12 Apostoli, Verona

I feel sorry for people who go on holiday for reasons other than eating and drinking. What a pain it must be, worrying about what the weather's doing or how busy the pool is or how much equipment to haul down the beach in 35 degrees celcius, when the rest of us can travel in the bargainous off-seasons and be untroubled by throngs of tourists as we hop from bar to restaurant to bar.

So if you have no interest in the beach, and would rather sell a kidney than fight through hordes of sweaty holidaymakers on the hottest days of the year, I can thoroughly recommend Northern Italy in winter. Thanks to a combination of still-fierce Covid restrictions (you need to wear a mask to even walk down the street in Veneto, which is a bit of an irritation even if you're sympathetic with the general thrust of the thinking behind it) and the usual seasonal drop in footfall, the streets of Verona were pleasingly tranquil, and its bars and restaurants, though largely open and operating normal hours, comfortably rather than overly populated.

There was a special kind of privilege, then, being two out of a total of four diners booked into 12 Apostoli on a cold Tuesday night in February. Knowing an entire Michelin-starred kitchen brigade and front of house would be prepping, cooking and serving for just two tables all evening brought with it a kind of extra responsibility as a diner. All these people, dedicated to making your evening special, coming into work knowing they'd not turn a profit that evening but deciding to do it anyway, it was all rather humbling.

I'll forgive them, then, the slightly wince-inducing decision to call their spread of exquisite appetisers "Snack Instagrammabili". They were lovely things, all of them, from the fluffly cheese croquette that brought to mind a posh Cheeto, to the meaty, umami-rich Cantabrian sardine on toast and the dainty little bowl of onion consommé, and the suggestion they'd been put together just to look good on social media did them, nor the food, any favours. Having said that, here I am taking photos of them and sharing them on social media so I suppose I'm in no position to moan.

An example of how Japanese techniques are quietly influencing many fine dining menus all across the globe, this gorgeous bowl of "chawanmushi" (savoury custard) topped with smoked fish and salmon roe, ate every bit as well as it looked. It was so good, in fact, that we probably need to find a better way of describing fish custard to people, because if you're put off by the name you really are missing out.

Fried skate fritter was one of the first actual courses on the tasting menu, daintily done and with a good meaty filling of fresh fish, served with something they called "herring mayonnaise". It's easy to be skeptical about pushing too many different fish elements into the same dish, but this worked brilliantly, the mayonnaise just lifted by a subtle spritz of the sea.

In the next dish, a jerusalem artichoke foam - ethereally light with an earthy, rounded flavour - covered a few select cubes of cotechino, a large, loose-textured sausage that requires boiling for several hours. To be completely honest there was something about the lack of variety in the textures here that threw me somewhat, despite the flavours and seasoning being spot-on, but my dining companion thought this dish was wonderful so there's a second opinion for you.

As you might have hoped for a fine dining restaurant in the north of Italy - I certainly bloody did - the bread course was absolutely stunning. Served alongside literally faultless sourdough, the kind of thing you worry about filling up on but then do anyway because it's so irresistable, was a fiery olive oil of clearly exceptional quality (exclusively served at this restaurant, we were told), some super whipped butter and - my favourite - "salsa verde", an entirely unseasoned (and all the more beguiling for it) blend of herbs and vegetables, dark green and intensely vegetal. This bread course is a reason to visit 12 Apostoli by itself.

I have been served lobster and licorice before - in a restaurant on lake Como in fact - so clearly it's a bit of a fine-dining speciality of the area. But whereas previously the combination was bewildering and jarring and faintly disgusting (and far, far more expensive, but that's Como for you), here the licorice just subtly lifted the seafood flavours and didn't distract from the generous chunks of fresh lobster. I should point out, though, that the risotto rice was undercooked and crunchy, which isn't really a great look for an Italian restaurant at any level never mind one with a reputation such as 12 Apostoli's.

"Acqua, farina e salsa segreta" probably sounds better in the native Italian than "Water, flour and secret sauce" but turned out to be a very enjoyable arrangement of braised snails, puntarelle hearts and fusilli with "vizcaina" - a Spanish style sauce with chillies and tomato. Maintaining a strictly seasonal menu in the depths of winter can be a challenge for some kitchens, but making use of unusual (to me at least) elements like snail help keep the interest levels up even when the variety of ingredients is curtailed.

I love sweetbreads even when less carefully cooked, but here, accompanied by an intense beetroot purée and a glossy, richly truffle-y Perigord jus, they were given the opportunity to absolutely shine. The offal itself, golden brown and crisp on the outside, bouncy and moist within, was glorious of course, but equally worth the price of admission was that jus, a masterclass in classical technique and exactly the kind of thing you go to places like this (and pay prices like this) to enjoy.

Dessert was an attractive modernist arrangement of candied pineapple cubes, saffron ice cream and shards of "marron glacé" (candied chestnuts) which by sheer coincidence that very morning I'd been watching people on Veneto television collect from the forest floor as part of a local news segment. They looked delicious simply roasted and eaten there and then, but in 12 Apostoli, given the haute cuisine treatment, they added a lovely seasonal toasty texture to the final course.

Final, that is, apart these pretty petit fours, which included a chocolate truffle and soft passionfruit meringue, all as attractive and intelligent and exact as most of what had come before. Not wanting the evening to end too quickly (though I imagine the staff had their eye on a rare early night, not that they were unprofessional enough to show it) we ended the meal with a glass of distillato - the generic name borne of the fact grappa must be made to a very specific method, and this backyard potion was a bit too under the radar for that. Great stuff though, and sent us back off into the chilly Verona streets with an even warmer glow than we had already.

It should be of no surprise that ingredients of this quality, cooking of such technical skill (risotto aside), and all the other trimmings and frills of world-class restaurant dining, don't come cheap. But really, £200/head (the total was €475 for two) including plenty of wine is pretty much the dead centre of what you should be prepared to pay for this kind of thing, across most of the European continent at least, and we had absolutely no complaints on that front at all. It's a simple transaction - you get what you pay for.

And what we got, in the end, was an effortlessly enjoyable evening in probably the best restaurant in town, and a further shining example of the versatility and generosity of Italian cuisine. For further examples from a part of the world that boasts a different delightful speciality every ten minutes' drive in any direction, watch this space, but it's no great spoiler to say that I didn't have a single bad, or even unmemorable, meal in my entire 7 day stay. And that, my friends, is what good holidays are made of. Who on earth needs beaches?

8/10

Ostuni, Queen's Park

Some of you may remember (or in fact may still be using, despite TfL's lawyers' best efforts) my restaurant tube map, which replaced the station names with my pick of the dining options within walking distance of that stop. I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that I didn't actually visit every restaurant before making the decision to include it - I've neither the time, the money or the capacity for really desperately shit restaurants (I'm looking at you, Docklands Light Railway) to do that - but instead, where I hadn't been in person, made a sort of best-guess choice based on a mixture of Urbanspoon/SquareMeal score, blog posts and national critic reviews.

Most of the time it seems to have worked. Restaurants that I've visited since the decision to include them on the map have usually if not been brilliant then at least been serviceably good - Diwana Bhel Poori (Euston), for example is a friendly, and very cheap, option for South Indian food, and Atari-Ya (South Hampstead) does pretty decent sushi. But while it's nice not to have to swap out a particular recommendation after a visit, (good) places I've actually been to will always take precedent over (good) places I haven't. And so, with deep apologies to the Salusbury pub, who have done absolutely nothing to warrant losing their position, we have a brand new Queen's Park - Puglian restaurant Ostuni.

The meal started with a selection of cheese and charcuterie, all very good. The caciocavallo and caciotta fresca cheeses were simple in style but had a nice fresh tang, and an blob of fresh mozzarella was almost burrata-like in its creaminess.

Capocollo and salami from Martina Franca were extremely impressive as well, blushed bright pink, wonderfully moist and perfectly seasoned. I usually enjoy even pretty mediocre salami, so you can imagine how quickly I managed to polish off these beauties (very).

Fritto misto (mixed fried seafood) suffered mainly in comparison to the quite honestly faultless version served at Polpo Covent Garden, but it still wasn't too bad - the batter could have done with being a bit crispier, and it was a pretty measly portion, but it was still fresh and tasty.

The main event (the Puglian mixed grill - sorry for the useless photo, completely forgot to snap it when it was all intact) was much better. The sausage had a LOT of fennel seeds in, and I preferred the bombette classica (sort of pork and cheese balls) to the deep-fried, breadcrumbed bombette saporita, the latter of which being rather greasy, but it all had bags of flavour and some fegatino (calves liver, pancetta and parsley) were genuinely excellent - not a hint of the dryness that grilled liver sometimes has. An accompanying acquasale salad was lovely too, containing bits of baked bread like a sort of mini Tuscan panzanella (though don't let the fiercely regional Ostuni hear you calling it that).

Good, sometimes great, food, then, that doesn't cost the earth. Why only 7/10? One reason only - service. Halfway through our meal we noticed some live lobsters being brought to a table near us for inspection, and yet we didn't see anything involving lobster on the menu. It turned out these were a "special" that our waiter neglected to tell us about, quite annoying considering we would have (cost permitting) considered ordering it. And although it started sprightly enough, as the place filled up it got increasingly impossible to attract anyone's attention; we never got to see the dessert menu and the process of ordering the bill was painfully longwinded.

In a strange way, though, the service, combined with the specifically-regional food and the endearing Mediterranean holiday décor, only served to make the experience at Ostuni seem all that more authentic. While the waits were annoying at the time, my memories of the meal are largely positive, and so it's still a very easy restaurant to recommend. So apologies again, the Salusbury, but maybe I'll visit you one day and you can have your spot back. Until then, welcome to Queens Park, Ostuni. And to everyone else, watch this space for the new non-copyrighted version of the map (coming soon)...

7/10

Cheese of the Month - Taleggio "La Baita"

Over the past few months I had found myself buying the same three or four cheeses on every single journey to the cheese shop. There's nothing wrong with that I suppose, they're good cheeses, together they make a good, varied cheeseboard, and I'm never disappointed. They are, in case you're wondering, Comté, Valencay goat's, Stinking Bishop and Roquefort - from blue to pungent, soft to firm, cow's to goat's, all bases covered. A good, solid cheeseboard. Something for everyone. But this week I thought it was time to bring a new contender into rotation, and so substituting out the Stinking Bishop (which to be fair only ever I was really crazy about and always seemed to be the one with the most left after guests had gone) I settled on a Taleggio called La Baita.

Most information about this cheese on the internet appears to be in Italian, so you have Google Translate to thank (and possibly blame) for the following. It's DOP designated, which if you trust the Italian government means it's been through a "scrupulous quality process that assesses thoroughly the quality", or if you don't means precisely nothing. It's made from pasturised cow's milk, which means it will last longer in the fridge but not have that extra layer of fresh farmy complexity that marks out the best soft cheeses. And it comes from a breathtakingly picturesque part of Lombardy called the Taleggio Valley, which has been mapped by Google Streeview if you want some serious landscape envy.

And it tastes really lovely. Once you peel off the annoying bits of paper you can appreciate the crumbly salty crust, covering a thin layer of almost liquid flesh just beneath. The main part of the cheese is firm enough to give bite but not soft enough to run, and has an interesting sweet and salty flavour with just the right level of pungent aroma. The layer of liquid beneath the crust apparently means that the cheese is correctly matured, and so it's all the more impressive that the main part of the flesh remained nicely firm - it's a well-made cheese, in other words, with all textures, flavours and aromas nicely balanced. I enjoyed it very much, almost enough for it to earn a permanent place on my cheeseboard. That is, until the next new favourite soft cheese comes along. Call me fickle, or call me open-minded.

8/10

Bottega Prelibato, Shoreditch

Another month, and another exclusive for Cheese and Biscuits. Stella Dore is a brand-new (barely two weeks old) Italian deli-cum-Trattoria just off Charlotte Street in trendy Shoreditch, and by the looks of a quick Google, chances are you read about it here first. I'm painfully aware I'm breaking one of my own rules about not visiting restaurants until they've had time to "bed-in" properly, but I'm going to bring this place to your attention because I think it has the potential to be rather good.

Despite the scary-looking metal grille over one of the windows (nothing to do with them apparently), the vibe inside Stella Dore is "Naples meets Shoreditch", with attractive bread and salami displays along one wall coupled with a loungey chillout zone downstairs and Bob Dylan on the stereo. They don't have a licence - yet - but it's BYO and you're about ten steps away from the best wine shop in town (the peerless City Beverage Company) so there's no excuse for not picking up a nice bottle of Sangiovese on your way there.


In true Trattoria style, we weren't shown a menu. Instead, the owner reeled off from memory a selection of antipasti and cold meats, and a selection of one or two pasta dishes. The cold meats arrived first alongside some salty Pecorino and some other smoked cheeses containing pieces of fruit (something I normally hate) and chilli. Most of the cheeses were fine - the chilli perked up what would otherwise have been a rather unremarkable product, and the Pecorino was tasty if a little on the cold side. The meats were excellent however - the Parma ham in particular was aged very well with lovely slightly crusty bits at the edges, and the salamis were as gooey and flavoursome as you could hope for. I still could have done without the fruity cheese though, and the house breads - bought-in, presumably - were slightly stale and nothing special.


A second cold antipasti of miniature stuffed red peppers and artichoke hearts was delicious. Again, how much input Stella Dore had into this dish was debatable, but even so, there is a certain skill in sourcing good prepared pickles (God knows how many kebab shops get it wrong) so some marks for this.


The real mark of an Italian kitchen is in the pasta, and I was delighted to learn that Stella Dore make all their pasta in-house. Two dishes of Fettucini, one with homemade pesto and one with tomato and Italian sausage, were very good - perhaps if not quite up to the standard of those we had in Italy or the Donna Margherita then at least better than anything you would expect to have anywhere else in London. The pesto had nice big flecks of fresh basil and was silky and rich rather than oily (as it should be), and the tomato pasta was creamy and had a good colour to it from the imported Italian tomatoes.


Desserts were so-so. A carrot cake had been left around too long and gone slightly stale, although the flavour otherwise wasn't bad. An apple tart was a bit flaccid and stodgy but was served with a nice cinnamon jam which the front of house were very keen to get us to try. In fact the service from the manager/owner was genial and attentive, but was rather mixed from other members of staff. Still, at two weeks old it's probably a bit too early to be picking holes - they're probably still learning where the glasses are kept.


As a footnote, and a credit to the manager, our lunch ended with a surprise complimentary dish of roasted lamb with a kind of homemade chips. We had arrived too early to have this as a main course option but he'd brought it out at the end just so we could try it - and very good it was too, the lamb being moist and juicy and seasoned well with rosemary. The chips were I think roasted or baked rather than fried, but depending on how these were sold to me (don't call them chips, basically) then I wouldn't be too disappointed.


All in all, Stella Dore is a solid, reasonably authentic Italian eatery which is gamely trying to serve proper food in a hardly favourable economic climate, and in competition with a thousand mediocre high-street "Mamma Mia"s the city over. We had a great deal of food for a little under £15 a head (not even counting the complimentary lamb) and where it mattered it was very tasty. It is a honest, affordable little place and deserves to do very well. Whether it will or not, these days, is impossible to know.

7/10



EDIT: Following some very welcome correspondence from both the Stella Dore gallery and the (completely unrelated) new Trattoria next door, I have updated the name of the venue. Apologies to Bottega Prelibato, and thanks for the correction!

Donna Margherita, Battersea - Revisited!

One of the drawbacks of the food blog format - along, to be fair, with any newspaper or magazine restaurant review - is that your public opinion of a restaurant is made once and preserved forever. I have made a conscious decision to never write about the same place twice, the idea being that however lucky or unlucky or misinformed I was on the first visit, a restaurant would only usually have one chance to impress the average punter and a first visit is as close as I'm going to get to a level playing field. That, and because I pay for all the meals out of my own pocket, I just don't have the budget to work my way around the entire menu before forming an opinion.

Therefore, it's not surprising that on occasion I do happen across either a mediocre restaurant that for whatever reason serves an accidental good meal the night of my visit, or of course an otherwise reliably good restaurant that has an off night. What is strange is that looking back over the last two years' worth of reviews how few there are whose scores, with the benefit of hindsight and repeat visits, I would change. Maybe an extra point added or docked here and there - I was a bit mean to Can Roca perhaps, and Laxeiro has disappointed on repeat visits - but overall my system - completely by accident you understand - kind of works. However, there is one review in particular that I can't allow to stay on my conscience. I'm not too big to admit that, back in November of 2007, I was completely wrong about Donna Margherita in Battersea.

It was on viewing the pictures I took of the pizzas we were served on that night that the owner, Gabriele Vitale, knew something was wrong. "Those big black bubbles of burned pizza base," he explained after he invited me back for a second try last week, "they are wrong. There was something wrong with the dough that night - I think it hadn't risen properly. A good pizza dough should have a nice even covering of small black dots. And of course, those mussels should not have been thrown on the pizza until right at the very end. Whoever was in the kitchen that night wasn't up to scratch." I agreed, after a commendably persistent PR campaign from Gabriele, to revisit Donna Margherita and perhaps learn a bit about Neapolitan cuisine in the process.


A cold antipasti selection of roast mushrooms, grilled aubergine, courgette and superb artichoke hearts were served covered in good olive oil and tasted very authentic. Warm antipasti consisted of terracotta bowls of half-and-half aubergine parmigiana and homemade meatballs in tomato sauce and a kind of dark lentil stew and courgettes and bacon. All superb comfort food, full of flavour and served in that traditional Trattoria style.



I was reliably informed that Neapolitan (that is, Campania) cuisine is generally more robust and contains a greater use of seafood than that from Emilia-Romagna. Now that they mentioned it, it occurred to me that we didn't have a single seafood or fish dish the whole weekend in Bologna. Here we were served two stunning plates of seafood - a medley of calamari rings, octopus tentacles and fried prawns, all perfectly fresh and cooked very well, and a very authentic tasting cold octopus salad. Gabriele told me that his English customers are a bit squeamish about the octopus and despite it ticking every box in terms of authenticity and taste, he doesn't shift much of it. Well, more fool them I say.


I will also reserve a special mention for the traditional Neapolitan salad of cherry tomatoes, rocket and buffalo mozzarella, which contained the juiciest, creamiest mozzarella I've ever tasted - including that from Bologna. Gabriele ships it in from Napoli every week and seasons it lightly before serving, and I can't imagine there being a better mozzarella served anywhere else in Europe.



All this was of course just the first act before the arrival of the main courses, starting with a deceptively simple margherita pizza. Made, needless to say, all in house, using Italian ingredients, it was a fine example of its kind and had an expertly balanced measure of the different ingredients, from the sharp tomato sauce to the rich stringy cheese. And, of course, a perfectly risen pizza dough displaying the correct smattering of small black dots. We were also shown the "correct" (I will need third-party verification on this of course, but for now I'm taking Gabriele's word for it) way to eat a Neapolitan pizza - first cutting the pizza into quarters, and then "rolling" each slice into a tube so that all the rich juices are trapped inside while you shovel it into your mouth. Using your hands, naturally.


We were then served two pasta dishes. One, a seafood spaghetti with clams and prawns and heaven knows what else, was as rich and wonderful as any plate of pasta I've ever eaten. The spaghetti was coated in a kind of seafood stock which made it silky in the mouth and the baked cherry tomatoes added another burst of flavour. Amazing stuff.


Also in the pasta department was a very attractive plate of large rigatoni served with a spinach-like vegetable along with various other herbs. Again, homemade egg pasta cooked al-dente and a rich and silky sauce.



Finally, a dense, nutty chocolate cake from Capri served with vanilla ice-cream, and a homemade Tiramisù, which tipped us over from "dangerously stuffed" to "potential hospital admission". But what a way to go.

And so, in a first for Cheese and Biscuits, I am going to re-review a restaurant. I will keep the original post up for historical reasons so that I can't be accused of complete revisionism, but I think its only fair that independent restaurants with a passion for authentic, honest food get all the breaks they can get. Because God knows there are enough people in London that will walk past Donna Margherita on the way to the Pizza Express just down the road, and miss out on one of the finest Italian restaurants in the capital. My original review, made on an off-night albeit with the best of intentions, is wrong. And fortunately, this is one wrong I'm happy and able to put right.

8/10

Photos courtesey of Helen Graves at Food Stories. Many thanks.

Cheese and Biscuits on tour - Drogheria della Rosa, Bologna, Italy

Saturday night, and another exhaustively researched Trattoria in a breathtakingly pretty part of Bologna. Drogheria Della Rosa is notable for two things, other than the food of course. Firstly, it's housed in an old shop, and the tables and chairs are crammed into the unlikeliest of nooks and crannies, some wildly unsuitable. We were shown to a table perched precariously close to the top of a flight of stairs in a hilariously narrow corridor to and from the busy kitchens, but we were by no means the worst off that night. One poor couple attempted to enjoy a meal in the tiny holding area where diners waited to be seated, the frigid Bologna winter air blowing in every few seconds and with excitable Italian staff arguing animatedly just above their heads. They looked thoroughly miserable. I half expected to find a table for four set up in the gents when I went for a pee.

Secondly, Della Rosa is more than a little renowned for the ebullient service, thanks to the larger-than-life character of Emanuele Addone. Being a repressed, up-tight Englishman who would run a thousand miles rather than have to put up with that in-your-face TGI Friday's style false bonhomie, I was a little unsure at first, but fortunately there's nothing in the least bit forced about Sign. Addone's style and he just came across as genuinely friendly and welcoming. He also gave us a free bottle of wine to send us on our way after the meal, and how can you dislike anyone who gives you free wine?


So to business. Antipasti was a plate of mortadella and Parma hams and a few fluffy little balls of buffalo mozzarella. All brilliant - especially the mozzarella which were sweeter and more creamy than any I'd had before.



My starter of fresh artichokes and cheese-stuffed tortelloni (tortellini/tortelloni being a speciality of Bologna it seems) were stunning, the artichokes blindingly fresh and sweet and the homemade pasta silky and deep in colour from good egg yolks. This is the kind of dish you dream about eating in Italy, and now that I have I will dream about it even more. Superb. Also of note amongst the starters was a cute little lasagne with veal mince, again a big hit.



My main course had a huge amount to live up to after that starter, and only just fell short. The beef jus was perfectly seasoned and the roast veg - endive I think? Or a similar bitter vegetable - were also cooked perfectly. But the meat itself wasn't of particularly high quality and despite being cooked rare was quite dry and tasteless, which was a shame. Still, another diner had the same dish and declared it the best steak he'd ever eaten, so maybe I just had the last of a poor batch.




Desserts of panacotta, a fruit cake and ice cream and chocolate sauce were comforting and unpretentious, classically Italian in as far as they were simple dishes made using good ingredients and not mucked about with too much. Along with these came a huge plate of fruits and nuts - a lovely way to show off seasonal ingredients with minimum fuss, and again typical of the pride and confidence Italians have in their own produce. And as if all these freebies (the plate of hams and the fruit & nuts were unbilled and unannounced) wasn't enough, we were given a free bottle of delicate, caramel-y dessert wine to wash the cakes and puddings down with.


The bill came to around €40 a head, and although not super cheap thanks to the bloody awful exchange rate, it felt like a bargain once we'd polished off the free bottle of dessert wine and considered all the antipasti and other freebies. And then of course another bottle of wine was forced into our hands on the way out by Sign. Addone and all things considered it's hard to come up with a bad word to say about the place. Perhaps if I'd been sat by the front door and eaten my dinner shivering under the armpits of the waiting staff I would have come away with a different impression. Then again, if I had been served the same food, maybe not.

8/10