Around The World In 80 Meals! (part 6)

Syria – 22/09/09

Everyone knows the story of Aladdin. However, this particular Aladdin is much less well known. Despite it sitting practically directly across the road from my flat I had never stepped inside its doors. In fact, I cannot recall ever seeing anyone enter or leave this restaurant. However, it seems to be reaching legendary status amongst Manchester’s congnoscenti – and with very good reason!

I had not even particularly noticed the place’s existence with its brick exterior and dated yellow awning until a couple of foodies at work mentioned it. Checking out the menu they had I was shocked to realise that it was located just down the road from me. And when Paul and I finally visited, at 6 o’clock on an unfashionable Tuesday evening, during what is supposedly a recession we were shocked to find the place buzzing. As the waiter checked his bookings sheet to see whether he could fit the pair of us in I realised that we should have booked.

Still, they found a space for us upstairs. This confirmed my decision to come here. Posters, photographs and prints of Syrian landmarks hung on the walls – the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, the norias of Hama, Palymyra, the amphitheatre of Bosra, grainy black and white images of Aleppo’s Souq al-Attarine from the 1920s. I had been in Aleppo at the start of Ramadan; now that it had ended (it had been Eid the previous day) I was revisiting Syrian food.

And there is certainly enough choice – 31 starters, 25 mains, and 6 desserts. Once again, like Petra, I think this would be a place that would reward a party grazing on mezze. A lot of them were ones I had eaten during my week in Syria – dips like hommus and baba ghannouj, cold appetizers like tabouleh and stuffed vine leaves, and hot hors d’oveures like falafel and cheese bourak pastries. So first off I went for a starter I had tried in Damascus - kibbeh makli. Kibbeh are a little like meatballs in that they are minced lamb. However they are rolled in a crushed wheat mixture and deep-fried. The end result is that they look something like potato croquettes. The favourite story about them is that during the second world war British servicemen nicknamed them ‘Syrian torpedoes’, and indeed these two did resemble torpedoes in shape somewhat, or conceivably thick cigars (by contrast that in Damascus was more pear-shaped). The other big difference between the Damascus kibbeh and their Mancunian cousins was the taste. These were nicer. The mince was dry, the coating was crisp, and flavouring was provided by parsley, onions, and pine kernals. The latter in particular added a lot to my enjoyment. Okay, so they were served plain and ungarnished in a bowl (though with a basket of warm pitta bread), but they were very tasty. The cost was £4.50 for two. Paul had chosen for his starter sujok. These were four chipolata-esque lamb sausages, spicy and pimento-red. The taste was reminiscent of chorizo – or more accurately for British readers, a Peperami Hot. The price for these was £3.80.

In general the main courses were more of an unknown quantity for me. Of course there were kebabs (but sadly no Aleppo kebab). There was maklobeh. But instead I went for a hot stew by the name of bameah (£9.00). This was pieces of lamb and okra, cooked in a garlicky tomato sauce. The combination of pulped tomato and soft okra gave it a taste not unlike like gumbo. Paul went for pretty much the same main as he had enjoyed during our Jordanian meal, stuffed artichokes (£7.50). There was a vegetarian filling to the artichokes, which had been topped with a ‘lid’ of a halved beef tomato before being oven-baked. It was lovely and had a very lemony tomato sauce. Each was served with a plate of long-grain rice (with thin pieces of vermicelli mixed in) to make the most of the sauces.

We went without desserts. While I am a fan (in small quantities) of levantine delicacies like baklava, katayf and kenafi, the problem for Paul is that the art of the Arabic sweet seems pretty much to be based around chopped nuts, which is no good for someone with a mild intolerance. So instead we just finished up our drinks. Aladdin does not have a liquor license, and only serves soft drinks (fizzy pop, coffee and tea and the like). However, you are welcome to bring your own alcohol for a small corkage charge (£1.00 for a bottle of wine, 50p for a can of beer). Corkage used to strike me as cheek, but I now consider this very reasonable, and much cheaper than it would have been to buy drinks in a restaurant normally. So for £1.00 we had a perfectly nice Fairtrade South African sauvignon blanc from the Co-op.

The end bill came to around £26.00 (we put in £30.00 to include tip). Obviously this was more than I would have paid in Syria! However, I would say that in general the food we tried was at the higher end of what I ate over there. And while Aladdin may not be the most glamourous place in town, I found it perfectly charming and it brought back happy memories. It reminded me of the old story of Aladdin in which a battered old dusty lamp contained wonders within. The moral would be to not be taken in by exterior appearances. This restaurant may not look like much but it serves up some good grub to its discerning patrons. But book in advance before word gets out!

Thailand - 25/09/09

Throughout our quest to eat Around The World In 80 Meals Paul and I have consistently found the soup to our taste. Quite frankly, we've never come across a bad soup, whether it is Russian borsch, Vietnamese pho, Moroccan harira, or Nigerian pepper soup. But the gold standard we have been mentally comparing them to has always been the hot and sour soup served at the Royal Orchid. So it was no surprise that this restaurant was always going to be our destination when it came to sampling the cuisine of Thailand.

It was a Friday night and we had a full party - me and Rebecca, Paul and Ana, Gary and Lucy, Simon and Lee. Though I should point out that the latter two are not a couple! There are a number of Thai establishments scattered around the outside edges of Chinatown - not just restaurants, but also shops, cash and carries, and karaoke bars. The Royal Orchid sits on the corner of Charlotte and Portland Streets near Piccadilly bus station. The decor is understated within - a hint of gold, a haging banner or two, a few wooden carvings, some rather nice Victorian photos of luxoriously-moustachioed Thai gentlemen in suits and bowlers. The Thai staff look the part in red silk cheongsams patterened with golden elephants. Elephants also appeared on the label of the bottle of Singha beer (�2.80) I supped while perusing the menu.

Choosing a starter was not a problem for either me or Paul; clearly we were going for the hot and sour soup, tom yam gai. Not only is this soup conceivably the best I have ever tasted, but I'm sure it must be one hell of a decongestant! This £5.00 bowl of chicken soup is served piping hot, and further the interacting tastes of fiery chilli and bitter lime juice combine to make the sort of broth that could raise a sweat at twenty below zero. Other flavourings come from lemongrass and characteristic Thai kaffir lime leaves. And it is no weak consomme either, being stuffed with mushrooms and chicken (you could also get it with prawns, tom yam gung, for an extra pound). (Honestly, I feel I should stress that it really is hot: Rebecca couldn't actually finish hers. Guess who had to take over? He he he!). Simon went for soup as well, tom kha gung, prawn and coconut cream soup, again with Thai herbs and mushrooms. And Ana and Lee shared chicken satay skewers.

There was even more variation among our main courses. I don't think any two people had the same meal - not hard when you have the choice of over 80 different dishes, and when with many of those dishes you have a choice of meats to have in it. I found choosing a dish not too much trouble. I went for the pad Thai, rice noodles fried with spring onions, ground peanuts, egg, and bean sprouts. Harder was choosing which meat I wanted it with, beef, chicken, or pork. In the end, prompted by Lee, I enquired whether it would be possible to have a mix of all three meats. It turned out that it was! So I enjoyed my pad Thai with chicken, pork and beef pieces mixed in. Lee did exactly the same, except that he had ordered the pad see ew, the traditional Thai noodles, which had the addition of a thick sweet soy sauce. Both dishes were £8.00. Paul and Ana's curries were also £8.00 each. Paul had the Thai red curry (gaeng phed), made with crushed up red chillis - the hot and sour soup was obviously not hot enough for him! Ana ordered the Mudsaman curry, a Muslim curry where the meat was accompanied, oddly enough, by potatoes. They were served their rice in a large central bowl to be dished out. Simon had ordered sticky rice separately however, and this came in a little plastic bag in a pot all of his own. And Rebecca had actually ordered a rice dish of her own, Thai fried rice with prawns (khao pad gung). Due to the inclusion of prawns this cost £9.00. Still, not a bad price for a complete restaurant main course.

There are some Thai restaurants that are self-consciously more high-class in Manchester (I'm thinking here of Chaophraya on Chapel Walks or Vermillion out towards Eastlands), but I am unable to compare the food served there with that at Royal Orchid. Because Royal Orchid has always been plenty good enough for me. When I come here I know that the food will be good (and that the soup will be great), and that I will not get ripped off for the privilege. Why travel elsewhere to find a new favourite Thai when I'm happy with the one I've got?

We did travel elsewhere once we had paid however. Round the corner onto Portland Street and down a few doors is another old haunt of ours: the Orchid Lounge karaoke bar. This is located up on the second floor above yet another Thai restaurant (the Siam Orchid - we were certainly getting through our orchids that night!). There is free entry, but it is an unrarified atmosphere, a crammed dark room, often packed shoulder to shoulder. However there do seem to have been changes made recently. Whereas in the past I have been refused admission when I have been in a group, on this visit we were greeted by possibly the most polite bouncer in the world! A second room had been opened upstairs, the bathroom was not as leaky as on previous visits, and the place was not as crowded. In fact it was curiously quiet for a Friday night. They also had many, many more songs on offer than previously, from current chart numbers, to the Jackson and McCartney classic The Girl Is Mine (long a track I had longed to see in a karaoke bar), to songs from the musical episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer! No Thai beer though, so we had to choose between Corona and Budweiser. And no, the tracks we requested never actually came round before we left. Which was possibly a good thing - I'm not quite sure Manchester was ready for Lee and my inevitably poor rendition of Girls Aloud's Biology.

Israel – 29/09/09

One of the motivations behind this Around The World In 80 Meals resolution was to find out more about my home town. And in particular north Manchester has always been a foreign territory to me. Never more did this strike home as when Paul and I headed west from the Bowker Vale Metro stop down King’s Road. Prestwich and neighbouring Whitefield are well known for its thriving Jewish community, but here we saw buildings sign-posted in Hebrew, men with curling sidelocks and low-crowned black hats, children in kippahs on bikes, a ‘Judaica Centre’, and a frankly stunning Hopper-esque deli advertising pastrami, lox and blintzes in swirling interwar neon. Here was an orthodox community that had escaped my previous attention. I’m ashamed to admit that I felt like a tourist in my own town.

Clustering around the intersection of King’s Road and Bury New Road are several eateries catering for Jewish tastes. Not just restaurants like Rimonim and Milky Dream, but also a couple of specifically eastern European skleps - a Polish takeaway and a Lithuanian supermarket. I may well be revisiting this area! But I had been recommended to try JS Restaurant. I’ll admit I was hesitant to assume a direct correlation between Jewish cuisine and Israeli cuisine; obviously the majority of the population of the state of Israel is Jewish but I did not want to assume that one necessarily equated to the other. However, I was pleased to note that the menu did promise an Israeli Platter. Sounded good to me!

Perusing the menu Paul and I decided to order ane of these platters. According to the menu the Israeli Platter was ideal for sharing between two (something I found a touch mordantly ironic). At £12.50 it comprised some wonderfully creamy hummous, crunchy fried falafel, shredded lamb shawarma, pickled gherkins and chillis, hot pitta breads, and Israeli salad (finely diced tomato, cucumber and onion. I found it best to pack my pittas with salad, falafel and hummous to resemble the sort of street food I found myself snacking on in Jordan and Syria. A more accurate term would strictly have been a ‘Middle Eastern Platter’, as all the foodstuffs provided are staples across the region as far as I can see. However I can really recommend the hummous they do here!

The remainder of the menu is not overly ‘Israeli’ in tone. It is however kosher, and takes meals from different cultures to put together an interestingly rounded choice of dishes – chimichangas, duck spring rolls, Thai chicken soup, beef pathia, teriyaki salmon. I was looking for something that spoke of, if not Israeli cuisine, then certainly traditional Jewish cuisine for my main course however. And again, they have a number of dishes that sounded Jewish to my Gentile ears – chopped liver, chicken schnitzel, meat tzimmas. Sadly however, my preferred option – a hot salt beef sandwich – was off the menu that evening. Instead we each opted to have a large bowl of ‘Jewish penicillin’ - chicken soup. And a warning now – when they say a large bowl, they mean a large bowl. This cost £4.50 (a small would have been £3.95), and it was a hefty portion. Paul was not able to finish his. It was dense with actual pieces of chicken meat, as well as lockshen, noodles. Each bowl also sustained two large dumplings - kneidlach. It was only afterwards that I discovered that these were the famed matzo balls of Jewish cuisine. Unlike the suet dumplings of English cooking, these had a very distinct eggy taste that I didn’t much care for.

My drink however was Israeli – an Israeli beer in fact. Maccabee beer (not pronounced mack-a-bee as I thought, but rather mac-ar-by, as in the football team Maccabi Haifa) is brewed in Netanya, Israel, and imported from there. It was a crisp pilsener, the sort of stuff I could imagine drinking in Prague. L’chaim!

As I’ve travelled throughout Manchester on this quest I’ve several times felt that I have been dipping my toes into a different culture. That I was unfamiliar with such a long-established and comfortable community as that on display here (despite having Jewish friends from Prestwich, who actually suggested JS as my Israeli meal) is actually rather shaming. Dining here I felt that I was being an observer of an extended family get-together. Many of the different parties seemed to know each other, and banter passed between the tables. At the next table over sat a lone diner, a businessman of some sort, who had obviously been recommended to eat here whilst in Manchester. It was a lively happy atmosphere. And looking next door into the attached delicatessan showed that that too was doing good trade. The overwhelming conclusion was that I needed to venture more into the north Manchester suburbs and get to know my constantly surprising hometown better!

As with JS it is easier to mention Jewish eateries than Israeli ones. Two other places in the immediate vicinity are the aforementioned Rimonim and Milky Dream. It has also been pointed out to me that the Pagoda in Prestwich is Britain’s only kosher Chinese restaurant outside of London. I have however since found reference to a place called Café Sheli on Leicester Road, Upper Broughton, which has as Israeli section on its menu.

One last thing: as you can imagine, the restaurant is closed on Friday and Saturdays.

Palestine – 03/10/09

It had not been my intention to hop straight from my Israeli meal to a Palestinian one, but you have to take your chances where you can. The only Palestinian place I knew about - West Bank in Rusholme - closed down earlier this year. But then it was pointed out to me (by the same people who recommended JS for my Israeli meal) that as part of the Manchester Food & Drink Festival there was a Palestinian Evening scheduled in at a local cafe. Paul, Rebecca and I booked our tickets...

Gabriel's Kitchen was a bit different from other places we had dined at for middle eastern grub. For starters, it is not a middle eastern restaurant. Hoummous and salads may be on their normal menu, but so are American maple waffles and full English breakfasts. The accent of head honcho Peter is more Knowsley than Nablus. If you want Arabic food nip next door - appropriately enough my Palestinian meal occurred one door down from where I had my Jordanian. But they are on the side of the angels. They obviously care about organic, unprocessed food, and a map of Lancashire on the wall shows the local suppliers they source their ingredients from. It is a homey, warm little place, which presumably does good trade with staff from the hospitals across the road.

On this night, however, there was to be a set menu for £15.00. Theorising that we would probably usually be paying that much for a restaurant meal we got our names down. There was a bit of a delay while they waited for others to arrive - but even then there could not have been more than 30 customers, filling the place. Starters were brought out first. Each group got trays of warm pitta-like flat-bread. Then they produced plates of hoummous and baba ghannoush for dipping. A bowl of Palestinian olives appeared (something that I was happy to leave for Paul and Rebecca), and an Arabic salad - finely diced tomato, cucumber, pepper and onions. Essentially it was only the addition of some coriander leaves that marked it apart from the Israeli salad I had eaten four days earlier. The hoummous had a good nutty flavour, and was coarser than I was used to - which I think I preferred, as I got the texture of the chickpeas in it as a contrast. Also on the table were pots of seasoning - sage green za'atar and purple sumac with a lemony taste.

As we were munching our way through this a bowl of another dip was brought out. This was a warm mixture of tomato and capsicum pepper, and I for one loved in. We were told that this was shakshouka, a dish I'd not come across previously. Researching it on the internet implies that shakshouka should contain eggs; if this one did, I didn't spot them. As I finished it, another bowl was brought. Throughout the mezze we were constantly asked if we needed any refills of anything. I think we were wary of going too mad simply because we were not sure quite how much food was going to be brought out for for the main course and dessert.

Our wariness was justified when the mains appeared. A big bowl of cooked wild rice, and then grilled chicken quarters, flavoured with sumac. Apart from the lack of taboun bread I think this was the dish musakhan I'm not sure how they expected us to get through it all! Thankfully we were helped by a chap on the next table who pinched some.

There was a break then as we were given a talk by a lady from the International Solidarity Network. She talked about the problems faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and played a short film about the village of Bil’in, whose olive orchards were expropriated by the Israeli government to build its ‘security wall’ through Palestinian territory. It made sobering viewing, though the lady’s tone was a touch hectoring. And of course while I sympathise with plight of the Palestinians I was really only here for the food. She had brought along Palestinian goods to sell – packets of spices, handicrafts made by womens’ co-operatives, and Fair Trade olive oil – in all the world only one producer has been granted Fair Trade accreditation, and that is Palestinian.

Following this dessert was served up. This was eish es-saraya, a sweetened cream, bread and pistachio pudding, flavoured with rose water. It was a gloopy, custardy concoction, but the delicate flavourings of pistachio and rosewater came through really well. Can there be two tastes any more evocative of the Levant than the everpresent nuts and the luxurious, almost decadent, rosewater? Considering the volume of mezze I had put away and the amount of chicken and rice served up I was surprised that I was able to make serious inroads into a very decent helping.

The food on offer here tasted authentic enough, though they were prepared from recipes rather than by someone actually from the area. But the love of cooking and of occasion was evident in this small little restaurant. And it was good enough to transport me over the sea and make me forget we were on a main road in Manchester as the autumn chill started to bite.

Somalia – 05/10/09

I have to admit that I had exceptionally low expectations about this meal. Throughout the year I had been unimpressed by African cuisine, and I felt that food from the strife-torn failed state of Somalia would be if anything worse. Add in the location of this little hole-in-the-wall place in Moss Side and the gangs of lads hanging around on corners and I approached with a heavy heart.

Imagine my surprise then that Dubay Caffé on Claremont Road has now ended up on my ‘visit again’ list. It may not be much, but it’s good! And cheap too!

It is a plain little place, a converted gable-end house with cafeteria-style tables, a small kitchen in the corner, and a television showing the football on ESPN. About the only other decoration was a reproduction of the infamous Carlos Tevez ‘Welcome To Manchester’ poster that so irked Manchester United fans – of which I am one. Cue a bit of banter about football with the friendly chap behind the serving counter. "You ever had Somalian food before?" he asked in a broad Manc accent. "Trust me – you’ll love it!"

The menu is minimal. We went for lamb on the bone, served with roast potatoes and carrots. With this we got the choice of two different sauces: a plain one, and one with mince. And then we had a choice of accompaniment: rice or – surreally enough – spaghetti. We opted for plain sauce and rice, and seeing the size of portion he was dishing out (it took up three metal take-away containers!) decided to only buy the one meal. For a mere £5.00 this looked like good value. But of course the proof of the pudding would be in the eating, so we retired to Paul’s to eat.

And eating showed that this was very good nosh indeed. The lamb fell off the bones with the lightest prodding with a fork. The potatoes and carrots came in large chunks and were well-seasoned and tasty. The rice was fried and delicately spiced with a hint perhaps of cinnamon (I’m guessing here!). And the sauce…? Well, in the other meals I have had from sub-Saharan Africa the rule has always been protein (meat) + starch (some form of pounded yam or cassava) + tomatoey sauce. And these sauces have usually been oily and quite heavy on the chillis. This sauce was not oily at all, it was smooth and light and well-blended, and the heat of it only came tentatively at the back of the throat. In fact it reminded me of something else altogether. "It’s pasta sauce!"

What was this crazy cuisine? Pasta sauce? Spaghetti? A quick check of the very helpful Wikipedia page on Somali cuisine provided some answers. Due to the Italian colonial presence in the south and centre – which lasted up until World War II – pasta (or baasto) remains popular in Somalia. The country is also crazy for popsicle-like jalaato (like the Italian gelato), which was what the kids outside the door had been eating. Another interesting fact was that in the north of the country (which was under British dominion) they have a drink called fiimto - Vimto. Cue a trip to the kitchen to get a glass of blackcurrant cordial!

Somalian cuisine, then, is frankly odd. They combine Italian tastes with those of the Horn of Africa (think Ethiopian), but overlaid with Islamic dietary laws. And it is one hell of an improvement on the food I had tried from West Africa. It is strange that West Africa, the region that experienced European colonialism for the longest period, should produce food that is less tailored for the European palate then Somalia, which saw only partial dominion for only 60 years at most. But Dubay Caffé has won me over. Upon leaving we passed a man selling t-shirts emblazoned with the flags of Somalia or Somaliland (the break-away northern part of the country) from his car. I was almost tempted to buy one…

Belgium – 21/10/09

For a nation so small (and supposedly so dull – just think of the Name 10 Famous Belgians game) Belgium certainly punches above its weight gastronomically. This is the country that has produced mayonnaise and moules marinieres, Brussels pate and Brussels sprouts, Belgian chocolate, Belgian waffles and of course Belgian beer…

Ah, Belgian beer. It is said that there are more different beers per head in Belgium than in any country of the world. Sadly they are mostly lagers which I never really have liked previously. Still, when in Brussels…

Taps has plenty of beer. Not just lots and lots of different bottles – all seemingly with different glasses – but also different beers on draught. The USP of this place though is that the beer taps are not on the bar – they are on your table. The diners can pour their own beer, and you are charged for each tenth of a pint you pull. Paul and I queried with the Belgian hostess which beers she would recommend. She directed us to a table with two pumps. One was Amstel (Dutch), and the other was Duvel Green. As this was a Belgian beer this was the one I went for, eagerly pulling a pint into the small tulip-shaped glass. Although it was 6.8% it did not taste as strong as it must be, and was easily quaffable. Prices are on the expensive side. Per tenth of a pint the Duvel was 52p (adding up to £5.20 for a pint); the Amstel was 32p I think.

But it is not all about the beer. Taps has a menu with a vague Belgian theme. Though on one of the starters they do serve fois grois alongside the escargots & grenouilles – so minus points for that. But they have a large frites section – you can have chips with steak, chips with stew, chips with poussin… or chips with mussels. Moules-frites is reckoned by some to be the Belgian national dish. So I ordered a half-kilo of mussels (£6.99). These came in a metal bucket, full of shellfish, shells open to reveal the orange flesh inside. They had been cooked in a mariniere sauce (white wine, cream, garlic and parsley). Though of course I had to dig through a lot of mussels to get down to the dipping sauce. And it was quite a job to sort through all the shells to make sure I hadn’t missed any – a separate bowl to put the discarded shells in would have been useful. These were also available as a 1kg option. Heaven only knows what these would have been served in – a garden pail? A separate bowl of French fries was served, thin and crisp, to which I had to add salt. Paul had a pumpkin and chickpea stew, with a vaguely mediterranean flavour, also with frites.

And then we paused.

We quite fancied dessert, but were fairly full. So we let the waitress clear our table, and we carried on drinking – Duvel Green for me, Amstel for Paul by this stage. But to get me in the mood for sweet I decided to switch on to a fruitier brew. They have a list of bottled fruit beers. As well as the expected cherry (kriek) there were beers flavoured with peach, mango, banana, even gooseberry. I quite fancied the last, but it turned out to be Scottish, so I merely filed it away in the memory banks for future reference. Instead I went for another Belgian beer – Timmerman’s Strawberry. And it did have a very floral strawberry scent. But it wasn’t as tooth-curlingly sweet as an alcopop thank goodness. Interestingly – as I noted from the write-up in th beer menu – it is a lambic beer. This wasn’t a phrase I had come across before. It turns out that lambic beers come solely from a region in Belgium and do not have any yeast. Instead they are a product of spontaneous fermentation after being left open and exposed to naturally occurring bacteria common to the Senne valley area. So I felt educated as well as refreshed.

Moving on to the desserts, all of them (except a more expensive Belgian cheeseboard) were pegged at £4.50. Paul ordered a cake made with light and dark Belgian chocolate. I have to say, it was only a small slice, though it was accompanied with chocolate ice cream. My dessert was much better value – I opted for Belgian waffles, though I paid an extra 50p for them to be dipped in chocolate. I got two large waffles, drizzled (rather than dipped) in rich choccy sauce. Seasonal berries were scattered atop, and there were three scoops of ice-cream (one chocolate, one tasting of Baileys liqueur, and one that I think was passion-fruit that didn’t really go as well with the waffles as the other two).

The bill when it came was exactly £40, or £20 each. We had a discount on our mains due to Taps’ ‘Beat The Clock’ offer – if ordering between 5 o’clock and 6:30 you instead pay the time you ordered your food. Hence, having ordered at 5:10 we paid £5.10 for each dish, rather than £6.99 for the moules marinieres and around £9.50 for the pumpkin stew. Over half of the cost was for beer. But frankly, here you are paying for convenience. Arriving at 5 o’clock, we didn’t have to get up from our tables until we left at gone 8. We could just relax in the high leather-cushioned booth and either serve ourselves our drinks or order from the waitress. We were not put under any pressure to hury up or move on and the whole ambience was extremely convivial. And the whole twist of being able to pull your own pints is a nice little affectation that really makes Taps stand out from the competition. I liked it, and have been recommending it since.

(I don’t think there are any other places serving Belgian food in Manchester, but there are certainly a couple dedicated to Belgian beers. Bar Fringe on Swan Street in Ancoats is otherwise the most central, and I have heard good reports of Le Trappiste in Altrincham too (www.letrappiste.com).)

Cuba – 24/10/09

Hey shorty, it’s yo’ birthday,
We gonn’ party like it’s yo’ birthday,
We gonn’ sip Bacardi like it’s yo’ birthday…
- 50 Cent

It was my birthday. And I wanted to party. And if any country sounds like a party it would have to be Cuba. So I decided to host a Cuban-themed day of festivities. It started off with me just lounging around in an old red Che Guevara t-shirt watching The Motorcycle Diaries on DVD. But the main event was going out rum and fun and food for my tum. Specifically for some Cuban food.

This took us out to Hyde, east Manchester. The top floor of a pub by the name of The Sportsman has been converted into what I’m pretty sure is Manchester’s only Cuban restaurant - El Cuba Libre. It is an unlikely spot to find a touch of the Caribbean. It is a fine local’s boozer (with some lovely real ales on cask) on an otherwise rain-slick street near Morrison’s supermarket, and the restaurant is recognisably just an upstairs bar. However it has been done out with the odd image of Che and Castro, a plethora of Havana Club promotional material, and a large screen showing what must be Cuba’s version of The X-Factor (people with an allergy to tight trousers and hip-thrusts look away now). And as it is run by two Cuban sisters by the names of Belen and Cangui I felt safe to assume that the food would be authentic. Though Paul, who had visted Cuba, had been robbed, and had been distinctly unimpressed with the standard of grub over there hoped it would not be too authentic.

There were 15 of us in total – not a bad number considering that Hyde is largely an unknown quantity to most of us, and it was a good car drive away. The place certainly gets busy, especially on the Saturday night we came, so pre-booking was a very good move. The first choice was whether to go for tapas or main courses. They serve a lot of tapas-style dishes at prices much less than you would be paying in the city centre (£2.50-£4.50 per dish). Most people decided to have tapas to try a range of plates, and to be honest I think that may have been a missed opportunity on my behalf – me, Simon, Paul and Rebecca all decided to have main meals. As such I only tasted a few of the tapas dishes – the Croquetas con Jamon y Pollo (chicken & ham croquettes) I ordered as starter did not arrive. This was actually a recurring problem, as there seemed to be some confusion over who had ordered what – but there were a lot of us and it was a busy Saturday night. The Camarones a la Habanera (Havana-style king prawns in a rich spicy cream sauce) came as a very respectable serving; likewise the Papas Rellenas (fried balls of mashed potatoes filled with molten cheese and garlic) were the size of cricket balls! Kate was very complimentary about her Platanos Verde (twice-fried plantain chips with dips) and Boniato a la Revolucion (cheese topped sweet potatoes in a spicy salsa), and Jo loved the Espinacas con Garbanzos (spinach with chick peas).

When it came to main courses, Paul ordered Bistec con Salsa Cubana – 8 oz sirloin steak – and Simon and I both asked for Filete de Puerco con Salsa - pork steak with mushrooms in a Cuban-style salsa sauce (which I promply managed to splash all down my shirt front). With each of these we were entitled to choose one accompaniment (roast or boiled potatoes, chips, or rice with black beans) and two vegetables (carrots, cabbage, roast aubergine with peppers, pumpkin / butternut squash, or fried yucca). I asked for the rice and beans (Congri Habanero) as this seemed the most authentically Cuban. Indeed it was similar to Jamaican rice and peas, rice and kidney beans cooked together. The mixture was a grey colour, but no less tasty for it. For my veg I requested cabbage and yucca. Cabbage was an unusual order for me, as I’m not generally a fan of cooked cabbage. However, this had been fried up with onion and garlic and was pretty good. And I ordered yucca purely because I never knew yucca was edible. To me yucca was just the spikey plant in my dad’s garden. In actual fact, following a bit of research, I think that this was actually cassava root, known as ‘yucca’ in Cuba, and so forming a clear link between the various West African dishes I had tried – in Cuba we were following in the footsteps of slavery sadly. It was served as large potato-esque chunks, fried in olive oil and garlic. The taste was very similar to roast potato, though it had a slightly vegetable aroma – it reminded me a tad of aloe vera. Ironically, whereas I wouldn’t have ordered cassava had I seen it on the menu I actually found this ‘yucca’ perfectly edible and a touch unusual. Paul had ordered the Calabaza (boiled pumpkin) and Berenjenas y Pimientos Asadas (roast aubergine with mixed red peppers); I found the pumpkin very bland, though the colourful aubergine and peppers did look like the most appetizing veg they brought out.

I think Rebecca got the best dish though - Garbanzos a la Cubana. This was a frankly massive earthenware bowl of stew containing vegetables, chicken, chorizo, chick peas and ham. When I say massive, I do mean massive. After eating away for ten minutes, the level of stew did not seem to have decreased at all. And it was a nice spicy affair. She was quite upset to have to hold her hands up in defeat. Thankfully she was then asked if she wanted to take away the rest to eat later; decanted, it almost filled a tin take-away container. If I ever have the opportunity to return I reckon this will be what I’ll be ordering!

As it was my birthday I decided to do ol’ Fiddy prud by drinking Cristal. In this case a bottle of Palma Cristal, authentic Cuban lager. And, well, I don’t feel the need to order it again. I’m not a natural lager drinker, and generally Spanish-style cervesas do not tickle my palate. Rebecca had a glass of red wine (Spanish; I’m not sure there are any Cuban wines on the open market – probably for a variety of reasons!).

After all this I think we were mostly stuffed – until Tom spotted that the Cake de Queso (cheesecake) was about £2.50, a real bargain. Especially as the slices we ordered turned out to be pretty hefty. I’m not exactly sure the cheescakes were home made, but Simon and I enjoyed our chocolate and mandarin cake, and Paul’s profiterole cake was if anything even bigger.

The final bill for the six of us on our table came to £80, or £15 each, and I’m not sure we can argue too much about that - though a couple of discrepencies did creep in to the other tables’ bills – as stated there did seem to be a bit of confusion about what precisely we had ordered. But that was about the worst complaint I could make, and even then, it was a busy Saturday night. Certainly I had no issues with the standard of the food.

So after a good meal, it was back to the city centre for more good times – at Cuba Café (43 Port Street, M1 2EQ, 0161 236 3630, www.cubacafe.co.uk). This is a nightspot somewhat hidden away off Newton Street in the Northern Quarter near Piccadilly train station. It hosts Cuban salsa classes during the wek, but on Friday and Saturday nights it functions as a dance club until 2am. It is not a huge place however – its website says it can only hold 150 guests. From 11 o’clock onwards it gets rammed (and hot, despite the wall and ceiling fans). But it is good entertainment – at least two other friends of mine have had their birthday parties there. Entry is £3 (for over 25s only) and the music is cheesy and classic – from Jailhouse Rock to Twist & Shout, from La Bamba to Tequila, from 9 To 5 to Saturday Night Fever. TV sets were showing Dirty Dancing (the original, rather than the far superior sequel Havana Nights sadly). And the décor is an amalgam of Cuban flags, Che prints, antique radio sets, ‘50s adverts and tropical palms. Kitsch but cute. They do not have any beer on draft – just bottled Spanish and Mexican beers, and wines and spirits served in plastic glasses. I felt it appropriate to end the evening with an actual cuba libre (rum and cola with a splash of lime). Viva la revolucion!

Mongolia – 02/11/09

I have to give Genghis Khans (formerly ‘The Mongolian Barbecue’) marks for non-authenticity. You see, I have actually been to Mongolia. And the food there was pretty much consistently the worst I have had in any country (it was the anti-Morocco if you like). Little veg, little choice, a diet consisting primarily of mutton, stodge and fat washed down with salty tea and fermented mare’s milk – not my taste in cuisines. If it hadn’t been for a decent pizzeria in Ulaanbaatar I think I may have despaired!

Thankfully, Genghis Khans (no apostrophe!) is that strange thing, a Mongolian barbecue. And despite the fact that apparently a Mongolian Barbecue has now opened up in Ulaanbaatar (or ‘UB’ as we old hands call it), I’m really not sure how authentic this mode of cooking is. Their website and menus tell of how in the age of the great Khan his mighty warriors would feast by thinly slicing meat with their swords and then cook it over a fire on their upturned shields. This sounds like another myth about the eating habits of these war-parties (to go with how they would pack the underneath of their saddles with raw meat to stop it rubbing against their steeds – hence steak tartare). If anything the place was more reminiscent of a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant.

Arriving at 6pm on a Monday night, Paul and I found the place almost full. We were found a table though, and presented with menus. While they do have various starters, accompaniments and desserts the main deal here is the £12.95 Genghis Grill. This is essentially an all-you-can-eat buffet. Taking a clean bowl the diner helps themselves to their choice of meat (on our trip the choices were pork, beef, chicken, turkey, salmon, pangasius, squid, shrimps, or kangaroo(!)). They then top this with their selection of vegetables, from mushrooms to mange tout, beansprouts to bamboo, peppers to pak choi to pineapple. They then slop over ladles of different sauces, and top with their choice of herbs and spices. The bowl is then handed to the chefs, who will sizzle and stir-fry it on a huge gas-fired hotplate. When cooked, the diner takes the food in a new bowl and eats with chopsticks. And when finished, goes back, gets a new bowl, and starts all over again!

There are some suggested recipes on the wall. I never got around to the Ulan Beef, but the Bator Beef (which I had with onion, red pepper and spinach) is made with one ladle of tomato & herb sauce, one of wine, half a ladle of mustard sauce, and teaspoons of salt, black pepper and cajun spices. I also tried the Tengai Fish, where lemon, soy and garlic sauces were added to my salmon and leeks, and then topped with black pepper, salt and oregano. The other suggested recipe I had a go at was the Samarkand Chicken (so can I count this as Uzbekistan as well…?): half a ladle of soy sauce, a ladle of babrbecue sauce, a ladle of beer, and sprinkled with ginger, black pepper and salt. Of course you can also go off-piste – I also had kangaroo, mushrooms, beansprouts and bamboo shoots with oyster and soy sauces sprinkled with pepper, rosemary and five-spice.

So really, the food is pretty good value. The meat was fresh, the veg was crisp, and you get the added theatre of the Mongolian chefs sizzling your dinner away on the griddle. You can’t really argue with unlimited grub for £12.95. And here’s an additional secret: on Monday evenings two dine for the price of one. So two eat for that £12.95 price point - less than £6.50 each! Despite this, Paul still decided he wanted to pay extra for a dessert – in this case Genghis Khan’s Peach Schnapper. This was a slice of cheesecake very strongly flavoured with peach schnapps. Still, I hear that ol' Genghis was keen on his Archers…

In general drinks are on the pricey side, but I expected that from a restaurant. Sadly there was no Mongolian beer on offer (the local Chinggis Brau I was drinking in Mongolia was surprisingly good!). Instead I had Japanese Kirin - £3.25 for a 330ml bottle. But even having a couple of these, and including tip, the pair of us got absolutely stuffed for £15 each.

I suppose that if I were to offer any caveat it would be that all meals are cooked up on the same stove. And while the chefs do clean it as they go along I imagine there is a danger of cross-contamination. So while vegetarians and vegans could eat perfectly well on the vegetables on offer, it would be cooked on the same hotplate as meat. Likewise shrimps and squid are cooked on it too, just to warn those on a kosher or halal diet. And more pressingly some recipes do feature chopped nuts, so those with nut allergies may want to be aware of that!

But on the whole I think this meal was one of the more fun I’ve had this year. So much so, that I have actually booked my office’s Christmas meal here!

I would never have done that in Mongolia...

Poland – 04/11/09

On a rain-lashed Wednesday night Paul and I drove out to the very borders of Greater Manchester, to Horwich, west of Bolton, searching for a place called Inkaa, apparently a Peruvian -styled tapas bar. A combination of the appalling weather and idiotic drivers meant that it took us 90 minutes from the centre of town.

Only to find that the place was closed. Asking around revealed that it had only shut down "a few weeks ago" – once more we were just slightly too late. Following on from the closures of King Cobra (Sri Lankan) and the presumed closure of Cora’s (Filipino) I started to get the suspicion that someone up there was deliberately trying to stymie me…

Our route home however took us through prestwich and down Bury New Road. So we stopped off to try Savich Polish Taste, a Polish take-away that we had only spotted five weeks earlier – until then I had thought that the last Polish eatery in Manchester (Altrincham’s Café Lech) had shut, leaving us with only the east European Polski Sklepy that dotted the more depressed suburbs.

There was a small dining area inside with nice tables, chairs & mats. A television in the corner played a Hollywood movie, dubbed into Polish. However, we had decided to get a take-away – including a meal for Simon – and rendez-vous at his. The menu wrapped around the wall – over twenty dishes in all, over half of which were distinctly Polish (as opposed to burgers). Paul immediately decided on gulasz (which rang alarm bells with me, as I knew goulasch as a Hungarian dish); I chose bigos, a ‘traditional hunter stew’ that I definitely remembered seeing on menus during my own three trips to Poland. Choosing for Simon in his absence was trickier – what would he like? Well, we knew for certain that he definitely did not like mushrooms – and that narrowed down his options considerably! In the end we ordered pierogi z mięsem, dumplings stuffed with mincemeat and onion.

Making our way to Simon’s house we found that, the host that he is, he had already set out plates and cutlery for us. There was an element of surprise as we opened the polystyrene take-away containers. At first glance, the food didn’t look great. In particular, my bigos (£3.00) looked like the sort of thing you might find splattered on the pavement outside a late-night takeaway. It was a stew of meat and coarsely chopped cabbage and onions. It tasted a lot better than it looked, having a tangy flavour and crunchy texture.

Paul’s gulasz was nothing like the paprika-rich soups I had eaten in Hungary. It was instead a rather sloppy grey gravy containing onions, red peppers and beef chunks. Again, not the most attractive foodstuff we had ever seen. Though again, it tasted okay. For £4.20 it came served with chips and coleslaw.

Out of the four different pierogi on the menu I had specifically asked for the dumplings stuffed with minced meat and onions ( pierogi z mięsem, £3.00). Upon eating however it turned out that we had been served Ruskie pierogi (Russian pierogi), where the dumplings were in fact stuffed with a cheese, onion and potato mixture. They were nice, but not what we had ordered. On the whole the meal was not out of this world, and actually did look very unappetising. It tasted fine though, and the prices were reasonable. But I did feel disappointed that it did not live up to some of the a great meals I have had in Poland itself.

I washed my dinner down with a Polish beer – a can of Zywiec - that I had bought from a shop just down the road. This place wasn’t a Polski sklep as such; though it sold a variety of Eastern European goods, the stock seemed to be predominantly Lithuanian, as did the lady running it. So it seemed only fair that I made some purchases for the following evening…

(I am not aware of any Polish restaurants in Manchester now, though there is another Polish take-away that I am aware of [Little Poland in Lower Broughton]. As stated though, there are a number of Polish shops and delis that dot the city, from Elena’s in Cheetham Hill and Polskie Delicatesy in Eccles to Abakus in Northenden and the award-winning Barbakan in Chorlton. My usual shop though is White Eagle in the city centre Arndale Market.)

Lithuania – 05/11/09

So far I have managed to avoid going to shops and buying ethnic food to cook at home. But as we get more desperate racing towards the finishing line of of our quest to eat Around The World in 80 Meals Paul and I will maybe have to compromise a little. And here it begins…

There is no Lithuanian restaurant in Manchester that I have heard of (though I did see one in Leeds!). And while a fair few East European stores have opened up since the 2004 accession of former Soviet Bloc nations to the EU, these have mainly been Polish owned and run, the now common Polski sklep. However, Little Europe Shop on Bury New Road proudly shows a Lithuanian flag on its sign, and the word parduotuve (Lithuanian for ‘shop’) is listed first before the Russian magasin and the Polish sklep. So we popped in.

The lady behind the counter was herself Lithuanian. Once I explained the rules of the game she was happy to help us, cherry-picking various traditional Lithuanian meal components. We picked a few more likely-looking things off the shelves ourselves. I suggested Paul come around to my flat the next night at 7pm, and I would have a four-course Lithuanian feast prepared.

So what was the menu?

First up was barščiai - borscht. This hot beetroot soup is popular throughout eastern Europe, and I had some myself at our introductory Russian meal ten months previously. It was only on getting home that I realised that the jar I had bought came from Poland - barszcz czerwony, from Winiary (a Polish subsidiary of Nestle). It came as a red instant powder (£1.35 for 150g). To make it all I had to do to make it was add boiling water. This sounds rather dull, but the resulting soup was extremely flavourful, as well as being an almost luminous magenta pink in colour. Paul’s view was that it was "brilliant – in all senses of the word", and he made a mental note to poip back and buy a couple of jars himself if he was ever passing. Yet again we had failed to be disappointed by soup. To make it a bit more special however, I had stirred in to the borscht some sour cream (a Lithuanian brand called ‘Mu’, £1.50 for 400g, imported from Kaunas). We also had bread with it, a dark pre-sliced 700g loaf of bočių rye bread. The packaging had declared it to be ‘Authentic Lithuanian Bread (real taste, real bread)’ (£1.40). It was a dense, chewy loaf with flavours of liquorice (caraway) and malt. Add some raisins and sultanas and it would have tasted quite like Soreen malt loaf. This too was imported from Lithuania, this time from Rokiškis in the north-east of the country. It was a very distinctive taste, and a little went a long way, so just the two slices each to have with our soup.

Second course was two more slices of this bread each. This time I had topped them with a traditional herring salad (Tradicine Silke). This was marinated slices of herring mixed in with finely sliced carrots and onions and (apparently) ketchup. In all it had a sweet vinegary taste; again, a little went a long way. This may have been labelled in Lithuanian, but it was actualy made here in England, by a company called Šilas, based in Dagenham, Essex. 500g of the herring salad cost the oddly-precise figure of £2.32.

Main course was more problematic. From the freezer chest we had been suggested cepelinai. This was a 1kg pack of dumplings roughly the same size and shape as baking potatoes. Their name – ‘zeppelins’ – comes from their resemblance in shape to the great airships that served the Baltic states in the interwar period. These were large dumplings of mashed potato moulded around a core of minced meat – a mixture of beef, pork and chicken in the case of these. I had left to defrost in the fridge overnight, and as I took them out of the packet they felt slushy to the touch. Cooking instructions found on the back (thankfully in English as well as in Lithuanian and Russian) directed me to put them into boiling water; once they had risen to the surface, cook them for another 25-35 minutes. I did this nervously, worried that the potato would disintegrate and the cepelinai lose all consistency. After the allotted time I served them out – only one each considering their size. To accompany it I added a couple of spoonfulls of pickled red cabbage to each plate. I had also mixed together a sauce to have with them. The Lithuanian lady in the shop had told me that they have them plain with sour cream (hence my purchase of it). What I did though was something I had seen done by locals in Russia, in that I mixed mustard into the sour cream. The whole-grain mustard I used was a last minute buy, a Polish brand (Roleski Musztarda) bought from the White Eagle Polish shop in the Arndale Centre. And I think this did add immeasurably to enjoyment of the dish. As for the ‘zeppelins’ themselves, they were a bit like massive chewy gnocchi to the taste, but stuffed with runny minced meat much as a chicken Kiev is stuffed with garlic butter. I think it would be fair to say that they weren’t our favourite part of the meal, but they were still edible, and I now know that if in Lithuania I can survive off these in an emergency. They were not cheap though, £4.70 for 1kg. A sticker showed that they were imported by another Essex-based company, Lituanica UK Ltd of Barking.

To accompany our dinner I had bought a couple of 500ml cans of beer (aluslokštainis "Medutis"). With thin delicate layers of sponge and what I thought was cream, but may have been instead lemon icing, it was really nice, and certainly sweet enough to not need any cream adding. It actually reminded me of Jamaica ginger cake, though scouring the list of ingredients revealed no sign of ginger. At £3.99 it was large enough for four decent-sized portions – and this was the ‘small’ variety! Again this hailed from that Lithuanian hotspot of Barking, Essex, having been made by Amber Bakery. (I had also bought a packet of Latvian biscuits, but these are being kept for a special occasion and were not part of the Great Lithuanian Feast).

I reckon that that was a great four-course (and beer) meal. But then I would say that – I was the chef. Paul had slightly more realistic expectations and judged it a three star meal though. Borscht was a hit, as was the honey cake. The distinctive black bread found thumbs up too. The jury was out on the herrings though, and the cepelinai would probably be politely avoided in future.

What struck me though was the strength of Lithuanian national character. This is a small nation that has historically been surrounded and dominated by larger and more powerful neighbours – Germany, Russia / USSR, and even Poland, to whom it is now most frequently compared. And yet while their traditional foods share similarities with those of their neighbours, there are enough differences to make them distinct. And while it might be easy for a country that has been independent for less than 20 years just to import their processed foods from neighbouring states, the fact that they have their own strong manufacturing base was clear to see. So much so that there is even a demand for this food to be exported to overseas Lithuanian communities, and for those communities to support their own UK-based businesses manufacturing Lithuanian food locally. The strength of such a culture to persist despite the efforts of more powerful states is truly a heartening story.