Out door seating – Page 6 – No Expert …but I know what I like

Bravo24 at the W – Whale watching!

Bravo24 is the signature restaurant of the W Hotel in Barcelona’s marina and has its own private lift in the reception area. We entered the lift expecting to be whisked up to the 24th floor but alas it merely took us up one level to the sun terrace.

The location (if you are having lunch on the terrace) stops this restaurant from being a “destination restaurant”. This is mainly because of its child friendly nature and the fact you are directly overlooking the sun terrace which provides a stunning view of Frank Gehry’s ‘Peix d’Or’ bronze whale sculpture and the not so stunning views of some of the W’s guests basking in the sun.

The executive chef is Carles Abellan who is also responsible for Comerc 24, our No Expert Best of the Best award winner last year, so as expected the food is off a high standard. However it was a slightly mixed bag with some very good high end dishes, served along side some fairly basic grills. I especially enjoyed the Cod salad which based on the menu description was not quite as expected as it was very refined indeed. For our main course we went for the Veal, it was served with some lovely mash but alas as I’m not a huge fan of eating fat (I know some people like this sort of thing) I wasn’t able to clean my plate.

I would imagine that the atmosphere in the evening is very different, making this a more suitable fine dining experience, than our casual lunch.

However despite this criticism, we would say that Bravo 24 is a good place for lunch, especially if you are in the area and want to check out the W or relax in the foyer bar. However you will need to be aware of the damage it will do to your wallet. Our lunch for example consisted of 3 courses and 3 glasses of wine at approx 70 euros per person.

Marks out of 10

Food 6.2

Service 6

Ambience 6

Return to top page

Boho – clock it

Found an interesting cafe/bar in the Canterbury called Boho – it is right in the middle of the tourist area, but is still quirky enough to be interesting.

The decor in the back room is fun, very eclectic. I particular like the wall of retro clocks. They also have a small garden area.

The menu is quite diverse, tea/coffee and cakes, a selection of wines, and dishes that range from typical veggie/vegan fare to omnivore food like Chicken liver.

Return to top page

Almeida – again

I made a return visit to Almeida for a friends birthday celebration (Happy Birthday Chris). My last visit was during chocolate week, see post:- Almeida – not just for chocoholics

The restaurant is a very popular pre-theatre venue, so it was a bit more difficult on a Saturday night to get a seat in the bar area. The room is fairly large, but perhaps not ideal for big groups, our table was a bit cramped for 8 people.

On the food front the highlight was the charcuterie trolley service, which several of my companions ordered. This is something the Almeida is famous for reviving, it includes home made rillettes, terrines and patés served with homemade pickles and I must say that it provides for a fairly substantial starter. One I wished I had ordered. My venison salad was very nice, but it did not have the wow factor of the trolley service.

For my main course I had the rib eye steak with lovely fluffy pommes pont neuf – certainly the best Jenga chips I have had for a while!

The rest of the menu was fairly classic for this type of venue, it included oysters, duck, beef and suckling pig.

To finish the meal I had a surprisingly light pineapple tarte tartin. This dish takes 20 minutes to prepare as it is created from scratch – its worth the wait.

UPDATE : March 2010 – made a return visit and ordered from the charcuterie trolley; highly recommended.

Return to top page

Le Pont de la Tour – No Fireworks!

It was November the 5th – Fireworks night, a visit to Le Pont de la Tour next to Tower Bridge seemed like a good location to see some displays, and off course the bridge has some historical significance in the Guy Fox story. Alas the only fireworks were some drunken revellers outside the window putting on an impromptu display using sparklers. There were no fireworks inside on the food front either, the style and quality of the food was actually more reminiscent of their sister restaurant next door (the Chop House), which aims for a different market sector.

When we left, as the Restaurant was closing at about 11:45, (I had been there since 7:20, but more about that later) one of the waiters asked if we had a good evening. One of my companions replied “Yes, the Food was good, The Wine was good”, and tactfully omitted any mention of the service which had been pretty abysmal, causing us to still be in the restaurant at 11:45.

I had arrived at 7:20 and waited 10 minutes while “the Greeter” was on the phone dealing with enquiries about the restaurant. The Maitre d’ apologised, took my coat and escorted me to the table. I noticed about 15 minutes later he was still carrying my coat as he took other people to their tables. My companions arrived, they too had felt invisible as they waited to be acknowledged, they spotted me and made their own way to the table. We were then quickly served Champagne – a freebie due to problems my companions had on a earlier visit. We were about to enjoy the Champagne, in fact I started drinking it (forgetting to smell it first) bad mistake – it was seriously corked. They replaced it with a better quality Champagne which was good. Our food order was taken, again after a fair gap. The Bread arrived about 15 minutes after that, a good hour after I had!. So you can imagine how hungry we were by the time the food arrived.

We shared a plate of 12 oysters, which we enjoyed. When the rest of the food arrived we found that several of the dishes, especially the Steak Tartar were under seasoned, so we had to ask for salt and pepper.

It was getting late by the time we got to the dessert/cheese course and we needed advice on wine matching, after conversations with several members of staff we finally got the sommelier, who recommended a lovely red dessert wine to go with our cheese. Unfortunately the cheese trolley had shrunk quite a bit by the time it arrived at our table, so we had to make do with a selection of what was left. There were no standout cheeses despite the menu descriptions, which had sounded so promising. However I am being picky now, as on the whole we did enjoy our evening it was just marred by the service.

I am afraid based on this visit that I have to class Le Pont de la Tour as one of these restaurants that relies too much on its location to attract custom (see Food Vent number 22). The Bar/Brasserie and the restaurant were both completely packed, which off course impacted on the service, but in general there did seem to be lots of staff and most off the issues we had were at the start off the evening when the restaurant was only half full.

Marks out of 10

Food 5.5

Service 3

Ambience 5

Return to Top Page

Delfina – Spooky?

The Delfina Restaurant is rarely open to the public in the evenings or at the weekends. It’s focus is breakfasts and lunches during the week and event hires in the evening. So it was good to get the opportunity to visit on a Saturday night, only this night was Halloween and they were doing a special menu.

The room is designed to be gallery space and lit accordingly, making it rather difficult to change to a spooky environment for Halloween. Even the tables and chairs are white. The staff dressed up though and there was the odd giant spider and some very effective light projections of witches and bats. I must admit it was disconcerting being served by Dracula and when the waiter spilt some red wine on the white table I almost did not want him to clean it up, as it looked like drips of blood adding to the atmosphere, which needed a lot of help.

The dining space is quite large and all the guests had been seated at the back of the room which meant that you always seemed to be looking out at an empty restaurant. They really are not geared up for evening dinning, they actually turned away two walk ins at 9:45 and removed the rather small sign on the curtained doors advertising the Hal loween opening shortly after. This is a real shame as the area could easily support another “full time” restaurant.

The menu was imaginative and it was surprising just how many of my favorite ingredients it included.

We started with what I assumed was locally baked bread, i.e., too nice to be store bought, with olive oil. For my first course I had the scallops and blood pudding, this consisted of 3 large juicy scallops and a few pieces of thinly sliced oatie black pudding, which I really enjoyed. Next was a fig sorbet to clean our palettes. Then for the main course I had the pork belly, it consisted of two flavoursome pieces of pork belly (both huge). We had also ordered a side order of chips which was totally unnecessary as the pork came with mash. For dessert I had the pumpkin pie. We had a couple of glasses of Prosecco and a bottle of rather mediocre wine. The total cost including service charge came to less than £50 a head, which is very reasonable for the area and for the quality/amount of food.

I also could not resist taking a picture of the very generous cheese course left on the next table, it looked great when it arrived and you can see from the picture just how much of it was left.

The service was very quick, if it had not been for the wine, I suspect we would have been finished in less than an hour, as it was we finished early enough to pop across the road to one of my favorite bars, the Hide Bar for drinks.

In the Summer Delfina also use their outside space for BBQs.

Marks out of 10 for Delfina

Food 5.9

Service 4

Ambience 3

Return to Top Page

Age & Sons – Eccentric & Professional (Closed)

We had been planning to do a post on Age & Sons for a while. When it opened last year it was seen as a place that could put Ramsgate firmly on the Restaurant circuit. The chef is Toby Leigh formally of Kensington Place and gastro pubs The Anchor & Hope and Heston Blumenthal’s Hinds Head.

Age & Sons is actually more than just a restaurant. It is spread over 3 floors, the top floor is the main restaurant, the ground floor is a more casual dining area (laid out a bit like a french kitchen) and the basement houses a cosy rather stylish cocktail bar. It is not the easiest place to find. We arrived on an off season Saturday night to a fully booked restaurant whose clientele consisted of well heeled locals, out of towners, people from the yacht club and foodies like us. I particularly like this places eccentricities – the eclectic range of “Granny” style side plates, the squeaky cheese trolley. It is definitely not one of these manufactured venues with catalogue decor, it has it’s own style.

I started with sweetbreads and damsons. While full of damson flavour it did religate the sweetbread to merely a texture rather than a taste. For main course I went for Kentish lamb and my companion went for the pork (as far removed from the pork I had in Harveys earlier that day, as it is possible to get). The portion sizes were huge so this was more comfort/hearty food than any pretension of fine dining.

What is also refreshing is that in such a busy place the service was professional and friendly. Taking the time for example to enquire how we enjoyed some of the more unusual cheeses in our cheese course. On that front we particularly enjoyed the whiskey flavoured variety from Snowdonia.

On leaving we noticed just how buzzing the downstairs was. This really made for a great ambience and one that most restaurants would kill for.

Marks out of 10 – October 2009

Food 5.5

Service 6.5

Ambience 7

UPDATE : July 2010, Age & Sons now have a much larger outdoor space for drinks and food, it’s a good spot to relax in the sunshine. It even does tea and cakes (not a big selection – they only had muffins on our visit, but they were actually rather good, especially the marmalade and ginger one). They were also selling jugs of Pimms and Ginger Beer, which makes for a nice change from the normal Pimms and Lemonade option.

UPDATE : August 2011

We had a late lunch out in the lovely courtyard. Age & Sons has really upped its game. My Mushroom and Ricotta Ravioli was particularly good.

Marks out of 10 – August 2011

Food 5.9

Service 6.5

Ambience 7

UPDATE : August 2014

The Restaurant is now closed.

Return to top page