Sunday 18 September 2011

Saturday - Aubergine & House Parties

After a lazy morning, we decided to head into West Kirby for a wander around the shops; we had grander walking plans but the rain led to a re-think! Last week I used the power of twitter to inquire where the best cafe was - West Kirby has a lot of choice in this area, and although Mum thought Sweat Pea was good, I decided on Abergine via twitter recommendation. Over to Jo......

Aubergine is a little tea room/cafe just off the Crescent in West Kirby.  It was doing a roaring lunch trade when we pitched up yesterday afternoon and we snatched the last table.  The room is stocked full of original period features and quirky decorations like knitted cakes and blackboards.  The menu is mainly sandwiches, with some paninis, jacket potatoes and salads.  There are also daily deals, including a soup and sandwich of your choice plus tea or coffee for under six quid.  When we visited one of the specials of the day was a goats cheese and onion marmalade ciabatta with salad, which both Joe and his mum opted for.  I went for a jacket potato with prawn marie rose (justifying it on the basis that I needed carbs for today's 10k - tenuous!!).  We also had coffees and an earl grey tea.

My prawn marie rose was lovely and had big prawns rather than the usual diddy coldwater prawns, although I was a little disappointed as I'm fairly confident that the potato was microwaved, but it was good and ate much more than I should have!  Joe liked the special, although it was very big (I'm not sure you can complain about too much food for £5.95 though!) and the onion marmalade was a little too sweet.  The coffees could be tidied up too, and I don't think the flat white was as described.  Overall it was good fare, and if the service had been a little chirpier we would have been happy. 

We've since found out that two of the chefs were off on Saturday, so they were doing the best they could with smaller resources.  I'd definitely give them another chance as the atmosphere was great and everyone else has said they are great - I wouldn't write Aubergine off yet.

Coffees - a flat white (but not quite) and a cappucino
My earl grey - love the cup and my tea pot was never ending!
Goats cheese and onion marmalade on ciabatta - nice but massive!
Jacket potato and prawn marie rose - with some lovely big prawns
After lunch, we were straight into discussing dinner and decided on rib eye steaks for the 3 of us. In West Kirby there is only one place to go and that's A.I Roberts butchers! - great product and great service. As well as the meat, we bought some local jam that I am looking forward to having for breakfast tomorrow.

Butcher art
Meols strawberry jam




Jo and I then decided to go for a pint at the Plasterers Arms in Hoylake - a great local fisherman's pub with a nice atmosphere and a good selection of drinks.


                             The Plasterers


There we were joined by Shereef and Steph who are great friends of ours. They are aware of our pork pie hunt, and brought me one from a local bakery called Fahys. It was a very nice, but the pork pie wasn't up to the required standard unfortunately - the search continues!....

Shereef with pork pie

We decided that after a big lunch, steak would be too much so Mum made ham sandwiches and home made chips....yum!



Our good friends,  Al and Jess, recently moved house and got engaged so they organised a house party to celebrate (it was also Jess's birthday today so HAPPY BIRTHDAY!). We didn't hang around too long as we had the 10k on Sunday, but when we left the party was getting started and we heard that everyone had a top drawer time.

What I haven't mentioned so far is that Al (and lots of other people it seems!) reads our blog and for Al it is his 'guilty pleasure' - brilliant! When I said I wanted to take a picture of them for the blog they both got a little excited and nervous at the same time -  here they are with some of the canapes that they demanded I take pictures of (its crazy what a little fame can do to people).

AL AND JESS!!!!!

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