Best Main Course

Roast rack of Cornish lamb, slow roast shoulder rosti, celeriac purée, greens, minted jus

 This dish was perfection and it wasn’t until about half way through that we realised this.  It is incredibly moreish and resulted in us mopping up every bit of it and still wanting more, that’s not to say that it was small, because there’s plenty on the plate.  The Rosti (which can’t really be seen on this photo), was incredible, soft and somehow crispy.  The Lamb itself was divine, packed with flavour and perfectly cooked as you can see, it matched up well with the celeriac puree which we are big fans of, but the minted jus- gravy- was the thing that brought it all together, the hint of mint reminding you that this was a lamb dish but all the while the deep flavour of the gravy making you salivate.  £17.95 makes it a middle ground price but it was definitely punching well above its weight.

To be found at The Moorings at Myton. 

La Margherita

La Margherita

Website
24 Church Street
Rugby
Warks
CV213PU
01788 550289

As Performed by The Captain, The Merchant, The Pole, Chief Sitting Bull, Daddy’s Boy and A Bunch of Hunts. 

          Tonight’s meal was originally planned to be a rival dinner to Busty Laroux‘s leaving do which we knew was at the same place at the same time, however seeing as The Jockey boycotted tonight’s meeting with no prior warning, we had a table that was too big for us.  Busty‘s table also had some space so we decided to cling on to their table, forming one giant all powerful table which completely dominated the restaurant (otherwise there was just a 2 and a 4 in). We were loud and disruptive from the beginning and continued this throughout the evening to ensure that they got a move on and looked after us. 
          This evening was plagued with organisational issues from the start, with the table rearranging and the fact that there were now 15 of us on one table made things rather complicated.  Anyway, we did wonder how this place stays open as none of us had been here before, but with it being on the main road through town we were all well aware of it.  It is a double fronted place with a big restaurant that stretches quite a way back and although we have never seen it busy, they must do a fair bit of trade to justify all that.
          The Merchant was apparently in The Arnold Arms last night and so this explains his tardiness, he said that it was dead, but when is it not dead? (apart from when we turn up for a free bar once in a blue moon).  Daddy’s Boy has also reminded The Captain that they are both off work this Saturday and so it makes sense for them to go to The Wharf Inn and get royally smashed: a dangerous task, but someones got to do it.  Talking of Pubs, the pub of rugby- The Merchants Inn is hosting another of their famous Beer Festivals, this time the theme is Britain at War; The Merchant did plan to go tonight after dinner to see what was happening but we cant report how that went, although we have heard that they have had 6 tonnes of sand delivered to transform the place into a bunker.
           Once we had ordered, we watched as our waitress came back and re-checked what we were having, she also informed us that there weren’t enough sirloin steaks and so some of us were upgraded to fillet steaks for free – which we liked.  As the chaos continued, we spoke about Two Door Cinema Club this Saturday in Alexandra Palace, London; The Captain, The Pole, Awesome and Sexy are going down and whilst in the capital may have a drink or two.  And to answer The Huntsman‘s obvious question, “No, hes not knocking her.”  The Little Chef is still on a quest to find anything with a pulse to keep him warm at night, no luck so far…….

←  Pan fried Mozzarella sounded better than it was, wrapped in parma ham it was which was a bit chewy.  Still nice though but could have done with double the amount of cheese and ham. 

 →  Carbonara with The Huntsman‘s fat finger jammed in it, nice but a bit too mushroomy. 

←  Grilled Mackerel on Sauteed Potatoes, a bit different and had quite a pungent smell, it stings the nostrils, reminded us of Sex Panther. 

          After we had eaten the starters, some of us went to make room in the toilets, and they started off with a 3/10 and were downgraded to 2.  This seems low but its quite justified- Daddy’s Boy had to stop half way to avoid the urinal overflowing over his shoes- a very painful procedure that is best avoided. The toilets may have been disappointing, but so far the food came out on time and was half decent.  We were well looked after by our waitress and she had some good banter about her, answering back several times with some rather amusing stuff, even laughing when she heard that The Captain was in a rush because he was “on a promise”. 
          With several holidaymakers present we obviously talked about our upcoming venture to Florida and where we should go to eat.  The Internet needs reviews of all the food that we eat and so we plan on working non-stop while we are out there.  The Captain has already lead by example with his recent holiday and in fact New York is still visible on his waistline 3 months later.  On Holiday we go by the rule “Don’t eat because you’re hungry, eat because you have to”. 
          The Huntsman as usual was trying to recommend some awful places to eat, for someone with a fairly successful restaurant, it seems strange that he chooses so poorly when going out to eat.  Regardless of this, we ignored most of what he was saying and continued.  After our starters we were still very hungry for our mains , but we didn’t have to wait long and they looked like this:

← The upgraded steak with sauteed vegetables and red wine sauce, absolutely fantastic, brilliant steak and at £13.95 it was a bargain for two pieces of fillet. 

→ Homemade Gnocchi, gobbled up by The Little Chef. 

← Chicken,surrounded by loads of veg in some sort of sauce, sorry, too much detail.  Tasted as if it was frozen veg according to The Chief‘s attentive palate. 

→ Fish with some stuff, looks alright don’t it?

← Falafel was mediocre according to Busty Laroux. 

→ Braised Lamb Shank, Massive portion and was declared awesome by The Pole. 

←  Lamb Tagine? looked good and there was plenty there to fill up  Double D. 

           The Little Chef remained seated throughout the entire night due to the fact that he was nursing a semi as a result of sitting next to The Perfect Threesome all night.  He was eavesdropping on their conversation, seeing who could fit the most in. Our server laughed at The Captain, when she overheard that he was “On a promise” and in a rush to go, she did seem to like any suggestive conversation and was probably pretty turned on by The Captain‘s evident sexual prowess. 
          At £22 each we were well happy with tonight’s experience, and we had been treated like royalty as we had just waltzed in there and taken over the place, which is never a bad thing.  The Huntsman bizarrely rated the night at 7/50, however the more sane of us finally settled for 3 stars, The Captain would have happily gave it another half though but it is a democracy, not a dictatorship.

Server: Shag  She was great fun all night, and although she did offer to bring The Little Chef the smelly cheese, we think it should have been the other way round. 

★★★☆☆

Rodizio Rico

Rodizio Rico

Website
The Cube
Commercial street
Birmingham
B1 1RS
0121 285 2856

As Performed by The New Awesome Foursome, The Pole and Daddy’s Boy. 

          As we made the epic journey over to Birmingham, we realised that it is a long way to go on a Monday night for a spot of food.  Nevertheless we made the effort as this week it is The Pole‘s Birthday and he wanted Brazilian as he had never had it before.  The Captain and The Merchant are regular patrons of the Texas de Brazil restaurant in Orlando, Florida and so were already familiar with Brazilian churascaria food, and therefore able to persuade the other members that this would be a good meal.  We spoke about food the whole way over and it was evident that we were a hungry bunch, bring on the meat.
          Chief Sitting Bull drove over with the full intention of driving back however he did have Tuesday off work and was primed and ready to be convinced by The Captain and The Pole, that going out drinking in Coventry was on the agenda.  We drove through small heath on the way and this reminded The Chief of the motherland, even brought a tear to his eye.  The Merchant pointed out a few places that he used to go when he was drinking at Uni, which we found strange as we didn’t know that he drank.  He pointed out a lovely place that he used to go every week after drinking on a Tuesday night- what a funny story.  We did eventually find the place and find some parking nearby, The Cube is a new building and it looks fantastic and once we had it in our sights we were even more excited for the meal. 
          Once we were there, inevitably we had to sit and wait for The Jockey to arrive late as usual, and this time it was utter torture: for those who aren’t familiar with a traditional churascaria, what happens is: there is a buffet with a selection of cold meats, cheese, salads and other side dishes and then the meats are cooked on an open barbecue and then brought to the table and sliced off fresh in front of you, as much or as little as you like.  You also have a card which is green on one side and red on the other, and you simply turn it to green if you want more meat, or red if you are a woman.  And this is the reason that it was so hard for us to wait this week because everything was ready, we had drinks and the buffet was just metres away, ready to go.  We have been eating a lot of good food lately and its not that we have raised our standards, but just that we are having a good run of luck- we still regularly eat at all the fast food filthy places and have no shame in doing so. 

The Buffet looked like this, and had some interesting stuff on as well as some strange ethnic dishes that didn’t even have an English translation.  We tried it all and although it was edible, nothing stood out as particularly good.

          Anyway, we weren’t here for the salad bar, we had arrived hungry and were ready to get the meat sweats; in fact we declared from the start that the first one to turn their card to red loses.  The Captain and The Pole were drinking throughout the meal and although they were already hungover from the previous night where too much vodka disappeared, it was a Polish Birthday and that means that you drink as much as your body can take.  The Captain was however hankering for a straight coke, which doesn’t contain alcohol and The Pole gave him a funny look when he ordered one.  We then continued to spend the rest of the night making sure that The Chief would be joining us, The Merchant valiantly volunteered to drive The Chief‘s vehicle home after dropping us off, luckily he was totally comfortable with it and wasn’t at all bothered.  
           The meats that were carved for us included Leg of lamb, Beef Picanha (Cap of Rump steak), Pork ribs, Chicken (Legs, wings, hearts), and homemade Sausage.  Everything was good, the sausage were a bit chewy and the hearts were an experience to say the least.  The highlight was the pretty much raw Beef which went down a treat. 
           After much meat consumption, The Chief was the first to cave in and turn over to red, with Daddy’s Boy hanging on to claim 5th place.  The Merchant was still going strong though and was lucky enough to join The Captain when they brought round the chicken hearts.  That’s not a typo, chicken hearts were put on our plates and we managed to chew our way threw a few of them, they tasted like chicken liver pate and weren’t bad, the worst thing by far was attempting to swallow them, they didn’t want to go down- we shall have to ask Awesome what the trick is.  In the end though The Merchant was the clear winner and had all the meat in and around his mouth, and was declared a Beef-devouring-sex-machine – that’s what he said.

←  This is how the meats are cooked and they smelled fantastic throughout the restaurant.  The Chefs probably got a bit of a sweat on whilst we were in the eating zone, as most of it was coming our way and between the six of us we could take a whole skewer at a time. 

→  As you can see from this, the meat was as rare as rare could be and The Merchant was loving it. 

          The toilets were actually very nicely done and we are proud to declare them the best we have ever reviewed.  Overall we gave them a 9.5/10 which shows how highly we thought of them, nice urinals, lovely wooden stall and a cracking sink (which we nearly pissed in as it looks a bit like a tempting urinal).  Nice staircase to get to them and then a mystery mirror at the top of the stairs. 
          The salad bar buffet did lack some key ingredients (the major offence being some nice white cheese, as we were stuck with just Stilton), and the meat did get a bit repetitive after a while, but however you look at it, it was reasonably priced and we had a good load of quality meat served up straight from the barby.   Birmingham may have been a long way to go but the food was great and it was worth it for The Pole to finally see a Brazilian in real life.  

Server: Avoid  Their funky accents wouldn’t have made up for the fact that it was another all male staff. 

★★★★☆

          After the meal we headed for Kasbah and proceeded to drink as many jagerbombs as was humanly possible, at £1.50 a pop it was the bargain of the century.  The Chief even managed to keep pace with the alcoholic couple, fantastic music again at the colly and our dancing shoes were nearly worn out.  It was a long night and as the culmination of The Captain and The Pole‘s 3 day alcohol bender it was surprisingly successful.  Nobody got chucked out, nobody was sick and we all got home correctly and on time- pretty astonishing as we didn’t have any responsible adults with us. 

San Marcos

 San Marcos

114 Far Gosford Street
Coventry
CV1 5EA
024 7663 4776
Website

As Performed by The Captain, Daddy’s Boy, The Little Chef, Wales Best Drinker, The Favourite, Awesome and JD.

          This week we were out celebrating The Favourite‘s birthday, and we started at lunchtime by meeting at the Coventry Blaze stadium for a spot of ice skating.  It was lovely and not camp in any way, The Little Chef even saw a girl with obviously very high standards being “frigged off whilst skating round the rink”- welcome to Coventry. 
          Once we had had enough of our ankles being torn apart by the 10 year old ice skates, we headed to the nearest bar we could find, and of course it was a spoonies, and we immediately commenced drinking at the speed that we intended to continue throughout the day.  2 drinks in we decided that we would try some of the (probably awful) food that was on offer and it came out looking like this:

←  BBQ Chicken Panini was very quick to come out, and did what it said on the tin, but you get what you pay for.  The whole menu is incredibly cheap and we can’t fault it for the price.  More food was had but nobody cared enough to snap it. 

          We then attempted to walk into town but kept having to go into every bar that we came across, which added to our journey time considerably.  After a few short hop walks we ended up in The Establishment which we found to be a lovely place to sit and have a drink free from the usual scrotes of Coventry.  We went straight from here to our dining venue for the evening. 
          As you may tell from the picture at the top, this place isn’t the poshest of places that we have been to.  In fact i would say possibly the opposite, as far as we can think, this restaurant is in the roughest area that we have eaten in on MNEC; not that that bothers us cus we’re all hard nuts.  All of that was irrelevant though as most of us had been drinking all day and could have taken on anyone. 
          We arrived just early and there were no other customers around but we were greeted by the lovely Antonio who proceeded to tell us about the menu and specials while we waited and drank at the bar.  As per usual, Awesome was in a very giggly tipsy mood and she regularly falls in love with anyone who serves her while shes in that state.   While Awesome was busy gushing, we ordered our food and headed to our table. 
     Daddy’s Boy and JD were the only sober ones present and it was clear from the volume and content of the conversation that that was the case.  We look back cringing at the thought of the other two tables that had arrived by now, and had to sit there while The Favourite‘s potty mouth was waffling on and on.  The Little Chef was clearly lagging, he and The Captain are not marathon drinkers, they are built for speed and energy; so The Captain was getting tired, however The Little Chef was staring into space with his mouth open. 

←  Pate was simple and filled a hole or two, in fact it is very much like The Little Chef. 

→  Bruschetta was pretty plain as you can see, its basic stuff so we can’t say much about it but still nice. 

←  Mushrooms stuffed with Pate and then breadcrumbed and deep fried, doesn’t float my boat but The Favourite said it was nice. 

→  Baked Goats Cheese was a huge piece of cheese that was blackened in the oven, very nice and a flippin brilliant amount of cheese on one plate. 

←  Mozzarella In Carozza was done very differently to how we would expect but equally it was still very nice to consume.  Hotter than the Sun, but that didn’t stop The Captain and Daddy’s Boy from wolfing it down. 

          By this point memories start to get hazy and unfortunately that is all we have to go on this week because The Captain wasn’t brave enough to take the official notebook with him whilst he was drinking.  Lets just assume that we were all talking a load of bollocks about loving each other and having a great time, and how we were going to go out later to Kasbah.  We did spend a fair amount of time trying to convince JD to come out but unfortunately this failed in the end. 
          As you can see from the food its not 5* stuff but its was a homely and friendly atmosphere, and the price was very reasonable for what they were serving.  Mains were brought out swiftly and looked like this:

←  Sirloin steak was nicely cooked and served with a strange selection of vegetables and salad, and at £18.95 it was the most expensive meal tonight. 

→  Spagetti Carbonara was done properly (with egg and not just some cheese sauce), as was expected, and turned out to be lovely, -a good meal at a bargain price. 

← Canneloni with spinach was a bit salty and extremely hot, Awesome had lost interest by about halfway but luckily The Captain finished her off as always. 

→  Lasagne for both JD and The Little Chef, simple and had nothing out of the ordinary, good grub. 

← Spag Bol was another simple success, cheap and easy. 

→  Chicken in white wine and mushroom sauce, pleased The Favourite so much that she said it was lovely- quite a big deal coming from her exalted position. 

          After dinner we sat and finished our drinks, but were itching to get out of there and get to somewhere more suited to people getting pissed.  This was exactly the kind of food that was required on the day and helped us rein in our budgets for the day, Wales Best Drinker had been to the cash machine several times now and was certainly not cutting any corners. 
          They did even bring out a birthday cake for The Favourite, not sure if one of us asked for it or not.  And after an awfully loud round of Happy birthday she tucked in and nearly gagged as she couldn’t work out what was in there.  It ended up being less than £30 each, which ain’t half bad considering that most of us were drinking well throughout.  We paid the man and bid Antonio farewell (Awesome telling him that she loved him of course), and headed to the 5 seater car that was going to take us back across town to The Skydome. 
          Now, as any of our readers that can count will know, there were seven of us present this evening, and this means that 2 people were going to get in the boot of the spacious Honda Civic, so The Captain knelt down on top of Awesome and the boot was slammed shut.  We got halfway there before realising that the only people that knew where we were going were in the boot of the car getting busy.  after we stopped to let The Little Chef have a go on her, we finally made it to a car park, and from here we headed to spoonies again for one last drink before hitting Colly. 
          After leaving JD and Daddy’s Boy behind we made it to Kasbah and put on our sober faces, and despite not having student ID and being almost definitely too drunk, we blagged our way in.  Things got messy, we did a lot of dancing and a lot of drinking.  But before it got too out of hand we decided to call it a night, we left together in a very organised fashion and climbed aboard the taxi Rugby-wards.  Once The Little Chef had been dropped off, we decided that the remainig four would christen The Joneses new bar and danced and polished of half a bottle of vodka.  We all slept very well except waking up several times to be sick, get water, piss fluorescent hot liquid or just make some hungover noises. 
          In the morning we tried Johnny Porkers as we had never been there and had the most perfect breakfast at an incredibly low price.  And that was the end of our Monday on the piss. 

Server: Shag  Speaking just for Awesome, she definitely would. 

★★½☆☆

La Coppola

La Coppola

Website
86 Regent St
Leamington Spa
CV32 4NS
01926 888873

 
As Performed by The Awesome Foursome, The Pole, Chief Sitting Bull, Daddy’s Boy, The Little Chef and Mrs. Jockey.  

          As you can see from the picture, this place looks like a garden centre and as Daddy’s Boy is the only one of us to have been here before, all the rest of us drove straight past it whilst attempting to locate it.  The botanical theme continued throughout the restaurant and every wall had something growing on it, there were some very nice murals on the walls and even the famous picture from the Sistine chapel was on the ceiling.  Directly above our table however was an older lady with a cracking pair, both of which were fully on display. 
          Regardless of whether they were able to find it or not, everyone but The Captain and The Pole was late, and it was only The Captain and The Pole who stuck to the Formal-Casual dress code.  The rest of the group looked like shit and the, clearly stressed maitre’d, didn’t approve.  The Jockey did a truly awful job of introducing his new Mrs to The Captain, for some strange reason, its almost as if hes scared that she will leave him and jump on the man with the bigger cock.  She didn’t have too much difficulty working out who was who in the end, The Pole was easy and Chief Sitting Bull was simple to work out; strange how our most racist names are clearly the most recognisable.
          We like to go out of our comfort zones and it was definitely not the place for a group of mates to go for a hangover cure with a lot of banter; however we don’t care and we just crack on.  There were plenty of staff around and although we weren’t too sure what they were running around doing, they did seem to know their stuff.  They did have a keen interest in the MNEC notebook and were definitely watching attentively as The Captain poured his heart and soul into the paper. 
          The Little Chef did appreciate the huge olives that were served to us on ice with our drinks, very nice touch and they were apparently on the house.  However while we sat and waited for them to take our order we couldn’t work out what they were waiting for, we arrived in dribs and drabs but everyone seemed to sit there for 10 minutes before getting a drink, and then once we were all there nothing was done for at least half an hour.  Some of us did still have our menus open but most of us didn’t, and either way 30 minutes is always enough time for people to read a small menu.  We don’t like waiting or having to ask for things that should already be being done, we regularly sit there after eating and nobody seems to realise that we want the bill; it is their job to ask us what we require, and not our responsibility to be getting up and telling them.  Anyway, rant over. 
          The waiter did come over eventually and of course he said ladies first, Chick was straight in there saying “after you little chef!”, he was pleased to get that one in, and to be honest hes probably pleased to get anything in these days.  Once the order had been taken we immediately got to the topics that were on everyones minds; last night: what happened? where was everyone? what ridiculous things happened?  The general consensus was that The Captain, The Chief and The Happy Sailor were all absolutely smashed; evidence was abound- Chief Sitting Bull was walking round with The Little Chef telling random girls that he was the chief.  The Captain had to leave Fever at about 2am because he was more than ready for bed, this is after attempting to get into Lloyd’s with Daddy’s Boy using their MNEC cards.  And The Happy Sailor was walking around with his McDonald’s looking for anyone heading to Daventry, unfortunately there was no availability and he ended up going on a lovely tour of rugby before having to tell the driver to go to dav and footing the entire bill himself. 

← Prawn and Crab Salad at £7.95 was presented well and despite having the obvious disadvantage of being a salad, was rather heavy on the meat which we liked. 

→  La Coppola Pate looked good but a bit boring, and once painted onto the bread it looked like Chick was eating a big black cock. 

←  Fish Soup was a medley of all things from the sea and The Jockey could safely say: “that was the best soup I have ever had”. 

→  Trio bruschetta pleased The Pole for £4.95, something not easily done outside of a brothel. 

←  Garlic Pizza Bread for Mrs. Jockey, it was very nice but she was about to let them take it away with two slices still on the plate; obviously we didn’t allow this and The Merchant was quick to clean up her mess. 

→  Calamari were absolutely rubbery, very nicely cooked and served, and not chewy as is often the case. 

←  Mozzarella Coppola was expensive at £6.95 and not very impressive, its only cheese but they could have done more with it. 

→  And by far the best of the rest, Tuna Tartare which was finished at the table by one of our well educated servers.  Daddy’s Boy declared that he had a full chubby the entire way through the tuna being done, and it is no surprise that there were no less than 9 solid erections underneath our table. 

          The Little Chef has stepped up to his role of social media expert well, we now have our facebook all running and twitter and email- which we apparently need for when girls want to send us their underwear etc.  He has been monitoring the statistics of our viewers and has even worked out that we have a hermaphrodite viewer somehow. He has also been one of the lucky ones to get a tshirt to give to The Merchant for printing, this will also be improved now that he has acquired a shirt press. 
          Daddy’s Boy earned some brownie points this week when he spotted Voldemort in the co-op, of course he immediately erected the voldemort warning signal above his head and proceeded to carry on down the aisle with his shopping whilst simultaneously letting everyone know that she was there.  And whilst on the subject of ex girlfriends, Chick’s Future Wife was out this week as she usually is on bank holidays and she was joined by D.I. Sheridan, unfortunately apart from saying hello we didn’t really get to see them and therefore couldn’t take the piss out of Chick as much as we had hoped. 
          We did have to stop talking at this point because apart from The Chief who was busy on his phone, all eyes were on the pair of leggings that just walked past our table, according to Chick they were almost 4D, you could almost taste the crab paste.  Once we had all got our juices flowing we decided to discuss what had happened with the single people present last night.   Chicken did actually have great success with women this week, 200% strike rate will keep his wank bank topped up for a couple of days.  The Little Chef did sow the seed of love for next time with his little number in the red dress but didn’t achieve anything this time. And as he didn’t taste the harbour last night he has ordered seafood tonight to make up for it. 
          After talking to the waiter, we were expecting 5 Kilos of Parmesan to be served with our mains, but alas we were let down and instead they looked like this:

←  Calzone looked incredible and was a bargain at £8.95. 

→  Suprema di Pollo Principessa was a bit saucy and lacking substance but the flavour was lovely. 

←  Classic Spag Bol for The Pole was amazing, a healthy amount of cheese was added to improve it further, big portion as well. 

→  Tagliolini con Granchio of course looked good if a bit small, nice textures. 

←  We all know who had the Fillet steak, and it did look excellent, very cheffy and well presented; the copper pot of Bearnaise sauce was a lovely touch.  

→  Seafood Risotto was lovely and had big chunks of prawn and scallop in, it did bring a smile to The Little Chef‘s face when it was served. 

←  Chicken in red sauce? probably pretty good but we have no information. 

→  Chicken in yellow sauce? probably really good, it looks alright on this picture, and that’s all I’ve got to go on. 

← Risotto Coppola with some tender pieces of steak, absolutely fantastic but looked like a small portion, however it was pretty heavy and in the end The Captain barely finished it. 

          Once the food had been served (a process that was very difficult because the waiters only said the Italian names of the food and weren’t particularly helpful, they didn’t pander to the fact that none of us could remember what we had ordered), we were already contemplating putting this in our top 5, even if we do end up paying slightly more than usual it looks like it’s worth it.  The service hasn’t been as good as some places, but the food has easily been in the top 3, most of us agreeing that it is the best food we have ever had on MNEC. 
          Delboy was out this Saturday for a wedding that many of the BAGELs were at, and was on his usual top form necking jagerbombs with the amateur youth of today.  The Huntsman was also there but this time wasn’t getting annihilated with the neighbours, we shall save that for Florida. 
          The Merchant has been working this lunchtime by going to The Royal Oak again to see if they were still up to their high standards and is pleased to report that there is still a great meal to be had there.  Always working, even on his days off.  The Bacon Potatoes did also remind us of Cafe Gnosh, another place that we need to go back to, difficult as they don’t open Mondays though.  The Chief has been off bread for 6 weeks and tonight finally broke his fast with some pizza bread, he has since been eating non-stop bread in order to pile the pounds back on. 
          The Toilets this time were sampled by The Pole and Mrs. Jockey, The Pole was happy with them but we did half expect a freshen up man; Mrs. Jockey rated them as 7/10, it was nice to have a female perspective; however women will never understand urinal ettiquette, as we discussed its something every man just knows. 
          An excellent night was had by all and we will definitely back, in the end we have decided that La Coppola is going in at number 2 on our top 5.  The food was top notch and the decoration was the best we have seen; service wasn’t on par though, and we had to wait 20 minutes for them to work out the bill after we had asked for it.  Things were good, and we are looking forward to eating more next time we visit.  Happy anniversary to Monday Night Eating Club, 52 weeks of fun, plenty more to come. 

Server: Avoid  An all male staff didn’t please us, no sex to be had with them.

★★★★½