Growers Champagnes

There has been a surge in interest in Growers Champagnes. This surge is probably due to the fact that most Champagne houses have been increasing their prices year on year with inflation busting rises, which borders on sheer greed, thus forcing the consumer to look elsewhere. Growers Champagnes are essentially wines from farmers who may have been contracted into providing their grapes to the larger Champagne houses but have had a change of heart and fancy bottling their own goods. What you get as the consumer is a champagne from a far smaller area, potentially single vineyard expressions, much more terroir and wines which are not priced to include massive international marketing budgets. These often visually-understated, humble champagnes will not mean basement price fizz, but they will mean great value for money and a wine that has been carefully and lovingly made by a very proud winemaker.

During a recent tasting, it was unfortunate for our wine rep to start with a NV Blanc de Blancs from Diebolt-Vallois. This blew our socks off and the rest of the tasting was a write-off as Nicolas and I kept on coming back to the champagne for further mouthfuls while ignoring all the other wines our rep had brought us. The Diebolt-Vallois is the first to be added to our new Growers Champagne section in our wine list, and we will soon add 2 or 3 more. We will keep these in minimal stock, maybe 3 bottles of each so that we can regularly change them when something newer and shinier comes along. I thoroughly recommend you try these when you next come in.

Seafood Restaurant Newsletter

Newsletter

January 2012

Happy New Year to you. Thank you for your support and business over the last year. Despite the world-wide doom and gloom, the changes and introductions to our menus have done well in persuading many more of you to come and dine with us, and I hope that you have enjoyed your visits. I am always looking for feedback so we can improve our standards as a team and provide you with a better and better service. If you ever want to contact me or any of my staff for any reason, please email me on tim@theseafoodrestaurant.com or the restaurant directly on StAndrews@theseafoodrestaurant.com.

In September we introduced the Express Lunch Menu. This is a 2 course (starter and main) lunch menu for only £12.95. This menu was primarily aimed at local business people to offer an inexpensive and healthy lunch option which could be had within a 1 hour lunch break. In St Andrews there seems to be an abundance of snack bars, sandwich shops and cafes but very few opportunities to eat fresh, well-cooked food. At £12.95 this menu competes directly with these fast-food outlets and we have seen a huge increase in the number of our lunch customers as a result of this. We are able to produce this amazing deal by working closely with our suppliers and the markets.

You may have heard of the issues surrounding the fishing industry and in particular of something called by-catch. What Hugh’s Fish Fight is trying to do is to force fishermen to land their by-catch, which is the other fish they catch when targeting another, usually more profitable, species. This by-catch arrives at the markets and is frequently sold as a ‘mixed box’. We make use of these mixed boxes by using them on our Express Lunch Menu, so by choosing to eat from our Express Menu you are doing your bit to help the problem of throwing away perfectly good fish.

www.itison.com

 We have agreed to put up a couple of offers on www.itison.com, the Scottish daily deals website. These deals will be available on Monday 9th January for 24 hours only, so make sure you are signed up to www.itison.com to take advantage. These deals are exclusive to itison.com members and run until the 29th February 2012.

YouTube

I am thinking about starting a YouTube channel for the restaurant (mainly because everywhere else is doing it!) Various ideas that have risen are to provide mini-vids on cooking and preparing seafood and other cooking skills; quick wine recomendations and in particular food and wine pairing or working with Luvians on wines that are readily accessible for the St Andrews locals; behind the scenes clips of running a restaurant or some live footage of the kitchens during service. If you have any ideas or thoughts about this, I would really welcome them.

Facebook and Twitter

Remember to come and join us on your preferred social site. Our ever-changing Express Lunch is posted every day as well as other offers. Or come and join in the conversations and laughs.

Become a fan of our Facebook page by clicking here.

Follow us on Twitter here.