B & K salt beef bar - Best Kitchen?

B & K Salt beef bar, restaurant, take away, is the still place for salt beef sandwiches and lokshen pudding.

Lunchtime they have a meal deal of starter and dessert for about £11.
Several restaurants in Hatch End offer similar set lunch prices.
Here's the noodle soup.

This is the soup with dumplings. (Kneidlach.)

Another highly calorific starter is the chopped liver, attractively served with three round pieces of matzah (crackers).

 One of my fellow diners wanted the salt beef and we decided to have two different main courses so they had the salt beef and I had the turkey. I was offered cold or hot turkey and optional gravy. You could choose chips or latke (potato cake as you see) or salad. I was surprised not to get meat and two veg, potato and one other. But one of us had salad and the other the potato latke so that gave us a healthy mixture. We did not go hungry!

How was it?

Anything missing? Yes. A green vegetable with my main course. The piece of rye bread I was expecting with the soup or salt beef. I suspected that 'you get what you pay for' and the rye bread comes with salt beef in the evenings. When I asked about the rye bread I'd expected they said as they were busy at lunch time they'd forgotten.

My latke was a bit thin, compared to the good old days. However, we bought apple strudel and lokshen pudding (noodle pudding). The lokshen pudding had the usual lemon taste. De-liscious!
Whilst I was only 80% satisfied, my two companions were 100% satisfied. That adds up to 280 out of 300. Would we go back? Yes. Next time I recommend sticking to the a la carte, going for salt beef, and making sure of getting rye bread.

The Crabtree Pub, London, on the water

Order your food from the barbecue and they will ring your mobile phone to tell you when it's ready!

The Crabtree Pub is a jolly place which has something for everyone, an outdoor barbecue, an area like a garden party, a riverside area, an upmarket indoor restaurant.

The crowd is elegant. All ages are at home. Dogs toddlers and prams, elderly people with wheelchairs and sticks, couples enjoying a tete a tete, girls having a get together, all seemed to have their own corners undisturbed by and not disturbing others.



  What else is for this venue? You can park in the street alongside on Sundays. They serve prosecco by the glass.
 Anything against going here? The outdoor barbecue's chips are thin and crispy, reminded me of McDonalds. At busy Sunday lunchtime you might not get a table by the river immediately. By the river at dusk there are flies which might bite you.
   Outdoor or in? We were at a do for a former colleague, so had to stay with the group outdoors. It was such good weather we were glad of the opportunity. If it had rained, maybe our large group would have moved indoors.
  Service - immediately somebody offered to help us and directed us to the area of our group of friends, although, it was not cordoned off.
  We shared a vegetarian burger, rather than the chicken as we already had chicken planned for our evening meal at home.

   They seemed to have everything, from wines by the glass or bottle to hamburgers and sorbets.

You can walk along the riverside and look at the birds and ducks.

Loch Fyne, Norwich

Starter: Olives.

Main course spicy salmon.

Dessert: lemon something.

Deelish.

A very nice thick steak was enough for two meals. They wrapped up the leftovers. Luckily despite the hot weather the steak kept overnight in a cool box we had in the car, packed with a base of ice packs.

Very jolly. Warm and friendly. 

As we left I saw the sign about the Festival extras and wondered if I had missed out on something. It turned out I didn't. I checked on the festival website, and found that during the seafood weekend various restaurants were offering discounts for certain meals, and if we had arrived before 6 pm we would have received a discount. I'll know for next year.

Hawtreys at The Barn Hotel, Ruislip

Some photos for you:

I've seen that some restaurants in New York want to stop diners taking photos of food. I love taking photos of food. You can re-live the pleasure, show your friends, write reviews. Photos tell you so much. By the time I got home I had forgotten that we had a flower on the table, and three types of butter, unsalted, salted, and salted with sea salt. 

The butter was on a slate. You can buy yourself a slate in Dunelm Mill at South Harrow.

Cafe Rouge

I think of Cafe Rouge as a 'chain' restaurant but I'm always pleasantly surprised at how good the food is.

My reviews on Facebook and Trusted Places, Statistics, Links

Statistical update.

I have 74 restaurant reviews on the website Trusted Places.

I get a much larger readership there than here. Seventeen times as large.

2911 people looked at my profile.

17596 read my reviews in less than a year.

(As a journalist I got more readers. About 80,000 on a magazine such as Brides. About a million for Take A Break. But blogging, where you get feedback, is more exciting. When you write a magazine article you might never meet anybody who's read it until ten years later.)

Of course Trusted Places is more focused on restaurants.

I watch my increasingly statistics every day.

My son does search engine optimization (company Market Appeal)

so I can get feedback from him.

I wanted to know how much difference is made by the links from my Facebook entry to Trusted Places. And does Trusted Places know.

Yes. He is going to tell me.

It's links which help drive up your ratings. 

My son has been telling me this.

It was brought home to me when I met Jeremy Jacobs at Harrovians Toastmasters.

Jeremy's blog has shot up in the ratings. He says blog every day. And add links.

His website is jeremyjacobs.com

You should read it. 

Until now I've felt I can't be bothered to start linking up all the time. 

But when you can link just be clicking on an icon which somebody else has inserted, it's easy.

Now I shall pay more attention to the links. 

Now I realise I have a link icon above in the toolbar I shall use it more.

Then one day I shall have 80,000 readers for a blog. Then a million.

I tell myself I am making progress. I can remember when I didn't have a blog. In fact I can remember when I didn't have a computer. Mustn't digress. Back to the restaurant review. go to Trusted Places to see my reviews of restaurants in London and other parts of England. I've just written about Cafe Rouge, blubeckers, the University of Wales, and The Hayes Conference Centre in Derbyshire and put up pictures of amusing places such as the Hell Fire Caves. 

Delicious Delisserie, Temple Fortune, London

Freshly squeezed carrot juice for me, and freshly squeezed pear juice with a head of froth like a beer for my son - on his birthday - his choice of restaurant, what a great choice.

Starters were chicken soup with dumplings, and chicken liver with chopped boiled egg - ooh! A double starter!

Main courses: We had fish of the day with mashed potato, Beef in high rye bread sandwich with browned onions and coleslaw, salt beef with viennas and latkes. Ooh - a double main course! All nicely presented. In case you don't know, viennas are red sausages like frankfurters but more solid and springy. Latkes are fried shredded potato cakes, like the Swiss Rosti and the American hash brownies.

We weren't madly keen on the browned onions, nor the coleslaw. If there was anything lacking in the meal it was fresh vegetables - no salad nor simple freshly cooked vegetables such as peas.

Desserts, one apple strudel big enough for two of us. With fattening ice cream. Didn't see anybody thin dining in the restaurant.

Leftovers wrapped up to take home. Two items in plastic tubs with lids, great. Third food item in silver foil split in my handbag, pierced by a ballpoint pen.

Full marks for the choice of coffee. We had single espressos. With milk. And brown sugar. N our view they score higher on coffee than Blooms of Edgware.

Seating comfort, all banquettes which I like. Tables very close to fixed benches. I'm usually complaining that you are so far from the table that your back arches. Here we had hardly room for our knees and were knocking elbows and no room for your bag on the seat next to you in a foursome with another person alongside. Would be fine for two of you. Table tops wipe-clean varnished wood, acceptable. Clientele on the night we were there, over 45 and looked like they might be Jewish, not particularly well-spoken but well-dressed and affluent. Man on next table had a gold bracelet and signet ring - which appealed to me.

Waiting staff were slim girls in black with hair tied back. One of ours was from Brazil.
Bar area, smart with gleaming glass displays.

Toilets, smart with one large ladies toilet containing modern circular basin and large flower display.

Cleanliness good.

Decor Thirties, with art deco vases and what looked like reproductions of Alma Tadema paintings. Not really glamorous - candles were tea-lights in glass, and no tablecloths, but the best of the Jewish style restaurants.

Parking
Easy outside on weekends - easier than nearby Golders Green.

Price
Our bill was about £90 without service for four including two glasses of red wine but only one dessert and four spoons between four.

Everybody was very satisfied and will be happy to go there again.

A word on Jewish style and kosher food. Those who really insist on kosher food mostly already know which places are supervised kosher. In fact, I've heard that some customers who prefer the London Beth Din claim that they are more fussy than the Sephardis. (I wonder what the Sephardis say.)

For those of us who don't 'keep kosher' when out (or at home), what's the difference between Jewish style and kosher?

One obvious difference is that the supervised strictly kosher places are closed on the Jewish sabbath and festivals. So if you are looking for a meal out on Friday night or Saturday night (depending on time of year) and you want chicken soup, bagels, and food like that made by Bubba (Yiddish for granny) you have to go to the Jewish style restaurants.

They have other branches. Hatch End, alas, has only a catering branch.

Delisserie, 1 Belmont Parade, Temple Fortune.Tel: 0208 458 8777.