A Fine Time...

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Just a diary post tonight as I'm rather lethargic after Number One Son's thirty-second-birthday lunch at the Catch 22 Brasserie in Valley on Anglesey; having eaten rather too copiously, and far more than is my usual custom. But nevertheless, a fine repast at what is now my favourite eating house in the area. As I said in the mini-review I wrote in March this year, 'A Good Catch', I indeed tried the Black Sea Bream this time around, for my main. I opted for a squid starter yet again, but this time it was a Korean style, breaded and fried, and with oodles of flavours and a welcome punch of chilli heat that sharpened the palate nicely. 

The bream was cooked just behind the point, its cooking finishing on the plate - as it should - with the heat of the crab (? - my memory's hazy in the afterglow :-) cake and the base of an Nduja cream sauce, which slotted into the other flavours of the dish in a way which took me completely by surprise. A last morsel of bream had to be left, unfortunately, as I eat slowly, and the remaining bit had cooked past the point, and anyway, I was feeling quite full. A break to jangle and get another glass of the white Rioja that had gone so well with both the squid and the bream, followed by pudding, which I am famous for very seldom eating.

But 'Sion's Piña Colada' had me intrigued, with its talk of whipped lime yoghurt and pineapple, with toasted (or was it roasted?) coconut ice cream and some kind of caramel laced with the rum. Starting at the top with the whipped yoghurt and pineapple, then a layer of ice cream, and then the rum caramel waiting at the bottom of the cup, each layer getting colder as I went, just made me smile as I ate through it, and the payoff at the bottom was so very, very naughty. As I said before, this place is a treat, and the prices for a once in a while feast are not that onerous, when one considers the price of a poke of fish and chips from the chippie these days. Highly recommended, and to cap off a rather civilized and pleasurable occasion, two of our number picked up the tab for the lot as a birthday treat: diolch yn fawr, iawn, Elanor and Angie!

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