Rivington Greenwich: Sunday brunch for the recession proof

15th September
I was due to go on a photowalk in Greenwich, and my family suggested Sunday Brunch in Greenwich at 1115. The suggested Venue was Rivingtons as it ticked most of the boxes for reputation, child friendly, vegetarian tolerant, and location. I am not a bruncher, but because we had to be done and dusted by 1pm, it was the only potential answer.
I am always suprised by the the number of people who don't eat breakfast at home. I know I have a friend in NYC who says that he has never ever cooked in his kitchen and eats 100% of his meals out, but has that culture come to London, or is that the eating of breakfast out is a treat I am not used to? Clearly many others have got past that questioning stage, because it was busy. May be the proximity to the city and Canary Wharf distorts the demography. I could not say with any certainty how many of the diners were Greenwich tourists (of which there are many).
Check out the menu at http://www.rivingtongreenwich.co.uk/_img/pics/pdf_1379626519.pdf .
I decided on the full English as it was breakfast and lunch combined, and the place did not change from the breakfast menu until the noon bell had rung.

This is not greasy spoon breakfast, and it clearly is being presented as if warranted the same care and attention as any other main dish. It was a mixed CHOF with some elements warmer than others but overall it gained a 7.7, with the sausage as an 8.5 as they always retain their heat better. The quality was excellent, and the quantity was sufficient to keep me going until the evening. This is quality breakfast for those with disposable incomes, and clearly they know where to come. I did not know that this was part of a group called Caprice Holdings, and if you check out their web site http://www.caprice-holdings.co.uk/ it will give a clearer idea of the quality of their stable.

Hotel Aranci, Vieste: like stepping back in time (in a good way)

7th September
About 30 years ago, when my children were very small, we went on a package holiday to Lido di Jessolo in northern Italy. It was a favourite seaside venue of many nations, and the hotels were middle of the road, serving middle of the road Italian food to families, and adapting to their particular needs. By modern day standards, it was all very quaint. It was the days before huge attractions and nightclubs and singles bars. Coming to Vieste in 2013 was a bit like stepping back 30 years. It it was not for the fact that the rooms now have flat screen televisions and telephones and free wifi, you might not know. The decor is the same, and for the mostly half board guests, the restaurants could have been a stopped clock. I do not mean this in any derogatory manner, and if fact it brought a bit of joy to my stick-in-the-mud heart that this sort of thing, and the holidays for native families on the beach is still alive and well in some parts of the world.

We dined in the hotel dining room and our 50 British tourists were mingled with other guests and ate the same as them. A four course dinner, with antipasta, pasta, main and desert.
The antipasta came from a hot or cold buffet, and was a huge variety of local style dishes.

The hot was so-so, scoring about a 6.9.

We were more luck with the steaming plates of pasta with seafood served to our table.

The main course was a little less exciting. being a non-descript escaloppe of meat which could have been pork.

However it scored a 7.9 and clearly was of Italian intent.

Breakfasts were in a modern annex of the hotel, and despite a review that had warned is that all that was available is bread and cake, they had run to a more extensive buffet. This was good news and bad news. I have to show this picture of the chafing dish that was used for egg and sausage:

Clearly another example of local project management, with no quality improvement activities during our stay. Suffice it to say, that the food was cold scoring about 2 on the CHOF scale. However they did serve fresh cappuccinos and the bread was excellent. 

As there was nothing but sliced processed cheese on offer, we bought some of our own from a local supermarket which did the trick. We saw other families had brought their own supplementary items into breakfast. It was also quite clear that some of the families were using breakfast as a filled-roll factory and were making their lunches for the beach. The hotel was turning a blind eye to this, but it meant that some of the bread and deli supplies vanished temporarily before re-ups were provided. My wife said the backed apples were excellent.

All in all, for a good old fashioned family hotel experience in a charming town, I would recommend the Hotel Aranci.

Hilton Garden Inn, Matera, Southern Italy

6th September.
I have reviewed this hotel on TripAdvisor, but just a word about the breakfast.
This is a modern looking smart hotel on the outskirts of Materia in Southern Italy. Accepting a party of 50 British tourists clearly was beyond their skill set and project management  After an underwhelming in-house evening meal, we were sequestered off into a separate room for breakfast the following day. As the breakfast area in the main restaurant was empty, this was not understandable. Knowing that food is left hanging around, we arrived at breakfast early.

Even at 6.30 in the morning, this huge vat of scrambled egg was cold. Nul Pointes.

As an eating experience, this hotel had nothing to recommend it. As there is nothing for at least five miles around, unless you have a car, you will not get much in the way of hot food or service. This is no way to treat tourists in an area that needs the trade.

RISTORANTE IL BORGHESE, Matera, Italy: still a bit hit and miss but better than the hotel food.

5th September.
As part of the policy of some nights out during our tour of Puglia, we were taken to this restaurant in Matera. The reason why people visit Matera is the cave houses in the Sassi area, so whilst not used to coach loads of foreign tourists, there are definitely tourists (of a more local kind).
We ate outside, which did not become a problem as the weather was good, and were offered a limited choice menu, which took a long time to deliver, so that some were finishing a course before others had even started.
The nature of the organisation running the tour was to convey via the tour guide the best available impressions and opinions, and to minimize risk, and so it was that the meals were always described in their simplest form, sometimes minimizing issues that might lead to distress.
There was a starter of a small pie with leeks. I had to get that information some time later from my wife, and clearly it was no so memorable that I could know from looking at the picture, which is my usual prompt.

This was followed by the orcchiette (again) with a sausage and mushroom sauce. This was good, hot enough, but the pasta was a little heavy.

The main course I chose was a fillet of beef. Having looked at the Tripadvisor reviews (after the event rather than before, I think what this was was beef with a balsamic vinegar sauce. The beef was quite chewy and in strange small slices. From the picture, it can be seen that it was also quite rare..

It came served like this on the individuals plate. What the picture fails to convey is that the portion is actually relatively modest, and the accompanying fried potatoes and salad did not really go with it, nor was there room on the plate. A strange meal, but in general, TripAdvisor diners found it good. The issue is clearly that restaurants take on the business of parties of diners paying up front for catering., do not have the resources to deal with them in the same way as their individual customers, and try to cut corners firstly by restricting choice (makes sense) and then treating them as a captive audience. They know that there are not going to be big tips or big drinkers here, so they are maximising turnover making hay whilst the sun shines. Given the choice between this or the boring hotel food, there is no choice. In an ideal world, maybe evening meals should have been a matter of personal initiative (I have successfully negotiated that one before), but when your hotel is 8km out of town, and with negligible public transport, you have to go with the flow.

To be very charitable, the restaurant staff could not have been more pleasant, and there were small birthday cakes for those in the group who had birthdays during the tour. Things are just a bit more laid back and disorganised in this part of Italy that has been cut off from main tourism booms.

Divine Providence Lecce. A more promising place to eat in Lecce

3rd September
Our guide on the tour had organised a feast type meal here with many dishes to sample. More hit than miss this time and good to get a variety. As they served mussels which I don't care for, it was also good that there were so many courses that missing one did not matter. There was too much to summarise, so I show a small sample. Impossible to judge hotness because of the large number of dishes served simultaneously.

This was just two of the pastas served. Puglia is big on the ear-shaped pasta or orcchiette and the one that they called fingers. Good, but could have been hotter.

This was an excellent sea bass, and was probably the best part of the meal.

An excellent pannacotta.

The whole meal reassured us that there was better food to be had, but it is still a bit hit and miss. Reviews of this restaurant on Trip Advisor are generally positive.OSTERIA DELLA DIVINA PROVVIDENZA

via francesco rubichi 4c, Lecce, Italy

Locanda Rivoli, Lecce. Local cooking, but pasta is a problem

3rd September.
After the hit and miss meal at the hotel, we were pleased to find lunch for ourselves in Lecce. Using Trip Advisor, my first two choices did not seem to exist any more, and this was a random choice. If I had checked it out first, I would have read about the pasta problem, but we found it out for ourselves. Otherwise we had a very interesting lunch. There is a web site at http://www.locandarivoli.it/ but it will need a translation. Like many places in Puglia, there is no tradition of international tourists (even though they had a menu in English of sorts) and only one of the staff had sufficient English.
To start, I had mozarella stuffed with cream.

It was not exactly cream inside, but some sort of cream cheese. This was a very rich dish, and probably more than one person could handle on their own. Because it was there on the menu, I ordered intestines stuffed with liver. This was sold by the piece at 2euros a piece, and they were a little confused when I only asked for one piece, but this was only a taster.

You cannot get a real feel for the size here, but it is the size of a small fat sausage, and that is really what it was like: a spicy liver sausage. Again very rich, and I think I would not have wanted to have a meal exclusively of these, but it is probably a local taste. Scored an 8.5 on the CHOF scale. Not for the squeamish or those who do not eat offal.

My main course was a local pasta which translated as fingers, and seems to be common in the area with clams (vongole).

This was tasty and hot enough but was hard work getting the clams out of the shells. My wife's pasta dish turned out to have undercooked hard pasta, beyond al dente. This had been noted before at this restaurant, and it is strange that they persisted in undercooking pasta despite the comments on TripAdvisor. Presumably they don't look or understand, or have no interest, or may be this is normal. We will never know, but take this as a warning.

The local pie we shared for desert was underwhelming, and was a bit like custard tart. Local pie for local folk.

So, all in all, an interesting meal, but diminished by the hard uncooked pasta. A feature of our trip was the rather hit and miss nature of eating out, and the reputation for consistently good restaurant food that is the norm for Italy was mised in Puglia. They still have some way to go.

Hilton Garden Hotel, Lecce, Puglia, Italy: uninspiring food for Tourists

2nd September.
The period 2-9th September is detailing food eaten on a Riviera Coach trip to Puglia, Italy. Dinner was included in the holiday, and 4/7 nights was based on the three hotels we were staying in.
Hilton Garden Inn, in Lecce is a comfortable out of centre hotel. The staff manage to make a global brand have an Italian flavour (e.g. none of the room doors working on one floor), but given the opportunity to impress a relatively adventurous coach party ( you have to be a bit adventurous to be visiting this off the grid part of Italy) of Britons, they failed with an uninspiring meal and chaotic hotel organisation.
So for our communal dinner, this was the menu (no choice):

Expectations were modestly high at the start, but the first course, which may have been soup defeated many. We were told that it was a fairly traditional dish in this part of the world, and various variations were to be found in surrounding countries:

It looked like soup, but its consistency was fairly thick and as you can see, the bread could not sink in it. It was hot (CHOF 9) but somewhat bland and beany. My wife thought it would have benefited from some chili flavoured olive oil. Some seconds were offered, but most people politely declined. A triumph of menu English, but the only one.

The main course was somewhat sparse and looked boring.

I made the picture small, because the portion size was small. It was more or less hot, scoring a 7.5 as I remember it, and most of the heat resided in the potatoes which were clearly not mashed.The piccatina looks like other piccatina dishes on the web, so that is clearly what was intended. Uninspiring.

The desert was exactly as described on the menu, so apple pie it was.

Breakfast was a bit of a surprise as typically in Italy one may get nothing more than bread cake and coffee. This hotel has a breakfast buffet, which sounds fine in theory, but give the influx of 50 travelers on the same timetable, the simultaneous delivery of breakfast defeated them. The coffee machines ran out of hot water and milk, other things ran out, and the somewhat promising buffet was not as it seemed.

On the first morning, the buffet was luke warm, as might have been expected (I mistakenly thought that if we had come earlier, it might have been hot), but on the second morning, where we all had to eat at 0630, the hotel excelled itself. The contents of the buffet were actually cold. I complained and from the one person who spoke hotel English was informed that the range was new and therefore was not to be expected to work. Raw sausages and cold potatoe. Nul Pointes.

The one highlight on both mornings was the signature waffles. If you had not come across the self cooked waffle before (more of an American phenomenon) this may not have been on your radar. Most of our party had never heard of this, and after a while I worked out how to do this with premixed waffle mix and sauces and a machine that timed itself. Success, and a waffle that scored 10 on the scale for hotness as it was freshly cooked to my specifications (slightly less than the instructions). 

Pity I could not have had more control over the temperature and creation of the other food. Lecce is not used to significant numbers of tourists, and they may get better in a few years time.

Conclusion: uninspiring food for Italy.