The oldies amongst you may (possibly through gritted teeth) remember the song from Max Bygraves about tulips from Amsterdam (younguns will have no idea, which is probably for the best) and “I wanna to tell you a story” about a first stop off in terms of using the 2024 iteration of the Cardiff Wine Passport in the form of Daffodil in Cardiff’s city centre.

Long ago, back prior to the Permian extinction, when I started working in the legal profession (not quite the quill and ink era, but when we had typewriters, carbon copies, faxes, telex and MS -DOS, with no such thing as emails) Windsor Place was the place to go for post work drinks. Since then, the centre of things in Cardiff has shifted west and has left the eastern end of Queen Street a bit unloved and rundown. Perhaps the dock feeder/ Canal Quarter development (had a look and must admit I was, based on how much it cost, expecting it to be a bit bigger) will kick-start that side of town (positive signs with the likes of Hench Burgers  -top tier – and the Dock Feeder pub  -no idea – now in situ). As an aside, what is it with the obsession with quarters in Cardiff? I must admit I am eagerly awaiting details of where will be named the “Two Bit“ Quarter.

Back on message, Bar Essential was the name of the bar we used to frequent on Windsor Place back in the pre – Permian days and it is now called Daffodil. It seemed the obvious place to start off using our Cardiff Wine Passport (with three of us thinking we could get the train to Queen Street and work our way back to Central Station).

I arrived drenched from a downpour, with a jolly japster asking me “Is it raining?” (oh how I chortled in admiration at his sparkling, rapier, wit), to find J & A (in possession of my wine passport) nowhere to be seen.

I killed the time waiting for them to arrive with a half of Wye Valley still clapping in admiration, with the whole pub,

at the Oscar Wilde would be proud “Is it raining?” zinger.

Once they did arrive, we passed on the al a carte (being a bit much for lunch when we intended to get nibbles in other establishments whilst using the passport on the day)

and thus defaulted to the brunch (no such thing really)/lunch menu.

I love a good hash, which when done well is a glorious mish mash.

Here it was a decent portion size (not doing themselves any favours here by putting it on a huge plate) for the £10.95 price tag,

with a reasonably runny egg (could have done with a lacey edge- con puntilla – and the yolk being a touch more golden and runny) and a good proportion of well favoured (but not oversalted) shredded ham hock and crisp potatoes. Sweet caramelised onions added nicely to the mix.

The brown sauce (much better than the overly sweet tomato filth) was advertised as being their own and if so they have done a remarkable job of exactly replicating the taste of HP sauce (which I like in any event). Whether it was home made (doubt it) or HP, it worked very well with the hash.

I shared my hash with J, in return for her sharing her mushroom Welsh rarebit toastie (£8.95 +£1 for the added fried egg) with me.

You get a choice of bread with the sarnies here, with it being white or brown sourdough (surprise, surprise – I don’t mind it, but does it have to be so bloody ubiquitous) or a brown seeded number. I requested (as sharing) white (as I consider brown bread to be the root of all culinary evil – tell me how often do you see brown bread in countries regarded as the most healthy and with the greatest longevity e.g Mediterranean ones or Japan?).

Nicely cooked (and not just white field ones) mushrooms, with good caramelisation, here brought a pleasing meatiness to this meatless sarnie and the rarebit topping had a nice mustardy tang to it. In hindsight, we probably didn’t need the added on egg.

The only thing amiss here were the unadvertised vegetable crisps,

which were verging on stale.

A went for the croque madame (£10.95),

which had the same, nicely tangy, rarebit topping and good quality ham (said Carmarthen, but didn’t look like the air dried stuff I know as Carmenthen ham to be honest), Teifi smoked cheese and bechamel interior.

I didn’t try it, but A said it was very nice.

We shared a side of “triple cooked” chips (£4.45 – odd price that!).

Unlike a lot of pub chips, with the “triple cooked” monicker,  these had a properly crisp, gnarly, exterior and fluffy interior and just the right (i.e. a lot) amount of salt on them. On the bill, these came as a SWAP (at £3) so presumably A’s croque madame would have otherwise come with the veggie crisps (we made a good call swapping them out, if so).

Of course, with the Cardiff Wine Passport in hand, we had a glass of wine with our food.

J & A went for the red,

which was perfectly pleasant if a touch non descript.

I think I would have struggled blind to place this as a cab sauv to be honest (I am crap at blind tasting mind), with it lacking pretty much all of the distinctive markers of a old world wine from that grape (black cherry, blackcurrant, cedar, graphite and baking spice) to my nose and palate.

I went for the white, an Aussie chardonnay,

which I rather enjoyed.

Nice aromas and taste of peach and nectarine and a touch of creaminess on the palate. Good level of refreshing acidity and a well judged amount of oak influence. All in all this made for a pleasantly quaffable wine.

The verdict

We enjoyed our lunch here, with plenty more of interest on the menu. With the Dock Feeder/Canal Quarter (hopefully) driving rejuvenation of this side of town, this is certainly somewhere to consider. It may be a little outside of the epicentre of the Wine Passport and things generally, but I think it was well worth the detour.

We made further dents in our passports at Parallel (still don’t really get the hype, if am honest, as I view it as being nice enough but nothing special – give me Uisce any day of the week) and Bacerto.

We interspering those two venues with a rather nice (not a passport wine) bottle of rioja

in Curado.

The details

Address: 33 Windsor Place, Cardiff, CF10 3BZ

Website: https://daffodilcardiff.co.uk