Ricci’s Place, Halifax

We like Ricci’s Place. It has a good atmosphere, great music and the food is usually very good.

It was Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen and we agreed to have a meal after work to celebrate the Welsh patron saint of friendship and love.

The evening didn’t start well with some confusion over our booking but we were given a table and I considered my options. I went for the tempura of hake with hand-cut chunky chips, tartare sauce, watercress and lemon. Not cheap at £13.25 but it was a special day so I was allowed to treat myself.

I had an inkling of what would happen next but I was still disappointed when it did. My meal arrived on a small cheese board with a piece of greaseproof paper holding the fish, watercress ,tartare sauce with the chips were ‘on-the-side’ in a little metal bucket with more greaseproof paper. I am a fan of cheeseboards used correctly and I’m sure I can find a good use for small metal buckets and the bucket did bring to mind summers making sandcastles on Treaddur Bay beach, but it didn’t work as a fried chip receptacle.  As the cheeseboard was very small, and would have been a genuine challenge to eat from, I asked for my meal to be plated, which was fine, but for the fact that it came back with everything apart from the greaseproof paper on the plate which meant that I had to put my little shiny silver bucket to the side and added small portions of chips to my plate as I went along.

The fish wasn’t great – the hake lacked flavour and although the shape and texture was perfectly fine it just didn’t excite the palate. The worst element was that one of the cardinal sins of fish and chippery had been committed, which was the skin on/off rule had been broken and some of the fish skin with batter on had to be left as it just didn’t taste very nice.

The tempura batter didn’t work at all. The idea of the batter is to be light in texture, taste and appearance and this was none of the above as it seemed to have been cooked for too long and was actually darker than a traditional fish batter and had taken on quite a lot of the frying fat which made it unpleasant after a few mouthfuls.

The chips were OK. They, like the batter, had been cooked a little too long and tasted too much of the fat but had some good potato flavour. They were however inconsistent with some being perfectly cooked and others overcooked. They had been advertised as hand-cut chunky chips but the size was absolutely fine and not really chunky at all. I’ve had much, much chunkier chips.

The lemon had been cut so that it sat proudly on the cheeseboard/plate and was a good size. The tartare sauce was delightful with chunky vinegary gherkins cutting through the other flavours. The watercress was perfectly pleasant but didn’t bring anything to the meal.

We will be back to Ricci’s but I’ll go for a Mediterranean classic next time.

Holdsworth House Hotel, Halifax

It was always going to be a good day when the amount of time, on public transport, to get from Hebden Bridge to Illingworth was 40 minutes and it included interaction with the charming staff of the T.J. Walsh bus company. I simply said where we were going to, paid my £1.40, and the driver stopped at where we needed to get off and pointed us in the right direction and during the journey he had quietly engaged with every person who got on the bus.

The Holdsworth House Hotel had been on the radar for a very long time and the January food and wine discount deal was the ideal catalyst to get us to book.

We did walk into a wedding when we arrived but eventually took our table in one of the grand rooms of this 17th century Jacobean manor.

The meal was advertised as Little Valley beer battered deep fried line caught haddock and was simply stunning. The fish was incredibly fresh and flavoursome and held together beautifully. The Little Valley beer and brilliant cooking were brought together to deliver a wonderful light, crisp and consistent batter which had to be separated from the fish to truly appreciate its excellent flavour.

The chips were wedges once again but I’ll have to let it pass this time as they were beautifully crisp, light chips with a fantastic taste.

Wow! The mushy peas were the stars of the meal. They had an intense pea flavour with great depth and a perfectly balanced texture of truly mushy but some still fully formed peas now and again and was a tribute to the glory of the mushy pea accompaniment.

No lemon – that was a surprise. The tartare was too creamy for my tastes and didn’t have the kick it should have had until right at the end. I had expected to be amazed as the rest of the meal was so good but it was the only part that could do with re-assessing.

The venue, the attention to detail in the dining experience and the £11.95 price tag is effectively posh fish and chips. But this meal had no pretentions as it was simply a beautifully crafted meal in charming surroundings with efficient, understated staff. The meal was washed down with a lovely South African white which was the perfect accompaniment.

One of the best fish and chips meals I’ve ever had and I don’t think it’ll be too long before we return.