Heaven’s a Spitfire

Woodsmoke. Barbeque. Meat. The smells that hit you as you walk into Spitfire BBQ are incredible. I visited the restaurant on Bristol’s harbourside for lunch today and was not disappointed!

The lunch menu is incredibly good value at £6.95 for a substantial main course and a soft drink. There is a good selection of options too; pulled pork bun, bbq rib ends, smoky chicken wrap and more. All come with chunky chips or salad too. The lunch menu’s not on their website, but you’ll have to take my word for it!

Today I went for the beef jaffle. “Jaffle? What is that?” I hear you cry! Well it’s a South African toastie made on the BBQ. Sandwiched between two rounds of crispy bread was a delicious mince beef and vegetable filling. It wasn’t spicy but was full of flavour and the beef was cooked to perfection. Spitfire have a few different sauces on the table, and the 10/10 hotness-rated one was a perfect accompaniment to my jaffle.

My colleagues mostly tried the pulled pork bap and were suitably impressed. Everything is cooked in an open plan kitchen where you can see hunks of meat going into the smoky BBQs in the middle. I can’t wait to go back and have the full menu. I feel a rack of ribs calling!

Let’s learn something new: Vietnamese street food

A few weeks ago I booked flights to Vietnam, which will become the 17th country I have visited and I’ll be well on my way to meeting my 30 countries before 30 target. I am so excited! My first time in Asia, my first real backpacking journey and so many things to experience! 

One of the things I am looking forward to the most is the food. Every single thing I read, every person I talk to that has been to Vietnam enthuses about the food. I can’t wait to eat pho every morning, banh mi from the street corners for lunch and whatever else I can find for dinner.

As part of my trip I want to participate in at least one traditional Vietnamese cooking course. Apparently Hoi An is a really good place to do this so I need to scope out a good half day course. Some minor preparation came this evening in Hanoi-esque humid Bristol (ha! Well it was raining and there was crazy traffic!) where I attended Little Kitchen‘s Vietnamese Street food cookery class.

Emerging through the fog

Bristol is quite a strange city sometimes. Last week I saw a man cycling down my road with twenty pink helium balloons attached to the back of his bike. Amazing.

Bristol’s strangeness was compounded in my mind when I walked to work on Monday. Its normally quite a mundane 3 mile walk to work. But, as I approached Pero’s Bridge I was surprised by the blanket of fog emanating from it.

Turns out its an art installation by Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya and is part of the European Green Capital and the In Between Times festival. I’m not really sure what it is supposed to represent, but it sure looked eeyrie on a drizzly Monday morning. And this treat happens every 15 minutes for 5 minutes until 23 February. How bizarre…

My ABC of Bruges

A is for Architecture.

For me, there is nothing better than the beauty of what occurs naturally in the world; mountains, rivers, open fields. Yet, I was expecting Bruges to be a pretty city and I was not disappointed. The architecture is at times absolutely stunning. I loved the “stepped” nature of the roofs and the grand buildings on Grote Markt were very impressive.

B is for Beer.

Well, obviously. Belgium is well known for the thousands of types of beer you can drink there and I definitely tried a few of them! I enjoyed a beer tasting in my hostel on the first night, but made the mistake of not eating dinner and the effects soon went to my head! Pretty much every beer you can buy (if we exclude the awful lagers on tap) was a minimum of 7% which is what I define as a strong beer in the UK! But they were so tasty. Some of the Trappist beers made in monasteries were some of my favourites.

A little bit of beauty in the everyday

I’ve just returned home from a mini a adventure to Belgium (more on that later). I’m really pleased I decided to walk the 30 minutes home from the train station rather than get a taxi as I caught this beautiful view.

I walk/cycle over the River Avon twice a day as I commute to work. I have never seen it look as beautiful as it did tonight lit up by the winter sunset. Blissful.

The Cauliflower Chronicles: Part 2

I’m off on a mini-holiday in a couple of days and so I need to eat my perishables before I leave. One of which was a cauliflower. Now I’ve previously posted about my distaste for the bland, often overcooked and lowly cauliflower. But I’m determined to keep giving it a chance, as I do with most foods I think I don’t like. It’s quite successful so far!

Yesterday I cooked a meal as if I were on Ready, Steady, Cook; a pile of ingredients that I had to make into something delicious without any plan at all! And I declare the experiment an astounding success; so much so that this meal is likely to become a staple of mine!