Brinkley’s Kitchen, Bellevue Road, Wandsworth, London SW17

Wandsworth is a suburb of South London that is well served with places to eat. Bellevue Road in particular is an attractive road with the broad expanse of Wandsworth Common along one side, and an array of restaurants, pubs, artisan tea rooms and independent shops along the other. Brinkley’s Kitchen is near the top of this road, we chose it for a late lunch on a Sunday afternoon.

The restaurant is decorated in a smart contemporary manner. The photos on its website show it as very bright and airy, but the blinds were all drawn on the afternoon we were there. There was no tablecloth on our table for three, but it does have linen napkins, nice cutlery and glasses. The brunch menu has good choice, we opted for roast beef and a steak. The wines by the glass had a more limited selection, for example they only had one rose. When I asked the waiter what it was like – as I didn’t know it – he told me it was very good. I said I was hoping for a more descriptive reply, he just said “you will love it”. So, I asked to taste before I chose and it was fine, although I suspect the whole bottle cost a fraction of what they charged for the glass.

The food was good but unremarkable. The beef was overcooked for my taste but the gravy was nice. When I pay top end prices for a Sunday roast, I would expect the Yorkshire pudding to be freshly prepared. These had clearly been made earlier and reheated. The ribeye was okay and the chips were hot and fresh. When my friend asked for tomato sauce for her chips, they brought a bottle of ketchup to the table, at least it was Heinz. It came without the lid, so much hitting the bottom of the bottle was required to get any out.

The service was entertaining, every different waiter who came to the table enquired “How is your day going?” which became a little Stepford Wives creepy after the sixth time of asking, especially after the busboy asked it twice in five minutes without waiting for a reply. I didn’t like the fact that they brought us the bill without us asking for it, I felt they were rushing us to finish our drinks.

Overall, Brinkley’s Kitchen served us reasonable quality pub food, but charged high end restaurant prices. In an area, indeed even a street, where there are so many fine places to eat, it will not be difficult to find somewhere that gives far better value for money.

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Porches Velho, Porches, Algarve, Portugal

Porches Velho is a restaurant that could be called a hidden gem. Porches is an attractive village about three kilometres inland from the Southern Algarvian coast, between Carvoeiro and Armacao De Pera. It is quiet and calm, with narrow cobbled streets and is relatively untouristed, even in the height of summer. The area is famous for its pottery and the local workshops are certainly worth a visit. However, the largest of these are on the nearby N125 and not so many people go into the village itself.

The village has a pretty church. Its bells rang (8pm on a Wednesday, if you would like to try to recreate the effect) as we walked up the hill to the restaurant and a sliver of moon shone over its steeple, making us feel a little like we had stepped into a spaghetti western, so the romantic scene was set even before we entered the restaurant. The room itself has high vaulted ceilings, it is a 200 year old converted wine cellar. It has thick whitewashed walls decorated sparsely with antique agricultural equipment, tiles and old fashioned lamps. It oozes Portuguese tradition from every beam.

Porches Velho is a “Restaurante Tipico Potugues” which means that it serves classic Portuguese food. The tables are dressed in white linen with white napkins and soon after you are shown to your table the waiter brings the couvert dishes, fish paste, olives, pickled carrots and pickled beetroot, also a basket of sliced local bread with oil and butter. The wines are all Portuguese and there is a full list to choose from.

The starters consist of fish, soup or vegetarian dishes. We had a Portuguese Gazpacho and the vegetable soup. Both were excellent, the vegetable was thick and hot and the Gazpacho was spicy and juicy. The main course menu has many traditional dishes. Rabbit Cataplana, Alentejo Lamb and chicken casserole are among the interesting choices.

We went for the Old Portuguese Style Steak and the Medallions of Black Pork Tenderloin. The Pork was perfectly cooked, and served with a sauce of wild mushrooms on the side. The sauce was delicious and thick with different types of mushroom. The Steak is served in a deep dish, covered in serrano ham, surrounded by sliced potatoes, in a thick brown gravy and topped with a fried egg. This is a traditional way to serve steak in the Algarve and many restaurants offer this dish. This particular version though, was beautifully tender, the steak was very good quality and one of the nicest that I have had.

For the dessert offering, the waiters come to your table carrying the choices available. This is a clever idea, as one is much more likely to be tempted by seeing the dishes than by reading about it on the menu. The ice-cream is homemade and I can certainly vouch for the chocolate one being rich and flavourful.

The service was very good, we felt that they were genuinely interested in our opinions of the food and went out of their way to ensure that we had a good evening. Porches Velho is a wonderful Portuguese Restaurant with lovely traditional Portuguese hospitality. It is a hidden gem of the Algarve, a little of the beaten track but all the better for it and certainly worth the trip to visit it. Highly Recommended.

Mac & Wild, Great Titchfield Street, London W1W

Mac & Wild is a restaurant that markets itself as serving the highest quality ingredients in its dishes – with a Scottish bias. It is known for its venison, steak and salmon. It is listed in the 2018 Michelin Guide and the Evening Standard named it in their “5 best places to eat game in London”. In 2016 it won the award for the best burger in the UK and it is in Time Out’s list of the best in London.

It opens for dinner at 5.30pm and we arrived, without a reservation, before 6. The place seemed pretty quiet, but they told us they would be able to squeeze us in at a table near the window. It was a damp autumnal Tuesday so I was a bit sceptical, but sure enough, by twenty past six they were turning people away and the restaurant was packed by the time we left at 7pm.

The room is long and narrow, decorated in a rustic style, with plain walls, rough hewn wooden tables and chairs and monochrome photos of Scottish countryside on the walls. There is a cellar room too, the same shape and decorated similarly. Even the bathrooms continue the rustic theme, with an old fashioned overhead ceramic cistern and a chain pull flush.

The menu is basically steak, venison, salmon, cod or hamburger. The sizes and cuts of steak vary according to their stock, they have a list on the wall and cross them out as they are sold. There are vegetarian starters and one main course on the list.  We ordered the scotch egg and fish bites to start. The fish was delicious as was the egg. We were here late October and the Scotch egg came Halloween style – stuck with a syringe and oozing blood! Very funny, but possibly not for the fainthearted.

The burger has two patties, one beef and one venison, it comes with caramelised onion melted cheese and béarnaise. The taste is good, a nice meaty flavour, juicy and with a lovely texture. Be aware that it will come rare unless you ask for it to be well done, unusually they did not enquire when we ordered. The bun is a nice toasted brioche and the chips are skin on and tasty.

It is served on a tin tray, with the chips in a small metal bucket by its side. For a restaurant that is proud of its Scottish heritage, a plate seems like an odd thing for it to forgo. At least it did come with a knife and fork. The lager was quite pricey, a hair under a fiver for a small tin. There are a number of wines served by the glass and the Pinot Grigio Rose was good. The service is excellent, the waiters are likeable and honest, they seem genuinely invested in making sure we had a good time.

All in all we had a really good experience. Mac & Wild are proud of the provenance of their ingredients and this shows in the quality of their burger.  If you plan on going, I would certainly recommend that you book – even as we left there was a couple standing outside in the drizzle waiting for us to pay the bill, so they could have our table.

 

Gillray’s Steakhouse & Bar, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1

This restaurant is inside the Marriott County Hall hotel. If you arrive by car the entrance is from Westminster Bridge Road through the hotel. The most attractive entrance though, is from Queens Walk, beside the river Thames. A sweep of steps leads you up from the walkway into a bright relaxed bar area and the restaurant entrance is a few steps to the right inside the door.

The room is sunlit and airy, light wood walls with large windows along one side overlooking the river. The view is lovely on a summer evening; people walking beside the river, the London Eye to the right and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament across the Thames to the left. We were here quite early, a pre-theatre dinner before a show at the National, which is a couple of hundred metres away along the South Bank. They have a pre and post theatre offer, it has a wider choice than many set menus and it is good value too.

There is a starter of chicken and mushroom roll, this is pleasantly spicy, a nice combination of flavours. We also tried the crusted pan fried mackerel, which was really a Caesar salad with mackerel, also good – the crusted fish taking the place of croutons. There is a choice of six mains, three steaks, a lamb, a fish dish and a vegetarian choice. The rib eye was nice, a little undersealed to be perfect but a good flavour. The lamb yorkie pie is a lamb casserole inside a large Yorkshire pudding, a clever serving idea. The lamb was nice, although the Yorkshire was more like a carvery pudding which is made in advance and kept warm.

I felt that the drinks were a little overpriced, the beer especially. The happy hour offer of a house gin and tonic for a fiver is not necessarily so wise, as this makes one aware of how much one might be paying for a branded gin at other times. The service was good, the staff were attentive and available whenever we needed them.

Overall, we had an enjoyable dinner in very pleasant surroundings, so if you have a show on the Southbank, Gillray’s Steakhouse and Bar is certainly worth considering.

The Albert Square Chophouse, Manchester.

This restaurant is very centrally located – in a beautiful solid brick building, on the corner of Albert Square. The entrance is up a few steps to a nice bar space with a mixture of sofas and chairs. The restaurant is downstairs, it looks impressive as you descend, an industrial sized room filled with fully set dining tables, booths and banquettes. The windows are set high and the kitchen is open and visible from the dining room. The walls of both floors are lined with photos of Manchester luminaries, some recognisable others less so.

The menu is traditional British. The corned beef hash cake is a great starter, meaty and comforting. I had a rib eye steak and it was flavourful and tender, one of the best steaks that I have had. The steak and kidney pie was reportedly great too, done in the old fashioned way with suet in the pastry.

The wine list looked good, the house rose was excellent. They have a full bar, so the selection of beers is good too. The service was friendly and helpful. It is not a cheap restaurant, but everything they do is high quality, so definitely a meal to sit and savour. This is a venue for a night out, to enjoy the evening and chat after.

We ate early, 6pm, so we managed to get in without booking, but it was quite full by the time we left, so I would imagine it would need to be booked if you wanted to eat at a more popular time.

We thoroughly enjoyed it and will be back next time we are in Manchester.

Hawksmoor, Deansgate, Manchester

I like the Hawksmoor ethos. They eschew ostentation. They keep it simple. They do it well. Hawksmoor Manchester stick to this blueprint. The décor is wood panelling, wooden floors, leather banquettes, and solid tables nicely spaced. The have proper napkins, good plain crockery, and the cutlery is steel and sturdy.

The menu is relatively short but you can be sure that everything on there is  prepared to a high standard. On the night we went, the potted beef with Yorkshire pudding was an excellent starter. The Caesar salad had romaine lettuce, anchovies, parmesan, croutons, and plain but perfect Caesar dressing. The fillet was high quality, soft and tender; even though it was rare, and the rib-eye had just the right amount of fat to bring out the flavour of the meat. This is all as you would expect from the Hawksmoor brand. The chips were full cut and well cooked. The mac and cheese, which we ordered as a side, was indulgent.

The wine by the glass was excellent, the Malbec robust and rich, and the Pinot Grigio Rose was dry and pale, possibly the nicest I have had. The service was impeccable, just as it always is at a Hawksmoor restaurant, never too close but always at hand when you want something.

If I  have a misgiving about Hawksmoor Manchester, it is the bar. The area here veers toward the austere. It feels a bit more like a church vestibule than a comfortable place to chat and wait for friends. They have good wines and all sorts of premium spirits, but their beer list is short, and it has little recognisable on it.

The restaurant is not cheap, but you get what you pay for. Everything is of the highest quality, and if you want somewhere that you can rely on to deliver a fine dinner, in pleasant surroundings, with polished service; then Hawksmoor Manchester should be one of the first places that you consider.

Hawksmoor, Air Street, London

Hawksmoor was a talented architect of the 17th and 18th century; probably not somebody I would choose to name a restaurant after, given the manner of his death.

However, the food here is high quality and well prepared. We all had steaks and they were all excellent. The set cuts on the menu seemed large (400g – the rib eye) but when I said this to the waiter, she offered us smaller sizes – or larger ones if we wished to share. The chips were delicious as was the spinach.

The wine list is comprehensive and the bottle we chose was very good.

The décor is low key, art deco. The restaurant is cleverly laid out because the surprisingly large room still manages to feel quite intimate. The service was perfect; always nearby but never obtrusive.

It is quite expensive, even for London, but the experience was distinctive, right from going through the door and it does deliver value for money.