A Fine Time...

-

 

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!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more