A few years ago I was kicked in the nuts by a dwarf. It was not an experience I wish to replicate - however lying on the floor of the pub in a small pool of burning testicular agony I realised that I had learnt a very valuable life lesson. Like anyone who has paid the price for assuming that because something is small that means it’s not sociopathically dangerous, I learnt that first impressions can be deceiving.
It seems I didn’t learn this lesson well enough and so it was that last week I got kicked in the nuts by another dwarf. Except in this case the dwarf was the food at the Furzton Lake Hotel and the first impression was that far from being small, they were big, retarded and guaranteed to fuck up my order, my food, my life and pretty much anything else I cared to involve them with. (Can I stretch a metaphor or what?)
As soon as I walked into this place I knew it was going to fuck up. For a start it was huge, vast. It could easily seat a couple of hundred people, It was also busy and the paucity of staff didn’t bode well for any sort of expediency of service. Secondly it was staggeringly cheap. £5 for an 80z steak is a bargain but they were also running a 2 for 1 deal in most dishes - so my steak and my girlfriend’s steak was going to come in at £2.50 a head. I briefly considered that maybe this was a mistake… maybe they were quoting the cost of a drawing of the aforementioned steak… or maybe a brief description in blank verse? It certainly seemed unlikely that they would be selling anything resembling meat for this price. If they were then I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat it.
Regardless of these obvious signals that I was about to indulge in an eating experience on par with medieval dental surgery, I bit the bullet and went up to the bar to order. It was here that my suspicions of the upcoming culinary apocalypse were confirmed. After standing there for about ten minutes one of the gibbering Neanderthals behind the bar finally stopped picking fleas off its fellow chimps back and flopped its drooping eyes over in my direction. For one moment, staring into those deep liquid pools I thought I detected a hint of intelligence, a spark of humanity… but then it was gone. The creature languidly shuffled towards me, knuckles dragging on the floor, and uttered a single guttural question
“Ug?”
Taking this as a prompt for my order I decided to forgo language and instead just pointed to the items and made eating gestures. In response it dumbly thumped a few buttons on the cash register and when this failed to elicit a response, started smashing it up with the leg-bone of a zebra one of its colleagues had been gnawing at. After a few moments, the commotion alerted the Alpha Male, a huge Silverback with hunched shoulders and a head the size of a basketball. After lambasting the younger female he finished smashing the register to bits before waving me away.
By this point I knew that was the last I would hear about my money, order or anything resembling food again.
And then the dwarf kicked me in the nuts.
Against all odds, against all hope, against all rational thought and logic the Furzton Lake Hotel came through. Didn’t just come through but actually exceeded not only my expectations (which were damn low by this point) but forced me to re-evaluate my expectations of pub food from then on.
Seriously, they knocked it out of the park. I order my steak blue. I do this mainly so I can complain about it being over-cooked. My girlfriend ordered hers blue too, usually because she can guarantee it will be medium rare, how she likes it.
My girlfriend couldn’t eat the steak at the Furzton Lake Hotel because it was a genuine blue steak. I mean an actual honest-to-goodness cut-off-a-cow-waved-at-a-radiator-and-shoved-on-the-plate blue steak. Given the experience so far I would be liable to believe this might actually be due to the cook not knowing what a steak was, let alone how to cook it but then they made the same mistake with mine so I can only assume it was deliberate.
Not only that but it was actually a good blue steak. You can’t serve a shit steak blue - the meat is too tough, the taste all wrong - you need a good cut of meat to eat it like this. Usually the blue steaks I have managed to order have been tough and/or tasted of silage. In comparison, this was a pretty fucking amazing steak. Melt in your mouth tender, dark, rich, deep meaty flavour, accompanied by hot crispy golden chips that were freshly cooked in something that may even have been actual sunflower oil.
I was amazed.
Look, here’s the thing. I simply cannot recommend the Furzton Lake Hotel, because I simply cannot believe that this wasn’t a fluke. Everything about the place screams fuck-up. I have absolutely no idea how they did it, and I cannot believe they will ever replicate the situation again. I can only assume that maybe another restaurant took pity on me and sent their food over. There is no way in a billion years my girlfriend and I ate two great steaks for £2.50 a head, served fresh, fast and perfectly cooked by a huge unmanageably large chain hotel run by inbred semi-sentient retards. It didn’t happen. I dreamt it. Feel free to dream it too, but don’t blame me if it turns out to be a nightmare.
One Line Review:
Excellent and incredibly cheap pub grub produced by God-only-knows-what God-only-knows-how.
Friday 10 October 2008
Thursday 2 October 2008
ORTEGA, Central Milton Keynes
Sat under the new apartment complex in the far corner of the Theatre District between Waitrose and TGI’s sits Ortega. It’s dark, grubby looking, gaudily decorated with a kitsch mix of posters depicting flamboyant toreros and adverts for San Miguel and rounded off with the obligatory wicker carafes and a giant papier mache bull head. The only thing lacking for that full authentic Spanish bar is an illuminated tin foil picture of Santa Maria and an ancient foul-smelling snaggle-toothed alcoholic goat herder sitting in the corner eating stale cheese and glaring at you through a haze of cheap cigar smoke… no... wait a sec... there’s one.
In short, this is about as close to an authentic Spanish Tapas Bar as you’re going to get 3,000 miles from Alicante. Actually that’s a lie. Actual Tapas Bars are far grubbier and contain a greater propensity for Formica and plastic deckchairs, but this is the Tapas Bar done the way you’d rather remember it.
It’s Spanish. It’s run by Spaniards. It usually has Spaniards eating in it. Really that’s all you need to know. The food... wine... surly waiting staff... service... all authentic, which might be a bad thing if you don’t enjoy waiting for 40 minutes for a bowl of cold meatballs swimming in oil served by a scowling Catholic - but for my money that’s exactly what I want from a Tapas Bar.
The menu is unpretentious and noteworthy more for what it omits than what it contains. For example you’ll find your olives, anchovies, meatballs, sausages, gambas, calamari (although in this instance they’re actually chiperones), but no sardines, no sepia, no mussels, no pescaditos. This makes sense. Sure, they could probably provide them - like many of the other Tapas Bars I’ve seen spring up around the Midlands - but what’s the point? We’re about as far from the sea as you can get. This is an inland Tapas Bar and it’s acting like one. Good for them.
Having said that, it would have been nice to see a greater variety of inland cookery. Sure there’s chicken and beans and peppers, but how about some rabbit? Or lamb? One of the great things about rustic Spanish cookery is their ability to turn cheap ingredients into staggeringly Moorish (sic) broths and roasts, rich game stews steeped in garlic and grilled peppers swimming in dark smoky paprika and red wine… then again, this is a Tapas Bar, not restaurant. I guess I can forgive them from omitting Thumper from the menu.
That said, what you get is about as close to Spanish Tapas as I’ve tasted outside Spain. And how you feel about that is really dependent on how you feel about Spanish food. Tapas are little more than bar snacks. We eat peanuts and crisps, they eat meatballs and bread. Portions are small, simple, and best enjoyed one at a time over a languid three-hour lunch and a couple of bottles of Rioja. Or four. Sit, talk, eat, drink. If you go in expecting a sit-down meal you will be disappointed. Sure, you can do it like that - I could personally eat a bucket of their calamaris in a sitting - but it’s not what the food's designed for. Sit down. Order a beer. Some anchovies and bread. Eat, chat, drink, let it settle. Still hungry? Order a couple more dishes. It’s Sunday, you’ve got nowhere to be, take your time.
Of course, we’re not good at that. We never have been. The concept that Lunch is an annoyance sandwiched between the football and the afternoon movie is hard wired into our system - a chore to be eaten as quickly as possible, endured and best forgotten as a passing annoyance between beers. This is not what Tapas were designed for. They’re a complement to the company, the wine, and the time shared. They’re something to nibble on while you watch the football over a couple of bottles of San Miguel (which they serve, btw). And Ortega does the best I’ve come across outside Spain.
Plump olives; soft bread; rich porky meatballs in a deep red paprika and tomato sauce; crunchy chiperones served with a wedge of lemon; warm patatas bravas; crunchy roasted little potatoes smothered in tomato; prawns swimming between crispy slices of garlic submerged in a litre of fresh olive oil. I love this stuff and Ortega's the first place in the UK I’ve found that actually gets it right. I could eat it all day, and the good news is that’s exactly what it was designed for.
In Brief:
Expect to pay £5 approx per Tapas. Portions are small by lunch standards but remember these are bar snacks (meatballs consists of three fairly large meatballs and nothing else). Order plenty of bread and aioli (unfortunately not free) and take your time. There is no need to order everything at once. Wash down with the house Rioja (£7) or a few bottles of San Miguel (£2). Don’t order the paella.
One Line Review:
Good Authentic Spanish Tapas served in a good Authentic Spanish Tapas Bar with all the connotations that denotes.
In short, this is about as close to an authentic Spanish Tapas Bar as you’re going to get 3,000 miles from Alicante. Actually that’s a lie. Actual Tapas Bars are far grubbier and contain a greater propensity for Formica and plastic deckchairs, but this is the Tapas Bar done the way you’d rather remember it.
It’s Spanish. It’s run by Spaniards. It usually has Spaniards eating in it. Really that’s all you need to know. The food... wine... surly waiting staff... service... all authentic, which might be a bad thing if you don’t enjoy waiting for 40 minutes for a bowl of cold meatballs swimming in oil served by a scowling Catholic - but for my money that’s exactly what I want from a Tapas Bar.
The menu is unpretentious and noteworthy more for what it omits than what it contains. For example you’ll find your olives, anchovies, meatballs, sausages, gambas, calamari (although in this instance they’re actually chiperones), but no sardines, no sepia, no mussels, no pescaditos. This makes sense. Sure, they could probably provide them - like many of the other Tapas Bars I’ve seen spring up around the Midlands - but what’s the point? We’re about as far from the sea as you can get. This is an inland Tapas Bar and it’s acting like one. Good for them.
Having said that, it would have been nice to see a greater variety of inland cookery. Sure there’s chicken and beans and peppers, but how about some rabbit? Or lamb? One of the great things about rustic Spanish cookery is their ability to turn cheap ingredients into staggeringly Moorish (sic) broths and roasts, rich game stews steeped in garlic and grilled peppers swimming in dark smoky paprika and red wine… then again, this is a Tapas Bar, not restaurant. I guess I can forgive them from omitting Thumper from the menu.
That said, what you get is about as close to Spanish Tapas as I’ve tasted outside Spain. And how you feel about that is really dependent on how you feel about Spanish food. Tapas are little more than bar snacks. We eat peanuts and crisps, they eat meatballs and bread. Portions are small, simple, and best enjoyed one at a time over a languid three-hour lunch and a couple of bottles of Rioja. Or four. Sit, talk, eat, drink. If you go in expecting a sit-down meal you will be disappointed. Sure, you can do it like that - I could personally eat a bucket of their calamaris in a sitting - but it’s not what the food's designed for. Sit down. Order a beer. Some anchovies and bread. Eat, chat, drink, let it settle. Still hungry? Order a couple more dishes. It’s Sunday, you’ve got nowhere to be, take your time.
Of course, we’re not good at that. We never have been. The concept that Lunch is an annoyance sandwiched between the football and the afternoon movie is hard wired into our system - a chore to be eaten as quickly as possible, endured and best forgotten as a passing annoyance between beers. This is not what Tapas were designed for. They’re a complement to the company, the wine, and the time shared. They’re something to nibble on while you watch the football over a couple of bottles of San Miguel (which they serve, btw). And Ortega does the best I’ve come across outside Spain.
Plump olives; soft bread; rich porky meatballs in a deep red paprika and tomato sauce; crunchy chiperones served with a wedge of lemon; warm patatas bravas; crunchy roasted little potatoes smothered in tomato; prawns swimming between crispy slices of garlic submerged in a litre of fresh olive oil. I love this stuff and Ortega's the first place in the UK I’ve found that actually gets it right. I could eat it all day, and the good news is that’s exactly what it was designed for.
In Brief:
Expect to pay £5 approx per Tapas. Portions are small by lunch standards but remember these are bar snacks (meatballs consists of three fairly large meatballs and nothing else). Order plenty of bread and aioli (unfortunately not free) and take your time. There is no need to order everything at once. Wash down with the house Rioja (£7) or a few bottles of San Miguel (£2). Don’t order the paella.
One Line Review:
Good Authentic Spanish Tapas served in a good Authentic Spanish Tapas Bar with all the connotations that denotes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)