La Fibule, Moseley

Inside La Fibule is supposedly reminiscent of the type of cafe you may find down the side streets of Tangier, though the closest I have come geographically to Morocco is a week in Tenerife, so I’ll have to take their word for it. Its all low-light and cushioned, with metallic pendants hanging from the ceiling and walls adorned with paintings of scary looking men on horseback. It looks like both of the Shisha bars I have been in.

We started with a mezze of salads and dips; a carrot salad was fine enough, as was a salty paste of olives and feta. Hummus was lacking in both acidity and texture, whereas a beetroot salad merely ambled by. The star was the Badinjan; a smokey blend of aubergine, red pepper and tahine – its hummus for those that like to keep the taste-buds train. I’ll be back, if only to mop a plate of this up with the supple flat breads.

Tagines next.  It had to be, we’re in Morocco, remember.  One chicken with peppers, another with lamb, almonds and peppers – both remarkably similar.  The base sauce was, once cooled down, an aromatic tomato based sauce not a million miles away from the shakshouka I rustle up at home.  It was fine thing that soaked into a side of cous-cous with ease.  It was pungent and spicy, even if both meats were a little on the dry side.

Desserts seemed an afterthought, so we finished the beers purchased from the off licence a few doors down and called it a night.  With starters around a fiver, mains a little over a tenner and side dishes a few quid more, La Fibule is an affordable and enjoyable evening.  I cant tell you that its a truly authentic Moroccan experience, but I can say that we left neither hungry nor disappointed.  And that is good enough for me.

7/10

Talbot Inn, Newnham Bridge

It seems obvious, yet so few abide by a simple rule of cooking; start with great ingredients and you will end up with a great dish. I am living proof that with a good butcher (Roger Browns of Harborne, if you’re interested) and a trusty place to get veg, even the most inept of cooks can rustle up something edible. Transfer the produce to someone much more capable and what you have is culinary fireworks. The Talbot Inn, a sleepy pub in Newnham Bridge, doesn’t have far to look for its raw material. Nestled in amongst the borders of Worcestershire, Shropshire, and Herefordshire, it has some of England’s finest bounty on it’s doorstep. From the windows of the former coaching inn it is possible to see tomorrows dinner grazing up on the hills.

It is pleasing to know that the Talbot is making the most of its location by sourcing as much as possible from its doorstep, and its at these moments that the menu really sings. Bubble and Squeak, a leftover dish often relegated to breakfast in our household, came with a poached egg and a sharp hollandaise that made for a gutsy starter. In between the mound of veg and egg sat a piece of back bacon from a pig that had led a happy life; the porcine flavour present with a layer of unctuous fat to coat the mouth.

A hefty portion of goats cheese was warmed through came with some lightly pickled pear that provided contrast and acidity.  A fig and balsamic dressing balanced the whole dish out by further interplaying the sweet and the sour.  A fish cake of salmon and crayfish that  benefited from not being overloaded with mash potato nodded politely at the far east with a salad of spring onions and sweet chilli sauce.

A carefully roasted beef dinner and another of pork both had some good roasties, creamed cabbage, and heritage carrots that were seemingly plucked out of the ground just hours before.  We sat around the table discussing how the meat was of obvious quality whilst agreeing that the carrots were the best things on the plate.  Another plate had more of the superb carrots with a compression of sweet potato and parsnip as the centrepiece.  A tomato and herb sauce added vibrancy to the earthiness of the root veg, all of which were impeccably fresh.

 

After all this, desserts failed to reach the expectations set from earlier on.  Not because they were bad in any way, but because they followed the same rustic lines as the savoury courses and lacked the refinement required to make it stand out.  A fruit crumble was well made, though a lemon and lime posset was the pick of the bunch; the marginally over-set cream was sharp with citrus and worked well with both the sweet mango salsa and coconut shortbreads.

Speaking to our waitress after the meal I got a sense of the ambitions here. The Talbot’s website may play down the cooking here as “relaxed rustic food”, but it’s obvious they are aiming much higher than that.  It’s a well thought out operation with real care made to the sourcing and cooking of its food.  For a business that has only been operating for two years it has found its feet remarkably fast;  it can only be a matter of time before the accolades and crowds come trotting along just as quickly.

8/10

The Mariners, Rock

No trip to Cornwall would be complete without a visit to Rock. Whether or not the Camel estuary tide is in, there cannot be many places as equally beautiful and dramatic. It is easy to see why it’s my partners favourite place in North Cornwall though amid the long stretches’ of sand and view over to Padstow I have always found it too aloof to meet my ideal. You can smell the money in the air here. The promenade has 4×4’x as chunky as the knitwear wrapped over the shoulders as its drivers, whilst on the beach has pure-bred dogs nearly as large as its owners trust fund. With such wealth, it is completely understandable why Nathan Outlaw had until recently based his two Michelin star restaurant here. He has since upped and moved to a larger premises and the passing trade of Doc Martin in nearby Port Isaac, leaving behind a gap to fill in the local market. In it’s place is The Mariners, a much more casual offering, steering away from the precise seafood Outlaw has made a name from and in to much more familiar pub food territory.

Mini chorizo sausages seemed a good place to start a light lunch. Five of them, good meaty things, for a fiver. See, I told you Rock was expensive. A sausage sandwich, picked from the specials menu, saw wonderful things done with onions braised in ale. Less wonderful were the sausages itself, with the casing flaccid in parts from not being sufficiently browned off. Fries were fine.

On paper a main of pork schnitzel, fried duck egg, anchovies and rocket salad sounded heavenly, though by the time it reached the table the pork had dried out a little and the egg yolk had progressed some distance past runny.  The anchovies were of a high quality and suggested that despite the carnivore offerings, perhaps fish really is the way to go when in a Outlaw establishment.  A meatless Bourguignon had chunks of beetroot as the main element, along with button mushroom, baby onions and a dollop of sour cream for freshness.  It had nice acidity from wine but ultimately was Death by Beetroot.  I get that its the trendy vegetable of the last few years but there is only so many times you can dip a spud into some spiked beet juice before worrying what it might be doing to your bowel movements.

We never bothered with dessert, mostly because the opportunity for a sunset walk was too enticing, though a glance at a nearby tables indicated that we may have been missing out.  There is no question that The Mariners is going to be a huge success; even on a warm December afternoon both inside and out on the terrace was heaving.  They have the location, the great beers and the backing of a superstar chef, though, for the standards that Nathan Outlaw has set, it felt very much to me like work in progress.

6/10