It's been a pretty busy few weeks - between moving, black belt gradings, work and so on, there's not been much time to relax. JP's folks came down on Saturday to deliver some much-needed furniture that they'd been storing (two desks, a bookshelf, a chest of drawers) and so we took them out to brunch to compensate for the 4 (!) hours they had to spend driving from Northampton to South London and back. JP chose Chapters All Day Dining in Blackheath as our destination.
Now, I've lived in in Hampstead Garden Suburb for the last 16 years (on and off), so you'll have to forgive me the North-of-the-river references, but Blackheath reminded me of nothing so much as the Highgate of South London. It's full of cute, boutique-y shops and restaurants that we could never hope to patronise regularly, and the house prices in the estate agents' windows were something scandalous. But it was fun to visit, and might feature in our Christmas-shopping travels later on. But rest assured, we will not be driving there on a Saturday again. Our reservation at Chapters was for 12.30; we arrived at about 12.50. This was mostly due to adverse parking conditions.
The waiter was sympathetic, though, and commiserated on the weekend traffic issues. After perusing the menus and asking our waitress for another couple of minutes to decide (she came to ask us for drinks orders 30 seconds after we sat down...), when we indicated we were ready to order, she decided to read the day's specials off the clearly visible board nearby. Couldn't that have been done the first time she came by? But I digress.
Two baskets plump with steaming-fresh bread were plunked down, along with a rather-too-cold pat of butter. Evidently we'd all skipped breakfast, because the bread was demolished rather swiftly. It was very good - two types of wholegrain, and a sourdough, all clearly handmade and fine quality.
Although we'd been warned that food would take 25-30 minutes (but at least that's a sign it was being made to order), evidently as a bid to get us to go for a starter (no dice), it seemed to turn up pretty quickly. Between the five of us, we had only ordered 3 unique dishes - HAJ & JP's dad went for tagliatelle with wild mushrooms and rocket salad, and JP and his mum ordered the venison burger with chips. My partridge leg with new potatoes and cabbage turned out to be most of the partridge, something I was not about to complain about - the legs were beautifully juicy and flavourful, and the breast had been protected by a couple of slices of streaky bacon. Liberally doused with a rich jus, it was really extremely tasty. JP and I swapped dishes halfway (something we habitually do, even in really good restaurants - that way you get twice the experience), and although the burger was perhaps a bit well-done for venison, which tends to be a bit lean and probably needs gentler handling, was still quite tasty (and it was our own fault for not asking for it a bit rarer; the menu had specifically stated it came "medium well"). Chips were hot and crispy and of properly-sized chunky-ness. HAJ has always been a light eater, so she didn't manage to finish her tagliatelle, but the rest of us were happy to give her a hand; the wild mushrooms were extremely tasty, and I dread to think how much cream went into the dish, but I suspect it was worth it.
We dithered a bit about ordering desserts, and in the end all got a coffee except HAJ (she'd had a hot chocolate to start the meal with, and declared it to be "very yummy") and ordered a chocolate fudge brownie and a pear-and-apple crumble to share between the five of us, the latter more for the accompanying honey ice cream than for the crumble. I confess, I rather preferred the crumble - the fruit was lightly sweetened and spiced just so with cinnamon and nutmeg (mmm), and the crumble very crisp and buttery. Honey ice cream was just right for it. The brownie, although pretty good, fell under what I call the "cheesecake rule" - something I very rarely order in a restaurant, because the odds are that I can make it better at home (all I need is a smaaaaall aubergine!) and will thus be disappointed. My brownie recipe is from Cook's Illustrated, and is a rather superior brownie to what was on offer, which was more sugary than chocolately. But the coffee was good, and I dare say that I had more than my fair share of the crumble, and so was content.
The whole meal, which consisted of 5 substantial main courses, a bottle of wine, 2 desserts and coffee, came to just over £20 a head - not bad at all, though not something I'd do every month.
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