Iggy’s Dinners – Culinary Investigations

Villa Alecya

Food: this is a chambre d’hôtes so you have to stay here to eat here but I’m gonna call it a hotel. It is so pretty! As we drove up it was a huge wow! 😂😍 My soup was amazing. It was lovely potimarron soup served with some cream. Mum and dad’s duck was good! (apparently) served with boiled potatoes, a pork sauce and some fried onions and mushrooms. This is an excellent hotel and a good restaurant. The chocolate fondant was impressive, I’m surprised it was runny after a good 10 mins of chat. Served with gorgeous ice cream. (sorry it’s not as chatty as usual, there wasn’t much to say and I needed it to be up before we left, so I’ll do another couple tonight/tomorrow, the Jumble room, the Grand at Grasmere and Le Comptoir, they’ll be chatty!)

Service: lovely, really friendly and chatty

Atmosphere: great huge old house

Little bits that are nice: everything

Quirky bits: dumb waiter.

Score: 8/10 not haute cuisine but a good bet!

La Maison

Food: We go to Cognac every once in a while, if we go to England, and we usually go to the ‘Coq d’or’. However, last time wasn’t that good so mum and dad thought it was a good idea to try something new so they looked on the internet and found this place called La Maison. I was very sceptical at first;the waitors all had ties on, plus the meal I had at the Coq d’or wasn’t bad. But when they brought out the canapés, we knew they meant business. There were 3 of each of a mini croque monsieur, a butternut soup and an olive swhirl on cheese cracker (the super thick crumby kind!). We asked if there was meat in them, because I don’t eat meat, and they said there was only meat in the croque monsieurs, and you know what he did? He went away and came back with a special little vegetarian canapé for me to replace the croque monsieur ! It was so kind! It was a chopped up artickocke heart with a yellow pepper sauce, it was delicious! The butternut soup was really good too! And the third and final was slightly less good than the others, but still great! It had curry spice in which gave it a lovely flavour boost! Next, the amuse-bouche. A prawn “cappuccino” with on top of some quinoa with a tuile. At first you go eurck, because it looks like ice cream, and you expect a sweetness. But then as you readjust your expectations it’s really quite good, very interesting to say the least, the tuile was slightly nothingish, but added some crunch which is always a good thing. Round about this point they brought hot fresh crusty bread, and also two types of homemade butter. One salted, and the other one flavoured with oak barrels. OMG! It was so good and interesting!it tasted like there was vanilla in it, but not quite, and it was really bugging us not being able to pin it down, so we asked if there were any spices in it,and they said no. Just some barrel essence, and he brought us some. He said that they take some butter, melt it and put this essence in it. It was a sort of powder made from grinding up the inside of some old cognac oak barrels. Outstanding discovery! Now let’s come back to the meal! Then they brought out the starters. Mine was a trout gravlax, with a dill oil, pink peppercorn crepe, egg mayo puree, some of the yellow pepper sauce and some diced hard boiled egg. It was exactly how it should be. The egg mayo puree had some curry powder in and was just so good and pepper sauce was great, and the crepe added a little bit of wham to it, the gravlax had clearly been marinating for a few days and was delicious even though it was trout, and the dill oil brought everything together! Wow! Mum and dad had foie gras with an onion confit and pleurotes, apparently it was superb. Next the mains. I had a prawns on top of a creamy risotto. It was supposed to come with a carbonara sauce but that had lardons in so RIP. It was very good, but it was slightly under salted because it needed the lardons but all in all it was a subtile well composed dish. Dad had bream on pois cassés (basically upper class mushy peas 😍) with a sauce bordelaise. For those of you who don’t know what a sauce bordelaise is, it’s a sauce using bone marrow and Bordeaux red wine. I know. Sounds delicious. And apparantly it was, but definitely slightly over reduced. Mum had pork with a tuile and some sort of puree and sauce. It was amazing apparantly. Then the cheese. It came on a huge trolley and you could pick the cheeses you wanted. There was an amazing epoisse, and the best langres I’ve ever had! And many more! They also had cherry chutney which was superb.

Service: Great, they had a certain twinkle in their eyes!

Atmosphere: good, if a bit brightly lit.

Little bits that are nice: everything

Quirky bits: the pictures of famous characters and people, but as skulls

Toilets: great, and amazing hot pink toilet paper!

Score: 10/10 I’m gonna have to make it in leagues aren’t I? Like, have home cooking, swanky cooking, and super swanky. And have a scale from 1 to 10 in those categories! Do you agree?

The best restaurants

I have been doing this blog for a while now… and we have reached the end of a DECADE! (its crazy !) Weve been going for a few years and I thought, ‘You know what ? lets go over the best restaurants Ive eaten in since that time. So here we are… the 4 best restaurants on this site so far!

1. Gidleigh Park, Devon
I think it is pretty obvious that this was going to get first spot, it being a 2 michelin starred restaurant and all. It was great! No 2 ways about it! but continue working and get better; you can always improve!

2. The Kitchen, Cornwall
This wins 2nd spot because it was so different, and that dessert… probably the best ive ever had, and thats saying something! Sadly its closed now, it was a victim of its own succes and i think the chef is doing some high level super expensive stuff now, if youre reading this Mr The Kitchen, i wish you the best of luck!

3. Hooked on the rocks, Cornwall
this is a really good restaurant at an affordable price, it masters the art of fish food and is generally an all round good bet if youre in the area! It is definitaley worth a sizeable detour to taste the crab, and other dishes!

4. The Elephant, Devon
Coming in at number five, is the elephant restaurant in devon. It is a fair bet if you have some money to spend, for it is not cheap. Good for special occasions, this restaurant is aiming high. Keep on working and improving!

So there you have it! I hope you enjoyed reading! and I hope to post more this decade! Adios amigos

Au cabanon de Puycelsi

Food: In case you didnt know, I am a huge fan of Japan and their culture/food. It is my dream to live in Tokyo, so when I heard that this restaurants theme for 2019 was japanese cooking, I was the happiest boy on earth. However, it has not changed my view of this restaurant, I will cut NO slack just because they are cooking Japanese food! My tempura vegetables were really really good, they came with a sesame dipping sauce which was not under spicy for France! I also asked if I could have some of their umeboshi chutney to taste it and they said yes! It was Deeeeeeelicious! Next, I had lentil balls with a crispy outside and a fluffy inside 😛 so good! With a spiced carrot purée that just SCREAMED lick the plate, a wasabi and chantilly cream that was very interesting and refreshing and a rice cake – you cant have a japanese meal without a rice cake! that was so sticky and gorgeous I just wanted 14,729 of them! Next we all shared 3 puddings. The chocolate and ajuki bean cake was tasty not amazing, but tasty. It was just chocolate really. The Matcha milk jelly was nice, and it came with a custard. it was very interesting and very heavy, a bit too heavy for my liking. And now the star of the show, THE BOBA!! Also known as tapioca pearls. they were yuzu scented tapioca pearls and I think they came with a mango sauce. I just could NOT get enough of them, so deliciously delicious and amazing. Citrus and boba and everything good combined. Homemade too!

Service; great

Atmosphere: great

Little bits that are nice: outside under a hanging thing very beautiful

Toilets: In the mairie so not bad

Score 8/10

Hooked on the rocks

Food: The baked chorizo was very tasty. It was nice and crispy served with a delicious though tooth-achingly sweet chilli jam. The squid was great, served with a kind of mayonnaise and lots of lovely coriander. I would have liked the squid to be a tiny bit more crispy but thats just nitpicking.
Next, the mains; I had the whole small crab and did not regret my descision. It was perfectly cooked and was just so fresh! The freshest crab I’ve ever had! It came with a good garlic butter and garlic mayo, super chips and a green salad. Plus the claws for cracking the shells and all that shizzle. The real deal! Dad had the John Dori, it came with a cider and clotted cream sauce ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and baby new potatoes. It was a bit of a let down, the fish wasnt that tasty, though i dont think it was the chef’s fault, its just not a very tasty fish. The sauce was nice but just cream would have been better – seeing as your goal as a saucier is to not clott the sauce- .
Mums tonkatsu haddock was good. It came with coconut rice, a breaded prawn, a homemade prawn cracker and corriander. 😊. Copacetic.
Nana had fish and chips. She said it was very nice, and the waiter/waitress gave her a smaller portion because she wanted one.
On to the desserts, Mum had an affogato, which is one of her favorite desserts, though for any aficionados out there, the coffee came in a glass and the ice cream in a shallow dish, meaning that you either have to put the ice cream into the glass creating a mini nuclear explosion of drips, or put the coffee in the dish, maybe causing an overflow. (Or you could just get a little of each of them at the same time on your spoon, that works i guess…) so anyway, thats out. I had a scoop of strawberry ice cream and a scoop of coconut sorbet, both homemade.

Service: Very nice, super chatty, efficient, just generally friendly

Atmosphere: amazing, perfect place for a restaurant, and very windowed

Little bits that are nice: you see them take out the crab that youre going to eat from the water tank and take it to the kitchen!

Toilets: very snazzy, and groovy

Score: 9.5/10 GREAT! Carry on like this!

Any ideas?

Hi guys ! How are you ? I’m sorry I havent put up a post in a few months, we just don’t really go to new restaurants !! But I thought I’d take this opportunity as a chance to ask you guys for some healthy (no gluten and no sugar) breakfast ideas. The winning idea will get posted on a very special page for community ideas like this: “The Hall of Really Amazing and Original Cooking Ideas Chosen by the Community”! The ideas will be judged on originality, health and delisciousness ! Leave a comment on this post with the recipe in to submit your breakfast idea !