Restuarant of the month. Sleek, urban and welsh. Charlies!
Prospect Place, The Marina, Swansea, SA1 1QP
Situated between Wind Street and Swansea’s Maritime Quarter, Charlie’s café bar and restaurant is an ideal place to start a night out or to enjoy a leisurely lunch. Its interior has a sleek urban look – think pale walls adorned with modern artwork; stripped wood floors and black furniture.
Chef Brian Petrie (known to everyone as Bru) has been at Charlie’s for two months. A chef for over 14 years, he has worked all over the UK in everything from fine dining establishments to gastropubs, most recently at Gilby’s, Culverhouse Cross and Le Gallois in Cardiff.
“I’ve worked with some great chefs,” he says. “A lot of my inspiration comes from a Swedish chef called Stefan Nielson who I worked with at Scallops in Cardiff Bay, where we received out first AA Rosette.
“I also learned a lot from Matt Powell in Le Gallois, who now has an acclaimed place in Southerndown.”
The menu at Charlie’s reflects Bru’s broad experience
“The cooking is French based, but also has a strong Welsh flavour,” he says. “All my suppliers are from Swansea market and my fish comes from Swansea Fish. We’ve got very good producers locally, which really helps when planning a menu. I’m also lucky in having a couple of fisherman friends who supply me directly. Come summer, all the fish we serve will be line caught and will come straight from the boat to the restaurant.”
Bru’s lunchtime menu offers two courses for a very competitive £8.95. Typical choices include moules mariniere to start; and main courses such as a gourmet hand-made beef burger topped with bacon and brie or three-egg omelette with salad and hand-cut chips.
An especially popular choice is the cockle, bacon and laverbread stack. “It’s cooked with leeks and cider, which gives it a slight twist,” says Bru. “People seem to like it.”
If you prefer a swift bite, lighter lunchtime options include a French-style croque madam and filled breads (maybe granary bloomer filled with roasted red peppers and home-made houmous).
In the evening, the menu focuses on modern classics such as a salmon fish cake topped with a truffle-infused poached egg followed by rack of lamb with red wine jus and pureed potato.
Everything on the menu is home-made, so be sure to leave room for desserts such as vanilla and lime cheesecake, Merlyn liqueur pannacotta or chocolate fondant.
Bargain hunters should take note that every Wednesday night you can enjoy three courses for just £15. The menu represents genuine value-for-money, with many of the dishes being featured on the full-price menu on other nights.
Charlie’s also functions as a swanky cocktail bar and coffee shop, and the upper floor is furnished with this in mind. The cavern-like lower floor has more of a fine-dining vibe, and is smartly decked out with stripped floors and chunky modern furniture. It also has a separate ‘snug’ which can be booked by private parties, and includes a large flat screen TV.
Still a relative newcomer, Charlie’s is hoping to become a regular port-of-call for food lovers. Duty manager Tanya Howells says that the feedback so far is very good.
“Customers always say they really enjoyed it and it’s such good value and quality,” she says.
Payment? You decide...
In May, Charlie's offered a deal where customers only paid what, if anything, they thought the meal was worth. Peter Slee went to find out if there was a catch.
The moment they greeted us, I was suspicious.
We had barely walked in and ordered our first drinks before the manager came over to welcome us in – and hand us a customer satisfaction survey form along with the menu.
“It’s because I’m here to review the place,” I sniped to my wife, a staunch believer of the old addage that nothing in this life is free.
But I soon had to eat my words after the couple seated next to us got exactly the same reception: along with the form on which we were all being asked to say just what we thought of each course and how much (if anything) we would be happy to pay for it.
We had booked our table at Charlie’s Cafe Bar in Swansea to test a potentially credit crunch-annihilating deal – free food if you are not happy with what is being served up.
Yes, you did read that correctly, free! I can’t be the only one to have dined out at some expense only to feel particularly underwhelmed at the experience and rather miffed when presented with the bill for the pleasure.
“It was nicely done, but I could have got the same steak from the supermarket and cooked it a lot better,” is a frequently heard comment when eating out. Or, “the starter was fantastic but my seabass with a lentil sauce did not warrant a £30 price tag.”
But so far, so good. The menu we are presented with looks good. The concept is simple: £15 for three courses is what is on offer on the exclusive Thursday-only evening deal. Side orders come in at an extra £2.50 each.
Where then does that all-important F-word (as in free) come into it? Well, in theory, if you don’t like what is served up and can justify your reasoning, you can leave with your wallet still tucked away.
The £15 menu holds such delights as local mussels cooked in garlic, grilled chicken nicoise or a salmon fishcake for starters.
Mains include pork loin wrapped in smokey bacon; an 8oz rib eye steak; pan-fried seabass or rack of lamb followed up smartly by choices such as chocolate fondant, lemon tart or a cheese board.
To sniff out any catches, I looked at the small print on the menu (there was none) and ordered. What was it like? Would there be a wealth of cost-skimping. Absolutely not.
It was good food, very well presented and prepared with some care, understanding and skill, using good-quality ingredients.
I could find no evidence of corner-cutting and indeed the cheese board was one of the best I have had for a long time.
Between each course, we noted our thoughts on individual pieces of paper for feedback to bosses as well as saying what we would be happy to pay for it.
Did we dare criticise? Well, no. But only because there was nothing to be critical about.
So why is this Prospect Place venue charting as yet unexplored territories and going down this road?
Undoubtedly, to get a few more bums on seats on quiet nights. But also, to allow punters to enjoy the experience of a night away from the stove at a good, local eaterie without having to take out a second mortgage to pay for it.
Manager Rachel Jones says the promotion is a bit of stab in the dark. “But we do want genuine feedback on whether we are pitching our prices correctly,” she adds. “
We thought the best way to do that would be to run a series of events to encourage people to come out and test the restaurant at the same time giving us their honest comments and opinions and pay what they think the meal is worth.”
Surely, though, that doesn’t mean it is actually free.
Well yes, it does, she says, “if they can justify to us what their argument against paying is.”
On the evidence of my trip there, I suspect there won’t be too much of that.
By our ready reckoning, our table would have been happy to pay just over £20 per head despite the fact that the menu price was £15.
Other guests were of the same opinion with all happily paying up for a bargain-night out. “Nobody paid less than the basic price,” I was told later.
What was a trial night at Charlie’s, went so well it is now to be extended to every Thursday evening for people who book specifically for it.
We’ll hopefully be back, and soon!
Nicks wine column
Nick John, owner of ND John Wine Merchants, talks about South African Wines
The pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow (Nation)
Ah...the noise, the buzz of the vuvuzela and the shimmer of the African sun. There’s nothing I like more than a good game of football…
Actually, I’m lying. The things I like more than football are myriad and as varied as life itself. I like cricket more than football for instance and I like wine more than football. I can drink it out of a real glass sitting down at home, safe in the knowledge that by the end of the second glass I’ll know more about the game than anybody else alive and will let them know it in no uncertain terms!
The list of things could, in reality, go on and on, but these two fine bastions of civilization are far from just being plucked from the innermost reaches of my mind They are, in fact, two of the best indicators of the rise and fall and then stupendous rise of South Africa as a nation and how it has gone from pariah state to a nation that seems to imply that nothing is impossible.
At this point I feel that I need to hold my hand up and say here and now that South African wine has never been a real favourite of mine. Perhaps it’s because I am unashamedly more of a European wine chap, who will enjoy the lighter side of drinking along with the lighter side of alcoholic volume. Perhaps it is down to my almost pathological loathing of Pinotage – I have been known to spasm when given a glass of this most eclectic of grapes – but perhaps it’s because I remember far too much of the old South Africa, with its reliance on and control by the KWV group and its glut of mass-produced wines that simply didn’t come up to the standards the rest of the world had come to expect.
The roots of the South African wine industry can be traced to the explorations of the Dutch East India Company, which established a supply station in what is now modern-day Cape Town. A Dutch surgeon was given the task of managing the station and planted vineyards for wines and grapes that could be used to ward off scurvy for sailors continuing on their voyages (a truly marvelous idea and very much in keeping with the modern thoughts on the health-giving properties of decent wine – a chap far ahead of his time, methinks).
However, in more modern times South Africa fell victim to the perfect storm of overproduction followed by state control via KWV, a system that meant that most grapes were turned into grape juice or fortified wines and there was a lack of market due to Apartheid. Funnily enough, this was mirrored in the country’s sporting fortunes as well, with the rebel cricket tours to South Africa revealing a wealth of talent hampered by little international exposure and, I’m quite sure, a quantity of decent wine cunningly placed to make sure those poor chaps didn’t get too thirsty…
By any stretch of the imagination the potential was there for South Africa to make a real impact on the world stage. When they finally threw off Apartheid and were warmly greeted back into the international community (who will ever forget that walk by Nelson Mandela through the gates of his prison to freedom and, remarkably, into presidential office?), people in South Africa expected their wines to be just as welcomed. However they were in for a shock as the world had moved on.
The wines were almost from a bygone age and were not taken up as they had hoped.
However, adaptability is ever the watchword of these remarkable folk and soon they were taking advice from all quarters of the globe, international winemakers were jetting in to offer advice and to take advantage of the fabulous growing conditions and, crucially, KWV was privatized, paving the way for smaller growers to make an impact – growers from areas like Stellenbosch for rich Cabernets, Klein Constancia for fragrant Sauvignon Blancs and the venerable Constantia itself, whose wine are among the most sought-after in the world.
Looking at it in this light, perhaps I ought to take a leaf out of their book and re-examine my prejudices. As long as I can avoid the football and those annoying vuvuzelas, I should be alright.
