Davy’s winebars were running their annual tasting at the
Vintners Hall at Southwark Bridge – so that had to be done! Emerging around 2pm, we decide to walk back
towards Borough Market for some lunch, and fall into an old favourite Black and Blue for some
sustaining meaty protein. We’ve been
here several times, and the organisation has expanded into a small chain of six
restaurants including the lovely wine bar Archduke at Waterloo.
This time of day the place is not too busy, so we get served
pretty quickly. A bottle of ES Vino Malbec from Argentina (£28) seems the right
thing to top up our earlier intake.
B has chargrilled garlic king prawns to start – lovely,
great garlic hit. I go for the chicken satay, which was also good. But then
disaster. We’ve ordered the Cote de Boeuf for 2 (600g) medium rare – when it
comes it is inedible – all sinew. We
struggle with it for a while (accepting that we might not be in the most
sensitive critical state!) but have to give in. The waiter, seeing we’ve left
most of it, asks if there was a problem and we explain – and to their credit,
without any fuss, they simply remove the price from the bill (given that this
was £36, that’s no small deal).
So, an unsuccessful experience,
well handled - £51 for wine and starters.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later in the month, we have a Sunday clear so wander up to
the South Croydon strip of restaurants – the “Restaurant Quarter” as the
council likes to call it – to try a fairly new brasserie with the unusual name
of YUMN (Arabic for “welcome”
apparently). As it’s a Sunday they are
only doing their set Brunch menu, which is not normally our thing. But it sounds quite interesting so we decide
to give it a go.
It’s quite a big place, but the front section is given over
to the buffet. Despite quite a few people being in, there’s not a great deal of
atmosphere – and a very weary old “easy listening” soundtrack.
There’s a first course of soup – this time it’s cream of
cauliflower. B decides to pass, but I go for it. It does what it says on the
tin – it’s creamy and cauliflower; nice bread too.
Next up is the “market table”. Now this is pretty
impressive. Loads of seafood, from dressed crab, prawns several ways, smoked
salmon, poached salmon, mussels, potted shrimp, potted mackerel – take what you
want. Also duck rillettes, chicken liver pate, salads and breads. This is practically a meal in itself.
There’s about half a dozen options for main course,
including of course Sunday roast with all the trimmings. B chooses the burger,
while I go for the steak frites. The
burger is fine, but nothing special – nice chips. The steak however is an
impressive piece of sirloin, cooked medium rare as requested, a significant
dish in its own right.
With a bottle and a couple of
glasses of a very acceptable Merlot (£17 a bottle), the bill comes to a very
reasonable £98 (before service). We’ll
certainly go again, maybe to try the normal menu – but as a family Sunday
brunch it’s a winner. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We’re meeting S for dinner, and the chosen venue is
Spitalfields. We’ve arranged to meet in Bedales first – a
sister bar to the one in Borough Market.
We are early so we manage to bag a table near the back, which is lucky
as the place fills up quickly – one girl just having one cup of coffee and
using the wi-fi is eventually asked to leave.
Nice spot, though not as much character as its sister in Borough Market.
For dinner we are booked into Blixen (crap website!), which B has read a
good review
about by John Walsh in the Independent. It’s very busy and buzzy – a good atmosphere.
Our table is perhaps rather too close to the kitchen, with the noise from that
– the beautiful people are out front.
We order a bottle of house white – Cortese from Italy (£19)
and some padron peppers and then decide on food. S has ox tongue salad to start, the tongue
being compressed into very rich croquettes.
B has a squid and chorizo stew, which was very stew-like, with beans –
an interestingly and warm different take on the common combination of
ingredients. My beef carpaccio is very thin, but an ample portion – very
acceptable.
Main courses are Monkfish tail with cauliflower and mussel
broth for S (nicely cooked); sea bream
with white beans and broccoli for B – a good crispy fillet; and (surprise!)
pork belly for me – good and rich, with a crispy mash. S has a dessert – the bill says it was
“cremeux”- but frankly I’ve no recollection! – and we each have a glass of
sauternes.
Good service by bright young
things. The total was £140 including
service. Spitalfields has a lot of new
restaurants these days, but this is definitely worth a try.
It’s March 31st, a famous day for excessive
stress. I’m struggling to finish a
report we’ve promised for today, haggling with colleagues over two words here
and some formatting there. We finally
reach a compromise and I can send it off and breathe again. B on the other hand is off to the O2 to an
Elvis exhibition!
So we agree to rendezvous at Waterloo at Cabin,
the Corney and Barrow winebar on the upper level – much recommended, if a tad
pricey. I’m in the doghouse for ignoring what B wants to do, so I Ieave the
choice of restaurant to her. And after
many times criticising it for being too expensive for what it is, she goes for Ping Pong, a
branch of the dim sum chain on the Southbank.
When we arrive it’s busy – a 20 minute wait. There’s a bar
upstairs so we decide to wait it out with a £20 bottle of Chilean SB –with
fancy technology to alert you when your table is free, and staff to back it up. In fact, it’s much less
than 20 minutes when they call us down to a shared table – two pleasant young
ladies and a rather earnest trio (2M, 1F – relationship uncertain).
We order a fairly standard combination of dishes: edamame
beans, 4 fried dishes (Vietnamese rice paper rolls, beef and chilli parcels,
soft shell crab and an odd Shanghai chicken dish), and 4 steamed ones (crab and
prawn – brilliant, scallop and shitake, chicken and garlic and a very weird
spinach beef fillet dumpling).
After that we still have room so we get a second chicken and
garlic, a duck spring roll and a beef gyoza dumpling.
Service has been fine – though we were bit miffed that the
two ladies who ordered after us got some of their food first, and the edamame
beans took a while to arrive. It’s a buzzy and fun place, and we’re really
enjoying ourselves until I realise that we are probably at least 20 years older
than anyone else in there! We have two more glasses of wine.......
Total £96 including service – fine for the Southbank, far
more than you’d pay for similar in Chinatown.
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