Good Food and Good Company

I waved the Young Man off on the London train yesterday, after a most satisfactory week.
One of the nice things about having him to stay is that we go out to eat and have coffee a lot, which I don't normally do.
On the day that he arrived, for instance, we headed to the Lichfield Vaults for a Greek platter, which was just right to share as a snack lunch. I think they've tweaked the menu slightly, but all my Greek favourites are still there. And it's the only place I know in Hereford that serves Adnams Broadside beer, too.
Several people in Hay who know the Young Man invited us out over the week, so we enjoyed good conversation while sampling Shepherds' wonderful mocha coffee a couple of times.
We were also invited out for a meal at Yak-y-da - and the Nepalese Mountain Lamb Curry, and the Kathmandu curry, were just as good as we remembered them. Bottles of Gurkha beer were also enjoyed. (I was chatting about the Yak-y-da today to a regular customer - as a good Welshman, he winced when he saw the spelling of the name, until I explained the Gurkha connection!)
On another day, we went to Brecon on the bus - which conveniently dropped us off at lunch time, which we spent in the Brecon Tap, eating their wonderful pies and drinking very good beer. The barman even remembered us from the last time we were there! Discussing which beer to try at the bar, another customer offered to let me have a sip of his pint, so I could see what the Yakima IPA was like (from Great Heck Brewery). It was complex, richly flavoured, and 7.4% - and it ran out just as the barman was filling my glass! Fortunately other wonderful beers were available, and we filled our beer carrier from the bottled selection before we left. It was a slight disappointment to find that they had run out of Discworld beers (all named for characters in the Terry Pratchett fantasy series), and when we were eating out at the Yak-y-da, our friends confessed that they had bought the last bottles only two weeks before!
As ever, we ran out of time before we did all the things we wanted to - there are cafes in Hay that we haven't yet been to together, and we never managed to get up to Beer Revolution (but the Young Man will be back some time in the New Year).