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.

Pierre Bistrot, Harrogate: customer service may not be the primary objective

22nd August.
With my first choice restaurant turning out to only serve lunch, it needed a short search for an alternative, and a call to Pierre suggested that they could take us at 8pm the same day. Also located in Cheltemham Parade (according to the address), we took heed, and allowed plenty of time to park, which turned out to be not necessary. It was good that we turned up early as the entrance was not in the stated street, but round the back, above a Thai Restaurant, but judging by the crowd when we arrived, that was something all the locals knew about. It was packed, and there was a line standing in the bar to be seated. I don't play the game of 'why not have a drink from the bar whilst we prepare your table'. However, we were early, so we toughed it out, and were sat pretty much on time. After placing our order, we had to wait 30 mins for food, and it was just as well that there seemed to be an unlimited supply of crusty French bread and butter. The people on the next table were moaning that the portion sizes were small, so that was an incentive to scoff the bread. There is a web site on http://www.lebistrotpierre.co.uk/food-and-drink/our-food showing it is part of a small chain of ten restaurants in the North and Midlands, and in August was already pushing the Christmas menu. Fitted with the wait that we experienced. When our orders were taken, even at 8pm, we were told that they had run out of chicken.
I had Scallops to start, which were tender, cooked in a French style and most acceptable, scoring a 7.9 on the CHOF scale.

For main course, I had the porc roti plate

Pan-fried pork with braised savoy cabbage, smoked bacon lardons, thyme and a light grain mustard sauce served with seasonal vegetable as can be seen. They had turned the lights down by the time main course arrived, so the picture is a bit dim. Again this was very French tasting, well cooked and most enjoyable.  Portion size, whilst not huge, was acceptable for the price, and we certainly did not leave hungry. Again a 7.9 on the CHOF scale, and may have even warranted an 8, but as many of the diners had left by the time our main course came, the kitchen should have been able to get its act together.
At the end of the meal, the patron engaged us in conversation apologizing for the wait. He said he had requested extra staff for the day, but the locum staff had not been able to get hotel accommodation locally because of the GCSE results (?????????????). They gave us a loyalty card with a couple of compensatory extra stamps so that we could get a free something if we ate there ten times. That went straight in the bin.
This was actually a very good meal, and tasted French. It was also hot enough. However it was let down by the attempt to squash in more covers than the staff could cope with, and clearly it was a triumph of turnover over customer service. They did not seem to have a shortage of customers. We were not impressed, and as we do not like to think that our eating venues are doing us a favour by allowing us in, will not hurry back. However, if you are lucky, and want a good French tasting meal, you could do a lot worse. Pricewise, it was high average, and a meal for two, with two courses and 500ml of wine came to about £50.