Granada: Day 2

After quite some debate Sister and I managed to figure out most of the places that we had visited the previous evening. And, as a result of us being Golden, track down her hat, the loss of which had threatened to spoil the whole of her year.

Headwear restored we were off to the Alhambra. If only we'd had some opium this'd be proper Kubla Khan stuff, as it was it was merely mesmerising and sublime.

The closest bar to the Alhambra furnished with a fine breakfast at about 2pm (closest excluding the ones inside where I had enjoyed a couple of pre-breakfast stiffeners). Potato fried with egg, vegetables and Jamon, was as hearty and unpretentious as it sounds. Bang on.

Back into town and a little beer at Damas Queros allows to properly investigate the various sizes of beer recepticles on offer. In Granada a 'Cana' seemed to weigh in below half a pint, which can mean it's gone before any tapas arrives. Here we discover the more manly 'Tubo'- perfect at around 300ml. We also have mushrooms al alijo with bread. A small portion must have made a sizeable dent in an entire clove, but Sister and I are never knowingly out-garlicked and hence loved this one.

From there to one of the most ultra-trad bars in town: 'Los Diamantes.' Tiny, with almost no seating space and three-deep at the bar at any given time. Seemed to specialize in deep-fried stuff, both dishes we had could have done with some sauce.

Also on c. Navas we found Puerta del Carmen bar and two Equipo Navazos sherries by the glass; La Bota de Fino #18 and La Bota de Palo Cortado #21. They were like good sherry on steroids: with greater intensity, complexity, precision and delineation of flavours. Jamon carved at the bar was all that was needed with them.

On to c. Elvira, universally recommended as the place to go for El Tapeo. Unfortunately in the time between this advice being formed and our arrival most seemed to have become hairdressers.

Weird, but no matter because at the end we managed to find Al Sur de Granada a deli, shop and wine bar that I had been recommended and had every intention of going to right up to the point on the flight over when I forgot its name and address.

It must have 30 or so natural wines by the glass, including the entire Barranco Oscuro range. Highlights were Tres Uves, and a Chardonnay called 'Cardonnohay'. We returned to Al Sur a number of times throughout the three days to work through their list and soon came to realise that the wine really was the star attraction: each tapa was vertically identical and amounted to no more than a small bruschetta with cheese, blood sausage and some veg.

Maybe a good thing 'though- otherwise I may never have left.

Tapa of the Day: Champinones al Alijo

Spanish Airport Cheese and Serrano Sandwich

€5, Palma Airport

And so once again we found ourselves in just saddest position in space-time mankind has yet experienced: Palma Airport, on the way to Stansted.

And even yet this despair proves time and again powerless to destroy the ineffable wonder of the Spanish Airport Cheese Sandwich.

But I was drunk and in the mood for experimentation, and the conflagration of these factors led me to a twist on the theme: the Spanish Airport Cheese & Serrano Ham Sandwich. It's a Ronseal number containing nothing but cheese, ham and bread and none the worse for it. Don't fuck with the classics, nobody wants a Bowdlerised sandwich.

That slightly stale ciabatta-style bread is my madeline; Valencia Airport all those years ago, with the vagrants and their dogs and their ugly Catalan. The mastication required stretches this sandwich to full twenty minutes. €5 isn't cheap for a sandwich, but Sister's hotdog was over in five, so that's value right there.

The cheese is obviously what this sandwich is all about. Two thin slices of a tasty, salty, cheddar-type affair. We'll stop there- I'm not about to unweave this rainbow.

If only they'd left it. The ham is low-quality; stringy, hard and requiring the trimming of fat that makes the whole affair rather more of a trial than necessary. It also pushes us a little far over the salt-line which meant sister and I had to drink the best part of two litres of San Miguel with our meal. Though we did get free hats to congratulate us on this. Swings and roundabouts.

My quarrel with this sandwich is fairly petty. It's still very highy recommended: 18 points at least. Just a pity it always comes when it does.

Cherished, strengthened and fed, without the aid of joy.

Domaine Heresztyn Gervrey Chambertin Vielles Vignes 2005 v Trimbach Cuvee Frederic Emile Riesling 2004

c£40 and £30 respectively

Some exemplary poker playing and a small lottery win on Friday night meant that I awoke the next morning in the mood to buy some weaponry.

I will not pretend that my assault on the London International Dive Show was an 'under the radar' kind of operation in any way, but equally I am not the kind to fail a primary objective. The conflagration of these meant that I found myself a few hours later standing on the banks of the Thames in Rotherhithe staring at my Sister down the barrel of a shiny new speargun.

Still, as is so often the case, the solution to one problem created a new set of questions and obstacles. Most are better left unconsidered or unasked, but the one I did feel in a position to tackle was just what type of cork I was going to put on the end of it to prevent poking people in between bouts of pescacide.

Having inadvertently stumbled across the answer to the debate surrounding bottle closure (synthetic closures are not the match for cork in every conceivable application), it was clear that something quality, ultra-traditional and probably French was in order.

Up for consideration then were a bottle of 2004 Trimbach Cuvee Frederic Emile Riesling, and a 2005 Domaine Heresztyn Gervrey Chambertin Vielles Vignes.

Now red Burgundy is a wine that I’ve not had much luck with, it’s not that I don’t like it- more that I don’t tend to like the people that do, and have a pretty low tolerance for brett and the old and weird winemaking techniques that go on down there. Riesling on the other hand I am besotted with, and particularly this one, which I had at a restaurant recently and thought it one of the finest whites I have ever tasted. I thought I knew how this little head-to-head was going to pan out…

Domaine Heresztyn Gervrey Chambertin Vielles Vignes 2005 – No dirt on the nose whatsoever, full of red fruit and a little vegetal leafiness. The palate is sumptuous, summer fruits; strawberries and raspberries, perfect acid and light tannins. Drinking beautifully now, this wine is all the ‘S’s; supple, subtle, suave, sleek, sexy and seductive.

Trimbach Cuvee Frederic Emile Riesling 2004 – Really tight nose, minerals, wet stone and no rubber. This translates onto a palate that is equally inexpressive, lemon peel, lime and taught, focused minerality, but none of the expansive exotic stuff of the last bottle I had. Seems very young and closed right now, or maybe a possible hint of oxidation, either way I wouldn’t have put it at much above a tenner.

A very one-sided showdown means that my speargun is now the proud possessor of stylish new hat from the Bourgogne.

Bring on the barracuda.

Roka

37 Charlotte Street, London, £65 pp excluding wine.

The combination of St. Patrick's Day and TOD's Irish ancestry had apparently lent him power of veto when it came to my choice of headwear for the evening. I am a serious man, and do not take sartorial decisions lightly, so was not about to pander to any bandana related bigotry that he may have cultivated.

We were due at a restaurant called Roka, whose clientele possess more money than sense, class and style combined, which made my compadre worried he may know someone there, and worse... they would see him with me.

This unfortunate alignment led to a minor hissy fit and him catching a cab for home around twenty minutes before our booking.

Not one to let solitude come between me and the possibility of a cocktail, I made for the joint, scowled at the bouncer (really?) and ordered an unimpressive Mojito. Realising his early folly TOD gave ground on the bandana front, appeared sometime later, and we found our table.

Food was in his hands, as I had got to that stage in an evening when my Japanese becomes a little rusty. And what came, via some friendly, speedy, don't-bat-an-eyelid service was pretty damn spectacular. Light as air prawn tempura, belly tuna sushi so slickly unctuous that it required the waitress to assure TOD it wasn't Foie Gras, and a couple of dishes from their centrepiece Robata grill; some lovely lamb cutlets on the bone, and a bit of small bird, pigeon or partridge or some such.

It was all very, very good... far too good for the clientele. But what really got me was the consistency. It wasn't genius teetering on the brink of insanity, just a long, fine sustained brilliance. Which for restaurant with a grillion covers, almost as many chefs, and probably onto its third sitting of the evening by 10.30 is staggering.

Topping all this was a wine list that oozed an unfocused dandy-ish class. Leaning heavily on Rieslings, Gewurztraminers and other Franco-German joys, it spoke of someone who cared about food and wine and fun. Better still TOD had very generously offered to pay for the wine, though this meant I could feel the power/responsibility combo weighing down on me a little.

10 minutes in however I was no closer to divining any rhyme or reason, and I was close to a hissy fit of my own when I came across it: Trimbach Cuvee Frederic Emile 2004. £92 is not cheap, but the food deserved it, and good god it was good. Kerosene, and minerals, tight citrus acidity backing expansive tropical fruit. It had everything, and in sublime balance.

The best things in life are emphatically not free: we must all make concessions, be they monetary, moral, or personal.

Unless of course you're me.

Le Pont de la Tour

36D Shad Thames London, £230 for 3

Now that the dust has settled and we have time to compose our thoughts and reactions, things have got a lot more confusing. So I’ll go for objectivity, present the facts straight, and leave long and difficult conclusions to someone else.

TOD arrived by taxi at my house at ten in the morning. He had some pink champagne for my family, a waistcoat which he struggled to put on for some time before discarding along with his hat, and was wearing pyjamas. These last were specifically ‘to give the impression that I’ve been to bed.’ A valiant attempt at subterfuge but more composure, less erratic behaviour and fewer stories about the visions he had of himself cooking bacon, would have completed the illusion better.

We were due at Le Pont de la Tour at Midday, though by 11 this was beginning to look unlikely, especially as past heroics mean TOD is blacklisted at Addison Lee. But arrive we did, at some point, via a pub, a cab, a members-only gym and a walk through the rain along the South Bank of the Thames.

Le Pont de la Tour’s opening salvo was by some distance the finest I have encountered in this country. They gave us frutos secos with the Martinis. Proper ones too: mixed, and with both sizes of corn.

The food is of the type that comes littered with technicolour smears, jus and garnish. Sister’s aubergine tower starter she said tasted like pizza. Which is probably a compliment of sorts. My own ‘Foie Gras Parfait’ (a special concoction dreamed up originally to make anyone who orders it sound like a prat), tasted like liver pate, the toast like toast, the garnish wasn’t bringing much to the party, and I left the smear of orange.

For mains TOD and Sister had a piece of accessorised Salmon. The chef's deconstruction of the other ingredients means I can’t tell you much more, but the fish was cooked to perfection.

I decided on 'Daube de Boeuf' because I didn’t know what it was, and was delighted to discover it means a large slow-cooked shanky bit of cow. Another diner may not have been so happy with the situation, as the internet has since informed that, of course, that’s not what it means at all.

I had noticed early on that this is one of those places that, rather pretentiously, does not give you salt or pepper. I’m not too keen on this practice at the best of times, but here it really serves to highlight the complete lack of flavour of everything that we ate. The ability to braise a bit of beef to melting perfection, but make both it, and the accompanying jus, taste of paper and water respectively is a peculiar skill to cultivate.

There are various reasons that my memory of the events is a little hazy, but I’m pretty sure that being unable to tell what most ingredients were using the traditional means of seeing and tasting it is quite high on the list.

Still, the obsolescence of sensory perception probably wasn’t making much of a difference to TOD who I established at one point was neither thinking about nor hearing what he himself was saying:

TOD – “Is everything OK man? There seem to be a lot of lulls in the conversation”
CV – “What? No there aren’t.”
TOD – “Well then I must have been asleep. Did I fall asleep?”
CV – “What? No. And when were these lulls?”
TOD – “They’re happening all the time. You know… when you and your sister aren’t talking.”
CV – “You mean when you’re talking?”
TOD – “Yeah.”

Our unblemished palates may not have required a trio of superb sorbets (rasberry, apple and a third which Sister correctly identified as Ribena), but these silences clearly needed filling. Initially I was a little concerned as they looked exactly like most of the other stuff we had just been served, but accompanied by homemade Lengua de Gato biscuits (not as good as out of a packet), they were brilliant.

A jolly post-prandial game involving throwing sugar cubes at each other was frowned upon by service which occupied a hinterland between frosty and hostile. Apart from the sommelier, who was quite good, but this was just as well because it was she who was tasked with the job of explaining the most staggering fuck-up of the day…

The week before we dined, D&D restaurant chain (of which Le Pont de la Tour is part) had spent a fair amount of time merrily issuing press releases claiming that they were slashing the prices of 100 of their top wines by up to half.

Needless to say that upon entering the restaurant I had commandeered the list from TOD, to prevent any daft choices, and set about it excitedly. Repeated assurances that it did contain up-to-date prices may well have been true, what it did not contain were any of the quite large selection of wines in their Top 100 which I was thinking about ordering.

Eventually we settled on a bottle of IGT Toscana (I do not use the ‘S-term' because I'm not keen on coming across as a tosser, and this one was pretty ordinary anyway) which was subject to their usual 400% mark-up. Not cool.

The very beginning and very end of our meal were pretty excellent, but the best that could be said of the middle was that it was extremely inoffensive. Mediocrity is a terrible criticism, but here I feel they've got away pretty lightly as the another way of describing it would be bland, souless, cynical, cold, outdated, imprecise, stuck-up and absurd.

Macia Batle Blanc de Blancs 2009

World of Wines, £15

We had only known each other a few short hours but I was beginning to think Marjorie might be The One. She didn't say much, but then she didn't cost much either, and many would consider both of these attractive qualities.

I may have woken that morning in another woman's bed but by mid-afternoon Marjorie and I had already drunk ourselves silly in Camden, eaten salt beef in Stockwell, seen away a bottle of good-ish Marcillac and attempted to buy a house next to a nightclub. The initial outlay was diminutive, but keeping her in the manner to which she was rapidly becoming accustomed was clearly going to put a dent in the wallet.

All this fun had put me in an adventurous mood and so, mid-way through the first Snakebite of the day, I left her in the capable hands of my Northern Irish friend to embark on a speculative mission to the nearby Wines of the World.

A sparse and indistinct selection yielded a single diamond amongst the rough- Macia Batle's 2009 Blanc de Blancs. Comically overpriced at £15 (around 6 euro in Mallorca if I recall), but nevertheless an essential purchase.

Along with Jose L Ferrer, Macia Batle is one of the giants of Binissalem D.O. Although the winery in its present state has only existed since 1996, it has rapidly made a name for wines at all price points, and is leading the way amongst the larger producers on the island for Moll-dominated whites. I remember being slightly disappointed by the '07 Crianza last summer, but buoyed by the benign influence of my decollated friend I was confident the Blanc de Blancs would justify the vineyard’s reputation.

This proved sadly misplaced. The wine itself is lean and green, with raspy acidity and little sugar despite only getting to 12.5% alcohol. Flowers on the nose are overwhelmed by oak, which comes through on both the nose and palate and makes the Chardonnay all the more apparent. An interesting wine, not bad, but certainly unbalanced.

No grape in the world wouldn't ripen in Mallorca's reliably hot, dry summers. But after the feast of San Bernado on August 20th things start getting a little more unpredictable; torrential wind and apocalyptic rain is not unknown in the first few weeks of September. The harvest is a crapshoot.

The Binissalem Regulatory Council rates the 2009 vintage as 'Excellent', but I reckon something spooked Macia Batle into picking a little early... This Blanc de Blanc seems a tad under-ripe, and has a slight bitter finish. They've lumped on the oak to try to disguise this, but it ruins the aromatics of the Moll, leaving an astringent Chardonnay.

The wine stands as metaphor for our whirlwind romance. Zippy, unhinged, bittersweet and expensive, but ultimately lacking depth.

Maine Lobster at "The Club"

$???

I had begun the day in notable style, arriving back at 10 in the morning wearing a pirate hat and santa pants.

A few hours previously the Russian's younger sister had mistakenly stolen a suede coat, a couple of leather jackets and a car, but still proved no match for my fearsome negotiating talents...

She might have my trousers, but I have her hat.

I had evidently navigated a peculiar evening with some panache, but even so I was more than a little concerned by what the next one had in store. We were due to visit a fairly hardcore South Carolina private members club ("No Negroes please, unless you're staff" kind of thing) for Lobster Night. Of course it wasn't the crustaceans that concerned me, more the unfortunate possibility that I would get drunk, run amok and then somebody would shoot me.

My compadre, however, was going to be of little use in the melee, as he had seemed somewhat listless all day. At one point that morning he *may* have been sexually assaulted by a photographer (male), and later had definitely agreed to go on a hunting tour of Argentina. Even a takeaway pizza and some fine 1980s Burgundy had failed to put the fight back in him.

Stoically determined to ingratiate myself with the locals, I armed myself with a stiff-upper-lip, a tweed jacket, a number of fictional stories about shooting things, and a bunch of racial stereotypes and made for The Club.

America is a land of superlatives: Most, Best and Biggest are ways of life, but first among these is Most. This is evidenced clearly in the country's approach to eating lobster. For a start the American doesn't "catch" a lobster as you or I might, he "harvests" it. In the state of Maine alone he did this to over 35 million kilos of the buggers in 2009 with a street value approaching $330m. 10,000 kilos of this is on hand for the five day Maine Lobster Festival, where the 100,000 or so visitors can tuck into the $34 Triple Lobster Dinner. The Club's Lobster Night was no more than a drop in the metaphorical ocean. Still, it was going to be interesting to see how the American Lobster stacked up against our own smaller European variation.

We began with a salad so unpretentious that they hadn't even bothered to mix the ingredients, some iceberg lettuce, sliced cucumber and cherry tomatoes were arranged in clumps on a small plate.

Before the main event we enjoyed wide-ranging conversation, covering hunting, shooting, fishing, the global warming conspiracy and the shortcomings of foreigners. I recall being a little disappointed with the size of my lobster, which was served with a couple of potatoes, some winning corn-on-the-cob and a little pot of melted "butter" in which to dip the flesh, as is the custom in the colonies. I say "butter" because, although I left it untouched throughout, at no point did it solidify. Presumably the same mutant cows that make squeezy cheese out of a bottle.

Once accessorised with some mayonnaise the creature proved more than acceptable. It seemed slightly less sweet and full flavoured than a good Scots lobster, and the claw meat was a tad watery, but all-in-all I was pleasantly surprised. Not the best, nor the biggest, but they've got the other one to a T.

Notting Hill Brasserie

92 Kensington Park Road, London. £150 for two including wine

As I suspected he might do, TOD met my latest arrival in West London with some violent and suspicious behaviour.

The area's cartographers, some deaf people, and a young lady who happened to be standing where he wanted to be, all came under attack. But particular vehemence was reserved for a woman sitting next to us in a pub who was wearing a preposterous hat.

The lobotomy of TOD's social conscience has led to a game in which he enjoys loudly speculating to himself about the dress sense, moral integrity and relative unintelligence of those in his immediate vicinity. And this regrettably-hatted woman had the great misfortune last Saturday of entering it.

She and her companion left half their drinks.

Having known him for far too long than is good for me, I understand that this kind of behaviour is in fact his way of expressing quite how happy he is with his lot. However, at this point, I was rather regretting stoking this particular fire by bringing him a lovely postcard of an umbrella shop as a gift.

Several pints of bitter later, we pointed ourselves in the direction of the Notting Hill Brasserie, TOD having begun the first of the day's many efforts to leave his postcard in a pub.

Good Espresso Martinis at the bar were enhanced by conversation with a charming and knowledgeable barman concerning his trade, before we made our way to a grand and almost entirely empty dining room.

I was prepared for the intimidating feel of the place having earlier purchased a smart handmade umbrella which lent a considerable gravitas to my operation, but it was clear that my umbrella-less companion was a little non-u.

I went for the excellent value £15.50 set lunch, whilst TOD opted a la carte because he wanted a rich and satisfying lobster and scallop starter.

My own starter comprised five melty medallions of pretty well completely raw tuna perched on a salad-y thing, which added a satisfying crunchiness, but little in the way of flavour. Delicate and unpretentious.

After the starters were cleared the excellent barman returned to give TOD back his postcard, which I was now beginning to suspect he probably wasn't responsible enough to look after properly.

For mains TOD enjoyed a high-quality fillet steak, but this was effortlessly trumped by my own braised beef cheek, which oozed a rich umami savouriness.

Earlier TOD had cemented his burgeoning reputation as a selector of poor wine, by ordering a glass of pretty dilute and indistinct Argentinean Chardonnay as an aperitif. Luckily my own choice of a bottle of Dolcetto D'Alba was sound, the wine full of bright racy cherries, and just enough body and structure to stand up to the beef .

A very decent, if diminutive, cheese plate preceded coffees and the bill. It was a good and precisely cooked meal served with a welcome side portion of surreal created by the design of the place, and a staff to customer ratio that can't have been too shy of 10:1.

We made our way back to the Earl of Lonsdale via an unsuccessful attempt to buy a sword from a man with a pony-tail ("Probably not the sword for you mate." after I told him that I just wanted a sword to walk into a pub with).

At some point later TOD lost his postcard.

Electric House

191 Portobello Road, London £???

We decided upon lunch at the Electric on what was clearly the back-end of a very long and very successful run of excellent decision-making. But before eating it was obvious that we required a hat for the otherwise preposterously dressed CV - a man not entirely equipped to deal with the sartorial rigour demanded by West London. His hat's raisin of debt was not merely to complement my hat, but also to furnish him with an early Christmas present worthy of our longstanding friendship-cum-rivalry, and to secure his safe passage through the members-only doorway of the Electric.

Actually completing the purchase of a hat proved beyond our abilities at the time, although we did make it as far as having one gift-wrapped in All Saints (prior to beating the hastiest of retreats), and also incurred the wrath of a man whose top hats were revealed (by some pretty rigorous testing) to lack the structural integrity implied by their £40 price tag. The aforementioned merchant also accused CV of being drunk, or possibly of being a fully-fledged drunkard - clearly here was a man of great insight & integrity, and he was not to be trifled with.

But I digress, let me set the record straight about how we came to be in Electric House. The name that I used to secure access for CV & myself was not made up, as his insane ramblings below would suggest. The name we used was wilfully purloined, and - in the events that followed - probably also blackened.

Without the hat, gaining entry to Electric House was going require even more derring-do and subterfuge than we had accounted for. There was one brief moment at which the success of the entire venture hung in the balance: the otherwise charming young lady on the door felt compelled to remark upon the fact that I possess considerably shorter hair than the man whose photo popped up when I deployed my stolen name at the appropriate time.

A look of grave terror came over CV's face at the thought of what might become of two plucky adventurers caught in the act of deception, but luckily I was able to employ some quick thinking and skilfully deflected her subtle probing with an oblique reference to the excellence of my hat - we were on our way into the heart of the Forbidden Kingdom!

In reference to CV's review - I concur entirely on the food, and am even willing to defer to him on the wine in this case. I can shed no more light than my companion on the nature of the third dish, but I certainly enjoyed the chicken livers. Electric House, though, is one of those places that you do not really go to for the quality of the food. The atmosphere and the service are what bring in the crowds.

I don't think enough emphasis can be placed on the extent to which our waitress was both charming and long-suffering. Quite how long-suffering is a matter of debate, and one that can probably only be settled with recourse to close-circuit television, or possibly police reports. In any case, she was lovely, if not quite as disposed to furnish me with her number as I had hoped.

The Electric Brasserie downstairs offers more of the same, and more importantly has the advantage of being open to non-members. If you are not of a brazen disposition, and prefer your dining experiences to come sans outlandish acts of deception or forced entry, this may be the option for you.

The menu is near-identical to that in the club, the food every bit as consistent, and the service just as friendly. They are also blessed with the prettiest pair of hostesses that you are ever likely to come across. They certainly aren't knockout, Eastern-European-hooker beautiful like the hostesses at the superb Japanese restaurants that abound in Mayfair and Knightsbridge, but their general encouraging friendliness really does lift the mood in the inevitable 10 - 20 minute queue for a table.

All in all a successfully executed dining operation. The front of house staff may have gently prodded us in the direction of the door as a result of various aspects of my conduct, but they did so the most cordial manner possible, and I have no doubt we would be welcomed with open arms should we choose to venture there again.

Highly recommended.

TOD

Electric House

191 Portobello Road, London. £???

Disclaimer – At the very best the objectivity of this review should be doubted. What we ate, drank, and indeed whether we were actually there at all are all matters of some debate.

First of all it should be noted that Electric House is a private club, part of the Soho House Group, with sister venues in such retro-glamourous locations as New York and Berlin. This particular establishment was less salubriously located behind an unmarked door on Portobello Road, though within convenient reeling distance of a Sam Smith's pub.

In theory one should be a creative new-media type on an informal networking lunch and a paid-up member of the Group in order to gain entry, so what follows will probably be of little use to anybody bored enough to continue. However this is, in fact, no barrier to lunch, assuming you are a tenacious sort. Put on a good hat, storm in, hastily scribble a made up name and signature and run upstairs to the bar for some Espresso Martinis. Which is what we did.

The restaurant was curiously busy for a Friday afternoon, but TOD was quick to mark out territory by shouting loudly about an important call he was expecting and forcing a frankly scared-looking barman to look after his phone.

Once it had become apparent that we weren’t leaving, we were seated in good time having polished off our aperitifs at the bar.

The menu has a fair breadth of starters, mains and various bar snack type things, three of which we ordered; chicken livers on toast, fishcakes, and something else.

TOD also plumped for a bottle of Meursault, as part of an ongoing campaign to drag me through his inexplicable fondness for white Burgundy. There may have been some bread and/ or olives involved at some point before our charming and long-suffering waitress brought the food.

The livers were mouth-fillingly rich and rather tasty, the fishcakes unmistakably that and served with a white dip which I recall quite liking. It was doubtless Tartare, or some variant thereof, but in the interest of journalistic integrity all I can say with absolute certainty is that it was white.

I don’t imagine the third plate was much cop as neither of us have any recollection of it whatsoever above the fact that it existed. The wine was jadingly typical, 'though not, if I recall, subjected to a horrific mark-up.

We enjoyed coffees, and I whiled away pleasant half hour watching TOD on a concerted but predictably fruitless mission to extract our waitress' phone number. As he began to lapse in and out of consciousness it became clear that it was time to make a move. Unburdened by the credit card we had left at the bar, we made a fleet-footed escape.

If all this sounds a little damning-with-faint-praise, let me assure you that Electric House is actually a superlative eating experience. The food is good, the ambience buzzy and pleasant and the staff met behaviour that must have pushed the limits of credulity with an heroic stoicism.

*If anyone from Electric House ever happens to come across this review, please feel free to contact me with any revisions or clarifications you may have. Especially if you know what the third dish was.*