Back in the (long distant) day when I was a student in Cardiff and Cathays was my drinking stomping ground, in between studying (barely) and my munitions factory (them Boers) and chimney sweeping jobs (not quite that old), the Flora pub rather stood out as a bastion of tradition as against the ever expanding “fun” pubs catering for student dickheads like me. It was what most people would call a proper boozer in those days, with food very much an after thought and said “food” being limited to salted (none of those exotic dry roasted ones) peanuts (from one of the supposedly racey – they weren ..read more

I am quite often called a jerk (mainly by Mrs. SF and J) and when I go to Caribbean restaurants (a rarity I have to say) or cook Caribbean food (even more of a rarity), my go to dish tends to be jerk (chicken). There are, of course, many, many, other standard dishes in any Caribbean restaurant’s repertoire including goat curry (another favourite), callaloo, salt fish and achee (never tried) and brown stew. The latter sounds on the face of it rather  beige, with brown anything generally not a great marker of anything good. I mean brown bread (rightly rhyming slang for you’re dead) an ..read more

Another wine post you lucky, lucky people. After the Jura wines post I could tell you all had an unquenchable thirst for wine posts (with the seeming indifference to that post, just a clever double bluff on your collective parts to encourage me to redouble my efforts in terms of putting out more wine posts ). Regardless you are getting one, with this time the tasting being back in Cardiff and relating to the one of Chateaneuf du Pape’s seminal producers in the form of Chateau de Beaucastel. Now, Chateauneuf du Pape (“CNdP“) is one of those wines, which (at least to my mind) has rather li ..read more

Times are tough for pretty much everybody at the moment, with the hospitality trade getting it both barrels. Costs are increasing (pretty remorsely, despite what the official figures may say) and income is being adversely affected by a lack of spending power from hard pressed punters. An empty restaurant is a sad thing indeed and sadder when you think of the cost of staff, ingredients, energy etc. all having to be met with no income that serves to offset such cost. As such, restaurant are having to be a bit more inventive in terms of their offerings to get the punters in, especially at those ..read more

Oscar my dog can be a bit of a dick (well they do say dogs are like their owners) and can be somewhat intransigent as he gets older (I do somewhat indulge the little troublemaker and would happy transfer a few years of my life to enlongate his if that were ever possible, as he thinks I can do no wrong and in that he is very much in a minority of two – me and him). One of Dick’s favourite walks is up behind the cathedral in Llandaff, by the Taff (I have to drive him up there as otherwise it would take an eon to get him up the hill to the village from my house, as he sniffs and pees on eve ..read more

Fun fact the Jurassic period is named after the Jura Mountains in France, with rocks of that age first studied in Jura and this is where the blog goes this week.  Not done a wine post for a while, mainly due to me not having been to too many tastings of late. Has, in some cases, become a bit more of a chore than a labour of love (with seemingly more admin. than imbibing), with other commitments having curtailed my attendance at both the Bristol and Cardiff wine tasting clubs. The Bristol one does allow me to take more of a back seat (and to see my Dad). Now my wine posts tend to be ..read more

I tend not to like to be too preachy on the blog (bar from about wine pour sizes – serve dry sherry in a 50/75cl pour and expect to see me outside setting up a pulpit for the purposes of raging against the injustice of it all), as why would most people care what I think in a food and drink blog about the current de riguer social issues. I have no interest whatsoever in being a social justice warrior, but I do have a lot of admiration for people (with better hearts than my ice cold “devil’s advocate” one) who look out for those less fortunate than most of us. Lots of us think times are ha ..read more

The oldies amongst you may (possibly through gritted teeth) remember the song from Max Bygraves about tulips from Amsterdam (younguns will have no idea, which is probably for the best) and “I wanna to tell you a story” about a first stop off in terms of using the 2024 iteration of the Cardiff Wine Passport in the form of Daffodil in Cardiff’s city centre. Long ago, back prior to the Permian extinction, when I started working in the legal profession (not quite the quill and ink era, but when we had typewriters, carbon copies, faxes, telex and MS -DOS, with no such thing as emails) Windsor ..read more

I know some people don’t rate the Sunday roast as a meal. Not sure why as oven roasted meats from elsewhere are often raved about, think cochinillo asado or lechazo asado in Spain, porchetta in Italy, Kleftiko in Greece and Peking duck in China to name but a few. These dishes are rightly lauded when done well, but tend to be awful if not. Personally I think there are few thing more satisfying than a top quality bit of ruby red, roasted, dry aged beef and who doesn’t like a crispy skinned roast chicken or leg of lamb or crackling encased pork joint and if you don’t like pro ..read more

I am a big sci-fi/ fantasy geek and have railed against the ruination rained down on beloved franchises like Star Wars (the last trilogy was utter garbage and that is an affront to garbage – controversially I rather liked the stand alone Rogue One, as I love a unhappy ending and it still riles me that the ending of Die Hard was not Hans Gruber nonchalantly blowing John McClane away and pulling off the heist). One of my favourite sci fi book is the first Dune novel and when I heard it was being (again) made into a film I had mixed feelings. The first attempt back in 1984 (with Kyle MacLac ..read more