Happy new year! New year, new enthusiasm for updating the blog. The last post was heralding the end of summer in Poland, and now here I am back on the sofa in Belfast wondering where the year went. So our new year’s resolution is to try and combine our enthusiasm for travelling, eating and giving opinions when no-one asked for them with a new found effort in getting those posts up!

Our big adventure for the last half of the year was a week in sunny Texas, living the good life in Austin and falling in love with the city. As usual we packed a lot into our trip and looked forward to blogging each little detail that made the city so special… But a few Tweets and a few months later and we still haven’t dared tackle the mountain of posts that deserve to be written.

So – in a bid to clear out the old to welcome in the new – we’ve decided that we’ll just have to do a quick run through of the whole week… and of course try harder next trip!

Before breaking into a bullet point list, let me mention the highlight of our trip (and the reason we were in Texas in the first place) – we were thrilled to invited to my friend Chris’ wedding to his beautiful Texan bride Jenny. It was a gorgeous day in the grounds of the period Barr Mansion in Austin – and to say the location (and the food!) was amazing is an understatement. Perfectly cooked rare steak at a wedding? Unbeatable. Oh and carrot cake? Fantastic. Jenny is very talented photographer, so check out her blog – particularly if you are in the Austin area!

Ok, let the datablast begin!

• Breakfast at Gordon Ramsay, Heathrow Terminal 5 – pricey tea, so-so food, but the peace, quiet and complimentary papers would take us back.
• Hitting busy roads of Houston, immediately following 9 hour flight, just after sunset in a left hand drive car was a little unnerving, incredibly exhausting…
• … so it was a relief to reach the very cushy (and cheap!) Hilton Garden Inn Houston Galeria
• Next day was the beautiful old houses of Galveston…
• …and the space age relics of the Nasa Space Centre
• Onwards to Austin and the Wee Cottage we were staying in – a cute and ultra cheap little house near the trendy SoCo area of the city
• Fantastic to meet up with Rachel, one half of fellow bloggers Boots In The Oven for a little tex mex before booze and bowling at the spectacular High Ball bowling alley.
• Rachel also for accompanied us to Smitty’s Market barbecue in Lockhart – how come everyone in Austin seems so skinny with this near by?!
• The Mexican Martini – our new favourite drink. We’ll post our ultimate recipe soon.
• Loved visiting Whole Foods flagship store – I don’t think there is anything like this near Belfast…
• Took a drive out to the epic watering hole at the the Hamilton Pool
• Watermelon and cucumber sorbet from Amy’s Ice Cream was a revelation… might try to replicate this come summer…
• Spoilt for choice for great tex mex spots, burgers. Oh and cheese fries made for an embarassingly great experience.
• Torchy’s Tacos made the best breakfast tacos – perfect with a hangover too.
• Of course we went to see the Austin bats! Just don’t ask how the photographs turned out.
• The Banh Mi from Lulu B’s food truck were so good, they have almost single handedly got us planning a trip to Vietnam.

Well, to say that that abbreviated list isn’t doing Texas – and Austin in particular – justice, is a gross understatement. Truly have we never found ourselves in such a green, relaxed city, packed with friendly people, amazing food options and a great attitude to keeping itself unique.

Keep Austin weird, we’ll be back!

We took you to the Sure Bar for drinks before and after reading that it served ‘the best burger in Poland’ according to the usually accurate tourist magazine In Your Pocket, we decided this would be the place to close out an indulgent week of birthday celebrations.

We’ll cut to the chase, it was not the best burger in Poland. It was not even the best burger in Gdansk – the £8 (38 PLN) dense, flavourless meat patty falling into second place behind the £1 (5 PLN) McRoyal from McDonalds. If you are looking for the best burger in Gdansk, save your money and head for the golden arches.

Fish in Gdansk has been good, but we’ve never had a battered fillet. The fish is served looking a bit sorry for itself. The batter a little soggy on the top… as if it has been left resting somewhere… but where has the deep fried fillet been sitting? A quick flip and the answer is obvious – it’s been sat keeping warm a touch too long under the grill.

We really wonder why a restaurant/pub that is trying to elevate the quality of international food in Gdansk would let something like this out of the kitchen. Anyway, the waiter was apologetic and offered a replacement, but as we had an early flight the next day we were short for time and picked out the cod within. The fish that could be salvaged from between the soggy and burnt portions was ok, but the lemon mayonnaise (definitely not tartare sauce as described) was really nice and woke up the chalky chips.

The seating options for dining are realistically limited to five tables at the rear of the bar. Unfortunately this left us sitting right next to one couple and only a couple of tables away from another. In a bar that only had six people in it, that meant social awkwardness, whispering for everyone and the embarrassment that comes with photographing one’s food.

We quite like having a drink here. The cocktails are expensive, but interesting and well made and hotel gave us an opportunity to do a bit of ‘celebrity spotting’ when we came for a drink after stumbling into a premiere up the road.

So when you are in Gdansk, for cocktails come to the Sure, to be sure, but set your eating expectations low.

Food
Service
Decor
Value

Sure Bar
Radisson Blu Hotel
Dlugi Targ 19
80-828 Gdansk

Ah, there’s a lesson here – take more pictures and take more notes. And then write a post less than three months after sitting down to the meal. Yes, alas 80% of the food related fun we had in Barcelona has long since disappeared from memory – but from the few snaps and vague recollections that remain, a single post can still be saved!

The sheer amount of well regarded restaurants in Barcelona is a daunting prospect when planning a few days in the city – we used Chowhound and eGullet to narrow the choices down to:

• Gresca
• Moo
• Cinc Sentits
• Tapac 24

Gresca is a small restaurant located in an inconspicuous, almost run down street in a random Barcelona city district. Inside, the narrow restaurant is all white and clean lines – this minimalism extends to the food, which made for some of the least inspiring pictures on my Flickr stream.

Despite the low key presentation, the food was probably the best of the whole trip – clean, fresh flavours made it the perfect place for a (relatively) light lunch. No, we can’t tell you much more than that – just look at the pictures and a big shiny four stars!

Gresca

Moo is the uber slick restaurant in the belly of the uber trendy and expensive Omm hotel. It is also a ‘product’ of the Roca brothers – the three owner/chefs of El Celler De Can Roca in Girona. We were lucky enough to visit Can Roca a couple of years ago and it remains probably the best food and wine experience of our lives – so we were keen to see how much of this was captured in this inner city incarnation.

Comparisons to Can Roca, however, are not really fair – as although the restaurant offers some of the more iconic Roca brother dishes, generally the experimentation is more subdued and the flavours far more conventional.

In terms of fine dining this well tried approach means that every dish, while not wildly exciting, was solid, well flavoured, beautifully presented and reasonable value for money… Its just a shame that it was ultimately fairly forgettable.

Moo

Cinc Sentits is the restaurant dimmest in my memory – in part because it was our last fine dining stop, and in part because the camera was all but discarded for the meal… The only thing I remember is that they wouldn’t let us both get different wine pairings, and gave us a bit of a hard sell on the more expensive pairings. Our overall feeling was that the food was good though, so another hazy solid fours stars is in order.

Cinc Sentits

Tapac 24 is another restaurant with stellar heritage from the north of Barcelona. Here former El Bulli chef Carles Abellan serves up high end tapas with a slightly bumped up price to match. The queue runs up the stairs and out the door, but without reservations there is little choice but to wait and it moves pretty quickly.

On our first visit we arrived at around 11pm, grateful to find it open, but disappointed to find a couple of the signature dishes finished. In spite of this disappointment, we took a selection of the remaining options and had a good meal – not great, but really good and at a reasonable price. The only problem was the nagging feeling that a similar quality of food could be found in a dozen tapas bars across Barcelona at a lower price…

We were in the vicinity the next day, however, and decided to pop in to try one of the signature dishes – the truffle bikini. Two crispy rounds of toast containing ham, cheese and truffle shavings. It was good. But… it was a toasted cheese sandwich and I’ve made better at home, truffle or no truffle.

Our favourite dish here was probably the tomato bread – the cheap and ubiquitous ciabatta style bread drizzled in oil, and rubbed in garlic and fresh tomatoes, with a healthy does of salt. So simple, so effective. Overall, our last visit to Cal Pep was far more successful – but we can’t help but recommend a stop here, just thinking of that bread is making me hungry…

Tapac 24

This was our first visit back to Barcelona after getting engaged there in 2008, and after such a perfect experience, perhaps we were wrong to go back – but this time around Barcelona itself seemed far less a magical, romantic place, but rather a slightly run down and unfriendly place… more of a big, grubby anonymous city than the charming warren of inviting side streets and cosy cafes that we remembered.

The food was excellent (albeit never truly great) and dozens of world class menu remain untried – but I expect it will be a while before we return to Barcelona.

A random blessing in our stay in Gdansk has been our new found friends (and fellow far flung couple) K & G, who are currently living in Gdynia for a year. At least once a month we find ourselves heading up to the sea side for another evening of good food along with a smattering of beer, wine and the occasional spirit.

So it was that we ended up spending a long, warm August afternoon in paper party hats chowing down on a tray of lobster at a ‘crayfish party’ (or kräftskiva) from G’s native Sweden.

Traditionally marking the start of the Swedish crayfish harvesting season, kräftskiva are held in August – but it seems that whatever stocks they had in the southern Baltic were long gone, as despite searching the whole Tricity, not a single crayfish could be found… But fear not, a quick and tasty substitution for lobster from the far side of the Atlantic saved the day.

Aside from the small matter of no crayfish at a crayfish party, everything else was in place for the authentic Swedish experience – the garden was decked in suitably fishy decorations and the table laid with paper plates and napkins printed with the elusive shellfish.

To accompany the lobster, K served a sublime traditional cheese pie – lovingly adorned with a crayfish insignia etched in raspberry. The pie was pure cream, eggs and rich Vasterbotten cheese – stick that in a buttery homemade pastry case and you have pure pie perfection.

If that isn’t enough cheese for you, the rest of the huge Vasterbrotten wedge was served up with crackers on which to spread the moist mushy parts of the lobster – bits that I would never dared eat had our hosts not given me assurance they were safe. In fact these were the best bits – I just need more experience eating lobster…

Another essential element at a crayfish party is booze and Swedish party songs – although we were slow to pick up some of the more lyrically complicated chants, we did manage a brief Finnish shout of ‘nu!’ (’now’) before each shot of sweet schnapps.

Beer and wine followed and by the time we got the train back to Gdansk we were fuller, tipsier, happier and tired out – another memorable weekend thanks to K&G, thanks!

A few weeks ago we returned to Gdansk after a short trip home, and it was great to take to the cobbled streets of the old town (albeit through Belfast-esque weather) to try the new Verres en Vers restaurant in the beautifully restored Radisson SAS on the the main historic square of Dlugi Targ.

The Radisson itself is really a remarkable restoration job. The lobby is bright and spacious and we decided to take a drink at the Sure bar just off the foyer. This was billed as a ‘cosy Irish bar’, but the reality was that it felt like a hotel bar. A classy, stylish one with an excellent cocktail list, but ‘Irish’ and ‘cosy’ are not two words that spring to mind.

We went for a couple of cocktails at 25 PLN (£5) each. Pricey drinks in Gdansk, but really well made and just soooo good. As the Radisson has only been open a few weeks, the bar was empty, the silence broken only by us and a light tinkling of 50s swing from the sound system. The cocktails were good enough to go back to, but the price will probably discount much of a local trade.

Drinking up, we sauntered along the corridor to the restaurant. Decorated in dark woods and light creams, it certainly looked the part of a stylish bistro. We took a table at the window overlooking the main street – we had plenty of choice as there was noone else dining there on the saturday night. Hopefully, no big deal as the restaurant was new, pricey and the tourist season had been stalled by the chilly weather.

The wine list was impressive in content, but seemed obscene in price. Wine is more expensive in Gdansk in general, but a house white at £20 a bottle seems a touch expensive. We opted instead for a caraf of Alsace Reisling at £10. At 25cl the caraf was almost humourously small, but the wine was good quality and it gave us a wee glass each.

The first starter we ordered was the onion soup. This was far and away the highlight of the meal – a rich broth stuffed with crunchy croutons and packed with cheese. About as good as a French onion soup can be (that means really good) and keenly priced at 20 PLN (£4).

After the full flavours of the soup, the crab salad could not have been more bland. The crab was completely without any flavour, so tasteless that it was almost disturbing… We grabbed the salt shaker and kept grinding until it at least it tasted like salt. The rocket and mixed leaves salad was also very lame. At around £10 for the starter, this could not have been worse value.

Mains arrived with some fantastic ‘garlic bread’ on the side. In this case the bread (a very non descript baguette) was accompanied by half a bulb of roasted garlic and a knob of butter. The soft garlic cloves could then be spread onto the bread and dusted with salt to create the some of the most amazing garlic bread we have had – why don’t we do this at home?!

Main number one was the fillet of beef with a brandy sauce and roast potatoes. The beef was perfectly cooked to medium rare and was a really great slab of meat. The sauce was a little fiery with chilli oil, but very tasty and a good dip for the potatoes.

We ordered a side of Dauphinoise potatoes with this (I didn’t realise the beef came with roasties) which were adequate… but rather than being creamy had more of a dry eggy texture. Hmmm.

The other course was the pork belly. At 40 PLN this was one of the cheapest things on the menu, but came as two large slabs of slow cooked pork belly with a nice crispy edge. The meat was served with potatoes and fennel in a red wine sauce, with a green side salad. While not wildly exciting, it was about as good as a meat and two veg dish could be – not bad at all.

Onto dessert, and with summer (supposedly) here we opted for two light fruity ones – strawberries with cognac and cream, and mille fuille with raspberries and cream. They were fine, fresh, fruity, did what they said on the tin, but nothing more.

Removing the cocktails and tip from the bill, the meal came to 350 PLN (£70) for three courses and a glass of wine each. While the ambiance and staff were superb, you really are paying for the location more than the uninspiring food. The onion soup was so good, though, that we might give it another chance now the summer is properly here.

Food
Service
Decor
Value

Verres en Vers
Radisson Blu Hotel
Dlugi Targ 19
80-828 Gdansk

For those of you unfamiliar with Oaxen, this world class restaurant is found in a somewhat random location, around 80km from Stockholm on a tiny island somewhere in the Swedish archipelago. Now in its fifteenth season of plating locally sourced and inspired dishes, head chef Magnus Ek has become one of the highest regarded chefs in Sweden and the restaurant has spent the last few years edging its way up Pellegrino’s contentious ‘50 best’ list.

Unlike Heston’s eternal tasting menu at the Fat Duck, Oaxen has a seasonally transient menu. Not only does it change on an annual basis (I’m sure being closed for six months of the year helps – El Bulli style), but it also changes with the seasons and even weekly to keep regular diners and the local population on the island happy. This means that your meal and ours might well be different experiences – as such it seems pointless to analyse each dish in turn.

Being a Sunday night, barely into Spring and only the first weekend of the 2009 Oaxen season, the restaurant was very quiet the evening we visited – in fact there were only two other guests in the otherwise silent room. At first this was a little awkward, but as time (and the wine pairings) progressed, we relaxed and it made the experience feel all the more unique and cosy. We were sat at a table by the window, overlooking our floating accommodation for the night and the waterways and islands beyond.

My first advice is to bring a good appetite to Oaxen because the urge to fill up on bread is irresistable. Not only does the bread flow endlessly from the kitchen (in tiny individually fresh baked pans), but four radically distinct varieties were delivered. Our favourites were the crumpet-like pancake bread and the obscenely sweet and crunchy pigs blood bread. Mmmmm pigs blood bread. You really had to be there. Spectacular.

Barely nudging ahead of the other dishes was the final main of kid, or to give it it’s full title seared herb spiced roast of kid with deep-fried brisket of veal and molasses bread, cauliflower and loan lichen with sweetbread fried in garlic ash and red wine jus. Phew. Kid had been the star dish in our trip to El Celler De Can Roca (probably still our all time favourite restaurant… just) so we were looking forward to this one, and Oaxen did not disappoint. Strong sweet meat flavours, well balanced with the buttery cauliflower and sweetbread textures.

To say that this was the best course is really a disservice to the rest, as more so than any other meal we had had, all seven main courses, the handful of amuses and even the petit fours really felt like they flowed into one another – building from subtle raw shelfish, through beautifully cooked fresh cod into the rich kid dish before culminating in a light and fresh series of sweets.

Sadly we didn’t didn’t do our best work with the camera on this one – the quiet restaurant made us feel a little self concious and the plentiful wine definitely affected the focussing… Oh and the food was so appealing that the occasional dish was gone before I even remembered the camera.

In fact the wine and champagne also contributed to a very embarassing (and thus all the more amusing) situation that left us giggling uncontrollably when we both misheard ‘trotters’ as ‘tortoise’. Childish hilarity ensued… well you can never be too sure at these modern restaurants can you? We really have to apologise to the waiter and the other couple in the restaurant for the poorly concealed giggles…

Whilst on the subject of the wine – the selection was beyond superb and well worth the indulgence. Unlike the rather tame pairings of the Fat Duck, here each course brought something that not only matched the food, but also provided an interesting experience in itself – for example one wine had the unmistakable odour of blue cheese, and yet when combined with the food, tasted exquisite.

At the end of the meal it was great to get a chance to speak to the manager and somellier Angete Green about the ethos of the restaurant – a case in point: the food is so fresh and local that she had been out in the garden with a torch to collect fresh mint and herbs for the pot of tea we had ordered to conclude our meal. We were then priveldged to meet Magnus Ek himself who showed us his nifty smoking device and then around the kitchen – a series of rooms that allowed the cooking staff to expand as the season got busier and busier.

After an almost flawless meal we were so stuffed that we wrapped up our petit fours along with a few other fun souvenirs and retired to our cabin to be sent to sleep by the gentle waves rocking the boat. And the wine. Mostly the wine.

Food
Service
Decor
Value

Oaxen
Tasting menu around £200 per person including wine pairings
SE-153 93 Mörkö
Sweden

It’s been a busy month since our weekend in Stockholm and the blog posts have slipped a little – how we managed to churn the Matbaren post out so fast, I don’t know. So adopting the ‘better late than never’ approach of unread blogs everywhere, here is a quick look at our itinerary for our long weekend in Stockholm.

Because of our planned side trip to the island of Oaxen, we decided to hire a car for our three nights in Sweden. At £45 for the duration of our stay, it worked out cheaper than the combination of buses and trains that would see us from the distant Skavsta airport to Stockholm.

We had looked at putting the car in an overnight garage, but having reviewed the cost and received assurances that on street parking on Sodermalm was a safe option, we ditched the car on the roadside and lugged our cases through the streets to the optimistically named ‘Best Hostel’ in the Gamla Stan. There is something oddly satisfying about getting glammed up in a bare room with bunk beds and a shared bathroom before heading out to a Michelin starred restaurant…

We spent the first afternoon strolling around town and tried in vain to find the Ostermalm Saluhall and instead slummed it for lunch at a popular (and undeniably delicious) American chain restaurant. Sometimes you just need a fix of ribs and wings. A few hours of wandering later we ended our day with a late evening meal at Mathias Dahlgren’s Matbaren restaurant (you can read about that here).

Saturday was our only full day in Stockholm and we awoke to beautiful sunshine. Making the most of this, we walked along the water side towards Kungsholmen to the Petit France bakery. The walk from the City Hall was lined with old boats with their interesting stories told on little plaques beside each mooring.

Coffee, baguette and macarons in hand, we sat out on cute little benches suspended over the water and dreamt about spending every weekend morning like this.

Hopping on the Metro (’longest art installation in the world’) we shuttled over to the east of the city and onto the island of Djurgarden. We were here to see the Vasa museum, but the weather was so good we decided to head straight for the open air Skansen museum for a wander around the beautifully restored Swedish heritage homesteads that have been lifted from across the length of the country.

The animal enclosures were a surprising treat too – whoever thought it would be fun to link the buffalo and boar enclosures was a genius. A buffalo charging into a group of pigs innocently snuffling through the mud certainly seemed to keep them on their toes.

Hungry after walking around the hilly park, we hopped on the easy to use bus service and finally located the Ostermalm Saluhall. A traditional food market selling local produce and meals, the food on display was very impressive – especially some dramatic looking aged beef. We decided to play up the traditional aspect and sat down at Tysta Mari for some Swedish meatballs and gravad lax (smoked salmon). Both were excellent and good value.

It was then back on the bus to Djurgarden and at 3pm we finally made it to the Vasa museum. Wow, the Vasa ship has to be one of the finest historic relics in the world. Nothing can do justice to the beauty of this early 17th century Swedish flagship. We easily filled the two hours before the museum closed – spending time looking through the (literal) treasure trove of artifacts recovered from the wreck. The history of the ship and its recovery from the depths of the bay is well worth a read.

After than it was back to the hostel to prep for dinner before making our way to Thai restaurant Koh Phangan on Sodermalm. This place has a good reputation, but having eaten there it seems to be more for the experience than the food – which was also crazy expensive for a Thai restaurant (even in Sweden, surely?!). The twist of Koh Phangan is that as you go deeper into the cavernous restaurant, you walk into an eerily effective reconstruction of a Thai beach. Beach huts, tuk tuks, wildlife and even simulated thunderstorms make for a bizarre but enjoyable eating environment. Worth a look.

The next day we once again went up to the Ostermalm district to try and find a nice coffee shop. Not much seemed to be open on Sunday morning, but we got lucky with a nice spot on either Nybrogatan or Grev Turegatan (ooops, details…) where we took a leisurely coffee and cakes of varying quality (if you can identify the place… avoid the cheesecake).

With that it was back to the car (thankfully still where we left it) and on the open road to Oaxen. An easy drive through beautiful countryside and a short ferry onto the island, we checked in aboard the SS Prince Van Orangien, moored right next to the Oaxen restaurant.

An elegantly restored 1940s boat (something like a steamer… I really have no idea), this definitely added to our Oaxen experience – and at £100 (off peak) a night in the small Officer’s Cabin, it was fairly reasonably priced. Anyone who baulks at shared bathrooms would surely be impressed by the facilities – a large private wet room with twin showers and period fittings. Because it was a Sunday night and early in the season, the boat only had four ‘passengers’ and hence we had the gorgeous lounge to ourselves – the perfect place to spend an afternoon relaxing, reading and drinking tea.

Breakfast the next morning consisted of a continental style spread of muesli, croissant, breads, ham and cheeses. I never thought I would publicly comment on how nice a tea set was, but here it is – the tea set was lovely.

With breakfast finished it was time to drive on to Skavsta for the flight home. If you are planning a trip to Oaxen (and you should), driving is definitely the way to go – the one hour drive probably being both cheaper and easier than the three hour train/bus combo that faces non drivers.

So for a just few days, we did a lot and really fell in love with Sweden and Stockholm. The capital is a truly beautiful city, with much to do and see – in our opinion easily surpassing Prague and well on it’s way to rival Barcelona as our favourite European destination (although we have many more to sample!).

One word of warning, bring a healthy credit card as it sure ain’t cheap.

In a nutshell, we stayed at:

• Best Hostel Old Town
• SS Prince Van Orangien (Oaxen)

We went to see:

• Gamla Stan (Old Town)
• Skansen Open Air Heritage Museum
• Vasa museum

We ate at:

• Mathias Dahlgren Matbaren, Grand Hotel, Stockholm
• Petite France, John Ericssonsg. 6, Stockholm
• Ostermalm Saluhall, Humlegårdsgatan 3, Stockholm
• Koh Phangan, Skånegatan 57, Stockholm
• Oaxen

Matbaren is Mathias Dahlgren’s ‘casual’ alternative to his world renowned ‘Matsalen’ fine dining restaurant, both located beside the Grand Hotel right in the heart of Stockholm. Arriving in Sweden that afternoon after a few hours of travel, we decided a full fine dining experience would be wasted on us and welcomed the chance to try the food of Sweden’s most famous chef in a more relaxed atmosphere and at a somewhat lower price.

While the restaurant has a few traditional seated tables for larger groups, the relaxed ethos of the restaurant is evidenced by the long steel food bar around the kitchen and the high tables and stools that line the sides of the restaurant.

Perched on one of the high tables, we sat down to little wooden trays and a bag of home baked crackers and before long were greeted by the waitress who explained the slightly unusual ordering system. Matbaren eschews the set courses of its fine dining sibling next door and offers ‘Tapas style’ ordering – your tray is lined with a menu containing around fifteen dishes and you order one, eat it and then decide what you fancy next. As we were not exactly starving, this approach was perfect – allowing us to sample the menu without overestimating our appetites.

Unlike tapas, however, the portions are fairly big and the menu is not particularly extensive – so four courses will probably be the limit for most people, as well as allowing you to try most things on the menu.

The first course we shared was a cocotte of ling – a cod like fish in a beautiful creamy sauce, served with sweet prawns and potatoes. The dish was full of flavour and Swedish character and is definitely recommended.

The other ‘first course’ we went for was the Cream of Nettle – surprisingly named as the nettle cream was probably one of the milder flavours on the plate. The cream was served in a bowl with white asparagus, morels, a poached egg and some caramelised onions. Simple, rustic and with good flavours.

With our first two courses we opted to add a bowl of new potatoes – a special menu item to celebrate the first harvest of the year. Perfectly cooked and served with lashings of butter.

At this point tapas ordering proved its worth – with me being able to take a second savoury course while L. held out for dessert. I opted for the chicken dish – it has been years since I had chicken in a restaurant, but I was interested to see how it would be prepared in a high end restaurant. The chicken itself was definitely the nicest I have had with a great texture. But the truffle sauce was very overpowering, to the point that it made us both a little queasy – but maybe we just don’t appreciate truffles… after that we won’t be rushing to try them again.

Another downer with this dish was the recurrence of the caramelized onions – they didn’t seem to sit perfectly with either dish they accompanied. And despite the tapas style sentiment, the menu is not particularly huge, so to see such a strongly flavoured element repeated was a bit disappointing.

The first dessert was a citrus sorbet – fresh, light, zesty flavours, a refreshing way to end a meal or to take a breather before another course. The second could not have been more different – heavy, creamy and best eaten immediately before heading home to bed. The chocolate brownie (bursting with melted chocolate) and toffee icecream was absolutely superb – sweet, smooth, crunchy, hot, cold and with a helping of sour cream to cut through the rich sweetness.

So if you are in Stockholm and looking for something that represents modern Sweden cuisine and provides a casual, yet elegant alternative to sit down fine dining – Matbaren is a great choice, albeit not the cheapest in town.

Food
Service
Decor
Value

Mathias Dahlgren Matbaren
We ordered three courses and two desserts plus five glasses of wine for around £150 – in retrospect not bad value for Sweden
Grand Hotel Stockholm
S. Blaiseholmshamnen 6
Stockholm, Sweden

Two months had passed since ‘A’ over at the Belfast Bap endured the arduous booking procedure and finally the day was upon us. Six of us converged from across the continent (ok, Belfast and Gdansk) to the small village of Bray for what promised to be the meal of a lifetime – but how would it measure up to these lofty expectations?

This Fat Duck classic is nearing its first decade on the menu, and with good reason. A trolley is wheeled to your table and a light lime spritz sprayed above you before the waiter explains the science behind the simple dish. A bowl of liquid nitrogen is revealed, in which a perfect ball of green tea meringue is summoned and plated for each diner in turn. There is no time to delay and each person is required to scarf down as soon as it hits the plate, resulting in an amusing blast of steam from each nostril.

The time pressure led to some amusement – one meringue disintegrating on the journey to the mouth, and L finding that it was quite a sizeable bite and fitting it in was a challenge on its own. The taste was light and subtle and there is no doubt that this was a perfect palate cleanser – and the science, showmanship and entertainment value cannot fail to build excitement for the dishes to come.

The first of the two strange sounding ice creams of the lunch arrived. Waiters deftly poured the red cabbage gazpacho around the little quinelle and told us that we shouldn’t wait for our missing guest to return from the toilet. My ice cream was melting so I was happy to be given permission to start! It all tasted a bit like coleslaw, which isn’t a bad thing: it was more cohesive than I thought it sounded. The only trouble was getting all the liquid out of the small bowl. Some of us tilted the bowl and others dipped the delicious bread in it.

A whole host of stimuli get delivered in the table for this ‘homage to Alain Chapel’, so lets start at the beginning with the ‘oak gel strip’. A few years ago Wrigleys and the like seemed to have made a breakthrough in breath freshening technology and brought out minty, plastic little strips that dissolve on the tongue in seconds.

To be honest I can’t recall seeing these recently – are they still made or were they a passing fad? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Heston loves a good gimmick. Yes, he can reproduce the soluble strip and tuck it in neat little Fat Duck branded packaging… but should he bother when the results are a what feels like a mouthful Pritt Stick shavings and tastes like plastic with a hint of moss?

Sorry, but this ‘pre hit’ was wasted on me.

Accompanying our dishes to the table was a moss filled tray which was promptly doused in water to release a mild oak scent and unleash the AWESOME POWER of dry ice – hiding the table under a veil of smoke.

The star attraction of this course was a bowl containing a beautifully layered, almost dessert-like, dish. I wish I had read the menu card as I only now note the inclusion of langoustine, but the meaty quail and foie gras flavours were powerful and delicious – particularly when accompanied by a mouthful of the splendid toast morsel it was served with. This tiny crumb of toast left us looking around the table for any scraps going spare, but alas there were none.

This was one of the tastiest courses of the night. And it wasn’t just because it was such a surprise that it could taste nice it all. It was hands down superb. The porridge was perfectly seasoned and the oatmeal provided enough resistance so that it wasn’t gruel-like. The snails were the some of the tenderest meat I’ve ever had, and the fennel provided a texture contrast.

We are terrible people. As appalled as we are by what we learn of how fois gras is prepared, we couldn’t help ourselves and tucked straight into this huge serving of goose liver. I’ve never seen it served like this, only experiencing a few tiny slivers of the delicacy, rather than this creamy, buttery slab.

The sweetness of fois gras and other flavours melded into something of a rich savoury Bakewell Tart – a surprisingly pleasant experience. I am a big marzipan fan and I could have taken the ‘fluid gel’ as a pint of milkshake on the side – in fact stick a few of those cherries in the bottom and it would be my dream cocktail.

A very interesting and pleasing dish – so we will consider this a fond farewell to fois. Any time we see it on a tasting menu we shall tut loudly and ask for an alternative. Honest!

I was very sceptical about this dish and actually hoped it would be still substituted with something else since shell fish was removed following the noro virus scare. I’d watched Heston making sand a few times on his Feast programme and frankly got bored of the idea. And listening to the sea? Pphhh. Anyway, a shell was delivered with an iPod Shuffle in it along with a glass plate containing an edible seascape… sand, sea foam, fish and seaweed. We were asked to put on our headphones and tuck in.

That’s when the magic happened. For once we were all silent, listening to the sound of the sea in our own world, feasting our eyes on the presentation and wrapping our tongues around the textures and tastes.

It all worked together, even the sand which contains little crunchy fried eels. When I finished off someone else’s plate I found that I couldn’t eat it without the sound. My scepticism was banished.

This was probably the biggest disappointment of the meal, gaining unanimous disapproval around the table. My expectations were lowered by fellow bloggers Boots In The Oven’s description – but even that did not prepare me for how underwhelming (unpleasant even) I would find this.

The salmon itself was fine – poached well, although quite flavourless. The liquorice coating really added nothing to each bite – the only way to extract any flavour was to suck a sizeable piece of the rubbery skin. Quite how you are supposed to combine the sucking with eating the salmon, I don’t know.

On the other side of the plate sat a blob of vanilla mayonaise. I’m all for new flavour combinations, but for me this was far too close to a mix of Haagen-Dazs and Hellman’s Mayonnaise. Yuck.

So taken as a whole, how was the dish? Mushy. No crunch, just a soggy mouthful. The sharpness of the flecks of grapefruit scattered around the plate offered the only interest – and I wish I had tried the ‘Manni’ olive oil in isolation as it disappeared into the mulch without even a whimper.

This was probably the most traditional dish on the menu – but wow. Just wow. The flavours were so intensely rich and savoury, the meat cooked to perfection, the black pudding so smooth… there wasn’t a bad thing I could say about this dish. So I’ll leave it at wow.

This was a fun palate cleanser to prepare us for the dessert courses. The flavour is simply Earl Grey tea – but the surprise is that on drinking, both hot and cold sensations are delivered to distinct parts of your mouth at the same time.

Having completed the savoury leg of our culinary odyssey, our first dessert was preceded by little booklets on Mrs. Marshall and her cutting edge ice cream making in the 19th century. The brief history added to the course – a perfectly presented, bite sized cone with apple ice cream and a ginger filling. The ice cream was good, not wildly exciting and maybe a touch salty – but Mrs. Marshall clearly knew what she was doing.

The instructions were to dip the hollowed out vanilla stick into the sherbet, lift it out and suck on the end – but the course would have worked better if there were more than a few grains of sherbet to taste!

The little cubes were peppery and went well with the blackcurrant sorbet. I love that he can get so much flavour into these small jelly cubes – just like the amaretto ones in the foie gras course. The one component lacking in flavour was the bavarois of lychee and mango. But maybe it was there as a respite from the intensity of the rest of the plate.

For the next two courses we were transported to the breakfast table – announced by the waiters with a chirpy “Good morning, your breakfast is served”. Here we have another amuse bouche style course that arrives in some cute Fat Duck branded packaging. Inside the cardboard packet lies a small plastic wrap containing a few flakes of parsnip crisps that are then doused with sweet, creamy parsnip milk. A simple course with simple flavours – not particularly outstanding (reminiscent of Frosties) but with a good fun factor.

This is another ‘molecular gastronomy’ classic – I know Heston B. hates the moniker, but I remember this dish being a poster child for the experimental cuisine. Of course bacon, maple syrup, sweet waffles and cream is nothing quite so revolutionary Stateside, but this presents the flavours as the perfect dessert.

The ice cream is created table side from ‘ordinary eggs’ (you almost expect the waiter to show you he has nothing up his sleeves) that have been filled with a bacon infused cream – these are then instantly nitro’ed into a scramble of strong flavoured, sweet ice cream and dolloped on top of your Pain Perdu – some sort of French toast made with a sweet brioche. The bacon rasher is either purely a sugar replica or almost completely caramelised, leaving no room for anyone who doesn’t like their desserts super sweet.

That means that Ms. Young was less impressed, a little overpowered by the cloying sweetness. Bring it on, I say!

In spite of the previous fourteen courses and amuses, we were all still game for the after dinner treats – where we were served three rather than the traditional four ‘Petit Fours’. The mandarin aerated chocolate was the blandest of the bunch – imagine an Aero topped with the Jaffa Cake filling and you have the same flavours and complexity. Nice, but dull.

The caramel was the final quirky delight – the toffee encased in an edible wrapper that dissolved on the tongue, possibly from the same research lab that previously brought us the oak moss film. The toffee was tasty enough, but without the edible wrapper it would be rather underwhelming.

Ending on a high, the violet tartlet was crisp, buttery, wafer thin pie base filled to overflowing with sticky and sweet violet chocolate – a perfect and original final bite to close the meal.

The white and brown bread on offer was open textured, light and with a crispy crust. The choice of butter was unpasteurised salted and pasteurised unsalted. I had to try all combinations which equalled four slices – but the winner was unpasteurised salted with white, amazing! The waiters kindly topped up everyone’s bread, even when it got embarrassing with how much we all had.

Out of the three wine pairings (£95, £165 and £195) we chose the lower and middle priced ones so we could have double the tastings. However, we were disappointed to find that three of the eight pairings were the same for each course.

We are by no means experts on wine, but the pairings did seem rather expensive – a trip to El Cellar De Can Roca in 2007 yielded more interesting pairings at less than half the price.

That said, all the wines were superb and the fruity sake served with the “Sound of the Sea” course was a pleasant diversion.

So with many highs, some not-so-highs and a few not-so-sures, where does this leave The Fat Duck? Maybe the dishes weren’t always successful, maybe some of the amuses were a little gimmicky – but overall this is one of the best dining experiences of our lives. Exciting new food experiences and superb wines – and the wonderful company – made this a truly memorable meal.

Food
Service
Decor
Value

The Fat Duck
£130 for tasting menu
High Street
Bray
Berkshire
SL6 2AQ

Before we went to the Fat Duck, we did our own share of reading up on the topic – our favourites were from the lovable pair over at Boots In The Oven, and the even more snap happy Ulterior Epicure where you can find more enticing food photography.

We headed over to London this weekend to visit family, see a show and experience some fine dining with friends from Belfast. To start the weekend we headed into Victoria to grab some great pizza and risotto at chain Italian Prezzo and then went to see Wicked – a cracking musical based on a ‘prequel’ to the Wizard of Oz, heavily inspired by the classic 1939 film version.