Old Orleans in Cardiff Bay has never been a place I would have said to go to if someone asked me for restaurant suggestions. The last time I went there I still had long hair and my parents paid for my meal. From what I remember, the food was not up to much and I hadn’t felt an urge to go back since. This was 7 years ago.
The company that own the Old Orleans brand, Punch Taverns, selected 6 of their outlets and have rebrand them under a new moniker, West Coast Grill & Bar, changing the fayre on offer from deep South fiery cajun dishes to Californian style ribs and burgers.
Firstly, I’m pretty sure, and correct me if I’m wrong, that ribs and burgers aren’t especially Californian. I’d say they were more mid-Western, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, South Dakota, Ohio – that kind-of area; but, I suppose how do you decorate a restaurant to look like Sioux Falls, South Dakota? So I guess we’ll agree to disagree on this one.
The refurbishment has been done adequately, the smouldering red colours replaced with sea blue and the New Orleans style Bourbon Street signs and decorations have surfboards in their place.
We were invited to the re-launch night, a “soft launch”, so no fireworks, prowling CEOs or any of that malarchy – just a night for invited guests and the occasional walk-in, so the staff could get used to the new menu. @MisiaKuczys, @DanielGrosvenor and @CardiffBites came along with me.
The good thing about this being a re-launch is that the staff are all the same, so we wouldn’t have to deal with a whole bunch of waitstaff on their first day tripping over each other and bringing us potatoes instead of pork and margheritas instead of martinis.
The new menu is a big one and I can see why the kitchen staff would need a while to get to grips with it, with no less than 34 items available as a main course it took us a while to decide and had to ask our server to come back, twice.
Once we finally had a handle on the menu, starters were ordered in the form of two of the biggest sharers – there were 6 of us after-all. This platter, the simply named “West Coast Platter” had pretty much every starter on it – so this helped for me to sample everything so I could be fair in my review.
In true American style the prawns were dubbed “shrimp”, but surely they must be prawns since it would take a lot of effort and a hell of a lot of food miles to source and import shrimp to the United Kingdom, especially since we have an abundance of their larger brothers.
The two huge oblong plates also had on them small ribs, chicken wings, tortilla chips, corn, onion rings and sweet potato fries.
One of the first things I noticed were that the onion rings were clearly bagged and frozen, quickly deep-fried on site. TGI Friday’s have absolutely awesome onion rings – I don’t know their method, but however they do it they make them taste as though they have been prepared from scratch. The rings here were disappointing, even for the frozen kind.
On the plus side, I love sweet potatoes, who doesn’t? So having them cut into gourmet style fries, thick and crispy, was an absolute delight. They were cooked well and could have been sliced freshly? I have no reason to doubt that they were.
After our epic menu reading session, where I could have mistaken our group for a book club, we had all ordered main courses and now they started making their way to the table. I had made a joke with our server that since we were eating for gratis that I should order the most expensive thing on the menu, and she duly pointed out the “The bigger rib gig”. It’s description “Share the stickiness for even better value; an extra large portion of the big rib gig, it’s a real belt strainer ideal for sharing”. I’m not a big eater, I like to eat “nouveau” – small portions of awesome flavourful food; but this is what the West Coast Grill & Bar is supposed to be modelled on – good ribs and wings – so what better way to get a taste of it all than to have them all on one big plate?
It was a monstrosity, 3 different cuts – pulled pork, a rack of ribs, and pork hammers with corn, fries and coleslaw. Not knowing where to start, I went for my favourite piece of the pig, the ribs. The meat fell from the bone easily, as good rib meat should. The texture of the meat was smooth and succulent – no problems here, this is good quality meat. The barbecue sauce that almost all of the pork on the plate was covered in however wasn’t the greatest. Quite salty to taste and a way too sticky, as if it had congealed. Covering 2 out of 3 types of meat, this really put the good cuts of pork in a bad light; like making parsley sauce with old milk and pouring it all over nice, fresh turbot.
The pulled pork had an entirely different barbecue sauce applied to it; darker in colour and thicker in texture, but thicker as if it had been aged or a bourbon had been used to thicken it, not like the other stuff which seemed it had become thicker through being left in a bottle with no cap in a fridge for days.
Yes, this was an entirely different specimen of marinade – fruity and smooth, topping off some of the best pulled pork I have had in a long while. It literally fell apart with my fork lightly jabbing at it. Moist and succulent, it had all the flavours of the flame grill ingrained in it and the sauce covering it just topped everything off – this single piece of meat, in my opinion, saved the whole dish.
The fries that we all had on the side became a topic of conversation between the members of the group, both over the table and after the visit – yes, this is how bad they were. The West Coast Grill & Bar need to source new fries immediately. They might as well have not been there, and quite how you suck all flavour out of potatoes like they have managed to do, I have no idea. You put them in your mouth and you could have been eating anything, it was a blank canvas, they tasted of absolutely nothing. I can’t even say anything more than that; they weren’t greasy or oily, they weren’t too thick, thin or potatoey, they weren’t dry, they weren’t cold, they weren’t hot, they weren’t salty, they were actually nothing. I have never tasted anything like this before, and this was resounded around the table. Making fries is both an art and a science, one that many companies invest thousands of hours to get right – if you’re going to be putting them on the side of every dish, they need to stand up to the challenge; these do not.
After managing to finish almost everything on my plate, despite the drawbacks of the one kind of marinade (I hasten to add that while it wasn’t the greatest, it was certainly edible, and the meat was worth salvaging), it was time for the third course, dessert.
Even though I have a relatively small frame and only weigh about 10st, sometimes I can manage to put away quite a lot – not often, but I have my moments, so I went with the apple pie – a dessert you cannot get wrong, and I was right, it was great, heated to the right temperature and not overdone – it went down a treat.
The other thing that this restaurant seems to be focusing on is their cocktail menu – there was an array of good looking “fun & fruity” cocktails like “jelly baby” and “tutti frutti”, Unfortunately I’m not a “fun” cocktail drinker – I’m completely buttoned down, my favourite being a whiskey cocktail, the Old Fashioned. @DanielGrosvenor did try a milkshake, the “chocolate banoffee” – he finished it all and didn’t complain, so I assume it was good – I’m sure you’ll hear about it in his review.
Service all night was great, our server was very attentive, friendly and welcoming – giving us as much time as needed to decide; but not overbearing – making sure that we were always with drinks.
Rating 4/10
The food was mostly phoned in, better than pub food, but you’d think that as a restaurant they would do more cooking – rather than using so much ready prepared, “3663 style” delivered dishes.
Going to a restaurant on its opening night is always perilous, anything can happen – the staff have never worked in this store before, probably half of them have never worked together before – all brought in from other locations or trained at other restaurants in the franchise before all being lumped together and told to get on with it.
Going to the opening night of Ruby Tuesday could have been even more perilous, being that it is the first UK location in this massive US operation. Not only have all the staff never worked in this restaurant before, but there is nowhere else for them to go to get their training out of the way – the best they could have done is some dry runs for family and friends of the franchise owners. I had been waiting for the restaurant open since it was announced back in March, I have visited many Ruby Tuesdays in the States and do enjoy their food.
It was immediately apparent that the glue sticking the team of hosts, servers, bar staff, management and kitchen staff had not quite dried yet. Servers were stood around looking quite bored, or confused, the host stand at the front of the restaurant was surrounded by a gaggle of personnel – nobody quite sure if there were any tables free, so we decided to wait at the bar while they made up their minds.
I should hasten to say that all of this I have no problem with – I was well aware that it was opening night, and I’m not being insensitive to the pressures, I am merely reporting what I experienced. We sat at the bar and finally got the attention of a bartender so that we could get some drinks menus, they were pretty backed up with drink orders from the tables that had already been seated so we sat there for ten minutes trying to get their attention to no avail so we didn’t manage to get any drinks before we were seated in a booth.
The decor in the restaurant is very understated, as is the mantra of the company “Simple Fresh American Dining” – nothing like the out and out extravagance of TGI Friday’s which is directly across the food court at St David’s. The whole place is decorated in soft, dark colours with the odd large picture adorning the wall, very easy to get on with. Evidently their food is meant to do the talking.
The menu is simple – a single sheet with about 20 or so dishes to choose from. No pictures, which delighted me, and some awesome sounding burger choices, along with steak and quesadillas, this is only a portion of the US menu – it didn’t take long to make a choice and we were away. We did manage to get a drink order in, I had Blue Moon beer – an imported Canadian wheat beer which is served with a slice of orange on the glass. The beer was ice cold and this made it ever more drinkable. A very nice, smooth beer – I would have another one at the end of the meal, a delight.
My dining partner, the effervescent Misia – now 7 and a half months pregnant, had a lemonade, which they promise will never be less than half full, a promise the attentive staff followed through on. From the menu I chose a mini burger combo, I went with buffalo chicken and pimento cheeseburger, for £9.99 this option comes with access to the “Garden Bar” (read “salad bar”), which, once bought, you can use as much as you want during your visit. With a good selection of green salad, potato salad, cheeses, coleslaw and dressings we ate this as an appetiser.
All the produce was fresh and tasted good – it hadn’t been left standing for long, though I suppose it couldn’t have had a chance to really, with the restaurant only opening two hours before our visit. The food was delivered to the table very quickly – this would have been a bonus in most circumstances, but since we had opted for the “Garden Bar” we were still eating salad when all of a sudden we had main courses dumped on the table, so we quickly discarded the salad to stop the main course from going cold. One tip to Ruby Tuesday UK staff – if the order includes the “Garden Bar”, hold up the main courses by 10 minutes or so to give patrons a chance to actually digest (or even ingest!) their potato salad. So, with hot food staring at us from the corner of the table we moved on to the main course.
My mini burgers looked good, I don’t call myself as a foodie – but I do like to think that I’m somewhat of an expert in the field of burgers (Look out for an upcoming feature where I try to find the best beef burger in Cardiff). The buns were soft, but not soggy. The ratio of filling to bun sizes was good (i.e. there wasn’t more filling than the bun could handle) and the chicken burger held together well when picked up from the plate. As I previously mentioned, I had ordered the pimento cheeseburger – this is a burger that is made entirely of cheese – unfortunately I was not overly impressed with this particular burger. The “patty” did not hold together well, it was very wet and broke down easily. I ended up with most of it having fallen onto the plate, easily eaten from there with a fork. The chicken in the other burger was quite chewy, definitely undercooked, but not dangerously undercooked – it wasn’t pink, but I could tell that it was only just past this point as the meat had a slight pinkish hue. The rest of the burger, the buffalo sauce, the gherkin and the lettuce really were excellent and performed a massive save, though a person with less patience would probably have sent it back to the kitchen.
My mini burgers were also purported to come with “endless fries”, although I didn’t have this explained to me so I don’t know how this works – I certainly wasn’t offered any more after I had finished all on my plate, but I’ll be honest in saying that I probably would have refused the offer anyway. The fries themselves were excellent – cooked with skins on, they were fried just to the right point, crispy and they kept their heat very well.
Misia had the parmesan chicken pasta which she indicated to me was very good, although a bit on the salty side. The portion was certainly of a decent size, though she managed to finish it all – probably because she’s eating for two. She also had dessert, her choice of the double chocolate was commended by two passing members of staff, evidently they had a chance to try the food and were impressed by this dessert, Misia was too. It did look delicious from my side of the table, but I was relatively stuffed so I made do with my second bottle of Blue Moon.
Overall we were satisfied with the food and the experience; I have no doubt that after the staff have gelled and a few busy dinner services have been completed the place will be akin to its American parent, restaurants will open in more locations around the UK and become a major player in the American imported restaurant market alongside TGI Friday’s which made the move very successfully more than 20 years ago. We will most definitely be visiting again soon, I may even pop in for a Blue Moon after work at some point.
Rating 5/10 Bill: £40 + tip
Ruby Tuesday is at St David’s Centre, Upper Eastside, Cardiff, CF10 2EF
A friend of mine posted on Facebook this morning that there were rumours about that the Pen & Wig on Park Grove in Cardiff is going to be closed down and/or turned into a high-end wine bar. I’m tired now of internet rumours so I decided to do some digging.
The first details started coming out on Thursday July 1st, put out there by Buzz Magazine on their Twitter feed. There is apparently also a petition on the bar at the pub itself, though I cannot verify this.
So, here I have some information straight from the horses mouth:
The Pen & Wig is not being closed down. Nor is being taken over by another company.
The establishment will however be going through a rebranding exercise. It is currently run under the Town Pubs brand, one of Mitchell & Butler’s. It will be transferred into the Nicholson’s Classic brand, also by Mitchell and Butler.
There is a big difference between these two brands.
Town Pubs is a cheap and cheerful brand, they focus on low priced food (like the Pen & Wig’s £2.99 meals) and cheap beer. See this link for more details on Town Pubs.
Nicholson’s Classic are big on real ales, this will see the Pen & Wig’s repertoire of real ale double, from 5 to 10. The food will also change drastically, focusing on well-made hearty food like sausages, pies, real mash and the like. Also the pub may have all its furniture renewed, something that it definitely urgently needs, in my opinion. See this link for more details on Nicholson’s Classic.
In the back of house the kitchen area is being doubled in size to accommodate the new styles of food that it will be offering, so that fresh food can be prepared, instead of the pre-made meals that they mostly serve at the moment.
The assistant manager, Aslim, seems excited about this and is very quick to quash any rumour that it is being remodelled to change the clientèle. The Pen & Wig was one of the first pubs in Cardiff to adopt the “cheap and cheerful” ethos that now every bar in Cardiff has and that it has to stay ahead of the curve in order to remain popular.
So, no need to fear, your beloved Pen & Wig is not closing down. Not being turned into a wine bar or a fancy restaurant, but it is going a bit more upmarket.
Cegin Y Ddraig, or “The Dragons Kitchen”, opened in 2009 to small fanfare. The day that we visited, a warmish spring day, we sat down to eat in the small café’s outside area after having a look around the inside, which was full of relaxed patrons.
The menu consists mostly of sandwiches and soups, good fare for this outlet as it is easy and quick to prepare in their relatively small kitchen/counter area.
I chose the ”Dragon’s breath” chicken in a brown baguette baton and my lunching partner, the ever patient @MisiaKuczys, had Caws Cenarth Caerphilly cheese on thickly cut bloomer bread.
We were informed that there would be a 25 minute wait for brown baguettes while they were baked as they had run out, fortunately there were other options and I switched to focaccia, which I’m glad I did.
Cegin Y Ddraig is situated on the entrance to Castle Arcade, directly opposite Cardiff castle; perfect for passing foot traffic, and away from the works to pedestrianise High Street which has been kicking up dust for the past few months.
The restaurant itself has a maze of seating areas, each with their own unique ambience. The downstairs section is quaintly decorated and quite romantic; an ideal place to visit if you’re looking for somewhere a bit more special than the average café for a lunchtime date. There are sofas with low tables if you want to slouch and just drink coffee, and a half-upstairs area which puts you on a stage to overview the entire establishment while you tuck-in. We sat outside, in the entrance to Castle arcade, which isn’t too busy and isn’t a wind-trap (or at least when we visited it wasn’t) so you don’t lose your crockery.
Our lunch arrived within 10 minutes and I was amused to find that the plate was garnished with Tyrell’s vegetable crisps; a new one on me, but my favourite.
First impressions of the food were positive, the bread was firm and not in the least soggy, the sandwich was generously filled and the chicken-to-salad-and-sauce ratio was very good. The plate had a small side salad to complement the aforementioned Tyrell’s vegetable crisps.
It was clear that the sandwich had been freshly made; something you would expect but, disappointingly, don’t always get, especially at some of the big chains where the sandwiches are made early in the morning and left in the fridge.
The chicken was tender, the sauce not too overpowering and the mango (which I was pleasantly surprised to find) was of good consistency and not cut into huge, mouth-filling chunks like you get at some places.
Surprisingly, I didn’t get it all over me like I usually do, but there were enough napkins around if I did- a major gripe of mine is finding that in some cafés, no napkins are to be seen. You can usually get them if you ask, which leads me to believe that either there is some kind of napkin thief on the loose in the Welsh capital, or that other establishments forego purchasing napkins in the hope that they can send out their troops to steal them from elsewhere. Can anyone verify this conspiracy for me?
The service was excellent. There was only one staff member at the time we went in, so he was a bit rushed taking orders, clearing tables, making food and delivering to its designated tables, but we weren’t in any rush as I had decided to finish work early for the day and take it easy (not that there was any considerable delay anyway).
One thing that I would change is the opening hours. Currently Cegin Y Ddraig closes at 17:30 and with the dining area set up as it it, it could easily cater evening service and turn itself into a fully-fledged restaurant. I wonder will they be considering this in the future?
As cafés go, this place is pretty damn good and I have visited on a number of occasions since, mostly for a takeaway lamb cawl which I wholly recommend everybody try for its great balance of tender meat and zingy flavour.
Rating: 10/10
Try the lamb cawl or your sandwich on focaccia, and also try a piece of the cake. I can wholly recommend both.
A few weeks ago I started a Facebook group to campaign against the Free B bus, a service which runs every 10 minutes in Cardiff to provide a link between bus stops, created after the idea recreating the central bus station was scrapped.
With the city centre only being probably just over a mile in diameter, this means the bus is most often completely empty. Also, with city traffic and the route the bus takes it is often quicker to walk between stops.
I was interviewed yesterday by a student film crew for the University of Glamorgan about the campaign. You can see it below.
Note:
Excuse my hair and my bumbling idiocy. I need it cut and I will also need to prepare next time too. It was literally flung at me 30 minutes before. I have also never been interviewed on camera before, so I didn’t really know where I supposed to be looking.
