Firehouse Rotisserie and Grill Bath

Bath has more quirks per block than most smaller English towns...The terraced houses and gas style lamps, the railway station that seems wedged into an alley...a street that's actually called Quiet Street that houses Kitchens probably the country's best independent kitchen equipment store - sorry more fun than London's Divertimenti by being more utilitarian and less posh - just wish it had an adjoining book and magazine store...

After 4-5 visits over the years of not stopping, we finally made it around the corner of Quiet Street onto John Street and the Firehouse Rotisserie and Grill...Clearly inspired by the likes of California Pizza Kitchen, this simply does what is says on the tin...Rotisserie chicken with good chips, stone baked pizzas with genuinely tasty toppings i.e. spicy chicken and avocado, a real bar-b-qued duck quesadilla, in a toasty two story Georgian house. Every town should have one but then it probably wouldn't be what it is

And since you're in John Street, dash across to Mr. B's an award winning independent bookstore with adorable lounges to leaf through books - must stop and buy to keep this kind of business in business!

San Francisco Bars

A cool piece on the San Francisco artisanal bar scene
http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/travel/28journeys.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Bocca di Lupo

Hopefully this one will run and run...In an alley behind Picadilly called Archer St, with signage that looks crafted in Spain, this is a long dining bar and 30 seat dining room with great Italianate food served in small and large plates - Cotecchino, lentils and mustard fruit, Red wine risotto and bone marrow, Fritto Misto, a couple of nifty salads, 5 glasses of wine and Cassata all for under £80 including service which was friendly and knowledgeable. From a team of ex Moro chef and restaurant manager, a great new option in Theatreland.

Christmas Music

Without being anti-social or anti-Christmas, can we have a break please? Two weeks before in most Starbucks, McDonalds and such would well be enough.

This said, Starbucks' collection of Elvis, Jack Johnson, Sinatra and such is slightly above the average moving towards tolerable.

Support your local cinema

I've been going to the movies, the pictures, the cinema - whatever you want to call it - on my own for say 35 years - at 10 pictures a year that makes 350 movies. It feels like a lot more to be honest in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Paris, Brussels, Lausanne, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, London, Hamburg. You always want to get there early, make sure you get an aisle seat, the song went. But as the cinemas grew into multiplexes, as the pictures arguably didn't get any better, I wondered when I (or we when it was the two of us) would get a theatre to ourselves.

Well it finally happened! Screen 8 at Vue Shepherd's Bush December 10th 18:50 - granted the film was The Express which was not expected to be a big UK draw. The picture itself wasn't bad - a brave look at Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman Trophy winner who died of leukemia at 23 - with h0nest performances from Dennis Quaid and Rob Brown. The experience was a bit haunting. The reason you go to the movies is to enjoy a shared experience...had I wanted be alone I could have stayed home.

German Christmas Markets

I love German Christmas markets...the gluhwein...the biscuits...the sausages

Only I love them in Germany where it all feels fresh and authentic...the disappointment when they're exported to England is well that they're just phony and tired...as good as a bratwurst may be at any time (and believe me I can put sausages away), the bread is inevitably a disaster, the mustard not Thomy, and the experience a let down

Small Plates

A really tasty piece here from Nation's Restaurant News on small plates for bars and lounges http://www.nrn.com/printViews/printView.aspx?id=360114

Michael Winner Goes to the Library

The Great Man himself tipped us off in his Sunday column that he would be taking his "stand up comedy act" to our local library the next night...so naturally being free we rushed the next morning to organize tickets. It felt like getting in at the last minute to see Springsteen, or the Grateful Dead albeit minus Jerry Garcia.

But possibly even better...the irascible, difficult, often justifiably cranky Sunday restaurant critic was nothing less than the most delightful, delicious, loving, often swearing raconteur...sitting down of course

It was a treat to hear tales of Orson Welles, Brando ever the prankster with the help of the staff of the Mayfair Hotel, Sophia Loren, Lancaster and Charlie Bronson. What was apparent in Michael's chat and book was his love of movie making, which he appears to have learnt as he went along, his kindness and empathy for the character actors like Vincent Gardenia and craftsmen such as composer Jerry Fielding and genuine decency

Maybe difficult to look after in a restaurant or hotel - but people like that simple know what they like and usually what's good and right - but he is a "mensch"

Gratinated?

Beyond the fact that all the obvious / good names for a food / service blog were taken, my folks and I used to marvel at the mangling of the English language, particularly when it came to menuese...there he goes again, you'll say

Fact is, menu English or French or...isn't like regular language. It's as descriptive as the chef / author wants to be, and as commercial as any marketeer wants to make it. So I'd be willing to bend. But "gratinate" an Anglicized gratinee as in Gratinee a l'oignon or French Onion Soup seems to have migrated its way onto a menu one day, and Alan Lewis and I would laugh ourselves silly for at least twenty years.

So gratinated the blog is...food, wine and service under the bright light of the salamander, tasty but not burnt

You always remember your first time

I will have a lot to say about Westfield and the restaurants there. Let's just leave it for now at a giant leap for mall feeding in the UK let alone Europe and maybe the world though the sum is probably greater than the parts.

We haven't really made it further than Kitchen Italia (not wanting to deal with the queues at Wahaca). This is an ambitious Italian Wagamama style and bless it most of it works. Bare wooden tables and benches - ask to sit side by side as facing each other is just too wide to be intimate - with some flavoured olive oils and Alessi cheese graters handily in the middle. Some drinkable wines by the carafe with quite ok glassware for the price, and tasty Forst lager.

The menu is fun, authentic enough, with enough individual touches to remind you you're here and not in Carluccio's or someone else's pasta shop - Taglierini with Black Truffles, Capelletti filled with Duck Confit and Sage Butter and a heroic Polenta with Wild Boar Ragu served in a wide shallowish wooden bowl. With two nibblies or sides, two pastas, and a dessert between the two of your, beer, wine and water you get out for £40 before the tip which is very very user friendly.

Now the rub...my first polenta was brilliant, warming, brave and as good as anything that might come out of Theo Randall's kitchen on a good day. This week's was ok...good enough...just not killer

All of which leads me to the critical question, is any dish ever as good as the first time you've had it?

When you least expect it

Sometimes, our practioners of customer service actually get it right and make your day. It's really small stuff that takes split second thinking and most importantly empathy.

Case in point, Chelsea & Westminster Starbucks, Saturday November 29th 9:00 am before my annual visit to my cardiologist, I get caught in a queue behind someone collecting a dozen or so capuccinos (all different of course) for some newly transposed sheikdom. My tea was waiting as was my £1.50.

Twenty seconds or so, a lifetime on a Saturday morning, I'm thinking please, take my cash even it if means giving me the change from the tip box...and miracle or miracles that's what happens.

The 5p should have gone right back into the tip box...and will soon enough. I'm getting over the shock and reveling in the pleasure