The Stable – pie and cider anyone?

We’ve recently made a couple of visits to The Stable – a cosy new joint in the ground floor units of the new Admiral building.

Started by Richard and Nikki Cooper as a single restaurant in Dorset, The Stable has grown to have a small chain of locations across the South which now includes Cardiff.

According to their blurb their original vision was to create a unique environment making food with local produce at decent prices. And lots of Cider.

So do they succeed?

You might have walked past the Stables without even noticing it, so dwarfed is it by the Admiral building that it is set in. However the missus is a sucker for twinkly candle-light and I’m a sucker for pies so it had all the pre-requisites to grab our attention by the curlies and we had made a mental note weeks ago to give it a try.

We have popped in a couple of times for a bite before going on to catch a movie because it’s very conveniently located for several city-centre cinemas.

First off they have a limited menu consisting of a variety of crowd pleasers made with some very interesting sounding taste combinations. Let’s step back and examine that sentence, shaaaaaall we…

A limited menu – it’s pies or pizza – so if that’s not your thing then (salad or ploughman’s aside) you’re pretty much out of luck. But hey – what’s not to like about pies or pizza?

Interesting taste combinations – herb roast potato, Perl Las blue cheese, roast onions and spinach pizza (The Blue Pearl) and Lamb, Rosemary, roast potato and honey pie (The Lamb Bam Boogie) for example – enough to make your mouth water just reading the menu.

As you might have guessed I’m a sucker for this type of food. I’m slowly working my way through the pie choices – so far I’ve had the ham hock, peas and mustard, and the afore-mentioned Lamb Bam Boogie. Both were excellent if a touch dry – maybe a little gravy-boat would be a good touch. The accompanying roast potato wedges were slightly overdone on the first visit but second time ’round they were perfect.

My other half went for the Billy the Kid pizza – goats cheese, mushrooms, spinach, caramelized onions and roast hazelnuts. We both agreed it was an honourable failure. Excellent ingredients and pizza base but maybe just a little too many flavours going on. Still – good enough that she’s ordered it on both visits so maybe we’re being a tad over-critical

If you’re a fan of ciders then your in for a treat as The Stable has a mahoosive selection

… And also some very good craft beers. I tried the Seafairer Pale Ale which I very much enjoyed.

And there’s an interesting wine selection –

The wife-ness went for a carafe of the Languedoc which was delicious.

Lastly a word about the ambiance. It’s all very casual and unpretentious. I assume partly due to a healthy number of visitors from Admiral the atmosphere was pleasingly buzzy.

And the lighting is just right – tons of twinkly candles that make the room feel intimate even though it’s quite a big open space. Perfect for a quiet meal for two or for a large group.

We’ll definitely be back – all in all a very enjoyable night out and highly recommended

Depot Winter Social

It’s dark, grim and persistently hammering down – it must be winter which means it must be time for the Depot’s Winter Social.

In dire need of cheering up we popped down there on Saturday evening to see what the £2 entry fee (free before 7:30pm) would get us

The place was pleasantly busy – enough to create an atmosphere but not so many that the food and drink queues were enormous. There was a great mix of people of all ages too.

The best thing about it was the chance to catch up with the Ffwrnes pizza boys

They drive their little pizza oven all over Wales in the back of Smokey-Pete the van delivering their superb wood-fired beauties to us undeserving rabble

Their pizzas are all made fresh with the best quality toppings on a sourdough base

These are my favorite pizzas bar none and at seven quid a pop they are excellent value too

Just look at those bad boys.

To finish off we decided to try the desserts from the folk at Science Cream

Their ice cream is made fresh to order and is quick frozen with liquid nitrogen giving an amazingly smooth and creamy texture

So good they even have the boy-wonder serving them.. Kapow Robin!

Our ice cream came sat on top of a creme-brulee.
My mouth is watering just remembering it. Delish.

All this accompanied by real ales and a real DJ playing a fab mix of retro and modern music.

If you’re stuck for something to do this weekend or you just have the winter-blues – get yourself down to the Depot Winter Social – I think you’ll love it

Chapter Oktoberfest

Popped down to Chapter tonight for a bit of Scran and a film (Everest – see separate post) and we stumbled into the annual Oktoberfest.

Tons of German biers on sale, schwarzbiers from Saxony, kölschs from Cologne, Bavarian weissbiers.

And curry wurst, giant schnitzel dogs and burgers.

We went for our usual Friday night pizza , margarita and Palma ham with mushrooms

Oh – and a side of sweet potato fries with mayo.
You won’t get a better pizza in Cardiff – stone baked, wood fired and delicious. One of the few places we go back to again and again (and again)

And free live music..

AND no eating allowed in the cinema! No crunching, slurping, chomping…

Chapter Arts – top place. Nip down for a bite or a pint or both – you won’t be sorry

Locke and Remedy

So this was a first, invited to a “soft opening” for a new venue in Cardiff called “Locke and Remedy“. What on earth I’ve done to deserve it apart from a few scratchy blog entries I have no idea but it was gratefully accepted none the less.
This is a new restaurant based in the old library building which is bang in the centre of Cardiff and is a pretty stunning venue both inside and out but for some reason had been a graveyard for the hopes of various business ventures over the past few years. Cardiff’s very own version of the Bermuda Triangle. 
We arrived fashionably late by about ten minutes in teeming rain and were warmly greeted at the door with a cocktail called a Welsh Princess – a delicious prosecco and aperol (no – me neither) based beverage which hit the spot nicely thank you very much.

At the behest of very persuasive mixologists (ok – they didn’t have to try toooo hard) we tried various other cocktails during the course of the evening including an Old Wives Tale (an exquisite citrus flavored gin and limoncello based potion) and a
Sailors Hydranger (a toffee and spiced rum libation which started promisingly but was cloying by the end of the glass)

The mainstays of the menu at “Locke and Remedy” are pizzas and burgers which may sound a bit basic but that’s definitely not the case here. The pizzas have some atypical but very well chosen flavor combinations and the burgers are hand-crafted with relishes such as American mustard and ketchup hand made in the restaurant.
In order for the guests to try a little of everything, pizzas prepared in-house and cooked in wood-fired oven were sliced and offered around the tables as pseudo-starters.

I loved the pizza’s perfectly crisp thin crusts and they had some interesting flavor combinations.  The salty mackerel on the mackerel and prawn went down surprisingly well for me but the missus is a traditionalist when it comes to pizza so she wasn’t overly keen. The spicy chicken and pepperoni had a delicious chili kick and the goats cheese and black olive pizza was a definite favorite. The mozzarella pizza had a lovely oregano flavor but my particular favorite was the palma ham and chorizo.

For mains we were offered a choice of burgers combined with a mix of fries (plain, cheese and sweet-potato)
Now I must admit I’m not normally a huge burger fan – too often the texture is poor and they’re an excuse for poor quality mince. So I’m happy the report that the glazed short rib burger I tried was pretty stunning, quite possibly the best I’ve ever had. It had more of a pressed steak texture the a mince and the american mustard relish gave it a pleasing dry spice kick. It was really (really) good.

The chicken burger was also good , moist tender breast in a batter with more than a hint of an upmarket “colonels secret recipe” spice going on.

For dessert, the chocolate cookies with vanilla ice cream were moist, gooey, malty and fab.

In the name of over-indulgence we tried a few more of the cocktails and eventually hit on our joint favorite which was the Margarita Rosa

So can “Locke and Remedy” escape the clutches of Cardiff’s Bermuda triangle?

On this showing I would give it a definite yes. Good food and drinks with imaginative flavor combinations, prepared and served with care and attention in wonderfully ambient surroundings

Highly recommended

Anatoni’s Pizzeria – Cyncoed

Decided to try another BYO tonight and had heard good things about a little pizza place in Heath called Anatoni’s. A quick phone call and we were in – which was lucky as the place turned out to be pretty busy.
My first impression was surprise that a little authentic Italian pizza place with a huge wood fired oven tucked away in a modern housing estate. And that after 15 years in Cardiff I had no idea this place was here.

My second impression was amazement that just opposite it there is also a (Knife and Fork Group) gastro-pub called The Discovery Inn. What the…. had we walked into an alternative reality? One day all new house builds  will be made this way. What was it about this tiny cul-de-sac that warranted two eateries that much larger connurbations would fall over themselves for either one of ( quick note to self – I must give The Discovery a try too).
We were seated in a lovely spot by the window where we could take in the ambience of the restaurant and also do some people watching as the night drew in outside.
Anatoni’s walks the fine line of adorable Italian atmosphere and fake Disneyland kitsch with the skill of the great funambulist Blondin crossing Niagara Falls. It’s all there, photos of Sophia Loren? Check. Photos of beautiful people on Italian scooters? Check. Opera and Italian folk songs playing on the hifi? Check. Checked table-cloth? Check. But it’s not laboured at all. You know there aren’t another ten of these scattered around with identical decor so it doesn’t feel forced. Rather it just feels like the owners are proud of their heritage and this is their shorthand for getting that across.  It’s very cosy and irresistible. You can’t not enjoy sitting in a candlelit Italian restaurant drinking your own choice of Italian red (a very modest £2.50 corkage) whilst listening to Jussi Bjorling belting out Verdi, alongside tacky versions of “The Godfather” and “Angels” (sung in Italian of course) and watching the dough being shoved into the biggest pizza oven this side of the Appian Way.

And so we come to the food (at last you say). I love a short menu – it shows confidence in the food and a kitchen that knows what it does well and sticks with it. Anatoni’s has an admirably short menu. A list of pizzas with various toppings sandwiched between a handful of starters and a choice of four desserts. You could also opt for spaghetti or lasagna but once you’ve had an eyefull of the pizzas coming out of that furnace there’s no turning back.

We started with two shared platters (for two) between the six of us

These came with excellent herby, salty garlic bread, palma ham, salami and a dressed salad with marinated sweet red peppers – a really good appetizer although it dawned on us that the bread was probably a mistake when we saw the pizzas.

After that we ordered a selection of pizzas between us including a “Salame e Caprino” (delicious – salami, unctuous goats cheese and sweet red peppers with added chillies), palma ham and rocket, Florentine (spinach and egg) and the Italian in the group even went totally off-piste and went for a custom build pizza which was noted down and served up without a murmur.
The pizzas all had that heat blasted charred crustiness that comes from a real 500 degree pizza oven and they were all pretty amazing.

We had to try the desserts though so some of the pizza was boxed up to be eaten for breakfast, dishes were promptly cleared away and tiramisu, ice cream and chocolate brownies dutifully ordered and served. The tiramisu was excellent – the perfect mix of sweet, dark cocoa and alcohol and (we were informed) it had been allowed to sit for a day to get the correct consistency. It was so good I ate it before remembering to take a photo. And all washed down with huge cups of Italian coffee. Fabulous.

I use a fitness app (Strava) that counts calories burned in pizza slices. After this wonderful night at Anatoni’s I’m going to need to cycle for a week to burn it off – was it worth it? Absolutely – highly recommended.