Ren Behan - Author Wild Honey and Rye

Food Writer

St Albans

Market Experience Food Photography, Oktoberfest and the St Albans Street Finale this weekend!

If today’s news of the giant sinkhole in St Albans hasn’t caught your attention, then I hope this weekend’s St Albans and Harpenden Food Festival activities will!

As I type, there are just two spaces left on our market experience food photography workshop this Saturday – take a look at Stephanie’s site to book if you fancy joining us. If you’ve never visited St Albans before, let me entice you…

Our beautiful city is just 22 minutes by train from London St Pancras.  According to the Guinness Book of Records, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks (situated in the heart of Verulamium Park) is the oldest pub in Britain. We also have more pubs per square mile than anywhere else in the country (woo hoo) and we are incredibly proud to host one of the oldest regular street markets in the UK, dating back to the 9th century.

St Albans

For a real taste of what St Albans has to offer by the way of independent restaurants, cafes, delis, market stalls and street food, then this weekend is by far the best weekend to come and visit.

Here are a few treats to look forward to at the weekend:

Stephanie and Ren’s St Albans Market Experience Food Photography Course

  • Meeting at 9am outside Thompson@Darcy’s
  •  2 Hatfield Road, St Albans, AL1 3RP

Click here for more details – two spaces left (as of today)

stephanie belton

Photo credit: Stephanie Belton

Octoberfest, The Foragers at The Verulam Arms – Saturday 3 October

  • 41 Lower Dagnall Street, St Albans, AL3 4QE
  • 12 noon – midnight

After the workshop, I’ll be heading along to The Verulam Arms to join The Foragers for their annual Okterberfest. The Foragers are promising live ‘Oompah’ music, a special ‘festbier’ from their microbrewery and beers from Munich, as well as their ‘unique brand of wild food with a German twist’ including sausages, homemade stews and sauerkraut. Who’s with me?!

St Albans Street Finale – Sunday 4th October

  • St Peter’s Street, St Albans (head for the city centre)
  • 12pm – 6pm

On Sunday, St Albans high street will be transformed into a street food haven with a pop up village green complete with hay bales and beer from some of our best local pubs. There will also be a Kitchen Garden area with an emphasis on grow your own and locally grown produce, a City Farm, a Family Zone (including a children’s Fairtrade chocolate factory) as well as a cookery theatre and a World Food Zone. See demo times here (page 14).

St Albans Seasonal Salad

Thank you also to everyone who made the St Albans Seasonal Salad (there’s been lots of love on Twitter!) that I created especially for the food festival and the #kidscookalong this year and to Stu McLellan for illustrating it.

St Albans Salad

Happigreetings

As I’m dishing out some local love, I’d also like to thank Glen Cooper for sending me one of his happigreetings by happijar cards, featuring an image created by a local St Albans artist, Mandy Reekie and some inspirational quotes behind the little windows on the front. The really cool thing about these cards is that you can customise them and include your own quotes in each window – think of an advent calendar in a card with eight windows – six on the front and two on the back. Take a look at Glen’s Etsy store here for more versions.

Happiness Jar

If you can’t visit St Albans this weekend, then I hope you can visit the St Albans Christmas Market within the grounds of St Albans Cathedral from Thursday 26th November to Sunday 20th December. Find out more here.  

Review: Tabure – Turkish Kitchen and Bar in St Albans

Tabure Ren Behan

This week saw the opening of a new restaurant in the heart of St Albans called Tabure Kitchen and Bar – introducing us to the delights of Turkish or Anatolian food, with a fresh and contemporary spin. I was invited to a pre-launch evening, and popped back in a few days later during their debut lunch service for a taste of Turkish cuisine. On both occasions, the food was perfectly matched with a warm welcome and a stunning interior – equally enchanting by day and by night.

Billed as “Turkish home cooking enjoyed with friends and family around the table,” the food at Tabure is based around the heritage recipes of owner Hulya, who has set about this new venture with her husband Mark. The menu is inspired by some of the dishes that Hulya most craves from her hometown on the Aegean coast in Turkey.

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St Albans and Harpenden Food and Drink Festival 2014 Highlights

Our seventh annual St Albans and Harpenden Food and Drink Festival, organised by the St Albans City and District Council, came to a close this week, ending with an awards ceremony held at the lovely Lakeside Restaurant in St Michael’s Manor Hotel. The Festival brought together and showcased some of our very best restaurants, cafés, bars, local producers, pubs, takeaways and family-friendly venues – and also welcomed some of the district’s newcomers into the vibrant and ever-growing food and drink-filled local landscape. The Festival event calendar was packed, with events ranging from delicious wine and beer tastings, a paella afternoon in a Harpenden pub, and charity events galore thanks to a Mayoral Tasting Evening supported by many local chefs, and a very relaxed Macmillan Tea Party.

St Albans Food and Drink Festival 2014
The St Albans and Harpenden Food & Drink Festival 2014 Finale

Sunday saw many of our local foodie businesses, as part of the twelve day-long Festival, take over St Peter’s Street for the Festival Finale, offering hungry crowds a taste of some of the very good things on offer around the City. The sun was shining and the centre of St Albans packed with families.

Some of my favourites from the day included lobster rolls from newcomer Phil Thompson at Thompson@Darcy’s, the ‘St Albans Burger’ by The Snug Bar, and pulled pork rolls courtesy of Kashu Street Food. Cupcakes and sweet treats a plenty were on show, too, from local favourites including Heaven is a Cupcake, The Bakehouse and more. I loved the focal point of the live kitchen, with food demonstrations taking place throughout the day, and the fully seated ‘pop-up’ in the city centre enthusiastically hosted by local restaurateur Andrei Lussmann and his team from Lussmanns Fish and Grill – find out more about the Best Local Restaurant category winner in my piece, here.  Neighbouring Harpenden, too, enjoyed its share of the spotlight, with a very entertaining and lively ‘street food’ festival the Sunday before, with their own Godfrey’s Fish and Chips taking home the Best Takeaway award for 2014.

Here’s a full list of the Food Festival 2014 Awards Winners with links to their websites so you can explore them for yourselves. Hopefully they will inspire you to visit here soon!

St Albans and Harpenden Food and Drink Festival Award Winners 2014

Best Bar 

Best Independent Food/Drink Shop

Best Café 

Best Newcomer

Best Local Producer

Best Local Restaurant

Best Pub

Best Takeaway

Most Family Friendly Venue

Coming Up!

Festival brochure in hand, I enjoyed visiting some of my favourite places to eat within St Albans and there are also plenty of new places to explore, which I’ll be writing about very soon in my new series Lunch@ – watch this space!

St_Albans
Above Burger at Relish, Hot Dog at The Snug, Tea at The Beech House

The beautiful Roman city of St Albans is always worth a visit, but if you’re looking for a specific reason, I’d highly recommend a visit to our growing Christmas Markets, held for their second year in the grounds of the Cathedral and Abbey of St Albans, from 27th November to 21st December. I’ll be there with my rum hot chocolate in hand!

Lussmanns Fish and Grill St Albans

St Albans is fast becoming a city known for good food, as evidenced by the annual St Albans Food Festival, which will soon be in its sixth year, along with three independent restaurant listings in the 2013 edition of The Good Food Guide. Although there are a growing number of ‘award-winning’ restaurants in St Albans, flying the flag for sustainability and ethics is Lussmanns Fish and Grill, located at the foot of our Cathedral and Abbey of St Albans. Eager to find out what really matters to diners and, crucially, what makes them keep coming back, I sat down with local restaurateur, Andrei Lussmann, to find out some of the secrets to his success. Along the way, we sampled some of the most popular dishes on the Lussmanns’ menu whilst I found out a little more about Andrei and his solid restaurant ethics.

Lussmanns St Albans

There can be no doubt that there has been a sudden flurry of interest in the market town of St Albans. We’ve started to see a regeneration of sorts, with plenty of new restaurants taking up residence, working hard to keep diners interested and talking. Of course, popularity swiftly attracts investment from chains, with Jamie’s Italian and Brasserie Blanc being just two of our most recent additions, involving costly and challenging restoration projects in both cases. With competition so high, how do you compete and how to you stay relevant and attractive to a customer? Is it about the name, and the money behind it, or is it about what you stand for?

Andrei Lussmann has been a Hertfordshire-based restaurateur since 2004. With a background in the hospitality industry and having moved to St Albans from London, he is the owner of two independent sites, Lussmanns Fish and Grill Restaurants in St Albans and Hertford. His restaurants have won him a string of awards, which no doubt help in some way to fend off the allure of the rapidly rising rate of other restaurant chains on his doorstep.

Part of Andrei’s success is the ability to very clearly pinpoint what diners can expect when they visit. As set out on his easy to navigate and up-to-date website, “We are the locals’ fish & grill restaurant, championing the best welfare-driven British producers and suppliers, and dedicated to looking after all the family.”

Lussmanns St Albans

Indeed, Andrei’s commitment to ethically sourced food recently led him to receive the coveted Three Star Sustainability Champion status from The Sustainable Restaurant Association, reflecting a ‘clear commitment to consistent improvement of sustainability’ and a ‘highly commendable’ waste management plan.

He also has a strong and dedicated self-imposed mandate – to promote the British pound with the additional aim of keeping that pound as local as he can. To him, this means sourcing British-based products from small producers, where possible, using the produce available on his doorstep, if they meet his standards. This very often involves meticulous sourcing methods and visits, to farms and suppliers in the locality. Localism, to Andrei, means keeping to within a particular region rather than within specific radius. So, for example, he selects his chicken from Ware, on the Hertfordshire/Essex border, because he believes he can’t get better welfare. He once tracked down a very local supplier of pork on a large estate, but in his view the welfare wasn’t as high as he could find over in Sussex, still “a regional player”. As far as organic food is concerned, Andrei’s view is that whilst sourcing organic food is important, it is possibly not as relevant as “being able to demonstrate localism or high welfare”.

It is his attention to detail when sourcing produce for his menus that led Lussmanns Fish and Grill to win the Independent Restaurant category of the RSPCA Good Business Awards in 2012, for the second year running. Andrei is keen to state, on his menu, exactly where his food comes from – an enviable and unique selling point. A quick, taste-bud tickling glance reveals a Cotswold Wild Boar Chorizo, Sussex Free Range Saddleback Pork (delicious, I can confirm, as was the Wild Rabbit Linguine) and a selection of house desserts, with the occasional ‘guest pud’ from The Pudding Stop. Menus are always being updated with the seasons.

When it comes to sourcing seafood, Andrei takes his responsibility as a restaurateur equally seriously. In season, the Norfolk coast provided Andrei with, “the best mussels he’s ever had!” On the menu currently, you’ll find Wild Black Bream, Line-Caught Pollock and South Coast Devilled Sprats, cleverly taking the hard work of keeping on top of sustainability issues away from the diner, whilst supporting a wider and significant cause. You can feel good about eating here; that’s the key.

Lussmanns St Albans

But do awards for sustainability, greenness and ethical sourcing translate into customers, or does it take more than that to stand out in a crowd and keep those tables turning?

Andrei is realistic and he fully accepts that there’s “no point in being a passionate advocate with values if you won’t be here to fly the flag in a week’s time” and that “a quiet narrative of what you stand for is everything, without being on a political tirade”. According to Andrei, it is all about “refined marketing”. For him, “the story is important when done in a sympathetic way”. It has taken him a long time to feel confident about having strong values as a restaurateur without “being on a political march”.

Another critical asset is Andrei’s desire to improve, which never ceases. Competition, he says, only “sharpens the pencil. We become better”. Narrowing the gap between chains and independents is important too, which is why Andrei offers a quarterly changing set menu (two courses for £10.95, three courses for £13.95) alongside his a la carte and specials menu. Menu options for his junior customers include high-welfare, free-range chicken schnitzel and English artisan ice-creams for dessert, so he’s raising the bar and educating the taste buds of his youngest diners, too.

Andrei always has a strong local presence and is keen to get on board and support local events, keeping on top of food trends as well as local demand. This year, at The St Albans Food Festival, alongside cookery demos, he offered a Lussmanns ‘pop-up’ on the high street, complete with hay bales and the same standard of slick and attentive service as indoors. Lussmanns Fish and Grill also beat off stiff competition for the title of Best Local Restaurant for a second time at the St Albans Food & Drink Awards, as well as receiving its fourth listing in The Good Food Guide.

Lussmanns Pop Up

Andrei doesn’t stop there either. He offers outside event catering and themed dinner evenings. For example, in March, Lussmanns will be hosting a series of ‘Film Dinners’ to support the first St Albans Film Festival whilst continuing to highlight issues of importance, with guests from The Blue Marine Foundation, The RSPCA and The Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) – two birds, one stone.

As well as all this, he’s turning his attention to supporting British micro-breweries by increasing his British beer list by 100%. In an article for the Herts Ad by Roger Protz, Andrei explained how he’d like diners to “treat Britain’s national drink with as much respect as wine”. Sourcing good quality, local beer also holds the respect of the SRA “since craft brewers buy malting barley and hops from home-grown suppliers and avoid the cheap substitutes such as rice and corn used in mass-marketed brands”.

So it seems there is plenty to keep busy with. By standing up for what he believes in, Andrei continues to demonstrate that he is a strong pillar of our local St Albans community. He is a force to be reckoned with, leading the way in our foodie revolution, placing St Albans firmly on the map.

The chains do what they do, affordable food in a generic environment, but our independent eateries are shouting much louder and there are many reasons for customers to keep coming back. In this particular case, the Lussmann’s name, with its growing collection of accolades and endorsements, stands for much better quality than a celebrity name over the door with little to support the hype.

Lussmanns Eaterie

Follow @AndreiLussmann on Twitter, and @Lussmanns

Website: Lussmans Fish & Grill Restaurants

St Albans Branch

Waxhouse Gate (off High St)
St Albans
Hertfordshire
AL3 4EW

T: 01727 851 941

I was a guest of Lussmanns on this occasion, there was no expectation of any review or write-up. Opinions my own.

More St Albans Features –

The St Albans Food and Drink Festival Finale & Highlights

The St Albans Cookbook Club

Eat St Albans – Ren’s Page

Seasonal in St Albans, my blog for Herts Life

What makes a restaurant worth going back to, in your view?

The St Albans Cookbook Club #1

St Albans has a new cookbook club!

Inspired by an article written by Silvana de Soissons about The Bath Cookbook Club over at my favourite foodie publication The Foodie Bugle, I decided that St Albans needed one, too. With immediate interest from St Albans local Sheba Promod, we decided to go for it.  We put the word out via Twitter and invited some people to come along for a browse at some cookbooks, a natter and a coffee. Since The Bath Cookbook Club were meeting at the Society Cafe, we decided that our first meeting would take place at our equivalent and award-winning artisan bakery cafe, Bakehouse St Albans, right at the foot of our beautiful St Albans Cathedral and Abbey. 

St Albans Bakehouse

Bakehouse St Albans

Firstly, a word or two about Bakehouse. If you are a local and you haven’t visited yet, you really must.  Bakehouse have taken St Albans by storm. Within just a few short week of opening, the Bakehouse team scooped up thier first award of ‘Best Local Cafe 2012’ at the St Albans Food and Drink Festival. Describing themselves as ‘an artisan bakery cafe’, Bakehouse is co-owned by two local families who hold a watertight ethos – to champion local food and local people.

Nestled at the foot of the St Albans Cathedral and Abbbey in Heritage Close, Bakehouse offer freshly baked, freshly made, freshly brewed breakfasts, with healthy options as well as indulgent treats. Lunch is a very local affair, with seasonal soups, hand-cut sandwiches, salads and a selection of fresh-from-the-oven baked goodies, such as Bakehouse sausage rolls, vegetable and cheddar crumbles, casseroles and stews. They also have the very finest selection of cakes and bakes (make sure you check out the counter downstairs, too!) and have even hosted their first, hugely successful, St Albans Cake Off.    

St Albans Cookbook Club

Meeting, as we did, for the first time before Christmas, we decided to set a festive theme. There were six of us in total, and  mini cookbook groupie, Daniel. We also chatted to owners Jim,  Kirstin and Matt who were very happy to welcome us to Bakehouse. The nicest thing was that there was an international demographic to our group, so we were able to talk about lots of different festive traditions as well as decicing whether we were going to brine our turkey’s as per Nigella’s Christmas or perhaps take the more relaxed, Scandinavian Smörgåsbord approach to holiday entertaining.

Of course, the stack was dominated by the inevitable Christmas publications by Nigella, Gordon Ramsay, Mary Berry and Delia Smith, but there were some surprises, too. In particular, we were all smitten by the newly released Scandinavian Christmas by Trine Hahnemann. A sign, I hope, that perhaps we are all tiring of the bashed out, manufactured celebrity compendiums.

I was intruigued to be able to see how very similar a Scandinavian Christmas is to a Polish Christmas – Christmas baking is dominated by spiced honey cakes and cookies, fruit flavoured breads and light pastries. There is a charming chapter on making homemade Christmas gifts, such as Lingonberry compote,  jellies and Gløgg extract. We found ideas for avent and pre-Christmas celebrations, such as open salmon sandwiches, Elf cake, or Chocolate salted popcorn. You could easily host a Scandinavian-themed Christmas party and just as tradition dictates across Eastern Europe, the main event is centred around the Christmas Eve feast. We all thought that Scandinavian Christmas was an enchanting cookery book, full of simple ideas and Nordic-led festive inspiration.

Pop over to Trine Hahnemann’s website for more inspiration or follow Trine @trinehahnemann

(Own copy, Scandinavian Christmas is published by Quadrille Publishing Ltd, RRP £16.99)   

St Albans Cookbook Club

I also brought along a copy of LEON Family & Friends to review as I’d noticed a section at the very back called Christmas and Boxing Day. This is the fourth book in the LEON series, tied into the ‘healthy’ fast food chain of LEON restaurants. Like the preceeding LEON books, this fourth compendium is co-written, but this time by Kay Plunkett-Hogge and John Vincent. There is also a very strong emphasis on a collaborative approach to cookbook writing, with a large proportion of the recipes contributed by family, friends, staff, chefs and fans of the LEON brand.

Kay writes that Christmasses in Bangkok, where she grew up, were hot, though they would still alwyas have turkey with all the trimmings. Her advice is to take the approach that you are really just making a ‘bumper-big Sunday lunch.’ Enticing recipes in the Christmas chapter included Herby sausage and apple stuffing, Spiced red cabbage with dates, Bryn Williams’s bread sauce, a Spiced cranberry and apple crumble or a Steamed spiced marmalade pudding.

If you are looking for a Boxing Day curry treat, flick to page 204 for Mamta Gupta’s ‘Mum’s Chicken Curry’ – a contribution by friend and fellow blogger Kavita’s mum, from Kavey Eats. I think Mamta’s flavourful Murg Korma recipe would be perfect for a bit of leftover turkey.

(Review copy, LEON Family & Friends is published by Conran Octopus, RRP £25.00 – find the LEON team on Facebook)

Our American contingency Heidi and Jessica talked about their own Thanksgiving traditions and we picked out a great alternative to making a large Pumpkin Pie, which happened to be Gordon Ramsay’s small but perfectly formed Pumpkin Tarlets with Sage and Thyme.

My friend Monika and I were able to talk about our own Polish Christmas traditions and one of the books I had brought along, Feasts by Silvena Rowe, featuring Eastern European food though not exclusively Polish, provided us with examples of the type of Pierogi or dumplings that we would traditonally eat as part of a twelve course meal on Christmas Eve.

Sheba, Indian supperclub host and cookery teacher, gave us a quick verbal masterclass in making ghee and told us about her families Keralan-Christian influenced Christmas meals. Whilst vegetarian blogger Clare mentioned that she was making Nigella’s Pumpkin and Goat’s Cheese Lasagne for her clan. So, as well as talking about our own cookery traditions, we were able to flick through some of our books for inspiration.

St Albans Cookbook Club

Things at Bakehouse were just hotting up as we were leaving. We’d sampled their wonderful Monmouth coffee, munched our way through a selection of morning goods and were extremely tempted to stay for a lazy lunch as a selection of seasonal salads, savoury sausage rolls and smells of fresh-from-the-oven artisan rolls and breads were set out. We’ll certainly be back for more!

Bakehouse St Albans

 

Details of  the next St Albans Cookbook Club

Date of the next meeting: Wednesday 16th January 2013

Time: 10 am – 12pm  onwards

Place: Bakehouse St Albans {on Twitter: @BakehouseStA}

Bring: Yourself and any cookery books you’d like to talk about

For more information Tweet @RenBehan or @AbsoluteIndianC (Sheba) or leave a comment here 

You don’t have to be a blogger! Everyone is welcome.

We’re also planning on an evening meeting and a meet at one of our houses with each of us bringing a recipe we’ve cooked from our favourite book.

St Albans Cookbook Club 

Which cookbooks have made your Christmas list this year? Are there any you turn to regularly at Christmas?   

 

The St Albans Food and Drink Festival 2012 Highlights and Finale

This Sunday, the St Albans Food and Drink Festival 2012 drew to a close, as many of our vivacious local food and drink businesses, restaurants, cafés and bars came together during the festival finale. St Albans has never before played host to quite so much street food and general merry-making!

The festival, organised by the St Albans City and District Council for the fifth year now, offered a host of activities over 12 days. Opening on September 26th 2012 with the CAMRA St Albans Beer Festival, foodie-themed celebrations also included a Gourmet Night in aid of local charity Grove House, a Food of Life photography exhibition, a Young Chef of the Year contest, the St Albans Food and Drink Festival Awards ceremony, meal deals and the festival finale itself.

St Albans Food Festival 2012

St Albans Food and Drink Festival Awards 2012

On 4th October 2012 our local businesses, restaurants and producers were celebrated at the St Albans Food and Drink Festival Awards held at St Michael’s Manor.

Five of our very best restaurants fought it out to achieve the accolade of Best Local Restaurant. The nominees were L’Italiana, Lussmanns, The Foragers at the Verulam Arms, The Lake at St Michael’s Manor and Veer Dhara with Lussmann’s Fish and Grill retaining the coveted title.

Other local business were also duly highlighted and celebrated; Redbournbury Watermill secured the accolade of Best Local Producer, Mokoko scooped up the Best Bar Award, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks won Best Pub, the Inn on the Park were our Most Family Friendly Venue and Bakehouse St Albans won our Best Local Café award.

Local Gems

Two other young and local entrepreneurs were successful in winning awards, too. The Pudding Stop won Best Local Gem ahead of also being a finalist at this year’s BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards in the category of Best Street Food/Take Away. Good Luck Jonny! Lucy Clark at Heaven is a Cupcake also won the Kate D’Arcy Award for Exceptional Customer Service at the Awards night, too.

The Pudding Stop

Festival Finale

Over forty stallholders took to the streets for the finale on Sunday, offering a warm and friendly welcome to old customers as well as extending an inviting hand to new ones. Starting from one end of town at the foot of our enchanting Cathedral and Abbey of St Albans, newcomers Bakehouse hosted the first Great St Albans Cake-Off, with music and festivities continuing right the way through town along St Peter’s Street.

Also on offer were cupcakes, baked goods and jams, including sweet treats from Dixie’s Cupcakery, Heaven is a Cupcake, The Pudding Stop, St Albans Bakehouse and Sweet Lilly. A particular highlight was the huge wild mushroom stall by Carluccio’s – a festival in itself. On hand to give advice on wine was David Rough from The Hertfordshire Wine School. A little further along, Tony and Dario from local delicatessen Buongiorno Italiana charmed customers with Italian food, whilst restaurateur Andrei Lussman mingled with his customers at his impressive Lussmans Fish and Grill pop-up.

The barbecues and hot plates were sizzling with food including British bangers, Carribbean cuisine, Cypriot, Indian and Italian delicacies. There were also live cookery demonstrations at the theatre throughout the day by local chefs.

All in all, there was definitely a celebratory air to the festival finale, with local businesses showcasing exactly what they have to offer to a discerning and food-loving crowd. It reminded me of how incredibly lucky we are to live in a city where really good food is not only celebrated during the St Albans Food and Drink Festival, but is continually showcased, encouraged and improved upon throughout the whole year, too.

St Albans Food Festival Finale

For more information on the festival and news about next year’s event follow St Albans Food and Drink Festival on Facebook or on http://twitter.com/St_Albans_FADF

For more local produce and street food throughout the year, you can visit the St Albans Farmers’ Market on the 2nd Sunday each month, from 8.00am to 2.00pm.

More St Albans posts:

 

Restaurant Review: Thai Square, George Street, St Albans

I was recently asked to review a branch of the Thai Square chain of restaurants. Given that we have one locally here in the Roman city of St Albans, I was only too happy to pop in.

Like many of its local counterparts here in St Albans, Thai Square is a chain, with nineteen individual restaurants across London and beyond and apparently, a new health spa.

The Thai Square group came under local public scrutiny here in St Albans a few years back, when they took on the challenge of renovating the Tudor Tavern public house, a Grade II listed building. The former tavern dates back to 1400-1401 and can be found on the corner of George Street and Verulam Road, close to the Abbey Gateway.

At the time of opening, the Thai Square/Tudor Tavern St Albans conversion was hailed a success. Though many locals were quick to oppose the change, the general view on completion was that the building had been tastefully and sensitively converted. Thai Square continues to be one of St Albans’ most striking restaurants, internally. Many of the original architectural features, such as exposed wooden Tudor beams and brick walls were retained, and are complimented by Thai statues, carvings and decor.

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Restaurant Review – Jamie’s Italian, The Bell, Chequer Street, St Albans

Last weekend saw the opening of a new branch of Jamie’s Italian in St Albans, taking over the space that used to be The Bell Public House on Chequer Street. The Bell becomes Jamie Oliver’s 25th restaurant in the Jamie’s Italian chain and since it’s on my doorstep, I was eager to visit. I joined fellow St Albans food blogger Heidi Roberts for a pre-opening lunch on Saturday, ahead of the official opening on Sunday 5th February.

The Bell is a listed building, with a chimney dating back to the 18th century and other areas dating back to the 19th century. Having followed the press reports, it would seem that Jamie has had to work very hard to jump through strict regulatory hoops, whilst sticking to a brief of ‘enhancing the character and appearance’ of the St Albans conservation area. He has succeeded, and The Bell now stands proud again, offering 150-seats to discerning St Albans diners.

My first impressions were that many of the building’s original features have been kept, whilst being given the ever-more familiar ‘Jamie’s Italian’ stamp. As you walk in, on show is a fresh pasta station (all pasta is made in the house) and a long drinks bar to the left, stacked with Italian wines and Jamie’s organic house wine, stored in eco-friendly Tetra Pak cartons – it is later decanted. There is also fresh bread, tins of Italian tomatoes, and of course, the obligatory levels of Jamie merchandise and cookery books to buy.

At the front of the building (along Chequer Street) are two separate dining areas, both with exposed brick walls and restored fireplaces, offering a more traditional and cosy atmosphere, a bit more like a pub. The main dining area has a more urban feel, sitting directly underneath a large glass roof through the middle and a timber-vaulted ceiling to the right-hand side, with windows looking out into the ‘premium-retail’ area known as The Maltings. Tables are a mixture of wood with metal chairs, or metal with wooden chairs, with bright red benches around the perimeter and gun-metal, painted walls.

As well as the bar, there is also an open dessert and cold-starter preparation area, adorned with chillis and garlic, market-style vegetable crates and hanging salami and San Daniele hams, and further on, a very busy, semi-open kitchen. The service area is bustly, but diners are kept well out of the way.

Onto the menu, the very first thing I spotted was Burrata with chilli and mint (£6.25), a fresh Italian cheese, made from mozzarella and cream. It’s all the rage, don’t you know?! In any case, it is very welcome in St Albans and I hope it stays here.

Ahead of that, there was, in fact, a selection of Nibbles or small bites that I had missed, such as an Italian bread selection (£3.75) or the ‘World’s best olives on ice’ (£3.75) – which did look quite cool.

I had to go for the Burrata (and I wasn’t disappointed) but I was hugely tempted by the Autumn Bruschetta – Beetroot ripple, smashed pumpkin, scamorza and cavalo nero (£8.95 to share), so I’ll have to go back for that. We also tried the Crispy Squid (£5.75) – not especially crispy, but the garlicky mayo was indeed, as described, very garlicky! Because we were feeling greedy, we also tried Jamie’s Funky Chips with fresh garlic and parsley (£3.25) but our waiter told us that the Famous Polenta Chips (£3.45) were his favourite.

The planks (£6.85 a head) seemed particularly popular too looking around, small piles of cured meats, Italian cheeses, or sliced, char-grilled, seasonal vegetables served with pickles and chilli jam. I also noted the Artisan meat boards (£4.45 each) of English wild boar salami, Truffle salami and Levonetto tondo, again, to try next time. The planks themselves are long wooden boards, held up by two tins of tomatoes on your table, creating a little bridge ideal for picking at and sharing.

Mains are divided into Pasta and Secondi (Meat or Fish.) We tried the Meatball carbonara, which was made with a fresher, lemon-cream sauce, San Daniele ham, meatballs and rigatoni pasta (£7.25/£11.25.) I enjoyed it, I was happy with the flavour, I didn’t find it too lemony or too salty and the pasta was perfectly cooked. Heidi ordered the Prosciutto spaghetti (£6.25/£9.75) which was a little dry, but well-flavoured with Sicilian lemon, fresh parsley and strips of San Daniele ham.

Making a nuisance of ourselves again and peering across onto other tables, we spotted the Seaside risotto (£8.95/£15.95) which was served on a very large plate, and garnished with clams, mussels, prawns and Gurnard. The Truffled Turkey Milanese (£12.25.) is highlighted as ‘Jamie’s Favourite’ on the menu and was a hit amongst diners. It looked like a huge piece of flattened turkey, stuffed with Fontina cheese and Prosciutto ham, topped with a soft fried free-range egg.  The portion sizes all seemed to be generous and crucially, plates were taken away clean!

Jamie’s Dolci, or desserts were flying out fast, too. We wanted to order the Amalfi lemon curd slice (£4.95) but they were out, so instead we went for the Peach and almond tart (£4.95) and the JI Warm Brownie (£4.95) served with fresh raspberries, crushed Amaretti biscuits and vanilla ice-cream. Both desserts were substantial, and in typical Jamie Oliver-fashion, pretty tasty.

Overall Impressions

Having visited the old Bell, which was a dark and dingy alco-pop filled noisy pub, I’m pleased to say that Jamie’s Italian is a vast improvement. Jamie himself stopped by earlier on Monday to give the place a once over, showing that he is not as far removed from his business ventures as some might say. Gennaro Contaldo, Jamie’s long-standing mentor also popped in on Thursday. Gennaro is credited for training the chefs at Jamie’s Italian, making sure they are up to speed and ready to go. The restaurant itself, as with all the others in the chain, will be managed by Jamie’s team.

Upstairs has also been renovated to a high standard, with posh toilets (Crapper, no less), white washbasins with vintage taps and grey-polished tiles. There is a disabled toilet and baby-change on the ground floor and though the main entrance is at the front, there is a ramp at the back for disabled access, too.

We did find it to be extremely busy and whilst the entire restaurant was packed, the tables in the centre of the dining room were particularly crowded, with, as you would expect in St Albans, lots of parents with kids. I’ll have to go back with mine to try out the children’s menu as I was too busy being a lady-who-lunches and forgot to ask!

On Saturday Jamie’s Italian was well staffed, although this was pre-opening, so the staff were technically still in training and the restaurant itself may have been artificially busy. We lunched for over two hours, so it wasn’t by any means a quick lunch, but we did have three courses. Our waiter was friendly and knowledgeable, at one point, he started telling us about the village that the pigs had lived in that were now the San Daniele ham hanging above the counter! The tables at the front (looking out onto Chequer Street) appear to offer a little more room, but you don’t get to see as much of the action.

Despite the fact that St Albans is already saturated with chain restaurants, I have a feeling that Jamie’s Italian will be a popular local hang-out, particularly if Jamie’s cheeky charm is allowed to shine through his team and his staff are able to relax into service as the hype subsides. I’ll definitely be going back, I admire the ethos behind the restaurant (fresh food, house made pasta, seasonality in the menu, reasonably priced) and I’m pleased we have a Jamie’s here now.

It is possible to book at table at Jamie’s Italian on-line, though they also operate a walk-in policy and will try and seat you, if possible.

We paid for our own meals, though we were given a 50% discount on our food as a soft-opening. With wine, starters, mains, an extra side and desserts the price would have been around £35.00 a head.

Thanks Heidi for taking me along!

Jamie’s Italian
22 Chequer Street
St Albans
Herts
AL1 3YD

Tel: 01727 221 266

Monday – Saturday
12.00 noon – 11.00pm

Sunday
12.00 noon – 10.30pm

Have you eaten at a Jamie’s Italian restaurant? What did you think? Would you go again?