Around the World in 80 Meals! (part 4)

Armenia – 29/05/09

Hurrah for The Armenian Taverna! Its existence really is a God-send to people attempting a quixotic quest to eat cuisines from 80 different countries without leaving Manchester. Though for half the restaurant’s existence it would have been quite useless. You see, The Armenian Taverna predates the independence of Armenia itself.

Armenia is of course a very ancient nation – it proudly boasts that it was the first state to adopt Christianity as its official religion. However, when The Armenian Taverna was founded in Manchester in 1968, Armenia had been relegated to the status of a socialist republic within the USSR. It took over twenty years before Armenia was able to declare its independence. So this makes this homely little den on Manchester’s Albert Square very historic.

Despite its prime location in the heart of town the best way to describe this place would be ‘ungentrified’. It resembles a cross between a ‘70s Italian restaurant and a Turkish holiday resort taverna. I’m not sure if it has been redecorated since it first opened. The walls are thick with Armenian murals, tourist trinkets or signed photos from satisfied diners. Most of the latter are yellowing images of men with big collars and impressive sideburns who look like they might have been supporting characters in Anchorman. The two people I did recognise were footballing icon George Best and a certain Elvis Presley (and I feel kind of churlish to point out that Elvis never visited England…). Lighting levels are low and red. Frankly more light would have saved strain on my eyes. It’s not as though the taverna has anything to hide when it comes to the food. And it is the food that keeps them in custom. Their repeat customers (who - from what people have said – seem to be legion) are not here for the dated décor – they are here for the fantastic food.

This food can be found on their website’s lengthy menu . It helpfully describes each dish so you will be able to tell your dabagadztzugnik from your kharapak khorovu. But for those new to Armenian cuisine I’d recommend that you follow in the footsteps of Paul, Bryan and myself and order a full banquet.

Considering that a main course generally costs between £9 and £11, the £16.40 banquets are jolly good value. This is the price per person, and each has to be ordered by at least two people. There are two – a Vegetarian Banquet and an Armenian Banquet. Obviously we went for the one that contained meat!

Drinks are not included. Sadly they did not have any Armenian beers (the excuse was that Armenia was "a long way away" – though they did stock Armenian wine). This meant that despite the two countries’ troubled history we were served the Turkish beer Efes. (A classy touch was that the waiter individually poured each bottle into your glass for you; a simple thing but a real hallmark of good service in my opinion!). This was appropriate. Armenian cuisine seems – from this visit at least – to be very similar to Turkish and other nations of the eastern Mediterranean / middle-east. Familiar names like hummus, taramasalata and feta cheese appear as mezze (or mezzeh) here, mains are generally a variant on kebabs, desserts are paklava and ‘Armenian Delight’.

Our starters all came on one large platter to share out between the three of us. A basket of traditional home-made and charcoal-cooked lavish was provided, a soft thin flatbread reminiscent of naan. This was used to scoop up the dips – hummus (grainy chickpea puree), tabouleh (cracked wheat salad), taramasalata (pink fish roe), baba ganouge (grilled aubergines) and mutabal (aubergine dip). With these were served possibly the best falafel I’ve ever had, crispy outside but soft inside. Binirow borek were fied cheese, parsley, nutmeg and egg pastries. I’m assuming they were good because Paul scoffed them all before I got a chance to try one myself! But in return that meant I could have his yershig which were small spicy sausages, so that worked out okay I think! Finally there were kufta lamb meatballs – kofta in Turkey, keftedes in Greece, an khufte in Iran.

Main course was a selection of mixed kebabs. Charcoal-grilled chicken, pork, lamb lulu (essentially a minced lamb shawarma), and lamb chops. Sometimes kebabs can be too greasy (particularly lamb). These were not. They were served with rice – though some more of the lavish bread would have been nice.

Coffee was included with the meal, but none of us wanted any. So we were just brought a tray of Armenian Delight - essentially just almondy Turkish Delight.

Armenian food turned out to be not that different from the cuisines of its neighbouring countries. You could certainly find similar dishes in Turkey, Iran,. Greece or southern Russia. But the class of the cooking and service at The Armenian Taverna makes this little place well worth an investigation. And frankly, it was nice to see just what everybody enthuses about when you mention it! To have survived for over forty years slap bang in the centre of town they must be doing something right!

The Armenian Taverna is closed on Mondays. Otherwise it is open from 5.30pm, and also serves lunch 12.00 to 2.30 on week days.

Fiji – 29/05/09

If it’s tacky and cheeky, it must be tiki…

Yes, the tiki bar craze has hit Manchester. Keko Moku is a big garish bundle of fun in the sometimes too-cool-for-school Northern Quarter. It sits at the bar-crawl hub of the area, where its nearby rivals include Bluu, Trof, Odd, TV21, Walrus, The Bay Horse and Common. Its nearest anologue however would be its neighbour, Socio Rehab. However, the two cocktail bars could not be too different. Where Socio Rehab is discrete and understated, Keko Moku is ADHD-bright. Music in Socio Rehab tends towards chilled beats; in Keko Moku they had bouncing reggae. What little decoration there is in Socio is ‘urban’; in Keko it is tacky South-Sea-Island charm. In Socio the staff are black-clad with killer cheekbones; in Keko we were served by piratical-looking mixologists, tattooed and bearded, wearing garish Hawaiian shirts. They are too sides of the same coin. Sometimes you want a cool chilled evening and you would head for Socio Rehab. Sometimes you just want a laugh, and it is here that Keko Moku delivers.

Keko Moku (the name means ‘Monkey island’) attempts to transport you to a more naïve and innocent time, to the technicolour exuberance of South Pacific. The store-front is bamboo-faced, as is the bar area inside. The bar is more of a thatched cabana. The walls are faced with maps of Fiji and Hawaii and ‘70s ‘erotic art’ prints (I’m really not sure a panda would do that!). Tables and seats are barrels. And there is the odd Easter Island head around the place too.

The bar is well stocked with endless bottles of booze. A look at the menu gives enticing ideas for cocktails. I was going to order a mai tai, but the barman suggested the classic tiki drink – the zombie. This is a killer cocktail of three different rums and fruit juices – notably pineapple and orange. There may be other stuff in there; frankly I was too busy watching the bartender shake it up. It was decanted into a tiki mug, a ceramic mug of probably about a pint in volume decorated with ‘tiki god’ faces. (There are a number of different mugs depicting Easter Island heads, skulls, or monkeys). Topped up with crushed ice, a slice of orange was placed on top, and then a sugar cube. A splash of over-proof rum and then the whole thing was set alight. A sprinkle of cinnamon and the flames went whoof!. My drink was literally on fire, blazing away like a volcano god.

At £6.50 this cocktail was not cheap, but you get one heck of a drink for it. It’s not just the volume, but also the fact that it is deceptively strong. It tasted mainly of pineapple with just a slight rum edge. I dread to think just how much booze was in it.

Bryan and Paul went for a wiser option in the form of bottled beer. To go with the bar’s laissez-faire atmosphere the beer was the punningly named Phuket, after the Thai resort.

Keko Moku is maybe not as sophisticated a night out as you might be able to find elsewhere in Manchester. But for a fun and boozy experience I can certainly recommend a flaming tiki cocktail down at Monkey Island.

Czech Republic – 03/06/09

Paul and my meal here has a bit of a Czech-ered back-story. We’d been trying to Czech it out for a couple of weeks. But on two separate occassions we had been forced to take a rain-Czech. On the first occasion we were too late to eat (they stop serving at 8 – we should have Czeched); on the second the bar had been hired out for a private party (though I don’t know whether they had paid with a Czech or not…)

Okay – bad puns over with. Czech Bar is a student bar on Cambridge Street, rather worn around the edges, with pool tables and MTV. It has been for years. But since the accession of their home nations to the EU it seems to have become a bit of a social centre for the young Czech and Slovak expat populations. The barstaff are Czech and Slovak, as are a good proportion of the custom. They hold regular ‘CS’ parties. Czech and Slovak flags flank a large picture of the Prague skyline. And they have a Czech menu.

The menu – there was apparently a rough correlation between the pre-printed English menu and the one written in Czech on a chalkboard, but I’m sure there were some dishes I couldn’t correlate. Food on offer ranged from utopenci s chlebem (pickled bratwursts on bread) to smažák (fried battered cheese) , kuřecí řízek s bramborový salát (chicken schnitzel with potato salad) to what must be the Czech national dish, vepřo-knedlo-zelo - vepřová pečeně s knedlíky a se zelím, roast pork with dumplings and cabbage.

To start with, we got a pint of pilsener (named after the Czech city of Plzeň). This was Prague’s Staropramen. Sadly they had no Budvar. And sadly the beer was at English prices (£3.00) rather than Czech (around 50p last time I was over there two years ago).

For starters Paul ordered Czech gulas soup (£3.50). Goulash I have always thought of as the quintessential Hungarian meal, but it was labelled as Czech here. The menu stated that it would be served in ‘a bowl of bread’. In actual fact it was served in a bowl of pottery, but served with bread, which was a bit of a let down. Though Paul assured me that the paprika-orange soup was tasty enough. I ordered bramborák. The last time I had eaten bramborák in the Czech Republic I had been served something that, in my own words, "looked like a battered shoe - and was pretty much the same size too!" As a starter here (£1.95) it came as four smaller blackened pancakes of grated potato, flavoured with onion. Considering that all it was was potato pancake, they were actually quite nice.

Our main courses were delivered before we had finished our starters, rather annoyingly. Mine was svíčková (£6.50). The menu described this as ‘sirloin steak served in a special double cream sauce served with dumplings, lemon and bilberries’. This wasn’t strictly accurate. The meat tasted more like braising steak; if it was sirloin it had been overcooked. It came in a gravy, with a splodge of cream to one side. This was actually Anchor Swirls-style aerosol cream, speckled with berry sauce. However the dumplings, the knedlíky , were moist and spongy and as good as any I have had in Prague itself. In all, the dish was filling, though rather too rich.

Paul had ordered a dish I hadn’t heard of before - flamender (£5.95). ‘A potato cake folded around pieces of prime chicken and vegetables, in a lightly spiced thick tomato sauce, topped with cheese. Served with a salad garnish.’ The ‘potato cake’ was more bramboráky. The salad was a sad afterthought – some limp strips of lettuce, some slices of cucumber, a cross section of a red pepper. The main dish was surprisingly substantial, but if anything richer than my beef in cream sauce, and Paul was unable to finish it (mind you, he had been working nights and this hearty meal and lager was really his breakfast!).

Considering Czech Bar is just a bar which serves food I can’t really fault it for authenticity. It reminded me of locals’ bars I have stumbled into in the Czech Republic. Indeed, the staff and locals here seemed to mainly be Czech and Slovak. And it really is great that they have a Czech menu. I just thought that the food was let down by a certain thoughtlessness. Why state that gulas comes in a bowl of bread when it didn’t? Paul’s salad was one of the saddest excuses I’ve seen – the sort that used to come with a prawn cocktail in a naff ‘70s British restaurant. The beef in my main was not what I would class as sirloin, and the fact that its cream sauce came from an aerosol canister was if anything just funny. Still, it might be worth returning on a Monday or Tuesday for a drink when they do Buy-One-Get-One-Free on Bohemia Pilsener.

(For a Czech experience Czech Bar may be your only option. Prague V on Canal Street has now closed down, though I don’t think it was ever particularly ‘Czech’ other than the name. I was excited to see a large flashy building on Stockport Road in Levenshulme with a sign proclaiming it to be the Golden Prague Czech Bar and Restaurant, with ‘Club Morava’ attached. When Paul and I visited it was shut up and deserted despite only having been there for less than a year. A little research on the internet turned up rumours that it was maybe a little more than just a restaurant, bar, and club however… and that it catered primarily for male patrons… Crikey!)

Jordan – 07/06/09

So many times when reading about the famous Arabic hospitality, I have come across the phrase ‘sweetmeats’. It’s one of those words that you tend to just accept subconsciously without wondering what it actually refers to. But now, after dining at Petra I know precisely what the orientalist writers of yore meant by that phrase.

It might be a bit of a cheat to class this restaurant as Jordanian. When I asked over the phone what sort of food was served here I was just told ‘Middle Eastern’ or ‘Arabic’. However, since Jordan as a country only came into being in 1947, and was only created as a League of Nations mandate under British rule some 90 years ago I suppose this does show up the arbitrary divisions of what particularly counts as a ‘nation’ for the purposes of this culinary quest. Really it would be asking too much for an authentic differentiated national cuisine to have sprung up in Jordan in that timeframe – particularly as roughly 60% of the population since the 1960s have been Palestinian refugees. So what Paul and I would be looking for here would be middle eastern food of the sort you could find in Jordan – and presumably neighbouring ares of Syria and Palestine.

Still the restaurant looks the part. Opposite the hospital on Upper Brook Street it is very noticeable with its wood-panelled frontage and overhanging eaves. Inside there is more wood panelling as well as pictures of Petra, the ancient Nabatean ‘rose-red city as old as time’ which is Jordan’s chief tourist attraction and after which the restaurant is named (an image of the famous Treasury adorns the bills) and wonderful David Roberts prints of mid-nineteenth century Jerusalem.

Petra is not licensed, though you are at liberty to bring your own alcohol for just £1.00 corkage. I went instead for a freshly-squeezed orange juice; it was no surprise that Paul opted for a pot of tea. Some complimentary nibbles were brough to the table with our drinks – olives, pickled chillis and swede. They have quite an extensive menu – both in terms of main courses and mezze. In fact, the previous time I had dined here we had been a large party and just spent the evening gorging on plate after plate on mezze. Thinking back to that night I now recall that a half-Iranian friend had been very impressed with the food. And repeat customers did seem to make up a large proportion of the diners. On a neighbouring table a studenty couple ate mezze while they waited for a take-out to be cooked. They chatted with the host in familiar terms. Paul and I ordered just three starters. Sadly this did not include halloumi, the fried ‘squeaky cheese’ that I had so enjoyed on my previous visit. But what we did order was equally as good.

First off were stuffed vine leaves, tidy little packets stuffed with rice and mince and flavoured with sharp lemon juice (five for £3.20). Lemon was also a flavouring in jawaneh, grilled chicken wings (£3.40 for four). These were seemingly quite simply prepared, but quite delicious, with a startling lemon and garlic zinginess which made them some of the best chicken portions I’ve probably ever had. Honestly – they really are great!

Best of all though was lahem bajeen. These I can only describe as the aforementioned sweetmeats. For £3.75 we received two filo pastries topped with ground lamb. However, they had been sweetened with cinnamon and pomegranate juice. It was a quite unexpected burst of sweetness that worked very well.

After the great starters I was a tad disappointed with my main dish. I had ordered makloubah which is one of Jordan’s national dishes according to Wikipedia. This was quite literally a upside-down dish. Still shaped like the container it had been cooked in, one could see that the cooking vessel had been lined with strips of lamb and aubergine, and then topped up with rice. Once cooked it was inverted and emptied out, leaving a bowl-shaped pile of rice now topped with aubergine and meat. It was a pretty hefty portion for £8.50, but actually quite bland in taste. To make it more palatable I had to mix in some of the tomato-ey dipping sauce that had come with the starters, or even better some of Paul’s grilled artichoke. This was a stuffed artichoke filled with rice, tomato, pepper, and finished off with a salsa-style sauce. This cost £7.50 and had much more flavour to it.

In total our three starters, two main courses, and drinks added up to £31.60. The food was very well presented, the staff were friendly, and most of it was wonderfully tasty – often in quite unexpected ways. Really, it is just the slightly disappointing nature of my makloubah that prevents this from being a five-star restaurant in my view. But I have no hesitatation in recommending Petra for a meal – even if you are not scrambling to find a ‘Jordanian’ meal!

New Zealand - 11/06/09

A blessed sunny day, so I’ll meet you at, erm, Deansgate. The Spinningfields area is a new development of offices and eateries sandwiched between Deansgate and the River Irwell. They are obviously trying to create some sort of metropolitan cosmopolitan vibe around here, though it still strikes me as somewhat soulless. However, with it being summer it seemed the obvious place to go for a burger.

Now, when I say a burger, I don’t mean a Big Mac / Whopper / lowest common denominator meat pattie between pre-sliced buns. Gourmet Burger Kitchen, as one might suppose from its name, positions itself at the premium end of the market. Though you can take food away it is not a fast-food restaurant. Food is cooked fresh, and it has a proper restaurant area in which to dine. In the case of the Spinningfields branch this is a light glassy area overlooking the Irwell across to Salford. Images of local footballing icons from the ‘70s grace the walls – primarily George Best for United fans and Malcolm Allison for those of a sky blue disposition.

None of this is hence very redolent of New Zealand. However, Gourmet Burger Kitchen (or ‘GBK’ for short) is a New Zealand chain, with a menu put together by ‘celebrity New Zealand chef, Peter Gordon’ according to their website. And they do a ‘Kiwiburger’. So that was enough incentive for us.

For this meal Paul and I were joined by a new friend, Rebecca. She had spent quite some time in New Zealand and was excited by the prospect of a Kiwiburger, of which she had fond memories. Mind you, she didn’t actually order one. New Zealand is probably most famous in the UK for its lamb, and she ordered a Greek Lamb Burger (£7.75), where the lamb burger was topped with hummous, cucumber raita, salad and chilli sauce. Paul took the chilli up to the next level with a Habanero Burger (£7.65) – Aberdeen Angus Scotch beef burger, mozzarella, salad, and hot & spicy sauce. Though it was marked in the menu with a burning ‘hot’ flame, the actual chilli spiciness did blindside him a little and left him spluttering into his red berry smoothie (£2.95).

I was man enough to take on the challenge of the Kiwiburger (£7.95). From the menu this is a frankly bizarre collection of ingerdients. Aberdeen Angus Scotch beef burger, okay. Salad and cheese, fine. Relish and mayonnaise only to be expected (though I asked for it with no mayo). Pineapple. Beetroot. And an entire fried egg. This is apparently the norm for this Antipodean delicacy. It came as a towering burger held together by a skewer. It was of quite jaw-aching size. And of course, after the first bite it started to collapse, relish and egg yolk dripping on to the plate, shreds of lettuce, beetroot and pineapple ring plopping out to join it. The strange thing was, taste-wise it all worked. The sweetness of pineapple and beetroot gave another layer to the flavour, and the fried egg added a creamy texture to the contents. I washed this all down with a bottle of New Zeland-brewed lager by the name of Mac’s Gold.

GBK has an intriguing concept – elevating the humble burger to a full restaurant meal. There are still a few small elements of the fast food experience that I found a bit annoying. For instance though a waitress lead us to a table, provided us with menus, and took our first drinks order, we were expected to go to the counter to order and pay for our meal. And I thought the burgers were on the expensive side at between seven and eight pounds each (thankfully I had a discount card that got us 50% off the food bill, meaning that the three of us dined and drank for under £20.00). But the nosh is high quality, inventive spins on the burger, freshly cooked for you.

(Gourmet Burger Kitchen has another outlet in Manchester, on Wilmslow Road in East Didsbury. If you want to go a bit further out there is another branch in Wilmslow itself, Cheshire.)

Ghana - 23/06/09

A tropical summer monsoon had battered me and Paul as we had walked the two miles down Hyde Road from Piccadilly Station into Ardwick. Steam was rising from our damp clothes as we stumbled into Timers Bar.

"Do you serve food?"
The African mama at the bar looked at us dubiously. "Yes. But I must warn you: it is mostly African food". A Ghanaian flag hung above her on the wall.
"That’s okay. That’s what we are looking for actually. What do you have?"
"For you, jollof rice."
For a moment I was dismayed. But then I saw the menu on the wall, heavy with exotic sounding dishes - banku, kenkey, waakye. "What are these?"
"This is proper African food. It would be too much for you. It would send you to sleep".
Well – never let it be said that I would turn down a challenge…

Timers Bar is at first glance rather unprepossessing. Standed on the invisible border between an industrial estate and a housing estate it is a solitary building that looks like a house was once converted into a pub, and has now been converted into a social centre. It was the patroness of the Moroccan restaurant Le Tagine who first alerted me to the existence of a Ghanaian ‘shebeen’ out in Ardwick. A little digging on the internet turned up a listing on Gumtree for a Ghanaian bar and disco. As Paul and I were heading out that way to see a gig at the Apollo we thought this would be a good opportunity to see what was what, and compare and contrast with the other West African meal we had eaten so far at African Emporium.

Inside is a blandly carpeted room with small tables set around the walls. There is also a DJ booth with a heavy-duty-looking sound system, though that was not in operation on our visit. However, once initial surprise at our visit had worn off, we received a hearty African welcome. Everyone there, from cook to other diners were very friendly. In fact, while I was trying to ascertain precisely what kenkey was, a man in the corner waved me over and urged me to try some of his meal! As it was, Paul took the lady’s recommendation and ordered jollof rice. I took a walk on the wild side and ordered kenkey…

Both our dishes came with fish in a spicy tomato-salsa style sauce loaded with onion and chillies. The fish was labelled as tilapia, but from the hefty almost-prehistoric skeleton it contained it was much more reminiscent of the yellow croaker we were served at African Emporium. I'm guessing the fish portions are shipped in frozen. As per the cook's advice Paul ate jollof rice, fried rice mixed up with onion, pepper and tomato. This was equally as good as his introduction to the dish and he managed to pack it all away, despite asking for my help. But I had no space for jollof rice. I was eating kenkey.

How to describe kenkey? Well visually it looked like a tube of uncooked Jus-Roll pastry mix: white, cylindrical, and slightly glistening. It came slightly warm - body temperature I would say. And it had a slightly off-putting, sourly bilious taste. This was fine if you only tore off small bits with your fingers and doused them in sauce, but a larger piece demanded a seemingly interminable amount of chewing and real will-power to swallow. I had to wash it gown with mouthfuls of beer (a bottle of malty yellow-label Guinness Export since you ask). Checking kenkey out afterwards on the internet describes this exotic dish as steamed ground corn which has been allowed to partially ferment. So there you have it. Kenkey is essentially a glob of partially fermented starch. And as of now I am cutting out from my diet any foodstuff that carries the descriptor 'fermented'.

Of course, I had ridden roughshod over the cook's advice in ordering kenkey. So she was bound to be interested in how I was getting on. How was the kenkey? "Mmm", I mumbled through a mouthful of the stuff, "fine". I believe I used the phrase "an acquired taste" - "not sure I'll be able to finish all of it!" There then followed a short interlude while a quietly amused Paul watched my efforts to secrete bits of kenkey under the cast-off fish skin or smears of sauce. At one point I surreptitiously wrapped a piece in a napkin and slipped it into my pocket. I maintain that my motivation was that I didn't want to hurt the cook's feelings by leaving vast portions of her signature dish untouched; Paul maintains that I could bear to prove her right when she told me that I wouldn't like it.

All-in-all, two meals of traditional Ghanaian protein + starch + spicy sauce and two beers cost less than £14.00. And everyone there was very friendly (if bemused by our presence). But when they say that certain items on the menu are not for you, I suggest that you heed their advice! Though at least I can now join the Facebook group "A group for those who are man enough to eat an entire ball of banku, or even kenkey". That last "or even kenkey" tells its own story my friends...

Australia – 26/06/09

A gloriously beautiful late June was the excuse for a post-work Friday pub-crawl. The venue of choice was the buzzing and bar-jammed Chorlton. The scene in this trendy suburb is so popular that while we were able to get seats in all but one of the seven bars we called in at in all cases they were often the only seats or table remaining upon our arrival.

I met up with Paul and Simon at The Bar on Wilbraham Road; Gary caught up with us next door at The Nook. Then it was on to the next neighbouring bar, Abode. We had bangers and mash at Elektrik, then continued down to the wonderful folkie bar Dulcimer (well, I thought it was wonderful – the others pretty much hated it!). Turning left onto Barlow Moor Road the next bar we came upon – surprise surprise – just happened to be an Australian joint. Right – time to tick off No. 37!

Uluru is styled like some outback shack, all painted planks, woodwork, and tin signs. On my one previous visit the big screen were showing Australian-rules football, and posters advertised that they would be broadcasting the Ashes. On this Friday night however they seemed to have simply tuned into BBC2 – we were treated to the end of Top Gear and coverage from Glastonbury (apparently Neil Young is still rockin’ in the free world…). This was a bit of a shame as it had said they would be hosting a live music night ("Ayer’s Rock"). Still, it meant that we were able to sit and continue chatting – we found a bench in a lamp-lit annex just out the back. It was my turn to get the beers in – though I must say it also helped that they had two cute barmaids, one with an appropriately Antipodean accent. They handed me a pair of dice for a game of ‘Beat the Bar’. Apparently, if you roll an 11 you get your drink on the house. I have to say ‘apparently’ – I didn’t roll an 11..

They have a selection of Australian beers, though seemingly they only had Fosters on draught. While Gary and Paul were happy on the Fosters I went for an ice-cold ‘stubby’ of VB (Victoria Bitter). This is not at all a bitter, just a lager. It has the highest market share of all beer sold in Oz. However it seemingly has a bit of a poor reputation amongst British ex-pats out there. Within a day of Paul posting a photo of me drinking VB on Facebook I had received a comment from two school friends who now work in Australia. Ian (living in Perth and last seen at the now legendary St Petersburg evening) described VB as "the antipodean Skol" and "Bogantastic" (a ‘bogan’ is apparently "the aussie equivalent of white trash"). Chris (resident in Melbourne) went further, stating "VB tastes like cat p**s. However I hope they didn’t sell you any Carlton draught – literally the worst beer I have ever tasted in my life…" Still, I managed to finish it off, the coldness of it being the real selling-point as far as I was concerned on a humid evening. And while I’ve never been a lager drinker (apart from for the purposes of the 80 Meals quest) it made a decent change from all the real bitter I had drunk previously that evening, and which I would continue to do at our final drinking hole, Argyle’s.

By that time we were hungry and had to head on elsewhere for a burger. Uluru does not serve food, which lets it down slightly in my eyes. Obviously I would have preferred to have found somewhere serving food to count as my ‘Australian’ pick. However, there does not seem to be anywhere that fits that bill, which is somewhat surprising considering the number of Australians in Manchester. Even more remarkable is the number that stay – I can see people wanting to visit Manchester, but hanging around when they have the whole world to explore…? Maybe it’s the novelty of the cold and drizzly climate… In fact, just last week Chris sent me a photo of the window of his local Flight Centre travel agents in Melbourne, advertising flights to London (with picture of Tower Bridge), Paris (with picture of Eiffel Tower)… and to Manchester (with a picture of our usual pub)! Food is served at Walkabout on Quay Street, a favourite hang out for young travelling Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans with raucous weekend party nights, but I think it is just your usual bar fodder – chips, nachos, burgers, etc. Other than that, I’m not sure I know any other Aussie establishments following the closure of Down Under bar near Bootle Street with its psychedelic dream time décor. Though apparently there is another Australian bar / live music venue in Altrincham by the name of The Flamin’ Gallah. Worth checking out just for the name quite frankly!

Canada – 26/06/09

By the end of our Chorlton pub crawl we were getting peckish. Sadly the Australian bar we had visited, Uluru, did not serve food. So we headed out for a Canadian takeaway…

Bizarrely, Canadian food is easily obtainable in Manchester. Or at least food that is described as ‘Canadian’. The key link seems to be that the grub in the two different takeaway chains – Canada Grill and Canadian Charcoal Pit – is cooked over charcoal. I’m not sure what makes charcoal-cooked food especially ‘Canadian’, but it does mean that you will often see a maple-leaf logo alongside main roads in many suburbs of Manchester.

In Chorlton the chain represented is Canada Grill. It does look a cut-above your usual late-night burger-joint. It is impeccably clean and shiny, and is has avery eye-catching frontage with a big red neon-tube maple leaf sign. Inside it seems rather less authentic, with the usual kebab-shop soundtrack of Arabic music. Chatting to the guy behind the counter revealed him to be Iranian, and we had a conversation about Iranian food while we waited for our order to be cooked. According to him the owner of the chain (three stores, in Chorlton, Altrincham and Hale) actually is Canadian.

The menu covers the usual suspects of take-away cuisine – pizzas, burgers, kebabs, and fried chicken. It was in the burger section that there seemed to be most Canadian influence. You could order, amongst others, a Canada Burger (a quarterpounder), La Canadienne (a Canada Burger with cheese), and an Ontario Steak Burger. You could also order a Hawaiian Burger (quarterpounder with cheese and pineapple). Whether this represents some unspoken Canadian irredentist desire for a bit of sunny beach, I cannot say…

Paul ordered a La Candienne, whilst Gary and I both ordered Ontario Steak Burgers. All three burgers cost £2.30 each. A plain Canada Burger would have been £2.10. I’m not sure what the qualitative difference between a plain quarterpounder and a ‘steak burger’ is. But topped with salad and ketchup, it actually was a tasty burger. Not quite up to the standard of Gourmet Burger Kitchen, but certainly edible and good for mopping up our beer.

As far as take-away food goes, Canada Grill is a pretty decent place. I’d be happy to call in again if we ever have another Chorlton pub crawl.

(The other two Canada Grills are located opposite the train station in Hale and on Railway Street, Altrincham. These are outnumbers by branches of Canadian Charcoal Pit. You can find these dotted all over – Stockport Road in Levenshulme, Buston Road in Stockport, Moston Lane, Northenden Road in Sale, and Wilmslow Road in Withington, a two-minute walk from where I live.)

Panama - 30/06/09

Sleek and sexy, dim and discrete, Panama Hatty's was not what I had expected. I knew of its existence of course - a low doorway leading down into the ground on a side-street beneath a knicker shop, but had known of no one who had ever visited. I had actually suspected that it might be rather grim. How wrong I was!

There were clues of course. The side-street was just off King Street, Manchester's highest-end shopping street. Near neighbours are Armani, Diesel and Vivienne Westwood. The 'knicker shop' upstairs is actually Agent Provacateur. And Hatty's has a sister restaurant in Tarporley, well into the Cheshire stockbroker belt. But it was only once I'd descended into Panama Hatty's that I appreciated that the venue was a big cut above what I was expecting. Tessarae floors, dimmed lighting, staff just as sleek and sexy as the joint. There is a bar area, a lounge with comfy chairs and cushions, what looked like a private dining room set up for a party, and a restaurant of secluded booths with individual lamps. If this is what Panama is like, take me there now!

Of course, Panama Hatty's doesn't even try to be respresentative of Panama. It just clearly likes a pun. And its decor and menu are truly global, testament to "Hatty's" travels across the world. On the walls vintage interwar advertisements for Imperial Airways hang next to French sketches and Russian posters. In nooks and in table tops you can find Chinese Buddhas juxtapositioned alongside Moroccan tagines and South-East Asian woodwork. This may be fitting of course - due to its canal Panama is a nexus of global trade, particularly in the interwar years when if you wanted to travel, you had to go by sea. Though first impressions evoked to me a hidden Shanghai godown, where the well-connected would sip Singapore Slings and talk international finance.

I'm not sure if they actually serve Singapore Slings, though there is a cocktail list. The 'virgin' cocktails, mixes of various fruit juices, are very good at £3.50. Their beers range from France to England, Germany to Estonia. Deciding that the nearest I would get to Panama was Mexico I ordered the first of a couple of Coronas. £3.40 for a 330ml bottle is, I would say, rather over-priced.

The menu too is international, though it tends to focus primarily on the cuisines of Mexican (burritos, chimichangas, char-grilled steaks) and South-East Asia (lamb goreng, Pataya chicken salad, Indonesian chicken dama) - two very different views on the use of spices in cooking! Somehow appropriate for Panama's key role canal linking two worlds. So whereas Ana ordered fajitas, Paul went for Masaman Curry. Having checked out what 'Panamanian Cuisine' consisted of earlier on Wikipedia I could see nothing on the menu that I could really count as authentically Panamanian. Unless one considered that due to its position at the narriowest point of the isthmus separating the Pacific and Atlantic (specifically the Caribbean) it would have the best of both worlds for fish. So fish is what I went for - the Grilla Pacifica.

The Grilla Pacifica was, at £18.95, one of the most expensive meals on the menu, but I was impressed with the size of the dish that was brought out. Thick chunks of white fish, mussels in their shell, entire king prawns, and a grilled sardine were heaped over a mound of buttered new potatoes. There was nothing fancy in their cooking, just a squeeze of lemon over the top. The fish was succulent, the mussels full and juicy, and the prawns hot and tasty. Of course, the latter were a bit tricky to shell, but getting sticky fingers is part of the joy of eating them in my opinion. Only the sardine was a bit of a let down, just because I aways feel a little awkward with eating them skeletons and all, and so I found it a little bit fiddly. One final thing is that the fish was fresh not frozen; when I ordered it the waiter had to dart into the kitchen to check they had some in.

Ana's fajitas were pretty substantial too - a heap of chicken, onion and peppers fizzing on a sizzler plate, accompanied by soft tortillas. However, there were not really enough fajitas for what was provided; only four in fact. Ana had to order more fajitas, which came at a cost of £1.50, which I felt was a bit steep on top of the £12.95 she had already paid for the meal. Paul's Thai curry was also of a good size - as you'd hope for £12.25. The green curry was served separately to its bowl of sticky coconut rice, and accompanied by another bowl holding sliced naan breads.

One tip I will give you is to leave room for dessert. They do have a good pudding menu, even if none of the options are actually very exotic at all - we're talking the level of Bramley apple pie, chocolate fudge cake, and Belgian waffles. I ordered a £5.75 baked cheesecake. And it was fine if not out of this world. The menu had stated it came cream or ice cream and 'seasonal berries in a pool of pureed raspberry sauce'. In actual fact this proved to be a solitary strawberry, and a zig-zag of raspberry coulis. For the price it was rather underwhelming. Especially when compared to Ana's dessert. She had ordered a Toffee Rocky Mountain for the same price. This turned out to me a massive pile of meringue, ice cream, toffee sauce and whipped cream. It had pretty much the same dimensions as a rugby ball!

Looking back, I can't believe I thought Panama Hatty's might be a bit of a dive. It aims at the upper end of the market, and is certainly on the more expensive end of a scale (for comparison: the price I paid for just my main course would have got me a five-course banquet in Koreana or an all-you-can-eat meat feast in Tropeiro). The food is good though. The place is seductive and stylish - definitely a place to come to impress. In fact, I even returned the very next evening with a date for a night-cap...

France - 01/07/09

Shakespeare said that music was the food of love. Much as I love the Bard, I may have to disagree with him. Personally I would go for French food as the food of love...

This was no Twelfth Night however. But it was a seventh date. And so a bit of romance was needed. And rightly or wrongly the French have a reputation for romance. So I made a reservation at Brasserie Gerard on Albert Square.

From the exterior the Brasserie is not the most wonderful-looking, located in a 1980s red-brick office building. Inside it looks much lusher with big couches and a zinc-topped bar. However, the exterior does have a covered portico facing the marvellous neo-gothic town hall and Albert Square itself - which at this point was busy with workmen erecting marquees for the upcoming Manchester International Festival. As it was a balmy summer evening we chose to sit out here to enjoy the sun and watch the world go by. What could be better than dining al fresco - or whatever the French equivalent would be...?

Probably the only problem with their menu is that it all sounds so good. Both myself and The Date were spoiled for choice, which made making a decision difficult. Thankfully I had already decided in my head what I would be having for my appetiser. Escargots. What could be more French than eating snails? Even the type of snail used is called the 'Burgundy snail' (after its French origin, rather than its colour!) I think many in Britain would be repulsed by the idea of eating snails. Though if anything they're probably 'cleaner' than most shellfish. And this is not the first time I had ordered them in a restaurant in Britain. My six snails (£4.95) came shell-less in an attractive serving platter, doused in a garlic and parsley butter. Which is necessary really, as I find snails don't actually have that much of a taste to them; they tend to taste of whatever they are cooked with. These were piping hot and had to be left to cool down a little.

As well as nicking one of my snails for a taste, The Date had her own French starter - Niçoise salad (£5.45). I'm not sure that tuna is often the fresh catch of the day in Nice, but the salad had plenty on, as well as the extected salad potatoes, egg, olives, anchovies, beans and plum tomatoes, all covered with Dijon vinaigrette.

I was more stumped as for what to choose for my main course. They had a lot of wonderful (and French) sounding dishes, from chicken to duck to sea bass. I was half tempted to actually order one of their Tagines du Maroc, as on the one occassion I had eaten here previously I had thoroughly enjoyed my tagine. Of course, these are traditionally Moroccan
dishes, but you can certainly get them in France, as I know from my own experience. In the end The Date ordered a Tagine d'Agneau, lamb tagine (£13.95). It came out in a proper pottery tagine; our waitress whipped the conical lid off to produce a puff of steam like a genie's sudden appearance. She promptly tipped in her bowl of fluffy couscous to soak up the sauce, sweetened with apricots, prunes, cinnamon & ginger.

As Brasserie Gerard proudly claim to offer ' the best steak-frites this side of Paris' that is what I went for. My 8 oz entrecote (rib eye) steak (£16.95) came rare and succulent, bursting with delicious flavour. I accompanied it with frites, thin, crisp, salted French-fry-style, and also a bowl of field mushrooms, as meaty and juicy as the steak they accompanied. Both chips and mushrooms cost £2.75 a bowl.

I suppose a nice full-bodied French red wine would have been the perfect match for these two dishes. However The Date was driving and I would have been faced with that age-old problem whereby a bottle would have been too much and a glass nowhere near enough. Mercifully when we asked for a jug of tapwater it came to our table pronto, with ice and lemon and nary a moue of complaint. In fact nothing seemed to be too much for the waitress, who was perfectly willing to talk through diners (on nearby tables) about what the dishes were and what they comprised.

Finally we decided to push le bateau out and order desserts. I opted for tarte au citron (£4.75). In part this was because of an in-joke. In one of our first conversations The Date had asked me if I were a pudding, which pudding would I be. Tha answer of course was tarte au citron - bitter and just a little bit pretentious. Anyway this particular tarte had a sharp lemon tang, but was a bit too curd-y for my taste. Still, it was a decent dessert. It came with craime freche and a drizzle of blackcurrant puree. The Date ordered mousse au chocolat et langue de chat (£3.95) - mainly because she was interested to see what the promised 'cat's tongues' would be. It turned out they were narrow pointed vanilla-flavoured biscuits, protruding from a pot of thick glutinous chocolate goo. This stuff would be a chocoholics dream, chocolate squared. It was thick and dark and gloopy and very filling. Full marks from both of us for this pudding!

In total the bill for the pair of us came to £55.50. Thankfully, considering that I was picking up the tab, I had a CityScene card that entitled me to to two courses free, so that reduced the cost. But even so I don't think that a bad price to pay for a very very good meal. The outdoor seating was good. The service was good. The food was very good.

And the company was excellent...