Bautinn, Akureyri, Iceland: a whale of a time

14th August.
Sometimes when you are cruising, it is just simply a nice idea to not go back for lunch, and to try some local stuff. I know it means paying for a meal when it was already included, but it is a break from the on-board style and company, and gives you a chance to have something completely different, as the food may never adapt to local supplies.
We broke away from an organised tour in Akureyri to sample the delights of the town. The local church/cathedral was on the list but it was closed for an hour or so for a funeral, so we decided to have lunch and go back. Our good intention was that the big breakfast would mean that a small lunch would suffice.

We chose Bautinn http://www.bautinn.is/ because it was convenient, with no other recommendation or thought and that it had a menu we could understand and a price that was manageable. However, looking at the menu suggested that there were things here that we might never get anywhere else:

Guillemot was not to my taste, but when did I last eat Grilled Whale, and when would I get it again?

So decision made. It works out about £24.

So this is what you get alongside your soup and salad. Two kinds of sauce, but I am not a great one for cowberries with my whale, and I am not certain what Cowberries are.

It looks like a hunk of red meat off the grill, a bit like a chunky rib chop. Tastewise, it was like game - venison like. It was also hot enough scoring an 8.5 on the CHOF scale. It was a heavy meat, and you would have not guessed it came from a sea creature: it did not have the salty/fishy taste of the sea. I asked and was told that this was minke which some campaigners would prefer you do not eat.

http://uk.whales.org/campaigns/visiting-iceland-please-do-not-eat-locals but if you eat one animal.....

This may be a tourist curiosity, but what the heck. It is worth the experience, but game is not something that I would eat every week.

M.S Marco Polo: 3* ship with 4* food

9th to 21st August
This report covers a voyage from Tilbury to Iceland. The Marco Polo is a well known cruise ship that is favoured by the Brits. It is geared up to them and despite the fact that none of the catering or restaurant staff hale from this country, the food is geared up to middle class middle English tastes. One thing that is somewhat out of place is that, unlike other cruise lines I have been with where the restaurant and bar staff are Philippine, on this ship, at the time of the voyage, much of the crew, restaurant staff, stewards and entertainers were Ukrainian or Rumanian. Even the ship's doctor was seemingly from Ukraine. Now to the best to my recollection, there is no culture of commercial hospitality in Ukraine, and even in the post-Soviet environment, there is still a bit of 'take it or leave it because we are not here to please you'. The staff is showing a different culture, and I guess when Putin has got bored, we may all be going on our package holidays to the Crimean Riviera.
You get three full meals a day with afternoon tea and bar snacks in the late evening. There is no midnight buffet.
Essentially you either eat in silver service restaurants or buffet style, but the food is pretty much the same. We ate most of the time in the full service for dinner, and occasionally used buffet for lunch and most breakfasts. The buffet food was fine, but never scored over a 7 for hotness. The full service restaurants that served up food by Ukrainian waiters, plated out was surprisingly successful, most hot food scoring an 8, and never having to send anything back for being too cold.

The buffet special on noodle night

Buffet meal

Aubergines making love

 Whilst my pictures are meat heavy, there were always fish options.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food. The quantities at each course did not seem great, but by the time you had had several courses, and a full day of eating, there was no issue of insufficiency. For the cost that is charged on Marco Polo, whilst not in the same league as Saga or Viking, the food is pretty good, and I would have no problem about using this ship again (from a food  and hotness of food viewpoint)

Maya's world buffet and bar, Southend: an interesting buffet venue with the usual limitations

29th July 2014
Somewhat belatedly, I am catching up with my eating, and am gratified by the number of hits this blog has had, even if they are bots.
We had clocked Maya's some time ago. It is in the row of restaurants on the London Road, close to the top of the High Street in Southend. Somewhat unusually, it is upstairs with the entrance round a corner in College Way, unashamedly proposing that this could be cheap grub for students at the Ivy League university round the corner. There is a helpful web site at http://www.mayasrestaurant.co.uk/ with their own pictures that give a good flavour of the place. It is a fixed price of £12.95 during the week for dinner, and somewhat cheaper at lunchtime and a bit more expensive at the weekend. The price is fair and does not include drink which is realistically priced. The idea is that it offers a geographically diverse choice of popular dishes, and you can mix and match even on the same plate. So you can have pizza and curry or sushi and tacos. You get the idea. It is a good place for kids as there is bound to be something for everyone, but probably not a good idea to let them help themselves. This is not smart or pretty dining, and plates of food do not have significant visual appeal. As with most buffets, it pays to keep an eye on what is coming to an end or being replaced as the new dishes tend to be hotter and fresher (obviously).

Tureens showing various degrees of emptiness

Starter plate

There is a station where you can have mixtures of vegetables and meats stir fried with spices. Rather like a Mongolian barbecue but with less variety. The cook did not look happy in his work

What you get off the stir fry: this is hot

round 2 with chicken tikka masala and Thai red curry

The above is representative, and does not show you the sushi station and the taco station. The variety is interesting and the food is plentiful, fairly well cooked and of reasonable quality. It has the usual buffet problems of food never being more than CHOF 7 and unless you are very disciplined, you may be up and down to the buffet so often that there are gaps in conversation. The desert bar was interesting for not only having the standard stuff that you might get at a Chinese buffet, but also having profiteroles and a chocolate fountain. High risk especially with children around.

Would I go again? Probably. It is not as good as East a few hundred meters away which is almost exclusively Oriental, but for an evening meal it is a very good price for as much or as little as you want of what you want. Service is up to you.

Akropolis, Station Road, Westcliff on Sea. Competent Cypriot Food

28th July
Probably to save any confusion between the culture of North and South Cyprus, the Akropolis plants is origins clearly in its name. If you were expecting Greek food, this is slightly off target, but if you want Cypriot Taverna, this is the place.
The menu is very standard. What picks this place out is the balladeer that is there nightly. On a wet Monday night in July, the place was very busy. We had wanted to try the place for many years, but were rarely there at night time, but today was our chance.
We somewhat boringly chose the Meze. This was exactly what you would expect. There was a series of cold dishes and dips followed by meat fish and sausage. There are absolutely no surprises.

The brownish balls on the left are scampi

Haloumi, ham and spicy sausages

kleftico and stifado

All the hot food was hot, scoring 8 or more on the scale. The quality and the taste were excellent. My only criticism was that the meal was somewhat thrown at us to their timetable. There was a big party in that night which may have consumed most of their interest, but on a wet Monday, were were not going anywhere, so it was a pity that they could not have made the meal a bit more leisurely. Entirely competent, and hot, but not exciting enough to make us regular customers. Better places nearer home. Meze cost £19.95 per person min two persons.

Victoria Inn, Burnham on Crouch: Safe bet for a pub lunch in Burnham

28th July 2014
If you ever fancy a day trip to Burnham, don't go on a Monday. They obviously get very busy weekend and need Monday to recover. One of the more popular restaurants in the town has now closed but Victoria Inn seems to be a good place for people who like drinking beer and eating pub lunch.

The menu is quite simple. It lacks some of the pub classics such as Ploughman's and plates of salad, savouries and sandwiches. But it has plenty of other stuff such as pie and chips, baked potatoes, sausages and so on. Whilst there is web-based information about the drink there is nothing to read about the pub food.  To keep it simple I chose sausage baguette.

You get quite a lot of hot sausage for your money. You can probably tell that it is not one of the rustic sausages but is more of a smooth variety. It was perfectly hot and tasty scoring and nine on the scale. They threw in a few chips as well, which was unexpected. I fancied a coffee after the meal. The best they could manage was a cup of instant. Shame on them.

My wife's baked potato was judged to be good.

The food was hot and could not be faulted, but lacked any originality or flair. Fair value.

Sukanya, Station Road, Denham: I wish it was nearer home

8th July.
I had a business group meeting in Harefield, and this place was suggested for a post-meeting get together. On a wet Tuesday night in July, we were in a pretty empty place. There are quite a few restaurants in Denham, which may get lunchtime business from the business parks nearby. There are actually two Thai restaurants in the immediate area (forgot to say it is Thai) and I don't know why this one was suggested in favour of the other, but I am glad it was.
It is not an inspiring place,and was so dimly lit, that it might have been closed. There were only a couple of other tables occupied, one of which was the staff. There is little to learn about the place from the internet, and the best information comes from TripAdvisor, and seem accurate enough http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g616258-d4093645-Reviews-Sukanya_Thai_Restaurant-Denham_Buckinghamshire_England.html  .There is nothing unusual about the menu and it is pretty standard stuff.
I was with a colleague who did not have any particular needs, and so to keep things simple we went for the set menu A, at just under £20 each (very fair price I thought). You can either have soup or a plate of hot starter, which is what we went for:

Again, pretty standard stuff with the prawns in batter, spring roll, prawn toast, but also some ribs that cannot be seen and some chicken thighs. Hot  and tasty with suitable sauces.

The main selection was also fairly standard stuff with a green chicken curry, beef, vegetables, prawn and fragrant rice. This was also big quantity, tasty, and all the dishes were hot scoring about 8.8 on the CHOF scale. Service was a little slow, but that did not matter. The staff were very pleasant, and were it not for the fact that this is an inconvenient location for north London, I would definitely go there again. Recommended. The set meal for two, including coffee was about £20 which was extremely reasonable, and a bit less than average.

Durum, Finchley Central. Consistently pleases

5th July 2014
One of the problems with this sort of blog is that there are some places I tend to go to repeatedly, and if there is nothing new to say, then I don't say anything. That is why there has been fewer entries recently. However, one point I have made is the fear of disappointment returning to really good places. A routine Saturday night meal out took us back to Durum in Finchley, which I have mentioned before. The web site has changed: it used to have a somewhat persistent music track. Now on http://durumrestaurant.co.uk/ . The web site is less informative and tells us nothing about the food, but there is now a branch in Golders Green. The pictures on the web site pretty much tell the story except the queues for takeaway kebab on Saturday nights.
Nothing much changes here except the prices. It is very busy early on Saturday night, but I booked the same day. If you go after 8.30 pm, you would probably get in without booking.
On this occasion I had the beyti kebab which is kofte in a spicy sauce on a bed of flatbread.

This was just sooooo good. It was very hot: a 10/10 on the CHOF scale, and very tasty,being in a piquant tomato sauce. It was a big helping, and I probably should not have ordered the portion of chips (also a 10 on the scale) which I shared with my wife but I did not know about the bread base. We had shared a cold mixed meze starter, which was also probably too much, and we left feeling very full. Prices have crept up a little here, and this cost £10.50 I think. 

Definitely going back again.