World Service

A business lunch on a Thursday.

Since they opened a few years back World Service has been a strong contender for my "Best Restaurant in Nottingham" nomination. In fact, they have won the Nottingham Restaurant of the Year award in 2003 and 2004 on a popular vote.

I'd certainly give them the "Best Lunch Venue" award, particularly in summer. The Zen garden with its towering golden robinia is beautifully done and provides an unexpectedly tranquil oasis so close to the traffic and fumes of Maid Marian Way. The restaurant itself makes remarkably stylish use of an otherwise dreary piece of 60's brutalism plonked squarely amidst the 17th and 18th century terraces of Castlegate. The interior is full of rich browns, mahogany and batik and a lot of oriental sculpture.

The decor reflects the food which is of the fusion school. I don't always approve of fusion cookery which seeks to blend the best of a diversity of food cultures but too often ends up in contrived nonesense like "Yorkshire pudding on a bed of Thai noodles with Mexican refried beans". But World Service has always been reliably above that sort of thing.

Fusion food was not much in evidence at our set lunch for three. The smoked salmon salad was beautiful to look at and came with some curiously fragrant and unidentifiable leaves. Due to the need to keep our business brains focussed with laser-like intensity on the matter at hand, we confined ourselves to a single beer each and I was not able to pay proper attention to my food - please excuse the vagueness of this review.

I went for the T-bone pork for mains which was superb, with a mustard mash and sweet dark brown sauce. The others went for the codling, in a white sauce with new potatoes and made approving noises. The portions were generous to a fault, considering that this was the £11.90 2-course set meal. In fact the portions compared very favorably with some of the dinners I have eaten recently.

Only one of us was game for dessert, a chocolate parfait with ice-cream. I'm sure it had a better name than that but I've forgotten it - I really ought to try and steal a menu in future. I sneaked a spoonful and it was the sort of thing that would have had my girlfriend doing an impression of Meg Ryan's fake orgasm in Katz's Deli from When Harry Met Sally.

Our meeting went on so long that it almost seemed worth carrying on and ordering dinner, but the staff were very patient and did not disturb us.

Excellent value and thoroughly reccommended.

Aquarium

Aquarium does not have a website

Years ago Aquarium was called Jesse's, after Jesse Boot, the founder of Boots the Chemists. Jesse Boot had his first pharmacy in this building at the age of 21 in 1860. The building was designed by the architect William Keating, who I recently discovered, was the first owner of my current house.

Jesse's was a relic by the time it closed, a throwback to the Dark Age of prawn cocktails and raffia-covered bottles of Portugese wine. The new owners painted everything blue, stuck a couple of bored-looking fish in an empty tank and opened as Aquarium.

I'm beginning to think that The Times - Eat Out for a Tenner deal is not such a good idea - some restaurants just don't seem to get it. Surely it is supposed to be a loss leader - what is the point of trying to scrape a few pence profit? If you're going to do it at all, then do it wholeheartedly and produce something that will bring the diners back to try the a-la-carte. It can be done, look at the Martins Arms.

I won't be going back to Aquarium. The portions were microscopic. The noisettes of lamb had been cooked until they were grey to the core. The vegetables were so miserly that a table of well-built young ladies next to us had to order about 6 extra portions between them to ward off starvation. The "brioche" dessert was laughable - a sliver of bread in a dismal puddle of cream. They should be ashamed of themselves.

On to more general matters. Voting is underway in the The Nottingham Restaurant Awards, visit the website to cast your vote. I also notice that if you do a Google search for "La Toque Beeston", my site now comes top of the results. Excellent! My power and influence grows...

Thai Orchid - Birmingham

The Thai Orchid does not have a website

OK, so Birmingham is not Nottingham but with the new Bullring, Selfridges (where they have a veuve clicquot bar and where you can buy real chocolate-covered ants and scorpions) and the Millenium Point centre, you might find yourself out on the town in Britain's second city.

Lunch at Cafe Icon in the Icon Gallery, was excellent - really authentic Tapas served by real authentic spanish waitresses. I don't think I've ever tried caperberries before and it's always good to discover something new.

The evening began at a subterranean bar called "Red" where a hen party was in progress and the gorgeous bride-to-be was on a mission to snog every man in the place - in which task she succeeded very easily. I can't say that this bar had much else to reccommend it, other than that we were undercharged for our round of drinks.

The Thai Orchid on Bennetts Hill was teeming with diners and I would imagine that it was a miracle that we found a table for 5 without a reservation at 8pm on a Saturday night. I'm not sure how long this place has been going but it's great to see a business at this point in it's life, when everything has fallen in to place and it runs like a well-oiled machine. The staff are happy and ethusiastic - welcoming you with the beautiful, traditional wai greeting of the Thai people - the hands clasped in an attitude of prayer. The portions are generous, with unstinting use of fresh thai ingredients, lemongrass, galingale and snowpeas. I even wanted to take a photograph of our main dishes, warming over candle heaters like offerings in a temple. The sea-bass was huge and succulent and the squid and green-lipped mussels were amongst the best I have eaten. We went for a selection of set "banquets" which, priced around the £20 a head level, was more than reasonable for the quantity and quality.

They must have used a lot of salt and MSG because we were all extremely thirsty as the staff wai-ed us out onto the street, but we'll forgive them that.

Nottingham's Pretty Orchid restaurant used to be like this but success went to their heads and the temptation to squeeze more profit from it proved irresitable. They cut the portions, dropped the fresh spices, upped the prices, stopped serving specials and most of the Thai staff drifted away to work elsewhere. I expect they still do well financially, but I hope this never happens to the Thai Orchid in Birmingham.

Bees Make Honey

Bees Make Honey does not have a website.

Bees Make Honey is a bizarre restaurant on the Alfreton Road, close to the deafening blues pub, The Running Horse. Sometimes, if you arrive without a reservation, the chef has to be fetched from the aforementioned pub in order to cook your dinner. The place resembles a kind of taverna, such as you might find in an off-the-beaten-track Greek fishing village - all that's missing is a couple of stray dogs, begging for scraps from the guests. This is "no frills" dining with a capital "N". They're unlicensed (take your own wine) and they don't take plastic (take your chequebook).

I've been to this restaurant on a number of occasions over the last 5 years and if I had to find a word with which to sum them up, that word would be "inconsistent". I remember eating my first Zarzuela (a mixed seafood entree) here and it was absolutely astonishing - I actually called the chef out of the kitchen to find out where he bought his tiger prawns and monkfish. Then again, I've had some absolute rubbish as well.

Tonight was sort of inbetween. We started with a grilled haloumi and artichoke salad and a king prawns with garlic butter. Will somebody please tell me what is the point of tinned artichokes? Artichokes have such a delicate flavour that it's hard to see how it might be improved by pickling them. My king prawns were good, but you only get three of them for £4.60 which was a bit disappointing.

I can only blame myself for the wine, a Chateau la Perriere Bordeaux purchased on what seemed like very advantageous terms from Majestic. It was horrid, even allowing for the fact that it was a bit too cold by the time we had walked to the restaurant. Alan Clarke used to say that you had to pay £100 minimum for a decent claret - I'm beginning to think that my minimum is about £6.49.

My main course was filet steak "hare & hounds" and it was perfectly cooked with just the right ammount of Dijon and glaze. The other dish, advertised as a "Rack of Lamb", more closely resembled "Two Lamb Chops" but was also done to perfection. This is the closest you will find to home cooking in a Nottingham restaurant - nothing fancy but good traditional dishes freshly prepared (you can see the chef at work in his open kitchen). The veg - which comes interesting (zucchini) and plentiful (everything else) - is also a high point.

We had no room for desserts and paid the £52 bill. We departed, leaving the half-full bottle of wine behind. Why did I have buy a dozen?