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Apologies for the lack of posts – it is purely down to the fact we’ve not been anywhere for food lately for one reason or other. One being we’re totally skintolla thanks to a holiday in Spain, moving house and other tempting treats of the non-food variety. The food in Spain was as diverse in quality as it was limited in choice – does that make sense. Basically there was the choice of tapas or fish/seafood and we ate likes kings in some places and swines in others. I’ll not go into it too much but I’ll just say at one cheap and uncheerful place on the seafront we ordered asparagus and potatas bravas and were presented with soggy, pale, flaccid jarred asparagus, tinned boiled potatoes with Tabasco sauce. The fruits of the sea salad was fish sticks with mayonnaise and lettuce. I can honestly say I’ve never been served such a pile a crap in all my life. Disgusting. Along the same stretch of street I ate one of the best steaks of my life and that’s saying something as I’ve eaten Kobe beef in the Bellagio. It was so simple yet so perfect. It was flawlessly seasoned, cooked to perfection and served absolutely drenched in fresh lime juice. Seriously. It was amazing, it works so well and I emitted numerous sounds of pleasure as I devoured it. Since then we’ve tried to replicate the taste sensation and lime and steak works great even with a cheaper cut of meat. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Mmmmmm.

Anyway back to Sheffield, more specifically Ecclesall Road and the Spice Market Café. Here the menu is a rather confusing state of affairs that boasts all of my favourite Asian cuisines with a Britishy kinda twist, I wasn’t expecting much to be honest, I’ve watched too many of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares to think that this would work out. We chose from the set menu £15 for three courses, there wasn’t much but just enough for me to choose from happily. I started off with sweet potato cake with chick pea relish and blue cheese sauce, he had ½ rack of bbq ribs. Once we’d ordered we decided to have another appetizer, duck croqettes with hiosin dressing and cucumber. It all arrived quickly and in large portions. My potato cake tasted great, though it was more like tepid sweet potato mash, the chickpea salsa was lovely, maybe too oily, and the blue cheese worked well. The ribs were massive, we shared and had about 4 large ribs each. The tender meat fell off the bone and was coated in a think black unctuous sauce more akin to black bean or hoisin than any bbq. Very nice. The duck croquettes worked surpsing well too, the duck had been shredded and looked more like tinned tuna, i had to finish this off as Steve was worried he'd fill himself up. I was starting to like this fusion of flavours. Next came our mains, Pork thai green curry and teriyaki veg noodles, my noodles were practically molten when they arrived and I literally had to sit there and wait for five minutes before I could even bring them to my lips. The noodles were great as was the sauce, which was deep but thin, the vegetables were sparse and those that I did find looked like they’d seen better days. This serving was massive and I barely consumed half. The thai curry was not great, it had spice but no depth of flavour and no creamy richness to it. Maybe I'm a thai curry snob but this was not great. When the dessert arrived I was already feeling quite full, maybe we shouldn’t have ordered the duck croqettes. In front of me was placed a generous serving of chocolate mousse with sorbet, he had sticky toffee pudding with clotted cream. Both were great. I sadly had to leave a lot of my half as I was totally full. All in all the food was good, especially the starters and desserts, if I was to venture here again this is what I’d go for. I’d choose a selection of the interesting starters and ensure I had enough space left to do full justice to the amazing desserts.