The Scarlet hotel, Mawgan Porth, Cornwall

Update, Oct 22 2011: This quick review trip was so blissy that I’ve just booked a seven night stay at the Scarlet for the week before Christmas. Which I believe is what people are talking about when they mention putting your money where your mouth is – and I can’t wait. 

Regular readers will have seen that last week I was invited to check out (and check into) a couple of very different hotels in Mawgan Porth. Mawgan Porth is a tiny Cornish village perched on a cliffside overlooking a horseshoe-shaped bay, where waves which have built up enough momentum on their journey across the Altantic to make a surfer’s day crash over an impossibly yellow, sandy beach.

Mawgan Porth
Mawgan Porth from the Cornwall Coastal Path. The Scarlet is the large curvilinear building in the middle (click to enlarge the photo) with the black roof.

The Scarlet opened a couple of years ago with a very individual take on what a top-class hotel should offer. The first thing you’ll notice is that there’s no reception; instead, you’re shown to a comfy chair by a fireplace, with a birds’ eye view across the bay, while the receptionist comes to you and takes your details. There’s a library, a sitting room, and a large and quiet spa; the place is full of tranquil little corners to bolt yourself away in, and children are not allowed – as well as a well-stocked and lively bar, and a very classy restaurant (of which more below). There are only 37 rooms, which makes for a pleasantly calm atmosphere, and you’ll find Cornish sculpture and paintings displayed prominently all over the hotel, which has the feel of something between an art gallery and the home of a really good and hospitable friend.

Scarlet lobby
The view from the entrance to the hotel - a lobby with no reception desk. That's not a swimming pool, but a decorative feature which I am sure serves some ecological purpose besides being decidedly pretty.

The Scarlet was built with the firm belief that it’s possible to provide a luxury hotel experience while making the minimal ecological impact, so you’ll discover that hidden away are biomass burners, solar panels, a very clever cooling system that relies on natural ventilation but offers a similar level of cooling to air conditioning, and as much recycling, reusing, and electric car charging as you can shake a (locally sourced) stick at. It’s all deeply sensible stuff of the sort that should occur to anyone who has to run their own home efficiently: unfinished bars of hotel soap are used in the laundry as stain removers, the drippy bits left behind in the bottoms of candlesticks are sent back to the candlemaker to be made into new candles, grey water is recycled, rain water is collected, and where possible, the hotel’s supplies are bought without packaging. All that you, the guest, will notice here is that your sugar cubes aren’t individually wrapped up.

Scarlet library corner
The hotel library - a perfect place to relax with a cream tea and a good book.

Best of all, though, from my perspective, was the way the eco-friendliness had been carried across into the hotel spa, becoming a feature rather than an economy. Here is an outdoor pool that’s really a sort of swimming pond overlooking the sea, filtered and cleaned not with chemicals, but via a gorgeous reed bed which forms part of the pool itself. It’s a bit nippy in September, but Dr W manfully took a dip and pronounced it lovely before scampering inside for a hot shower. The pool indoors is solar-heated to a nice bathroom sort of temperature, and cleaned with very low-dose bromine instead of the more skin-unfriendly chlorine. And the hot tubs are perched on the cliff-top lawn and, charmingly, heated by stoves full of logs. (Those logs can create sparks in high winds, which, thanks to hurricane Katia, precluded my having a soak.) You can book a hot seaweed bath in one of these tubs, which look for all the world like giant red teacups; the seaweed is harvested locally, and apparently does all kinds of wonderful things for the skin.

Indoor pool
The blissfully warm indoor pool. A better option on a chilly day than the sea or the outdoor swimming pond!!

Our room had big, sliding balcony doors at the foot of the bed, from which we could walk out onto a lawn on the cliff, and straight down to the sea. This was one of the best hotel rooms I’ve stayed in this year (and I’ve stayed in a lot this year; in the last month alone I’ve slept in a W in New York, a Fairmont in California and a Hilton in Arizona, none of which has rooms a patch on what’s on offer at the Scarlet). A lovely, light space coloured by the sea outside with crisp linens, blond woods, sea-toned textiles and sculptural decorations. The lighting is not something I usually do anything other than curse about in hotels – you’re probably familiar with the situation where you’re presented with six separate switches in different parts of the room, none of which do what you want them to. At the Scarlet, though, the lighting is designed to switch between seven different situations: your lighting can be architectural, ambient or mood-matching, and it’s all controlled from a central panel by the bed or one by the door. A bathroom is integrated into the room over a low wall, with a huge tub and basin on the bedroom side, and a shower and toilet hidden behind a heavily frosted glass wall. It all adds up to a sense of airy lightness, enhanced by the sun and the waves an outstretched arm away outside the window.

Scarlet room
Bedroom overlooking the cliff-top lawn

This is Gastronomy Domine, so you’ll want to hear about the food. As I mentioned in the piece I wrote about the Scarlet’s sister hotel, Mawgan Porth is very close to Padstow, a town entirely colonised by restaurants, hotels, cafes and gift shops run by Rick Stein (who himself prefers to spend his time in Australia these days). This means that an unholy number of food tourists visit the area – and the result has been to cause other, non-Stein hotels and restaurants to raise standards to a very high level. At the Scarlet you’ll be eating with that spectacular view along one wall of the restaurant, all chocolate and purple velvet and private corners.

The localism that characterises the Scarlet makes itself felt in the menu, where the food is impeccably seasonal and chef Ben Tunnicliffe emphasises quality ingredients. What’s more September-y than the sweet, pinkly bloody breast of a grouse served with cobnuts? The heather these little birds live in grows in abundance all over Cornwall, and after a day yomping over the moors, I can’t think of anything better to round things off than this beautifully prepared dish, so well-balanced in flavour and texture. Fish, of course, is as fresh as can be, and the monkfish tail wrapped in bacon and served with a mussel tagliatelle was based around the sort of dense and rich seafood stock that you can only dream of producing at home in a kitchen where your only fish is from the supermarket. Venison terrine, blackberry crumble (deconstructed so it arrives on the plate looking like some of the hotel sculpture) – this is a thoughtful, ultra-seasonal menu which will have changed to reflect what’s best at the moment you visit. The restaurant was packed on the night we visited, and there was a bit of a delay between courses – but when that’s the worst criticism you can come up with in a 24-hour stay, somebody’s doing something very right.

Grouse with a cobnut and bacon salad
Grouse with a quail egg, cobnut and bacon salad - one of the best starters I've eaten this year. Simply beautiful stuff.
Roast monkfish tail wrapped in smoked bacon, roasted courgette, mussels, creamed tagliatelle
Roast monkfish tail wrapped in smoked bacon, roasted courgette, mussels, creamed tagliatelle
Rhubarb pannacotta
Rhubarb panna cotta

Breakfast follows in the same vein – local bangers and hog’s pudding are on the menu (waiter service here, none of your buffet scrummage) alongside Tregida kippers, which are currently vying with Frank Hederman’s kippers from Ireland as my pick for world’s best. They’re very heavily smoked over oak, with an ethereally sweet and buttery flesh. I’ve been very pleased to discover that the Tregida Smokehouse’s produce is available by mail; I’ll be placing an order when I’m back in the UK. There’s apple juice on the table, pressed locally: a lovely way to wake up after a night listening to the waves break over the beach below.

Breakfast table
Breakfast table setting. Augment this lot with pastries, porridge, coffee and some world-beating kippers, and you're all set for the day.

We got into the car for the drive home absolutely miserable to leave the place behind. A 24-hour stay simply wasn’t long enough. I’ll be back at the Scarlet as soon as I can as a paying guest, and I hope you decide to take someone you love very much too, for a weekend or so of calm, indulgent grown-up time.

Bedruthan Steps hotel, Mawgan Porth, Cornwall

I was invited to spend a weekend at the Bedruthan Steps hotel and its sister, The Scarlet, in Mawgan Porth in Cornwall. These are two hotels catering for very different audiences, but sharing an ecological, food-loving ethos – and one of the greatest sea views you’ll ever wake up to.

Clifftop
Clifftop view from the Cornwall Costal Path, a few paces from the Bedruthan Steps

I don’t have kids. It means that I’m blissfully ignorant of things like baby monitors, the school gate experience, feeding times and other arcane kid stuff. So I was a wee bit worried about being invited to the Bedruthan Steps, which is heavily advertised as being family-friendly. I’d resolved to steel my way through a day of kids, then collect my reward at the Scarlet in the company of grownups the next day.

Bedruthan Steps from the outdoor pool
Bedruthan Steps from the outdoor pool

A total surprise, then to pitch up at the Bedruthan Steps, admittedly full of pre-vocal people accompanied by their carriers/feeders/cleaners, and find it weirdly tranquil. The management know that not everybody wants to spend their day being poked with a plastic shovel, so to that end, there are plenty of adult-only areas (and a teenager-only area which Dr W had a good old whinge about not being allowed into so he could play pool). This works well for parents, too, who don’t have to worry about their kids’ noise and play annoying the kid-free; the kid-free are all in the adults’ lounge, the bar, or the adult-only pool. Breakfast saw us and all the other childless visitors put in a child-free section of the restaurant. There’s also a no-children swimming pool and spa. And this place is beautiful. Externally – well, not so much; you’re looking at a white 1950s monolith stacked up the cliffside in steps. But inside, the Bedruthan Steps is a lovely thing: all marine colours, pale woods, sculptural shapes, Cornish artworks and handsome textiles.

Cornish cliches
Cornish cliches in Mawgan Porth village: clotted cream ice cream, pasties and surfing. All that's missing is a scone and some tea.

If you do have kids, then you are really the person this hotel is catering for. Baby monitors in the rooms; a children’s club; an adventure playground with scrambling nets and a kids-only zip wire (cue more howls of disappointment from Dr W, an 8-year-old in a six-foot microchip architect’s body). The spa offers those special pregnant-lady massages, alongside all the usual treatments. All the baby stuff that my baby-owning friends have to tote around with them is provided, so you’re not going to have to pack the car to the gills – you can use the hotel’s plastic baby cutlery, cots, bibs, reusable nappies and potties (four words which I hope never appear again on this blog) for free, and if you want, you can also rent strollers, sterilisers, bouncing chairs and bottles for a very small fee. Our room had a double bed separated from the rest of the room by a half-wall, and two single beds for our imaginary children to sleep in in the living area.

Hotel room
Hotel room - and that view!

There’s a lot of attention to detail in the child facilities, and I did feel that that same attention to detail was missing in small ways in the rooms (perhaps it was just the bad luck that comes with being assigned room 13) – I could have done with a towel rail and loo roll holder that stayed attached to the wall, and I could really have done without the half-used bottle of lubricant that a previous guest had left in the bedside drawer. But the view from every bedroom, of Mawgan Porth’s gorgeous little sandy cove and the impossibly blue Atlantic pounding up to the beach – that’s worth all the nasty bedside drawer surprises in the world. We opened the window in the night to breathe in the sea air, and to listen to the wind and the waves; better than any prescription sleeping tablet. There’s lousy cell phone reception up here on the cliff, which makes for a fantastic excuse not to pick up the phone to talk to work while you’re away.

Lane down to sea
View from the lane down to the sea

You can walk down to that beach in about five minutes. It has a dedicated lifeguard and makes for a perfect sandcastle-making spot. It’s also good for surfing, and you can arrange lessons with Nick via the hotel’s front desk. The hotel is only a few yards from the Cornish Coastal Path, and there’s some great walking in both directions along the cliffs.

Mawgan Porth bay
Mawgan Porth bay

Padstow, now entirely colonised by Rick Stein restaurants, gift shops and hotels, is just up the road. This has been great news for diners visiting this part of Cornwall – rather than allow him to have the lock on good eating in the area, the other hotels and restaurants around here have really raised their games. Dining at the Bedruthan Steps, overlooking the bay through the restaurant’s ceiling-height windows, you’ll find a menu that changes daily; mixing simple, traditional cooking with more exotic (but never unapproachable) flavours like sumac and green curry. The fish here is local, admirably fresh and carefully selected, but if you’re not a fish person, there’s lots of choice, from vegetarian dishes to some great locally, organically raised meats. Locally fished mackerel stuffed with cracked wheat, currants and pistachios had sweet flesh, rich with oil, underlined by a sharp, herby gremolata dressing. And a beef casserole, full of local vegetables, had a lovely dumpling floating in the middle, light and airy: this is family food just like my Mum used to make. Cornish plums and Mawgan Porth lavender in a tarte tatin – locavores can quite literally eat their hearts out. Cornish beers (I was there for a Harvest Festival celebrating local beers and produce) stand alongside some extremely good Cornish fruit juices – of course, if you’re a wine drinker, there’s also an extensive, non-Cornish wine list.

Mackerel stuffed with crushed wheat
Mackerel stuffed with cracked wheat
Beef stew
Beef stew with an ethereal dumpling and some terrific onion rings
Tarte tatin
Roast plum and lavender tarte tatin - and a compulsory dollop of Cornish clotted cream

Alongside this localism, you’ll see a real commitment to sustainable, ecological management of the hotel. The food and drink aren’t the only locally sourced things you’ll see here – soaps, stationery, and even the hotel’s building materials are all from the local area. There’s solar heating for the outdoor pool; the rooftops are planted with grass; and the hotel has a year-round commitment to keeping the beach clean. There is constant waste and energy monitoring, motion-sensitive lighting in some areas, and a slightly irritating towel rental policy if you want more than the one per person that you’ll find in the room for the pool or beach.

Spa
Bedruthan Hotel spa

If you’re a parent of children of any age, I can’t think of anywhere you’ll find a better mix of things for the kids to do and for you grown-ups to enjoy too. There’s so much to do in the surrounding area, but if you want to stay in the hotel, there are weekend activities for adults: shoe-making, bread-baking, beekeeping, toddler-management, yoga and so on. (Check the hotel website for what’s on when.) Summer in Cornwall is late in finishing; when we were there in early September lots of families with pre-school-age children were taking advantage of the final flush of the south-west sun. Older children appear in the school holidays. Just watch out for the contents of the bedside drawers in room 13.

Pan con tomate – Catalan tomato bread

Pan con tomate
Pan con tomate

It’s a total mystery to me how Catalan cuisine, out of all the cuisines in the world, could have given birth to the ultra-complicated school of molecular gastronomy headed up by Ferran Adria. Catalan cooking, in its non-molecular state, is centred in simplicity and great ingredients; there’s a growing collection of super-simple tapas here on Gastronomy Domine, all of which are typical of the region.

My newly minted sister-in-law, Katie, has family in Barcelona and studied Catalan at university. She and my brother married just outside Barcelona, which afforded them the perfect opportunity for a wedding meal made up of course after course of delicious tiny nibbly tapas, alongside a whole leg of Iberico ham (complete with a knife-wielding dude to carve it), three enormous dishes of paella cooked over propane burners and enough fruit tart (standing in for wedding cake) to sink an armada.

Pan con tomate, as you’ll have guessed if you’ve ever visited Barcelona, was on the wedding table (alongside chorizo al vino, padron peppers, positive gallons of sangria, and some garlicky prawns, croquetas, boquerones and other bits and bobs I’ll blog recipes for later on). It might just be the recipe with the best ease-of-making to total-deliciousness rating ratio in the world. I’m not even going to list amounts below – it’d go against the whole nature of the thing.

Quality of ingredients is always important, whatever you’re cooking; but if you’re making something this simple it becomes absolutely paramount. You should look for a really dense bread (not wholemeal) with a decent chewiness to it. And the tomatoes – hoo boy. There is no point in making this recipe at any time of year when you can’t get a decent supply of juicy, fresh, large tomatoes. You’re best off by far with tomatoes from your own greenhouse, and the things that resemble red potatoes from the supermarket should be avoided at all costs. Reckon on using half a tomato on each slice of bread. Your garlic should be plump and unblemished, and your olive oil the very best you can get your hands on.

You’ll need:

Good sourdough bread
Garlic
Very ripe, large tomatoes
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt (I like Maldon salt here)

Grill the slices of bread until golden, and rub each slice with the garlic pieces, which will wear down to nubbins as you go. Cut a tomato in half and rub it on a garlicky slice of bread, pushing as you go to make sure the juices and seeds  are pressed into the piece of bread. Discard the pulp.

Pour a generous slug of olive oil over each slice of tomato bread, and sprinkle with a little salt.

These are fantastic just on their own, and can be made even better by laying a slice of raw Iberico ham on top before taking a bite.

Celebrity Silhouette, dining

Porch restaurant
Caesar salad (anchovies optional!) at the new Porch restaurant

The Japanese have a business philosophy called kaizen, which means continuous improvement. No matter how slick a process is, kaizen says that constant small improvements can – and should – always be made.

I have a deep suspicion that Celebrity Cruises are practising kaizen.

I’ve been invited on the inaugural cruises for Celebrity’s last three Solstice-class ships. These enormous floating palaces are the largest and swankiest in Celebrity’s already pretty large and swanky fleet, and although plenty of what’s on board will be recognisable across all four ships, there have been changes in each new launch – some, like the tweaks to Murano’s cheeseboard, so small you might not even notice; some surprisingly large, like the wholesale transformation of Michael’s Club from a cigar bar to a craft beer venue. If you read my reviews of the previous ships in the fleet, you might remember my bafflement at the inclusion on the last three ships of a glass-blowing studio. That’s gone on Silhouette, to be replaced by a prepossessingly calm and comfy cabana area on one of the ship’s lawns (these ships all have lawns – an amazingly difficult thing to maintain in the salty atmosphere at sea, but maintained they are, and handsomely) and a new barbecue restaurant.

I only had two days on board to explore all the changes, and two days is nothing like long enough to work your way around all the menus on board. The standard dining, and unlimited standard drinks (a variety of beers, wines and spirits) are all included in the price of your cruise. The included dining covers the huge formal dining room; the buffet, which stretches over nearly an entire deck; the pool deck grill, serving chilli, nachos, hot dogs and other poolside goodies; a terrific gelato bar down on deck 5; sandwiches, patisseries, tea and coffee in Cafe al Bacio; cocktails and nibbles in several bars; and the odd little treatsome canapé left in your room if you’re travelling concierge or Aqua class.

Lawn Club Grill
Lawn Club Grill being set up for the evening crowd

All this means that once you’re on board, there’s really no reason to spend any extra money on eating or drinking – but if you’re reading this, you’re probably pretty motivated by food and don’t mind spending a little more for something a bit different. For those who are looking for something special, Silhouette houses a number of other drinking and dining venues, all with different ambiances. I wrote about Qsine (an additional $35 per head) at the restaurant’s launch on Eclipse, and the whole interactive eating experience has proved so popular (you have to admit that a burger is much more fun when you’re squizzling your own sauce on it and draping it with your own idea of the right amount of fried onion) that they’ve introduced another interactive dining venue on Silhouette. The Lawn Club Grill, up on the top deck, where you’ll pay an extra $30 per person, has DIY pizzas for the kids, and DIY flat breads for you. The real draw, though, is the barbecue element where New York strip, filet mignon and rib-eye steaks, snapper, salmon, veal, lamb and a big selection of kebabs are available for you to grill yourself to your own liking at your own table. If you’re not up for barbecuing your own dinner, the chefs will do it for you – but where’s the fun in that? There are some pretty special accompaniments on offer, which will be delivered to your table. Allergies prevented me from trying it myself, but I’m told I must encourage you to sample the lobster macaroni cheese in particular.

Also up on the top deck, you find The Alcoves, a pretty little lawn with eight cabanas which can be rented by the hour or the day. Picnic baskets are available here for a price, and there’s also waiter service for drinks and snacks. These new venues replace the glass-blowing studio that’s been on the top decks of previous ships (I have never been able to get my head around the presence of a seagoing glass-blowing studio), along with a $5 dining venue (one of a few on board), The Porch. Here, you’ll find paninis and salads. It’s a lovely quiet spot if you’re looking to get away from the hurly-burly of the pool area, one deck below.

The Alcoves
The Alcoves

Tuscan Grill ($30), Blu (complimentary for Aquaclass passengers), Qsine ($35) and Murano ($35) are still the first-class restaurant lineup at the back of the ship on the fifth deck, which is the deck where those with a care for their stomach will be spending most of their time. There are changes down here – Murano is now offering a champagne afternoon tea, with some terrific little finger sandwiches, strawberries, pastries and the inevitable scones, jam and clotted cream. In the spirit of kaizen, little changes have been made to dishes I’ve eaten in these restaurants on previous ships: I’m not quite sure exactly what’s happened to Qsine’s Disco Shrimp, but it’s gone from a merely-quite-good dish to an absolute must-order, sweet, tender and very, very tasty. Ceviches are also very good now, and any dish which has its origins in the SW of America is pretty much guaranteed to be worth ordering: Chef Jaques van Staden’s Las Vegas roots do show now and then! Murano’s duck foie gras and rilettes dish has turned into a foie and confit plate, the confit appearing in a Moroccan pastilla, crisp, paper-thin bric pastry doing great things to its texture. What used to be a tomato coulis in this dish is now candied mango. On my first visit to Murano, two ships ago, I didn’t feel it was really competitive with top-class restaurants on land, but it’s now pulling its weight: witness the sea bass (picture at the bottom of this post), previously a bit tired, salty and dried-out; now succulent, elegantly sauced and good enough that you’ll be dibbling your bread on the plate when you’ve finished the fish.

Murano is probably the most romantic spot on board for dining, with private-feeling booths and a clever layout to make you feel remote from other diners. I’d especially recommend it to those cruising to celebrate a honeymoon or anniversary. Portions are still enormous. This is a direct result of the ship’s American ownership and international clientele. This feels a bit odd in a fine-dining restaurant, but when someone feels like giving me a gargantuan portion of foie, I am not going to complain.

Get chatting to your server. The staff on board these ships are universally friendly and helpful – and if you make friends, as we did with the utterly charming Anne Toures, a chef de rang at Murano, you might find the service elevates itself to superhuman levels. Anne, after a couple minutes’ chatting about blue French cheeses (I’d been wittering on about how it’d be nice to see a blue that wasn’t a Roquefort on the large chariot de fromages), disappeared and came back with a piece of Rochebaron from Auvergne for us that hadn’t made it to the cheeseboard – soft, blue, with an ash-rolled rind and completely new to me. A real treat.

I love watching the way these ships evolve. I love being surprised every time I visit by the force-ten smiles of every single member of staff, the shimmering cleanliness of everything on board, and the clever little features like the ice bar, and the Enomatic machines in Wine Masters (charge a swipe-card, and organise your own tasting – there are some really exciting wines on offer in here). I love waking to the sound of the sea, I love that I can retire to a Deck 11 treehouse, of all things, if things get too much; and I love the fact that there’s an iLounge and a Bulgari shop on board. Keep at the kaizen, Celebrity – you’re doing a great job.

Ceviche trio
Ceviche trio, Qsine. Three beautifully balanced ceviches, and a rather random helping of chips.

 

Sea bass
Sea bass at Murano

 

iPad menu
Another iPad menu at Qsine. I swear: you have never in your life seen a cleaner and more smear-free iPad than these.

 

Veal chop
A very good veal chop at Murano, sized for American appetites. Fantastic accompaniments - breaded cauliflower and little garlic spinach cubes.

 

Les Six Etoiles de Murano
Les Six Etoiles de Murano - Murano's signature desert. To be shared!

 

Maltese flag
A lovely view to take in over an evening gin and tonic at the Sunset Bar, located right at the back of the ship.

 

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Celebrity Silhouette

A big thank you to Celebrity Cruises, who invited me and Dr W on the inaugural sailing of their new Solstice class ship, Silhouette. We spent the weekend swanking around the Mediterranean, drinking far too much champagne, soaking up the sun and nibbling on canapés.

I’ve got a few hundred pictures to edit, fifteen twinkly decks and a whole weekend’s overeating to write about. While I’m busying myself about that, you might like to whet your appetites for the post I’ll be putting up later in the week with some photos.

In port at Citavecchia, near Rome
In port at Civitavecchia, near Rome

 

View from our table in The Porch Restaurant
View from our table in The Porch Restaurant, a new addition to the regular Solstice lineup

 

The wine list and menu at Qsine are handed to you on an iPad.
The wine list and menu at Qsine are handed to you on an iPad. Wish I could have kept it!

 

Cocktail waiter perfecting his Tom Cruise impression
Cocktail waiter perfecting his Tom Cruise impression

 

Pool deck at night
Pool deck at night

 

Dr W and yours truly in a gargantu-chair on the lawn deck
Dr W and yours truly in a gargantu-chair on the lawn deck

 

A trio of ceviches, served with a really great smile.
A trio of ceviches, served with a really great smile.

 

Market Restaurant and Bar, Del Mar, San Diego, California

So here I am in Southern California, getting too much sun and doing a lot of hiking. We spent most of Sunday clambering over stuff up Palomar Mountain, a few tens of miles of orange groves away from San Diego. Chef Carl Schroeder has been raking in the plaudits at Market (3702 Via De La Valle Del Mar, CA 92014, tel. (858) 523-0007) for his minutely, obsessively prepared dishes full of bouncingly fresh farm ingredients, so we swung by that evening, in the middle of the white corn season, to see what was on offer.

Andouille and fresh corn chowder
Andouille and fresh corn chowder

For me, the best of Californian cooking is all about the produce. This is one of those menus where the provenance of every last green bean is described, along, of course, with the sourcing of all the meats on offer. Schroeder is using whatever is at the peak of its season here, so those beans, the picked-this-minute sweet corn, and tomatoes bursting with the Californian sunshine all find a place on the plate. The chowder above was gloriously, thickly complex. Dense stock, a really good andouille sausage providing a velvety background of pork and spice, and astonishing depth of flavour from a whole garden of vegetables and herbs supporting the sweetness of some corn picked at the height of its ripeness.

All types of cuisine can be had at the many restaurants San Diego California has to offer.

 

Braised short rib
Braised short rib

I ordered Schroeder’s signature dish, a beef short rib braised in Cabernet – the beef and the wine local, of course. A stupidly American portion size (what you can see in the picture above is only half of what was on the plate), and I was a little ashamed to finish the whole thing. Blame the hunger caused by a day’s hiking and the fact that this short rib was really pretty darn fabulous. All its connective tissues were reduced by long, slow sous-vide cooking to a perfectly tender mouthful, the dark Cabernet jus penetrating all the way through the joint. This was once a well-marbled and cheerfully pudgy cow, and all the fat had melted through the beef, carrying flavour and a lovely mouthfeel. More corn here, and some balsamic cippolini onions alongside a sweet onion and potato mash, just in case you don’t feel affairs on your plate are rich and dense enough already.

S'mores
S'mores (kind of)

Another signature dish for dessert – pastry chef James Foran’s take on a s’more. If you’re English, you may not have come across s’mores. Imagine your Girl Guide/Boy Scout marshmallow-on-a-stick souped up, American style. Here, kids around a camp fire sandwich that marshmallow between two Graham crackers (nearest UK equivalent: the humble digestive biscuit) with a chunk of chocolate, and perform complicated grilling manoeuvres until the innards are melted. Here at Market, the chocolate is a fondant in a shell bearing only the barest resemblance to a Graham cracker – which is to say, that shell is crispy – and topped with a swirl of marshmallow. The shell is cheek-suckingly rich, flavoured with chocolate and cinnamon, and that marshmallow is made with brown sugar and a little smoked sea salt. Add a scoop of malted chocolate ice cream, and you have one hell of a dessert.

It’s a warm-feeling room, all chocolate leather, persimmon walls and modern-googie design touches. And there’s a fantastic and thoughtful wine list (although I ended up with a bottle of Kanchiku junmai sake, which was a great accompaniment to everything I’d ordered). A couple of duff notes: some insipid and tasteless asparagus with a smoked salmon starter, which stood out after the great season we’ve just had in Europe and alongside the other impeccably seasonal vegetables, especially since the kitchen had tried to remedy matters with a far-too-sharp dressing. Tables are uncomfortably crammed in. I felt awkwardly party to every detail of the second date going on to my right and the birthday on my left. And there’s really no excuse for making your parking valet-only, Market, when it takes less than ten seconds to walk from the end of the car park to the restaurant door. Still: all in all, a lovely, bright and fresh meal, and a restaurant I’d definitely visit again.

+(65)/plusixfive Supper Club, London, by way of Singapore

Food blogging demographics are a decidedly odd thing. A totally disproportionate number of us have at least one South-East Asian parent. (KevinEats has noticed the same phenomenon in  LA food blogging circles.) And of that disproportionate number, an even more disproportionate number have family from Singapore or Malaysia. Not so much of a surprise, I suppose; I’ve never been anywhere else in the world where food is such an ingrained part of the overall culture of a country.

Nibbles
Drinks nibbles: freshly roasted peanuts, ikan bilis (crispy baby anchovies) and Goz's amazing five-spice pork crackling

So when Goz (behind the cooker) and Wen (front of house) started up the +(65)/plusixfive Supper Club, named for the Singapore telephone code, they probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as they were that the first night’s bookings filled up with a positive legion of bloggers nostalgic for pandan cake and crispy fried anchovies. At my table alone, there were four of us, shutters clicking, making “eeee!” noises every time a new dish arrived, and slapping each other away with the serving spoons in an attempt to get to the best bits.

Goz and Alex
Goz and Alex hard at work filling pie tee moulds

Supper clubs are a tricky thing for the hosts to balance. Too much formality can be uncomfortable for diners; too little, and your service can fall apart. You’ve got to hope that your guests will get on well: ideally, the food should provide a talking point to get conversation moving. I’m amazed that this was only the first time that Goz and Wen, with help from their friend Alex, had hosted a supper club. The service was slick; the hosts were warm and great fun to chat with. The company was superb – nothing brings a table of strangers together better than a shared interest in a particular cuisine – and the food, the most important part of the evening, was like going back to Malaysia and eating in my auntie’s house.

Satay
Satay with plenty of raw shallot and cucumber to dip in the sauce

Goz prepares the food in a tiny kitchen area overlooking the open-plan dining room. There are two rice cookers on the go, churning out fragrant coconut rice. There’s a wonderland of woks hanging from the walls, and by some magical space-bending trick, dish upon dish upon tray upon baking sheet of food keeps coming out of the tiny space. Where was it all hiding?

Pie tee
The pie tee, filled. These have to be eaten within about five minutes of preparing so the shells don't go soggy. Unsurprisingly, we didn't have any trouble eating them in time.

I feel personally responsible for putting Goz to a lot of trouble over one dish. We got talking on Twitter about kueh pie tee, or top hats: cotton-reel sized shells made from a very thin rice flour batter, and filled with any number of ingredients. They’re a nightmare to prepare, and I’ve never managed to make them well enough to blog (there’s lots of faffing with heated brass moulds on a stick and woks full of terrifying boiling oil). So I was touched, thrilled and a bit ashamed when Goz made a giant stack of the things in addition to the eight courses already on the menu.

Pork belly with mustard greens
Wen's family dish: pork belly with mui choy (mustard greens)

Goz is in charge of the kitchen, for the most part, while Wen deals with the administrative side of things. She also contributed a family recipe: a braised Hakka pork belly and mustard greens concoction which possesses the uncanny ability to take you straight back to your grandmother’s knee, being spoon-fed coconut rice soaked with the rich soy gravy. (If you have a Hakka, Malaysian or Singaporean grandmother, that is. If yours is from Skegness, I doubt the pork belly will have quite the same impact.) She plans to blog the recipe; I’ll add a link here when she does. (Update, about four hours later: with terrifying promptness, Wen has blogged the recipe here.)

Beef rendang
Goz's ox-cheek rendang

Even if you’re not an expert on Singaporean/Malaysian food, you’re likely to recognise some of what arrives on the table. Goz’s chicken satay, lemongrass-fragrant and spiked with peanut sauce, is terrific, little nuggets of skin left on so they crisp under the grill. Beef rendang is also a dish you might have come across in restaurants in the UK. Goz’s beef rendang (my recipe for rendang is here – you’ll notice that rendang is basically impossible to photograph in a way that makes it look pretty) has a twist to it, though; it’s made with succulent, flavour-packed ox cheeks.

Tofu with century eggs
Tofu and century eggs with a soy and sesame dressing

Tofu in a sesame and soy dressing was served with century eggs. I love century eggs: back in Malaysia we ate them with strips of pickled ginger, and I think they’re fantastic studding a bowl of congee with shreds of roast pork. They also work as a good personality test. I find that if someone who’s never encountered one before eats a piece with gusto, transparent brown white and greeny blue yolk and all, I’m almost certainly going to like them.

Teochew duck, eggs and tofu
Teochew duck, eggs and tofu

Goz saved the savoury dish that we thought the best for the end. Teochew braised duck with hard-boiled eggs and spongy tofu, all the better to soak up a gorgeously rich, dense and meaty dark sauce. Terrific alongside the Hainanese vegetables with glass noodles and a dollop of that coconut rice.

Ice cream
Tea ice cream and a sort of cornflake praline. I could have eaten as much of this as Goz had room in his freezer for.
Kuih ubi kayu
Kuih ubi kayu. If you visit Goz and Wen, make sure you save plenty of room for these - and make sure you grab a bit that touched the edge of the pan.

Teh tarik (pulled tea) ice cream made with an almost impossibly strong black tea was a lovely way to cool the mouth. Teh tarik is a sweet, strong, milky tea which is cooled by pouring in great loops between two glasses until it’s warm and frothy. Goz served it with crushed caramelised cornflakes; a terrific flavour match and texturally really good with the ice cream. Kuih bingka ubi, a lovely soft, syrupy, mouth-melting cassava cake, was meant to be a petit four to accompany our coffee, but our table ate them all in about five seconds flat, before the coffee had even brewed. Goz, not to be outdone, toasted up some pandan cake for us instead. Pandan cake will be familiar to all Singaporean or Malaysian readers, and can be bought at some oriental bakeries and supermarkets in the UK. It’s a very light chiffon cake with a bright green crumb, flavoured with the grassy fragrance of pandan leaves. None of us had every tried it toasted before, and I don’t think I’m ever going to go back to eating it straight again. Broken into chunks and grilled until the edges are barely crisp and golden, it made for a lovely accompaniment to the coffee, imported from Singapore roasters.

Pandan cake
Pandan cake, toasted

I live an hour and a half from +(65)/plusixfive, but I’m already planning my next trip. Goz, Wen and friends are doing something really special here: Singaporean home cooking and Singaporean hospitality that makes you feel a million miles away from London. Keep an eye on their website or follow them on Twitter @plusixfive to find out when they’re next hosting an evening, and bring plenty of Tiger Beer!

Garden Par-tea afternoon tea, Royal Horseguards hotel, London

Another season, another one of Joanne Todd’s afternoon teas. I was invited to visit the Royal Horseguards hotel again last week for an afternoon tea timed to coincide with this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, all the patisseries flavoured, this time, with flowers. Add a pot of flowering tea, some chocolate butterflies and leaves attached to the cake stand with melted chocolate (no picture of these; my partner-in-tea snapped them off and ate them before I got to them with the camera), the compulsory scones, and a stack of neat little finger sandwiches, you’ll find yourself with a very good reason to skip lunch.

Patisseries
Floral patisseries

It’s the application of a fierce imagination to what’s on the plate that so charms in these afternoon teas. A Felchlin chocolate cremeux was flavoured with lavender – and popping candy. Elderflower cupcakes; chocolate chip loaf spiked with orange blossom; a lemon drizzle cake where much of the citrus aroma actually comes from lemon thyme. The raspberry and hibiscus flower jelly tart and a violet cupcake had me grinning like a lunatic. These patisseries are beautiful, they’re superbly delicate, and they make for one of those rare examples of something that really does taste as good as it looks.

The Garden Par-tea had a short run and finishes today, but Joanne is, as ever, keeping busy: look out for another Wimbledon-themed tea this June, and a children’s afternoon tea later in the summer, complete with alphabet shortbread, toy soldiers and jelly bears.

Scones
Tiny scones with a positive mountain of clotted cream and jam, and some super-duper finger sarnies

I’ve been visiting the hotel for Joanne’s teas for a year now, and it’s great to see the little refinements made to what’s on offer every time. The scones have shrunk to a much more manageable size (I still couldn’t get through two, though, especially on top of all the lovely little cakes); the sandwich fillings are becoming more complicated – and this time, there was a handsome amount of chocolate kicking around to round things off.

Royal Horseguards terrace
The Royal Horseguards terrace, just across the street from the Thames

The hotel has undergone some renovations in the last few months, and the outside terrace (closed to diners when I visited because it was such a windy day, but I managed to get outside to take some pictures) has been completely revamped.

I’m wondering if I can convince someone to lend me their children in time for Joanne’s upcoming kids’ afternoon tea. I like the sound of those jelly bears.

Bremen food and drink roundup

Bremen town hall. Image from Bremen tourist board.

I wonder if there’s a body out there that can rescind qualifications you’ve acquired in the past. Since a GCSE passed with flying colours 20 years ago, the only German I’ve encountered has been sung at me on my iPod by David Hasselhoff and the odd choir – and you can tell. Reduced to gurning, miming and pointing over schnitzel and pig knuckles, I am reminded that the brain is a muscle, blah blah blah, and that a mild attempt to keep up learned skills in adulthood might not have been a bad thing. If you intend to enjoy eating while travelling in a European country where you don’t speak the language, you could do a lot worse than pick up a copy of Eating Out in Five Languages, which fits nicely in your handbag or a coat pocket and covers 10,000 restaurant and food terms in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. I found it invaluable, and it’s always reassuring to know that the words for lark, nettle or lung are just a quick flip away.

If there were such a thing as a bloggers’ licence, I should probably have that rescinded too. I’ve just spent a week in a city a-throb with UNESCO World Heritage sites, and I managed to leave my camera out of the hand luggage while trying to get the case to meet Ryanair’s weight restrictions, and forget to put it back in again. All the pictures you see here are courtesy of the Bremen tourist board.

So, you’re in North Germany. You’re probably thinking sausage, and you’re definitely thinking beer. The local cuisine is heavy on the meat, light on the vegetables, tends towards onions for flavouring rather than garlic, and favours mustard and caraway above pretty much every other spicing. You’ll find the local foods all over the city, in bierkellers, restaurants, and in the biergartens strung like beads along the river Weser.

Your first destination in Bremen should be the market square. This is where all the UNESCO World Heritage goodies are – a statue of Roland and the gothic fruitcakery of the Ratshaus (town hall), both built around 1405. If it isn’t supper time yet, you can fill any gaping holes you might possess with a wurst; there are three permanent stalls here to the left of the town hall where you can pick up a sausage in a bun, with some potato salad, or without any accompaniment at all. Currywurst (in Bremen sometimes called Kanzlerschnitzel, or Chancellor’s Schnitzel – any German speakers know why?) is a popular choice: a grilled sausage slathered with sweet tomato sauce, then dusted with garam masala. There’s no chilli heat at all in one of these beasts, but plenty of flavour from the curry spices.

Bremen Ratskeller. Image from Bremen tourist board. Kobolds etc. probably lurking in barrel.

Underneath the Ratshaus, you’ll find the Ratskeller, an enormous cellar tavern which originally housed all the wine sold in the 15th century city. Now, if you are someone with a horrible addiction to computer role-playing games of the medieval fantasy sort (not that I know anyone like that. Oh no), you’ll be all over this place. It’s the perfect instantiation of ye olde cellar tavern, all vaulted ceilings, sconces just aching for a flaming torch, cast-iron stands for your coat and your sword, and gorgeously baroque dark wood carvings. Seated next to a gargantuan wine barrel with armorial markings from 1740-odd, I was perfectly primed for an attack from a party of kobolds while I wrestled with my Bremer Knipp.

Knipp (pronounced with a hard “K”) is a very local dish you’re unlikely to find elsewhere in Germany. The closest you’re likely to have come to it in the UK is a haggis; Bremer Knipp is made from oats, beef liver, pig’s head and pork belly, seasoned with onion and some sweet spices, all minced together into a patty and fried crisp in lard. You’ll be thankful for the pickled gherkin it’s served with, which neatly cuts the fatty richness of the Knipp. We found ourselves big fans of Bremer Knipp; if you’re someone who enjoys offal, you’re likely to like it too. (If you’re a haggis-avoider, give it a miss.) The local dishes seem to be by far the best at the Ratskeller: try the Labskaus, a sort of corned beef, potato and onion hash.

Two minutes’ walk away you’ll find Böttcherstrasse, about 100m of narrow medieval street as reimagined by 1920s expressionist architects in brick. It’s a jewel of a place (look out in particular for the Haus des Glockenspiels, where a carillon of bells made from Meissen porcelain plays an eight-minute concert on the hour in the daytime) lined with little shops and restaurants. We particularly enjoyed the cavernous Ständige Vertretung, a beer hall themed, rather weirdly, around German politics. My, the conversations we ended up avoiding for reasons of cultural sensitivity over our herrings. Beer here – frothy, crystal-clear Kräusen from the local Haake Beck brewery by default, although you can choose other beers – is sold in little 20cl glasses, which are topped up as the evening goes on. (They’re fragile; clink, if you must, with the bottoms rather than the tops. My friend T ended up with a shard of glass in his pilsner.) A tally is kept on your beermat; it’s easy to drink a lot like this, but when you feel you’ve had enough, just pop your beermat on top of your glass.

Take a left at the top of Böttcherstrasse, and with another few minutes’ brisk trotting, you’ll find yourself in the Schnoor district, a maze of medieval streets. Restaurants here tend towards the touristy (avoid the Beck’s restaurant), but Schröter’s Leib und Seele, especially on a sunny day, is a great lunch spot – and there were more vegetables on the menu here than I saw anywhere in the rest of the city. It’s attached to Schröter’s Konditorei (cake shop), so save plenty of room for dessert, which is the best part of the meal here.

Paulaner's beer garden in the evening. Image from Bremen tourist board.

The city’s set up for long, drinky evenings. You’ll find atmosphere in buckets in all the places I’ve mentioned, but on a sunny day you’re best off by far along the river embankment (Schlachte). Here, you’ll find a line of terraces under the trees, where you can eat from the restaurants opposite the river. At weekends, pigs appear on spits, mackerel is grilled over coals and things get substantially busier than they are in the week. We spent a lot of time sitting at the picnic tables here, soaking up a positively professional amount of beer with sausages and schnitzel. My favourite spot along the Schlachte is Paulaner’s, where there are actual honest-to-god beer wenches, with boobs hoisted up near their chins on a sort of lacy shelf arrangement. Great schnitzel, too, served at this time of year with beautiful fat white asparagus and hollandaise (everywhere has a seasonal menu featuring asparagus at the moment; I wish we’d pick up on this idea in the UK), along with a totally unnecessary lake of butter.

Alcohol-aided bravery might be necessary for you to try out another local trick in the beer gardens: white wheat beer with a shot of flavoured syrup. You’ll find banana (a really surprisingly good flavour match to the hoppy Weissbier), cherry and Waldmeister (woodruff), which turns your beer a startling green and gives it an aromatic, honeyed flavour. Woodruff beer is also called Mai-Bier (May beer), and is meant as a particular springtime drink. Just be ready for a little teasing when you order one of these – on ordering a Pilsner and a banana-flavoured Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse I was told by a smirking fella in an apron: “Hier ist das Bier für einen Menschen. Und hier ist ein Bier für ein Mädchen.”

Even I have enough German to understand that.

Kaiseki menu at Hakubai, Kitano Hotel, New York City

Cornus flowers
Cornus display in the Kitano lobby

The Kitano, a few blocks south of Grand Central Station, is one of my favourite places to stay in New York. The hotel is Japanese owned and run, and stepping off the Park Avenue sidewalk into the lobby is a bit like stepping through a teleporter, straight into an Asian hotel. There’s Japanese floral art, a service ethic imported straight from Tokyo, a green tea machine in every bedroom – and it’s wonderfully, extravagantly clean. Best of all, there’s a simply superb Japanese restaurant in the basement; one of those inexplicable well-kept secrets, which you won’t read much about in guide books or online. I am assured by a Japanese friend that given the decor, kimono-swathed waitresses, and lacquered tableware, it is very easy to mistake Hakubai for somewhere similarly swanky in Kyoto before you even get to the food.

I was there for the food rather than the hallucinatory experience of being in another city, but I have to admit: going from a view of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings to a restaurant that feels half a world away is a great sensation.

Hakubai was on my list of must-eats in New York because it is one of the very, very few restaurants in the city that offers a kaiseki menu. Kaiseki is a bravura food-as-art performance of a meal. This isn’t hyperbole; a kaiseki meal really is regarded as art, and like other kinds of art, it has a formal structure. You’ll find many exquisitely prepared tiny courses, which are carefully chosen to reflect the season. Looks and taste are equally important here, and there should be a very wide variation in textures between the courses. Modern kaiseki usually proceeds with an appetiser, sashimi, a simmered dish, a grilled dish, and a steamed course (not necessarily in that order), perhaps with additions from the chef. The courses are served at carefully timed intervals on decorative lacquer and porcelain dishes, decorated with real leaves, flowers, and tiny pieces of edible garnish. This sort of thing doesn’t come cheap, of course; Hakubai offers two kaiseki menus, one at $170 a head, and an oknomi kaiseki (what-you-like kaiseki, which is what I ended up ordering) at $95.

Because a kaiseki meal is meant to appeal as much to the eyes as it does to the mouth, the best way to take you through what I ate is through pictures. This is a meal worth saving up for if you happen to be visiting the city. We had the excuse of a couple of celebrations – a birthday, the end of a university course – but if I were you, I’d do my very best to make up some reason to celebrate, sell the car, and use the money to hotfoot it to Hakubai.

Cold sake
Cold sake in a Venetian glass bottle, crushed ice and sakura blossoms. I'm struggling to think of a nicer way to start the evening.
Sesame tofu
Sakizuke: an amuse-bouche-type starter course. Sesame tofu with a raw okra and fresh wasabi garnish. The tofu, made in-house, is delicate, silky and has a subtle sesame flavour.
Hassun
Hassun: a course emphasising the seasonal theme. From top right, clockwise: monkfish liver; a cold grilled cod salad in a very light rice vinegar dressing; herring roe; spinach and bonito salad. The monkfish liver, sometimes called aquatic foie gras, was a real seasonal treat, but the standout here for me was the herring roe, which is very hard to find.
Herring roe on kelp  (komochi konbu)
A closer view of the herring roe on kelp (komochi konbu). This was only the second time in my life I've eaten it. Komochi konbu is hard to find; it has a short season, and western diners can be a bit squeamish about raw roe, so it's not very popular, which is a great shame, because it's fabulous stuff. The herring lays its eggs on each side of a piece of kelp - you're looking at a cross-section of the egg mass. The kelp is the dark stripe in the middle. This is all about texture - it's beautiful, sea-tasting roe with a soft crunch, wonderful dipped in a very little soy.
Futamono
Futamono: a lidded course. This is chawan mushi, which you might have encountered elsewhere: a steamed savoury egg custard. This was densely flavoured with pork, mackerel, crab and herbs, with a tiny ball of sticky mochi in the centre.
Sashimi
Mukozuke: a sashimi course. Sashimi on crushed ice in an earthenware oyster shell. From the top, you're looking at chu toro on a spicy perilla leaf, fluke and amberjack (a Japanese fish which, again, is hard to find outside Japan) with lemon. All impossibly fresh.
Scallops
Takiawase: a course of vegetables and fish, meat or tofu, prepared separately. The grilled scallops are served with lightly dressed, steamed spaghetti squash. Above them is a tofu and seasonal vegetable salad with some very fresh bamboo shoots, and to the right a grilled Spanish mackerel dish.
Sushi
Shiizakana: the most substantial course. There was a choice between sushi, tempura or steak (with a $30 supplement for Kobe beef). This was so good I went back a few nights later for a sushi-only meal. Back row, top to bottom: toro (fatty tuna), hirame (fluke), ika (squid), tai (red snapper). Front row, top to bottom: amaebi (sweet shrimp), anago (sea eel), uni (sea urchin), ikura (salmon roe).
Mizumono
Mizumono: a course of seasonal desserts. Green tea ice cream, vanilla ice cream, and mochi (glutinous rice flour cakes) in caramel. The mochi were so soft they only barely held their shape. A lovely (and necessarily - I was very full by this point) light finish to the meal.

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