Such a beautiful horizon ...

I was on holiday in Spain recently, which partly explains why I haven't posted so much of late. But holidays for me are a string of eating and drinking opportunities connected by sleep and travel, so it did actually create a fair few topics for discussion!

Our first port of call was Barcelona. This was the first visit for all of us, so I thought it would be a good idea to try and find out about some fallback restaurants and bars before we arrived. I was delighted to discover that Toptable now offers bookings in several cities abroad, including Barcelona. I even got some bonus points for booking it!

We ended up going to Trobador Rambla Catalunya, part of a chain of restaurants across the city. This one was just on the corner at the start of las ramblas and only a short walk from most of the exciting-looking bars.

The food was good ... for Spain! It was good-quality, reasonably good value, reasonably well-presented, but still only average overall. Spanish restaurants just don't seem to do things with quite so much style as most Europeans: silver service, for instance, is practically unseen. Our veal steaks were served shish kebab-style, which just seemed an odd style of presentation!

One thing stood out, though: this restaurant had proper puddings. A lot of Spanish restaurants simply have a colourful laminated card showing pictures of pre-prepared, frozen desserts from their chiller cabinet. Here we were offered a choice which included an apple tart, crepes with chocolate sauce and other proper-sounding dishes.

Generally I'd recommend Toptable's service more than the restaurant itself, as it's nice to have a meal planned for the day of arrival. In high season this'll probably be even more of a benefit.

More of Barcelona hereafter ...!

Monkeying around!

I spotted this blog post the other day, from The Monkey Blog.

Doesn't Monkey's lifestyle sound strangely similar to mine ...?!

Comfort food

Yesterday a colleague advised me to "just go home and have some beans on toast". So I did (almost) exactly that!

I had three slices of toasted white bread with baked beans on top (Branston baked beans are the best - far nicer than Heinz!). I normally splash a bit of worcestershire sauce into the beans as I'm cooking them, just for a laugh. I topped it with some grated cheddar and some black pepper.

Ok, so you don't need a recipe for beans on toast and it's not exactly tricky or fancy, but it was delicious comfort food and it goes really well with Scrubs repeats on TV!