Mad_Cyril Was in Manchester over the weekend for a mate’s birthday. Hit the bars on Peter Street and had a lovely steak dinner and cocktails at Hawksmoor. Superb.

hawksmoor is superb. especially the sunday roast

Best sticky toffee pudding I ever did have?

Rick’s in Tooting, followed by Hawksmoor.

    Grabbed some Chef Smelly’s takeout over the weekend. Half Dungeness Crab, Blackened Prawns, Garlic Noodles. Not the most aesthetically pleasing dish but whew was it good. Love this time of year for the crab alone.

      24 days later

      Off here tomorrow, reasonably new place in the city centre. Situated above St Georges market, which is a great food market if you are ever over in belfast.

      https://www.stockbelfast.com/#about

      Slightly concerned that there are items on the menu containing no potato.

      I’d go for this -

      Slow Cooked & Glazed Beef Cheek in Red Wine, Kale, Roast Onions, Buttered Mash

      Though I’d have to ask for the mash sans butter, obvs.

      You literally cant keep away from the spuds Ed LOL

      Did I ever tell you about the potato song Snr wrote?

      Ended up on a Kenny Everett album and he made £10k.

      Tru fax!

      A family infatuation it seems. Remember the time your old dear reckoned she saw 5 types of potato on a pub carvery menu?

      That was good craic to be fair

      Think it was at someone’s house in Wicklow.

      They served a Sunday roast with 5 different types of mash.

      Grabbed some noodles from a Chinese spot called Huangcheng Noodle House….

      Damn good. Spicy but the noodles are all hand-cut. I’m not sure what that means but they’re fucking good.

      @bosstrabs is Huangcheng an area/province in China? I can’t mind much information.

        jonattonyeah I had to look this up based on the characters, because there are so many homonyms in the Chinese language (many ’huang’s and many ’cheng’s).

        Huangcheng 皇城 is a village in Shanxi Province. The name actually means ‘Imperial City’ so it will have been an important capital of some fiefdom or warlord’s mini empire centuries ago probably. I expect it’s just where the owners are from.

        The noodles look legit, if excessively spiced. Either you dumped a shit-ton of chilli oil in there yourself, or they serve them like that for SF hipster tastes. No-one from anywhere in Northern China is eating that amount of spice in their daily staples, although someone from Sichuan might.

        If they are genuine Shanxi people (as opposed to third generation ABCs bastardising their grandparents’ recipes), G9 and B6 on their menu will be superb.

          And ‘hand-cut’ will just mean (like pasta) hand-made on the day, leading to an irregular cut, as opposed to using a machine, or worse, packaged noodles.

          Dave taking the fun out of chinese food since the day he set foot in beijing.

            rhouses That would just make it ‘Chicken Chow’ which wouldn’t really make sense.

            bosstrabs Either you dumped a shit-ton of chilli oil in there yourself, or they serve them like that for SF hipster tastes

            It came like that. It honestly wasn’t that bad as there was a bunch of noodles below. Once mixed it up, it looked far more reasonable. And they seem genuine. Oakland’s Chinatown is not like SF’s. It’s very poor and not touristy at all. Some of the places are quite dodgy and not just for the health inspector. The building Huangcheng was originally in burned down and the fire inspector found a maze of underground tunnels connecting various buildings. Likely used for human/sex trafficking unfortunately.

            And cheers for the recommendations and the info, Dave, I shall give them a go next time.. I’ve become resonably familiar with Shandong cuisine but trying to branch out a bit. The regional variations are all over the place and can be intimidating. Many business owners are wary of outsiders and often aren’t very helpful.

            Trullo was absolutely magnificent.

            Cheers!

            7 days later

            Love Ethiopian you uncultured swine! Injera is a god-gift to mankind.

            Dubman What’s the grey stuff down the middle

            That’s the stuff Penguins regurgitate to their chicks after a day out fishing

            Dubman

            Yogurts to cut the heat.

            Yes, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing food, but the taste makes up for it. And you get to eat with your hands like an infant. Added bonus.

              jonattonyeah

              And you get to eat with your hands like an infant.

              Polite of you to not say “like Ed”.

              Dubman

              It’s a very sour “bread” made from teff flour. It’s spongy and I’m going to guess fermented. Grab a handful and dive in. It’s typically on the bottom of the platter, as well as on the side, so it soaks up the spice-heavy, curry-like dishes.

              In the US, refugees were grouped together. So Seattle has a large Somali populaiton; Atlanta has a large Sudanese population. Oakland and DC have large Ethiopian groups. Certainly thankful as the food is tremendous, if not always the prettiest.

                Dubman

                None of the spots around here serve rice. Dunno. Maybe that region is too arid to grow it? I don’t have any idea.

                  jonattonyeah
                  It seems they don’t hardly eat rice in Ethiopia but do eat a lot of Teff instead.

                  jonattonyeah I once went for an Ethiopian meal in North London and it was surprisingly decent. Pretty sure it was The Queen of Sheba in Kentish Town.

                  It was definitely presented in a more appealing fashion than that plate though.