Welcome to Issue #30

After last week's focus on films and television, I've got lots of food related things to catch you up on: four restaurant reviews and two home cooked meals to share.

Food

A couple of weeks ago we met with our friends, their 6 month old baby and two pugs for a midweek lunch. We didn't think we needed to book but the place we agreed to meet had a function on and turned us away. We searched for the nearest pub, gave them a call to check we'd be able to come in and so ended up in The George & Dragon in Chacombe.

Three of us ordered the fish and chips and it was up there with one of the best pieces of battered cod I've had at a restaurant. The batter was light and crispy, the fish delicate, moist and falling apart. The portion was huge - I don't think the photo does it justice, but I struggled to finish it. Chips were decent, but nothing to write home about. I do love mushy peas and these ones were good, slightly minted if I remember correctly.

It's a very small pub with maybe only 4 or 5 tables to sit. Service was friendly and they had some dog treats and water available for any visiting furry friends.

Rating: 8.5/10

The next pub lunch was to try The Folly's sunday roast. They offer a 'trio of roasts' where you get to try a bit of everything: chicken, pork and beef with all the veg, yorkshire pud and whatever gravy and sauces you like. We also ordered a small cauliflower cheese on the side to share.

It was an excellent roast, again really filling. When it initially arrived I thought I'd have no problem getting through it, but I was stuffed by the end. The beef was by far the tastiest of the three meats and if we go again (which I expect we will) I wouldn't get the trio and go full beef. It's slow roasted sirloin and so is extremely tender and almost falls apart in your mouth. Delicious! The pork was fairly good and in comparison the chicken felt dry and lacking flavour.

The veggies were all excellent, yorkshire pudding slightly overcooked (which I mentioned to the waiter when he asked if we'd enjoyed the meal and he seemed upset that I hadn't told him sooner as he'd have got me another one!) and the cauliflower cheese side dish was also excellent. We shared a sticky toffee pudding for dessert which was very good and overall had a lovely lunch.

Rating: 9/10

Back in Issue 12 I reviewed a couple of takeaways in Cambridge and this week I visited the same friend and ate a couple more places.

Oscar's Lockdown Pizza was born out of an opportunity for Oscar to start supplying homemade pizzas to his neighbourhood in Cambridge and it all grew from there. I had the 'Pep' pizza and was pleasantly surprised. I'm generally not a huge fan of takeaway pizza as the travel time can make for a soggy base, but this traveled well and was still fairly crisp and warm even on the last bite. All the ingredients seemed good quality and the tarragon and garlic dips on the side were an interesting combination.

Rating: 7.5/10

After wandering for 45 minutes and failing to agree on somewhere for lunch, we were all beginning to get fed up and so went to a tried and tested classic burger place, GBK. Back when I lived in London and you could find one round every corner, I used to go here a lot. They had an extremely generous/exploitable loyalty app where, combined with a student card, meant regular heavy discounts with a free burger or free side every other meal.

I nearly always go for a beef based burger but on this particular day fancied chicken and decided to try the peanut satay. It comes with a huge panko-crumbed piece of fried chicken, satay sauce, garlic mayo, rocket, paprika onions, picked onions and relish. The satay sauce did seem incidental, rather than a core component of the burger, but it was really tasty. The fries on the side had cajun seasoning, but if you'd told me they were plain I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. They were OK. The burger was great though and for the price, (considering inflation!), it was good value.

Rating: 8/10

The last two food related items are home cooked meals, with the first being Sunday lunch cooked for Mother's Day. It was pretty much a case of stick each thing in the oven at the right time, but came out well with a boneless roast pork joint with stuffing and crackling, rosemary and garlic roast potatoes, honey roasted carrots and boiled broccoli. I attempted a gravy from the pork juices mixed with chicken stock, but it was very thin and kept separating.

I was having a flick through a pasta recipe book, saw a tomato soup and wanted to give it a try. I've never really made soups before so find them a bit intimidating to cook, but this seemed easy and I had everything I needed already at home.

As you can see, I also added some grated cheddar, and probably doubled the suggested amount of pasta because it just didn't seem like enough. I was worried it was going to be a little bland when I tasted it after adding the stock, but it came together nicely with plenty of seasoning.

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Thanks for reading and have a great week.

Adam