During the baking hot summer, if I am honest, eating out (other than al fresco or for light meals) was not front and centre of my mind and full blown meals out certainly took a back seat to the need to keep cool. Hydration as oppposed to mastication.

As such, I didn’t eat out much in my usually haunts and that included Asador 44, a place to which I have not been for far, far too long.

In the rush to go to the next “viral” thing  (why is everything viral these days, I mean it is like “Guys, I did the latest doggy thing this morning. It is called “going for walkies”. I know freaky or what, but honestly it was insanely good. Why has no one thought of putting dogs and going for walks together before? I bet it goes viral before you know it and the parks will be full of  people following my lead!”) we tend to forget (well not me actually, as I wouldn’t know something viral if it was directly injected into a vein) the old stagers and it is nice to remind ourselves why they are old stagers in the first place.

I am (well it is me) also going to get on my winebox and have a bit of a whine about wine.

J and Mrs. SF going to the New Theatre to see Operation Mincemeat (very good apparently) at the New Theatre, afforded the opportunity to met up with them post the show for dinner and Asador 44 was the venue chosen by J (she had been to Pasture the night before and said she favours Asador over the two – quite how she isn’t Manatee shaped based on how much she eats out is quite beyond me).

Food wise Asador 44 is one of those places in Cardiff that I would (if asked) always flag as somewhere you can reliably get a very good meal and it is far more than a steak restaurant (albeit they do very good ones).

The main menu is a good read and the special board/chef’s window always entices.

I was rather taken by the piglet loin,

but according to Mrs. SF and J they are just too cute. Give them a milk fed lamb and they are “Pass me the mint sauce“, but little piggies are apparently off limits! Never understand that as is a lamb not as cute as a piglet (I blame Babe, with Shaun the sheep not having the same “aaaaawh” factor as it doesn’t speak)? Anyhow, as a result I was denied that particular piglet pleasure/Babefest.

Back to the main menu, it is my firm view  (also of Italians and the Spanish, who know best food wise) that a restaurant meal is not complete without bread and at Asador 44 it is pretty much mandatory, with their flavoured butter and in house olive oil (£4.50) taking it to the next level 

Here the previous sobrasada (bit like hot honey with it, and the Italian iteration in the form of  njuda, on/in bloody everything at one point) version (on my last visit) had been replaced by morcilla (Spanish blood sausage basically, with me favouring the Burgos variety). I liked this, as it gave the butter an earthy and quite meaty flavour. 

Whilst I still mourn the passing of Asador  44’s jamon butter (was it a cost thing, as can’t think of any other reason for ditching what was the king of flavoured butters in my view), I definitely prefer this morcilla one to its sobrasada predecessor.  J did rather temper that joy by repeatedly mispronunciation it as  “more – CHILL – er” rather than the correct “mor – THEE – yah“). Knows how to wind me up that one!

The (assumed to be Rama 44) olive oil was as good as ever with lovely grassy and peppery notes, as well as a pleasing fruitness. Good quality oil and bread is a simple, age old, pleasure that should never go out of fashion.

For starters, I had set my sights on the sardines on the specials board, having fond memories of espetos at a chiringuito in Rincon de La Victoria (with friends from their) from a trip to Malaga back in June.

Alas as I asked for them they were crossed off the specials board.

As a result, I defaulted to my second choice in the form of a surf and turf number (£14.50 😬) comprising monkfish cheek, ossobuco and ajillo (yes I know I flagged S&T in another post as being a bit odd, but this seem a more rationale scallop and black pudding kind of combo rather than a bit of king crab and filet mignon “willy waving“).

I am a big fan of fish cheeks (like chicken oysters, the best bit if ask me) and also of ossobuco. With the latter traditionally very rich, however, I was curious as to how the monkfish would hold out against it.

Nice looking dish this, with the cheek having been kissed by the flames of Asador 44’s “big Bertha” grill and the osso buco (interesting Italian interloper) off the bone (assume rabo de toro was deemed a touch too heavy for the fish) and surrounded by a moat of the ajillo (which also adorned the monkfish)

I really enjoyed the deep rich savouriness of the osso buco, but did feel it rather overpowered the monkfish.  The ajillo worked well with the beef, but again seemed to slightly overawe the more delicate flavour of the monkfish. Nice, but I was not entirely convinced that the monkfish added a great deal with its mild sweet flavours somewhat drowned out.

Mrs. SF is a sucker for any picked crab dish (she wouldn’t go for crab if in the shell, whereas I am happy to crack and pick away at one with the meat ending up in my beard, hair, what’s left of it, ears etc. and even some in my gob) and thus was immediately attracted to the crab and salmorejo (a Cordaban rift on a gazpacho – I actually prefer it to gazpacho, with it being thicker and creamier) dish (£12).

Again very nice looking dish this,

with lovely fresh flavours to match. The heritage tomatoes added a pleasing sweetness to the proceedings that amp up the innate sweet brininess of the crab. A kick of garlic from the salmorejo added nicely to the mix.

On to the main, with Piglet (Pooh pooh’ed by the Eeyores, Mrs. SF and J) off the menu for me I suggested to Mrs. SF that we could share the lamb dish (£51). To my surprise (she normally hates sharing food with me, as she accuses me of being greedy, with some justification) she happily acquiesced. Had she arranged for it to be laced with a poison that she had carefully developed an immunity to I wondered, double checking for mushrooms, as I ate twice as much of it as she did?

Nice dish this, with the lamb falling away from the bone with the merest tease of a fork and having quite a herbal flavour.

It came with a glossy fully flavoured lamb sauce and a punchy salsa verde that did a good job of  mimicking a mint sauce without the sweetness. Really enjoyed this, but think (with it being £51) perhaps a side (more on sides in a mo) could have been thrown in.

J went for the rump steak (£28), which was cooked rare as requested.

Nice crust on this and she added a peppercorn sauce (slagging me off in the process as she blames me, for some reason, for them taking the blue cheese sauce off the menu). A Roscoff onion and onion ketchup went well with the meat, but again (and maybe it is just me being tight) some fries as part of the deal doesn’t seem unreasonable at the asking price.

Despite (or perhaps because of) my moaning re the lack of carbs included in the price of the mains, I do really like the Asador 44 fries.

You gets a pretty decent portion for the £5 price tag and they are always properly crispy and have a proper amount (i e. a lot) of salt on them. We order 2 between the 3 of us.

Other sides ordered were the heritage tomatoes salad (£7.50)

and the leek and galmesan (Spain’s answer to parmesan) dish (£8)

Really enjoyed both of these side dishes.

The intense savouriness of the dried olive crumb work very well as an extra seasoning (on top of salt and pepper) as against the refreshing sweetness of the heritage tomatoes.

The leek gratin had a beautifully toasted smokey chorizo infused crumb topping a velvety bechamel and soft yielding leeks with just a touch of alium kick to them. The Galmesan added a pleasing buttery nuttiness to the dish, making it all very moreish.

A final side (probably not needed to himsight was a broccoli number.

I particularly enjoyed the romesco sauce it sat on, which has a pleasing smoky sweetness.

We passed on desserts, as we were pretty full at this point.

On the booze front, if I am honest I am starting to struggle a bit with a lot of restaurant wines list (with the norm seemingly to be for most stuff to be North of £30 even for house wines) and regrettably the Asador 44 list is no exception.

Don’t get me wrong it is a good list with lots of interesting stuff on it that I really like. For instance, I like their Uva 44 red and whites, which are good reliable wines. At £38 they are, however, far from cheap “house” wines.

Moving up the gears just a bit in terms of the list, the 12 Volts (a very pleasant Mallorcian wine, that I am quite partial to)  is £68 and (if you look hard enough) can be found for £20 on the t’internet. Even further up the price ladder, the 2017 Remelluri Reserva (tinto) is without doubt  a very nice wine (I highly rate the bodega),  but at £110 on the list (versus a retail price, if again you look hard enough, of under £30) it is well beyond my meagre means.

If I am honest I increasingly feel like I am being priced out of the wine market in UK restaurants and that is discounting the high end stuff (which I gave up on buying in restaurants outside of Spain long ago).

As a result, I opted to bring my own wines for which there is a not inconsiderable £30 a bottle corkage charge. Pasture’s corkage fee is somewhat more palatable at £20, Blacklocks’ is even more so at a mere tenner (but I really have  no idea how they make that work financially to be honest and it is in London), with Stefanos in Pontcanna probably the best bargain (corkage wise) in Cardiff at £10.

Many people will likely be somewhat incredulous at the thought of paying £30 to bring you own bottle, but perversely it make perfect economic sense if you bring the right bottle/with the prices on a lot of lists in restaurants these days.

In fairness, for the £30 corkage price, it only really makes sense to bring something pretty decent (good food deserves good wine and versa versa) and luckily I have a rather bountiful stock of old riojas that I should probably start drinking sooner rather than later (before we all get “it’s for you own good and you will make a fine battery pack’d” by our soon to be AI overlords).

I thus dug out a bottle of a rather good wine I bought a few of a while back on release (2007/8) at about £30 a pop (a long sunk cost and thus it felt like the corkage was the only cost) in the form of a CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva 2001 (an excellent vintage in Rioja).

Not cheap at the time, but seems decent value now based on current prices which hovers at around the £135 a bottle (duty paid) mark.

Despite the supposed all conquering power of AI, I wasn’t able to find a 2001 of this wine on any restaurant lists (I will wait for one of the more IT literate members of the Cardiff Wine Buyers Club to prove me wrong and for an AI to freeze my bank accounts as a punishment for my carbon based condescension), but it did manage to find the wine in question in   the 1994 vintage (more expensive retail at about £185 – duty paid) 

on list at £330 😱 .

I reckon (based on the 1994 being more retail) that the 2001 would be maybe £200/£250 (if only AI was less useless I could be more definitive –  50 social credits deducted puny human – but that does give me hope that it may not succeed in killing us all) on most lists.

On the basis of that list price assumption, not a bad notional saving (corkage + the retail price I paid totalled £65) of between £135 and  £185.

Before we got to the red, we had a 2022 white rioja from the Jesus Madrazo stable.

I have a lot of time for Jesus’ wines (have met him a couple of time back in his Contino days and will hopefully do so again in November to taste his latest wines) and this white (about £35 retail) is a rather lovely wine with notes of  delicate floral, rich citrus and  stone fruit on the nose, with lots of refreshing acidity on the palate.

Enough oomph to cope with the osso boco, but still delicate enough not to be too much for the crab starter. Think this wine will age very well, so may need to stock up.

The Imperial was an absolute bobby-dazzler of a wine

which belied its quarter of a century age. It was drinking absolutely à point, I would say and an improvement from when I last drunk one in 2018.

Loads of red cherry and strawberry fruit, vanilla, coconut and cedar (a touch of cigar box) and that lovely baked orange that you get from aged riojas. Oak was present, but had a nice subtly to it.

This wine was superb with the lamb, for which it was an exquisite pairing (quality rioja and lamb are an age old pairing for very good reason).

The verdict

The food here is as good as ever, with everything we had full on on the flavour front. Perfect sort of food as the night start to draw in. For the food alone, this remains a must visit venue in Cardiff.

It is not a cheap night out, if eating off the al a carte menu, with the bill  £80+ a head and only us bringing our own wine likely keeping it below the £100 per head mark. I do think for the quality of the food it is generally worth it.

As mentioned above, I am starting to really struggle with the level of restaurant wine prices generally. Regrettably, I think they are increasingly becoming disconnected to that which a lot of punters are willing/can actually afford to pay.

This, in turn, increasingly limits access to decent (rather than boring, by the numbers, identikit slop) wines (when eating out) to the chosen few. 

Asador 44’s list is one of the better ones out there quality wise, but cheap it aint. I love a lot of the higher end wines on their list, but rarely feel inclined to buy them due to budgetary constraints.

Personally, I don’t think good wine being  the preserve of the minted is a very good marketing strategy for the industry as a whole and I do wonder if there could just possibly be a link between this and the level of wine consumption in hospitality seeming to be in freefall?🤔.

I know restaurants need to make a profit and there are certainly lots of ever increasing cost, taxes etc. to take account of and perhap I am naive in this view, but if you price decent wine such that few/no people buy it then you have all the costs, but not much/no revenue from it.

Speaking generally, rather than on a specific basis, one of the Cardiff Wine Buyers Club chaps said to me recently:

“The choice between a glass of wine of dubious quality for £9 vs a pint of beer of known quality for £5 does often tip the scales“.

Now this is from a person was loves all things wine and I think there is a real risk of lists just devolving into offering identikit rubbish that no one really likes, as no one can afford the decent stuff any longer.  People will drink such stuff, under sufference, for a while and then will just stop buying wine when eating out.

Being honest, we all have bills to pay and wine when eating out it likely (for many) one of the easier costs to cut out!

If my generation is starting to be put off buying wine in restaurants there is unlikely to be much in the way of salvation from the younger (cocktail/pre-loading) generations and if wine is lost to them then it will likely be lost to future generations in years to come.  Once it leave the collective consciousness, it ain’t coming back any time soon. That does not seem to me to be an optimum outcome, with the following quote from Andre Simons coming to mind:

“Wine makes every meal an occasion, every table more elegant, every day more civilized”

I would slightly change this quote by prefacing it with “Good  (affordable) “, as a bottle of poor wine doesn’t do any of those things.

I have said it before on this blog  and I will say it again, don’t kill the golden (wine) goose!

The details

Address: 14 – 15 Quay Street, Cardiff, CF10 1EA

Website: https://grupo44.co.uk/asador44/