It’s been foggy here. Flights have been delayed, some cancelled. But the fog lifted long enough to allow all nine competing chefs and their teams from St John’s to Vancouver to land safe and sound, and now that they’ve met each other, shared some wine and food at a chefs’ dinner party hosted by Tantalus Vineyards, and been introduced to their kitchen facilities at the Okanagan College, the fun is afoot.

Last night, each chef was handed a mystery bottle of wine. He knows it’s a white. But other than that – no label, no cork. His job: sniff it, swirl it, drink it, mine its soul – and then concoct a dish that will make it really tick. The catch? Make a lot of them (350 small plates for guests and 11 more for judges) with a puny little budget.

With $500 in a pocket, plus some petty cash for cabs, each chef shopped up a storm, and have now returned to the College kitchens. Together with their sous chefs and a couple of culinary students as helpers, and with constant slugs of the elusive wine to keep on track, the teams are now creating a masterful little plate – 350 of them – ever mindful of the scheme that awards fifty percent for this competition, to the wine match.

Stay tuned! More to follow…

It also takes us to a cooking class in Oaxaca, Mexico, where Ottawa author Pam Collacott gives grasshoppers a gander.

And to Bergen and Boston, Lunenburg and Ireland, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Rarotonga and Rennes. It’s a visual feast, and a practical one, weighty with recipes and culinary dispatches on gourmet destinations, regional cookery, cutting edge cuisine, fine dining tips, holes-in-the-wall treats. For those who travel hungry,  the one year old Taste & Travel Magazine is a marvellous resource. Pick it up wherever fine magazines are sold. Subscribe here.

Gruelling challenges await them, at this national level, including the doozy – the dreaded Black Box competition. Let’s see: mystery ingredients, one hour to make it all happen, cameras rolling, audience watching, judges’ waiting: Fun, fun, fun.

Then more mystery with the wine matching competition, in which each chef must create a dish to match a wine he receives (all fellas this year) in an unmarked bottle, its true identity hidden to all but David Lawrason, GMP’s national wine advisor. (Wonder if he’s ticklish?)  This leg of the competition adds the additional cruelty of having to produce many, many plates of food (last year, 350) to feed the guests, to match the wine, to impress the judges,… with a budget of $500. Egads!

And finalement, there will be the gala event, the last of the three parts of the competition, that grants each chef Carte Blance to wow us. “Us” are the guests, certainly – all attending to support this masterful Canadian culinary talent, and to raise funds for Canada’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes – but also ‘us’, the panel of national judges. I have the honour of being a member of that panel, representing Ottawa-Gatineau. May I just say, though I am utterly, completely impartial: Go Marc Go!! (Marc Lepine, of Atelier, is representing our city. We are very proud, and wish him great success.)

For 2012, the lineup of competing Chefs, regional champs, looks like this:

Winnipeg
Michael Dacquisto – WOW Hospitality. Paired with Gray Monk Estate Winery Gray Monk Riesling

Montreal
Jean-Philippe St-Denis - Kitchen Galerie Poisson. Paired with McAuslan Brewery St. Ambroise Cream Ale

Calgary 
Michael Dekker - Rouge. Paired with Stratus Vineyards 2008 Cabernet Icewine

Edmonton
Jan Trittenbach – Packrat Louie. Paired with Peller Estates Winery, 2007 Private Reserve Syrah

Vancouver
Rob Feenie – Cactus Club Restaurants. Paired with Haywire Winery 2010 Pinot Gris

Saskatchewan
Anthony McCarthy – Saskatoon Club, Saskatoon. Paired with Nichol Vineyard’s 2007 Cabernet Franc Syrah

Toronto
Jonathan Gushue – Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa. Paired with The Organized Crime Winery 2009 Fumé Blanc

Ottawa
Marc Lepine – Atelier. Paired with Hidden Bench Vineyards & Winery 2009 Chardonnay

St. John’s
Mike Barsky – Bacalao. Paired with Pelee Island Winery Pinot Noir Reserve

JUDGES are led by James Chatto, National Culinary Advisor for Gold Medal Plates, and include, from east to west: Karl Wells from St. John’s, Robert Beauchemin from Montreal, Anne DesBrisay from Ottawa, Sasha Chapman from Toronto, Jeff Gill from Winnipeg, CJ Katz from Saskatchewan, Mary Bailey from Edmonton, John Gilchrist from Calgary, Perry Bentley from Kelowna, Sid Cross from Vancouver and our culinary referee, Vancouver’s Andrew Morrison.

PAST CANADIAN CULINARY CHAMPIONS

2011
GOLD: Martin Juneau of Newtown in Montreal
SILVER: Jeremy Charles of Raymonds in St. John’s
BRONZE: Robert Clark of C Restaurant in Vancouver

2009
GOLD Mathieu Cloutier – Kitchen Gallerie, Montréal
SILVER David Lee – Nota Bene
BRONZE Matthew Carmichael – Restaurant 18

2008
GOLD Hayato Okamitsu – Catch Restaurant, Calgary
SILVER Frank Pabst – Blue Water Café
BRONZE Deff Haupt – Le Renoir

2007
GOLD Melissa Craig – The Bearfoot Bistro, Whistler
SILVER Anthony Walsh – Canoe
BRONZE Roland Ménard – Manior Hovey

2006
GOLD Makoto Ono – Gluttons Bistro, Winnipeg
SILVER Michael Blackie – Perspectives Restaurant
BRONZE Mark McEwan – Bymark

There has never been a better time to spend your hard earned money on dining out in Ottawa. The restaurant landscape has come of age,  exploding in marvellous ways out of the doldrums of its early years. Yes, indeed, it was bleak. I remember it well. Back in 1993 when I penned my first review for  the Ottawa Citizen (do you remember the Green Valley?) we were a city with only a handful of restaurants worth their salt. And we were a city with a pretty early bedtime.

Quite a different landscape now. Notwithstanding its dubious distinction of being the second coldest capital on the planet, there simply isn’t a city that enjoys a more  burgeoning local food movement plucked from such a bountiful backyard. In the hands of some of our magnificent chefs, that translates to increasingly tastier plates in increasingly better restaurants.

You’ll find the best of them here …  as well as those that need to pull up their socks.

Book a table!

Anne

We arrive at Peggys Cove at dusk. On the eastern point of St Margaret’s Bay, this fishing village, population 46, is one of Nova Scotia’s busiest attractions. But we are alone here. The bus tour season in this celebrated place appears to be past its prime and we have these granite outcrops, these lashing waves and Canada’s most iconic lighthouse to ourselves.

The late October light is stunning, slicing through the clouds in purple bands. We leap from rock to rock, kids again, though mature in our complaints and our carefulness: wishing we’d brought a scarf, a hat, alert to the dark rocks, the slick spots, the sharp edges. There are signs that warn the incautious of the perils of taking lightly the power of the sea and we heed them.

Besides, there is a dinner reservation awaiting us in Lunenburg, and we have every intention of being there.

Moments after we leave Peggys Cove on NS highway 33 toward Lunenburg, we stop at The Whalesback promontory, the site of the Swissair Flight 111 Memorial (one of two in Nova Scotia, erected in honour of the 229 men, women and children who perished when their aircraft crashed into St Margarets Bay on September 2, 1998). Three thin notches on a monument stone, representing the flight number, form sightlines to the crash site, while a second granite marker points to the town of Bayswater, and to the second memorial site.

An hour later we arrive in Lunenburg. This nineteenth century fishing port is on the map for a few fine reasons: It boasts a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation; it’s old by Canadian standards, and awful pretty by any standard; and it has a long and storied maritime history. And every time I visit, it’s tastier.

This, thanks in part to Chef Martin Ruiz Salvador. In 2008, he and his team from Fleur de Sel restaurant in Lunenburg beat out the big city boys of Halifax to take the top prize at the Nova Scotia Gold Medal Plates culinary competition. We may have had Peggys Cove to ourselves, but Fleur de Sel was packed.

Open from May through October, housed in a yellow clapboard, Arts and Crafts style house in the centre of the historic district of Lunenburg, Fleur de Sel is all creamy yellow and starched white, softened with rounded arches, potted daisies and thoughtful service led by Sylvie Ruiz Salvador.

Her husband’s cooking draws from the sea and local farms for inspiration and from a firm foundation in French cuisine for its discipline. We worked our way happily through his tasting menu. From the opening moves – chilled Annapolis Valley cantaloupe soup with mint oil – and on through Cherrystone clams with a fennel and tarragon cream, seared beef heart with chanterelles, roasted partridge with local artichoke stew, farmhouse cheeses with fruit bread and honeycomb and poached peaches with almond milk sorbet.

“Did it ever occur to you,” wrote newspaper man Horatio Crowell in 1931, “that the Creator … may have spent aeons in moulding those features of this Province which possess such delicacy of beauty, such subtlety of charm that, travel the world over, we find them unexcelled, and without peer?”

Working on an appetite for breakfast, wandering the harbour in the early morning, the inspiration for Crowell’s poetry was plain. Like all naturally gifted bits of geography, Lunenburg was settled early, in the mid 1700s, before Canada was Canada, when immigrants from Germany, Switzerland and from Montbeliard (a “Countship”, not yet a part of France) established new lives in this county. They were known as the Foreign Protestants, and they were joined soon thereafter by pre-Loyalists from New England, paying off the cost of their sea passage by working on the fortifications for the British protectors.

The Government of Canada declared old Town Lunenburg, known as Mirligueche to the Acadians, a National Historic District in 1992. In 1995, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added “World Heritage Site” to its list of honours. Lunenburg is the second urban community in Continental North America to be designated a World UNESCO District. The first was old Quebec City.

Sometimes best to discover the historic and cultural significance of a town from a grizzled guide called Jack, a Lunenburg man for generations, and his faithful horse Duke. Those two, bless them, pulled us up the steep hills that stretch from the harbour to the top of Old Town, unchanged in arrangement and with some of the finest preserved 18^th century wooden houses and churches in the country.

A community dominated by the sea and blessed with a deep harbour is a natural for shipbuilding and it flourished along Lunenburg’s waterfront. Be sure to visit the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, red barn buildings at wharfside, and then head to the Lunenburg Shipyard. Housed in a massive tent is the restoration project of the famous Canadian fishing and racing schooner the Bluenose II. Though the damaged hull is being completely replaced, much of the original ship – the rigging, sails, blocks, rescue boats and two decks – will be re-used and she’s due to be back in service in the spring of 2012.

We were due for lunch. Seeking simple fare, we headed to Ruiz Salvador’s second restaurant. This one, The Salt Shaker Deli, is open year round. Among assets like salt cod and spud cakes, Indian Point mussels with Halifax’ Propeller beer, Stinky Charlie’s garlic pizza and Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, is The Salt Shaker’s triumphant seafood chowder. Also: save room for pie.

We took our time on the way back to Halifax – stopping at the Kiwi Café, an emerald green restaurant and coffee shop in the Village of Chester, owned by transplanted New Zealander Lynda Flinn.  Toys and books for visiting kids, water bowls for visiting dogs and solidly good home baking keeps the place crowded and the crowd happy.

Books and biscuits vie for attention at the Biscuit Eater Café in Mahone Bay. We buy a good read and settle down with a thick bowl of black bean soup and a pulled pork and blue cheese sandwich. We end the chapter with a strong espresso and a slab of chocolate cake – like the old fashioned, from-scratch birthday cake your mother made. Only considerably better.

Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, 68 Bluenose Dr., 866-579-4909, www.museum.gov.ns.ca/fma

Bluenose II restoration project, 121 Bluenose Dr., 1-800-763-1963,  www.bluenose2.ns.ca

Fleur de Sel, 53 Montague St., 902-640-2121, www.fleurdesel.net

Salt Shaker Deli, 124 Montague St., 902-640-3434, www.saltshakerdeli.com

Chester, NS

Kiwi Café, 15 Pleasant St., Chester, 902-275-2570 www.kiwicafechester.com

 Mahone Bay, NS

The Biscuit Eater, 16 Orchard St., Mahone Bay, 902-624-2665

www.biscuiteater.ca

This Hintonburg newcomer will fit in fine with the mood of a neighbourhood that’s flowering with new dining-out options. Most have a flop-into-them, linen-free, post-skating, long-johns-and-tuque-head-are-perfectly-fine feel.

My husband is delighted with these come-as-ye-be-and-wolf-down-some-macky-cheese sorts of places. I applaud too (the cheese tends to be local), but maybe with a bit less verve. The Le Métro/Chez Jean Pierres of Ottawa’s past are all being replaced with gastropubs or “soul” cafés, restos that give themselves “kitchen” as surname, put their bars front and centre and dish up endless plates of comfort food.

Read complete review at the Ottawa Citizen.

The Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market

Its history is long and contentious, as all rich histories tend to be, but today the Halifax Farmers’ Market, the oldest continuously run market in North America, counts among the most innovative.

Established in 1750 by Royal Proclamation, for its first fifty years it sold livestock and produce from Acadian farms in the Annapolis Valley. Over its 260-some years the market has seen fourteen homes. It has also endured much spirited deliberation about its future, its place, its controllers, its modernization, its opening hours, indeed whether it even mattered during a time of intense “urban renewal”.

Concerned with its future, and wanting to wrestle its way out of government control, a plucky group of vendors, some of whom had family roots at the Halifax Market for more than a century, established a cooperative and set up shop in the historic and labyrinthine Keith Hall Brewery Building complex on Hollis Street.

Today, that market venue coexists, albeit in diminished form, with a brand spanking new one, just down the street, called the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market. It opened in the summer of 2010 on the renovated Harbour Pier 20, all 45,000 square feet of it a model of sustainable design. Powered with solar and wind energy, and with striking windows that bring the Halifax harbour right into the light-drenched space, it boasts wide aisles filled with goodies from sausages to slippers, jam to jewelry, local fish, artisanal cheese and charcuterie, exquisite pastries and all manner of fresh Nova Scotia produce.

Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market, 1209 Marginal Road / Pier20, Halifax, NS http://halifaxfarmersmarket.com

UPDATE: you will note that the restaurant Sweetgrass, referenced below, has closed. Chef Warren Sutherland is now at the SmoQue Shack.

OTTAWA’S BRILLIANT BACKYARD

This is a food-lovers story about a city with the dubious distinction of being the second coldest capital on planet Earth.

A veneer of white on late April ground is as common as it is unwelcome in my hometown, but it is the frosty reality of life on the 45^th parallel north. Winter is in charge here. Just one of four seasons, yes, but it’s the bully. Embrace it or endure it, the fact remains: it has its way with us for half the calendar year.

Can winter in Ottawa be beautiful? You bet. Do we not have the world’s largest skating rink on our Rideau Canal?  (Named a World Heritage treasure by the clever people at the United Nations who decide these things.) Can we not pull into the parking lot of a Quebec ski hill surrounded with trees in full snow blossom a scant fifteen minutes after touring Parliament Hill? Indeed we can.

Bully news for skiers and skaters, I suppose, but for fresh food seekers, the yields round here are pretty darn slim from November to May.

At least they ought to be slim. You’d sure expect them to be slim. And yet… every winter week, to the snow-dusted, pillow-lined cooler on my front porch arrives a harvest of fresh and cellared riches. Heirloom fingerlings, chioggia beets, baby fennel, French shallots, red garlic, summer and sweet dumpling squash, pea shoots, a bag of frozen-in-August corn and another of September heirloom tomatoes, microgreens, winter and salad greens – mâche, mizuna, bull’s blood beet tops, sorrel, sylvetta and rocket – delicate and sharp, sweet and bitter.

Bryson Farms is a certified organic grower, associated with some of Ottawa’s better restaurants, with a sprouting network of home deliveries, and owners of just one portion of the reported 1.5 million square feet of greenhouses in the area – all chipping away at cheating winter’s protracted grip.

And while we’re talking numbers – chew on this other (much less dubious) distinction of ours. Ottawa is a city (fourth largest in Canada) with more agricultural land within its municipal borders than any other in Canada. More than Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. Combined.

You read that right. Combined. Ottawa, better known for its acreage of bureaucrats, has more cultivated land within its municipal boundaries than those other cities all piled together. Tous ensembles, as we are wont to say in Canada’s capital. Two thousand eight hundred square kilometres big, we are.  Productive too. Those five aforementioned cities lumped together? Less than half the number of farms as has Ottawa. Those guys, together/ensemble: 549. We guys, all by ourselves/tous seuls: 1,267. (Thank you, Stats Can.)

But you can’t eat farms… Oh wait. Yes, you can.

For those seeking to bolster a recently explosive local food movement in this community, these figures and facts amount to quite a blessing. And from my perspective, as a student (and, for 20 years, critic) of restaurants, this all adds up to increasingly tastier plates in increasingly more interesting eateries.

That awareness of what rural Ottawa can bring to the urban table is not new. There were scattered islands of interest, most notably from John Taylor (chef-owner of Domus Café and of the new Taylor’s Genuine Food and Wine Bar) who was mucking around in clods of dirt years before it became fashionable to dangle the local carrot as marketing ploy.

For Thom Van Eeghen of The Elk Ranch (his family farm located twenty minutes from the Byward Market’s restaurant hub) John Taylor was ‘the forefather of regional cuisine’ in Ottawa. When Van Eeghen first started peddling his elk meat at the Carp Farmers’ Market, “No-one would touch it. No restaurant would take it. But then,” he tells me, “Taylor came calling. He wanted our product. He was putting it on his menu. It gave our meat authenticity and it opened the doors.” His pitch to other chefs: “John Taylor has our elk.” That did the trick.

John Taylor’s Domus Café was one of perhaps three good restaurants in Ottawa’s vibrant Byward Market district a decade ago. Ten years later, the Market is a destination for some of the city’s best dining out: Domus, Restaurant Eighteen, Murray Street, Sweetgrass, Navarra, Social, The Courtyard, Play food and wine – all with chefs well acquainted with what the back forty has to offer.

Michael Moffatt, executive chef of Play, and of the excellent Beckta Dining and Wine on Nepean Street, finds “Ottawa area farmers, for the most part, incredibly happy to work with people who are interested in what they do.”

“Here I have a buffalo farmer, a duck farmer, a wild boar farmer, an elk farmer, all within easy driving distance of my restaurant.  That’s what I like about Ottawa,” says Warren Sutherland, chef and co-owner of Sweetgrass, (a lovely restaurant that spotlights aboriginal cuisine on the increasingly tasty Murray Street.)

That interest in what’s happening – and what could be happening – on some of those 1,267 farms has moved beyond the realm of chefs contemplating the day’s menu. When I first landed in Ottawa twenty years ago, there were the Byward and Parkdale Markets, and one true Farmers’ Market in the town of Carp. Today there are 21 and counting, most having sprouted in the past five years. (For full list, see below.)

Mushroom foragers, beekeepers, bison farmers, artisan cheese makers, horticulturists, sugar bushers, berry growers: they’re finding their way to these markets, facilitating the direct interaction between farmer and those who eat food, building community, a sense of place, a local flavour.

“Fish. It’s the only thing I can think of that Ottawa doesn’t have!” Not that Shane Colton, executive sous-chef at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier is bemoaning Ottawa’s landlocked geography. “We’re in a terrific position here. We’re meeting with area farmers constantly. They’re now buying seed and planting crops specifically for our menus.”

That was unheard of twenty years ago when I penned my inaugural review in this city. It was a restaurant called The Green Valley (now put out to pasture). On the plate: roast beef, frozen peas, cauliflower, whipped potatoes, all trucked in from parts unknown, all fairly grim. Across the street from the restaurant was a field, part of the 400-acre network of experimental farmland in this city. (Ottawa is also – did I mention? – the only capital city in the world that has a working farm at its heart, a retreat of grain filled fields, barnyard animals, greenhouses and gardens.)  In 1990 I didn’t make the connection between the plate in front of me and the ground outside the restaurant window. The idea of ‘eating Ottawa’ wasn’t on any menu. It is now. And Ottawa’s backyard is bountiful, immense, and easily accessible. Right (and ripening) for the picking.

BERGEN

Possibly you’ve heard it’s ruinously expensive to dine out in Norway. And you’d have heard about right. All the more reason to be selective! Know where to find the good stuff, and then feast with that soaring feeling that it’s worth every krone.

You’ll certainly feel uplifted at Hanne på Hoyden, a green market gem close to the University of Bergen. Chef Hanne Frosta’s restaurant is homey-chic and dripping with personality. Photos – of fishing expeditions, family dinners, kitchen prep and working gardens – line the pale walls. Behind the restaurant is Hanne’s garden. The rhubarb is standing tall and containers are dense with herbs. A truck has just delivered the catch of the day. Small organic farms from nearby deliver produce, hams from Landas, cheese from Underdal, mushrooms and berries from local foragers. If it’s not Norwegian, it’s not served at Pa Hoyden. Frosta’s motto is “uncompromised.”  (The woman’s got an indoor beehive, for crying out loud!)

Mussels and sweet baby leeks are steamed in Hardanger cider from Lekve Fruit Farm in Ulvik. Red ribbons of raw beet make a crunchy nest for local hake, improved with bacon (isn’t everything?) A few molecular gastronomy tricks are pulled into a starter of Norway’s famous King crab, fashioned into a mousse sharpened with herring roe, and with pearls of suspended raspberry vinegar that burst with bright red juice.

FISKESUPPE

You can’t visit Bergen without sampling a smorgasbord of fish soup, a velvety brew of northern swimmers, root vegetables, stock and cream, with a subtle tang and touch of sweet. The best bowl? (Please don’t make me… there were so many.) OK. Pingvinen (The Penguin) after a long day of stoic touring in the horizontal rain. A small place, and clearly a local favourite, with a menu of exclusively Norwegian dishes – including fish soup, whale steaks, meatballs and dumplings with lingonberry jelly, stews like Mormor used to make, at prices she’d approve of.

GODT BROD and KAFFI

It’s a small bakery chain in Bergen, but its product is fresh and yummy. Try the cinnamon buns, strong of cardamom and nutmeg, with a great cup of coffee.

Hanne pa hoyden, Fosswinckelsgate 18, 5019 Bergen, 55 32 34 32 www.hannepaahoeyden.no

Pingvinen, Vaskerelven 14, 5014 Bergen, NO, 55 60 46 46 www.pingvinen.no

Godt Brod, various locations in Bergen centre, www.bakeverksted.no

In place of the front deck is now a smart brick addition. At night it’s framed with neon lights, designed to alert those who whiz by of its presence. The fact it has parking in the back. Inside, the new space has wrap around windows and a trio of long booths. Dangling strings of snowflake lights, sharing space with hanging peppers, potted plants and table bouquets of ceramic peach trees – or are they apple? – complete the noble effort of blocking Carling Avenue, without interfering much with the natural light.

The curios and bric-a-brac add to the busy charm of the room – though I must say I don’t much miss the tiger print chairs. These have been reupholstered.

The other change about Mrs Le is the menu. It’s still long and confusing (what Vietnamese restaurant’s menu isn’t?) but it now includes two pages of Thai dishes. This begins to make some sense when we learn Vietnamese Mrs Le has a chef from Bangkok.

The casual wait-staff isn’t exactly pro-active in advising what to try, but if you encourage them with specific questions (how’s the fish curry tonight?) you may get somewhere. Otherwise, look around you. Everyone is parcelling up fragrant, grilled meats with vermicelli, peppers, bean sprouts and herbs in softened rice wraps, and you can’t go wrong with that order here. It’s good, filling, affordable food.

I’ve always found Mrs Le’s Vietnamese fare a cut above – particularly her beef noodle soup (pho) with its gloriously scented broth, strong of cloves and star anise – a sure-fire cure for any winter lurgy. But these latest visits I find myself meandering onto the Thai pages of the menu and liking it as well. Starting with the deep fried tofu-wrapped purses of minced pork and shrimp, with carrot, cilantro and scallion. These are warmly spiced, addictive treats, served with a house-made sauce green with cucumber.

There are stir-fry dishes, of course, and the couple I’ve tried have had those hot, spicy, sweet-and-sour flavours we seek, with fresh, crisp veg and yielding meats. But it’s those essential flavours amplified by the shifting textures of crisp, soft, wet and dry that I most love with Thai food and here’s where the fish dishes shine. Particularly good the red curry of tilapia, the fat, fresh-tasting fish in a well balanced, tastebud-tingling sauce. Excellent too the deep fried version (number T17) the fish remarkably juicy and moist within its crackling coat, in a sweet and gingery syrup dotted with dried red chillies, which give some pop at the end, to balance out the sugar. Yum.

I wasn’t as impressed with the pad Thai. The dish had a good tamarind-forward flavour, but the noodles were gummy, clinging together, without enough lubricant.

They have Mill Street on their beer list, along with the usual Asian imports, and though wines by the glass are limited to one choice, red or white, the full bottles are very kindly priced.

Much to like at the newly re-opened Mrs Le. You won’t miss the deck. Promise.