Bucks bites: batter up

I’m not quite sure why the global schnitzel/escalope/tonkatsu phenomena hasn’t taken off on these shores. Sure, we have nuggets and kievs and breaded chicken strips (a box of 5 Maccy D’s Selects, with sour cream dip, is my new jam), but a flattened piece of meat, bread crumbed and fried, still remains elusive. And what isn't better breadcrumbed and fried.

After visiting Australia a few times to see my family, I'm often asked ‘why don’t you move there?’ To which I reply the weather (I’d melt); the history (I love old stuff, just ask my wife…); and the football (have you seen the A League…). 

But, as well as the fam, when I get back home I do miss being able to get a schnitty at the pub. Even if you have to drink your grog in schooners. For me it’s a near perfect pub meal, something you wouldn’t make at home – a proper schnitzel really requires shallow frying and involves much mess with all the double-dipping and dredging – and is also perfect to soak up the booze.

The Poles have a rich history of beating and breading things, which has made Syrena my second favourite place to go and eat in High Wycombe (almost next door to Dosa Special, which still remains my absolute favourite). 

It's a simple set up with a handful of tables, a counter at the back where you order and pay, and a short menu which includes both pork and chicken schnitzels (and sometimes a special of a breadcrumbed minced meat cutlet), which you can also order topped with cheese and mushrooms. 

I’m not always a traditionalist, but haven’t looked past the classic pork yet. The cutlets are crisp and hot and greaseless, with the thin carapace of breadcrumbs perfectly billowing up from the tender meat as they are fried to order.

Although the escalope covers most of the plate, there’s still room for a couple of scoops of potatoes, that exist somewhere in that perfect place between boiled and mash and strewn with dill. Salad won’t fit, so comes on the side. Normally two different types that may include their excellent coleslaw, beetroot, sauerkraut or pickled cucumbers.

The schnitzel topped with a layer of sauteed mushrooms and a layer of melted cheese is served with fries, garlic sauce and salad and is also pretty great, if not quite as great as the classic version. It's certainly a good post-pub choice (as the restaurant closes at 8, it would have to be an afternoon session).

Another favourite are tender slices of roast neck of pork that come with Silesian dumplings; bouncy potato dumplings traditional to the Upper Silesia region of Poland with a distinctive depression made with a thumb for gravy. The dumplings, which are similar to gnocchi, are boiled in salted water before being covered in the aforementioned gravy. Proper rib-sticking stuff that is especially good with their braised sweet red cabbage.

When we took Stealth along for dinner, she had one of her favourites, beef goulash. I think her favourite is still Mummy P's beef stroganoff, but she still seemed very happy with her choice. The beef and red pepper stew, with its deep paprika-spiked gravy, comes with buckwheat - an underrated grain that doesn't get the love it deserves.

Homemade deserts include pancakes served with sour cream and sugar - they can also be ordered as a savoury course with mushroom gravy or goulash - and crepes with cheese jam or Nutella. They also have a glass cabinet, like the ones my sister and I would press our noses up against when on holiday as children, with a variety of cookies, choux buns, brownies and waffles.

Even though I'm still off the sweet stuff, I have sampled their 'cheesecake' on several occasions before the sugar ban. I use the word loosely, as it's a behemoth featuring a pastry base, a fluffy cream cheese filling and a layer of fruit (I've tried plum and apricot), before being topped with a layer of crisp meringue. Unsurprisingly it's also very, very good. In fact, the only way to improve it would be to roll it in breadcrumbs and fry it.

The Full Monty

In its previous incarnation, Monty’s could be found in the railway arches on Southwark’s Druid Street. An auspicious location as it also heralded the end of the Bermondsey Beer Mile (or the beginning, if you like to mix it up a bit). Making it the perfect pit stop for pre-drinking ballast or post-drinking refuelling.

Although I was more than a little sad to see it move, a successful Kickstarter project funded the hop across the river to a much swisher - if less accessible from my endz - location on Hoxton Street earlier in the year. Happily meaning those Jewish deli staple cravings can now be satiated all-week round. 

Originally an East End bakery, interior-wise, it’s hard to fault. Everything just screams out joyful, in a lower East-side, preserved in aspic kind of way. From the pickle-shaped refreshment sign to the bagels strung up in edible necklaces. There’s a slick and shiny zinc counter, hedged by handsome leather stools; Victorian tiled booths with numbered globe lamps; and a black and white harlequin chequered floor.

While you may not be able to enjoy a locally brewed beer in the sunshine with your sandwich as you could at the old gaff, the drinks menu here goes someway to making up for it - offering beers from Wiper and True , Siren and Thornbridge, spirits including kosher scotch and Serbian plum brandy and even Kiddush sacramental wine. As does the bigger food menu including Friday Shabbat suppers of roast chicken and lokshen pudding and a range of home-baked babka, blintzes and bagels.

It wouldn't be a brunch without a bloody mary (as we were eating at 15.00, some people may argue it wasn't brunch anyway) and this was a pretty good one. Poky with horseradish and chilli and garnished with a huge celery stalk that made me feel a little less guilty for missing my green juice earlier that morning as I chomped my way through it.

Latkes are a hugely underrated potato preparation. Perhaps it's because they are normally served with apple sauce or sour cream - or, if you're lucky, like here, both - but to my mind they are far superior to the common garden hash brown. These were no different - light, crisp, greaseless and quickly dispatched.

Chicken soup with matzo balls and noodles - aka Jewish penicillin – was as soothing and restorative as the names suggests. There’s something supremely comforting about a well-made chicken soup; the slight crunch of the carrot discs; the fragrant fronds of dill; the bland matzo balls and noodles soaking up the shimmering broth.

And while on this particular Sunday afternoon, I was feeling mercifully hangover free (although the bloody marys were staring to take care of that), this would also have made the perfect panacea on those desperate occasions where only a T4 marathon on the sofa and several pints of Berocca are going to cut it.

The Rueben special dispenses for the need to choose between salt beef or pastrami, as you get a heap of both. This is a Very Good Thing, as you get the perfect balance between fatty salt beef and the leaner, peppery pastrami. Sauerkraut, mustard and Russian dressing add piquancy; all barely held together by toasted rye bread and accompanied by half a new green pickle.

Despite their being no blintzes on the brunch menu - and being out of chocolate babka when we arrived - Monty’s is still a Jewish gem. And if you’re still craving an after-brunch snifter, you could do a lot worse than the nearby Old Fointain pub, where a pint of strawberry wit beer from BBN, one of Bermondsey’s finest, made the perfect summer pudding.

Spud U Like - Sandford Park Ale House

I’ve written about my passion for pubs before, often quoting from Orwell’s marvellous A Moon Under Water - a great read and a pleasant distraction from all the ominous quotes from 1984 that look so prescient at the moment – and it’s a love that remains as enduring as the smell of stale fag smoke clinging to a old bar carpet.

Trying to choose a favourite pub always feels rather like choosing a favourite child (not so much because of partisanship - more because, when you think you’ve found The One, they run out of scratchings or the beer’s flat), but one I always enjoy drinking at, and it seems I am in good company as it was awarded CAMRA'S Pub of the Year 2015, is the Sandford Park Ale House in Cheltenham.

The first time I visited was a dark Sunday evening, where we were too late for a roast but just in time for the dish of leftover spuds and a jug of gravy to be put out on the bar. While roasties aren’t my favourite (I didn’t get the moniker Amy One Potato for nothing) I could have eaten a barrowful of these, anointed with the finest gravy I have possibly ever eaten.

Which carb-heavy talk makes an apt lead in to our most recent visit, after attending a nearby Potato Day – which is what people do at the weekend when they get old, apparently. A surreal, although not  entirely unenjoyable experience, where people rummaged through piles of knobbly roots, checking off their carefully compiled lists, and had chance to admire famous works of art that had been replaced by tubers. 

Reckoning that standing in a muddy marquee juggling spuds is a thirsty business, I had also brokered a deal with the Ewing where she agreed that if I feigned enough interest in the allotment we could go to the Sandford Park for lunch.

As well as their ambrosial gravy, the beer is also kept in reliably fine nick with a solid cask offering (Oakham’s Citra, Wye Valley's Butty Bach and Purity's Mad Goose being stalwarts, alongside a roster of regularly-changing ales) as well as offering a big Belgian and keg selection. 

Beers I remember from previous trips include Timmermans kriek lambic (a guilty pleasure), Dark Star Creme Brulee stout on cask and a 5 Points Railway porter on keg. This time I was excited to see Harvey’s Best Bitter, which remains one of my favourite beers, while the Ewing, who had being craving the Black Stuff, had a pint of Arbor Nitro Stout.

As it was Saturday, the roasts weren’t on (nor, disappointingly were the faggots, mash and and peas, replaced by haggis, neeps and tatties for Burns Night) so we decided to share two dishes featuring different incarnations of the potato, burger and chips and ham knuckle and boiled potatoes.

My descriptions downplay the dishes somewhat, as the burger - on a floury bun, topped with a thick doorstop of blue cheese and a pile of dill pickles, served with fluffy chunky chips and tomato relish - was the perfect pub fare. 

One thing that amuses/confuses me here is the assertion that ‘note that you may order vinegar to be added to your meal in our kitchen but we do not put it out in the pub.’ Why are patrons no longer trusted with the non-brewed condiment? Have they been putting it in the beer, in an attempted sabotage of the hostelries good reputation? Whatever the reason, chip to vinegar ratio is a personal thing – so while I enjoyed the dousing ours had been given in the kitchen, the Ewing wasn’t as keen. Which, I suppose, wasn’t really a problem from my perspective…

The ham knuckle was even more magnificent – a behemoth of boiled pig served with sauerkraut, buttered potatoes and a light, glossy gravy that, while not up to the ethereal heights of the previous visit, was still cleared from the plate with the last forkful of DIY mash. And all yours for under a tenner.

A thoroughly decent pub, serving thoroughly decent beer and spuds (other foods are available) and, in the words of AA Milne; ‘if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a decent sort of fellow’.