Restaurants, Cafes, Coffee Bars

Merlot ?

Hi, The Phily winner of the month cafe award for good quality & convenience particularly for public transport users is, Cafe Italia in Trinity Street. This was my Sunday lunch between duties yesterday. Caesar salad, including two rashers of bacon & loads of chicken breast. Booooootifuel.

Mayjan and I had breakfast there last Tuesday it was delicious. A favourite place of ours.

Thank you Pat & Mayjan, The fact that you can see the food preparation area, is good starter. Food isn't cheap anywhere but when it's good, folks smiling when leaving, we'll rest our case

As per CliffB's pic I posted in #417 - another one has turned up of the Alex Cafe - I think it was the corner of Hood Street and Read Street -

Hello, This evening was my first visit to Bistro Pierre in Broadgate. Food & service excellent. I'm glad that I was being treated & not having to pay the bill. Carry on now, please.

Need to get more savvy when it comes to dining out Philip. Loads of online offers out there with anything from 10 to 50% discounted meal deals that makes seemingly expensive menus very very affordable. You posted you'd been to Cafe Italia and Bistrot Pierre recently and suggested BP was a tad expensive but a fixed price lunch is £12 there, comparable I'm sure to what you had at Cafe Italia. Just saying.

Hello, Thank you for your comments. I was visiting as a guest last evening. The table was awash with wine, as well as a two stage meal, so I was glad that I wasn't footing the bill. As said, the grub was really good. I did notice the midday meals & they are very tempting. The funny thing is, nobody spoke French in there. Well, nobody speaks Italian in Cafe Italia either. Regards the online offers, yes & I believe that an offer was in progress last evening. My railcard (as an example)often hinges offers for meals which I do take advantage of.

Nice to be treated to a lovely meal isn't it Philip. Food is symbolic of love when words are inadequate.

Somewhere, I think that my name should have had a food connotation. Brill.

I would like to share my experience of drastically changing my diet starting last November. I was a bit shocked when my G.P. told me I had a fatty liver and needed to remove the glass of red wine from my evening supper. My B.M.I. was 30 and I needed to take lansoprazole daily for my chronic oesophagitis, (something I have taken for the past 30 years). NICE tells me this is caused by eating too much fatty food. After watching a few evangelical medics, but generally discredited by their profession, on youtube I thought I would test their claims and try a keto diet. This has involved cutting out all forms of starches, sugars and processed foods, substituting them with saturated fats and red meat, (washed down with a glass of Cote de Rhone!), all the things we are urged to avoid. I have bacon and eggs and sausages every morning instead of my previous toast and marmalade. I make sauces with double cream to accompany the evening fresh meat dish, eat full-fat cheese such as Chaorce and Comte (the latter tastes like the cheddar I remember before it came hermetically sealed in plastic). I have substituted celeriac for potatoes and when eating out I have managed to get a salad substituted instead of chips. The result after 6 months is my BMI is now below 25, having lost 22lbs. I was dreading receiving the results of a recent routine blood test when called to monitor my kidneys, liver and cholesterol, having unilaterally stopped taking statins 11 months ago. (I found they caused my muscles to ache after just walking up the stairs.) What was surprising was that my ldl/hdl was the lowest I have ever recorded (4) and all the other parameters were within normal limits. I no longer get reflux and have stopped taking lansoprazole. I must admit, I do miss puddings and potatoes but I feel healthier than I have been for some time. My best friend is a retired cardiologist, who eats chips but fries them in lard, his comment was "... everything you have been told about fat is wrong!". He said it is virtually impossible to challenge the status quo in the professional journals. (Perhaps the pharmaceutical companies want to keep us hooked on statins, ppi's, ssri's and the latest craze, ozempic.) Can anyone suggest the best place to maintain my keto diet when I next visit Cov?

Hello, It's very much a fact, that once a reputation gets a hold, good or bad it's very hard to break. Unless we are eating toxins or poisons, I don't believe the stance of healthy verses unhealthy food. Most is to do with portions & proportions. An example. Following on from the domination of fast food restaurants over four decades ago, a government health minister categorised fast food restaurants as unhealthy. Fish & chip shops were included. Straightaway, the British heart foundation, distanced itself, by stating, their absolute disagreement regards fish & chips, stating that for many folk, fish & chip, dinner was the only fish that some families ever consumed. The government was even going to install a fast food tax, but the BHF, intervention stopped it. Our human body's are designed for a varied diet, I've been lectured on that so often in the past. I'm less than three years off eighty, enjoy a very varied diet, but like so many, I over do it a bit. I sometimes don't know when to stop. I did a duty today that took me to the GE in Nuneaton. With over an hour around noon to idle, I popped to Masons for their cottage pie with fresh veg. It was booooootifuel. I had to force stop myself from indulging into their apricot crumble pudding, because that would been over the top. So I've enjoyed a dish of fresh fruit at home now, whilst typing this. I have always described Masons as a dinner dinner restaurant. If I was dating a new bird in Nuneaton, Leonardos, with table cloths would be my first choice. Thank you ever so much for your input on this.

Dreamtime, Fleur de lys pies are not what they were. The first time I tried them was in 1960 when stationed at Gaydon. As the 'local lad' I guided two car loads of national service R.A.F. lads to the pub where they were made at Lowsenford. A good time was had by all At that time they were handmade in the pub. A few years later they moved the production to Emscote Rd in Warwick. (The old flour mill ?) Later on in the 70,s we used to sell them in a chip shop in Bulkington but the quality was not what it was. We switched to Pukka pie that were better. When we moved to Bournemouth Pukka pies were not available in this area. I suggested their use to the wholesaler and we used them again. .Sadly now their quality is no longer what it was.

The Lowsenford Fleur de Lys are advertising on site that they have developed a new range of pies which they call Lowsenford pies that they make on site, which are also available as take away. Their site also says that the original recipe was sold and became Pukka Pies.