Everyone's a Critic

The Grill On The Alley

Hempsall grabs two shameless liggers and keeps them out of the snow in return for them laughing at his jokes...

As this stomach is obstinately guided by the weather this visit to The Grill on the Alley in Ridgefield, merely our latest since it opened four years ago, could only jog the memory as to the warm bias of those visits. Having only eaten there in the summer, needless to say, seafood has hitherto been the order of the day.

This time no sooner had we kicked the snow off our boots before the comfort food was calling. And because Mr Red or Dead was holed up in a maternity ward having got a lady into trouble and Southern Bedwetter had remonstrated at the sheer chilliness of these parts, my companions were Sniffy Muso and Paramilitary Vegan, with the aim that the latter truly put this grill through its paces given its predisposition to meat and fish.

To start, Sniffy Muso went for the rock oysters while Vegan plumped for the oven baked Camembert with toasted croute and cranberry salsa. I went for the goat’s cheese tart with marmalade onion, beetroot and red pepper.

The oysters were “terrific” and came with Tabasco or proper oyster vinegar with finely chopped shallots. The baked Camembert was satisfying and my tart was particularly divine given that, in my enthusiasm at the ordering stage, I’d neglected to notice it was served with beetroot, a vegetable I tend to loathe. Consider me a convert.

Mains were sirloin with a béarnaise sauce for the Muso whilst I took a deep breath and ordered steak and ale pie. Then, joy of joys! Vegan crumbled before our eyes, plumping for the sashimi tuna loin with a warm vegetable salad. In the stroke of a steak knife he was re-christened Selective Pescetarian. His only complaint? The portion was too small.
Muso’s steak was wolfed down, despite the fact that French mustard was ordered on the side and when it arrived it turned out to be Coleman’s, the one that resembles a baby’s first attempt (Red or Dead take note).

The feeling around the table was that if you’d presented a Frenchman with this he’d come at you with a meat cleaver, and who could blame him? Proper Dijon is, after all, readily available.

My pie brought back memories only half remembered of winter evenings spent by open fires and as Muso entertained us with his Ren Hoek impressions I welled up with mawkish sentimentality the like of which only good comfort food can summon. The pie should be served with mash but knowing The Grill does “the best chips in Manchester” I switched and they were also served with the steak. As all three of us squabbled over them I regaled the table with the story of how the owner, Tim Bacon, once told me that he had two chefs in the kitchen whose sole remit was to produce the chips, one to blanche and one to fry. Over-zealous maybe but it reflects well on the end product.

Dessert was vanilla ice cream with some sort of weak liqueur. Muso reported it was OK-ish but Pescetarian pronounced his Fruit Mess to be a total success before falling back into his chair with a distinctly bovine expression.

Sniffy Muso really came into his own over the ensuing Armagnac when he insisted I call out the appalling background musak, describing a solo piano and female vocal accompaniment as “Diana Krall with a poor quality digital piano, possibly a Thoman, and a lower quality Behringer mic manufactured in China”. The entire ensemble resulted, he said, in a third rate sonic mush. Imagine the delight when, upon visiting the scene of the crime, it turned out not to be piped musak at all, but a live performance on an old acoustic upright piano. And no, it wasn’t Diana Krall.

Never did get to check out that microphone, though.