Italian in Coulsdon

After suggesting it a few times, I finally persuade B that we should re-visit our favourite, friendly Italian restaurant, Pulcinella,down in Coulsdon. We get the bus and walk along the street, only to suddenly realise that it is no longer there.  There is a suchi/robata grill place in its stead, but we didn't have our mouths set right for that, so we instead go to the other Italian La Scarpetta.


We have been here before, and it's been fine, but it didn't have the intimacy of Pulcinella, with its specials board. The waiter is friendly enough, and though the place is quiet when we arrive, a couple of other of tables-worth of people to come in.


We have the house white, Trebbiano, at a modest £18 and share a chicken livers starter. This comes on a crostini (o?), with a rich sauce with a fair chilli kick to it. B has scallops in bacon on pesto angel hair pasts. This amounts to the three scallops/bacon pieces and a lot of quite sticky pasta. Tasty but a bit salty was the verdict.


My choice was spaghetti scoglio - mussels, clams and prawns, again in a slightly chilli sauce. Pretty good too, with lots of seafood


The menu had an amazing allergen list, including celery and lupin!  Who puts lupin in food?
With a second bottle of wine, this comes to £74 without service. The waiter has tried hard to be friendly, but suggesting Pulcinella closed three years ago was silly.


We'll maybe try the sushi place next time.

Another very good Chinese

Another wine-tasting, and another Chinese with T&K, though this time we are in Westminster.  We often visit Dim T in Wilton Road after this tasting, but this year I’ve found a Chinese restaurant off Horseferry Road – Má La Sichuan.  It’s not as stylish as Yming last week, but smart enough with dark wood tables, oriental design screens and clumps of bamboo.                                    

As last week, we start off with prawn crackers and bottle of red (Primitivo, £26) and of white (SA Chenin Blanc, £26), but this time we only have one of each.  The menu here is pretty extensive too, with some unusual dishes, though without the name-dropping. There are several two- or three-chilli dishes, with the added boast “This dish can be made extra or super spicy.”!  Not for the faint-hearted.  

There are two soft shell crab options for T&B to choose between – they go for the three-chilli, red chilli crispy version, highlighted as a “special”. It certainly is hot, but with plenty of crab flavour too. We also have three dumpling dishes: “specials” – ‘Chao Shou’ which are chicken dumplings with spicy sesame peanut sauce (2 chillies) which is very interesting; “Northern Chinese Crescent Dumplings”, a more standard pork and chives dumpling – and a conventional steamed scallops dumpling, which for some reason takes longer to arrive.  

We steer clear of some of the more challenging main courses like fresh eel with lemongrass,  sliced pig intestines, duck tongue and spicy pig’s ear.  Instead we have the Gongbao king prawns, with sweet sour sauce and cashew nuts – good sized, firm prawns; aromatic lamb with cumin – rich and dense; fragrant black pepper rib-eye beef, which comes stir fried with edamame and asparagus; and, fragrant chilli chicken, a two-chilli special.  These are supported by some Singapore noodles and steamed rice.  

Service has been good – unobtrusive and fairly prompt. With 12.5% service the total comes to £162. Oddly, if we had had 4 bottles of wine, the bill would have been almost exactly the same as Yming last week. 

Choosing between the two?  Yming was more stylish, and more convenient generally; its specials (we had one as starter and one as main) fewer but maybe more distinctive. Mal Sichuan was probably more authentic Sichuan, certainly with hotter dishes, with some adventure to be had if you’re brave enough!  We’d happily return to either.

Excellent Chinese in Soho

We are going to a wine tasting in Tobacco Dock in Wapping with friends T&K, and as tradition demands we are looking for some Asian food afterwards, mid-afternoon. Locally there doesn’t seem to be anywhere open, so some Googling is required.  We’ve never had a great deal of luck in Chinatown itself, so I look a bit further afield and eventually find Yming on the corner of Greek Street and Romilly Street.  

I booked us in for 3.30pm, but they say they need the table back by 5pm. So we decide to leave the tasting earlier, about 2.30pm, and grab a taxi. What we hadn’t allowed for was the Lord Mayor’s Show – many roads were closed, and those that weren’t were very busy. So it is gone 3.15pm by the time we get there anyway.  

There are only two other tables occupied when we arrive, which seemed a bit surprising. So we get a very nice table in the corner by a window - as it's on a corner there are windows on two sides, so it is very light. The atmosphere is very relaxing. The décor is a sort of pale blue/green, with cloths and napkins  - and waiters shirts - to match; even the chopsticks are the same colour. Much nicer than the usual garish red and gold clichés nearby in Gerard Street.  

The menu is huge, though they don’t do dim sum. As well as the usual range of starters and various main course permutations, there is a big list of wrap and of soups. There is also a “special” menu, with dishes recommended by notables such as Matthew Fort and Jay Rayner, and even a dish called Jonathan Miller’s sea bass. The wine list goes up in price quite quickly so we stick to the house Chilean Sauvignon Blanc, and Merlot at £21.  

The waiter comes over before we’ve really had a chance to get to grips with the menu, so as well as the wine we order some prawn crackers to keep us going while we decide.  Though we do take our time, the crackers don’t arrive until after we’ve ordered – though fortunately the wine was prompt! 

For starters we have “Phoenix Tail - big prawns wrapped in bacon” off the special menu, soft shell crab (a must for both B and T), vegetarian spring rolls and steamed meat dumplings. The Phoenix Tail was very good, big as advertised, full of flavour with a good portion of bacon.  The crab was quite good – enough meat rather than all batter as some are – but not a very large portion. The spring rolls (4), were also rather modest size, but the dipping sauce they came with was very interesting.  We’ve eaten all these before the dumplings arrive which was a bit irritating.  But when they come, there are again four in the steamer, very tasty and hot.  

It’s not a long wait for the mains. K chooses the Tibetan garlic lamb. This comes with  peanuts and a good hit of chilli – very succulent too. B goes for the simple steamed prawns with garlic, which are again large and don’t disappoint on the garlic front.  T’s choice is shredded duck, a slightly smaller portion, but again with plenty of chilli. I’m the only one to choose from the special menu, “Double braised pork in Hot Pot” – the one recommended by Fort, Rayner and Jonathan Meades, billed as “soft and tender”.  It certainly is that, a dark deep flavour. There are 7 or 8 large slices of belly pork, that yield to chopsticks easily and melt in the mouth. These guys know what they are talking about.  

We also have boiled rice and Shanghai noodles – quite thick noodles with shredded pork and vegetables, in a tasty, slightly hot sauce.

The first waiter was slightly distant in classic Chinatown style (though not as famously rude as some), but others were more friendly with the more mature guy sorting the bill almost genial. Maybe that’s because with 4 bottles of wine the total was £215 (incl 12.5% service) for the four of us.  

We considered whether it might be a good venue for Christmas and Easter get-togethers. There is a private room downstairs in a rather vile pink and rather close to the toilets – so probably not.  

We are finished eating by 5pm, and the restaurant is now full, with some people having been turned away, but they don’t bother us as we finish off our wine. We were impressed and will pretty certainly go back, but it’s definitely somewhere to book rather than just rock up.