Dim sum and a curry

As we need some things from the famous Wing Yip Chinese supermarket on the Purley Way, we decide to call in the Tai Tung for dim sum first. As usual it’s pretty busy with a good few Chinese people in there, but we’re lucky to get a table straight away. This is a no-nonsense place, so we just go for the house wine at £13.50.

We look through the dim sum list and tick off our selection on the little lottery ticket. We’ve gone for 7 dishes on this first pass – 3 steamed and 4 fried – plus jasmine tea. The selection is rather heavily prawn based: paper-wrapped prawn, prawn dumpling, prawn and chive dumpling and pork dumplings (with prawn on top).  Also grilled pork dumpling, squid cake (very good), and meat croquette (which B described as a savoury doughnut).  Generally good without being very special.

We’re pretty full, but we go round again with another paper-wrapped prawn and a mixed meat dumplings, which was billed as being spicy, but wasn’t especially, but was tasty and featured a lot of peanuts and the odd prawn. Most of the other dishes are in the outer realms of taste - chicken feet, curried whelks etc. So although we've enjoyed what we had, I doubt we'll be back very soon.

Service has been unusually friendly for a Chinese restaurant with several regulars being greeted warmly, and any questions answered happily.

With two bottles of wine and service, this lot comes to £55 – but you could get away with much less. Definitely somewhere to look in if you’re shopping on the Purley Way. 

 

Visiting friends in Theydon Bois, near Epping Forest, we are taken out to the local Indian restaurant, Indian Ocean. It’s a Saturday night, so we have to go early (6.30pm) and be ready to give the table back at 8.30pm, as it’s so busy and popular. The restaurant has won the “Tiffin Club” award from the House of Commons as the best South Asian restaurant in the UK, so the photos on the wall feature luminaries such as John Bercow and Keith Vaz.

The menu has quite a number of unusual dishes as well as the more common biryanis, baltis and tandooris. A feature is the number of different duck dishes.

Papadoms and Shiraz arrive fairly quickly. Then we select dishes: we’re advised portions are large so there’s no need to order much rice or bread or vegetables.  So B opts out of starters;   I have “Harryali Kebab” - chicken breast pieces with garlic, mint, green chilli and coriander, a rather dodgy green looking creation.  G has samosas, and P an interesting looking salmon tikka.

For mains, I have a lamb dish – toasted lamb strips with fresh green chillies – a pile of meat slapped on the plate, not pretty but nicely spicy. B tries the duck jalfrezi, which though nice meat does not have much in the way of kick it. We also share a pilau rice and a bhindi bhaji, which comes as very thinly sliced okra which have been deep-fried – more of a snack than a vegetable.  G has “Bhaarotiya” - chicken breast stuffed with raisin and garlic spiced mixed vegetables in a spicy sauce  - and P the tandoori mixed grill, which comes with naan and is huge – he can’t finish it.

Our second bottle is a Merlot as they’ve run out of Shiraz. Service has been pretty good, and the owner/manager comes over to chat, as G&P are regulars there. The place is very buzzy, and noisy, with a crowd of locals many of whom knew each other.  G&P generously paid the bill, but as main courses were around £10 each, I’d guess it came to about £70 plus wine.

For such a sleepy little place as Theydon Bois, this is a remarkable restaurant. Not sure I’d say it was the best in the UK, but I should probably bow to the much more extensive experience of Mssrs Bercow and Vaz.

Birthday treat - a mixed experience

It’s my birthday so I get to choose where we go. I’d seen Asia de Cuba online several times, so after checking a few other options, that’s what I go for when I see that toptable have an offer on a 2-course set meal with mojito. The restaurant is in the St Marin’s hotel on St Martin’s Lane, and is totally anonymous from the outside, looking more like an office block. Inside it is also rather characterless, despite their efforts. It’s light and there are round pillars with Cuban photos or books and retro radios; there are low slung filament light bulbs over every table, giving little light and just creating a network of wires; it’s not that busy and there’s no buzz to the place. It’s not helped by us being shown to a table down the far end of the restaurant, where one of us effectively has to look at the wall.

We’d checked the menu on the website beforehand to make sure there were things on the set menu we’d like.  But we’d also been warned when the restaurant rang to confirm our booking that the menu had been recently changed, making it “better and cheaper” – unlikely we thought.  So it was without much surprise that we saw that the dishes we’d liked were no longer available, and the main course options came down to salmon, chicken, a sandwich or tofu. The old menu is still on the website, so be warned.  The price has been reduced from £22 to £18.50, but that’s not really the point

The wine list is also pretty scary, with nothing under £25; we select an Australian Viognier for £29.50.  So I’m feeling a bit scratchy when the cheery waitress arrives, and I demand my mojito - they’re on their way she claims, and within seconds they arrive. They are very good, served in small jam jars, with the clean fresh mint and a good kick of tequila, so my mood lifts a little.

The waitress is very chatty, clinking our glasses together as they arrive. She squats down to take our order, so she is at our eye-level. This could feel pretty patronising, but she gets away with it with her chatter.  There is a trio of ceviche on offer at an extra £10, so choose that. This causes some confusion, as it doesn’t actually count as one of the two courses – which I means I have to order a dessert as well.  I’m puzzled by this, but as I’d been prepared to pay the £10 “supplement” anyway, actually I come out ahead.

The trio comprises grouper, snapper and salmon. The grouper is very sharp and freshly citrus tasting; the snapper a bit dull, and the salmon comes with an avocado puree and a chilli kick. B unusually goes for the miso soup with chicken – also with plenty of chilli.

B’s main course is the roasted salmon with sweet soy topping and a cucumber escabeche. Although this sounds a little dull, actually the fish had plenty of flavour and was nicely cooked, and the cucumber was good, so the dish worked better than expected. My chicken “with BBQ sauce” and sticky rice was a large portion of sliced chicken breast with just a little (enough) sauce that didn’t dominate its juiciness.  Again a dish that exceeded expectations.  My “extra” dessert was a “Cuban coffee brownie”, served with coffee ice-cream – very good.

There’s a whopping 15% service to add to the bill – and then the credit card bill is left open for “additional gratuity”. So that takes the total to £122 with 2 bottles of wine, which I think was a bit high for what it was (though you could have got away with £37 if you’d stuck to the one mojito and water).  If we’d seen the revised menu online, I doubt if we’d have booked it, but as it was I was glad to have given it a go. If go a la carte, starters were £6 to £10 and mains £18 to £25 – maybe worth it to get what you want.

The Chancery

Situated appropriately just off Chancery Lane, on a corner in Cursitor Street, The Chancery is a small, smart restaurant, clearly catering to a better class of lawyer.  All around are elegantly dressed men, virtually all in dark suits and sharp ties, and conservatively clad women. The place is full when we arrive for our “toptable” booking at 1.15 (having been specifically asked to come that crucial 15 minutes later).  Staff are welcoming and friendly enough, avoiding the formality that could easily spoil your fun in somewhere like this.

 

We arrive ahead of M&G, and struggle with the wine list. The Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier that featured at reasonable prices on the website are nowhere to be seen, and the prices seem to climb steadily.  We’re about to hedge our bets with a glass of Prosecco when the others arrive and we agree on a bottle of Picpoul de Pinet – a slightly fruity, off-dry white at around £25.

 

The a la carte menu is limited to 5 options per course at £28.50 for two, and £32.50 for three (though we’re on the “50% off food” offer).  The “limited a la carte” offers just three choices, but comes in at £39.50 for three courses – work that one out!   M and I decide to start with the cod cheeks in red wine while (after a last minute change of heart) G and B go for the duck’s egg.  The cod cheeks are small round disks of meat, with a rather unappealing dirty red tinge, served with a leek creation and cornichons – pleasant, rather than tasty.  On the other hand, the duck’s eggs had bright yellow yolks, were cooked to be runny and served with some cute little button mushrooms.

 

For main course, I chose the venison (£4 supplement) with beetroot. This came topped with beetroot slices and a small beetroot tart – a little odd. Apparently there was bitter chocolate in there somewhere, though I didn’t detect it – maybe that’s just as well. The meat itself though was excellent, just bloody with full flavour. B chose the plaice with razor clams and prawns, which came with a tasteless foam, and was rather dry and uninteresting.  Both M and Genjoyed the loin of pork rolled in ash, with creamed cabbage and pickled quince. M had also chosen a bottle of Dao at £26 to complement the meats – smooth and full.

 

To follow, G decided to try the rhubarb soufflé, while B and I shared the plate of French and English cheeses (£5 extra) which was good, with both bread and biscuit.  G was impressed with his soufflé which disappeared without trace.

 

Service had been a bit patchy: we’d waited a while to order (though this may have been partly due to G having to make a phone call outside), and one starter was delivered only to be whisked away again.

 

M&G generously paid the bill, so I don’t know the exact cost. But working on the fixed price menus, I think food would have nominally come to £132  - with our deal giving a saving of £66. The 4 bottles of wine were a little over £100, plus some water and coffee, so we’re looking at around £45 a head.  Good value at that price – a little more challenging if you added a further £16 each when paying full price.