Description: Peru – 01/04/10Paul and I finally managed to get to grips with a Peruvian meal just three days before the final deadline of our quest. And we managed it at the fourth attempt – including three separate trips out to Lee Lane, Horwich.
The building that has housed Puddleduk since it opened in February used to house the Peruvian restaurant Inkaa. Paul and I had made a trip out here in November only to find that it had very recently closed down; instead we were forced to have a
Polish takeaway. However, interestingly enough a new restaurant by the name of Puddleduk has now moved in. A sister restaurant to Preston’s Duk and Pond, Puddleduk is not truly a Peruvian restaurant. Rather its playful and inventive menu is a fusion of different international dishes and some rather joyous fruit-based experiments. However, there was enough there for me to count it as my Peruvian meal.
Inside there is a rustic South American cantina feel going on with rough wood tables, Peruvian blankets on the walls, and a Latin soundtrack. I had booked us a table which was probably a good move – maybe it was because the next day was Easter Friday, but the place was busier than many other places we had patronised on a Thursday night with dining couples, groups of friends, and a semi-raucous female birthday party downing sangria. We opted for beer, in this case being bottles of
Cusqueña, Peruvian beer that I recalled fondly from my own stay in
Cusco.
The menu is an extensive list with an annoyingly random use of fonts, type sizes, speech marks and bolds. The dishes thereon are inspired by chef Andrea Mellon’s international travels, from Canarian potatoes to Cypriot halloumi, Catalan chicken to Berber lamb and Argentinian steak to Thai mussels. But there is a strong Peruvian feel to the bulk of the menu. Some dishes, like the ceviche have to be ordered in advance – unfortunately my request was not received in time by the main chef, mso I had to choose from the remainder of the menu.
We both started off with
Peruvian stew. This was a £6.95 bowl of succulent chicken strips in a sauce that was both fruity and spicy, laden with green peppers, chopped chillis and surprising little morsels of apple, orange or raspberry. The menu stated that it was guaranteed to kill a cold at 100 yards, and they were probably right. Do not order this dish without at least a full glass of drink beside you! After the stew we had to pause and sip our beers to give our tastebuds chance to recover before our next course.
I continued with the Peruvian theme with my next course. I was tempted by the £6.25 Cuzco chicken in a creamy tomato and basil sauce. However, I thought that a more robust taste would be obtained by opting for
Machu Picchu steak (£10.95). This was juicy strips of fillet steak fried up with mushrooms dipped in truffle oil. It came accompanied with a ball of ‘dragon pate’: venison and chilli pate. The pate was quite harsh on the palate, and I did not think it had been very well integrated with the rest of the course – it was an amusement served simultaneously, but did not really add much to the dish. I wasn’t really sure what its link to the fabled Machu Picchu was either. While there is beef in Peru, I doubt there is much venison. Llama would be more common. Mind you, at least I was trying. Paul ordered home-made mackerel pate served with chunks of toasted ciabatta (£5.95).
Our desserts were not really Peruvian at all though. However, mine in particular really deserves a second visit it was that good. I ordered Pepper Pear. This was two whole pears poached in port and red wine and then topped with ground black pepper and a port reduction. It was absolutely wonderful! The by-now ink-purple pears had been cooked so thoroughly they could be sliced right through, and eaten in complete slices, core and all. The black pepper created a very unusual tingly catch at the back of the throat that I really wasn’t expecting. And the sauce was pretty much enough to get you drunk by itself. I couldn’t recall being so enamoured of a dessert since my visit to Luso over a year earlier. Paul had a Spanglish pancake, a pancake stuffed with more fruit and berries and then topped with grated cinnamon. Both were bargains at £4.95.
To finish off I persuaded Paul to join me with Peru’s national drink, a Pisco sour. I was expecting an Old Fashioned glass of pisco (Peruvian grape spirit), soured off with lime, sweetened with sugar, topped with frothy beaten egg white and a splash of bitters. What we got, I think, was a mere shot glass of pisco rimmed with salt. I certainly didn’t remember salt being an ingredient in the pisco sours I had enjoyed (rather to my surprise!) in Peru, and the traditional egg wgite froth was distinctly non-present. Mind you, I had wondered whether British health and safety rules would allow any bar to serve up a drink involving raw egg white!
Apart from this, the only real let down was the fuss it took to get the bill – 15 minutes speaking to three different wait-staff, in the end being given an estimated total of £58 as they could not find all the slips from the waiters’ notebooks. This delay caused us to just miss our train back to manchester from Blackrod station and have to wait an hour for the next one. It was a sign of a certain disorganisation. Of course, we wouldn’t have minded so much if we had not had a train to catch. Otherwise we would have been quite happy to relax on the big leather settees in the lounge.
Puddleduk is not very far from San Marino. And whereas I had stated that I was never likely to revist that restaurant purely because of its distant location, I do intend to pay another visit to Puddleduk. I mentioned that it had a very imaginative menu. Well, I would like to go back and try some of their other dishes – the blueberry fillet steak (cooked in red wine with a sticky blueberry and caramelised onion sauce) for instance, or the raspberry pepper chicken. With a playfulness like this Puddleduk is more than a Peruvian-themed restaurant.
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