Mr Wolfe Café – Sunday 22nd September 2013

Skip, skip, skippety-skip….I’m off to grandmother’s house! Skip, skip….no, no, wait…..I’m off to see Mr Wolfe to fill my face with some of this amazing cake I’ve heard about. Mr Wolfe opened in February 2012 and has been quietly feeding the very selfish locals since then. I can see why its punters were reluctant to shout about it, they clearly want to keep it all to themselves. The café is run by husband and wife team Travis & Kat who hail from Melbourne, moved to the UK and worked in North East London as graphic designers for 12 years. They toyed with the idea of a café/coffee house for some time before deciding to move to Brighton and give it a go. Their interest in architecture and design shows in the interior which is unfussy, with charcoal grey walls and a lovely wooden counter with more than a hint of a Scandinavian flavour. Mind you, it’s made all the prettier by the array of bread and cakes sitting on top…

…but I’ll come back to that.

I went along to Mr Wolfe accompanied by my lovely brunch buddy, and we ordered a coffee and settled into the window seats, taking in the surroundings (aka, staring at the cakes) and listening to PJ Harvey which was playing at a nice, unobtrusive level. They serve Monmouth coffee and, as a self-confessed coffee snob, I can honestly say it’s one of the best cups of coffee I’ve EVER had. Apart from the fact that’s it tastes fantastic, Mr Wolfe told me that they chose Monmouth because they deal with farmers on a direct trade basis and they really like their business ethic. They also sell coffee from other small UK roasters like Workshop, Squaremile and Roasting Party which they sell on rotation. If tea is more your bag (BDUM-TISHHH!!! I’m here all week), they have a huge range which comes from a Sussex based tea company. Such care in the choices of their suppliers is clearly one of the reasons they’re so popular.

The food choices have been neatly handwritten on the blackboards and it’s clear that the menu isn’t extensive.

Again, this is a positive thing: so many small places try to do too much and end up producing below par dishes. I ordered avocado with lemon juice on sourdough toast and my brunch bud went for the goats cheese and roasted red pepper sandwich.  Also on their blackboard are a selection from Magpies Pies, another small Brighton based company, and sandwiches/toasties which are all on bread bought in from Glynde-based Flint Owl Bakeries. The Wolves have particularly fond memories of sourdough in Melbourne, so they especially wanted to offer that as an option. They found Flint Owl Bakery and Magpies Pies at a local market and signed them up. My avocado on toast was simple and wonderful and is my new favourite snack; who’d have thought it? Just that hint of lemon juice and black pepper made it stand out and the sourdough was so good.

I tried my buddy’s lunch too – I loved it and I can’t stand peppers usually!

And so….the best bit…. Kat is responsible for the mouthwatering display of cakes, including Aussie favourite, Lamingtons. Kat is a self-taught baker, but she’s great at making lots of things and is apparently a dab hand with power tools! His personal cakey-fave is the luxe chocolate one that she often makes at the weekends.

And so, after much changing of minds, I opted for a chunk of the pistachio, almond and orange blossom cake, with a creamy mascarpone icing. Oooohhhh, so good. My brunch buddy had a choc brownie, (which I sampled in the name of research of course); rich, chewy and very special indeed. And check out the pretty plates!

To wash it down, I had a pot of Japanese cherry tea and it came in a beautiful teapot. Their crockery is mismatched, as is the latest trend,  but you can see that it’s all been carefully chosen to fit in with the overall style of the café. Lovely tea too, I need to find out where I can buy this so I can drink it at home.

So now that I know where this hidden treasure is, I’ll definitely be paying it regular visits. It’s so great to find somewhere of this calibre that isn’t in the middle of the scrum that Western Road can be at times. If you visit Mr Wolfe, and I strongly recommend that you do, try and plonk yourself in the best seat in the house: right by the counter. You get to eye the spread of pastries and cakey wonders AND you can draw a picture or scrawl a message for the next lucky punter on the chalk board table.

So go see Mr Wolfe; all the better to treat you with my dear. 9/10

Service The staff here were laid back, but friendly and attentive. The lovely beardy bloke that served us was definitely a coffee nerd and was very knowledgeable about all aspects of it. I got the impression that he was properly passionate about it, which makes a refreshing change. It took a little while for our coffees to arrive, but nothing excessive and they were really worth the wait.

Decor Minimal and simple with the food doing all the talking.

Toilets Just the one, which is upstairs. The only gripe I had with this was that there was no mirror above the sink (trust me, I NEED a mirror. I frequently wander around with bits of food on my face and in my hair). Kats DIY skills need to be used in here! From what I remember, there was nothing to dry your hands on either.

Prices All sandwiches came in at less that £4 unless it’s toasted which costs an extra 30p. Cakes start at around £1.30 and go up to about £3.40 for the big multi-layered ones. OINK!

Grrs Nothing much to find fault with, apart from the loo which could do with a little more attention. Everything else was spot on. Personally, I found the website a little difficult to find my way round too.

P.S. Mr Wolfe is playing host to some of the acts playing at the Oxjam event this coming weekend 26-27 Oct. Check the Mr W Facebook page for details.

Mr Wolfe, 15 Montpelier Place, BN1 3BH Brighton Tel: 07972 252787 Opening times: Mon-Frid 8-5, Sat 9-5, Sunday 10-5

Food For Friends – Tuesday 17th September 2013

It’s been many, many years since I visited Food For Friends. I had a brief five year flirtation with vegetarianism in my late teens/early twenties, but I succumbed to a big fat bacon butty (yes that old chestnut) and I’ve never really looked back. Saying that, probably about 50% of my meals are vegetarian anyway; not through any particular effort, more because me and Mr BMB love all kinds of food and don’t feel like there’s anything missing if we don’t have meat.

Way back in time (about ten plus years ago), FFF was more of a veggie café doing stir fries and the like, not particularly memorable, but a good cheap belly filler. So when I was invited along to eat and review their food, I raised an eyebrow. I’m telling you, it took some practice, have you ever tried raising just one eyebrow? Tough.

We were booked in for 7pm and were given a seat in the window where we could watch the world go by. Apparently, the world today consisted of about a thousand visiting language students and a group doing the Brighton Ghost Walk.

We were given the menus and I chose an Elderflower Fizz cocktail while Mr BMB went for a Samuel Smith’s Strawberry Beer. I’m a huge fan of a fruit beer and I tried it….mmm…I need to find out where I can buy this from. Luuuurvly. My cocktail was delicious too: ingredients were Bombay Sapphire gin and elderflower liqueur topped with Prosecco and a twist of orange peel. I’ll be trying to recreate this at home…HIC!

Nibbles

Mixed olives – exactly what it says on the tin, except it says on the menu that these come with sun dried tomatoes, but they were actually red chillies, so we got a little burny surprise.

Crispy tofu w sweet chilli dressing -….HO-O-O-ONK! HO-O-O-ONK! Yes, the tofu alarm is sounding. I’ve NEVER had tofu that made me go, “mmMMMmmmm”, but I’m pleased to say that these were delicious and one of the highlights of the meal. Me and Mr BMB were fighting over the last ones. No-one was more surprised than me; my previous experiences with tofu were that it tastes of nothing and is like sucking on a wet sponge.
My hopes for this meal just went up by quite a big chunk.

Home made bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar – the bread was nothing special really, it was OK.Mr BMB said it was a bit dense, but he makes his own and is very picky about it. I thought it was OK.

We weren’t given any plates for the nibbles which meant that the balsamic vinegar and the chilli dressing got dripped all over the table (and down my front). Little plates please!

Starters

I had fresh fig, basil and smoked ricotta salad with pickled ginger crisps and toasted pine nuts in a honey mustard dressing.

This was a really light and tasty plate of food. It had just the right amount of everything and the figs were fresh and delicious (I adore figs). The little crispy bits of fried ginger were an unusual addition and added some texture and a hint of heat. I really enjoyed the whole thing.

Mr BMB had the goat’s cheese, fresh herb and confit potato terrine with apple chutney and toasted fruit bread.

He said that the fruit bread was ‘a bit weird’; it didn’t go with the potato and tangy cheese. And the addition of apple chutney and an apple sauce meant that it didn’t balance at all. Overall, too much fruit.

Next, the mains

I chose the roasted almond, chilli and sage polenta cake with crispy sesame tofu (HONK!), carrot and star anise purée, sun-dried tomato dressing and wilted greens and Mr BMB went for Portobello mushrooms stuffed with feta, sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts, served with roast onion boulangere, fine beans, red and green pesto and crème fraîche.
The first thing to say is that both of these were served on HORRIBLE brown plates that did nothing for the look of the food.

The polenta cake was HUUUUUGE, very stodgy, heavy and had no heat from the chilli, in fact didn’t really taste of much at all. The tofu was a totally unnecessary addition. Why do vegetarian restaurants feel that they have to use it? You have to do so much to it to make it taste of anything, seriously, what’s the point? The greens were really bitter and weren’t offset by anything else. The dressing and the purée were really tasty, but there was barely enough on the plate to register it, just a few smears on the edges of the plate. More of that please! If the polenta cake was about half the size, served with courgette ribbons or green beans with a good strong hit of garlic and double the amount of tomato dressing and carrot purée, it would have been far more appealing. Ditch the tofu and add a little butternut squash or roasted beetroot squares to balance out the bitterness of the greens perhaps?

The best thing about the stuffed mushrooms was the green beans. The crème fraiche was too much with the goats cheese. A bit sickly. And considering this was meant to be stuffed mushrooms, they didn’t figure very largely on the plate.

(A wee apology here for the quality of the photos; the lights were dimmed as the evening wore on, making clear pics difficult).

So overall the mains were a tad disappointing. And lose those awful plates.

Finally, dessert

Mr BMB was too full for dessert, but I was determined to push on like the soldier I am. (I left about half of my polenta cake as I knew it wouldn’t allow room for anything else AND it wasn’t that good.) I went for something light, the lemongrass infused crème brûlée with summer berry salad and a home made lemon thyme sablé. This was nice, but then ‘nice’ isn’t the way that any chef would want their food to be described is it? It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t lovely either. I didn’t get any lemongrass flavour from it at all, not even a subtle hint. It was OK, but nothing memorable.

Service
The restaurant was very busy (impressive on a Tuesday night) but we still got really good service. Our waitress was friendly, knowledgeable and attentive.

Decor
Soft lighting, simple wooden furniture, food related pictures on the walls, a cosy feel even with the huge windows.
Toilets – really lovely, modern and sparkly clean

Prices
Nibbles are £3-£4 each, starters start at £4.50 for the soup and go up to £6.50, mains are £11-£13, side dishes are £2.50-£4.50 and desserts start from £5 for ice cream and go up to £10 for a sharing platter.

Overall, the food was good, but I’m not convinced by its website description as a ‘gourmet dining experience’. There are real glimmers of interesting and clever cooking; the crispy tofu nibbles were a stand out dish. But there are also elements that let it down; my overly stodgy main course, unbalanced flavours, bland vegetables.
I’ve heard so many people say good things about FFF, maybe we were just unlucky this evening. I’ll definitely come back and try out the lunch menu, or maybe pop in for tea and cake, but I don’t think I’d come back for dinner in a hurry. The flavour of the veg and herbs aren’t being brought out well enough for my tastes. And that stodgy main course isn’t something I want to repeat any time soon. BUT, fab cocktails and a really great website too. 6/10

Food for Friends, 17-18 Prince Albert Street, The Lanes, Brighton BN1 1HF Tel: 01273 202310 Open: Mon-Thurs: 12noon-10pm, Fri-Sat: 12noon-10.30pm, Sun: 12noon-10pm (serving roasts from noon), Afternoon tea served daily 12noon-5pm