PM's of St Andrews

This is a generic takeaway outlet on Market Street - you can see the contact details on the brochure. I have come across this takeaway twice during my first weeks at uni. The first experience I had wasn't a very good one. I ordered a pizza, and it was not very good at all. To say the least. However, today, while powerwalking home from my 1pm class, I did feel the need for a chip butty. After handing over my £1 coin, I was presented with a medium sized white breadbun stuffed full of chunky chips. Condiments were put all on the same chip, as is customary for chip shops. I'm not sure whether it was my hunger or the quality of the chips (which were perfect, no scraggly or burnt ones), but it was the nicest chip butty I've had for a long time.

University

Well, having been engrossed in settling into university life in St. Andrews, I haven't posted on here much recently. Tonight, me and some of my new-found friends are going to embark on a whole new food journey - cooking for ourselves. Up till now we've been eating Hall food and relying on takeaways for the weekend evenings, but now we're trying it for ourselves.

After trekking to the local Tesco, we got ourselves a huge sack of rice, and one of pasta shells (economy brand, of course). We plan to make a stir fry tonight, with onions, peppers and mushrooms, and of course some own-brand sweet and sour sauce.

Tomorrow, tomato and basil pasta, along with any of the left over veggies from today.

Should be fun. I'll keep you posted.

Photos Added! (not a real post)

I finally got around to taking pics of the restaurants in Newcastle, so check out old posts for new pics!

Lau's Buffet King

Lau's Buffet King in Stowell Street, Newcastle wasn't given many stars by a local reviewer, and maybe it's easy to see why.

Although the food is filling enough, there isn't really that much choice for vegetarians, and as can sometimes happen with Buffet lunch deals, there is better food available for slightly more cash in one of the other Chinese restaurants in Newcastle. About £2 more gets you a 5 course lunch and a drink at Shangri-La or the Mandarin. That said, Lau's provides an easy meal. At £4.99 a head plus £1 for a soft drink, it's certainly one of the cheapest places to eat if you want Chinese food. Beware, any friends coming with you will be charged £4.99 even if the don't have anything from the buffet. Lau's is one of the many Chinese all-you-can-eat buffets on Stowell Street. The service is excellent, plates can disappear under your nose if you appear to be finished, though, so watch your knives and forks if you use them. For someone who eats meat, there is a lot of choice ("80"-course buffet offered!), though some of the mainstays of a Chinese buffet (chow meins for example) were strangely thin on the ground, but the special fried noodles are very nice, and led to something of a "noodle challenge".

Another fantastic thing about Lau's is the gorgeous sweetcorn soup, which you can find in a huge cauldron in the corner, along with another soup of the day. The choice of desserts is good too, ice cream, pineapple and banana fritters, fruit and jelly are all laid on.

So, even though Lau's is the cheapest around (and definitely cheerful) remember that you only get what you pay for.

Minchella's Ice Cream

This locally made ice cream is, in my opinion, the best ice cream you can get on a vaguely warm summer's day in Noth East England. It's so white it will make your teeth jealous, and is best enjoyed all on its own, or blended with cocoa powder when you can't resist buying 2 litres of the stuff to bring home. I think Toney Minchella's is the best. You can read about the Minchella Brothers on their company website.

Chocolate - Wonka's Whipple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight

Today, I think I'll take a cue from some of the more ranty and arty blogs I've found while clicking the "next blog >>>" button. So, here comes some stuff in italics, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl.

"Charlie smiled nervously and sat down on the edge of the bed. He was holding his present, his only present, very carefully in his two hands. WONKA'S WHIPPLE-SCRUMPTIOUS FUDGEMALLOW DELIGHT, it said on the wrapper."..."Charlie looked down at the bar of chocolate. He ran his fingers slowly back and forth along the length of it, stroking it lovingly, and the shiny paper wrapper made little sharp crackly noises in the quiet room"


"Very slowly, Charlie's fingers began to tear open one small corner of the wrapping paper"..."Then suddenly, as though he couldn't bear the suspense any longer, Charlie tore the wrapper right down the middle...and onto his lap, there fell...a light-brown creamy-coloured bar of chocolate."


Well. Having read the book, there's no doubt that Wonka chocolate does promise a lot. However, you also have to remember it's Nestlé, and a film tie-in foodstuff.

And that's exactly what it is. This chocolate bar is really nothing more than a promo offering. Don't be tempted by the delicious sounding name. The fudge is only a tiny piece in each tiny block, with the rest being taken up by some generic creamy filling that could be found anywhere. In short, I feel a little let down by this supposed creation of one of the fictional world's best chocolate makers. Chuck me a CDM any day.

Coming Soon...

Hey, What with all the fun tools I've just added to the blog, I can see we actually do have some readers, and this makes me very happy! Now I know there's an audience, and some of you have even signed up to our feed, let me just say thanks!

Coming Soon:

More chocolate reviews, ready meal fun, and we'll talk more about Chinese food.

Tell us what you want to read, too!

Chocolate - Saveur Chocolat Auzou, Caraïbe

While I was in Normandy I bought a couple of bars of chocolate from a Chocolaterie in Rouen, chosen pretty much at random. I picked the 100g bar of Caraïbe chocolat noir (made with cocoa beans from the Carribean) for myself, and the Nougatine bar for Kate.

Both bars are packaged in a very simple plastic and cardboard wrapper, allowing you to see exactly what you are buying. Yup, 100g of sweet chocolatey-looking stuff divided into rectangular chunks.

This 66% Cocoa paste chocolate is described as dark, but is not as dark as the 70% Lindt you can find at almost any supermarket. The chocolate itself is not stamped with any designs, not even the maker's mark.

As for the taste...well, I love chocolate. This is just bitter enough to give you the chocolatey rush, and does not have the sweetness associated with Bourneville. However, it seems to avoid the sometimes unpleasant aftertaste often found after eating a stronger dark chocolate.

The Mandarin - Chinese Restaurant, Newcastle

The Mandarin Restaurant in Newcastle's Chinatown has a lunchtime menu, 5 courses for £5.60, excluding drinks.

For this, you get a soup, two starters, a main course (beware, rice or noodles are not included and must be bought for £1 extra, which gives a generous portion for two) and a dessert.

As you can see from the outside photo, the whole restaurant is decorated in a very traditional style. It was also listed in the Egon Ronay RAC Guide in 1996 and 1997.

As far as I am aware, this is one of the older restaurants in Stowell Street, and the experience has obviously paid off for the owners and staff. The service in Chinatown's many restaurants has never been less than very attentive and professional, and The Mandarin is no exception.

The Mandarin has a very large array of different "banquets", becoming more and more expensive as the courses become more numerous and extravagant. That being said, the lunchtime £5.60 menu is very reasonable, and is served between 12 and 1530.

El Torero

Yesterday, Kate and I visited one of our favourite restaurants in Newcastle, El Torero. You may be surprised to learn that it's a Spanish tapas restaurant. It's open from 12pm every day.

El Torero is definitely worth a visit. The dining room is very pleasant, especially if you wait until an hour or so after opening when the food seems to be slightly better and the atmosphere livens up a little bit. The decor might be a little cliché for some with its red and yellow theme, but it's nice to see the dark wood tables and the colourful walls with their bullfighting posters - you can hardly forget where you are.

There is a lot to choose from, even if paella and chicken aren't your thing. Each dish is a reasonable price, anything between £2-4, and some more expensive tapas and boards are available if they take your fancy. Good deals are available for groups with set selections of dishes. Even the drinks are a reasonable price, and you can always order a jug of water if you have ordered some of the more garlicky dishes. They make the best garlic mayo I've ever tasted, and it comes with many of the fresh salads and breads.

So if you just fancy a quick snack, or a full meal, there's something to suit everyone. Five Stars!

Luscombe Wild Elderflower Bubbly

Kate and I came across this delicious drink on Bettys Summer menu. It's a non-alcoholic fizzy drink. Once again it is 100% organic, and was produced on a farm in Devon. It cost £2.60 per bottle in the café.

This lightly sparkling drink is flavoured by wild elderflower and Sicilian lemons, and is both tangy and pleasantly sweet at the same time.

Luscombe Farm produces several similar drinks, such as ginger beer and cider. These drinks are all organic. A full list can be found on Luscombe Farm's website.

Coupe Matterhorn - Ice Cream Sundae at Betty's in York

Seeing as it was incredibly hot today, I spent £4.95 on a Coupe Matterhorn sundae from Betty's in York. For the price, you'd think I'd have been robbed for a bit of ice cream, but this was not the case.

I can honestly say it was the best ice cream sundae I've ever tasted.

The sundae was very simple, it was two scoops of vanilla ice cream, two of chocolate, some fresh cream and some warm chocolate sauce. The thing that made it so special was the quality of the ice cream.

Both ice creams were delicious. The vanilla had obviously been made with vanilla pods and real cream, and was of similar texture to chocolate truffle. The chocolate was of a similar texture, deliciously flavoured and again obviously made with real cream. It also contained some lovely chocolate flakes, of a similar sweet taste to the warm sauce.

The portion was generous, as was the quantity of sauce supplied, and the whole dessert was organic. Even though I am an impoverished student, I feel that this time I definitely got what I paid for. Yum.

Innocent Smoothies

I've never been the most enthusiastic person when it comes to fruit. Particularly fruit that comes in puréed form with the bits left in.

However...

Innocent smoothies have converted me. You may have seen the ads on TV for this delicious drink, which contains apples, oranges, bananas, mangoes and passion fruit (and no chickens). So far I've only tried the smoothies, but as you can see from their website they have a vast range of jucies and other fruity products.

The "mangoes and passion fruits" smoothie is totally gorgeous in every way, and is very refreshing. It's also one of your 5-a-day fruit and veg if you have 250ml of it, it's that fruity.

Welcome to Food!

This is a blog all about food, as you may have guessed. The plan is to update this every so often whenever we find something that we like. Tomorrow we're off to Betty's Tearooms in York, and a review should be posted about that soon.

Until then, you may want to take a look at the linked food sites in the sidebar, but please come back at some point, we do need the audience. This is a new thing for me so I'll probably get other things going when we actually have some proper content.