Little Italy, St Andrews

I have just got back from visiting my brother at university in St Andrews, and with a meal out for lunch and tea every day, I have plenty to write about over the next few days! It's lucky Christopher loves eating as well!

I have been to visit him once before, and on that visit I managed to put on half a stone in a week through eating so much, which I think is testament to how much good food there is in such a tiny city. I absolutely love St Andrews (it is such a beautiful place!), and while I would never regret going to York (ever!), I always think that if I hadn't gone there, St Andrews would have been a brilliant replacement.

Down by East Sands and the pier - so pretty!

So anyway I'll try and put photos of St Andrew's the city (as well as the food) in these blog posts - hopefully it might convince some people that it's worth making the (very) long journey up there. St Andrew's should be seen by everyone!

There are hardly any chains in St Andrews (there is no McDonalds, no Dominos...) - they have a Pizza Express, Subway, Bella Italia and a Zizzis, but I think that might be where the chains end...this means there are lots of lovely little independent places to sample - even after my two visits there are still places I have yet to try, and, of course, places I want to revisit!

The first meal out we had was at Little Italy. It's a very cute little restaurant on a side street (Logies Lane) between Market Street and South Street - when we first went in it was quiet, but by the end of the meal it was very busy considering it was a Monday lunch time! The restaurant is currently rated number 3 on Tripadvisor which, considering the strong competition there is, is very impressive!

I went with Christopher, Hannah (whose family are family friends - we have spent every New Year (bar one!) with them since 2000, and I have known her since she was born! And funnily enough both she and Christopher go to St Andrews!), and Hannah's flatmate Kat.

I really loved the interior of the restaurant - I thought the red walls with all the pictures gave it a cosy and familial vibe, and I also really liked the ceiling! As my dad said, it looks as if it should be tacky, but somehow it just works and makes it look even more fun! They also had candles in bottles on tables, which has been a favourite of mine ever since I was nine and we went on a family holiday to Portugal and they did it there!

There isn't a website for Little Italy, but I took a picture of the main menu

As you can see, it is hugely varied, and has lots of delicious things on it - I also loved the description of the "Melanzane alla Parmigiana" - "homemade baked aubergine, please try it." An earnest menu, that's what I like to see!

They also have a special lunch time menu for £7.95 for two courses, and as the true students (and one ex-student...how sad) we are, we all ordered from that.

Both Christopher and I went for the deep fried mozzarella and marinara sauce (for a £1.50 supplement)

Yummy oozy cheese

 It was definitely worth the £1.50 extra we paid - the amount of cheese was really generous, and breadcrumbs were nicely crunchy. The sauce complemented it well and they gave the perfect amount so the breadcrumbs did not become soggy, but you also had plenty to coat it all so it wasn't dry! I feel like the side salad also deserves a mention as they put olives in it, and I love places which do that!

Hannah and Kat shared a salad with avocado, olives, grana padano cheese and balsamic dressing, and a selection of olives and bread (which sadly I didn't get a picture of!)

 I thought the salad was really nicely presented and looked fresh and appetising - I would have been bad at sharing it though as I'd have wanted all the olives and avocado to myself!

For main course, I went for a pizza. On the 2 course set menu you can get a margherita, and add extra toppings from a selection for 85p each. I added pepperoni, capers and olives

While I wished that they included maybe even one other option of pizza on the set menu rather than charging extra for any topping, I must say that this is one of the nicest pizzas I have had in a while. A nice thin and crispy base, with a generous amount of tomato and cheese (also it was really nice and stringy mozzarella!) - and they didn't skimp on the extra toppings so it was good to see my 85p x 3 bought me something! The capers added a delicious saltiness and tang, and the pepperoni was crisp and flavoursome. Obviously I loved the olives too!

Christopher had a pizza too, but added ham and pepperoni to his.

He really enjoyed his too - also I forgot to mention that he had come here two weeks previously with my dad, and liked it so much he brought me too. A good recommendation!

Hannah went for spinach and ricotta stuffed cannelloni with a tomato sauce which she really enjoyed and described to me in a text as "sooo good!!!", and I have to say it did look tasty - so much cheese and sauce!

Kat went for a margherita which we all laughed at after Hannah said "looks pretty boring", but I am sure it was just as delicious as mine and Christopher's - perhaps Kat even appreciated the base etc more without extra toppings crowding her taste buds?!?!

Nice corner table with a window looking out onto the street 

All in all I thought this was a really nice restaurant, with a great buzzy atmosphere and friendly and efficient service. It reminds me of a slightly more formal version of my favourite restaurant in York, Il Paradiso, and I would definitely come back here on my next visit. The set menu is a bargain too, as even if you do pay extra supplements, you still end up paying for two courses about what you would pay for one off the normal menu! Definitely a great way to start off my week of eating!

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The Player, London

I shamelessly got the idea of going to The Player from one of the Londoner's blog posts - she went and it looked absolutely amazing so I decided it just had to be done.

I was a bit worried before arriving that I might be too uncool, too badly dressed, too poor, or all three (!), to feel comfortable here, but upon arriving I was pleasantly surprised. There was a wide age-range of people already there, everyone was dressed pretty normally and basically it wasn't an intimidating atmosphere at all! There was incense burning which made the place smell great, and the bar staff/waitresses were really friendly.

The Player serves both cocktails and Breddos Tacos food - an amazing menu of sliders, tacos and some very tempting sides.

To start off with, we had a "Fabulous Gay Wedding", a sharer cocktail with a fabulous name...

It was Bombay Sapphire gin, with fresh lime juice, honey syrup, strawberries, raspberries and cucumber, topped with pink champagne, and it was really refreshing, and deceptively strong! 

After a few sips we were straight into ordering food - there was so much good stuff on the menu that we didn't want to miss out, so probably looked really greedy..it barely all fit on our little table! 

Anyway, we went for....

 10hr chipotle beef short rib tacos, with mature cheese and habanero sauce

Twice fried cod cheek tacos with pickled onions and habanero sauce

 Short rib cheesy fries with salsa

 Pork belly croquettes with coriander aioli

 The short rib slider - beef patty, short rib, american cheese, habanero sauce, salsa and lime

The Breddo - beef patty, American and Swiss cheese, pastrami, ketchup, chipotle mayo, shoestring fries, habanero sauce.

Everything was great, but the sliders took it to another level - they were absolutely amazing! If they had been big burgers they'd have rivalled Meat Liquor which is a big deal in my mind! (For my Meat Liquor blog post see here) The Breddo was just about my overall favourite - juicy, pink centered, with salty pastrami and the fries adding extra flavours and textures. Also, they're about the only two burgers ever where I haven't felt the need to add ketchup which is definitely saying something.

The short rib cheesy fries were also really good - it was a cheese sauce rather than melted cheese which normally I don't like too much, but actually it worked really well. You also got bursts of flavour from the coriander now and again which added freshness and made you feel a tiny bit less like a fat pig - there was some green in there after all!

The tacos were overshadowed by the sliders but still good; I couldn't taste the cheese much in the short rib ones, but the cod ones were very good, especially with the burst of acidity and freshness from the lime.

The pork belly croquettes were very tasty, and I think coriander aioli must be one of the best dip inventions ever?!

After all this it was time for another round of cocktails

This time I had the Grapefruit Julep, with Finlandia grapefruit vodka, fresh pink grapefruit juice, lime juice, honey, grenadine and mint; it was really tasty and the honey took the sharp edge off the grapefruit so it was very easy to drink!

James always goes for the ones with loads of alcohol and not much juice (never a fan of fruit and veg) so had the London Buck Highball (Bombay Sapphire gin, lemon juice and ginger ale) which he really enjoyed.

Then...we decided to have more sliders! They were just so good that we couldn't only have one each!

 James had the Blue Breddo, which was a beef patty, stilton, bacon, pickled onions and spicy mayo - I'm not a fan of blue cheese but I bravely tried a bit and it was actually really good! The cheese wasn't overpoweringly strong and I loved the spiciness.

I had another Breddo, and then we shared a classic which is just a beef patty, American cheese, ketchup, mustard and pickles

They were as amazing as the last time and I only wished I could have ordered more, but with a week of St Andrew's eating out ahead of me, I thought I ought to conserve my money. I cannot rave enough about the sliders though, and the other accompaniments were great too - go there!!

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Mishkin's, London

About two months after we last saw each other, and even more months after Mishkin's was put on our list, Clare and I managed to meet up for another great evening of overeating.

Mishkin's is near Covent Garden which meant I got to see lots of nice Christmas lights on my way there

Mishkin's has a really cool New York diner style interior, complete with booths for bigger groups. Our waiter was really nice and friendly and it was generally a nice atmosphere.

But let's cut to the chase and talk about the food. As avid perusers of the menu ever since it got added to our list, it wasn't tough to decide what to have.

I went for half a reuben

So meaty!

A 3oz beef slider with cheese and onions

And "Half and half" (half onion rings, half East End chips)

Clare went for the 6oz slider

And East End chips

And last but definitely not least, we shared a large portion of the macaroni cheese with salt beef and colman's

Everything I had was absolutely delicious, but the macaroni cheese was probably the best bit. It was rich and creamy with lots of cheese sauce and the breadcrumb topping added a lovely crunch. Neither of us could really taste the mustard, but to me that didn't really matter as I just added the old standby - French's!!

The Reuben was absolutely packed full of pastrami, and the sauerkraut added a nice acidity - also loved the gherkins on the side of the plate to have in combination with it. I just love gherkins! (They were good with the mac and cheese too!)

The slider was nice and pink in the middle and pretty juicy - Clare was a bit disappointed with her big version of the slider though as it was basically just two small patties on top of each other. We had both imagined it would be a bigger patty rather than two small ones; this way it was a bit more difficult to eat, and I think we both agreed that the half Reuben and the small slider was a better choice in the end!

The onion rings had an amazingly light batter and were so crunchy and way easier to eat than normal onion rings - I always end up having to eat the entire bit of onion in one go because it's too slimy to bite through properly, but there was no such problem here! The chips still had their skin on and they were so soft and delicious - Clare said they were her favourite part of the meal!!

For a wide selection of comfort food at its finest, definitely try Mishkin's. Just don't get the big burger - try Meat Liquor for that!

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Picnic, Reading

Post Hunger Games late night marathon, what could be better than lunch in what must be one of Reading's nicest cafés?! It was my first time at Picnic yesterday, and it didn't disappoint.

It's a brightly coloured cute little café, with colourful tables and chairs, shelves full of food and a blackboard listing the specials and drinks.

In addition to the soup (why oh why was it tainted by blue cheese?!) and the salads, they have a fridge full of sandwiches, with both typical and more interesting fillings!

Sometimes the labels were a bit of a tease - they didn't have either the salt beef, gherkin and mustard which took my fancy, or the pâté and brie which Tanya loved the sound of, but there was still a great selection.

Decisions

After much deliberation I went for the pastrami and emmental, and Tanya chose the goat's cheese, honey and walnut..

I guess there isn't too much you can say about sandwiches, but as far as sandwiches go, mine was a really good one. (And I am fussy with sandwiches - I used to take smoked salmon bagels to school....!) The bread was really soft but with a nice chewy crust, and the pastrami was nice and peppery. I might have preferred a bit more filling in it for £3.65, as I felt like Tanya got a bit more for her money with the goat's cheese, but overall it was very nice!

They also had a really good selection of drinks (San Pellegrino Limonata included!), and one of my favourite things was that they had jugs of tap water out. I always drink loads so hate having to annoy the staff by constantly asking for more, so while the jugs may have been to save their time as well as out of consideration for customers, I loved it!

Then it was time for cake

I went for a piece of the chocolate cake (the final one!)

It was moist with a good amount of icing, but not icing overkill which is what makes me hate "cupcakes" - why is there more icing than cake?!?!

Tanya had a large mint hot chocolate

And I had a small hazelnut hot chocolate

As you might remember from my Flower's Café post, I'm not a fan of hot drinks (unless they're basically melted chocolate, Flower's style), but I wanted to try this as I thought it might taste like liquid Nutella! And as far as non-chocolate-fondue hot drinks go, this was really good. A thick foamy top and it did taste a bit like Nutella too! I also dipped my cake in it - yum!

Picnic is a fab little café and I really wish I worked in Reading town centre so I could come in for my lunch - the salad boxes looked great so hopefully I will be back soon to sample one of them!

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