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.