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We stopped here for lunch on a busy Easter school holidays weekend.  We happened across the place just before midday and there was a small queue waiting inside.  We decided that was a good sign and went for this pub rather than the many other options in the town.

Inside there is an atmospheric pubby bit as you walk in and we were drawn to that area, but there are additional seating areas with more of a restaurant feel and a beer garden too.  The pub bit has a very nautical atmosphere as the bar is made of an old lifeboat and other parts of the boat are used as a part of the decor.

It was a little odd that you could only order drinks at the top bar and that you had to order drinks and food separately.  Also, no card payments are accepted so you’ll need to have cash (there is a HSBC two doors up the road and there was a bit of a queue for it when we walked past – in fact if you want a cashpoint without a queue I suggest you try the one at the rear of Barclays Bank, but that’s further away).

I was glad to see they had Doombar on a hand pull when we went in, so I knew there would be something decent to drink.  There was also a locally brewed beer on hand pull.  The staff kindly offered me a taste of this, but it was too light a beer for me, so I opted to for the Doombar, which was decent.

We opted for variants on fish and chips as we were in a seaside town.  My companion had the beer battered fish and chips with peas, which was enormous.  I tried a little and wasn’t so keen on the batter which seemed a little heavy.  It was a perfectly fine portion of pub standard fish and chips and we’d certainly be happy to eat there again.  I had the scampi and chips with peas, which I really enjoyed.  It was good quality scampi and again a generous portion.  The food came very quickly when you consider that they had a rush of orders in just after opening and the pub was pretty busy all the time we were there.it

They do offer a particular meal which must be huge and there are pictures of people who have tried to eat it in under 10 minutes on the wall and there is even a league table of those who did it fastest.  If you do manage to eat the whole meal in under 10 minutes you get it for free.

Indie Bay are reinventing classic snacks starting with the moreish pretzel. The idea behind the brand is simple: easy, convenient snacking, but snacking you can feel good about.  So many snacks are laden with grease or sugar, so it’s nice to come across an alternative that you can feel good about eating.  I love the fact that come in little round balls too. Indie Bay’s range of snacks are natural, under 100 calories and vegan, which is good to know.

The good thing about Indie Bay Snacks is that they are: all natural, a great source of fibre, no added sugar, vegan and a great source of protein. You can buy them from retailers such as Ocado, wholefoods and planet organic, for a full list check here. Because they are high in fibre and protein they will keep you energized and fuller for longer. I’d say these are perfect for a lunch box or for stashing in your desk at work. Having a healthy snack easily available will cut down the temptation to have something that isn’t good for you and you’ll feel a whole lot more virtuous.

I have a month’s supply of Indie Bay to give away to one lucky reader.  Enter via the Gleam widget below.  Good luck everyone.

Competition Terms and Conditions

2018 was an incredibly difficult year for me on a personal level.  I don’t want to go into all the doom and gloom here, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s the worst year I’ve ever experienced and there have been some other contenders for that in recent years.   The tail end of the year was the worst part of it and I haven’t really felt in the mood to share some great news with you all until now.

Photo by kazuend on Unsplash

So it’s lovely to have some really good news to celebrate.  I’ve only gone and won an award: Food Blogger of the Year 2018 – UK.  It’s one of the awards given by LUXlife magazine and it’s great to see the name of my blog up there with so many great blogs and websites.  It’s a real honour.  Sometimes in this job you can feel you are working away alone and no one really appreciates your work, so awards like this do provide a very welcome boost. You can read about the other winners in my category : The Food & Drinks Awards here.  Looking through there are so many great hotels and restaurants I now want to visit and so many wonderful food and drink producers that I now want to sample.  There’s plenty there to keep me occupied for a long time to come.

Here’s a link to the announcement of my win. Many many thanks once again to LUXlife magazine.  I’m so thrilled to be included in your list of award winners.

After the indulgences of the Christmas and New Year season, it can feel good to cut back on a rich foods and take a step away from heavy dishes with lots of meat in and take on a lighter diet.  That doesn’t need to be boring though.  Lots of people have been doing Veganuary this year and even though we haven’t gone that far, we have been trying to incorporate more vegetarian and vegan food into our diets and cut back on meat, fish and dairy a little. So when Comptoir Libanais got in touch and asked me to try out their Veganuary menu, I was really interested to try it out their vegan feast at the Birmingham branch in Grand Central.

Comptoir Libanais are celebrating have launched a special Lebanese Vegan Feast menu offering a variety of colourful and tasty vegan dishes.  The menu will be available throughout January at all Comptoir Libanais restaurants for a very reasonable £12.95.  We started off by nibbling away at some tasty Marinated Damascus Olives and a Selection of Pickles whilst we took in the colourful, atmospheric decor which certainly makes you feel like you are somewhere exotic.  There are fez hats on the walls and some wonderful tiles, you can even buy a range of goods which have that Middle-Eastern vibe.

We moved onto the mezze selection of Red Pepper Hommos, a smooth chickpea puree with tahina and red peppers, virgin olive oil, served with pita bread and a Quinoa Tabbouleh, which is made from chopped parsley, quinoa, tomatoes, mint and onions with a lemon and olive oil dressing. The red pepper hummus was delicious and moreish, plus the flatbreads were perfect to mop it up. The quinoa tabbouleh was the perfect foil to it with its fresh, citrusy zing.

I really enjoyed the delicious Couscous Salad with grilled peppers, roasted squash and mixed nuts.  It was very tasty.  The other choice of main was the Aubergine Tagine which sadly wasn’t available on our visit due to supply problems.

For dessert there is a Coconut Mouhalabia and Mixed Dried Fruit.  It’s a traditional Lebanese milk pudding made using coconut milk and topped with toasted pistachios.  The coconut mouhalbia which was like a panacotta with a smooth texture and a lightly sweet flavour. We loved the sweet fruits on the top and the sweet honey syrup that was poured on top.

For liquid refreshment between us we tried a couple of beers: Almaza and Casablanca (Casablanca was the better of the two) and Leymona, which was a really tasty and thirst-quenching lemonade with flavours of lemon and lime.

The service was excellent: attentive and friendly.  The staff were knowledgeable about the food on the menu and we were very well looked after.

Wild and Game, the not for profit business that aims to turn the UK into a nation of game eaters, has launched a new range of high quality ready meals. The idea behind the new range is to take familiar favourites and make them into ready meals using game as the meat ingredient.  The hope is that people will realise how easy it is to enjoy game in the place of more widely used meats, such as beef and chicken. The ready meals include grouse with mushroom and peppercorn sauce; pheasant breasts with pancetta, mushroom and cider sauce; pheasant breasts Florentine; and pheasant tikka masala.

“These are dishes people would probably love to cook at home, but many people are not confident cooking with game, so we came up with this range of high quality ready meals to make life easier,” says Wild and Game’s co-founder Steven Frampton.

I tried out the Pheasant Tikka Masala.  It was a nice generous portion size, although it is advertised as for two people, and it actually provided a very hearty meal for one and if I’d been less hungry there might have been some leftovers.  Whilst the dish is made for you, this isn’t the sort of meal you can put in the microwave for a few minutes and then sit down to eat.  It needs 80-90 minutes and that needs to be in the oven. So that requires a bit of planning and forethought.  Also, you’ll need to provide rice or naan bread or whatever you fancy as an accompaniment yourself. That said, you will get a meal that is full of flavour and does taste like you have lovingly cooked it for several hours.  I think you could get away with serving this up at a dinner party as your own dish as long as you served up some rice with it. In fact, I’m tempted to do that as it would certainly cut down on the stress and my guests would be getting a very decent meal.

Now I’m a bit of a game fan, but I was surprised how well pheasant suited the subtle, yet distinctive flavours of tikka masala.  The pheasant added a richness and depth of flavour that you certainly don’t get with a blander meat like chicken.  I’d go as far as saying that pheasant is a much better bird to use with the dish and I’d certainly be happy to eat this dish again.