near perfect!

For the next course, A and C both had the tomato risotto. It came bright red, quite wet with chunks of tomatoes in it. The ladies informed me that it was excellent – they ate it all.  I had sausages on mash. Two pork and leek sausages, sitting on a pile of mash on top of a pool of thick brown gravy. It was fine.

It was a pleasant meal – good honest cooking  But then it was the set lunch.

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PS This place is listed in the Michelin Guide.