1. 10 Essential Guide Visit our website nottinghampost.com NEP-E01-S3 EP01 NEP-E01-S3 EP01 Visit our website nottinghampost.com Essential Guide 11
EG Food
Mud Crab Pacifico
Beyond
the call
of Heinz
HALFWAY down Central
Avenue a pair of
well-scrubbed young
salespersonettes halted
passers-by and begged them to
accept free sample tubs of
Salad Cream.
Doh! You are in West
Bridgford, girls. Only
Provençal aioli will do.
Having witnessed Heinz
marketing department’s take
on Mission Impossible, I took
a lunchtime chance with the
puzzlingly-named Mud Crab
Pacifico, situated in the
premises once occupied by the
annoyingly noisy pasta
parlour Felicini.
Mud Crab Pacifico? Yes,
crab pops up in the
restaurant’s taco and linguine
dishes but mangrove
crustaceans don’t get a
specific mention on the menu.
Nor is there evidence that the
Pacifico bit has anything to do
with the Mexican beer or
Peruvian football club of that
name.
With its open front and
awning-shaded tables close to
the Central Avenue pavement,
Mud Crab offers additional
opportunity for the fragrant
young mothers of NG2 to
parade their pre-school
offspring.
The view is to Antonio
Carluccio’s new place, whose
recent opening had
Bridgfordians squealing with
delight. Throw in boozers and
restaurants like the Stratford
Haven and Larwood & Voce,
The Oriental Pearl and
Monkey Tree, Escabeche and
Belle & Jerome and you thank
your stars that you weren’t
around when the town was in
the grip of Methodism and the
nearest thing to fun within
250 yards of Tudor Square was
a home-brewed mug of cocoa.
The Mud Crab menu?
Crowd pleasers with a hint of
exotica, like chicken
jambalaya or ginger and soy
steak salad.
After watching a disabled
driver in some sort of
squabble with occupants of
the Heinz Salad Cream van –
“100 Years of Zing!” according
to the slogan on the side – I
took delivery of my starter.
There is a soup of the day
on the fixed-price menu but I
took a punt on the
available-every-day chorizo
and bean soup.
Nice job. Plenty of chewy
Spanish sausage and al-dente
butter beans were bound in a
thick tomato broth studded
with pieces of celery and red
pepper. This was a satisfying
number, pepped by a
well-judged hint of spice and
topped with two toasted
cheese-coated croutons.
Another ladle and a thick
wedge of good granary bread
and it would have made a
lunch on its own. Well,
probably not for me.
Aside from the jambalaya, I
was tempted to make a main
course out of the smoked
turkey and ham hock pie and
the six-napkin cheeseburger.
In the end I looked at the
specials card and ordered the
“pan-fried” sea bream. Fine
with me. After all, you don’t
want your sea bream fried on
a carrier bag.
Sampled at The Three Crowns, Upper
Parliament Street
ORIGINATING From Brazil, the recipe is a collaboration
between Cesario Mello Franco Brewery and Everards.
Made with Nelson Sauvin and Cascade hops, the
lager-resembling beer has plenty of punchy flavour
with hints of citrus and grapefruit mellowing into a
crisp dry bitter taste and a zesty, clean finish.
The Three Crowns has reverted to its pre-70s
name. During decimalisation days, it was reinvented
as the Tavern in the Town. The three stone crowns
are still above the entrance.
This renamed pub is an airy, open-plan design; it’s
one of only a few in Notts with a viewable kitchen.
The well-thought-out areas with their motley mix
of furnishings give the feel of several rooms. The
mezzanine bar is ideal for people watching or as a
pre-theatre stop-off.
My pre-opening sample was a nice surprise – the
pub opens proper at noon on Monday.
Richard Studeny
The fish was nicely done, its
sweet, slightly pink flesh by
no means overcooked and well
matched with a generous splat
of tomato risotto.
I wasn’t sure about the
hefty shake of the
Mud Crab Pacifico
Central Avenue
West Bridgford
Nottingham
NG2 5GQ
0115 981 1500
www.mudcrab
industries.co.uk
I had: Starter: chorizo and bean
soup, £4.50. Main course: sea
bream with tomato risotto, £13.95.
Drink: spring water, £2.40. Total:
£20.85
Marks out of five ###
The meal
neighbourhood’s favourite
condiment, balsamic vinegar,
and I thought the piquant
tapenade slightly
overwhelmed the fish. The
rocket leaves helped balance
things up.
I ran out of time for what
the waiter called “sweets” –
sweets are to be found in a
confectionery shop – but had I
chosen a dessert it would
surely have been the lemon
and yuzu meringue pie with
toasted rosewater
marshmallows and pistachio
crumbs. A dozen words? It’s
got to be worth a try. A yuzu,
by the way, is a small citrus
fruit.
Mud Crab service is
friendly without being creepy
and the general ambience is
pleasing. The value is
borderline but I’d go again.
Jeremy Lewis
I The Food Sleuth dines unannounced
and pays his own bills.
PINT OF THE WEEK
Xingu Brazilian Gold
Beer (4%)
FOOD SLEUTH
Where are your favourite places to eat and drink in Nottingham
and further afield? E-mail features@nottinghampost.comGet in touch
The Sleuth’s stars
##### Second to none
#### Seconds, please
### Second XI
## Just a second
# Seconds out
June 20 2014 June 20 2014
With the Nottingham leg of his Living
Dangerously tour rapidly approaching, Sir
Ranulph Fiennes talks to Chris Peddy about
his charitable work, a close encounter with a
hungry polar bear and his fear of heights
SIR RANULPH FIENNES Royal Concert Hall
‘I never
thought
of death’
FOR most people, any contact
with a large, aggressive,
man-eating animal will
happen behind the safety of
reinforced, metal fences at the
zoo or at a reasonable
distance on a safari holiday.
But for a man who has
braved temperatures of minus
50 degrees, discovered the lost
Arabian city of Ubar and
climbed to the summit of the
world’s tallest peaks, this was
never going to be the case.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes is the
Guinness Book of World
Records’ greatest living
explorer and was named the
UK’s top celebrity fundraiser
by Just Giving in 2011 –
having collected a total of
£16.3 million for various
charities to date.
And despite being forced to
abandon a solo expedition to
the South Pole because of a
kidney stone, as well as
multiple occasions where his
I Still scared of heights: Sir Ranulph Fiennes
body temperature dropped so
low that he suffered frostbite,
the ex-British Army officer
has never feared death.
Even when faced by one of
nature’s most deadly killers.
“It was circling and the
circles were getting smaller
and smaller,” he remembers.
“There were two of us and we
had been floating on the ice
north of Siberia for a long
time and had strayed on to a
floating polar bear route.
“We tried to scare it away
by making noise and banging
cooking pots and all that but
this one was obviously
hungry and smelt human
blood. It was out to get us.”
Eventually the ferocious
animal charged and his finger
was forced to the trigger of his
revolver. But the experienced
mountaineer seems relatively
unfazed.
“It was obviously quite
scary but I never thought of
death,” he adds.
One anxiety Sir Ranulph
does have to face on many of
his adventures is a fear of
heights.
To prevent the pain in his
fingers caused by frostbite, he
sawed the tips off with a saw –
and his solution to
overcoming his fear of heights
is every bit as combative.
“I am really bad with
heights, even at home,” he
says. “My wife still takes
things up and down the ladder
from the loft because I just
hate it.
“But when I got to 60 and
was still looking over my
shoulder like a bit of a wimp I
decided to do something about
it.”
And by doing something
about it, he means climbing to
the summit of the tallest peak
on the planet.
But did this latest challenge
have the desired results?
“Everest doesn’t have any
real sheer drops where all you
can see is pitch black, so it
didn’t really work because
although I knew I was at the
highest point of the world, it
didn’t really feel like it so I’m
still scared of heights to this
day,” he adds.
Other achievements in his
decorated career include the
Transglobe Expedition – a
three-year trek around the
world on it’s polar axis – and
the 7x7x7 challenge, which
saw him complete seven
marathons in seven days
across seven different
continents, aged 59.
But it is Sir Ranulph’s
incredible contribution to
charity that really sets him
apart from others. And seeing
the impact last year of a
$2.5million donation made to
Seeing is Believing – a
foundation that tackles
avoidable blindness – stuck in
his memory.
“We travelled out to Dakar
with Joanna Lumley, who is a
trustee of the charity,” he
says.
“We went into some of the
wards and actually saw the
moment when they were
taking the bandages off these
three-year-old children and
they could see their mothers
through their eyes. That was
the first time I had really seen
where the money was actually
going and it was very
touching.”
The explorer, now 70, is coy
on what the future may hold,
not giving anything away in
case there could be more
records to be broken, but one
thing that fans can look
forward to is the Living
Dangerously tour that comes
to town at the Royal Concert
Hall on Wednesday.
“Hopefully people will be
very inspired by it,” he says
enthusiastically. “There will
be lots of pictures of bloody
fingers falling off and things
like that. They will hear about
my experiences and if they
are as receptive as recent
audiences have been they will
have a great night.”
I Sir Ranulph Fiennes: Living
Dangerously, Royal Concert Hall,
Wednesday June 25, 7.30pm, £19 from
the box office. Call 0115 989 5555 or
trch.co.uk.
I Explorer: Sir Ranulph scales Everest
EG Theatre
Nottingham! Ready to Rod?
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Congrats to our girls tonight
@TTNtheMusical. Fierce.
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We loved every second of our
#beanbagmc experience
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@RoyalNottingham. Thanks for
having us :)
@bongobongoltd
Nottingham! Man what a
week! Thanks to all
@RoyalNottingham for a
fantastic time. Cracking
audiences and top city. m/
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Great panto launch
@RoyalNottingham today.
Sounds like it’s going to be
another epic show from
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see @NicklessBen too
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cosier, greener & more
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