Ready to order your ethnic authentic? It’ll take 30 years

Lamb on the bone

FOREIGN restaurants go through a period of evolution when they arrive in this country. The first Indians, Chinese or Greeks might want to give their English customers a taste of what they eat back home but they soon realise it doesn’t pay to be that authentic.

Indian restaurants, in reality Pakistani or Bangladeshi, for long had dishes that wouldn’t be recognised in their own countries. Many still do. Chicken tikka masala? Pull the other poppadom!

I still remember Sompranee Low, who opened the city’s first Thai restaurant, the Bahn Nah, back in the Nineties (Sheffield has always been late for dinner compared to the rest of the country) telling me that she ” dialled down the chilli heat” for customers.

It wasn’t good business for a pallid Englishman, more used to the tranquil flavours of cottage pie or bangers and mash, to be left reeling by an authentic but fiery chilli.

So what we got was a pale shadow of a native cuisine, filtered through several layers of difficulty. The first restaurateurs may not have been natural cooks (many, particularly, Italian and Indian, were redundant steelworkers), the ingredients, herbs and spices were often not available, and Mr and Mrs English knew no better.

If they thought spaghetti carbonara came with cream and complained when it didn’t, unaware that the creaminess came from the emulsion of egg, water and cheese, they got cream.

Then things happened. The first was foreign travel. Holidaymakers in Italy realised that pasta didn’t grow on trees or come out of a tin. The sharper ones, who didn’t high tail it down to the English pubs on the Costa Brava, realised there was a difference.

Very blue – the interior

Secondly came the wider availability of exotic ingredients. Avocados and aubergines started appearing on menus, and much else.

And, thirdly, there are now other customers to please besides Mr and Mrs English: Their own countrymen and women.

Earlier on, immigrants were too poor, too busy or just not in the habit of going out to eat so there was then no need to cater for them. And they would probably have something sharp to say if they did.

When, say, the Pakistani, Chinese or Italian diasporas in Sheffield got to a certain size and had the habit of eating out and money to spend, they could support their own authentic restaurants. This is not true yet of all communities. A Thai woman told me recently: “Why should I eat out when I can cook it myself?”

So we have seen little Pakistani and Kashmiri restaurants spring up in the city, unconcerned about Anglo trade, and just think what has happened to the Chinese restaurant business with the influx of students from Mainland China. Suddenly restaurants other than Cantonese have appeared, along with noodle bars and hot pot eateries. Some have not even bothered to have menus in English.

Not too long ago my wife walked into a place full of Chinese. We were the only Europeans and the waiter confidently expected us to take one look at the menu, which contained not a word of English and leave, so he didn’t bother to come across and ask our order. We stood (or sat) our ground until he did.

I don’t suppose that would happen now as there is a band of ultra foodies who delight in finding the most obscure ethnic places and reporting their finds enthusiastically on social media and blogs. (I have followed up some rave reports with less than euphoric results.)

So where is this leading? These thoughts were triggered by a visit recently to one of those little ethic restaurants, Apna Lahore, on Abbeydale Road, Sheffield, with fellow foodie and blogger Craig Harris. Now Craig majors in Italian cuisine but is currently studying for a critical Dip Ed in Pakistani food and this is one of his regular haunts. He’s written about it here

Its sit down custom is almost exclusively Asian, although this place started life as a takeaway. I’m scanning the menu and see among the specials is maghaz, which means brains.

Samosa and pakora starters

I have eaten brains and trotters, also on offer, before, although in very upmarket restaurants, so miss these and take Craig’s advice to order lamb on the bone. It is a robust, earthy, fiery curry with plenty of chopped bone but I am a natural gnawer so that no problem. And it’s the bone which gives it a deeper flavour.

He has ordered chicken daal, not on the menu, but basically chicken in a sauce of large, soft lentils still holding their shape.

Gutsy is the word I would use to describe both dishes, good nourishing stuff without any hairs and graces.

The decor is bright and basic and very blue. There is music but not too loud. It is of course, alcohol free. You get a bottle of water and glasses when you sit down. Most customers eat with rotis, just workaday bread in my opinion, although cutlery is available.

Pickles and fajitas are very good. Meat samosas come man-sized with proper crisp pastry not filo. The chicken pakoras aren’t bad either.

Two courses, with rice, comes to £26. It’s a bargain. Probably not a first date night place but one to put on your list.

We finish with unspiced Pakistani tea with condensed milk. And a plate of ginger biscuits. Dunking away, we are both impressed by these. Did they make them themselves?

“We get them from Lidl,” said Ali, our server.

Chicken daal

Apna Lahore is 342 Abbeydale Road, S7 1FN Sheffield.
Tel: 0114 258 8821

Now for something completely different

Ashley (left) and Luke in cheffy mode at Airoma

LUKE Hanson flashes me a wide grin. “We’re just two big kids messing about. We enjoy having a laugh.”

By ‘we’ he means himself and best mate Ashley Bagshaw, soon to re-open Silversmiths as head chef, who run pop-up restaurant Airoma, named after a dish that has not yet been set before the public palate, in the Loft Bar at Kelham Island, Sheffield.

It’s their third outing and Luke, from the British Oak, Mosborough has e-mailed offering me a free ticket for favour of review, and a discount for whoever tags along. I bring a mate, ex-pub landlord, Masterchef contestant (floored by a fish) and food blogger Craig Harris, so the lads were getting two bloggers for the price of almost one.

When we get over the shock of being charged £8 for a pint and a half of Kelham Island’s Easy Rider (the brewery is bang next door so those beer miles which upped the price must have been via Newcastle) we settle at one of three tables. There are 30 guests.

Tickets are £45 so I joke that we could have done Joro for lunch at that price. What we are about to get turns out to be thoroughly entertaining.

It’s a sort of tasting menu in a series of small plates, some more serious than others, featuring world classics. We begin close to home with Bacon Butty, a teeny-weeny yeasty white loaf with a brown sauce butter and crunchy little bits of salty bacon, the sort of thing you might get as an amuse in a posh restaurant.

Crocket or croquette – it tasted great

We move on (when the beer runs out we stick to water) to what is to my mind the night’s star dish. Instead of a menu there’s a screen and flashed up is “Bubble & Tweet: roast chicken dinner crocket, crispy cabbage.”

For crocket read croquette, chefs never could spell. I love it. Encased within the breadcrumbed exterior is a complete mini meal: roast chicken, vegetables and stuffing, all precisely flavoured. It sits on the now fashionable crispy cabbage and, carefully balanced on the croquette, is a wafer-thin crispy shard of chicken skin, which everybody knows is the best thing about a Sunday roast.

Not sure how they did the skin (was it dehydrated first?) but it was impressive.

Next we go all oriental with hot and sour flavours from a langoustine gyoza (Japanese dumpling) coupled with a Thai marshmallow, except that something’s missing. I stop a passing waitress and report I am a gyoza-free zone. It turns out that several other diners are in the same boat.

It’s quickly remedied and yes, there was langoustine, but the dish was hot, hot, hot, the marshmallow only providing light relief. Craig detected Szechuan pepper, and then some more.

“It tasted well when we made it but the flavours kept on giving,” said Luke later.

My tastebuds soon got some comfort from what looked like a Fab ice lolly from the Sixties, complete with sprinkles. This was the girly rival to the boys’ Zoom, linked to the Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds series. I never knew Lady Penelope put gin in her lollies. Great fun.

Beef shin, corned beef, crisps

During a break I ask why they are doing this. Do they have their own place in mind? Not if Ashley’s going curtain-up on Silversmiths Mark 3 (or is it 4?).

Turns out they feel mildly constrained by working to order, worrying about meeting profit margins and getting the knock-back from owners on ideas they like.  There are times all chefs will feel like gastronomic Pythons and say ‘Now for something completely different.’

“With this, we can do whatever we want and, hopefully, build up a bit of a reputation,” Luke says.

The lads have spent time working together, chiefly at the Rising Sun, Fulwood, and Chequers at Froggatt Edge, and developing the pop-up took about two years. Hardest part was finding the venue and Airoma was the first ‘do’ at this new function room.

Did Lady Penelope have gin in hers?

Next up was the dish which came closest to the croquette for me, a roundel of oh-so-soft and melting beef contrasting with some home made corned beef.  “We used beef cheek for the corned beef and the shin was braised for nine hours in black treacle,” said Ashley, a chef who is all curls and tattoos.

The dish had what I thought was a second outing for the brown sauce seen in the opening dish, in the form of a jel, but it turned out to be greatly reduced Henderson’s Relish. That brown sauce was actually good old HP!

There were a couple of home made potato crisps as garnish, so good they can always go into business making them if restaurants pall.

There was more, notably a very well-judged piece of parkin and some fun bourbon biscuits with a parmesan shortbread.

So if I had paid the full whack, was it worth it? Certainly. Not everything worked completely but enough for me. I reckon you can always tell when a kitchen is having fun. Some dishes may never be seen again, others will be ideas still in the making.

Just like that airoma which, I gather, was to be a take on Aero. Hasn’t made it yet but it did spawn a pop-up.

*Luke and Ashley will next be messing about and having a laugh with Airoma at the Loft Bar on November 28. Book on https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/airomaonce-upon-a-time-tickets-75578576557?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

*You can read what Craig thought of it  here

Luke (left) and Ashley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peaky’s Vito plays a blinder!

Long service: Boss Vito Ciaraolo

SOME restaurants are like people you’ve lost touch with. You know where they are, you like them but, somehow, you never get round to saying hello again. And so it was with us  and Vito’s on South Road, Walkey.

“We’re off there tonight,” says my wife in the greengrocers as she pays the bill. “Used to be Pepe’s, run by Pepe Scime,” I add, picking up the bags.

“And before that Roy’s Bistro,” says a woman behind us. “It had a chandelier in the hall.” Gosh, she’s got a good culinary memory. It was one of Sheffield’s earliest restaurants of note. In fact between them Roy, Pepe and Vito have forged some gastro history at this little restaurant at the corner with Industry Street.

Roy’s I never went to (although I did its successor, the Four Lanes at Hillsborough). Pepe’s was my introduction to Italian food, lively, boisterous, exciting, and, well, 100pc Pepe, until he sold up in 1993 to his chef and business partner, Vito Ciaraolo. He’s been there 26 years, longer than both his predecessors put together. And it has gone decidedly upmarket.

“Minty,” says one of my friends, studying the menu before we go. With antipasti such as fried ravioli with with rocket and stracchino for £10.90 or main course lamb with prunes for fivepence shy of 20 quid it is easy to push the barca out here.

Lobster ravioli

If you want to create an impression order the beef, usually Fassone from Piedmont or Chianina from Tuscany. Fillet with gorgonzola is £25.95. A bigger splash? The specials board offers Chianina fillet at £90 for two.

You can tread more carefully. Cheaper dishes are available. They even do pizzas although these are classier than most, perhaps topped with ndjua (Calabrian salami paste) or black truffle – Vito makes regular appearances in The Star with his latest fungal acquisition.

He’s even appeared on the telly, as the menu reminds you. He was an extra in the first episode of Peaky Blinders. There’s a picture of him. Very mafiosi.

We’re on the town with food blogger and Italophile Craig Harris and his wife Marie and it’s their first visit.

So Vito’s is going-on posh yet its owner hasn’t completely shaken off the old Sheffield-Italian image: ceiling and walls are still partly Artex and a whopper of a pepper mill is still produced at the table.

The specials board

There’s nothing Sheffield-Italian about the food. It’s authentic. One mouthful of Marie’s spaghetti carbonara (£7.20), done the proper way with guanciale, eggs and pecorino and absolutely no cream thank you very much took her back on holiday in Minori – springy pasta, creamy sauce.

Even something as simple as my Sicilian starter, grilled aubergine with marinated anchovies and olives (£9.95), shone brightly. The aubergine took on a meaty texture, the white anchovies were first class and so were the olives.

Just a few highlights: Craig’s agnello alle prugne, lamb with prunes, sounded as if the spicing had been recently unloaded off an Arab dhow,  ginger, saffron, cinnamon, garlic, almond, olive oil and honey.  The meat was ultra-tender, the flavour exquisite.

My main course lobster ravioli (£14.95) was heavenly, an eggy pasta surrounding a very generous filling with prawns which tasted really luxorious. Vito freely admits he buys these in directly from Italy. This prompted a round table discussion on the merits of doing so.

Aubergine and anchovies

Lamb with prunes

My wife’s merluzzo Fiorentina (£18.95), firm, tasty cod in a spinach, cream and almond sauce, also bore the hallmarks of this restaurant’s kitchen: accurate, precise, unfussy cooking, letting first class ingredients take centre stage. That’s always the intention but it’s not always the case, is it?

Vito, who reminds me it was 17 years since I was last there, writing a review, at the same time as his wife was giving birth to his daughter, operates the kitchen midweek and is front of house at weekends.

Originally the arrangement was to buy half the business and the rest over four years. The deal went belly up and he needed to find the money quickly. “Somehow we managed.”

He hadn’t intended to stay more than a couple of years. Now, aged 56 and originally from Potenza, he’s been there almost half his life. Business is good but “it’s gone down with Brexit. People don’t want to spend.”

But some obviously do otherwise that chianina wouldn’t have been on the specials board.

To sum up, the atmosphere was warm, the service expertly pleasant and the food was great. The kitchen didn’t put a foot wrong. The bill? Well, we splashed out that Saturday evening. You’ll have gathered we liked it.

And I bet you saw the headline coming halfway through this piece . . . Peaky’s Vito plays a blinder!

Vito’s is at 284 South Road, Walkley, Sheffield. Tel: 0114 233 3574. Web: http://www.vitos.org.uk

Some like it hot

Lamb balti at Mirpuri Tawa

THERE’S a familiar face waiting to greet me at Mirpuri Tawa on London Road, Sheffield. The last time I saw Afaz Mohammed he was tootling around the car park of his Estikutum buffet restaurant in a tuk-tuk taxi he’d just bought.

He tuk-tukked all over Darnall and Sheffield with the name of the restaurant emblazoned on the side, a one-man mobile sandwich board.

I have a memory of him in the vast former pub, clad in flowing robes of white and gold, ushering in burkha-clad women to the enclosed family booths which lined one wall.

The Mirpuri Tawa, named after the Pakistan Punjab town from which many of Sheffield’s Asians originate, and the flat metal cooking pan traditional to the area, is much smaller than the Estikutum. And Afaz is in a suit.

There’s an old adage which says if you want to see if a Chinese restaurant is authentic then check out the customers. If a lot of them are Chinese, you’ve struck lucky. The same goes for South Asian restaurants. Most of the customers at Mirpuri Tawa on our night (or most nights) are Pakistani.

They’re mostly men but here and there is a woman diner and headscarves seem to be optional.

If you want authenticity, then you can get it in spades here. I can’t recall a single ‘Indian’ restaurant aiming at a European clientele which has curried camel, deer, tripe, brains or sheep’s trotters on the menu.

 

Chicken liver starter

The food makes no concessions as far as I can see to Western tastes and palates, although it does include chips in a starter selection of dishes for groups of dinners. There are no dinky little images of chillis to designate the heat of various dishes. You are expected to know. And like it.

And, as Afaz likes to say in a kind of mantra, you won’t find dishes marked Bombay, Madras or even that Made in Glasgow (or was it Birmingham) Anglo-Indian favourite, chicken tikka masala on his brief, compact menu.

There is, though, a chicken masala. My wife chooses that, apprehensive about things like brains and feet, and clings to things she knows. Except it isn’t.

Instead of breast meat in creamy tomatoey sauce with a gentle heat it is dark meat. No point in telling a Western woman that dark meat is tastier than white. She’s lucky it isn’t on the bone although that would have made it even tastier. But the sauce has an undeniable searing quality.

It is hotter than mine and I’ve taken the advice of our friend, fellow blogger and curry aficionado Craig Harris, in ordering the lamb balti. I wonder at this because baltis were invented in Birmingham, weren’t they?

That aside, it is on the bone which adds for succulence, richness and sweetness and the sauce is thick and clinging. I love it. But it is not as hot as my wife’s masala. And that’s not as hot as Craig’s wife Marie’s paneer and spinach dish. It defeats her.

Food here comes mostly in ethnic looking clay pots and jugs with wooden spoons. Cutlery, as at the old Kashmir on Spital Hill, is optional. Otherwise you can use the excellent naan bread to mop things up.

We had enjoyed good starters. My spicy chicken wings were certainly that but little different to those the world over. Craig’s grilled chicken livers tasted fine and gutsy with cumin, none of the Western ‘we cook them pink’ here.

There’s no booze and you can’t bring it in. And that, says Afaz, perhaps a little wistfully, stops some Westerners coming in. Now I’ve never  been one to scoff a curry with a pint because weird things happen to my digestion so I’m more than happy with water and a jug of mango lassi Afaz provides.

The ladies will not be back. Traditional Indian cooking does not agree with them. Craig, who has reviewed Mirpuri Tawa here most certainly will. And I’ll be happy to join him. Might skip the camel, though.

Mirpuri Tawa, 162 London Road, Sheffield S2 4LT. Tel: 0114 258 0805. Web: http://www.mirpuritawa.co.uk/

The place to go for camel – or sheep’s hooves

 

Taking wine with Signor Caruso

Nino, Craig and me at Veeno’s wine tasting

THE next time someone plonks down a plate of gorgonzola in front of me I shall know what wine to drink it with. I shall casually reach for a bottle of juicy red Nero d’Avola and smirk knowingly.

Likewise, should I be confronted by some buffalo mozzarella, I can click my fingers, summon the waiter and say:” Marco, I think we need the sprightly Grillo grape with this.”

Now this never happens in Real Life, only in dreams about cheese and at bloggers’ wine tastings. In Real Life you’re in your favourite enoteca with a board of Italian meats and cheeses on the table and decide you’ll have one red and one white, the second cheapest on the list, because you’ve got to eke out those holiday euros.

As this is not a dream we’re at the estimable Veeno in Ecclesall Road, one of a chain of Italian enotecas co-founded by the splendid Nino Caruso, a name that sounds as if it has been made up by public relations but hasn’t.

I have used those complimentary adjectives not just because Signor Caruso is footing the bill. I genuinely like the place, having been here three times before and spent my own money on each occasion, once investing in a third share of a £26 bottle of superb Greco di Tufo. And I have a loyalty card.

Now I hope you don’t think I am not taking the event seriously. I am. All around me people are Tweeting and Instagramming and photographing while sloshing and slurping their vino so it hits all the taste receptors. I am wondering if I can go for another slice of speck.

I like wine but very often I don’t detect what others do in the glass. Here’s a Veeno chappie telling us that the Sicani Grillo hints at apples on the palate. The vinophile next to me says Granny Smith’s but I get pear, although I couldn’t swear if it was Comice or Williams.

However, it was my favourite wine of the night because I like its dryness and acidity. I could also comment on the delicate notes of oak and acacia only I’d be reading from the crib sheet.

What I like about Veeno, which you can read in my earlier review here, is that it has plenty of atmosphere and a slate of good wines from Nino Caruso’s family vineyard. The wines are interesting, although the house white is a bit too thin for my liking, and the food is tip top quality.

There Is a little booklet they give you so you can road test any or all of a selection of six bottles or glasses so I won’t add much more. That Nero d’Avola, by the way, is, according to my own notes, rich, velvety, tannic and smoky: in other words, very full on. I also loved the gorgonzola with it.

If you’re the sort who dodges that end-of-meal limoncello offered at your local trat, the one served here has none of the oily, oleaginous, cloying qualities you expect but is light and elegant.

For a much better review of the wines check out the post on fellow blogger Craig Harris’s blog. He’s the one who shouted Granny Smith’s and can gurgle in Italian.

They gave us a bottle of that house white to take home.

http://www.theveenocompany.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Make mine a Veeno

Every bit as good as it looks

IN need of some refreshment I dropped into Veeno, the new Italian ‘wine bar café’ on Ecclesall Road Sheffield. Make a note of the address or you might find yourself at Veeno’s mini mart on London Road where an involtini may be hard to come by.

Veeno is near Berkeley Precinct (I refuse to call it the renamed Berkeley Centre) in what used to be Carluccio’s, a place some local people called pants although my main grouse was the giant pepper pot they wanted to grind on to your meal before you’d checked the seasoning or flag one down if it turned out you did need pepper. Just leave the condiments on the table!

Veeno is not pants. In fact, it is very good if a tad, no, a soupcon, expensive.

I was alerted to it by fellow blogger and Italophile Craig Harris and his wife Marie who had enjoyed a visit to the Nottingham branch of the 15-strong chain and got me a ticket to the opening night. Like me, the best thing about their Italian holidays is finding a cosy little enoteca (the Italian for wine bar) with good wines and boards of meat and cheese. I always remember one on Lake Como where I upset the owner by querying the bill until I told him I thought he’d made a mistake because it seemed too cheap.

Reader, you won’t be thinking it comes cheap at Veeno although it does food, drink and atmosphere pretty well. Fitted out with tables, sofas, alcoves, walls lined with wine racks, and a bar, plus a tasting room, it serves up some very decent wines with top quality meats and cheese, plus a smattering of bruschettas and spuntini, nibbles, the Italian equivalent of tapas or dim sum.

Inside Veeno

That way you don’t need a chef, just someone adept at putting good quality ingredients together. It seems simple but then the best ideas are. The two young men who came up with translating the enoteca to Britain are Andrea Zecchino and Nino Caruso, whose family just happens to have a vineyard in Sicily.

We’d found a table and were sipping our complementary glasses of house wine when I flagged down a chap who looked like he was Andrea or Nino. He wasn’t. He was Mike from Hungary but he was the owner as he had the franchise, his second after York.

Magyar Mike must have been in an expansive mood because he generously told us to order some food on the house. Perhaps he thought we were influential: Style setters. We liked Mike. The evening’s photographer didn’t hold the same opinion because he never pointed his camera at us once.

Craig promptly ordered the most expensive board in the house, the Italia, at £24.50. And he did it with a straight face. It was lovely and included some Formaggella al Tartufo, a northern Italian cheese with truffles and some runaway gorgonzola with walnuts, speck, the best fennel salami I’ve had, breads, oil, honey with truffle and plenty more. The price could have been worse. In Bristol the same menu item is £26 while in Kingston upon Thames it is £26.50. Magyar Mike is obviously pitching his prices at what he thinks Sheffield will stand. I thought that top whack for the same thing on Lake Como would have been 15 euros but then you’ve got to factor in the air fare.

The house wine at £4 for 175ml was pretty decent, from the Caruso e Minini vineyard. The same glass is £4.20 in Bristol and another 20p more in Kingston. But as Craig had gone large on the free food he felt it only right to go large on the paid-for wine so he ordered us a bottle of Greco di Tufo at a stunning £28 (a quid less than in Bristol). It had lovely honeyed appley flavours.

So there you have it, a little pricy but a very well put together exercise, which is why the chain is doing well. I cavil a bit at the name, Veeno for Vino, and the clunking ‘wine bar café’ self-description instead of enoteca but that’s just me. It won’t stop me going, though!

Craig will doubtless be reporting at http://www.craigscrockpot.wordpress.com. You can check out the Veeno offering at http://www.theveenocompany.com

Veeno from the outside

 

The Chef Behind the (Wet Fish) Counter

Hake with clams and samphire

YOU know how it is, you go out to eat some fancy fish but can tell it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg and then the other two. Well there were four of us and we started with three Colchester oysters and ordered three plates of hake with clams and both fillets of a sea bass and the bill was £43.

Yes, you read that right.

Mind you, we had to make some sacrifices. One of us got out of bed at 5am to bake the ciabatta which mopped up our chilli-spiked tomato sauces while another popped next door but two to the wine shop for a chilled bottle of Puglian white and four glasses.

But if you don’t mind being propped up on a bar stool a couple of feet from a prime display of wet fish on crushed ice while customers come in for their cod or smoked haddock then I can heartily recommend Mann’s wet fish shop on Sharrowvale Road, Sheffield, any lunchtime when it’s open, all week save Sunday and Monday.

An A-board on the pavement invites you in: “Try any fish. We do the rest.”

The chef, not behind the curtain but behind the counter is Christian Szurko, not some fishmonger who fancies his hand with a frying pan but a fully trained chef with experience at London’s seafood restaurant J Sheekey and the Blue Broom, Lounge Bar and Club One Eleven back here.

Just walk in, size up the fish, tell him how you’d like it (fried or poached, usually) and sit down with a bottle of BYO and wait until it’s ready. All you’ll be charged is the shop price of the ingredients plus £2 per person for the privilege of having it cooked. The hake was £18 a kilo and the sea bass £14. If you really want a fish called wonga the halibut is £40.

While we were the only ‘diners’ on a blowy Wednesday the previous Saturday there had been 20 eating. “Not bad for a wet fish shop, is it?” said Christian, cutting very generous steaks off the fearsome looking hake lolling next to squid.

Christian beheads the hake

My wife and I were joined by fellow foodie blogger Craig Harris and his wife Marie, both staunch Italophiles, and it was he who had made the lovely springy ciabatta that morning.

Customers could already eat in after Christian started an impromptu oyster bar a couple of years back. At £1 a pop it was and still is a bargain. “It escalated from there. We always had the induction hobs because we make our own stock for the shop,” he added. So is he scratching a cheffy itch? “Partly, but I also run pop up restaurants. I’m looking for new premises now.”

If you fancy a glass of Chablis to chase it down then Jane Cummings of Olive & Vine wine merchants has a berth there on Saturdays. As it was midweek my wife nipped out to fellow wine merchants Starmore Boss with a tenner and came back with a chilled A Mano Bianco. They also loaned us the glasses.

Christian, who took over the then Hillsborough-based business with his brother Danny (who has since left the shop) in 2008, could offer the fish with spiced lentil salsa, daal with paneer, spicy tomato sauce or garlic mash that day. We already had the bread so didn’t need the mash but the tomato sauce sounded good. “Throw in some clams and samphire?” asked Christian. You bet.

Lunch is on the right

We almost forgot the oysters until Craig prompted me. They were expertly shucked by Craig’s new partner in the shop Scott Mills, another chef turned fishmonger. These were Colchester oysters in tip top condition.

So was the hake, heralded by tempting cooking smells. I sometimes find the texture of this fish, a favourite with the Spanish, a little on the heavy side but this, while still retaining firm-fleshed meatiness, was also light and flakey, set off nicely by the tomato sauce with a little crunchiness from the emerald green samphire. The clams were fine but I don’t go into raptures over a vongole. What is it but a posh cockle? Give me a winkle or a whelk any day.

Christian plates while Scott supervises

It made for a very pleasant and enjoyable lunch where we could all pretend we were Rick Steins popping in for a bite with an obliging chef. This is one you all must try.

#Mann’s is at 261 Sharrowvale Road, Sheffield S11 8ZE. Tel: 0114 268 2225 On Twitter and Facebook

Check out what Craig thought of the meal at www. craigscrockpot.wordpress.com

A feast of fish

No Name, this is the pack drill

Griddled scallop starter at No Name

IT’S a beautifully made piece of ciabatta, I think, as I bite into it at No Name in Crookes. Look how it almost quivers, the open crumb and the delightfully olivey taste. It’s almost a shame to dunk it into the bowl of balsamic and olive oil.

I can recall when ‘Italian bread’ here was half a breadcake wiped with garlic. Then it was called Franco’s Pizzeria, no great shakes for food but chef patron Franco D’Egido ended the evening singing the Wild Rover while his wife Elaine let off balloons.

We went back 20 years later to find Franco had retired, it was still Italian but in different hands and the head waiter was called Nigel.

I turn to my dining companion, fellow blogger Craig ‘Mr Ciabatta’ Harris, a foodie and Italophile so keen on authenticity he slips out of bed early to make his weekly batch. What does he think? He nods enthusiastically.

Crispy chicken beats KFC

No Name is tiny, a micro bistro. It seats 21 or 24 if you all breathe in. So is the menu with just 3-4-2 choices at each course. The prices aren’t micro, though, so a meal for two would be banging on at around £60 and I get a bit of a grump on when Craig, who books, tells me there are two sittings. If I spend that money I want the table all night, particularly at a weekend. But then again, if you’ve got a place that small, it helps pay the rent.

Happily Crookes hasn’t got the grump because No Name, which opened in June, has been a runaway success in an area which is all pizzas and pakoras and where Modern British Cooking has not previously reared its head. “Simply outstanding,” one diner trilled on TripAdvisor.

The owner-chef is Thomas Samworth, 33, one of Mick Burke’s star pupils at Sheffield College, who won the prestigious Maurice des Ombiaux in Belgium, a junior chefs’ European Cup, back in 2003. After a spell at Gary Rhodes’ W1 in London he came home to head up the kitchen at Rowley’s in Baslow, as well as the village’s Devonshire Arms. We’ve eaten his food at both places as well as at the Schoolrooms in Low Bradfield, although he had fewer tattoos back then.

When I saw the menu (there is no website, just a Facebook page) it looked very safe: butternut squash soup, lamb shank and duck confit. I was proved wrong. It’s the way he cooks them as someone very nearly said.

There is now no Nigel front of house but there is a very expectant Mrs Megan Samworth and the hope skitters across my mind that she won’t give birth between my crispy chicken starter and confit main. “If I drop my food it stays on here,” she laughs, patting her belly.

Megan and Thomas Samworth

I had no idea what crispy chicken (£7) was but it turned out to be a sort of chicken rillettes bound in Bechamel and shaped into a crispy coated lozenge. That’s very modern and also very old, a souped up version of croquettes. What soups it up is a sauce of blitzed sweetcorn and a good helping of fancy micro mushrooms, lightly pickled.

The rest of the table has scallops (£8), three very sweet pieces, seared one side only, with apple caramel, hazelnuts and celeriac. Craig, a celeriac junkie, wished for a bit more oomph with the vegetable.

We men went for the confit (£16), served boned on top of a triangle of wonderfully crisp and starchy rosti potato, so good it threatened to upstage the main ingredient. This was a lovely dish, helped along with earthy kale and an elegant pickled blackberry jus.

My wife had an excellent piece of stone bass, nothing like sea bass but it’s an ugly blighter otherwise known as Atlantic wreckfish, now becoming popular. Craig’s wife Marie enthusiastically offered portions of her ultra-tender lamb shank to share.

In his micro kitchen (just two rings) Thomas said he had got fed up cooking fish and chips and gammon steaks in country pubs and wanted to rustle up the kind of food he liked to eat out. Some pop-up nights at his family home helped establish a following and by early summer the place was open.

And why No Name? “I wanted an air of mystery,” he said. Doubtless he was thinking of The Man Behind the Curtain in Leeds. Well, there’s no mystery why No Name is popular. It’s the good cooking. It’s also BYO so that sort of compensates for speedy eating.

We finish with either spiced plums or a good chocolate mousse with honeycomb. A great night out and we wish Megan and Thomas all the best with the birth. Let’s hope the owners of No Name come up with one for the baby!

#253 Crookes, Sheffield. Tel 0114 266 1520. Open Wed-Sat night. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pg/NO-NAME-Sheffield-1695321363841840/about/?ref=page_internal

Tiny but perfectly formed

 

Definitely not the same old poutine

John Parsons’ poutine at the Beer Engine

POUTINE sounds like a female follower of Russia’s President Putin but actually it’s a foodie fad which in my sheltered life I’d never come across until a year or two ago. It’s the Canadian version of cheesy chips, that student stand-by, although as I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties the most exciting thing to eat was a late night Wimpy. We never went exotic and put cheese on chips.

Back in 2015 I saw it on the blackboard at Jonty Cork’s eponymous little café on Sharrow Vale Road, Sheffield, and asked what it was. He’d been taught it by a Canadian houseguest who was on a cheesemaking course at Welbeck School of Artisan Food.

The idea was to cook some chips, add cheese curds and bathe the lot with gravy. It is, apparently, a fast food dish which started life in Quebec, the mostly French speaking province of Canada. As I recall Jonty had a bit of a problem getting the right curds – apparently they have to be the same size as the chips – until he settled on a squidgy German mozzarella.

Well it was breakfast so I didn’t get to taste Jonty’s poutine although I saw it on other menus and, once, chalked on a wall. As I’m a bit of a food snob there never seemed to be a cheesy chips moment and then it seemed to fade from fashion.

But I’ve been going to the Beer Engine at the bottom of Cemetery Road quite a bit lately and noticed it on chef John Parsons’ menu. Still, I shunned it in favour of dishes like pig cheek ragu, dipped ox cheek sarni and crab and prawn rice rolls. Then, lunching with fellow foodie blogger and Masterchef contestant Craig Harris, we reckoned that if ever there was a cheesy chips moment it was then.

John makes no claims to it being authentic but says it is his Sheffield version. He didn’t use the word but I will, superior. It is listed as Sheffield Poutine: cheesy chips and ox liquor gravy with cinema cheese sauce. I had to ask what this last was and was told it squirts out of a bottle. See what I mean about a sheltered life? The chips were big and fat. The cheese sauce (curds are not the way with this dish) was a béchamel with cheese (I forget which), spiked with paprika, and the gravy the left-over liquor from the ox cheek. It was lovely with a glass of Neepsend Blonde.

“It’s been on the menu since I started. It’s a case of using up whatever is in the kitchen,” said John. It costs £4 and fills you up splendidly. There’s a veggie version but you’d miss the best element, the ox cheek liquor. So is it poutine a Quebecker would recognise? Probably not but I’d take this any day.

We had only one complaint: you needed a hunk of bread or a spoon, which we got. John was taking no criticism. “You do this” – and he mimed picking up the dish and drinking the gravy down – “particularly after a few pints!”

Check out the Beer Engine at http://www.beerenginesheffield.com and Craig’s excellent blog at http://www.craigscrockpot.wordpress.com

STOP PRESS: John Parsons has now left the Beer Engine (as from August) and is mulling over new plans. It is certainly still worth a visit, particularly for the Korean chicken wings.