BYO nights are held on the 1^st Wednesday of every month, book online or give us a call on 0191 232 1331 to reserve your table.

Unpastuerised and unfiltered, these Italian artisan craft beers are brewed in Friuli especially for the young at heart.

Toz is a top fermented pale ale with delicate fruit and citrus aromas; at 4.8% abv a perfect match for our food.

Easy is a 4% abv pale ale with herbal aromas from freshly harvested barley and almost tobacco like spices. A real thirst quencher.

Salute

www.birratoz.co.uk

As it’s a special day we will be open from 12.00  - 4.00pm on Mothering Sunday. Chef Glen’s menu is tailored especially for this family occasion, priced at £18.50 for 2 courses and £21.50 for 3. Throw in a glass of Prosecco and your lovely mum will feel like a real Italian Mama!

Mother’s Day Menu:

Chicken Brodo with Tortellini

Field Mushroom Fritters with Buffalo Mozzarella and Basil

Bruschetta with Parma Ham, Soft Hen’s Egg and Pecorino

Caesar Style Salad, Chicken, Pancetta & Spicy Croutons

Salted Cod, Sweet-roasted Peppers and Crostini

~

Baked Vanilla Cheesecake with Strawberries

Poached Rhubarb, Vanilla Mascarpone & Meringue

Selection of Home-made Italian Ice Cream & Sorbets

Italian Cheese Selection

(Fontina, Taleggio, Gorgonzola)

2 courses £18.50                        3 courses £21.50

Call us on 0191 232 1331 or reserve your table online now.

If you can’t be with your mum this Mother’s Day don’t forget that we have a range of gift vouchers for you to treat her.

Click here to buy gift vouchers online.

Now in its third year, Restaurant Week offers diners the chance to eat out for as little as £10.00 per person for a week in  January 2013. It’s a great opportunity to pay a visit to a favourite restaurant or to try out somewhere you haven’t been before.

Our special menu price at £10.00 per person for 2 courses and £15.00 for 3 courses will be available at lunch and dinner Tuesday 22nd – Friday 25th and at lunchtime on Saturday 26th January.

Download a voucher from the website here:
To reserve your table please give us a call on 0191 232 1331 or you can book online and mention ‘restaurant week’.

Our sister restaurants are also taking part: Cafe 21, Cafe 21 Fenwick & The Broad Chare

Our Christmas menu for the 2012 festive season is now available to download.

From Monday 20th August until Friday 24thh August we are offering our special menu priced at only £10.00 for 2 courses.

See the Menu Here

Make sure you download your voucher and bring it along with you.

“Fantastic” I hear you all cry. “So, whats the catch?”

The catch is…….You must be on the Carruthers & Kent Mailing List to qualify and you must buy the wine from Carruthers & Kent in Gosforth. There, that’s it. Simple…!

So, all you have to do is…..

Go to the Carruthers & Kent shop and buy some wine that is £8 or over.
Tell them that you want to book a table.
They book a table for you there and then, and give you a booking slip.
You arrive at the restaurant with our wine and show the staff your booking slip.
You then sit down, eat fantastic food, drink fantastic wine, enjoy your fantastic company, and have a night to remember.

Contact Carruthers & Kent to join their mailing list.

To others it’s frustrating, but to me, the fact that English asparagus is only available for a few precious weeks each year adds to its attraction.  It reminds us that seasons are there for a purpose.  You should never find asparagus on a menu outside of its spring growing months.  Seasons are there to be respected.  Purists argue that asparagus should be eaten within one hour of cutting (a bit extreme; three days is fine).  Like garden peas, that sublime sweetness ticks away with every minute.

As a kid, asparagus never entered our house.  Even as a young chef, the closest I got to it was Jolly Green Giant tins of strange-looking vegetables.  (That being said, tinned asparagus has its uses.  It’s not unusual for me to make asparagus soup out of the ‘sprue’–thin, straggly or immature pieces–and bulk it out with a few tins.)

It was only when I got a placement at the Hotel Bellevue in Baden- Baden in Germany that I began to appreciate asparagus.  I arrived just before Easter. Within days the whole town had exploded into Spargelzeit, the Festival of Asparagus.  It was everywhere, on market stalls, in shopping bags, on every restaurant menu.  This was the real deal.  I became so caught up in this asparagus whirl that I went out and bought a fancy, expensive asparagus peeler, which I still have to this day.

Peeling asparagus is a perennial debate.  It’s a question of size and quality.  I peel if I’m serving them in the restaurant, but not when eating at home.  If you are troubled by it, try this little test.  If a bit of the outer skin comes away easily with your thumbnail, you might want to peel them.

There are two varieties of asparagus (three, if you want to be pedantic, but the third is merely a difference in growing technique): green and white.  The growing tips of white asparagus are trenched every day–kept under the soil–to keep them blanched. It is big, bland and common in mainland Europe.  The green is what we grow in Britain.  To my mind, it’s sweeter, more subtle and has greater depth of flavour–particularly when grown in the north, which I put down to the colder climate necessitating a more leisurely growth.

Fresh asparagus should be firm, glossy, and springy.  When pressed gently with your thumbnail, a little moisture, the sap, should rise to the surface.  Deciding where to trim is easy:  bend it, and where it snaps is the point at which to cut.

Cooking asparagus is dead easy too.  Far too much nonsense is talked about using fancy tall pans with perforated inserts. All you need is a large pan with lots of salted water, about 20 grams per litre.  Thoroughly wash the asparagus to remove any grains of dirt that might be caught in the tight buds of the tips.  Bind equal-sized spears with fine string into bundles, to keep the spears intact and to keep cooking times the same, and plunge them into the boiling water.

Don’t pack the bundles in too tight; they need the luxury of lots of water.  Stuffing the pan causes the water temperature to drop dramatically and you will lose vital vitamins and nutrients through the longer cooking time.  This, incidentally, is true of all green vegetables.   Cover the pan and surface of the water with a clean, damp tea towel to ensure all the bundles stay submerged.  After 3 to 4 minutes, squeeze the base end of a spear to test for tenderness.

What about chargrilling, I hear you say.  When blackened vegetables were all the rage on fashionable menus in the late ‘90s, I turned up my nose at it.  A silly fad, I thought, with no taste benefits.  I hold my hands up; I was wrong.  Chargrilling is great.  Drizzled with olive oil and a generous scattering of sea salt, you get that fantastic contrast between the crunchy bitterness of the caramelized skin and the tender sweetness inside.  But be warned; it’s easy to get carried away and overcook them.

Asparagus is good in an omelette, great in quiche and fantastic in risotto.  Use the peelings and trimmings for the risotto stock, add the tips right at the end and go steady on the cheese.  At home, we often have asparagus with potato gnocchi, browned sage butter and Parmesan.

But the finest way to eat asparagus is to lift them straight out of the pan onto a plate.  Squeeze a wedge of lemon over them, sprinkle with sea salt, pick up with your fingers and dip into a pot of melted butter.  There’s something almost decadent and definitely sensual about eating asparagus in this way.

Tips:

To prepare ahead:  drain the cooked asparagus, plunge under cold water, dry and lay on a plate covered with a cloth.  To re-heat, place them in a single layer in a large, flat saucepan with a scant 3 or 4 tablespoons of water.  Add a knob of butter, pinch of salt and pinch of sugar.  Boil  for 3 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated and the asparagus is glossy and coated with a buttery emulsion.

Great with: Butter, chervil, cured ham, crabmeat, eggs, fried breadcrumbs, hollandaise sauce, lemon, mushrooms (any sort but particularly morels), olive oil (extra virgin), Parmesan cheese, sea salt

Click Here to see the menu.