How Much Change/How Many Mistakes do you Tolerate?

Been a while.

In 2020 we only went out ... twice? post-lockdowns and those were "we have no other choice / we simply cannot be at home" situations after my mom died.

In 2021 we've been behaving quite a bit. We went to an AYCE sushi place for our wedding anniversary. No complaints. Also went to a couple different restaurants when we stayed out of town while my wife was in a marathon. Can't remember much about them outside of the one that was bay-side and, while chilly under their zero-walls roof due to wind, the food was fantastic.

My international trips were a different story though.

Burger place in Belfast.
Small-ish place. First floor had five two-person tables.
Second floor had eleven.
And being socially distant meant there wasn't much room for eat-in.
Anyway, I ordered what was described as the "Cuban burger".
Pulled pork, burger patty, crispy onions, mayo, mustard, pickles.
What I got, though, was definitely not a "Cuban burger".
Just the same, whatever it was happened to be freaking delicious, to the point that I ended up going back a second time.

Hotel restaurant. Where do I start.
Their "ulster-style fry" breakfast was glorious. Glorious I say. Sausage, country/back bacon, baked beans, roasted mushrooms, roasted tomato, fried potato bread, fried soda bread, hash brown triangle.

Their Irish brisket dinner was hit-or-miss.
The first time it was amazing. Moist meat, tasty veg (green beans and carrots), sizable lump of mashed potatoes.
The second time, it wasn't.
The third time almost made up for the second.
The fourth time didn't.

Their "Irish beef burger" was terrible. How can you screw up beef like that? (Which makes me happy that I found the other place listed above).

The fish and chips though was "up there" with good compared to what I had elsewhere on the trips.

One night I ended up having a very late lunch and wasn't hungry again until after primary dinner serving hours, and ordered a grilled panini of some kind. It was tiny. And very, very overdone.

The Pho place I found was also awesome. Except for one meal there, I had their Pho (Irish brisket pho). The last meal was braised pork belly, which was like pork candy.

The wedding reception I went to had a "meat and potatoes" meal that was head-and-shoulders above the hotel restaurant.

However, what the Belfastians consider to be "Mexican food" is more like "Upperscale Chipotle". This doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it though - I had it five or six times the first trip, and only once the second.

Oh and the Indian places I went were just ... just ... lacking. Not from flavor or anything, but more from being used to a more "courteous touch" having been to various Indian places in four different US cities and a number of local places.

Indian would have been better a short trip away, in Scotland/England. The chicken tikka masala there is practically a national dish. The ulster-style fry sounds like a full English without eggs.

I'm tempted to go back to a bad area of town where a Quebec cuisine fine dining restaurant, St. Lawrence, is. They've been doing monthly menus during the pandemic, so not the stuff I had when I went a few years ago that I loved so much. But in December their theme is "best of the past", and they're bringing back what I had last time:

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Mushroom vol-au-vent (hollow puff pastry filled with mushroom cream sauce)

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Tourtiere (like a meat pie with finely ground pork and venison)

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Sugar pie with vanilla cream (like a pecan pie without pecans, or a shoofly pie without crumble on top, very similar taste to a butter tart).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Delores Mulva

Indian would have been better a short trip away, in Scotland/England. The chicken tikka masala there is practically a national dish.

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A British national coworker said that as well, but it wasn't something I could quickly and easily do with the time I had available.

Quote:

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The ulster-style fry sounds like a full English without eggs.
.

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You're right, I forgot to mention the egg preparations (poached, or scrambled) because I cannot eat them (I love love love eggs, but my stomach does not digest them well at all).
It does also occasionally come with black pudding. I tried it once.
It was ... unique. I enjoyed it but I don't think I'd have it again.

I got a phone call from a Russian friend while I was responding to your post, and I mentioned that you were very happy getting a full English and what was typically in one. She didn't know what black pudding was, so I started describing it to her. Two ingredients in, she was already gagging over the phone. She was curious about bubble and squeek, though. Was the hash brown triangle actually bubble and squeek (potato and cabbage)?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Delores Mulva

She was curious about bubble and squeek, though. Was the hash brown triangle actually bubble and squeek (potato and cabbage)?

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The one from the hotel restaurant, no. The one I had at Gordon Ramsay's place in London Heathrow, no.

I did have a meal from a fish-and-chips place which, on the menu, was called "Threes a Crowd", which I thought was a treatise on the different types of fried meat included.
It wasn't.
It was a description of how many people it would feed.

I can't find my photo of it right now, but all of the components were fried: *1) three chicken tenders (goujons), (2) three big chunks of white fish, (3) three hash browns that - upon reflection - had to have been a low-end chip shop version of "bubble and squeak" based on the unusual texture, (4) three sausages, (5) onion rings, (6) three huge mushrooms, and a crapton of fries. All for under 13 sterling.

I didn't notice it too much from the taste, but there was an additional squeaky texture from the cabbage, yes.

I was not able to finish most of the fries, half of the onion rings, and more than a few bites of the hash browns from this meal. (It was either eat as much as I could or let it go to waste, because my hotel room didn't have a fridge.)

(Because it took me over an hour to reply) I found the photo and have labeled it.

Spoiler for bigfood:

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And this doesn't show the additional box of fries!