h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Zens have a confession. We went for a day out in the Highlands today and drove around Loch Rannoch and back to Edinburgh. We ate at a chip shop in Aberfoyle, it was lovely. But we had a macaroni pie and chips, with curry sauce.

Macaroni pie? As in pasta in a pie?

Deb

I ate at the Wanted Inn in Sparrow pit. We stumbled upon it during a day stomping around caves in the snow and didn’t have high hopes. The food was great, I had nut roast with potatoes and vegetables whilst my son and partner had giant Yorkshire puddings with Glamorgan sausages. Everything was fresh and homemade. As we were leaving I noticed it had been a finalist in Simon Rimmer’s 2011 cooking competition.

http://www.wantedinn.com/todays-menu-c2.html

It was how a country pub ought to be, real fires, good beer and possibly great views. It was very hard to tell in the freezing fog.

Thursday.

I finished work at 8pm (12 hours) it was snowing a blizzard, I gopt back home at little after 8 and thought 'cook to eat?' bugger that for a game of soldiers' so eschewed thoughts of defrosted pizza and decamped to the other Thai place at the end of the high st, I pass on my way to the supermarket and had wondered what it was like, for some chicken satay and malaysian fried rice infusion event and a chocolate cake slice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

The blizzard hadn't abated any so it was all good.

and quite reasonable, meal, desert two drinks = £16.

Had lunch at Leeds Met Headingley refectory today: the food really is remarkably good. Had Thai-style stir fry with noodles, mini cheesecake and a coke for 6 quid - it was close to restaurant quality for half the price.

With it being Leeds Met there was also a lot of eye candy too

I have form with eating out in Wales; the first Welsh sushi bar (which seemed to mainly serve cabbage), the Greek restaurant which served everything covered in orange chedder and the garlic bread was Mother’s Pride and the restaurant where they ignored us because we were English. For this trip to Cardiff I trawled friends and relations for recommendations. There were none. So I bought a salad from Marks and Spencers and eat it in my hotel room hiding from the cold…it has avocado, pine nuts, pasta and cheese. Therefore more calories than a portion of chips.

That might not be true I can't remember where I got the chip information and I think the salad was meant for two.

I can tell you that the cafe in the London Transport Museum, which as a museum in all other respects is excellent, does the world's smallest portion of chips for £2 plus. Of course, it is in the middle of Covent Garden, so Other Eateries Are Available.

Anyone want to write any of these reviews up a bit for the Guide? Weseem to have very few restaurant entries after 2000 or so. Or the Post of course. I am rather enjoying your gastronomic travels, Storm, for example. Could be a column...?

Wagamama, Meadowhall. Not bad Kimchi at all.

I had a takeout from Eccles' Eastern Tandoori. Cracking curry house.

I thought I really should venture out into Cardiff but somehow the prospect of eating out alone on Valentines was too much, the hotel were offering a ‘five course candle light meal’. I considered doing it as some sort of post feminist statement but I remembered the time a waiter came and lit my candle…and then bought me a rose at the end of the meal when I remained dateless…So I ate at Novotel Cardiff in my room. I had a squash risotto which was surprisingly nice; spinach, squash and mushrooms. In an ideal world the rice would have been cooked through.

One of the interesting things about staying in Cardiff is the size of the hotel room . It's massive. I could do some after diner aerobics if I felt so motivated.

Solnushka

I didn’t realise London had a transport museum. I like a transport museum. The one in Dublin is amazing, it’s the very last stop on the DART and possibly the bleakest place I’ve visited. It’s a massive old bus garage with so many ‘exhibits’ crammed in its impossible to stand far enough away from the exhibits to view. There is one old guy opening the doors and showing people around (sorry drfiting).

I’m never sure I’m going to get to travel anywhere interesting. With international development work a coalition of funds has to be put together (World Bank, IMF, donor countries) and it often falls apart. I’ve spent the last 5 years about to go to Lesotho. At the moment I’m in the frame for trips to Mauritius, New Zealand, Nigeria and Bangladesh but I could well end up going nowhere.

I ate in Covent Garden on Friday night at Wahaca (http://www.wahaca.co.uk/) . It’s my second favourite South American eatery in London and my Mexican cousin-in-law assures me that it is authentic. I met my youngest brother and we had the meal for two. It was nice because the vegetarian things actually tasted substantially different from each other and I got to eat cactus. It’s very informal and was only £10 a head. It’s one of those places that you can’t book a table and as we were leaving the queue stretched out the door.

No more eating out for me until March, yesterday's peek at the bank balance settled that.

So today we are staying in and cooking a massive beef stew n dumplings, which will see us clear to the end of the week.

Not actually eating out, actually eating lunch at my desk, but it's so good I just had to say something: Asda spicy lentil & vegetable soup in it's own microwaveable bowl. Oh boy .

Deb

I ate at the Aurora hotel in Manchester.

After working through the night I was first in the hotel dining room at 6.30am. I stared disgruntledly at the lack of hot vegetarian breakfast buffet. The over-perky waitress bounded over. I expressed my displeasure. She offered home-made falafel. I nodded taciturn agreement. She returned moments later, would I like the chef to do me some poached eggs- there's something about falafel and poached eggs isn't there? Is there?
She serves me a plate of falafel, eggs, tomatoes and mushrooms. She returns, do I like it, she really hopes I do?
Her enthusiasm is irrestible. There really is something about poached eggs and falafel.

I ate at Urban Coffee in Birmingham. I went to a film night. The whole experience made me feel like I was in arty film in Amsterdam cycling around with flowers in my basket. My partner and I cycled there one lunch time to get tickets, it’s in the Jewellery Quarter and they had a display of local work. It’s all post-industrial fittings and painted white brickwork. The seats are pews (though we are now wondering if there is a factory somewhere producing ‘distressed pews’ as the numbers decommissioned from churches must surely be exhausted). I had mushroom stroganoff with new potatoes and green beans. It was excellent and £10 for a meal, a film and a glass of wine struck me as very good value.

Tonight we ate at kanpai sushi in Edinburgh. Edinburgh is good for sushi and resturant was amazing, lovely food really well presented.They were busy and the serving staff were overwhelmed.

Lovely food though.

I ate at Jyoti in Birmingham (http://www.jyotis.co.uk/). I had stuffed chillies, paneer bhuji (paneer and cashew nuts) and rice. This is a vegetarian restaurant and the food is really good, they serve things like masala dhosa which are relatively rare. Jamie Oliver visited the restaurant on a number of occasions with his family, he wrote glowing reviews for a newspaper. The owners were understandably proud and took photos of them selves with Jamie Oliver. They have had these enlarged and framed. Whilst you eat pictures of the gods Krishna, Vishnu and Jamie Oliver loom over you. The lighting is slightly too bright and they seem to be obliged to employ a wide variety of family members leading to slightly erratic service. Despite these failings there is a warm family atmosphere and consistently good quality interesting vegetarian food.

A review in the local paper said ‘I would eat on a rain sodden park bench to enjoy food of this quality’ and I have to agree.

Then next time we're in Birmingham we're going there...

We had a tricky time eating out last Saturday - I'd been a couple of times to the new fake-American diner place out at the Sprucefield roundabout(I keep calling it Ben and Jerrys but I think its Frankie and Benjys), and Dai was keen to go again. At about 6pm on a Saturday evening, there was a 35-40 minute wait. We decided to try elsewhere.

Our next port of call was Eds diner, in the Lisburn Omniplex site. It was full too (I've never been there when it was full, and had heard rumours that it was struggling - so it was reassuring in terms of the strength of the local economy to see it bustling, even if we were left table-less)

Across from it is another diner called Springsteens. We'd last eaten there a few years ago, and it had been such a bad expereince we'd avoided it since. But decided to be forgiving and give them another chance.

We were still in time (it was 5 to 6) for the early bird special - 2 courses for a tenner. I had garlic mushrooms follwed by cheese and bacon burger, Dai had chilli chicken goujons* followed by strips of steak in a mushroom sauce on penne pasta, with garlic bread. C had sausage and chips with beans. The food was excellent, particularly the fabulous chunky chips, and proper juicy burger. The service was friendly and efficient, and the facilities clean. Would recommend it to a friend.

*which bit of the chicken is its goujon, do you think? Do other animals have them - it seems to be a uniquely chick-thing

homemade baked beans and a hash brown.

I have become convinced that the maître d' is an assassin. The café is run entirely by volunteers but he looks expensive and has a foreign accent. He wore a tuxedo when the café first opened but has deserted it in favour of a less noticeable outfit. He becomes evasive if asked where his accent is from and claims to have 4 passports. Today he had a new Ipad so I think he has just completed a hit.