No Expert …but I know what I like – Food Blog, Restaurant reviews
Reviews, Guides & Maps
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.
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.
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
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.
In celebration of chocolate week, Almeida has joined forces with chocolatier Paul A Young to create a unique three course “chocolate” menu. Each dish being combined with a complementary chocolate. So basically instead of wine matching, it’s chocolate matching!.
The whole concept of a chocolate menu seemed a bit of a gimmick, so I was pleasantly surprised just how serious this food was.
The meal began well with a very nice goats cheese appetizer/canapé. Then I had a stunning foie gras dish (described as pan fried foie gras, chocolate and orange – 64% Dominican Republic chocolate with a balance of sweetness and a delicate nutty, smoky taste.) I thought this dish was very subtle with great flavour combinations.
For my next course I went with the pork (braised suckling pig, creamed savoy – with Paul A Young’s Ras el hanout spiced chocolate), again it was a dish that was beautifully complimented by the almost savory chocolate sauce. We even asked the waiter for the recipe and to his credit he went out of his way to get it for us.
One of my chocoholic companions decided to forgo the main course and have two desserts instead. No problem, they just provided him with a “jumbo” sized dessert as the main course. For the rest of us, there was a choice between two desserts. A chocolate souffle that was not so well received and a stunning dessert called Chocolate 3 ways, which included some lovely fudge.
On the wine front to match the chocolate theme, we went for a rather nice Portuguese red.
The only low mark here related to the wine service where the waitress kept overfilling glasses, which meant that the wine was not evenly distributed and forced us to get a second bottle to make up the short fall. (We would have gone for a second bottle anyway, but would have preferred to do it in our own time).
We then finished the meal with coffee and petits fours.
The layout is very well designed with a distinct bar area and a dinning area that consists almost entirely of round tables. I love round tables in a restaurant, they work so well for both groups of two (both dinners can face into the room) and groups of 6 (much more sociable as you can have cross table conversations with everyone). The acoustics were also very good, we could not hear anything from the neighbouring tables.
The bar is worth a visit on it’s own, we mainly indulged in yummy Chocolate Martinis, but there are some other cocktails on the menu that are worth trying. One of the champagne cocktails, “The Morgan” (Morgan’s Spiced rum, gomme syrup, cranberry juice and champagne) was very nice too.
The restaurant has 2 AA Rosettes, which it certainly merits. It is also off course an ideal pre-theatre venue for the Almeida Theatre. I certainly plan to return, even without Chocolate week.
