Hawksmoor Steak Restaurants For Perfect Steaks and BYO Mondays

 The name of this steakhouse group conjures up visions of hawks and moors and wildlife in rural England. The resstaurants serve steak. Not just any steak, but a whole vairety of steaks. Cooked to perfection. 

Britain is known for its beef. Sunday lunch is traditionally roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Horrisons, a popularly priced supermarket chain started out specilising in formed food in England.  Yuu can find roast beef and Yorkdhisre pudding for Sunday lunch, often only Sunday lunch, all gone by Sunday evening, in the budget chain popular priced pubs.

Here at Hawksmoor, the meals are more expensive, for special occasions. The steak is done to perfection. Perfect steak, even when cooked rare, not tough, the outside well cooked but not overdone.

They have several restaurants in prime locations in London, England. Covent Garden, Borough Market.

If you are a gourmet, and also a wine buff, the day of the week to go is Mondays, which is alwo their bYO day.

The corkage charge is about five pounds per bottle, any size bottle including a magnum which is the size of two bottles, enough for four people drinking carefully, more if anybody doesn't drik red wine or doesn't drik any one.

I signed up for their newsletter, where you give your birthdate, day and month, not the year, in the hope of getting a birthday offer. They ask your favourite location. Mine would be the art deco branch overlooking Regent Street.

Travel Tips

1 Monday is BYO day.

2 If you or one of your group is bringing a magnum, check out the bus and train routes so you don't have to walk far, nor drive far.

Useful Websites

Hawksmoor Locations

https://thehawksmoor.com/locations/london/

TFL

A Birthday Meal Out, Day or Evening? Why A Monday Lunch?

 

Angela Lansbury at The Tanglin Club, belated birthday lunch. dessert with candle. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

We are members of the Tanglin Club in Singapore and they give you a money off voucher for use in a restaurant on your birthday. Fortunately, it lasts a few weeks. Just as well, because we were in different countries on my birthday and had to wait for an opportunity when we were together. 

My husband wanted to go there on a Monday because that is when they have their BYO (or BYOB bring your own bottle of alcohol). We had to wait a week to get a booking, and then they were full in the evening. I did not want to wait longer, as my birthday got further into the past and I was impatient to have an evening out, after weeks of Covid and being in separate countries because of family travels.

Advantages of evening meals

Normally we go for evening meals. You can dress up without feeling overdressed. Dine by candle-light which is romantic, and hides your age. No rush to be anywhere else. You are not too drunk to do anything useful with the day. If you are a bit tipsy, you sleep well. 

Advantages of Daytime meals

Less problem paying higher charges for a taxi late at night. You can spend the rest of the day reminiscing about the meal. The big lunch saves you having to cook a big evening meal. So two meals in one day are taken care of.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYOB

https://www.tanglinclub.org.sg/dining/churchill-room.html

How and Why To Record Your Favourite Wines when travelling

Years ago I was on holiday (accompanying my husband who was at a conference) and we had a meal in a hotel restaurant in Sydney and I loved the wonderful white wine. We had been living in the USA, where wines are inexpensive









and in England, Which did not have much wine then, unlike nowadays with the benefit of global warming









and in Europe (Spain), known for dry red Rioja and

Singapore, (where wines are expensive)

so the wonderful white wines from Australia and New Zealand were new to us. I wanted to keep the empty bottle and soak off the wine label.

The waiter took away the bottle and promised to give me the label. He forgot or somebody else in the kitchen threw away the empty bottle. I was so disappointed.

Lost Wine Name in Australia
Yes, of course, I had written down the name of the wine on a corner of the paper napkin in my pocket. The grand restaurant for our first night and last night dinner had fabric napkins. Yes, of course, I lost the piece of paper.

BYO in New Zealand
Off we went to New Zealand. All around New Zealand the restaurants were BYO, bring your own wine. Often if you did not bring a wine, the restaurant, which might or might not have a license to sell wine, would direct you to a wine shop next door, or a few steps away. In the wine shop we would look along the rows of unfamiliar wines from Australia and New Zealand wondering what to choose, in a hurry to get back to the restaurant for dinner.

No good relying on the waiter or sommelier to suggest wine to go with the food. You have to choose your own in New Zealand.

Photographing Wine Labels
Nowadays I have a mobile phone containing a camera. I make sure it is charged and take a photo of the label on the front of a bottle of wine I like and the label on the back and the top.

Wedding And Event Menus
If you go to a wedding or grand reception you might get given a menu with the wines which go with each course listed.

However, you might get given a separate list of wines at wedding or a wine tasting or wine and dine event.  I like to give a single tick to a wine I like. I use a double tick for something I like so much that I want to rush out and buy a bottle or order it online the next free hour whilst it is still in my mind.

I usually don't staple the wine and food menus together because I don't like to damage the menu. Instead, I fold the wine list inside the food menu. Or I photograph the food menu followed by the wine menu or the wine bottle and label.

When I was first married, I had a book in which I stored the labels of wines I liked so that I could ask for them for bithdays and Xmas and order them for parties.

Labelling Wine Glasses
It is easy to see the difference between a white wine and a red wine. But when the wines have gone around the table, a latecomer is deemed to be an absentee, you might be allowed to take the last dregs from a bottle of your favourite.

If you get out of sync with everybody else, it is hard to pair up the wines in your glass with the ones on the list. Yes, you can taste the difference between the sweet you liked and the too dry wine - you think. But the taste of wine alters with your familiarity with it, and what you are pairing it with.

Changing Taste
Hence the old saying, buy on an apple, sell on a cheese. My family wine expert interjects and objects: 'No wine buyer would buy on an apple, which is too acid. You only buy or sell at trade shows with dry biscuits.'

You can try this at home. Drink red and white wines with an acidic pickle or apple or lemon and then a chocolate or marzipan.

At a wine tasting event such as a tutored tasting at a wine show you would be given enough glasses for every wine (usually only five or six) the glasses are placed on a paper placemat, in order with circles, sometimes with numbers drawn inside the cirles like the top of a clockface.

If I had anticipated this problem of muddling up wine glasses, I would have torn off strips of white paper and put numbers and wine names on them and put the paper under the foot of each glass.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
If you want a popular talk on wine tasting and testing for a group, you can contact me or my husband. I give talks to Toastmasters International groups in the UK and Singapore - anywhere else if you want to arrange the expenses of the flight and transfers and hotels and restaurants. If you want a technical talk with slides and a series of wines to taste from growers in one region, contact my husband Trevor Sharot

Trevor has spent several years doing the wine exams through WSET up to Diploma level. After that he was observed doing a wine tasting for a group and tested for admission to the Association of Wine Educators.

You fail the test if you serve a dud wine. You must test all the wines before giving them out to the guests.

That is why you as host taste the wine in a restaurant. You are not to see if you like the wine, but to check it has not gone off.

A little of the wine knowledge has rubbed off on me. See Trevor Sharot's blog post:
http://grapedeal.com/english-wine/

BYO for Wine Groups In Restaurants - how to organise BYO, transporting, tasting and recycling bottles

Problem
How do you organize a wine tasting group in a hotel, restaurant, business premises or home?

Answers
I belong to several wine tasting groups in the UK, about half a dozen. I am also on the mailing list of wine festivals and events worldwide. Plus events organized by restaurants, bars, wine shops and the Wine Association. One of the groups meets in a restaurant in London. We match wines to food, which is pretty simple, starting with a sparkling white, drinking reds through the main course which is mostly stronger flavour meats, ending with sweet wines to go with dessert.

Details about wines and wine matching are on Grapedeal website. All website links are grouped at the end for you to turn to when you have finished reading this post.

Our group's organiser chose a Croydon restaurant, only as convenient for his home. He runs another company wine group based on his former workplace in central London. The Croydon venue attracts people from as far north of London as Watford, and as far out of London as Faversham in Kent.

Well-Travelled Members
The group attracts a complete mix of nationalities, from those whose parents are from the UK, to others descended from parents born in Germany, Italy, and the Cameroons in Africa. All are well travelled. One teaches on cruise ships.  Others travel with work. Discussion over cocktails and lunch ranged from 'my recent trip to Valencia in Spain', to India, and Boston in the USA.

For many years this group met at a hotel in Croydon. Then a new manager apparently changed the rules about BYO (bring your own).  We believe our leader negotiated better prices for a large group to meet at The Boulevard.

BYO
Wine societies are always looking for restaurants which allow BYO for specialist groups. Another factor is a set price for three courses with coffee including service. That makes it so much easier for the group organizer to book a table for a certain number and know what each person must pay.

The advantage to the restaurant is that they can regularly fill a large table and know what everybody will be paying, and no non-payers, and all customers are regulars and reliable.

BYO is very common in New Zealand.

In the UK, you can search online for BYO. Sometimes you get BYO in family-run restaurants, especially ethnic restaurants which don't specialise in wine. Another opportunity is from newly opened restaurants which don't yet have a license.

If you phone around, you may find that some places want to charge a prohibitive price for corkage; but others are very happy to charge nothing and just keen to get business to fill a back room or a large table lunchtime or evening, mid-week or weekend.

You might get a deal if you simply keep going through your list until you find somebody willing to meet your needs. The other advantage for a club is having an organizer who is retired and has time to research. Another option, a bonus, is a charming but canny negotiator.

Negotiating Skills
What does a negotiatior need? To enjoy researching. To compliment the chef, owner, hotel or restaurant or manager or staff. To work out what the restaurant wants, more business, to fill the place at off-peak hours, to build up business long-term, gain goodwill?  To concentrate on the price per meal? To concentrate on the total which the restaurant will get?

To be easy-going or tough? Or to have two negotiatiors, Mr tough and Mr nice?

To get a free drink or for everybody attending, or a free meal for the organizer? To be a regular customer at the restaurant in addition to organizing the club? To compare what other restarants in the area or country offer, or what other groups are paying?

Pay Straight Away
If your diners only want one type of wine with the main course, you could have an arrangement that everybody pays cash or credit card at the time of ordering for aperitifs and for after dinner drinks.
However, many retired people have spent a lifetime collecting wines and have specialist wines which are no longer available and would not be sold in most restaurants.

The last two events I attended were for wine pairings. We compared two wines.

On one special occasion for a wedding anniversary we had twelve wine glasses per person for a table of about twelve people. You drink only a small measure of each.

Safety First
You don't drive home.You take a train or a taxi. You make sure somebody sober collects you from the station.

Leftovers
I didn't drink port or spirits. If you have leftovers they can be corked up and taken home.

Open Bottles Banned
Notice that opened bottles of wine or cans of beer are not allowed on some stations and trains in the UK. Signs may tell you.

Why would the powers that be do this? Are they just being spoilsports?

No. Rules and bye-laws are brought in to stop drunks lurching around, singing annoyingly, accosting passengers. Worse still, drunks could be being sick, urinating on walls, or onto electrical lines.

They might start fighting each other, or amusing offering to share drinks or alarmingly demanding drinks money from passengers. You don't want winos and down-and-outs sleeping on benches and underfoot, assaulting railway staff, and falling under trains. If it never happens, it's because the management and staff don't let it happen.

UK Responsibility
Many UK restaurant menus have warnings about units of alcohol and drinking responsibly. At one company wine club, the staff insisted that a visiting lecturer add a warning on the printed tasting notes.

USA
In the USA in some States, you cannot have opened bottles of wine in a car. One restaurant in the USA would not allow us to take home an opened bottle for this reason, they claimed.

Transporting Heavy Wines
If you have packing to prevent access to the bottles, and to keep them hidden inside a locked suitcase, and you are sober, or the person with the locked suitcase is sober, that would be better.

Transporting wines for a group of 12-36 people, or more, means moving heavy bottles. Sometimes the bottles can be delivered to the venue the previous day and kept in a locked cellar at the venue.

Leftover bottles
What about the leftovers? What a waste! At one event, two of the ladies took home a half bottle each to cook in a casserole. Empty bottles can be kept for display, or converted into table lamps, for fun, for gifts, for decoration at home in the kitchen or lounge, or restaurants in the wine bar or dining room, for a pub, for a museum, or for sale.

In Company Meetings
To accompany wine bread and biscuits and cheese are often supplied. However, this is an unbalanced meal with no fruit or vegetables. Guests may wish to bring grapes, or to ask for vegetables and fruit to be supplied.

Providing Water
Another consideration is the cost of water. A wine tasting group might be looking for a venue which will provide unlimited supplies of tap water, or bottled water, and not refuse to serve tap water nor insisting on supplying and charging for bottled water. Organisers want to keep down the costs and ensure that sufficient food and wine is supplied to keep patrons sober.

Useful websites
drinkaware.co.uk
grapedeal.com
visitbritain.com
visitbritainshop.com
visittheusa.com
www.newzealand.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker

La Rugoletta Italian Restaurant - Such a lovely evening

La Rugoletta Italian Restaurant. Photos by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Italian cuisine. Notice the green rocket motif.

Problem
Where to go for an evening meal in London. Indian or Italian? We looked at three restaurants. All seemed good.

The interior has paintings, wine bottles and flowers on the tables.

Answer
But when our wine buff saw that the Italian restaurant offered BYO, Bring Your Own bottle of alcohol, that clinched the decision.

La Rugoletta has two branches. The one which was nearest to our friends was closed. We didn't mind. I thought the smaller restaurant looked as if it had basic chairs. Were the seats and back broad enough for me. Never mind. We visited the larger, more chic restaurant.

We found parking free in the road outside after 6.30 pm, providing that you watch out for the double yellow lines on corners and other no go areas and read the signs.

One of the two smiling waitresses came forward to greet us immediately and showed us to our table. The place settings already set up with knives and forks and napkins and the menu, water glasses and wine glasses.

My trip to the ladies put me in a good mood from the start. It was conveniently nearby on the ground floor, no trip upstairs, nor down to a basement nor round the back of a building. It was spotlessly clean, white and gleaming chrome. Looked like it was installed yesterday.

For starters we ordered ravioli. It proved pleasing to look at and a satisfying taste and texture.

My main course was the classic chicken with white sauce and mushrooms and saute potatoes. I was in heaven.

The portions were large, large enough for me to have some wrapped up to take home.

We shared desserts. The chocolate soufflé eclipsed the other chocolate dessert, which as Okay, just not quite as zingy and moreish.

We had a candle on the table. And two roses.

Coffee came with a wrapped biscuit. I didn't have coffee. But I ate the biscuit!

At the end of the evening, I noticed a lady sitting at the back. I recognized her from the restaurant's website which I had looked at earlier in the day.

My first question to her was, what does La Rugoletta mean?

It means rocket, a variety of lettuce, which you see pictured on the front of the restaurant menu. Rocket has a peppery flavour.

I had been looking for a translation of the word on the internet earlier in the day without success. The usual Italian word for rocket is rucola. Rugoletta is Napolitan dialect. (From Naples, Italy.)

My other questions was: why does La Rugoletta offer BYO? We found BYO at restaurants all over New Zealand. BYO is much rarer in London, England, and other cities outside New Zealand.

The husband and wife team opened their first small restaurant intending to apply for the 'liquor license' as Americans would say. But customers were so keen on BYO that the restaurant stayed that way. The system suited both management and customers.

When they opened their second, larger, restaurant, they applied for the liquor license and you can order a sweet dessert wine with your dessert. However, you still have the option of BYO.

When we left the two young waitresses, one of whom was Romanian, had run to stand either side of the gate to smile at us and say goodbye and thank you.

La Rugoletta,
308 Ballards Lane,
Finchley
London
N12 0EY
Tel:+44 (0)208 445 6742
www.la-rugoletta.com