The Old Lodge, Limpsfield

The Old Lodge
High Street, Limpsfield, Surrey
Tel: 01883 714365

We've driven past the Old Lodge many times, and eventually decided to try them out for a meal last Saturday night. After phoning to check that they had a vegetarian option on the menu (which they did) we booked a table.

We were shown into the bar area and shown the menus. The bar area was very comfortable, and it was nice to be able to peruse the menu and wine list. The main menu had about three meat free selections on the starter menu, but none on the mains. However, there was a note at the top of the menu saying to ask for today's vegetarian selection. So I did.

I was pleasantly surprised, that there were three main menu options that I could choose from. All the options sounded nice. I chose what was described as Caramelised Onion, Pear and Fig Cheese Cake. For starters I chose Pasta with asparagus and horseradish in a creamy sauce.

The pasta was fusili and the sauce was very nice. It had a slight taragony flavour too and, despite it being a fairly large portion, the taste was good enough that the dish never got boring.

Between the courses, a complimentory apple and blackcurrent sorbet turned up, which was an unexpected, but extremely pleasant surprise.

The 'cheesecake' was next. I'd been wondering what this would be like, as the description sounded more like a dessert rather than a main course.

Very shortly, the wait was over and a small tart turned up on the table, accompanied by onions along with the mushrooms and saute potatoes I'd ordered from the side orders menu. The tart was like a cheesy quiche, with pears and figs layered through it with caramelised onions on the top. It had a sort of sweet and sour taste as the pear and onion took turns at assaulting the taste buds. It was an unusual sensation, but a very pleasant one.

The dessert trolley contained a plethora of cakes and tarts from which I chose a rather nice pear and chocolate cake.

The service was very good, save for the fact that we had to top our own wine up - but thats a minor complaint. The staff were also interested in my opinions of the vegetarian dish, and said that they always have three or four dishes on the menu suitable for vegetarians, which is good to know.

All in all, it was a good night out - as for the price, it worked out to around the same price as our meal at Terre a Terre earlier this week. What really matters is that the food was nice, the service good and the setting very pleasant indeed.

Terre a Terre, Brighton

Terre a Terre
71 East Street, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1HQ
Tel: 01273 729051

www.terreaterre.co.uk

So, Terre a Terre - another mungbean and lentil hippy café in the veggie capital of England, Brighton you say? Well, you couldn't be more wrong. Terre a Terre will blow away any preconceptions you may have of vegetarian cuisine being lentil and nut based - this is veggie fine dining of the like I've not had since Il Margutto in Rome.

The restaurant itself is easy to find, being up one of the roads that leads directly from the seafront. From the outside it looks pretty small and unassuming, but it stretches back quite a way, and also has a small garden area.

We arrived early but seating us was no issue (there was an England game on, so it was fairly quiet) and we were presented with the menu and wine list.

Before the starters arrived, we decided on having some Wasabi Cashews to nibble. Wow! You have to try these, if you visit. They taste much as they sound - and they sound great.

The menu is very wordy, and this makes it a little confusing as, unless you've eaten here before give you little idea of what you're going to get. To give you an idea, I have stated below what the menu stated, followed by my report of the dish. I tried a mouthful of everything my wife had and I've included her comments on the food too.

For starters we had Truly Truffly Risotto - served with set cep consomme and fresh chestnut parmesan milk foam, with virgin oil and organic aged balsamic green tops, toasted barley and scrunched fried sage and Miso Pretty - Sweet ginger sushi reverse roll in Szechwan chilli flakes, served with roast yellow pepper and white miso dressing, soused Enoki mushrooms, lime and tamari ketchup, cashew and coriander salad gaspacho, served with hot and sour soup and dry miso powder.

The risotto on its own was lovely, nice lemony tang and a spinkle of truffle shavings but when combined with the cep consomme and foam (served in a small 'shot glass') it was great. The balsamic green tops were nice, but my fave was the risotto.
I tried a little bit of the Miso Pretty and it was very tasty. My wife said it was really delicious.

Next up was the main course. I had Ravioli Butter Cookie Crumble and White Asparagus Milk Shake - Fava and pea farci ravioli crammed with tarragon, flat leaf parsley and lemon thyme, topped with butter cookie crumble, served with parmesan ice, fresh ricotta wild garlic pressé and just-cut pea shoot tangle, with wet garlic and salt lemon confit pastry shards. My wife chose Wotzyuzu Ithai Gnocchi - Potato gnocchi poached in Asian citrus liquor and wokked with bok choy, choi sum and star shitaki, doused with mushroom ketchup, served with smudges of soy pea miso sake blitz and roast cashew satay, tempura Sechuan spice cress and ginger hair, accompanied by a green tea and thai basil shooter with wotzyuzu dressed micro leaves.

The presentation was amazing. The ravioli (looking like a pie made of pasta) was perched on top of half a dozen asparagus spears. On top of the ravioli was the butter cookie crumble - rather like a very thin biscuit. The rest of the plate consisted of some pea puree in which was placed the parmesan ice (more of that later) a small jug of what I can only describe as pea soup (which was to pour over the ravioli), a small green pyramid of the ricotta and garlic presse and the garlic confit pastry shards. So, what about the taste? On first taste, I immediately thought of mushy peas, but there were a lot of more subtle flavours , the more I ate. The parmesan ice was like an inch high ice cream cone with a small round frozen sorbet on the top - very surpising, but refreshing. The garlic confit and the ricotta presse were both very nice, but seemed to be more for decoration, as they didn't add that much to the dish as a whole.

As for my wife's dish, she overlooked the tempura part of this, which unfortunately doesn't agree with her, but she said it was nice, but not as nice as the starter. Presentation was 'stack-style' - again, very impressive.

We also ordered a portion of Smokey Scrunch Chips loaded with bang bang salt served with chilli spiked avocado mayonnaise to share which were nice, but we didn't finish them, as the mains were quite filling.

The pudding menu looked amazing. Luckily Terre a Terre do a dish that contains a selection of the sweets on the menu which they call Tapas Sweety? - pudding miniatures - for two. This consisted of small portions of the following sweets: Peachy Cheeks - Roasted Amaretto peaches with set 'Calabrian' cream, orange and thyme shortbread, blood orange and Campari granita and an Amaretto syrup. I'm gonna have a full portion of his next time I go. The 'Calabrian' cream is basically a crème brulee tipped out of its pot. Apart from being a bit runnier than I like - it was perfect. A definite 9! The peaches were gorgeous too. Coconut Cupcake Crumble - crammed with banana curd and topped with sweet toasted coconut crumb, served with maple citrus syrup, palm cream, banana ice and sugar snap. Yum! The banana ice was superb! Jasmine Nashi - Warm Nashi pear poached with plum and mirin liqueur, sitting in Asian apricot citrus puree, served with scented sushi and poached apricot, liquorice nori roll and deep-fried pureed anise rice pattie served with sweet jasmine tea. The pear was beautiful, the 'sushi' was apricot wrapped in rice pudding then wrapped in licorice - amazing. Chocolate Brownie in Chocolate sauce. Poor chocolate brownie - it was never gonna compete with the others, nice though it was.

The service was great - the waiters were very knowledgable about the ingredients of each dish.
The overall impression was of excellent food imaginatively (if sometimes a little over-ostentatiously) presented and excellent service.

Will I go back? You bet.

Taste of London

Regents Park
London
www.tasteoflondon.co.uk

Taste of London was an event held in Regents Park where forty of the capitol's top restaurants set up their stalls allowing you ti sample some of their top dishes. In addition to the restaurants there were plenty of other stalls, demo's by celebrity chefs, cookery lessons and much more.

To sample the food you had to have the event currency, crowns, which you could either buy at the event or order in advance with your tickets.

I worked out that to eat all of the menu items that were suitable for me, as a vegetarian, would cost me around 235 crowns. I had thirty-six, so I had to choose carefully. Most of the choices however, were desserts, there weren't an awful of meat-free main courses so that made it slightly easier.

To start with, I headed towards the Fifteen tent to sample the "creamy risotto of smashed peas, broad beans, mint and ricotta salata." It was a popular dish, which meant about a ten minute wait while they cooked up a couple of batches. It was very nice though - and creamy, as the description said. From there I made my way to Imli, an Indian resturant that offers a modern take on the standard Indian restaurant fayre. They were offering a couple of dishes that were marked suitable for vegetarians (the only ones that I saw marked thus in the whole show - well done Imli.) I selected the "medley of puffed rice, cucmbers and roasted peanuts tossed with assorted tangy chutneys." It was very spicy, and quite tasty. I couldn't have eaten a lot of it, but the portion served was just about right.

So, what next? I fancied something sweet and the "vanilla mille feuille with roasted peaches" from Angela Hartnett at The Connaught fitted the bill perfectly and tasted great.

Passing the Cinnamon Club I noticed that they had a "mango and cardamon brulee" which I just had to try, given my love of brulees. This was certainly different, but very nice reaching a good 8 on the scale.

Finally, I spent the last of my crowns on the "avocado and goats cheese soup" from the Notting Grill tent. As I was slurping it down, Anthony Worrall Thompson walked past. I said hello as he passed and he returned the greeting. The soup wasn't bad - it was a cold soup and I feel it would actually be nicer if it was hot, but it was tasty none the less.

So, that used up all my crowns. During the visit, we also sampled loads of cheeses, dips and sauces, ate an ice cream or two and tried the odd sample of wine. We came away with a few jars of pasta sauce (some of which were given away free) and plenty of leaflets for online shops, cookery courses etc - some of which I may try in the future, so watch this space.

All in all, it was an enjoyable night, the weather was perfect and even British Rail deemed to be on time for that particular night, so getting to and from the event was nice and easy too. Hopefully Taste of London will be repeated next year, so look out for it.

Cordon Vert Cookery School

Cordon Vert Cookery School
Vegetarian Society
Altrincham
www.vegsoc.org

Last weekend I attended the Far Eastern cookery course at the Vegetarian Society's Cordon Vert cookery school near Manchester. This course marks the halfway point of the diploma course that I'm doing.

It's a two and a bit day course. The first evening the tutor, Chico - who runs a couple of cookery schools of his own and is also chef to the ex-royal family of Germany - gave us a brief introduction followed by a meal that highlighted the kind of dishes that we would be cooking over the next couple of days. During the meal I got to know the other nine students that were taking the course.

The next morning, we all gathered in the kitchen for a demo of what we would be cooking and Chico regailed us with various hints and tips gleaned from his travels. The course is based around the 'real' food of the far east (Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailad etc) rather than around fancy restaurant quality dishes.

After the intro talk we began cooking for our lunch, which included a spicy soup with peppers, lime leaves and coconut, stir fry salad and a dessert made with sweet potato. We also made sushi and a dipping sauce from vinegar, sugar and chilli.

After lunch it was back into the kitchen for more demos. My job this afternoon was to make chinese leaves stuffed with tempeh, ginger, garlic, shoyu, beansprouts and beanshoots. The other groups made various spicy dishes including curries and stirfries and the table was bowing under the weight of the food when we sat down for dinner. After eating everyone sat around chatting until almost midnight.

Sunday morning started with a chat about different oils and vinegars and then continued with a demonstration of different presentation techniques. After a quick demo of some of the dishes we were to cook everyone was split into teams again to cook lunch. I cooked some vegetable fritters and did the melon balls for dessert. Lunch consisted of the fritters, tofu sesame toasts, black bean and yellow rice, kebabs and wonton soup.

The course was great fun, the people that were on the course were nice, and easy to get along with and I can't wait for my next one in a few weeks time.

Melbourne, Australia

As a vegetarian, you are never going to go hungry in Melbourne. As I strolled along I checked the menus of many of the restaurants in the city to see if they had a choice that would be suitable for vegetarians. With the exception of one pie shop, everywhere had at least one meat free option on the menu.

Breakfast is never a problem as most places do a pick and mix and most are happy if you want to substitute one item with another, but some do specific veggie breakfasts. For lunch or dinner you are literally spoiled for choice from the many cafes and restaurants that inhabit the city or the specialised areas, such as Lygon Street that offers a whole host of Italian restaurants.

One place we ate at was a restaurant called O'Connells in South Melbourne (www.oconnells.com.au) at which I had a fabulous linguini with fennel and goats cheese. There wasn't a huge choice for veggies on their menu, but it does go to show that even places that are away from the centre of the city can still produce some really tasty dishes.

Further afield, on the Mornington Peninsula, the Portsea Hotel (www.portseahotel.com.au) served a rather tasty Asparagus and Rocket Risotto with truffle oil and they had two or three other meat free dishes on there menu.

The markets are fantastic. I don't think I've seen so many fresh vegetable, fruits and spices in one place before. Queen Victoria Market's (www.qvm.com.au) food hall is magnificent. There are stalls selling a myriad of different versions of cheese, anti pasti and more different versions of tofu that you can shake a stick at! They also do specialised food nights which are well worth a visit. South Melbourne Market (www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/southmelbournemarket.html) is smaller, but still has a huge selection of fresh produce. Organic and gluten free produce seems to be quite big over there at the moment so these add to the already large choice.

I also popped into one of the many Asian supermarkets that are in the city and was pleasantly surprised to find that they stocked most of the mock-meat products that you can get here plus many other kinds of tufu and sauces suitable for vegetarians.

The only things that I could not find in my travels were vegetable suet (which no-one seemed to have heard of), vegetable haggis and Quorn. I contacted Quorn and they told me that they have no plans at present to market their product in Australia which is a real shame, but with all of the other ingredients and produce that are available, I daresay one could live without it.

Soul Mama, Melbourne, Australia

Soul Mama Global Vegetarian Cafe
St Kilda Baths
Melbourne

www.soulmama.com.au

Soul Mama is set on the beachfront in St Kilda. The restaurant has large tables and offers great views over the bay. On the way in there is an area with a lovely log fire that has cushions strewn around it that would make for a very interesting eating experience I imagine. However, we went for the standard option and sat around a table.

The concept of ordering the food at Soul Mama is very simple. You pay for the size of bowl you would like and then fill it with rice and either four or five other dishes from their buffet depending on the size of the bowl you order.

I decided to start with a courgette, leek and tomato soup which was very nice - not too tomatoey, which (for me) is good. It was actually quite filling and I was wondering how much of the buffet I would actually be able to eat. No matter - I would give it a good try anyway.

The buffet was fairly extensive with a range of hot dishes and cold salads. However, a lot of it was fairly standard veggie fare and tended towards the curry side of world cuisine. Aside from the curries, there were a couple of other veggie staples - pasta and tomato sauce and moussaka.

Now, don't get me wrong, just because I think the menu was fairly standard doesn't mean that it wasn't good. For my part I had saffron rice, vegetable satay, spicy lentils, noodle salad, potato and rice balls and pepper and tomato chutney. With the exception of the lentils, which I found were a bit floury and dry the rest was pretty good. The potato balls were very nice as was the satay - which was quite spicy. The noodle salad didn't have a huge amount of taste, but provided a good antidote to the spicyness of the satay, so I was glad it was there. The portions were ample and you had the choice of having it all served in a single bowl or in a prison/school dinner--style compartmentalised tray.

I didn't have room for a pudding, but they all looked rather tempting.

The staff were very good and had no problem with us waiting for a good half hour or so for another of our number to turn up, despite the fact that we were taking up one of their large tables. The prices are reasonable too. There are plenty of restaurants serving veggie food in St Kilda and Soul Mama is the only purely vegetarian restaurant I tried during my time there so I can't recommend it over anything else, but its definitely worth a go.

Blue Train Cafe - Melbourne, Australia

Blue Train Cafe,
Southgate Landing,
Southbank, Melbourne.

www.bluetrain.com.au

We popped in here for a quick bite to eat at lunchtime. Its worth a mention as there are always a few veggie options on the menu and it's very reasonable on the purse.

I had potato and vegetable samosas with rice, cucumber raita and mango chutney, and my wife had vegetable spring rolls with chilli dipping sauce. Both were very nice and fresh tasting.

Mention must also be made of the service at the Blue Train. Upon complaining about a foul-tasting wine that we were given, they happily opened another bottle (which tasted the same incidentally) and then exchanged it for another wine without any fuss. We were just charged for the one wine. Also, enquiries about the ingredients of the dishes were happily answered. They also put a bottle of water on your table, which isn't charged for. Okay, it may only be tap water, but its a nice gesture and one that doesn't happen at many places.

Bokchoy Tang - Melbourne, Australia

Bokchoy Tang
Federation Square
Melbourne, Australia

www.bokchoytang.com.au

Bokchoy Tang is a Chinese restaurant on the top floor of Federation Square in Melbourne. It seats just over 200 and, depending on where you sit, looks out over the central plaza of Federation Square.

It describes its food as "contemporary Chinese cuisine."

Chinese restaurants don't usually offer that much choice for vegetarians, so it was a pleasant surprise to see a good half dozen veggie (or veggo as the say over here) dishes on the menu.

I started with Jiao Zi which were dumplings served with a salad of julienne potato & red vinegar dipping sauce on-the-side. The menu offers both a meat and a vegetarian version of the dumplings and the veggie version had what appeared to be cabbage or seaweed and shredded egg in them. It was very nice. The julienne potato was very interesting. It looked like some kind of noodle, but appeared to have been made from a single piece of potato. Again, it was very tasty.

For main course I had North Chinese Country-Style Tofu Box which constisted of three 'boxes' made from tofu filled with mushrooms, fresh soy beans, carrots & bamboo shoots. This was served with soy sauce, bokchoy and steamed rice. The little tofu boxes were quite strange, to say the least and it was shortly after trying to eat one and squirting soy-sauce down my front, that I gave up trying to eat them with chopsticks and requested a spoon. Whatever the method of eating them, however, they tasted great.

My wife chose the Spicy Szechwan Chicken and has asked me to warn anyone that reads this that they really mean it when they say spicy as she had about 30 chillies in her portion!

We were too full for dessert, as the entree and main meal portions were quite sizable and the bill (including a glass of wine each) came to around A$90 for the two of us which works out at less than £20 each, which isn't at all bad for food this good.

Morrisons Winery, Moama, Australia

Morrisons Riverview Winery & Restaurant
2 Merool Lane
Moama, NSW, Australia

www.riverviewestate.com.au

Morrison's is a winery on the New South Wales bank of the River Murray. Its setting is gorgeous and the restaurant itself looks over the river. It is only open at lunchtimes for meals and winetastings.

We started with a winetasting, working our way through around eight or so wines from a selection of whites, reds, dessert and after dinner wines.

From there we were shown to our table. The restaurant had been informed in advance that I was a vegetarian and had said that it would be no problem, they would adapt their menu accordingly. The menu itself had one main dish that was meat-free, which was stuffed vine leaves. However, once I had sat down, the waiter came over and enquired as to what restrictions I had to my diet, and said that it would be no problem to tailor any of the dishes, or to mix and match dishes to my requirements. If I wanted a risotto, he told me he would enquire as to whether a meat or vegetable stock was used and whether it could be changed if possible. What more could you ask for?

We started by ordering a couple of plates of bread and dips for the whole table. One dish was sourdough bread accompanied by olive oil and a mix of hazelnut and sesame seeds, the other was bread accompanied by three dips, one of spicy lentil, one of roasted beetroot and the other of hummus. All were lovely, the spicy lentil dip especially so. It was not unlike a dhal, but it was blended to and extremely smooth texture.

For main course, I chose the spaghetti dish that was on the menu. It came with prawns, baby spinach, chilli, and zuccini. I asked if I could have it without the prawns and could they put a few mushrooms in it if possible. No problem at all, I was told and indeed it wasn't. When the dish arrived, it was a mushroom feast. It had shitake mushrooms, field mushroom and oyster mushrooms as well as all of the other ingredients and was superb. The chilli was 'just about there' which meant it left a slight burning after-taste but didn't overwhelm the rest of the dish.

For dessert, I had a warm toffee pudding with caramel sauce, cream and ice cream. It tasted as good as it sounds and then we ordered a cheese board to share across the table. This consisted of three Aussie cheeses from King Island, a cheddar, a blue and a brie and all were as tasty as their European counterparts.

All in all, it was a great meal and the service was spot on. If you're down this part of the world I recommend you put aside a lunchtime to visit Morrison's Winery.

Echuca - Moama

I've now been in the Echuca-Moama region of Australia for around a week now and I'm pleased to report that it is very veggie-friendly. I've been checking menus as I've been making my way around and just about all have some kind of veggie option available. Even in the small villages, like Maldon, the cafes will have vegetable pies, or samosas available.

Ordering off-menu hasn't been a problem and everywhere that I've been have been more than happy to switch ingredients around to accomodate my diet. I'll be posting a review shortly of a meal I had at Morrisons Winery which was, quite frankly amazing. The waiter took time to go through the menu explaining which dishes could be altered and which ingredients could be substituted etc.

The shops have plenty of veggie stuff, mostly soya and vegetable based, but nothing quite on the scale that we have with Quorn and Linda McCartney back in the UK. The best thing though, is the abundance of fresh ingredients and having had the facilities to be able to cook for the last week, its been great.

Tomorrow, we're off to Melbourne for the remainder of our holiday, and I'm hoping to visit some good restaurants there, so expect some more reviews to be posted over the next few days.

Border Inn Hotel - Moama, Australia

Border Inn Hotel
Moama

The Border Inn Hotel advertises its food services as a cafe bar, but I think it underestimates itself. In the UK it would be proudly promoting itself as a gastropub or something of similar quality. The “cafe bar” occupies one half of the Border Inn Hotel in Moama on the New South Wales-Victoria border and it is neat, tidy and well laid out with polished wooden tables. It has an extensive menu including meat, pasta and fish dishes. There are a couple of options on the menu which are marked as vegetarian, which is nice to see. There was also a mushroom and red wine risotto which is made with vegetable stock and is vegetarian, despite not being marked as so, which with the salads gives a reasonable veggie selection.

We started with cheese and chive foccacia bread. This turned out to be a huge slab of foccacia, which was extremely light, soaked through with butter and then seasoned with chives. Sound good? It was, and it would be easy to munch your way through loads of it and not leave any room for a main course. However I resisted this and left room for a main course.

For the main course, I had home made pumpkin gnocci with spinach and pine nuts. It was good to have my faith in gnocci restored after the last couple of examples I've had. This was firm, fairly light and served in a cheesy sauce. I'm pleased to say that the amount of spinach in the dish didn't overwhelm it – for me at least, as I'm not a huge spinach lover – and the toasted pine nuts gave the dish the occasional crunchy interlude.

I was pretty full, but forced myself to have the golden syrup pudding. The top part was really syrupy and sweet (just the way I like it) where the golden syrup had soaked through but the bottom was a bit dry. The dish was served with ice cream and this helped to counteract it.

All the dishes were presented very nicely, the sort of presentation I would expect to see in a top UK restaurant, the service very friendly and the prices (especially when compared to the UK) are very reasonable. You ordered your own drinks at the bar, on which was a jug of iced water for you to help yourself – which I think is a great idea and one that should be universally adopted.

We made a second visit to the Border Inn a few days later. It was good to see that a vegetarian dish had made it onto the specials board, although this may well have been because I knew the chef. This time I had pumpkin, pesto, pinenut and blue cheese lasagne. It was very tasty, and the pumpkin was very sweet. The blue cheese was not overly prevalent, which was nice as it was a pleasant surprise when you came across it.

The other diners said their food was just as tasty. The only downside on this occasion was the service. After a promising start, we ended up having to clear the plates ourselves from the table and had to get up to order our desserts and find our own cutlery. At one point we even had to summon a waitress for a couple on an adjoining table who had yet to have their order taken! However, I am assured by regular visitors to this establishment that this is the exception rather than the rule and that the normal service in this restaurant is usually very good.

Emirates Airline

Emirates
www.emirates.com

Flying to Australia is definitely where long haul lives up to its name. Previously I've flown with QANTAS and the food has been variable to say the least. In fact QANTAS holds the award for the worst tofu meal I have ever eaten – it was like eating a block of soap.

This time we flew with Emirates, and after seeing the large range of diets that they had available for their in-flight meals, I was eager to see what their vegetarian meals would be like.

On the first leg, from London to Dubai, I was presented with a vegan meal of tofu, rice and a mixture of peas and carrots. Accompanying this were a roll, a pack of cheese biscuits and two salads, one consisting of chick peas in a spicy dressing, the other a mixture of various lettuce leaves and a tomato. For dessert there was mixed fruit. It was okay. In fact, considering it was airline food, it wasn't bad. The tofu was marinaded in something, which gave it a bit of flavour and the salads were nice.

The main meal on the leg from Dubai to Singapore was a breakfast of mushrooms, a small jacket potato with the insides scooped out and replaced with baked beans, tomato and spinach. The mushrooms and potato were pretty much as you would expect them, and as I'm not a huge tomato or spinach fan (at least not when they are served on their own) I didn't eat them.

For the last leg of the journey, from Singapore to Melbourne, I was given spaghetti in a tomato sauce. I have to say that this was really nice. And, despite the fact it was only a small portion, it was quite filling. Accompanying this was a salad, that included a vegetarian sushi and a roll with cream cheese. Dessert was a toffee sponge with jam sauce. Again, this was quite pleasant.

There were other snacks served (a completely uninspiring asparagus roll springs to mind) throughout the journey and overall I thought the food was as good as any other airline I have been on.

TexMex - Viva Las Vegas Reunion

Last weekend, the gang that went to Las Vegas got together to reminisce about the holiday and share their photos.

I had volunteered (or been volunteered - I can't remember which) to cook, so the question was - what to have to eat?

We decided that a Mexican meal would bring back memories of the meal we had in Las Vegas.

To start with I cooked a Corn and Red Chilli Chowder which was accompanied with Soda Bread (memories of San Francisco there.) The chowder consisted of a puree of creamed corn, onions and tomatoes to which was added corn kernals, red peppers, chillies, potatoes and stock. Once cooked a swirl of cream and some chopped parsley completed the dish. It must've been nice as I was asked for the recipe.

Soda Bread is fun to make and, I've found, quite messy. It's quick, as you don't need to wait for the bread to prove and very tasty.

For the main course we did a selection of dishes. My wife did a couple of salads and made some guacamole. I'm not a huge fan of guacamole, but homemade stuff is always much nicer that the shop bought version, and this was no exception. It was very spicy and made a perfect accompaniment to the quorn fajitas. We also made chicken fajitas for the non-veggies that were there.

Also on the table were peppers stuffed with beans and cheese; rice with tomato, carrots and green beans; flautas - tortilla wraps filled with feta cheese, peppers and seeds; chilli potato cakes and a couple of salsas. All rather nice, even if I do say so myself. One of the salsas was made with chipotles en adobe, and I highly recommend using this as, as well as being very spicy, it has a fantastic smoky flavour.

We had a great idea for dessert. We found a company that would create edible photos (www.eatyourphotos.co.uk). You email them a photo and they then sent you a version of the photo created in edible ink. The turnaround was really quick and the quality of the picture was excellent.

Initially we we going to get a cake for and ice it with the photo of the gang at the Stratosphere Tower. We eventually decided that we would make an iced trifle. It was different, but worked really well and every one ate their own heads, which must have some psychological meaning, I'm sure...

The meal was accompanied by several different kinds of margheritas (including strawberry and mango and peach if my memory serves me correctly) which were rather nice. All in all it was a great evening. Thanks to all those who helped out in the kitchen with the food and the drinks.

Fifteen Trattoria, London

Fifteen
Westland Place,
London N1 7LP

http://www.fifteenrestaurant.com/

Last night I made another trip to Fifteen, the restaurant run by Jamie Oliver. This time however I was to be eating in the trattoria rather than the downstairs restaurant.

I met my friend in the bar and we were shown to our table. We both had antipasti to start, which was delivered to the table on a wooden board. We had explained to the waiter that I was vegetarian, and he made sure that the meat for the antipasti was brought on a side-plate. The antipasti included olives, squash, beetroot, chard, caramelised onion, mozzarella, baby carrots and other stuff that I forget. It was all very nice, but I have to make special mention of the squash that had an amazing flavour and was cooked to perfection, including its skin.

We decided that we would do the whole primi, secondi thing so, as there were no veggie options on the secondi menu, after a brief chat with the waiter, I decided that I would have two dishes from the primi menu.

First off I chose the four-cheese tortellini with a sage butter sauce. The pasta was cooked just right, the filling was very tasty and the sage butter divine. All in all, a perfect primi, I couldn’t fault it at all.

Next up I had gnocchi with treviso (if I remember correctly). I have to say that this was very disappointing indeed. When it arrived, the dish looked good, but upon further inspection the gnocchi itself appeared to me not much more than mashed potato. To be honest, I can’t imagine how it would hold together if it was dropped into boiling water. The sauce was okay and would’ve been fine with a more robust gnocchi, but what I effectively ended up with was mashed potato in a cheesy sauce.

Fortunately, the dessert rescued the situation. I had a pannacotta with grappa which was lovely.

The trattoria experience is different to the restaurant experience that I described in an earlier blog. It’s more of a ‘standard’ restaurant (if there is such a thing) and appears to be a lot busier – not necessarily in numbers of people, more in the atmosphere of the place - but the service was up to the same standard as the restaurant. Next to our table was a blackboard that listed the breakfast menu. It all sounds very nice, so I think a morning visit will have to be arranged sometime.

San Bas, Westerham

San Bas,
1 Market Square,
Westerham,
Kent.

San Bas is the new name for San Basilio, an Italian restaurant in Westerham, so the menu informed us. The restaurant itself is on the main road through Westerham on the A25 and is very well presented both inside and out.

Lats night we visited for our wedding anniversary. The front part of the restaurant was taken up with a rather good jazz trio who kept us entertained throughout the evening with a nice selection of songs from the likes of Nina Simone.

I started with a goats cheese crottin served with various bits of salad and a honey dressing. It was quite nice, however there wasn't quite enough dressing to take the dry edge off of the cheese, so by the end of the dish it was quite difficult to finish - it reminded me of one of those cream-cracker eating competitions where your mouth completely dries up leaving you unable to swallow. In contrast my wife had a twice-baked applewood cheese souffle with tomato compote that was stunning. I only had a mouthful, but I really wish I'd ordered that. The souffle was lovely and the compote had a gourgeous smoky flavour that complemented the applewood perfectly.

For the main course I ordered a cep gnocchi with shaved truffle. I say 'ordered' because the gnocci dish that turned up didn't appear to have any ceps in it whatsoever, but did have rather a lot of artichokes. I was a bit miffed about the lack of ceps - those of you who have read other reviews here will know of my love of funghi - but the dish was very tasty (and I do like artichokes) so I decided not to make a fuss.

The dish it was served in was like a square dessert bowl, and it was full to the brim with the gnocchi. I managed to make my way through about two thirds of the dish before giving up, mostly through being full but partly through boredom. That's not really being unkind it's just that I felt the dish would have better if it had been served on a flat plate with half the amount. My wife had a chicken dish which, she said, was very nice indeed.

The dessert menu had a creme brulee on so, following Gaz's Dessert Rules, there was only the one choice. And it started so well. The top was a nice colour, crispy and not too thick and the custard was smooth, and very tasty. No vanilla seeds, which was a shame - I always prefer it when vanilla pods are used. However, after a couple of spoonfuls I notice a hard substance at the bottom of the ramekin. I'm not sure what it was - it had a very strong taste of vanilla, so maybe something had separated out of the custard somehow during cooking. Whatever, it prevents this particular brulee from rising above a six on the scale, whereas it could've been on for somewhere around an eight.

Still, even with these reservations, it was an enjoyable evening; the service was great, the food tasty and the jazz band really created a nice atmosphere.

Saturday Morning at Leiths

Leiths School of Food and Wine
21 St Alban’s Grove
LondonW8 5BP

Tel: 020 7229 0177

www.leiths.com

Leiths is the cookery school where they teach many of the chefs for world class restaurants. They run professional diploma courses as well as courses for enthusiastic amateurs.

Among the latter are their Saturday morning courses where you get to cook a three course meal in one of their kitchens and then eat it for lunch. A couple of times a year the course has a meat-free menu and I attended one of these last Saturday.

The day started in a demo room where we were introduced to the course and told the various safety procedures. Everyone was then divided into groups and told which kitchens we would be working in. There were sixteen people to a kitchen and three (I think) kitchens, so you can see that these courses are pretty popular.

Each kitchen had two tutors and somebody to wash up the mess we made during the day, which was good. Leiths recognise that a lot of people are given these courses as presents or go along because they enjoy cooking and they make sure that it's as enjoyable as possible.

The menu for the day was Parmesan and pear rarebit with hot buttered radishes to start, followed by Open ravioli with warm lemon and rocket pesto and roast vine tomatoes. For dessert we were to make cappucino brulee.

We were talked through the recipes and then paired up to cook the meal. I was interested to see if any of the techniques that would be taught were any different to those I had learnt at Cordon Vert, but they were the same, which was comforting.

Everything went pretty smoothly, except for a brief moment when I accidently (and spectacularly) 'flambeed' the radishes. I'd never even considered cooking radishes before, but trust me, they taste really good having been sauteed in butter and lemon juice.

The main course was quite tasty. I've made a fair bit of pasta and pesto before, but not with rocket, and it was rather nice.

The brulee was devine. It could've been set slightly more, but time constraints meant that it was in the fridge for less time than it should've been. Had it been served to me in a restaurant, it would've been around a seven on Gaz's creme brulee scale - so not bad for my first effort.

It was a really enjoyable morning, topped off with great food. I picked up a few ideas and it was great to cook in a 'professional' kitchen. The staff were helpful and patient. I'd recommend it if you fancy trying something different or you know someone who loves cooking and want to get them a different kind of present for a birthday or similar.

They also do other, midweek, courses where they concentrate on a single skill, pastry or sauces for example. I'm keeping my eye out for convenient dates, as I'm always keen to brush up my skills.

Little Bay, Croydon

Little Bay
32 Selsdon Rd
South Croydon CR2 6PB
www.little-bay.co.uk

A little while back I reviewed my visit to Little Bay in Farringdon. Despite the restricted choices for veggies, the food was so good and the price so reasonable that I decided to visit another of their branches, this time in Croydon.

From the outside, Croydon's Little Bay looks like a Swiss chalet, and the wooden beams and decor inside the front part of the restaurant continues that theme. The rear of the restaurant has the red and gold decoration (including the "big head") that those who have visited the Farringdon branch will be familiar with.

The food in this branch is as well presented and tasty as the Farringdon restaurant - I recommend the Feta Terrine for starters - and the service was great. We arrived for our meal around 6pm and took advantage of the lower pre-7 prices. For two starters, two mains, a side of chips, two desserts, bread and drinks it cost us a total of £24 plus tip. That's amazing for the quality of the food we had. As well as the terrine mentioned earlier that we had for starters, I had Goats Cheese tortilla with artichokes & peppers for main which was very tasty and my wife had pork medallions with coriander & chilli mash. For dessert we both had the apple cake with custard and ice cream - yumm.

Little Bay in Croydon is now on our list of restaurants to visit again, as it's not too far from where we live and, if there's a Little Bay near you, I recommend you to do the same.

Food For Thought, Covent Garden

Food For Thought
31 Neal Street
Covent Garden
London WC2

Lunchtime in Covent Garden offers a few choices for vegetarians, and one of the most popular is Food for Thought in Neal Street.

When we arrived, the doors were only just opening and there was a queue of half a dozen or so people outside. We joined the queue and very soon more people were behind us.

Food for Thought has a sit down restaurant downstairs and a takeaway section upstairs. From the menu boards, they both seem to sell the same stuff.

To say that the downstairs restaurant is cosy is an understatement. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I can imagine that all sorts of converstations are struck up by people forced to share tables. It isn't really the place to sit and enjoy a long, leisurely meal, its more the kind of place that you pop in, fill up and then leave, so even if its full, it probably wouldn't take too long for a space to become available.

You select your food from a counter, pay and then take your seat. I had butternut squash and apricot soup with coriander pesto and Jamaican Blackbean Hotpot. My wife had a moussaka and a salad. The soup was quite nice, the apricot gave it a slight sweet taste. The hotpot was tasty, but on tasting a bit of the moussaka, I noticed that the tastes of both were very similar. Still, it was filling, and just the kind of thing that would warm you up on a cold day. The salad was lovely. Best of all, are the prices. For the two of us, it cost us around fifteen pounds. Not bad at all for a hot filling meal in the West End.

Overall, I wouldn't choose this restaurant for a 'meal out'. But if I just needed a quick, hot meal at a reasonable price then I certainly wouldn't overlook Food for Thought.

Carnevale, London

Carnevale
135 Whitecross Street
London EC1Y 8JL
Tel: 020 7250 3452

http://www.carnevalerestaurant.co.uk

Last night I made a return visit to Carnevale, near Moorgate. This time, I've the opportunity to do a better review and mention some of the dishes that we ate. I was accompanied by an actor friend of mine, who was over the moon because he had just been complimented on his art by what he described as 'proper actors.'

Carnevale is very cosy and has, at most, a dozen tables. There is a covered 'yard' out the back where there are a couple of tables which the staff quaintly refer to as 'the garden' and we were seated there.

The menu was better than the last time I was there, with a couple of extra dishes in each section. However, my first choice of starter (potato gnocci in a cep sauce) was unavailable so I started with a brioche with spinach, wild mushrooms and a soft poached egg. The brioche was very nice, the bread was a bit soggy by the end, but I'm not sure you can do much about that, spinach does tend to hold vast amounts of liquid. The egg was just right for me, not too runny, but not too hard so the yolk stayed on the bread rather than trying to explore the whole plate.

My friend enjoyed his starter of fried halloumi and salad. Apparently, according to other diners, the butternut squash soup was very good too.

For main course we both plumped for Breaded Aubergine stuffed with Smoked Mozzarella and Ricotta. This was served with Romesco Sauce and Green Beans. I'm always interested to see what different chefs can do with aubergine and this was really good. The aubergine was so tender, that you probably wouldn't have known it was there. However, this did mean that it's taste (such as it is) was somewhat overwhelmed by the cheese and the sauce, but I think it was there to provide a base and hold everything together - which it did.The sauce went well with the other ingredients and was tomatoey and spicy without being overpowering. On the side of the dish was a green salad. All very good and my friend was very impressed.

The dessert menu had a rasberry crème brulee, so I had to have it - real vanilla, topping suitably crispy, served chilled but not too chilled - about 8/10 on the creme brulee scale. My friend had a vegan white chocolate pudding with summer fruits (which were primarily strawberries.) He was surprised that it tasted so good, and I think, was tempted to lick the bowl clean. All this plus coffees and drinks for £25 each plus a few quid for a tip.

The food is of a high standard, and has none of the 'hippy health food' connotations that many people seem to think that vegetarian restaurants have, this was almost fine dining - the food was presented really well and I don't remember a single lentil on the menu. The service was friendly and prompt and the atmosphere is pretty good although, because of the closeness of the tables, when it gets busy it's difficult to hold a private conversation, but nice and easy to listen in to other peoples! Overall, I think the menu has improved since my last visit and it was pretty good back then.

Tony Tobin @ The Dining Room, Reigate

Tony Tobin @ The Dining Room
59 High Street
Reigate
Surrey

Tel: 01737 226 650

http://www.tonytobinrestaurants.com/

It's nice when you ring up a top restaurant to ask if they have a vegetarian option on their menu to be told that they have a vegetarian menu. And so it was with Tony Tobin @ The Dining Room.

Tony Tobin is probably known to most people from his appearances on Ready Steady Cook and he took over this particular restaurant in 2001.

The restaurant itself is above the shops and were shown to a window table that looked out over Reigate High Street.

The veggie menu isn't bad, and there are three choices for both starter and main courses. I chose Rich Cepes Risotto for starters and Roasted Root Vegetable Kromseki with Garlic Mash and Braised Puy Lentils.

While waiting, we were presented with a choice of breads including cheese, sundried tomato and herb.

The starters arrived. Unfortunately, there had been a mix up and I was presented with the risotto from the set menu, on which was sitting a lump of fois gras. Not the best dish to set before a vegetarian. Still, the error was sorted out quickly without fuss and the vegetarian risotto arrived with apologies, so no harm done.

The risotto was well presented, suitably gloopy and the cepes had a nice smoky flavour.

The main course consisted of roasted parsnips, roast carrots, wild mushrooms, spinach and puy lentils inside a ring of garlic mashed potato. On top of this was a ball of potato, tomato and thyme (I think) that had been cooked to give it a crispy coating. The vegetables and lentils were really tasty and something in the mix gave it a bit of a kick. The garlic mash was incredibly smooth, creamy and had a wonderful flavour. The potato ball on that sat on the top of the vegetables had its own flavour and finished the dish off nicely.

For dessert I had a dish which I think was described as a Banana Tatin (or similar). What arrived on the plate wasn't far off a work of art. The banana had been halved lengthwise and was placed on a banana shaped pastry and then caramelised. This was served with ice cream, a biscuit and drizzled with caramel and chocolate sauce. Wow! It tasted lovely. I was terrified that the biscuit was going to explode everywhere while I was trying to break off bits with my spoon, but luckily it was not to be.

The service was very good, the waiting staff very attentive and they dealt very well with the little glitch at the start of the meal. The restaurant itself is very well dressed and tidy, much as you would expect a restaurant of this calibre to be. If you've a special occasion coming up (or even if you haven't) Tony Tobin @ The Dining Room is worth a visit.