My order for breakfast at the Lamb was either sausages with white bread or bacon with white bread, which was the nearest I felt I could go to asking for sausage or bacon sandwiches. There was no bread available on the buffet, as there often is in larger hotels. Which order resulted in either two sausages and two slices of factory white on a square plate or several rashers and two slices of factory white, cut diagonally with the whole arranged on a rectangular plate. Sausages and bacon good, bread bad. But it was still better, and better for me, than a full English which was the alternative actually offered by the menu. One can only speculate about how long one would have to stay before the chef thought to ask whether what sir would really like was a sandwich.
My order for soup was tomato, which turned out to be a brown soup which tasted more of Branston pickle than tomato. Not unpleasant, but pickle rather than tomato. This was followed by sausage and mash, which turned out to be three not very big sausages (the same, probably, as those supplied for breakfast) arranged on a white heap which mainly consisted of mashed potato and which was raised in a lake of red-brown gravy. The whole served in a large soup plate. Not bad, but next time I shall ask for the gravy to be served in a jug on the side and put in a plea for a green vegetable.
Next stop taBouche for lunch, an eatery on the banks of the Ouse, an eatery which fancies itself, but which on this particular occasion was serving a scattering of pensioners like ourselves. The soup here was described as curried parsnip, which did not sound like my sort of thing. But I did want soup, so I gave it a go. Pale yellow, rather creamy (or at least milky), but quite good for what I call a ladies' soup. The sort of thing that might be featured in a weekend newspaper supplement. This was followed by a beef sandwich which was not very good at all. Served with a miniature bucket of crisps which I did not want. A miniature salad which I have got used to. Adequate bread, thickly sliced, under cooked beef, lashings of very powerful horseradish sauce. As a result of which I decided that I much preferred my beef sandwiches to involve beef which has been cooked for longer, to be brown rather than red in colour and to be sliced for thinner. And that horseradish sauce, like gravy, should be served on the side. This particular stuff seemed innocuous enough when you took it down, but then hit you with a blast of what I took (having made horseradish sauce myself, many years ago now) to be ammonia and which did unpleasant things to the very tip of one's nose. Luckily, whatever it was was quickly damped down by a mouthful of water. BH perfectly happy with her meal, I think chicken caesar salad.
Did much better at Prezzo, where we discovered large, thin and oblong pizzas, which were served on a plank of wood and which were rather good, in part because they were not fat and round. They made a change. Small round pizza for starter, but flying under some other name. A not very good tiramisu for ender, it having a dampness which I did not care for. I like my tiramisu to be on the dry side. All washed down with a couple of bottles of a nice Gavi, very reasonably priced and not very dry at all, at least not to my palette.
As well as a surprisingly good selection of eateries, Ely also offers Edis the pork butcher, a chap who, inter alia, makes his own pork pies. If you want one for your Christmas lunch he can do you a special, about a foot wide and three inches high and costing around £50. We settled for a small one for me and a very small one for BH. Good, but a touch peppery. We also took some sausages and a cooked hock to take home, both very good. The shop from which I bought a cooked ear on our last visit - on which occasion I see I made a point of saying how I much liked the lack of pepper in the pies. Has my mouth changed or their pepper supplier? See reference 2.
Service in all these places was very good, mainly young, female and foreign, with a sprinkling of older locals.
PS: note the mouth with a sandwich illustrated in the illustration above, taken from the taBouche web site - and then take a peek at reference 1 where I complain about big eating in public. I associate this morning to the Fat Face stores.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/trios.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/in-praise-of-edis-of-ely.html.
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