This Is The Puppy Song And I Will Play It
Apr. 2nd, 2015 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lupestripeLate March is a busy time for friend's birthdays and after Arc's the weekend before last, this week it was the turn of Stray to be serenaded and adored by his nearest and dearest.
The plan was to head into Bradford late in the evening for a meal at the Polish restaurant Ambrosja followed by a few drinks in local craft beer bars. As I have mentioned before, Bradford is one of those places which looks dire on the surface but if you scratch underneath, you can find some true gems which are even better than some in the major metropolises. So is the case with Ambrosja, so much so that it has become a popular haunt of ours due to the range of good food and beer on offer. Granted, it's not as good as the food in Gdansk but amongst the best you can buy in the UK, with the Zurek and Pierogi a particular delight. Indeed this is what I went for, and just one Polish beer on account of our pub crawl elsewhere later in the evening - I had had all the beers before anyway.
There were eight of us there, and it was a nice little gathering, with Stray enjoying the bottle of Sink The Bismarck we had bought him in particular. He also liked my puppy-trademarked story in his card about a fox with a colander penis - despite giving up writing I tend to personalize each birthday card with a story or some irreverent drawings which seems to be appreciated. The problem is I've now set a precedence and everyone will be expecting one - will worry about that nearer the time. After the meal, a few people had a Polish liqueur, which I couldn't drink on account of it eviscerating my insides due to its high alcohol content. It did taste nice though, like a Kinder Bueno, and would have been a good way to end the evening.
After this, we headed up to The Record, which was surprisingly busy on a Sunday night, meaning we had to split into two tables. On our table - which Arc and Draken joined around ten minutes after they had formed a six - we decided to try first their cheese board and then their meat board as they looked so tempting. I hadn't had a massive meal in the Polish restaurant so I was fine with this, and it was a good call as the cheese board in particular was exquisite, with a range of top quality goat's cheeses with fresh tangy notes. The meat platter too was divine but I'm more of a cheese fiend. They cost £5 for the cheese and £5.50 for the meat which wasn't too bad, but could only really be shared between two rather than four. Still we all got to sample a bit of everything, which was our main hope, so it all worked out well.
We had a couple of beers here before Ent left and I was sent on a mission to spec out The Sparrow, which had thinned out by this point and was open until "10 or 11" despite saying 6pm on their door - it's good to see an increased demand for Sunday drinking, probably due to the increased number of craft beer bars on this street. We all decamped there for a while with Draken flitting between one end of the table and the other for a varied conversation. Arc wanted a pork pie but alas they had none while we tried some truly exceptional beers including The Mayan by the Ilkley Brew Company, a 6.5% chocolate chipotle stout. It's good to see traditional real ale breweries experimenting with craft beer and being bold in their attempts to create new flavours. This was definitely one such example and something we mentioned on Tuesday night with the BrewDog staff. Anything that moved us away from pallid standard real ales is gratefully received. I also went for a high strength brew from Brooklyn called Blast which was also pleasant although pretty middle of the road, as is a lot of their stuff.
Arc, Draken and Luna said goodbye at this point leaving four of us going to Wetherspoons to use up our CAMRA vouchers and sample the dregs of their Real Ale Festival, which was on its final day. There was a nice range here although some ales were brewed from American recipes in UK breweries which to me means you don't get the same result as the raw ingredients such as the water are likely to be different. I'm a bit of a beer purist in this regard, which is why I don't believe beers should be brewed under licence either. Anyway, despite their glasses having lipstick residue over them - something which makes me cringe to the point of being physically ill - we got to sample the remains of what they had, meaning we tried nine of 50 ales overall in the Festival. Not loads but some will come back again and I can't spend every night drinking. We stayed out later than intended as we were having such a good time, with Taneli leaving for his final bus around 11:30pm and us agreeing to get a taxi as Stray offered to pay most of it on account of him staying at ours the night. So this is what we did, with the taxi driver taking us the long way round thinking we wouldn't notice and us sharing the remainder of some Pringles and watching TV before heading to bed, with everyone having to be in work in the morning.
The plan was to head into Bradford late in the evening for a meal at the Polish restaurant Ambrosja followed by a few drinks in local craft beer bars. As I have mentioned before, Bradford is one of those places which looks dire on the surface but if you scratch underneath, you can find some true gems which are even better than some in the major metropolises. So is the case with Ambrosja, so much so that it has become a popular haunt of ours due to the range of good food and beer on offer. Granted, it's not as good as the food in Gdansk but amongst the best you can buy in the UK, with the Zurek and Pierogi a particular delight. Indeed this is what I went for, and just one Polish beer on account of our pub crawl elsewhere later in the evening - I had had all the beers before anyway.
There were eight of us there, and it was a nice little gathering, with Stray enjoying the bottle of Sink The Bismarck we had bought him in particular. He also liked my puppy-trademarked story in his card about a fox with a colander penis - despite giving up writing I tend to personalize each birthday card with a story or some irreverent drawings which seems to be appreciated. The problem is I've now set a precedence and everyone will be expecting one - will worry about that nearer the time. After the meal, a few people had a Polish liqueur, which I couldn't drink on account of it eviscerating my insides due to its high alcohol content. It did taste nice though, like a Kinder Bueno, and would have been a good way to end the evening.
After this, we headed up to The Record, which was surprisingly busy on a Sunday night, meaning we had to split into two tables. On our table - which Arc and Draken joined around ten minutes after they had formed a six - we decided to try first their cheese board and then their meat board as they looked so tempting. I hadn't had a massive meal in the Polish restaurant so I was fine with this, and it was a good call as the cheese board in particular was exquisite, with a range of top quality goat's cheeses with fresh tangy notes. The meat platter too was divine but I'm more of a cheese fiend. They cost £5 for the cheese and £5.50 for the meat which wasn't too bad, but could only really be shared between two rather than four. Still we all got to sample a bit of everything, which was our main hope, so it all worked out well.
We had a couple of beers here before Ent left and I was sent on a mission to spec out The Sparrow, which had thinned out by this point and was open until "10 or 11" despite saying 6pm on their door - it's good to see an increased demand for Sunday drinking, probably due to the increased number of craft beer bars on this street. We all decamped there for a while with Draken flitting between one end of the table and the other for a varied conversation. Arc wanted a pork pie but alas they had none while we tried some truly exceptional beers including The Mayan by the Ilkley Brew Company, a 6.5% chocolate chipotle stout. It's good to see traditional real ale breweries experimenting with craft beer and being bold in their attempts to create new flavours. This was definitely one such example and something we mentioned on Tuesday night with the BrewDog staff. Anything that moved us away from pallid standard real ales is gratefully received. I also went for a high strength brew from Brooklyn called Blast which was also pleasant although pretty middle of the road, as is a lot of their stuff.
Arc, Draken and Luna said goodbye at this point leaving four of us going to Wetherspoons to use up our CAMRA vouchers and sample the dregs of their Real Ale Festival, which was on its final day. There was a nice range here although some ales were brewed from American recipes in UK breweries which to me means you don't get the same result as the raw ingredients such as the water are likely to be different. I'm a bit of a beer purist in this regard, which is why I don't believe beers should be brewed under licence either. Anyway, despite their glasses having lipstick residue over them - something which makes me cringe to the point of being physically ill - we got to sample the remains of what they had, meaning we tried nine of 50 ales overall in the Festival. Not loads but some will come back again and I can't spend every night drinking. We stayed out later than intended as we were having such a good time, with Taneli leaving for his final bus around 11:30pm and us agreeing to get a taxi as Stray offered to pay most of it on account of him staying at ours the night. So this is what we did, with the taxi driver taking us the long way round thinking we wouldn't notice and us sharing the remainder of some Pringles and watching TV before heading to bed, with everyone having to be in work in the morning.
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no subject
Date: 2015-04-02 09:36 pm (UTC)You bought someone a bottle of StB? That's rather magnanimous. =:D
which I couldn't drink on account of it eviscerating my insides due to its high alcohol content. It did taste nice though, like a Kinder Bueno
But what a way to go. ^_^
The Mayan by the Ilkley Brew Company, a 6.5% chocolate chipotle stout
Ooo.. that sounds like an outfit to remember. I had one of their white chocolate stouts a couple months back, after a rabbiteering session - quite superb! As rich a stout flavor as you'd wish, but with that luscious white chocolate nature quite evident, and all in a perfectly golden brew. =:D
With the Wetherspoons festival, it's usually more a matter of the brews being bespoke for the festival - the brewers dictate what it shall be, and the contractors implement it. So it's usually not something that's ever been available before, or after, so much as an indication of what that brewer stands for.
I do hope you can get down this way sometime. ^_^ There are some really nice pubs up in the county capital, one with bags of atmosphere, another with loads of pumps, another with a large selection of bottles; and then a couple really nice ones not far away, including one in an establishment old enough to've served the Normans on their way in. =:) (Really atmospheric place. Good beer and cider, and often very good food - had a superb lamb shank with puy lentils one time, and then a fairly perfect pork belly with red cabbage another time. And then there's the ability to make a genuinely good, rich French onion soup..)
no subject
Date: 2015-04-17 11:41 pm (UTC)There's some very good stuff coming out of Ilkley at the moment, if you can get your paws on it (unlikely due to geography I imagine) then I would grab the chance.
Suggest a weekend over the summer and we should be able to come down. Incidentally, we will be in Cambridge first weekend of June if you can make it up that way.