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Over the past few months I had found myself buying the same three or four cheeses on every single journey to the cheese shop. There's nothing wrong with that I suppose, they're good cheeses, together they make a good, varied cheeseboard, and I'm never disappointed. They are, in case you're wondering, Comté, Valencay goat's, Stinking Bishop and Roquefort - from blue to pungent, soft to firm, cow's to goat's, all bases covered. A good, solid cheeseboard. Something for everyone. But this week I thought it was time to bring a new contender into rotation, and so substituting out the Stinking Bishop (which to be fair only ever I was really crazy about and always seemed to be the one with the most left after guests had gone) I settled on a Taleggio called La Baita.
Most information about this cheese on the internet appears to be in Italian, so you have Google Translate to thank (and possibly blame) for the following. It's DOP designated, which if you trust the Italian government means it's been through a "scrupulous quality process that assesses thoroughly the quality", or if you don't means precisely nothing. It's made from pasturised cow's milk, which means it will last longer in the fridge but not have that extra layer of fresh farmy complexity that marks out the best soft cheeses. And it comes from a breathtakingly picturesque part of Lombardy called the Taleggio Valley, which has been mapped by Google Streeview if you want some serious landscape envy.
And it tastes really lovely. Once you peel off the annoying bits of paper you can appreciate the crumbly salty crust, covering a thin layer of almost liquid flesh just beneath. The main part of the cheese is firm enough to give bite but not soft enough to run, and has an interesting sweet and salty flavour with just the right level of pungent aroma. The layer of liquid beneath the crust apparently means that the cheese is correctly matured, and so it's all the more impressive that the main part of the flesh remained nicely firm - it's a well-made cheese, in other words, with all textures, flavours and aromas nicely balanced. I enjoyed it very much, almost enough for it to earn a permanent place on my cheeseboard. That is, until the next new favourite soft cheese comes along. Call me fickle, or call me open-minded.
8/10
Another month, and another exclusive for Cheese and Biscuits. Stella Dore is a brand-new (barely two weeks old) Italian deli-cum-Trattoria just off Charlotte Street in trendy Shoreditch, and by the looks of a quick Google, chances are you read about it here first. I'm painfully aware I'm breaking one of my own rules about not visiting restaurants until they've had time to "bed-in" properly, but I'm going to bring this place to your attention because I think it has the potential to be rather good.
Despite the scary-looking metal grille over one of the windows (nothing to do with them apparently), the vibe inside Stella Dore is "Naples meets Shoreditch", with attractive bread and salami displays along one wall coupled with a loungey chillout zone downstairs and Bob Dylan on the stereo. They don't have a licence - yet - but it's BYO and you're about ten steps away from the best wine shop in town (the peerless City Beverage Company) so there's no excuse for not picking up a nice bottle of Sangiovese on your way there.
In true Trattoria style, we weren't shown a menu. Instead, the owner reeled off from memory a selection of antipasti and cold meats, and a selection of one or two pasta dishes. The cold meats arrived first alongside some salty Pecorino and some other smoked cheeses containing pieces of fruit (something I normally hate) and chilli. Most of the cheeses were fine - the chilli perked up what would otherwise have been a rather unremarkable product, and the Pecorino was tasty if a little on the cold side. The meats were excellent however - the Parma ham in particular was aged very well with lovely slightly crusty bits at the edges, and the salamis were as gooey and flavoursome as you could hope for. I still could have done without the fruity cheese though, and the house breads - bought-in, presumably - were slightly stale and nothing special.
A second cold antipasti of miniature stuffed red peppers and artichoke hearts was delicious. Again, how much input Stella Dore had into this dish was debatable, but even so, there is a certain skill in sourcing good prepared pickles (God knows how many kebab shops get it wrong) so some marks for this.
The real mark of an Italian kitchen is in the pasta, and I was delighted to learn that Stella Dore make all their pasta in-house. Two dishes of Fettucini, one with homemade pesto and one with tomato and Italian sausage, were very good - perhaps if not quite up to the standard of those we had in Italy or the Donna Margherita then at least better than anything you would expect to have anywhere else in London. The pesto had nice big flecks of fresh basil and was silky and rich rather than oily (as it should be), and the tomato pasta was creamy and had a good colour to it from the imported Italian tomatoes.
Desserts were so-so. A carrot cake had been left around too long and gone slightly stale, although the flavour otherwise wasn't bad. An apple tart was a bit flaccid and stodgy but was served with a nice cinnamon jam which the front of house were very keen to get us to try. In fact the service from the manager/owner was genial and attentive, but was rather mixed from other members of staff. Still, at two weeks old it's probably a bit too early to be picking holes - they're probably still learning where the glasses are kept.
As a footnote, and a credit to the manager, our lunch ended with a surprise complimentary dish of roasted lamb with a kind of homemade chips. We had arrived too early to have this as a main course option but he'd brought it out at the end just so we could try it - and very good it was too, the lamb being moist and juicy and seasoned well with rosemary. The chips were I think roasted or baked rather than fried, but depending on how these were sold to me (don't call them chips, basically) then I wouldn't be too disappointed.
All in all, Stella Dore is a solid, reasonably authentic Italian eatery which is gamely trying to serve proper food in a hardly favourable economic climate, and in competition with a thousand mediocre high-street "Mamma Mia"s the city over. We had a great deal of food for a little under £15 a head (not even counting the complimentary lamb) and where it mattered it was very tasty. It is a honest, affordable little place and deserves to do very well. Whether it will or not, these days, is impossible to know.
7/10
EDIT: Following some very welcome correspondence from both the Stella Dore gallery and the (completely unrelated) new Trattoria next door, I have updated the name of the venue. Apologies to Bottega Prelibato, and thanks for the correction!
One of the drawbacks of the food blog format - along, to be fair, with any newspaper or magazine restaurant review - is that your public opinion of a restaurant is made once and preserved forever. I have made a conscious decision to never write about the same place twice, the idea being that however lucky or unlucky or misinformed I was on the first visit, a restaurant would only usually have one chance to impress the average punter and a first visit is as close as I'm going to get to a level playing field. That, and because I pay for all the meals out of my own pocket, I just don't have the budget to work my way around the entire menu before forming an opinion.
Therefore, it's not surprising that on occasion I do happen across either a mediocre restaurant that for whatever reason serves an accidental good meal the night of my visit, or of course an otherwise reliably good restaurant that has an off night. What is strange is that looking back over the last two years' worth of reviews how few there are whose scores, with the benefit of hindsight and repeat visits, I would change. Maybe an extra point added or docked here and there - I was a bit mean to Can Roca perhaps, and Laxeiro has disappointed on repeat visits - but overall my system - completely by accident you understand - kind of works. However, there is one review in particular that I can't allow to stay on my conscience. I'm not too big to admit that, back in November of 2007, I was completely wrong about Donna Margherita in Battersea.
It was on viewing the pictures I took of the pizzas we were served on that night that the owner, Gabriele Vitale, knew something was wrong. "Those big black bubbles of burned pizza base," he explained after he invited me back for a second try last week, "they are wrong. There was something wrong with the dough that night - I think it hadn't risen properly. A good pizza dough should have a nice even covering of small black dots. And of course, those mussels should not have been thrown on the pizza until right at the very end. Whoever was in the kitchen that night wasn't up to scratch." I agreed, after a commendably persistent PR campaign from Gabriele, to revisit Donna Margherita and perhaps learn a bit about Neapolitan cuisine in the process.
A cold antipasti selection of roast mushrooms, grilled aubergine, courgette and superb artichoke hearts were served covered in good olive oil and tasted very authentic. Warm antipasti consisted of terracotta bowls of half-and-half aubergine parmigiana and homemade meatballs in tomato sauce and a kind of dark lentil stew and courgettes and bacon. All superb comfort food, full of flavour and served in that traditional Trattoria style.
I was reliably informed that Neapolitan (that is, Campania) cuisine is generally more robust and contains a greater use of seafood than that from Emilia-Romagna. Now that they mentioned it, it occurred to me that we didn't have a single seafood or fish dish the whole weekend in Bologna. Here we were served two stunning plates of seafood - a medley of calamari rings, octopus tentacles and fried prawns, all perfectly fresh and cooked very well, and a very authentic tasting cold octopus salad. Gabriele told me that his English customers are a bit squeamish about the octopus and despite it ticking every box in terms of authenticity and taste, he doesn't shift much of it. Well, more fool them I say.
I will also reserve a special mention for the traditional Neapolitan salad of cherry tomatoes, rocket and buffalo mozzarella, which contained the juiciest, creamiest mozzarella I've ever tasted - including that from Bologna. Gabriele ships it in from Napoli every week and seasons it lightly before serving, and I can't imagine there being a better mozzarella served anywhere else in Europe.
All this was of course just the first act before the arrival of the main courses, starting with a deceptively simple margherita pizza. Made, needless to say, all in house, using Italian ingredients, it was a fine example of its kind and had an expertly balanced measure of the different ingredients, from the sharp tomato sauce to the rich stringy cheese. And, of course, a perfectly risen pizza dough displaying the correct smattering of small black dots. We were also shown the "correct" (I will need third-party verification on this of course, but for now I'm taking Gabriele's word for it) way to eat a Neapolitan pizza - first cutting the pizza into quarters, and then "rolling" each slice into a tube so that all the rich juices are trapped inside while you shovel it into your mouth. Using your hands, naturally.
We were then served two pasta dishes. One, a seafood spaghetti with clams and prawns and heaven knows what else, was as rich and wonderful as any plate of pasta I've ever eaten. The spaghetti was coated in a kind of seafood stock which made it silky in the mouth and the baked cherry tomatoes added another burst of flavour. Amazing stuff.
Also in the pasta department was a very attractive plate of large rigatoni served with a spinach-like vegetable along with various other herbs. Again, homemade egg pasta cooked al-dente and a rich and silky sauce.
Finally, a dense, nutty chocolate cake from Capri served with vanilla ice-cream, and a homemade Tiramisù, which tipped us over from "dangerously stuffed" to "potential hospital admission". But what a way to go.
And so, in a first for Cheese and Biscuits, I am going to re-review a restaurant. I will keep the original post up for historical reasons so that I can't be accused of complete revisionism, but I think its only fair that independent restaurants with a passion for authentic, honest food get all the breaks they can get. Because God knows there are enough people in London that will walk past Donna Margherita on the way to the Pizza Express just down the road, and miss out on one of the finest Italian restaurants in the capital. My original review, made on an off-night albeit with the best of intentions, is wrong. And fortunately, this is one wrong I'm happy and able to put right.
8/10
Photos courtesey of Helen Graves at Food Stories. Many thanks.
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Saturday night, and another exhaustively researched Trattoria in a breathtakingly pretty part of Bologna. Drogheria Della Rosa is notable for two things, other than the food of course. Firstly, it's housed in an old shop, and the tables and chairs are crammed into the unlikeliest of nooks and crannies, some wildly unsuitable. We were shown to a table perched precariously close to the top of a flight of stairs in a hilariously narrow corridor to and from the busy kitchens, but we were by no means the worst off that night. One poor couple attempted to enjoy a meal in the tiny holding area where diners waited to be seated, the frigid Bologna winter air blowing in every few seconds and with excitable Italian staff arguing animatedly just above their heads. They looked thoroughly miserable. I half expected to find a table for four set up in the gents when I went for a pee.
Secondly, Della Rosa is more than a little renowned for the ebullient service, thanks to the larger-than-life character of Emanuele Addone. Being a repressed, up-tight Englishman who would run a thousand miles rather than have to put up with that in-your-face TGI Friday's style false bonhomie, I was a little unsure at first, but fortunately there's nothing in the least bit forced about Sign. Addone's style and he just came across as genuinely friendly and welcoming. He also gave us a free bottle of wine to send us on our way after the meal, and how can you dislike anyone who gives you free wine?
So to business. Antipasti was a plate of mortadella and Parma hams and a few fluffy little balls of buffalo mozzarella. All brilliant - especially the mozzarella which were sweeter and more creamy than any I'd had before.
My starter of fresh artichokes and cheese-stuffed tortelloni (tortellini/tortelloni being a speciality of Bologna it seems) were stunning, the artichokes blindingly fresh and sweet and the homemade pasta silky and deep in colour from good egg yolks. This is the kind of dish you dream about eating in Italy, and now that I have I will dream about it even more. Superb. Also of note amongst the starters was a cute little lasagne with veal mince, again a big hit.
My main course had a huge amount to live up to after that starter, and only just fell short. The beef jus was perfectly seasoned and the roast veg - endive I think? Or a similar bitter vegetable - were also cooked perfectly. But the meat itself wasn't of particularly high quality and despite being cooked rare was quite dry and tasteless, which was a shame. Still, another diner had the same dish and declared it the best steak he'd ever eaten, so maybe I just had the last of a poor batch.
Desserts of panacotta, a fruit cake and ice cream and chocolate sauce were comforting and unpretentious, classically Italian in as far as they were simple dishes made using good ingredients and not mucked about with too much. Along with these came a huge plate of fruits and nuts - a lovely way to show off seasonal ingredients with minimum fuss, and again typical of the pride and confidence Italians have in their own produce. And as if all these freebies (the plate of hams and the fruit & nuts were unbilled and unannounced) wasn't enough, we were given a free bottle of delicate, caramel-y dessert wine to wash the cakes and puddings down with.
The bill came to around €40 a head, and although not super cheap thanks to the bloody awful exchange rate, it felt like a bargain once we'd polished off the free bottle of dessert wine and considered all the antipasti and other freebies. And then of course another bottle of wine was forced into our hands on the way out by Sign. Addone and all things considered it's hard to come up with a bad word to say about the place. Perhaps if I'd been sat by the front door and eaten my dinner shivering under the armpits of the waiting staff I would have come away with a different impression. Then again, if I had been served the same food, maybe not.
8/10
If it sometimes seems that my life revolves around eating and eating out, and that every activity in every moment of every day is dedicated to the search for the next great meal, well that's because it is. Other people may choose their holidays based on climate, attractions or architecture, history or culture, but I have one simple rule when choosing where to spend my leisure time - is the food any good? Emilia-Romagna was chosen specifically as an area of Europe that could boast a world-famous gastronomic reputation, and Bologna in particular because it had an airport I could reach in one hop from Gatwick, thus allowing us to cram in as much good eating as possible over the long weekend. Leaving nothing to chance, I had researched two of the best trattoria in the city for our two evening meals, and through the freezing fog of Bologna last friday, made our way to Meloncello in the south-west of the city.
It was, as we'd been led to expect, a cosy and unpretentious room, and the staff were merrily unconcerned with our non-existent grasp of the language. You couldn't imagine that kind of welcome in France, for example. There was no printed menu, and instead the waiter did a fine job of explaining the dishes on offer, most of which sounded relatively familiar to English ears but then maybe the point of this visit wasn't to expand our culinary horizons but to see, after all these years, how Italians cooked their own cuisine in their own country. I began with sage and butter gnocci.
Fluffy, fresh gnocci and just the right amount of sage. There's not really any more to say - it was a lovely little plate of food, as tasty as it was straightforward. Another primo of genuine Bolognese ragù sat on a bed of perfectly al dente pasta and was even better. It was apparently veal mince that they used in the ragù, which gave the sauce an extra meaty silkiness. I should also mention at this point the house wine, a Sangiovese (the same grape they use to make Chianti) which, whether it was the situation or the anticipation, seemed to punch far above its €20 price tag. I have been scouring the internet for suppliers in London since.
My main was a couple of slices of tender pork loin dressed in a creamy herb sauce, and was also delicious. Again, a simple and unpretentious presentation and nice enough on their own, but they were served with an extraordinary side of rosemary potatoes roasted in some sort of rich animal fat that we couldn't quite place - perhaps goose fat. They didn't last long, and neither did the pork.
Desserts were varied but of the same home-made style. Cakes and puddings, a rich creamy home-made ice-cream dressed in chocolate sauce, nothing unusual but all prepared to a very high standard and all very tasty.
I tried bits of everything on the table (of course I did) but was so stuffed after two courses of carb-laden loveliness that in place of my own dessert I thought I'd risk asking the waiter what he suggested as a digestivo. Not understanding any of the names he rattled off, I just picked one at random that sounded something like Pedrus or Pegrus. What arrived was a shot glass full of what I can only describe as a cross between liquorish, pure ethanol and scotch bonnet chilli. The effect of drinking it, to quote Douglas Adams, was rather like having my "brains smashed out with a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick". It's the first time I've ever tasted any drink that made me want to scream out loud and then go for another sip. Quite remarkable stuff, and any Italians out there please feel free to chip in and tell me what it was, because I'm going to see if I can get hold of a bottle in London to break the ice at parties - literally and metaphorically.
And so, warmed by the Italian firewater (or more accurately, feeling as if I'd swallowed a Molotov Cocktail and been set on fire from the inside) we headed home. Meloncello was exactly what I was hoping for from a traditional Italian trattoria and more or less what I expected. That the cooking there perhaps verged on the side of "safe" is forgiven given the quality of the dishes they put out - after all, when safe is this good, who needs danger?
7/10
