The Walrus and the Bentobox

The latest twists in my life have been taking me on somewhat of a ride - up hills of effort, down descents of excitement and in contrast to working for my previous employers seems to be keeping the doldrums and depressions short and snappy rather than protracted and bitter. It's much more fun working for myself.

So that's all good yes? Anyway one of the exciting new things on the cards may involve me going to work in Germany for a few months... which having told my ex brought up rather a lot of unpleasant reaction over the weekend, harking back to our breakup (and most worryingly seeming like she was editing the story somewhat) making me feel very very upset. Didn't help that I was rather hungover mind... In the end it got to the point where we were both sulking at each other and I just figured it wasn't any good having this going on around the kids and said my good-byes.



So the therapeutic lunch was at Walrus - where they have a rather neat five-pound "bento box" deal.

Walrus itself is all very Northern Quarter cool - and environment wise feels a bit overly WHITE... very very white... white banquettes all around with little white tables and white stools and the odd bit of duck-egg blue trim. It's also starting to look a touch shabby for all the scuff marks despite only having been open a year or so. On a busy night perhaps it makes sense, but for me on a quiet monday lunchtime it's a little jarring.

The food though wasn't bad - rice alongside meat or fish or veg in a sauce and a couple of nice little oriental nibbles on the side. For a fiver this is really rather exceptionally good - the nearest equivalents like Rice seem to cost slightly more and not be anything like as refined. It comes served in a lozenge-shaped wooden box with mandatory chopsticks. To my mind there was perhaps a bit too much sauce going on with my chicken and perhaps not enough sauce with my companion's vegetables but it was all quite tasty.

The service was order-at-the-bar where there was a slightly bored looking young Russian guy who I spoke to for a while about the betrayal of the socialist revolution and cultural variations in tea-drinking habits and education systems. The food arrived reasonably quickly and was as fuss-free as one would expect for a cheap lunch. And yes - it really is a very very good deal and despite the whiteness I will be doing it again.

The next encounter with my ex we just got on with the usual stuff and didn't talk about it... but I have a sense of foreboding...

[update, nov 2010] the bento boxes have gone down-hill somewhat of late; I went in there a few weeks back and the nice gyoza have been replaced with over-salty cremated chicken bits. Not good. Staff changes and cutbacks by the taste of it.

Falafel - or is it safe to come out yet?

Probably not... but nuts to it. [This is edit #5]

I’ve had a funny few months since the last post, including a number of ongoing changes to my life. However I’ve been pretty quiet here. Why? Because ultimately I’ve been put off by some goings on in my personal life and crossed wires on the internet. To those involved I sincerely apologise for my part in surfacing this all over the last few days. Time to move on.



I figure I may as well review Falafel in Rusholme. Manchester’s curry mile is a bewildering place - full of neon, flashy asian lads driving their souped-up micras and mondeos up and down causing hazards to navigation, jewellery emporiums, sari shops and endless endless restaurants.

I have a very close friend who lives there, someone I've never grown tired of spending time with and think the world of... one of our favourite places among the melee is Falafel - a thoroughly Palestinian purveyor of deep fried crispy chickpea delights. Falafel’s falafel is truly excellent, and while not quite on a par with Hashem in Amman it certainly tickles the spot. It’s a basic café-type place, no pretensions of restaurantness here, but formica tables and padded benches and top notch felafel, foul, mutabal and salads.

Also worth a go are the fatyer however DO NOT have the spinach one as it’s rather disgusting and tastes like the spinach has come out of a can; lamb or cheese are both much better. It’s also pretty cheap - for a few quid you can get a felafel wrapped in a soft naan with salad and a pot of mint-infused tea. If you’re not too far away it’s well worth the pilgrimage for lunch or a swift and inexpensive supper.

Fromages à Paris

Bombing around Paris on a bike can go either of two ways... Either slowly and sedately following the pretty girls on their Velibs down the cycleways by major roads, avoiding hapless tourists. Or it's fast and furious racing with scooters up and down little one-way side streets forever trying to work out where the next possible turning in the other direction might be (they seem to assign directions to said streets en masse). Really it is immense fun and very easy to out-pace others travelling by metro or even RER.

The first place I went to eat was Astier up in the 11eme arrondissement on recommendation from a food and cat lover I know in Manchester. Frustratingly the process of getting in touch with my friends meant that some wires were crossed - they were supposed to meet me on Pont Neuf but went straight to the restaurant - leaving me to spend an hour or two farting around wondering where they might be before twigging that they were already there. By the time I arrived they were onto the cheese which was absolutely fucking amazing. A huge platter of marvellous marvels in all grades of stinky oozyness. I did get to have a pudding - a very nice orangey moussey thing interspersed with layers of chocolate, one of my companions had the Rum Barbar (cake plus rum equals good) and we managed to demolish a bottle or two of excellent Pic St Loup.

All in all I was very disappointed not to have had the whole shebang (particularly given my friends ravings about how good it was) so am seriously promising myself a proper visit in the not-too-distant future. À la prochaine!

Breakfast at The Betjeman Arms

I've not had a proper holiday in about a year - so have decided to have one despite the risk of letting things slip a little at home that I need to go away. First stop was an extended weekend with friends, eating vast quantities of rather nice curry and a bit of roadkill - and then impulsiveness took me and I bought myself a Eurostar ticket.

Right now I've just had breakfast at the Bejeman Arms at St Pancras, watching the trains glide in and out, rather excited at the prospect of actually getting on one. With a bit of luck my bicycle is already half-way to Paris by now. It was a reasonably reasonable breakfast however what points they gained with the tasty sausage they completely lost with the bacon which was utterly dried out and a bit like cardboard, only crunchier.



The service however was provided by a very pleasant, smiley and well spoken young lady who when informed of the state of the bacon first offered to fetch more of it and then got me a free cup of coffee instead. I suppose it's not free really as she has thereby swung me into leaving a tip.

In summary; great atmosphere, good service, bad bacon.

#piemob

There is a new anarchistic culinary passtime going down in Manchester. Piemobs are impromptu twitter-organised outings to eat pie of a Friday lunchtime. Preferably with mash, peas and gravy.

Cup in the northern quarter gets a bit of a bad rep on the intertubes for lacklustre, disorganised and unfriendly service however they do do Pieminister pies which while not exactly made on the premises are always very passable. Sadly as a mob it was a bit of a mess as a number of people bailed out leaving only three of us.



A couple of weeks later a second sitting was organised at the Bay Horse, just a few doors down Thomas Street from Cup. This time our mob counted thirteen and the pub was even warned of our impending arrival by one of the twitterers. However come 1pm their pie selection had got rather limited. There was some kind of thai-fish pie and a vegetable pie. They may have been home made but neither were really up to the mark particularly when the blackboard had various interesting sounding gamey pie items on it which were not available to us. The food all came out very haphazardly, pies followed later by gravy followed by peas followed (once we'd pretty much eaten all the pies) by chips. The peas were really the only saving grace being minty and made of gently mushed garden peas rather than processed-to-death marrowfat ones.

The bar seriously needs raising here - so if anyone has any particularly good sources of pie in central Manchester please do leave a suggestion in the comments, or call it on Twitter using the #piemob hashtag. If we don't get any good ones we might have to abandon it all and have #falafelmob instead.

The Governor's House - AVOID

Yesterday I suggested we might go out to some kind of little festival type thing in Chorlton but instead we went for a rather poor pub lunch at the Governor's House in Cheadle Hulme. The food was seriously rubbish with horrendously overdone steak, nasty sauce with the children's spaghetti and meatballs (soundly rejected in favour of stolen chips) and was really not worth the cash. If we weren't hungry and they hadn't made us pay up front it would have been a walk-out job. Don't even bother going there.

Rice

So yesterday evening wile feeling somewhat upset over things a quick and not overly expensive source of food needed to be found. In Piccadilly Gardens there is this big stupid concrete wall by the tram stop with a Cafe Nero and a place called Rice tucked under it. It's a fast and furious oriental-food-in-a-little-box type of place and really takes fast food to a different level. It's clean and open and you can watch as the guys whack your food in a wok. Rice also does noodles which is what I had, with beef and little mangetout in it, picked randomly off the list. Definitely recommended. They do need to do something about the door at one end of the place as it was slightly ajar, lacking a handle to close it with and letting in the arctic gales.

Following that, some drinks with a friend, discussion into some of the whys and wherefores of life. After she went I walked a few yards and saw another friend at a very very stupid gig. All in all a most positive night.