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Restaurants

My 65th birthday at Restaurant Sat Bains, Nottingham I managed to grab a room-and-dinner package for the 17 January 2008. Sat was one of the stars of the BBC’s Great British Menu, and we were really looking forward to comparing his tasting menu with Heston Blumenthal’s at The Fat Duck, where we celebrated my 64th. See further down and here. Now Sat has won the Best Restaurant category in The Observer Food Magazine’s 2008 Readers’ Awards.

My 66th was celebrated, belatedly, in June 2009 at Morston Hall, Norfolk - see below.

Also at the bottom of this page: our next big celebration...

The Good Food Guide

One of my Christmas 2007 stocking-fillers was The Good Food Guide 2008. This is published by Which and relies heavily on reader input for its restaurant reports. It gives each restaurant a score on a scale of 1 to 10 for cooking (1 isn’t actually bad - if the restaurant wasn’t at least good it wouldn’t be in the book at all!), and it also contains a Top 40 listing. Given that we are far from wealthy and don’t actually eat out that often - rather a great meal now and again than an expensive one every week! - I was delighted to find that we have eaten at Number 1 (The Fat Duck, cooking score 9), number 17 (Restaurant Sat Bains, cooking score 7) and Number 24 (Fischers Baslow Hall, cooking score 7), where we were married and have stayed and eaten on two other occasions. Even better, Winteringham Fields, where we went on the 1 May 2008 (see bottom of page), is Number 4, with a cooking score of 8. Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, where we would love to go but have been put off by the high cost of accommodation, is Number 3, cooking score 9.

What is great is that the list isn’t heavily loaded with London restaurants. I hope I’m not contravening Which’s copyright by publishing it, with additional information, here.

France

One restaurant that I remember with affection was back when Wife Number Two and I were renting a friend’s house in the Morvan forest in Burgundy. My ’little French brother’ Philippe and his partner Nathalie (of whom more in The Big Holiday) came up from Auvergne on one of Philippe’s countless motorbikes to spend a couple of nights with us. Philippe, the eternal gourmet, had brought his Michelin Guide Rouge and went hunting for a one-star restaurant. He found Chez Camille (website in French only), where we had a stunning meal. This is a long time ago, but I’ll never forget the Galantine de Canard et son Foie (literally duck stuffed with its liver). I didn’t realise until much later that this had been my first taste of foie gras. There is a funny convention in French menu-writing which was apparent in my first knowing encounter with foie gras - Notre bloc de foie gras et ses toasts - of labelling the garnish as if it belongs to the main item. So the liver in the boned-out duck may have been its own, but given that it was a small duck, this seems unlikely! Incidentally, Philippe was shocked to discover that since the publications of his Michelin guide Chez Camille had lost its star - good thing he didn’t spot that before he booked, because the meal was superb.

You can read about one of our most memorable meals at La Matelote in Boulogne (one Michelin star). The restaurant has its own website, complete with an English version.

Another astonishing restaurant that we found by accident, while desperately seeking a bed for the night in the Lot valley, on the way home from Mougins, near Cannes, was called Chez Camillou. It’s in Aumont-Aubrac and is part of an otherwise undistinguished Logis de France hotel. Our meal there was full of grin-inducing surprises, and I really would like to go back. There was also a wonderful little restaurant called Le Petit Fouet (website only in French) in Mougins itself, run by a delightfully funny gay couple - great food and great fun.

At home

Yet another meal which I never got round to writing up was for Patricia’s birthday in May 2005. I managed to get a booking at The River Cafe, and we had a superb evening in this huge, bustling restaurant on the Thames in Fulham. The food was delightful and the service, despite the enormous crowd, was highly professional - everything Ruth’s and Rose’s TV cookery programmes had led us to expect. When I emailed my thanks, they kindly replied with the menu for the day we were there. Click here to read this email. Not sure about a restaurant run by an British woman and an American married to a British lord that prints its menu in Italian, though...

Then there’s Fischer’s Baslow Hall in Derbyshire (also one Michelin star): Patricia took me for a deluxe night with dinner for my birthday in January 2006, and we were so impressed we got married there the following May! We went back for a night in May 2007 to celebrate our first wedding anniversary and Patricia’s birthday - I think this might become an annual event. We also discovered that the proprietors and their head chef have a bar/restaurant, also in Baslow, called Rowleys, and we intend to try a Sunday lunch there soon.

On Tuesday 23 January 2007 we had dinner for another birthday at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant (three Michelin stars and recently voted The Best Restaurant in the World!). Given the restaurant’s awesome status and the fact that we tried for a booking just at the end of Blumenthal’s TV series In Search of Perfection and the parallel series in the Sunday Times Magazine, this must rank as a major achievement - we hear that calls for reservations average 380 a day, and we got a cancellation within five days of my birthday! We knew the bill would be scary, but our guest-house room in Maidenhead cost a lot less than Baslow Hall’s £180 per night. Anyway, the Tax Man had just coughed up what he owed me for running all my business ventures at a considerable loss - failure has its compensations! You can read all about it here...

North Notts/Yorkshire

Since moving to North Nottinghamshire we have found a few very good places to eat locally. Ziniz, in nearby Bawtry, is run by a native of Florence and offers beautifully-presented Tuscan cuisine in an elegant bar/restaurant. It had a very elegant website, too, but it seems to have vanished. He has very recently opened a fish restaurant and wine bar called NordEst in Tickhill, even closer to home. At the last Google, this didn’t show as having a website, but there’s plenty of contact information. Patricia, stepson Alistair and I had lunch there on my birthday (a few days before going to The Fat Duck) and were impressed with the surroundings and the food on the small lunch menu. We had a slightly early Valentine’s dinner there on the 13 February 2007 (never go out to eat on the 14th - your chosen restaurant will be full enough to strain service to, if not beyond, the limit, and the ’special menu’ will probably be ridiculously expensive) and were favourably impressed.

The confusingly-named village of Wales, between us and Sheffield, boasts a really good Chinese restaurant called Ka China. We have been several times and have always thoroughly enjoyed the food and the service. Bawtry has The China Rose, which is much bigger and - while very good - would be our second choice of the two. Neither have websites, but a Google search for either produces masses of information.

Scottish Highlands

We found a little excellent food on our fortnight’s holiday in Scotland in April 2007. Please read this page to find a seafood restaurant worth a trip from anywhere north of Inverness.

Restaurant Sat Bains, Nottingham

We spent the night of the 17th/18th January 2008 celebrating my 65th birthday (and blowing more than my first four weeks’ State Pension) at Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham. Sat, who was a winner in the BBC’s 2007 Great British Menu, is a friend of Heston Blumenthal, and very much part of the same movement. We had a superb meal, and Sat was kind enough to annotate a copy of the tasting menu we’d eaten before we left because, again, it’s very difficult to remember all the details of meals like this. Unfortunately I left this at the house of a family member and by the time I got it back my memories of the meal were a bit hazy!

Sadly, Sat didn’t get beyond the Central England heat of the 2008 Great British Menu - I suspect his overly modern dessert, using Stilton as a seasoning for strawberries and adding some bizarre jelly pastilles made from, of all things, rapeseed oil, was a pudding too far for Matthew, Pru and Oliver.

Winteringham Fields, Lincolnshire

Sometime in 2008 Darren, my fishmonger at Worksop market, told me that Winteringham Fields was his favourite restaurant. This is another ’restaurant with rooms’ - a format we’ve grown to love - about an hour’s drive from home, quite near the Lincolnshire side of the Humber Bridge. I had a look at their website and decided to book a midweek break (£395) for our wedding anniversary and Patricia’s birthday. I landed one of their top suites, the Thomas Westoby, normally £205 a night. We were there for dinner - the Menu Surprise with the sommelier’s choice of a glass of wine with each course (eight, if you count the refresher!), bed and breakfast on the 1 May, and my report can be read here.

Just before Christmas 2009 Darren gave me a copy of Lincolnshire Pride magazine with a special offer from Winteringham Fields. We didn?t hesitate, and had another excellent night there on the 19 January 2010, the day after my 67th birthday. Read all about it...

Winteringham Fields has won some fairly serious awards, and has the same score for cooking in The Good Food Guide, 7, as Sat Bains - two less than The Fat Duck’s 9 and one less than The Waterside Inn’s 8. It also featured in a Hairy Bikers programme in 2009.

Darren gave me a copy of Loncolnshire Pride magazine just before Christmas 2009 because there was a special offer from Winteringham Fields: book the Menu Surprise (£79) with the sommellier’s recommended wines (£55) for two and get a room and breakfast worth up to £222 free. That’s equivalent to dinner and wine for two for £46 - too good to miss. I phoned and managed to book for the day after my 67th birthday - report coming soon. Meanwhile, a few days before our second visit, I have re-read and edited my report.

The latest celebration

We actually leapfrogged our wedding anniversary and Pat’s birthday (1 and 4 May respectively), celebrated back at Fischer’s Baslow Hall in Derbyshire, with my birthday celebration (18 January). This finally happened on the 25 June 2009 at Morston Hall, chef/proprietor another TV star, Galton Blakiston, and - yet again - a restaurant with rooms. We combined this with a five-night holiday at Church Cottage in the quiet Norfolk village of Langham, less than two miles from Morston and even closer to the delightful ’coastal’ village of Blakeney - the quotes are because Blakeney Quay is quite a long way from the sea, from which it is separated by a wide band of salt marsh. My report can be read here...

Coming next

Hambleton Hall in Leicestershire, also a 7, is on our ’definites’ list. It’s actually cheaper than Winteringham Fields - a break for two is £270, but doesn’t include wine - and the chef, Aaron Patterson, has won a Michelin star. I think he was the fourth man in the Central England eliminator on Great British Menu, with Sat, Glyn Purnell (who won the heat) and Rupert Rowley of Fischers, but that information seems to have dropped off the BBC website.

Then there are all other the guys in Great British Menu to go at. We really liked Nigel Haworth’s food (and personality!) in the North heat of GBM, and his Northcote Manor (another restaurant with rooms) looks wonderful. I think we’ll give Anthony Flinn a miss, though, regardless of who wins the heat.

Personal site for Paul Marsden: frustrated writer; experimental cook and all-round foodie; amateur wine-importer; former copywriter and press-officer; former teacher, teacher-trainer, educational software developer and documenter; still a professional web-developer but mostly retired.

This site was transferred in June 2005 to the Sites4Doctors Site Management System, and has been developed and maintained there ever since.