Wednesday 7 August 2013

Sensational Sète!



In July we were lucky enough to go to Sète in France for the final weekend of this year's Worldwide festival.  Worldwide is a week long festival curated by Giles Peterson with loads of great music happening day and night in various venues around the town. Sète is a charming Mediterranean port town and a great place to hang out anyway, so add a festival and you've got a winning combination of great music, mega sound systems, cheap wine, friendly people from all over Europe, glorious sunshine and unspoilt beaches.  Not to mention good food!


Sure, any boutique festival worth its cider in the UK has an all singing / and dancing / pop up / dress up / gourmet restaurant these days but you will probably pay massively inflated prices for a meal.  Stick with the masses and you will be eating out of cardboard cartons surrounded by overflowing bins.  No matter how much choice is offered by the vans around you (and it can be good) after the third day I always struggle to find something really appealing and may well end up eating mushy peas cold from a can (true fact).  Here you have a great many restaurants to choose from and don't have to suffer the slight indignity of festival food.  

Our day in Sète generally started off with a hangover.  We had brought along a suitcase full of alka seltzer which helped to neutralise this, (alka seltzer makes you bullet proof, I overheard someone exclaim on the beach - so true) as did breakfast in bed at our fabulous little hotel, les Sables d'Or.  Rolled in at 5am and want breakfast at midday?  No problem just call the reception and within two minutes a lovely smiley French lady appears with a tray laden down with good filter coffee, orange juice, bread, croissants, jam, and butter.  RECOMMEND!

http://www.hotel-sablesdor.com/

Thus fortified we'd head to the beach, a short walk away, for a day of music and chilling, stopping en route for gallons of alarmingly cheap rosé wine served from a massive refrigerated tank by a very sarcastic man.  Bliss.

At the beach bar they served big platters of huitres, (oysters) which were amazing, and mussels (not so amazing, still beardy).  We also sampled a delicious octopus pie (like a minced octopus pasty type thing) recommended by a man named Dan who has come to Sète for Worldwide the last four years in a row and is very much in the know. 



On the beach there is music all day and as long as you have your rosé in a plastic glass there is no problem taking it into the festival "bit".  It is a bit stricter at night and at one point we did use a baby to smuggle in a bottle of rum but that is another story...all in all an absolutely blissful time was had by all, I really hope we can return next year and thanks to the friends who suggested we come along :-)




Friday 17 May 2013

More please Westmorland!

Yep, I've had a rather long break from blogging, I was getting bored and it was feeling like a chore.  I wasn't inspired anymore.  Plus, with a plethora of instagrammers and Facebook foodies to contend with I no longer felt special, my voice was being drowned out in the clamour.  Recently though, with the days growing mercifully longer and lighter, I have once more felt the urge to write about food.  My appetites have been stimulated writing a number of reviews for the Nottingham and Derbyshire Food & Drink Guides.  In the last few months I've eaten at venues as diverse as the Derby Casino, the Ostrich in Longford, A Thai restaurant in Burton and a pub in Nuthall where I sampled a fabulous venison carpaccio and got insulted by the bar staff. (Reviews to follow once the guides have been published!)

I'm glad to be back and will continue in the vein in which I left off, by telling you about anything that inspires or excites me in the world of food and drink.  This week it isn't a recipe or a restaurant but a motorway services on the M6. 

Services suck.  You know what to expect; overpriced Costa Coffee, Krispy Kreme donuts and the horror that is Scotch egg bars (one of these once fuelled me for an entire weekend in Scotland, but that is another story.)

Between Junction 38 and 39 of the M6, near the Cumbrian village of Tebay, you will find a services with a difference.  Westmorland services is the only independently owned and run services in the country and boy, does it show.  We stopped on the way up to Scotland last week for a very impressive breakfast.



We Marvelled at the pleasant, airy canteen space, and ate looking out onto a duck pond.  We used the clean, pleasant toilets, which have showers, a make up area in the ladies and vases full of fresh lilies.  Best of all is the shop.  Not a Scotch egg bar or Rustlers burger in sight, this is one of the best farm shops I've had the pleasure of setting foot in.  Mining a rich vein of local Cumbrian produce, as well as niche groceries from further afield, it has a butcher's counter to die for and rows and rows of homemade pies.  We left laden with organic duck eggs, pheasant sausages and rosemary jelly.



I am almost looking forward to my next slog up the M6 if it means we get to stop here, and I'd thoroughly recommend you make it a pit stop.  We even saw a duck getting on a coach.  Word.

http://www.westmorland.com/tebay-services