dinner on friday 17 july

So after evensong I went to dinner at a place across the street called Cafe Zoot or something like that. It seems to be a melange if I dare use that word of English, French and American cuisine. I guess. Throw in some Italian. They have bruschetta and garlic bread and a ravioli dish and gnocchi. And a duck confit for a starter, and another dish that sounds an awful lot like duck confit, at least it's duck leg, for a main. And there's a duck pate. And a salad of pear, walnuts and gorgonzola. And of course the ubiquitous steak and ham dishes. Fairly eclectic. I finally settled on the starter sampler, which is supposed to be an appetizer for two people. I needed to eat something but not a full meal.

It had on it:

some seriously mediocre duck pate, a blob sitting on a small sea of strawberry jam, with toasted baguette slices stuck in it;

two sauteed prawns that were okay;

some strips of beef that were battered and fried had served with a "sweet chilli sauce" on top (it was actually better than it sounds);

some green salad, mixed stuff, mostly mache and arugula, in the middle, hard to mess up;

breaded, and then baked or fried (sometime earlier) camembert, served with some kind of chutney on top; and

big chunks of rolls and big slices of french bread separating all these dishes.

It was actually better than it sounds, but it was still bizarre.

Who was it who said that to eat well in Britain, you have to eat breakfast three times a day?

And what is it with these wines? the red ones, at least...

I had dinner last night in the restaurant downstairs in the White Hart, and had two starters, in stead of a main course. My first was "gravlax" which I put in quotes, because I'm fairly certain how gravlax is supposed to be made, and this wasn't. As far as I could tell, it was 1/4" thick cylinders of raw salmon drowned in oil (probably not very good olive oil), placed on very thin rounds of cucumber, and sprinkled generously with fresh dill weed and capers, and sprinkled with lemon, with dollops of mayo scattered around. It was good, but it wasn't gravlax.

And my other starter was fettuccini with Whitby crabmeat, in a white wine sauce with some red peppers in it. Pretty good, but an odd combination.

In both places, the options for red wines were essentially the same: Italian, Australian, South African, no French. Why not?

Lillie