Spiltwine

I am a closet glutton, please help.

I’ve been walking by Numidie for awhile now and only recently stepped in when I saw rouille (and fish soup) on the window menu.  Well actually it was fish soup with rouille but I didnt really notice the soup bit because  I have a sort of crack-like addiction to rouille.  It could have said rouille and 3 day old pizza or rouille and toast., I wouldn’t have cared.

Numidie is on Westow Hill in Crystal Palace and serves French/N.African cuisine.  The place looks nice it has three little art-deco chandeliers, little wooden tables and chairs, and a cool retro-French decor. And best yet there’s a little basement bar too!  Well the basement bar is only part of the best bit…the actual best bit is that three courses is only £14 and nothing on the wine list was more than £40?!

So, they have rouille, the menu and wine list are both excellent value and there’s a cool bar in the basement…PLEASE GOD make the food good!  Well to make a long story short — the food wasn’t good.

le menu

The food was SUPERB! In fact I have since found out that this little bistro is quite famous and has a very dedicated and loyal following.

The fish soup and rouille was very nice, I asked for extra rouille to put on the home-made foccacia-like bread.  For mains I had a roast chicken (always a test for restaurants) with Algerian dumplings and a chickpea sauce. It too was very good.
M, my dining partner enjoyed salade Numidie (say it with a French accent) as a starter – salad leaves mixed with an array of brightly coloured roasted red peppers, houmous and probably the best falafel I’ve ever tried.  For her main M had Couscous Royale with merguez, roast chicken and lamb (I secretly wanted her main) – the portion was huge and like everything else we had, excellent.

I opted out of dessert which was a tarte au chocolate but once taking a nibble of M’s decided it was too good to share, and promptly ordered another (this is the glutton bit, btw)

louis with the rouille

All in all a great experience and the bill came to under £50.  I have vowed not to frequent any more famous chef restaurants, offering little more than a bloated cheque after the meal.  To find such a welcoming, great value and excellent little place only 5 minutes from where I live, was a great surprise and pleasure. I will be most definitely going back.

Oh and nearly forgot, they gave us each a glass of pear digestif after our meals – loved it!

Numidie Bistro – 48 Westow Hill – Crystal Palace – SE19 1PX – tel: 020 8766 6166

Wine I recently tried

If you read imbibe magazine you will see I have a story about Zinfandel in the current issue.  Zin is one of my favourite grapes, that is, if it is made correctly.  Too many times it can be over-ripe, too tannic, sweet – in fact, it can be everything I hate about wine.  But when it is good, I can’t get enough of the stuff.
Sadly, like most things wine and American all the good things come with a price.  Plus with the added bonus in the UK very few California wines – and I’m talking around ten – are good and readily available.

That’s where Ravenswood steps in, Joel Peterson – founder and winemaker – is very well-known for his motto of “no wimpy wines” and this stands true to all that he makes.  Admittedly I am not a fan of all the wines in Ravenswood’s range, but one of my favourite is the Vintners Blend 2006 … for an entry-level, zin-introduction (I refuse to use zin puns) this wine is perfect. So,  I was happy to try it out (again) for the people at Constellation.

very good zin

On the nose there’s loads of dark berry fruit, ripe black-cherries, while on the palate it’s a mouthful of dark black berries, bramble, licorice and a nice cranberry tartness on the finish.  It’s costs £7.99 (Waitrose, Tesco & Spar) and for an entry-level Zin (in fact for a wine in general) it is good value.

By the way I had it with some homemade steak nachos, fresh salsa and guacamole, it was perfect.