MY, MY, MY DELILAH
IN different guises she was the treacherous temptress of both the Book of Judges and a 1967 hit for the young, raw and gutsy Tom Jones. Nowadays, on the streets of Nottingham and Leicester, the name Delilah is synonymous with fine food – the sort of tuck that prompts oohing and cooing in NG2.
We are in saffron and harissa territory. If your idea of food heaven is Nutella on sliced white, you may not feel at home in the handsomely-appointed deli in Victoria Street.
It looks as if it was once a bank. The den of usury has given way to displays of artisan bread and fine wine, and the sort of cold meats and cheeses that won’t be finding their way into a Midland Mainline buttie.
Provided you do not make too much of a mess, you can drool on this lot from the mezzanine floor, home of Delilah’s little café.
And very handsome it is, with wooden screen partitions and views of the ornate plasterwork dating from the distant age when banks treated their clients with respect.
Another bonus at Delilah is the service, executed by an efficient young team who could probably give bank executives a lesson in customer care.
The menu should please anyone who likes their breakfast, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea or even pretheatre bite to come with bonus exotica. Breakfasts, for instance, include that West Bridgford pleaser, avocado on toast, while the scrambled eggs come with pesto and the sautéed field mushrooms with Manchego cheese. You probably won’t be asking for HP Sauce.
It being lunchtime, I inspected the main menu and opened fire with the soup of the day, a butternut squash number. I paid extra for a rarebit accompaniment, assuming it might be a couple of genteel fingers of cheesetopped toast.
The soup came with not so much a chilli kick as a jolly sound chilli kicking, the spice bullying the gentle gourdy goodness of the ochre broth.
The fingers of toast turned out to be two whopping doorsteps of sourdough – a style of bread that usually has me sprinting for the bathroom cabinet. Topped extravagantly with an unusually rich Cheddar-style cheese, flecked with slices of leek, they were
actually very pleasant indeed … and happily it proved to be a Remagel-free afternoon.
However I soon found myself struggling in a prolonged carbothon, for the sourdough was followed by a main course loaded with spuds.
I refer to my substantial helping of salt beef hash, a distinctly Spanishstyle effort with a prominent support role for salsa brava, featuring rather a lot of sautéed potatoes.
I liked the chewy (but chewable) dark pink salt beef with the softer chunks of morcilla sausage. Also present: a poached egg and one of my five a day, in the form of chard or similar dark leaf. Nice. But very filling.
After parking that lot, there was no question of pudding. As Tom Jones once bellowed, “Forgive me, Delilah, I just couldn’t take any more.”
■■ The Food Sleuth dines unannounced and pays his own bills.