December outings

After a wine tasting at Tate Modern, we drift round the corner to our new nearby favourite,  Mar I Terra.  I’ve reviewed it before, but again it did not disappoint.  This time we are there on Friday evening, and it is pretty busy, which gives it a great atmosphere. Staff are friendly and welcoming. We start with a garlic bread (to soak up our wine) and then go for garlic prawns, braised beef Riojana, pork belly, and chick peas with spinach and cumin. There’s plenty of garlic around, and a fair bit of chilli too. The beef comes with piquillo peppers, which also have a good kick. The pork belly has a good portion of crackling and is really very succulent.  The Verdejo at £21 seemed good, but maybe our palettes were a little jaded.  At £63 including service, very reasonable indeed.

The following night we are off to a comedy gig at Union St chapel, with H.  Again we re-visit a favourite, La Petite Auberge, I’ve also reviewed before.  As we are eating before the show, the placed is quite quiet, though there is one larger group in. Service is a bit erratic, with no consistent waiter, and they seem more interested in getting the chairs in than actually bringing any wine! For starters I have the crevettes in garlic, which are more tiger prawns than crevettes, but perfectly fine.  B has bacon and chicken liver terrine – which hasn’t stuck in the memory! – and H moules mariniere.  Mains are stuffed guinea fowl for me (a bit claggy), stuffed chicken breast for H (which she thought a bit dull) and B has the gambas as before.  A couple of bottles of  Pays D’Oc Viognier at £24.50 bring the bill up to £130 including service.  But not as great a success as last time.

To complete an indulgent weekend, we are having our “131” lunch, with T&K, H and J, back from her travels.  After further unsuccessful attempts to book Dishoom again – I think I’m giving up on them for good – we are booked into Salt Yard  in Goodge St.  We are in the downstairs room, with a large, but fortunately fairly restrained, group nearby.  The charming waitress is all smiles and helpful, so we rapidly start in on the Campo Flores Verdejo/SB and a Honoro Vera (£25 and £24 each).  A first round of dishes includes grilled flatbread, sweet and spicy guindillas (big green chillies),  smoked almonds, boquerones (juicy) , padron peppers and caperberries. More substantial dishes follow: crab arancini, chorizo picante with chickpeas, marjoram salami, roast salmon, courgettes flowers and burrata. Also pork rillons (pork belly cubes), polenta with mushrooms and leeks, and paprika chicken, followed by a Spanish cheese selection.  With two bottles each of the white and red, and service this all comes to £270 for 6 people – pretty good I’d say.

The next week we meet S&L at Tiles, after their visit to “Spooky” the spiritualist.  This is a really old favourite, from before we were married. It’s midweek, but still pretty busy so we are downstairs with a couple of Xmas party groups.  The Viognier from Languedoc is £23 a bottle, and very creamy.   Starters include a baked aubergine parcel, cauliflower soup, and tuna tartare (my choice – pretty good).  For mains L and I both have pork medallions, which she is unable to finish – rich tasty, with Lyonaisse potatoes.  S has a chicken breast stuffed with roasted peppers and goats cheese and wrapped in pancetta – again too much for her. And B has the fisherman’s platter: deep-fried squid, prawns, salmon and cod with courgettes chips also too much. So we had quite a doggy basket – the portion of chips was unnecessary, but hot and crisp as they should be. Despite being busy the services has been fine – efficient rather than friendly perhaps.  Three bottles of wine and service take the total to £170

The next Monday I have a work meeting near Smithfields in the afternoon, so I stop off at St Bart’s Brewery for lunch first.  The small plates previously advertised on the website are not available in December, and a number of tables are booked for parties, so I end up in a low “comfy” chair.  Although predictably quiet when I get there at noon, plenty of people are coming in on spec, so it gets quite busy by 12.30.  I order the brisket brioche, which comes with a portion of red cabbage slaw and chipotle gravy with a surprising kick. A tin of good skin-on fries goes well. A couple of glasses of Vermentino help things along. £22 in total.

Next day we are meeting M&P in Sutton for lunch. It’s an ASLEF strike day on Southern, so it has to be a cab, which in the end means we get there early and stop off in the Old Bank for a drink first.  We catch up with our friends as we reach the restaurant – a classic-style Italian called Casa Nostra, one of their old favourites.  As well as an extensive standard menu, there is a good list of blackboard specials, which apparently contain regular dishes.  M&P don’t drink, so I order a bottle of Frascati, and B says she’ll have one too – the cheeky waiter brings both together! M&P both have the crab and avocado salad starter, which looks good, but perhaps has too much dressing on it. B has the garlic king prawns (obvs), which do seem very good, and I have squid ripieni (ie with black pudding and bacon on a bed of spinach), which is excellent – rich, flavoursome with the squid al dente. Filling though.  For main P has the turbot steaks off the specials board, M has sea bass fillets which she asks for with a passata sauce, and B has skate with lemon butter and capers off the specials too. My veal saltimbocca (with sage and parma ham) is excellent, in a good white wine sauce.  All the mains come with a selection of vegetables (aprt from B who opted for salad) which include some good sauté potatoes. Paying for the wine and splitting the food means we end up with £129 for the two of us.  It’s only Sutton and with few pretensions, but that’s still good value for what we had.

Thursday sees us at the M&G organised ex-BT Xmas gathering at the Morgan Arms  in Bow.  There are 18 of us, so we are at three tables, with strict instructions from M for the men to move around between courses.  Surprisingly that works quite well.  We have had to pre-order our food (fair enough), but the placecards have got mine and B’s confused.  She has game terrine to start, while I have confit duck leg (with red cabbage and juniper) which is close to being a full main course. For main, B has sea bass, while I have the venison steak, with sprouts and good roast potatoes. The venison is OK, but a little chewy, and again a large portion, so I fail to finish it.  For dessert I have the chocolate mousse (very runny, but tasty) and B has the trifle, which comes in a smallish glass.  I don’t know how much wine we consumed, but our share of the total came to a very reasonable £130.

As there’s another ASLEF strike on. I can’t get to a meeting on Friday, so we indulge again in a lunch in Purley at Mekan.   There’s a big table laid up for a party, but we manage to get one by the window, a little way away. The group doesn’t arrive till we’re about to leave anyway.  As usual, we have lamb’s liver and spicy sausage to start. And B has her usual Mediterranean prawns in garlic and white wine to follow. After some indecision, I opt for the lamb iskender barbequed lamb with yoghurt and pitta bread. They are out of our usual NZ SB, so instead we have a couple of bottles of Gavi at £23.  The waiter is very stern and unsmiling, but the waitress much more pleasant.  £80 all in.

We’ve no other meals planned before Xmas, though I expect we’ll fit in the tapas bar and a curry some time during the week.  So MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL MY READERS (if there are any!).

Busy couple of weeks

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with trips to several new places and some old favourites re-visited.  

IMPERIAL CHINA

G&S are down staying with us, so after the compulsory trip to our favourite local Vietnamese, Cat Ba Island, the next day we decide to go to Dishoom  in Upper St Martin’s Lane.   We’d tried to get in before but not been able to face the queue, so we think around 4pm on a Sunday afternoon should be OK.   I go ahead to grab a spot in the queue. As I approach it doesn’t look too bad, but when I ask the chap how long the wait will be, he says an hour! And 30 minutes before we even get inside to wait at the bar!! I don’t think so.

 So we decide on Chinatown for dim sum. Our previous favourite, Harbour City, has been taken over by New Loon Fung, but they too are full, with a half-hour wait. So we go round to Lisle street and into Imperial China.  This is an attractive place, tucked away in a courtyard, approached by a little bridge over a stream, by a waterfall and a pond full of huge koi carp. Chinese lanterns complete the look.

 The dim sum is a fairly standard selection of dumplings and rolls. But they are fresh, spicy and hot.  Service is friendly (for Chinatown!) and efficient. With three bottles of wine it comes to £180 for four.

 

CHEZ BRUCE

Next day the four of us went to Chez Bruce, probably our “go-to” favourite. The set lunch is £32 for 3 courses, which is very good value, though B was not impressed with a £6 supplement for the venison that both she and S had as main. The parmesan crisps were excellent as usual, and the service still very friendly and unstuffy, but we had a surprisingly long wait for our starters. My selection was duck tagliettelle (wonderful!) followed by  sea bream, and then their super vanilla créme brûlée . Wines at £26 for Viognier, £28 for Syrah (both Chilean). Total £287. Afterwards reflected on the fact that normally Michelin-starred places give you an amuse bouche, but apart from the parmesan crisps, there was nothing at Chez Bruce.  Still, it remains up there for us.

 

HOUSE OF Hô

B has booked us, with T&K,  into House of Hô after the Tesco wine tasting at Olympia. It’s only at the last minute we realise that it is not the place in Old Compton St we had been to before (which has now closed), but in Percy Street, Fitzrovia, on the site of Bam Bou, which we used to like.

There is an attractively priced set brunch menu available on a Saturday, but instead we decide to choose from the a la carte.  The menu is predominantly starters, sushi and sashimi, with just a few mains, so we treat it basically as dim sum.  The waiter explains that some of the dishes come with just three pieces, and offers us the chance to make them up to four to share.  I wonder if this is a sly trick to make more money, but to be fair when the bill comes the extra piece is charged pro rata. We have some edamame beans in chilli while we decide what to order.

First up come the skewered spicy prawns, and the chicken dumplings. The prawns have a good flavour, though are not that spicy, and the dumplings good but nothing special. Next come the duck spring roll (very good), and “imperial roll” (large) and some crab and prawn croquettes (excellent).  Then the Vietnamese scotch egg (interesting), duck and watermelon salad (quite large and tasty),  and spare ribs (falling off the bone) arrive.  We discuss whether we are full and decide we can manage some more. We order another duck spring roll and some prawn dumplings (good but more standard) for three of us, while K has a dessert – Asian banana crumble, which she says is wonderful.

Service has been good and attentive, and the place gradually filled up towards 4pm, giving it some atmosphere – the décor is not as dramatic as Bam Bou used to be.  Three bottles of Chilean SB at £28 each takes the bill up to just over £200 – given the quality of what we had, and how full we feel that seems pretty good.

 

THE CLOVE CLUB

M&G are generously taking us out for lunch, on behalf of M’s late mother, at the Michelin-starred Clove Club in Shoreditch – not an Indian as many people assumed.  We have a drink first in a quirky Shepherd Neame pub – the Prince Arthur – with a very chatty barman, who insists we look at the upstairs bar before we leave. There is a real fire, candles, and a strange mix of Regency cartoons and Gonzo prints on the walls.

Then on to the restaurant at Shoreditch Town Hall. It has a bar at the front but we get shown in to the main room at the back.  There is a huge brigade of staff, outnumbering the diners by two to one.  The chef featured recently as “young chef of the year” in the Observer food review – and looks about 14.

We opt for the five-course tasting menu at £65 (rather than the nine-course one!), with the complementary wine pairing at £50. But we start with some kir, champagne and a Bourbon cocktail.  We did though decide against the extra scallops course at £18.

The meal starts with a selection of “snacks” - iced beetroot with crème fraiche, crab tartlet (lovely), haggis balls (in a sweetish brioche-like bun, not as peppery as you might expect) and fried chicken in pine needles (“an up-market KFC” – much nicer).

The first course of the meal proper was tartare of hake which came with an Alsace Pinot from a magnum. The hake is an interesting idea but doesn’t taste of a great deal.  Next up is a soup course – three of us have opted out of the oysters.  Again, not that special.

The cod with beetroot and  fermented cabbage was more of a success - firm, tasty fish and some intriguing accompaniments.  I also liked the “main course” venison loin and venison sausage, though B was less impressed. 

We then opted for one portion of the extra cheese selection, which came with a Sauterne and a fino sherry.

Dessert courses were a delicate layered cream and ice cream pot,  and a rather sturdy tarte tatin – more of an English apple tart really, but good all the same.

Service was friendly and with such a big staff very efficient. The sommelier was chatty and knowledgeable.  Of the other customers, two were Silicon roundabout hipsters eating alone, four slightly older business types (still with beards), and a pair of elderly gentlemen.

As I said M&G were very generously treating us, so I don’t know the exact cost, but it must have been seriously expensive.  It had been a great experience, but at those prices I doubt we will rush back.

 

MARKET BRASSERIE

Meeting up with ex-BT colleagues, S and L, we decide to go to Shepherd Market for lunch.  Interesting French colonial African pictures on the walls.  Buzzy little place, with a strange porcelain head on one table – “watching over us” said the waiter.

L has the orecchiette with tomato and broccoli, and S the Atlantic cod (which looked like a small portion).  I go for the duck breast with Lyonnaise potatoes off the specials board – very good.  As S is off to a meeting we just have the one bottle of Chilean SB at £21.  Just under £30 a head in total including service. Not a “wow” place but pretty sound and handy to know of if you’re in the area (though of course there is plenty of choice around there).

 

DRAKE AND MORGAN, KING’S CROSS

K has stayed over with us after the party yesterday, so we go with her to King’s Cross to see her off back home. Pancras Square, round the back of the station, now has quite a range of eateries, but we settle on Drake and Morgan.

It turns out to be a huge place, done out in industrial chic, with exposed pipework.  It is pretty busy as we fetch up about 1.30pm on Sunday, but we have booked so that’s OK. We are shown to our table, miles away down the far end of the restaurant, overlooked by a huge picture of a grumpy cow.

Despite the waitress being attentive, our drinks take a while to arrive – Chenin Blanc (£18) and ginger smoothie for K.  For starters (which do arrive quickly) we have crispy squid (quite spicy) and ham croquettes (nice crispy exterior, but rather gooey insides). 

I had seen a Thai green coconut curry (with either chicken or prawns) on the website menu, but they’re not there on the day – maybe because it’s a Sunday, with roasts.  K orders the Waygu burger, but is told they’ve sold out, so she settles for a cheeseburger instead – very dense and filling. B has gone for a starter Cobb salad with chicken as main – specifically making it clear that she didn’t want a larger one. When it comes it is huge, but to be fair they only charge us for a small one - it would be far too much as a starter. I have the tuna with ginger and soy sauce, plus some chips – very good and pink, but a bit cold.

K has an espresso martini to follow, while we have a couple more glasses of wine.  £135 for three of us (2 bottles of wine) seems good value.

Late summer catch-up

Noble Rot

Five of us fetched up at Noble Rot wine bar in Lamb’s Conduit St on a hot summer’s day.  As we were shown to our table at the back of this maze of a place, our eyes gradually became accustomed the gloom, such a contrast to the weather outside.  It’s a charming spot for a winter’s day, or perhaps an illicit assignation. 

 

We settled on a bottle of Picpoul (£22) from an extensive, but not cheap, wine list. The charming young waiter explained the specials to us, including Thai Stingray.  He was unclear whether it was a starter or a main course, and insisted it wasn’t fish – I think the kitchen had been teasing him.  So after some confusion we manage to order.  I had cod and samphire to start, a smallish portion, but nicely done; others had smoked eel gazpacho (interesting) and mackerel.

 

For mains I had venison haunch, others had turbot and the Stingray – skate of course.  Three bottles of wine and £4 for some (admittedly, nice) bread took the bill up to £260 including service – which perhaps felt a little steep for a wine bar.  But it was a welcoming venue and well-produced food, so worth a visit if you’re in the area.

 

Oka

In Kingly Court, off Regent Street, near Senor Ceviche which I’ve reviewed before, the two of us decide to try the “Pan-Asian” sushi bar, Oka, for lunch. It’s a small, basic place, but the staff were very helpful and welcoming, finding us a nice table by the window. Sauvignon Blanc was £25.50, for a very nice NZ Marlborough, again perhaps a bit steep. We first ordered the spider roll, tuna tataki and the beef fillet with chimichurri sauce.  All excellent.  We followed up with the tiger king prawns, marinated salmon and some rice – again all good.  At £128 (2 bottles of SB), it again wasn’t cheap for an unpretentious place, but very enjoyable nonetheless. Tough call whether I prefer Senor Ceviche, but a good option for a change.

 

Brasserie Vacherin

I’ve reviewed our local French restaurant before and the service has sometimes been a bit mixed, but as they had (and still have) a 15% off food offer, we thought we’d give it another go.  Their Viognier from Languedoc was £24.50, but there are cheaper options available.  For starter, B had the Atlantic prawns – a sizeable portion of good-sized prawns, with garlic and parsley – while I had the reliable tuna tartare with wasabi.  Mains were lemon sole and fillet of sea bass, both good, fresh and simply done. The discount amounted to a little over £8, so the total with service was a just over £100.

 

The Refinery

After some culture at Tate Modern (Georgia O’Keefe, as you ask), we settle on The Refinery in the Blue Fin building round the back for a late lunch.  It’s a huge barn of a place, in the “industrial chic” style, and although there was one group of office workers in, we felt quite alone in the big back area.  The waitress was friendly, but after asking us for our order before we were ready then went AWOL.  We had managed to order a bottle of Chenin at £17.95 though, so it wasn’t a complete disaster.

 

For starters we had a flabby chicken satay with no oomph, and some weird prawn lollipops. The mains were a bit better – my chargrilled tuna was cooked competently, and B’s coconut prawn curry had some flavour. But overall not somewhere we’d rush back to. £79 (just one bottle and two glasses) was a fair price perhaps, but maybe it’s more somewhere to go for a regular quick lunch rather than a destination in itself.

 

Ken Lo’s Memories of China

Meeting up with S and L, we go first to the Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria station for a cocktail in their swish bar.  We’ve thought about going to about Ken Lo’s famous restaurant for many years, but now we have finally got round to it.  For a Tuesday night, it’s nicely busy and buzzy without feeling stressful; service is charming and helpful.

 

We order the Viognier at £27, and then our starters: prawn dumplings (standard), courgettes with prawns (super), smoked chicken (just OK), and a scallops, prawn and chicken in black bean sauce (excellent).  Mains are monkfish with asparagus, double cooked pork (my choice – very nice), medallions of beef, French beans and Singapore noodles.  A good, but perhaps not sensational, selection.  Just two bottles of wine means we get away with just £190 for the four of us  (13% service charge for some reason), so it feels like good value.  Worth another visit.

 

Richoux, St John’s Wood

We were at Lord’s for the climax of the County Championship (Middlesex v Yorkshire), and take a break for lunch. The Lord’s Tavern is fully booked, so we make our way to St John’s Wood, and decide on Richoux, with seats outside in the late September sun.  It’s only a light lunch, but both my “elegant rarebit” (ie with bacon) and B’s steak salad are super; the house fries were good too. (Oddly, a lady at another table also ordered the salad and had something quite different which she wasn’t very happy with).  With a bottle of Trebbiano at £17, we come away paying £44, and feeling very content – and Middlesex ended up winning.

 

Mar I Terra

After more culture at Tate Modern (the Philippe Parreno exhibit in the Turbine Hall, with moving boards, flashing lights and ambient music – what’s that smell? BS) we look at Gordon Ramsay’s Union St café, but decide against. Instead we find this little tapas bar tucked out of the way by the railway line. It perhaps seats about 30, and there were a dozen or so in.

 

The Volteo white (Verdejo-Sauvignon) at £19.50 is sharp and interesting.  The waiter recommends five dishes between two, so after some dithering over the pork belly, we decide on chick peas and spinach,  garlic prawns, grilled sardines, chicken livers and the criollo sausage off the specials menu.  Very enjoyable – the prawns had a good kick of chilli, the sardines were fresh with the flesh coming off the bones easily,  the chicken livers very intense in sherry and the chick peas with cumin; the special sausage was tasty but a little chewy.

 

Two bottles of wine takes us up to £95, including service.  This is likely to become a regular after Tate Modern visits.

South Croydon Vietnamese

I’ve been a bit remiss recently on reporting on my restaurant visits, which have included Jia in South Kensington again, Mayfair Garden in North Audley Street and Ember Yard in Berwick Street.  But as we have now returned for the fifth time to a new Vietnamese restaurant on the “strip” in South Croydon, I thought I had to make the effort.

 

Cat Ba Island took over from the Mae Ping Thai restaurant in South End back in January.  We’ve been there just the two of us a couple of times, and with P&M and with H.  And then today we went again. As you can guess, we quite like it there!

 

The menu is extensive, with a big selection of Pho dishes – we haven’t tried those, but P did and was well satisfied. They are massive bowls of soup and noodles with whatever protein you choose.

 

Aside from the Pho, the menu is huge – as are the portions.  Starters we have enjoyed include minced pork with lemongrass, rice paper duck rolls, crispy pork and crabmeat spring rolls, raw beef with herbs, soft-shell crab.  These are nearly enough on their own to fill you up.

 

Main courses have included a pork belly in a roasting pot with tea-light, chilli prawns (8 in a portion) or king prawn tamarind, sizzling beef, wok-fried “shaking” beef and a magnificently presented crispy fillet of sea bass, with the rest of the fish wrapped around it.  There are dozens of other rice and noodle dishes too.

 

The Australian house wines – Hidden Road Sauvignon Blanc or Merlot – are incredibly priced at £14, which for the Williams family means a great reduction in the bill.  Service is friendly and reasonably efficient (“Quick wine”), and the atmosphere nice and friendly. This Friday it was very busy and buzzing, yet the service was still rapid – too fast if anything. 

 

So full marks to Cat Ba Island. It’s not sophisticated, but hard to beat for value.

Two contrasting Chinese

We are in South Kensington lunchtime after visiting the Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum.  I had researched a couple of tapas bars, Casa Brindisa and Apero, but a little café-style place offering dim sum caught our eye – Jia.  We make sure to check they serve alcohol before venturing, and joining a small number of people happily eating their lunch. All the dishes looked very colourful.

The place is small – perhaps 20 covers downstairs and the same upstairs – and very simply decorated, with unusual rectangular tables, and barely any pictures. We order the Tierra Antica Chilean SB at £15.50 – there are other reasonably priced options too – and some jasmine tea.  We’re focussed on the dim sum. Steamed coriander crab dumplings, wasabi prawn dumplings, spicy chicken Su Mai. Fried garlic prawn dumplings, lamb dumplings and honey roasted pork pastry.

Fairly prompt service delivers the fried dishes first, with 3 of each. The pork pastry is good and crispy, and moist; the garlic prawn very garlicky and the lamb tasty too. The steamed dishes arrived soon after – a good hit of wasabi and two prawns in each of the 3 dumplings, fresh tasting coriander with the crab and slightly less than spicy chicken dumplings.  All were hot, colourful and a good size.

We’re quite full, but decide to try the seafood lettuce wrap with our second bottle of wine.  This too is good with plenty of prawns and scallops.

Friendly service – for a Chinese restaurant – and a total of £63, made for a good value, enjoyable lunch.
A week or so later, we’re meeting our friend D for lunch. We’ve seen that Opentable have a 50% off food offer at the Chinese Cricket Club in Blackfriars, so that’s what we go for. It’s located in the Crowne Plaza hotel, so we go into the lounge bar there first, for a reasonably priced bottle of SA Chenin Blanc.  When D arrives we head on in to the restaurant.

There are a few cricket items around at the entrance – pads, bat, balls – but overall there isn’t a great deal of cricketing decoration, despite the logo. There’s a signed bat from an England – Pakistan match and a signed team photo, but that’s about it. Nor is there much Chinese decoration – the overall effect remains that of a corporate hotel restaurant – dull and lacking atmosphere. A real missed opportunity.

Service is attentive and brisk. We order a French Viognier at £26, and some sparkling water.  We decide to start off with the dim sum platter, supplemented by wasabi prawns. The platter is a collection of 4 types of steamed dumplings, with just two of each:  duck, chicken, prawn and scallops.  Nothing special in any of them. The wasabi prawns comes as a plate of 5 good sized prawns in a rather unimpressive, topped with a wasabi mayonnaise – pretty tasteless.
We follow this up with a second order of “slippery chicken” and crispy soft shell crab, supported by Singapore noodles. The chicken is uninspiring – slippery enough though – and the crab without much flavour, mainly batter. Noodles had some good prawns and chicken in though.

We had three bottles of wine, taking the total to £163 including service, and after the £52 saving on food.  This was steep enough for what we had, but without the offer, paying over £200 for 3 people for this would be ridiculous.  A serious disappointment.

An "authentic" disaster and two old faithfuls

We’re off to see Eddie Izzard at the Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus, and have decided we fancy trying somewhere new, preferably Chinese.  Ba Shan in Romilly Street has kept coming up on Opentable, with special offers of 25% off food, so we decide to give that a go.

We’re slightly late for our 6pm booking, and the place seems very busy pre-theatre on a Friday. After just a short wait, we’re taken through the maze-like arrangement of rooms to our table in a small room of just 12 covers.  Everyone else in there is Chinese, which makes us optimistic – one table has the remains of a huge fish which they had clearly enjoyed.

We’d read about the menu from the “Revolutionary Cookbook” and about the Hunanese cuisine of chillies, chillies and more chillies. So we’re less surprised to see photos of Chairman Mao adorning the walls, though other décor is attractively classical Chinese. His exhortations are scattered through the menu too, though there’s no sign of his Little Red Book. There’s a rough and ready feel to the place, but that’s fine for a quick meal.

We order food and a bottle of South African Chenin Blanc at £22.  Our “fish-fragrant prawns” arrives very promptly – slightly odd, flabby, possibly reconstituted, deep-fried prawns with a fiery chilli dipping sauce.  We’ve finished these before the pork dumplings arrive (having been sent back by the table next to us). This is a good portion of 8 or so dumplings, slippery and messy, but with a good herbal fragrance  - no chillies.

The range of choice of mains was impressive, if somewhat bizarre.  We have settled on “bamboo-fragrant chicken” and Dry-wok twice cooked pork, with some plain steamed rice.  It’s then that we realise that “authentic” is not a synonym for “good”.

The chicken dish arrives literally covered in dried red chillies. We’re OK with that, sifting through to find the meat, and burning our mouths only a little bit. But the chicken, when you got to it, was tough and chewy, very small pieces no doubt extracted from dubious regions of the bird. Revolutionary fervour would be needed to enjoy that one.

The pork dish had slightly fewer chillies, but was every bit as spicy. Another “authentic” dish of predominantly fat on thin slivers of tasteless pork. Nothing as bourgeois as edible meat.

We surrendered. The capitalist running dogs were defeated. Less resistance than even paper tigers.

OK, the Chinese punters seemed to be enjoying themselves, slurping their way through their even more strange-looking dishes and shouting orders to the waitresses in Mandarin (I’m guessing here). So it’s not without atmosphere.   The waitress has in fact been fairly attentive, given that half the time she wasn’t in the room.

The 25% off was duly administered without question (a saving of £10) and a standard 12.5% service charge applied, bringing the total (with two extra glasses of wine) to just £73.  You’d struggle to get a meal for that price elsewhere in this area – and boy did we struggle.

Two old favourites came up trumps however.  Friends took us back to Chez Bruce to celebrate B’s birthday – the lunchtime menu there is most impressive, a wide range of excellent dishes to choose from for each course, at a very modest price. And a manageable wine list too.  My selections were brill sashimi to start (brill indeed, fresh, light with a hit of wasabi on the side) and duck cassoulet for main course – deeply rich, warming mix of duck done three ways.  Thank you guys!

And for my birthday we returned to our local Brasserie Vacherin for a late lunch. Service here can be variable, but on this occasion it was fine, though we weren’t in any rush.  The “aromatic and luscious” Viognier from Languedoc was £24.50.  B had the Atlantic prawns smothered in garlic to start – a good sized portion, while I had tuna tartare. For mains we stayed with the fishy theme and had fillet of seabass (grilled, good and meaty) and supreme of hake with mussels in a very light tomato sauce (rich and flavoursome). And to celebrate we share a lovely crepe suzettes.  A second bottle, some sparkling water and chips, plus 12.5% service take the total to £117, so just over £50 for the food, very good value.

Disappointing Boxing Day lunch

It’s Boxing Day and we’ve booked to go back to The Rendezvous in Westerham for lunch.  We’d been on Boxing Day a couple of times, four or five years ago, so we’re quite looking forward to it.  And when we’re able to find a parking spot really close by, we’re in a really positive mood.

It’s a very attractive place, with lots of light from the big windows, clearly French but without being clichéd. There are about 4 or 5 other couples in when we arrive – all of whom turn to stare at us as if we were aliens!  We have between us halved the average age in the room – yes, even us! -  and this seems to be an unwelcome intrusion!  God knows what would happen if a 25-year old strayed in.

We are given a nice table by the window, where I can watch the excitements of Westerham pass by – two dog-walkers in an hour. The table is quite small, cluttered with cutlery glasses, a Xmas table setting and the basket of bread – hardly room for the wine and water.   The bread is lovely, pain rustique-style, auguring well for the set meal to come (at a very reasonable £25 a head on Boxing Day).  The wine list is on the pricey side, but we manage to find a Picpoul Pinet Clos Isabelle for £24.

B orders the scallops (supplement £3) to start, while I go for the mushroom risotto.  This comes nicely dressed with pesto and parmesan slices. But from here it goes downhill – we’ve both ordered the roast pheasant for main course – big mistake!   When we came a few years back, D had ordered the pheasant and remarked “it wasn’t very gamey” – when we sympathised she said “No, I don’t like it gamey!”.   Well, this time made up for it. Both our portions were dry, tough and with a harsh tang. The roasted root vegetables did nothing to lift it, and we both had to leave it half-eaten.

No comment from the waitress, presuming I guess that our teeth weren’t up to it.  Dessert was a little better – a crème brulée, was tasty but not bruléed enough; the ice hockey puck of Christmas pudding was lighter than it looked, but nothing special.

The place has filled up while we’re there, with a few other tables of people under 80. But it’s not what you’d call “buzzy”!   There’s a cover charge of £1.50 each (worth it for the bread I suppose, but only a 10% service charge, which for Boxing Day is impressive, making the total just £92.  But such a disappointment.