Lunch Out & About: Eat a Pitta

12th July 201712th July 2017Leave a comment

“Bristols best falafels”, and they’re totally gluten free! Eat a Pitta is my current lunch obsession. You can find their stalls in central Broadmead, the lovely St Nicks market and soon to be on Gloucester road. You can choose a salad box, which they cram full of various chickpea, tomato, carrot and cucumber salads, and then add some of the hot homemade falafels on top. Topped off with hummus and a variety of sauces or salsas, it really is just the perfect summary lunch that is super filling. The food is really clean, fresh and tasty. Crispy falafels with a moist (sorry) centre and hummus make a wonderful pair.

Everything apart from the pittas, cous cous and tabbouleh is GF. If you’re coeliac or sensitive ask for the box to be made specifically gluten free, they then pick all the salads and ingredients straight out of the boxes at the back to avoid any cross contamination from the front counter.

The lunchtime queue is always huge, however they’re very efficient so no fear, you still get your falafels and hummus quickly!

This is just a quick post really to say, if you haven’t tried Eat a Pitta yet, definitely stop by! I’m not the usual vegetarian/salad lunch buyer, but as I said this has sucked me in and I can’t get enough!

Forever, The Awkward Dinner Guest

Seafood Supper at The Waterfront, Exmouth

12th July 201612th July 2016Leave a comment

My boyfriend and I met in Plymouth while I was living there for a couple of years. Now living a little more into the country in Bristol we take every free weekend to run back to the seaside for a break away. This past weekend we took a trip to his Grandparent’s house in Exmouth for some crazy golf, beach walks and home made roast dinners.

On Friday night we booked a table for two at the Waterfront restaurant at the Pier head.

Beautifully decorated inside they stick to the seaside, cosy theme. There are seats inside and a conservatory overlooking the stunning Exmouth bay. I would definitely recommend booking in advance to try and get a seat in the conservatory.

They offer a nice simple menu varying from poussin to steak tartar and fillet of Cornish hake. Everything is locally source and it all looked delicious – I had serious food envy of our neighbour tucking into a huge seafood platter off the specials board.

We both, of course, opted for starters. I had local scallops with vegetable julienne and red onion salsa and my boyfriend had calamari with garlic and basil sauce. The scallops were perfectly tender, one more scallop would have been very much welcomed on the plate.

For the main we had the Exmouth mussels of the day and a side of fries. Mine came with gluten free bread which I used to mop up the tasty mariniere sauce. They tasted really fresh, the sauce was full of flavour and really filling.

They don’t have a specific allergy menu but when I enquired they said most meals could be altered or substituted to fit any allergies. The staff really were lovely the whole evening, even when we ran about half an hour late after sitting in M5 Friday evening traffic, they held our table and said there were no problems.

For pudding we shared a banana banoffee creme brulee, totally forgot to take a picture as by that time I was in Friday night mussels and wine coma. It wasn’t my favourite dessert ever, slightly strange texture with the banana mashed in but it wasn’t horrible. I finished this off for the both of us!

Exmouth is a small but really lovely town, this place is the ideal, reasonably priced spot for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Take time to relax, drink some wine and look out over the pretty bay. We’ll definitely drop in here again net time we’re visiting.

Forever, The Awkward Dinner Guest

Bottomless Brunch with my Hen – Avenue, London.

24th June 201625th June 2016Leave a comment

My beautiful big sister got married on the 18th June 2016. But, before I go into all the exciting details about that, let me take you back to the beginning of June when I was in charge – the hen party!

As head bridesmaid, it fell on me to organise a wonderful send off for my sister. Food, prosecco and dancing was my main theme and this was to be repeated throughout the day. The idea was to start where every Saturday should begin, at brunch, and drink prosecco in the best way, the bottomless way. I decided on London, the brunch centre of the UK, and started researching where to go!

After looking through google and timeout suggestions I narrowed my choices to Bad Egg, Bourne and Hollingsworth Buildings and Avenue. They all looked lovely and seemed to provide what I was looking for however, following recommendations from friends living in London and TripAdvisor reviews I finally decided on the latter. The general consensus was that Avenue are extremely attentive and you totally get your money’s worth – which when it comes to prosecco is very important.

Groups of 8 and under are booked online, if any bigger you can call and reserve your table there. No payments are taken in advance they just require credit card details as a deposit if the party doesn’t turn up.

The brunch menu offers 2 courses for £23.50 or 3 for £26.00 you then add on bottomless prosecco for £15 per person. Honestly, it really is bottomless. Your table is booked for 2 hours and at no point in that time was my glass empty! The staff were all great and brilliantly attentive. I only had to take a couple of sips and there would be a nice man leaning over my right shoulder to top up my glass!

Now to the food! The brunch menu is a sort of American style lunch affair, varying between smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, pancakes and buttermilk chicken burgers. Of course, not everything is gluten free friendly but I felt happy with my selection. They can substitute any of the bread/toast for gluten free replacements. Unfortunately all granola, waffles, pancakes and burgers were off limits.

I chose two courses and started with eggs royale. The gluten free bread is by no means groundbreaking but it was a good portion and the hollandaise sauce was really tasty. Every brunch should have a pudding so my second course was mint ice cream with hot chocolate fudge…delicious.

We booked for 13:15, it was extremely busy already by then so I would definitely recommend booking first. Despite the tables of excited hen parties and group after group of girls with cocktails and prosecco, we still felt the waiters looked after us really well and were at no point left trying to catch their eye for service.

For us it was the perfect way to start the weekend. I have to confess my planning got rather lax onwards from this and we ran late for everything else! Don’t expect to have a productive afternoon after you fall out of a bottomless brunch! Find Avenue on St James’s Street round the corner from Green Park and Piccadilly tube stations. Grab your best girlfriends and guys and book a table! I can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon – can you?

Forever, The Awkward Dinner Guest

CAU- Argentinian Restaurant, Bristol

23rd May 201624th May 2016Leave a comment

I spent a very nostalgic Saturday night drinking red wine, eating steak and telling Argentinian adventure stories.

February and March this year I was travelling through 4 countries in South America. One of my favourite weeks was spent in Buenos Aires – the capital of Argentina. BA is an absolutely beautiful city with a European feeling. My friend and I spent our time drinking, partying, taking tours around the neighbourhoods and eating steak every day, and I mean every day!

CAU aim to replicate the sense of fun and passion you can find in Buenos Aires after they also fell in love with the City. They say their vision is to capture the spirit in a restaurant that would fit right into the heart of Palermo. Palermo is the Soho of BA and just happens to be the place where I ate the best steak of my life – so they had a lot to compete with.

With my Malbec and steak levels now reaching an all time low in 2016, this was the only place I wanted to go for Saturday night date night.

Luckily CAU caters extremely well to coeliacs and gluten free’ers! Of course the usual burgers and sandwiches are off limits but that’s not such a terrible thing when you’re choosing between steak, speciality cuts, sea bream fillet or twice cooked belly pork.

Triple cooked chunky chips, thin chips and baked sweet potato sides are all safe to eat. I was slightly disappointed that the CAUslaw was not GF friendly because I mean, steak and coleslaw is always good. But, I got by with a CAU chopped salad instead.

The decor inside is very modern with big white cushioned booths, higher level seating and tables all mixed in together. It didn’t necessarily transport me back to the streets of Buenos Aires, but it was nice all the same! The staff were lovely and we were never left waiting for anything.

I started with a ‘Where the wild things are’ cocktail which I have to admit, didn’t taste of much. It was a mix of sloe gin, portobello gin and ginger ale but tasted like sweet berry water instead. Saying this, I am not ready to write off the cocktails quite yet and would definitely give them a chance next time. Moving on swiftly, I ordered a bottle of the Trasandino Malbec – Mendoza, Argentina and sipped this happily as I remembered cycling around Mendoza vineyards and wine tasting on private balconies.

We both went for the 220g sirloin steak medium/rare with a side of thin chips and salad. One of my favourite things here is being able to eat the steak sauces! All of them are gluten free, so we chose a pepper sauce and shared a truffle butter.

The results were beautiful.

The steaks really were great – juicy and excellently cooked. I’m not ashamed to say I eat the fat on meat, its one of the best bits, so these sirloins were perfect. We had no complaints!

I would 100% go back to CAU, I’m eyeing up the twice cooked pork belly. But, it may still have to be a side to my sirloin, I really struggle to turn steak on a menu down.

For good quality steak and wine along with a friendly atmosphere I would really recommend checking out CAU. They have restaurants all over the UK from Glasgow to Tunbridge wells – so there’s no excuse to miss this Buenos Aires experience.