Saturday Night Fooding
Saturday evening commnced with food at Cardiff’s Chapter Art centre and a lovely pint of Kaltenberg Hell. Here’s the harissa chicken burger with fries, freshly made coleslaw and sour cream. Although very tasty, considering it was meant to have been flavoured with harissa I was expecting a lot more of a spicy kick to it.
After finishing our burgers attention turned of where to go next. A surprising suggestion was a visit to Pontypridd (just on the outskirts of Cardiff heading towards the Welsh Valleys). Anyone who is familiar with Pontypridd or to give it its more glamorous nickname ‘Ponty’, may be wondering WHY? Well this was my exact thought however I was assured that a trip to the Bunch of Grapes pub would be well worth the £4 train fare, possible bare-knuckle fight with post-rugby international day revellers and colourful locals.
So after a short train journey we arrived in Ponty and proceeded to walk for about 20 minutes through the main town centre. Out of nowhere at the end of a residential street appeared the very traditional looking Bunch of Grapes pub
Inside it was a relief to find not a single Fosters, Carling or Strongbow in sight. Instead the wonderful Brooklyn Beer resided on draught (Brooklyn Brown Ale and Pale Ale were available in bottled form) alongside a selection of Otley ales, Sierra Nevada and local guest ales.
After several beers, attention turned of course to more food. Being late at night, and after already consuming a burger and fries earlier in the evening, somehow the ‘confit leg of mallard’ didn’t seem appropriate. Instead two cheese platters were ordered and quickly devoured. Delicious.
Cheese.
No Cheese.
Butter. Not Cheese.
The Bunch of Grapes is well worth checking out and there’s a lot of events coming up including a cheese night, cooking classes and a even a live male voice choir this coming weekend!
Words & Pics: hypervaluevalue
In pictures: Salami Crackling at Fresh
Last week I was fortunate enough to try the latest addition to the specials board at Fresh Baguette – Salami crackling. Fresh is located in Royal Arcade Cardiff and at lunch time is hard to miss as customers line the arcade queuing to order. This is for good reason, the inviting smell and welcome atmosphere coupled with an impressive menu selection has generated a real cult following.
Home Made Ale Mustard
Merry Christmas from The Sandwich Club! Hope you’ve all been feasting well.
This year I had my first attempt at home made mustard as presents for some of the family. It’s gone down really well and I’ve been pretty pleased with the results.
Straight after making and bottling, the mustard was quite overpowering and the ale was very prominent, but after leaving it to settle for a week the flavours have mellowed and blended into a pretty tasty mustard. It was fairly straightforward to make and the Sandwich Club will definitely be experimenting more with home made mustards in 2012!
Ale Mustard – Ingredients:
1 bottle of real ale (I chose Hobgoblin)
yellow mustard seeds
black mustard seeds
sea salt
chilli flakes
white wine vinegar
honey
ground nutmeg and coriander
Apply to beef and enjoy!
Wally’s Kaffeehaus
Wally’s Delicatessen is something of a local legend, known for it great selection of olives, meats, cheese and foods from around the world. My first memory of Wallys was as a very young boy and my grandad making the short journey from Newport to get, amongst other delights, molokhia leaves to make molokhia soup (an Egyptian soup that he made with neck of lamb).
Located above the deli is Wally’s Kaffeehaus where they strive to ‘uphold all the traditions’ of Viennese-style coffee houses by serving a selection of Northern European inspired open sandwiches, as well as breakfasts, desserts and of course coffee!
I had the Baden which consisted of German dark smoked black ham, Hereford Hop cheese and ploughman’s chutney with green salad, chopped balsamic onions and sliced pear, served on wholegrain seeded bread. I was quite impressed by the ‘picky’ look of the presentation, lots of bits and pieces to graze on and mix up to get different flavours with each mouthful rather than just the same tastes you usually get with your traditional sandwich or baguette. It feels more like eating a meal really and of course requires cutlery.
It was very good and the ingredients of course were top notch given the plentiful supply from the downstairs deli! It’s not the cheapest though, you’ll be looking at over £10 if you have a sandwich, drink and desert. Also it’s probably not recommended as a quick eat on a lunch break, we did have to wait for a table and space is fairly limited. But this isn’t what Wally’s are going for. The tradition of the kaffeehaus is to take your time so making a quick take away bagel would be kind of against their ethos.
Overall it’s a place well worth checking out on a lazy saturday afternoon.
Scores
Price: 2
Taste: 4
Look: 4
Service: 3
Originality: 4
Total: 17/20
Virginia Gentleman VG 90 Bourbon Chipotle Hot Sauce X Pulled Pork
Good friends Martyn and Maia came to visit this week from Virginia in the USA. They’ve been there for about a year and a half now and the last time I saw them was when I was Martyn’s Best Man at their wedding out there.
Martyn and Maia obviously know we’re big foodies and sandwich fans and were kind enough to bring over with them on this trip some Virginia Gentleman VG 90 Bourbon Chipotle Hot Sauce and a set of napkins depicting the state bird, the cardinal, and the state tree and flower, the dogwood. Both items were bought from Market Street Market, which we reviewed on a previous post compiled on the same trip to the States for the wedding, and can be read here.
Here’s the sauce:
and here’s the napkins:
All of these things can only mean one thing, coming soon… THE SANDWICH CLUB DO PULLED PORK ROUND II !!!
Cafe Kino, Bristol
We recently made a long overdue trip to Bristol. The primary purpose of our journey was to see Kurt Vile playing at the The Fleece (who was excellent) but also as an attempt to sample some of the local eateries.
It seems we didn’t head to Bristol earlier enough and after exploring Park Street, Stokes Croft and St Nicholas Market we were a bit late for the lunchtime sandwich trade. A special mention should go to St Nicholas Market which contained some amazing looking food stalls and cafe’s especially the gloriously titled Sourdough Cafe, this alone justifies a return trip to Bristol!
After a fair bit of walking we settled on Cafe Kino, just opposite The Crofts music venue, which from the outside looked very welcoming. We both went for the spicy option of the Kino Burger. This was a lovingly crafted home made burger that came with mayo, salad, a fennel seed relish, home made ketchup and an option of chips. The price was very good, £4.00 burger or £5.80 avec des frites.
We would highly recommend this, the food service and atmosphere were all excellent and from the posters on the inside there seemed to be regular events on there as well. The only disappointment was that the burger had zero spice to it, despite going for the spicy option!
Lost in translation
I’m not going to name the place, but I’ll say this, it was in Wales and it was NOT a Chinese.
The main meal was great and when the dessert menu came around quite a few things caught my eye. A sponge band? Topped with milk? Maybe I’m not reading it right, but I still like the way I’m reading it before anyone says otherwise. Then there was the fluff white chocolate on a layer of crunch. Any takers? What’s one of those?
As funny as these are without doubt the best part of the menu was the drinks. Coffee £1.80 and liquid coffee £3.50. Someone please explain. You can have a banana or pineapple FITTER for £3.50. I guess that’s cheaper than your average IKEA fitter, but here they are limiting their trade to just fitting bananas and pineapples. Finally, a random picture of some one horned monster for the kids. Without doubt my favourite menu. Good work.
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