Restaurant Review: The Smoke Haus

I thought I'd take a break from writing about my wedding and honeymoon as I felt like blogging about what I know best... food!

It's been a while since I wrote a restaurant review as we were too busy in the few months before the wedding to visit any new restaurants. We therefore made it our mission to visit a few new restaurants once we got back from honeymoon. After having a quick chat about what kind of food we fancied in our first new restaurant, our first choice was... The Smoke Haus.

I love a good burger and I was very excited about having a big American meal as I'd banned myself from eating such calorific extravagance before the wedding. I love the freedom of not needing to fit into a wedding dress any more! However, I should probably bear in mind that I still have actual clothes to fit in to before I go too overboard...

We turned up at The Smoke Haus at around 3:30pm and were seated straight away. It's a no-frills restaurant with very stark decor, but it still manages to look impressive and inviting. And it's MASSIVE. It actually looks like a posh warehouse inside, but it really works!

Although I was adamant from the beginning that I wanted a big fat burger, I still drooled over the other sections of the menu for ten minutes. Meat, cheese and carbs galore! I eventually decided on a Baby Bertha as it was the smallest burger on the menu and I didn't want to overstretch myself too much. Yes, I can show some restraint sometimes when it comes to food, believe it or not.

However, I did have a sneaky suspicion that it might be messy... the kitchen roll on the table was my first clue. How many times have you been in a restaurant and worn a hole in your serviette because your food is inexplicably messy and they've only given you one measly napkin? The kitchen roll is a fantastic idea!

Our food didn't arrive for half an hour or so, but in fairness the restaurant was pretty busy. In the meantime, we listened to some excellent tunes such as Ash, Foo Fighters and Bon Jovi. The Smoke Haus has an iPhone app where you can choose the music on the jukebox yourself and broadcast it to the entire restaurant! I absolutely love this interactive touch and think it's something more restaurants should adopt. Unfortunately, neither of us has an iPhone so we happily listened to other people's music choices which were very satisfactory. 

When my burger arrived, I immediately knew why the kitchen roll was an absolute necessity... 

More civilized people might have cut up their burger with a knife and fork from the very beginning, but I'm not really one of those people. My eagerness to eat my burger 'properly' resulted in needing to use approximately 11 pieces of kitchen roll. Although I wasn't a big fan of the bacon in my burger, everything else was amazing. I was unsure about the cheesy sauce when I ordered this burger but it was quite mild yet tasty which suits me perfectly. The burger itself wasn't the best I've ever had, but it's certainly in my top twenty (I've eaten a lot of burgers in my time). Even the coleslaw on the side was delicious, and the chips were lovely and moreish as I would expect from any American-themed restaurant. 

We weren't content with just one visit to The Smoke Haus within a month, so we visited again a few weeks ago. This time, I decided to go for the chilli dog. Ta-dah!

Another massive meal... the chilli was very spicy so I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as I enjoyed my burger, but it was still excellent and a LOT of food. 

Would I recommend The Smoke Haus to others? Most definitely, especially if you love big fat burgers as much as I do. It's very reasonable considering the sheer amount of food you get and I really love the relaxed atmosphere. The staff members are all chatty and efficient, and it's a very family friendly restaurant. They also have a bar with lots of choice and an extensive dessert selection, although I've never drunk alcohol or eaten dessert there. I'm always too full... can you blame me after seeing these photos?

The restaurants stationed in this particular Cardiff city centre location always seem to fail and covertly go into administration... we're keeping our fingers crossed that this won't happen to The Smoke Haus!

Have you been to The Smoke Haus yet? How many pieces of kitchen roll did you get through? 

Cricieth... the food edition!

Yes that's right, I'm still raving about my weekend in Cricieth! You won't be surprised to hear that we ate a lot of food so I thought I should dedicate a whole blog post to the various snacks and meals we had during the holiday.

I should probably start with confessing how many times we went to Cadwaladers during our holiday... we went for an ice cream on the Friday evening after we arrived, went for another ice cream on the Saturday afternoon and went again for lunch and dessert on the Sunday afternoon. Obviously I just can't resist their amazing ice cream! The Cadwaladers restaurant in Cricieth is lovely and has a beautiful view of the seaside at the back of the restaurant. We were lucky enough to find a table overlooking the sea on all three occasions!

First ice cream - sticky toffee pudding and caramel pecan

Second ice cream - strawberry and honeycomb

Neil's lunch... chilli con carne in a bread bowl! I had food envy as my 

barbecue chicken panin didn't look this good. 

Food envy disappeared when my amazing dessert
turned up... strawberry meringue tower. A tidy Eton Mess!

Don't panic, we did eat in other places apart from Cadwaladers. On our first evening, after having our ice cream, we went to the Prince of Wales pub for some food and a few drinks as we'd read lots of positive reviews on Trip Advisor and we didn't fancy eating in an upmarket restaurant on our first night. I ordered the chilli con carne with half rice and half chips, expecting something similar to the chilli I've experienced in Wetherspoons... nice, but nothing spectacular. However, independent pubs in North Wales obviously put a lot more effort into their food and presentation! The chilli was lovely and clearly wasn't a microwaveable meal, the chips were chunky and tasty, and even the 'wild rice' was extra nice! 

We had breakfast every day in our little guesthouse... I'll be writing a separate blog post about Bron Rhiw but here's a preview of the breakfast I decided to have on our first morning!

We went to an Indian restaurant called the Spice Bank on the Saturday evening. We originally wanted to go to the Poachers restaurant on the High Street but they were fully booked, and Indian is always a good alternative. I went for the keema byriani as I've never tried it before and wanted to try something different as we were in a new place. It was served with half a boiled egg which I've never experienced with a byriani before... the whole thing was delicious! We had the usual poppadoms and chutneys which weren't too impressive and probably came out of a jar (the chutneys, not the poppadoms!, but my main meal more than made up for that. 

I've already blogged about our visit to Caffi Cwrt so I won't expand on that here, but here's a picture that pretty much sums up how amazing it was! 

No trip to the seaside is complete without fish and chips so, on our last evening in Cricieth, we visited the local fish and chip shop and ate our dinner on the sea front surrounded by fellow tourists, pet dogs and seagulls. Thankfully the seagulls aren't as aggressive in Cricieth as they are in Cardiff... they left us well alone. I'm not a big fan of fish so I had a battered sausage and chips instead. I haven't had a battered sausage in years! It was a lovely simple meal and a great way to finish off the weekend. 

Are you concerned about my eating habits yet? Don't worry, I do go to the gym a lot,  honestly! 

Have you eaten in any of the restaurants featured above? Let me know! 

Diet advice, please!

Ahh the confusing world of diets and dieting... I'm very strict about what I eat during the week and used to think I ate a healthy and substantial diet, but now I'm not so sure. I'd like some advice, please!

I go to the gym nearly every night after work and burn an average of 450 calories each time. I often feel quite weak and wobbly after a tough session, and I've had to buy some emergency jelly beans from the sweet machine on a few occasions before driving home. I also recently fainted during a Stereophonics gig because I suspect I hadn't eaten enough before going. Not my finest hour, but at least it was at the end of the gig and not at the beginning. If I had to choose somewhere to faint for the first time, I definitely wouldn't have chosen a packed arena containing one of my favourite bands of all time!

I absolutely love food (as you'll already know if you're a regular reader) and I'm much less strict on weekends, but I do try really hard to be good during the week in terms of diet and exercise. I want to lose more weight before my wedding next August, but I think my weight loss goal might be unrealistic as I haven't lost a substantial amount of weight for a while according to the scales, yet I've gone down a clothes size in the last few months. I think I must have reached the stage where I can't actually lose much more weight so it's all about toning up. For someone who weighs themselves every day and judges themselves based on their weight, this is hard to accept! I am a healthy weight for my height, but I don't think anyone ever really wants to believe those figures.

I find it so difficult to know what a healthy and nutrituous diet should contain... the media is always publishing conflicting stories about good and bad foods, carbohydrates always have mixed reviews and everyone has a different opinion on what makes a healthy diet. I'm not even sure if I'm eating enough during the week, especially as I go to the gym so often and burn 400 to 500 calories every time. I'd hate to find out that I'm actually hindering any weight loss because I'm not eating enough, not eating the right things or starving my body of the energy it needs.

To sum up, I'm getting fed up of struggling through the confusing world of healthy diets so I thought I'd ask for advice from the blogging community!


This is my diet on a typical week day:

Breakfast - 2 Weetabix biscuits with semi skimmed milk

Lunch - Beans on toast (half a can of Tesco Light Choices beans and two slices of Hovis Nimble bread, 51 calories per slice)

Dinner - Either poached eggs on toast (Nimble bread again) or a bowl of pasta and pesto, veggie stir fry, veggie curry or chilli con carne. I'm not a vegetarian, I just don't like spending money on meat!

Snacks - Apple (12:30pm), banana (4:30pm), Weightwatchers yoghurt (after lunch), two breakfast biscuits (one before lunch, one after lunch), Options hot chocolate with three marshmallows (evening), a handful or two of sultanas (evening), multivitamin with iron (evening).

Yes, I really am that strict with the timings and quantities.


I know this diet isn't particularly varied but I think it's pretty healthy on the whole. It's also important to note that my food budget is very small due to all my other monthly expenses, and I'm also way too busy to cook meals which require a lot of effort every night. I usually cook a huge meal once or twice a week then divide it into 4 or 5 portions for the rest of the week.

The big questions are... am I actually eating enough and am I getting enough nutrients from the food above? Is there inadvertently too much sugar in  my diet? Am I eating enough from all the vital food groups? Am I just thinking about this too much? Should I put my weighing scales in the bin? I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts!

Restaurant review: Ed's Easy Diner

Ed's Easy Diner has been on our list of places to eat for months, and we finally ventured there last weekend. For those of you who aren't familiar with Ed's Easy Diner, the Cardiff branch is situated in the St David's 2 food court. We went at around 4pm so it was pretty quiet and we were seated straight away. I was practically drooling as I read the menu... I wanted to try everything! I was torn between having a hot dog or a burger, but I finally settled on a Chilli Cheese Burger Combo Plate. This consisted of a chilli cheese burger (obviously), chips, onion rings and coleslaw for £10.45. I've heard amazing things about the milkshakes at Ed's Easy Diner so I was tempted to have one of those too, but I decided not to succumb to the temptation of adding even more calories to my already hefty meal.

YUM.

The food arrived quickly and I really can't fault any of it. The onion rings were just the right level of crispy, the chips were the best I've tasted for a very long time, the burger was cooked perfectly, the chilli was goooood and even the bun was toasted to perfection. I couldn't really taste the cheese on the burger but I'm not a huge fan of cheese so that was fine by me. I'm a massive ketchup fiend so I liked the fact that they put a little pot of it on my plate. Simple things! 

The atmosphere in Ed's Easy Diner is very informal and the staff were all very friendly and helpful. I like the American diner interior, and also like the fact that the kitchen is in plain view. Very authentic!

I would most definitely visit Ed's Easy Diner again and would highly recommend it to others. Our whole meal cost approximately £26 for two combo plates and two diet Cokes which makes Ed's Easy Diner one of the cheaper places in the St David's 2 food court. Just one tip... it always looks very busy in there between 6pm and 8pm, especially over the weekend, so you're probably better off visiting just before the dinner rush like we did. 

Has anyone else been to Ed's Easy Diner lately? What did you think?

Chilli bean con carne

I've been trying to widen my cooking horizons, so tonight I cooked chilli con carne properly for the first time. I used a recipe from this amazing book I had from my Secret Santa at work... my love of baked beans is a bit of a running joke in the office.

Here are the ingredients I used:

500g minced beef

70g chorizo (my own addition!)

One tin of baked beans

One tin of chopped tomatoes

1 onion

1 pepper (again, the recipe didn't include this but I have an insatiable love for peppers)

2 cloves of garlic

2 tablespoons of tomato puree

1 teaspoon of chilli powder

2 teaspoons of dried mixed herbs

Lots of Fry Lite!

The recipe also tells you to use 2 red chillies, but I didn't this time as I haven't used chillies before and didn't want to accidentally make the food too spicy. I don't mind a bit of spice, but I do like to be able to taste my food rather than it burning all my taste buds off. 

It was very simple to make, which is always helpful. I cooked the mince first, then added the chorizo, onions, peppers and garlic. After heating those for about 5 minutes, I added the tomato puree, herbs and chilli powder, then added the beans and tomatoes last of all. 

Using baked beans instead of kidney beans was definitely a good variation, and I think it actually improves the taste of the sauce. And chorizo makes everything taste better, obviously.

What shall I cook next?