Three interesting new places in a busy week

 We find ourselves in Kingston and are heading towards the Giggling Squid, a reliable favourite. As we walk along Charter Quay by the Hogsmill River tributary, we pass a Chinese restaurant which we've never been in because it always looks empty. But today, despite it being a Monday, it is very busy, with several tables occupied by Chinese people.

So we change our minds and decide to give Sanxia Renjia a go. We're shown to a window table with a nice view and quickly order a bottle of French SB at £30. It comes promptly, served by a very smiley waiter.  It is quite a big place, but sectioned off into smaller areas so that it doesn't feel daunting. 

The menu covers both Sichuan and Cantonese cuisines. There's also a substantial dim sum section. The Sichuan section offers several Clay Pot and Dry Pot options, but the aromatic crab with ginger and spring onion from the "Traditional Chinese" list has caught our eye.  Because of this, we decide just to have one starter between us - a pan-fried pork dumpling.  Typically there are three of these, making sharing trickier. They are very lightly fried, but very well-flavoured.

We had asked when ordering whether the crab came whole, and were assured that the kitchen will have cracked it open for us. The main shell with the brown meat had been, but the crab claws and legs hadn't so we had to ask for the crackers to get at the white meat. With the sauce (loads of ginger) on, it all got rather messy, but we were well-supplied with napkins and little moistened towels - the spicy sauce option would be very challenging I imagine. 

Along with the crab we had the cumin lamb (marked "hot and spicy") and fried rice with tobiko, prawns and scallops. The lamb was indeed covered with chilli pieces, but if you avoided those it wasn't too spicy otherwise.  Tobiko it turns out is a golden coloured fish eggs concoction (Wikipedia tells me it is flying fish roe) piled on top of the rice. There were plenty of prawns, but scallops were hard to find, probably cut up very small. 

With a second bottle of wine and 12.5% service (which has been friendly and helpful) the bill comes to £140.  Certainly worth another visit. 

A couple of days later we are meeting up with T&K in town.  T has chosen The Seafood Bar on Dean Street, as he knows some of their Amsterdam branches through his nephew who lives there.  It's a nice bright place, not very busy on a mid-week lunchtime.  We order some wine - a light, fruity Chardonnay at £36 - from the chatty waiter, who introduced himself as Florian. 

The menu is quite remarkable. As well as several kinds of oyster, there are loads of permutations of fresh seafood - Fruits de Mer, Mixed Grill, Combinations, Plateau - and a few other dishes from the Plancha.   B has seabass ceviche to start, which she raves over. She follows up with a Plateau - crevettes, smoked salmon, smoked mackerel rillettes, poached salmon, seafood salad. Unsurprisingly, she can't finish that. I have clams with white wine, garlic and cream sauce to start. This is a big warming bowl in a sauce commonly linked with mussels. My main course was gambas, grilled with salsa verde and chilli - have a dozen of them.  Full of flavour, with the chilli being quite subtle. 

T&K have scallops with mushrooms and chorizo and tempura oysters, in attractive shells, to start. Both looked very good. Their mains were a massive fruits de mer and filleted lemon sole. We also have some truffled chips, plain chips and mixed salad. 

We have three bottles of wine in all; service is an unusual 11.5%, making the total £326 for 4.  Definitely a good place for seafood lovers. 

Finally, on Friday evening we meet up with S&L. They like their cocktails, so we go first to Blind Spot at St Martin's Hotel. They have a range called "Spin the Globe" - unusual combinations named after various cities. A particularly odd one is called Kingston (Jamaica) which includes Guinness but comes out transparent. When we ask about this, we're told that the coconut juice combines with the stout to make it clear - very odd.

Then we walk up St Martin's Lane to Gilgamesh which S had booked because she'd received a 50% off food offer.   Named after the Sumerian king/demi-god, it describes itself as "pan-Asian".  By coincidence, I was catching up on the Observer the day before only to find a Jay Rayner review of the place - he clearly didn't like it at all! 

Admittedly, the headline "It's a weird trip" is accurate enough. We were shown downstairs to a corner table where the decor is relief depictions of Sumerian scenes. As it's quite early, there aren't many other people in as yet so they accommodate our request to turn the music down (Sade and ambient music), apart from two rather severe looking heavies at a large table nearby. 

Ignoring Rayner's comments, we press on with the prawn crackers - both white Chinese and brown Thai versions - and a rather good salsa.  We'd checked the wine list in advance and managed to find a Spanish Macabeo/SB for £38 - after that it gets scary. 

For starters, we had the cocktail glass full of popcorn shrimp (which was great), soft shell crab (quite meaty), a rich duck, watermelon and cashew nut salad and a couple of steamed dumplings off the dim sum list. 

For main, B and I share a deliciously tender "shaking beef" fillet chunks and a baked seabass fillet. S's Thai green chicken curry was a bit ordinary, but L's beef rendang with roti was also really good - a serious kick to it.  We also has some jasmine rice and pak choi. 

Desserts followed - Asian banana crumble and chocolate fondant (very gooey). 

Part way through the meal, the room started to fill up. Six or seven very scantily dressed young women joined the heavies' table. Several other tables had an older man surrounded by younger women - though I suppose that was true of our table too, though the dress code was very different!  And as I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for the others  to come back from the loo, more young ladies in impossibly short skirts were coming down the stairs.

We had 3 bottles of wine and service was 12.5%. The discount offer saved us £100, leaving the total at a very reasonable £260 for 4. Even at full price it was worth it for the experience!

Esher Chinese

 We are in Esher for a showing of "The Great Escaper" in the Everyman. Someone had recommended a Japanese place, but that seems to have closed down, so we try the Chinese, the Good Earth. There are other branches in Wandsworth, Knightsbridge and Mill Hill, and a few "Express" outlets too. 

It's a smart place, with lots of red and gold, some classic Chinese pictures on the walls. Although there is only one other couple in, we are asked if we have a reservation, but then given a nice table in the window overlooking the High Street. The chopsticks are elegant, in fancy wrappers, there is a classy glass tray for dishes in the centre of the table (lazy susans on larger tables) and to B's great amusement we are presented with two little buttons, which when doused in hot water expand into hot towels. 

I'd looked at the menu beforehand, and it seemed quite expensive - £20 for soft-shelled crab starter, £25 for sweet and sour pork. The wine list wasn't so bad, so we settle on the French Viognier at £34. Fortunately though, there is also an express lunch menu at £18.80 for two courses and a range of dim sum dumplings at £5 per portion. 

So we decide on a combination of the two. From the express menu we order lettuce wrapped chicken and spicy lamb with lemongrass, egg-fried rice and vegetables. Dim sum dumplings were scallops, and prawn and chive. I also throw in a Dragon's Whiskers prawns from the starters list. 

The lettuce chicken and Dragon's Whiskers come first. The chopped chicken comes with some vegetables and a tasty sauce (billed as plum sauce, but lighter than that). A bit messy to eat, so the hot towels come in handy. DW is large prawns in shredded pastry, also rather messy, but certainly tasty. The dumplings come next. Scallops are really good; the wrapping is a bit heavy on both, so the chilli sauce is welcome. 

Finally the lamb, rice and vegetables, all served on one beautifully decorated plate on the glass tray; our starter plates have been replaced with smart blue and white bowls and plates. The lamb is good and spicy, with clear chilli flakes in it. The rice has identifiable pieces of scrambled egg, and the good range of vegetables (peppers, carrots, asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms and something that may or may not have been celery) were all fresh and deliciously al dente.  

Unusually for us we treat ourselves to a dessert. Harking back to many years ago we order the toffee bananas. These are gorgeously crispy with sesame seeds; B reckons we should have had ice cream with them, and tells the couple at the next table, who duly order that and agree.

The waiter has been smiley and helpful without intruding; wine glasses topped up efficiently. The place is quite large, but has filled up a little while we were there. No background music.  

With a second bottle of wine, the bill goes up to a bit over £130 - with an odd 13% service charge. That's fine, but I imagine an evening meal from the main menu would be much more. Admittedly, the portions do seem to be quite large from what we saw at other tables, but I think our lunch deal worked pretty well. If the Japanese doesn't open up again, we will probably go back. 

RETURN TO LOCAL CHINESE

 

It’s farmer’s market day and we’re considering where to go afterwards. The last few times at Gordon Bennett were a little disappointing, so it’s a change of scene. We think about Boat, a local Japanese, but we haven’t researched the menu enough to know whether that will suit. So we go to Naturally Chinese, on a corner nearby, where we had eaten only once before.

Now, I’m not against technology per se, though I have been falling behind a bit lately.  Here, they expect you to pull up the menu on your smartphone using a QR code. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. So they lend us a tablet to scroll through the menu – and then write down our order on a paper pad! Technology is fine if it improves the experience: ordering beer from an app in a crowded Twickenham pub was good as you avoided the scrum at the bar; a touch-screen table-top menu was less successful, as it had become greasy. Here, the menu is laid out well-enough, but unlike with a paper menu you couldn’t get a simple overview of what was on offer.

Anyway, we knew we wanted dim sum, which they advertise as a speciality. When we came before, the selection had seemed very limited, but now there is a good choice. We order two classic steamed dumplings - crabmeat and pumpkin, crystal prawn – and also steamed Shang Hai dumplings (pork in a “soup pocket”, with spoon provided). All fresh and interesting, not too much pumpkin. These were preceded by pork spring rolls in rice-paper – more like little sausages – and salt and chilli squid, good and crisp. We also had “thousand shreds” prawn – prawn wrapped in crispy kataifi patry, served with salad cream – which is impossible to eat politely, as you scatter pieces all across the table.

All the dim sum have been good, but we do feel we need a little more. So we decide on Singapore noodles and a beef dish (without looking again at the tablet). The friendly waitress talks us through the beef options, and we opt for ginger and spring onion. The noodles is a large portion, with plenty of chicken and shrimps, and a rather dominant curry flavour.   Beef rather ordinary.

We’ve had a couple of bottles of SA Chenin Blanc (£22.40 each), so the total has crept up to  £120 – a bit more than we’d normally pay for a dim sum lunch. But it has been enjoyable (attentive service, prompt arrival of dishes) so I’ve no doubt we’ll be back.

Catching up since July

I’ve been a bit remiss these last months, but here is a quick summary of places visited in the second half of the year. I no longer have all the details of what everyone had, and not all the prices, but I still have the memories!

India Club, Strand:  threatened with closure because of re-development, this throw-back to the 60s/70s was granted a reprieve. It used to be a traditional haunt of our Varsity match group, so we went along to celebrate. The room is basic – though the tables are no longer secured to the floor.  Drinks are obtained from the bar on the floor below – don’t expect anything beyond a Kingfisher or gin. Starters are standards – samosa, onion bhaji, plus a remarkably dangerous chilli bhaji. Mains are also fairly standard - lamb, butter chicken, dhal, aloo sag - but with good portions of rice and breads.  At £30 a head, it’s great fun.

Mar I Terra describes itself as “contemporary Spanish tapas”.  We’ve been before in the evening, but on this lunchtime visit after the Picasso exhibition at the Tate, we sit outside in the garden which is very pleasant.  Chilli prawns, crab-stuffed peppers, chicken livers, chorizo and morcilla with beans, chick peas are all good. Bill (with probably two bottles) comes to £92. Excellent – definitely recommend it if you are in the area. On a second visit in the early evening a couple of months later we have garlic prawns, sardines, chicken livers, beef, beans and jambon, chick peas (£75).

Guiseppe’s in Borough High Street has become B’s “go-to” restaurant. We went just the two of us first to research it, then as a group of 6, and then B went again with 4 other ex-colleagues. It’s as  clichéd as an Italian can be, short of candles in Chianti bottles. There are specials on the blackboard and all the traditional dishes you can remember.  Starters have included bresaola, scallops, prawns, calamari. Mains, spaghetti “My Way” (under a photo of Frank), veal Holstein, chicken Milanese with penne arrabiatta.  Good choice of Italian wines; generally around £50-£70 a head. Fine, convenient, but not sophisticated.

Ivy Market Grill . There are loads of Ivy spin-off places now, some of which have had unflatteringly reviews, but I think this in Covent Garden may have been the first one when the original restaurant closed for refurbishment for a while.  We went one lunchtime with S&L, and were sat next to Nicholas Lyndhurst (though he did ask to be moved!).  I had steak tartare followed by sea bass fillets and the bill came to £105 for the two of us. A very good experience. B went back again and that was good too.

Babur Brasserie I have reviewed before, but it remains worth the visit to Honor Oak Park.  Regional dishes feature strongly – this is no ordinary curry house. My meal this time was prawns and gourd to start followed by rabbit. At £106 for two this is good value.

The Oxo Tower Brasserie is a good place for a celebration. This time it was J’s 30^th, and there were 16 of us, on two tables of 8 with good river views. It’s not cheap though, and the wine does make the bill mount up. I had grilled crispy squid followed by chicken breast in a herb sauce and a tart.

Sticks ‘n’ Sushi, Wimbledon has rather less charm than its Covent Garden sister, the room being bigger and more open, with several refectory style tables, but has the same interesting menu and would be a nice reliable place to have on your doorstep. After the usual spicy edamame beans, we had beef tataki, crab croquettes, crudities and miso. Then shrimp rolls, crispy chicken rolls, duck breast and scallop and bacon sticks. With two bottles this is good value for £109

Chez Bruce:   I’ve reported on it several times, but it is still a reliable favourite for a good lunch. The parmesan crisps are still gorgeous and the atmosphere and service top-class. This time I had fishcakes with boquerones, followed by calf’s liver and then a caramel crisp. The set lunch price means this comes to £150 with a good amount of wine (though you have to hunt through the wine list to keep the cost down).

A Wong in Victoria has been around for a while, but though we’ve tried a couple of times we’ve not been able to get into this Michelin starred Chinese. So with S&L we book one evening and take on the challenging menu. It’s hard to decide how much to order, and I think in the end we were a bit conservative  for 4 Choices between us were prawn cracker, crab and prawn fritter;  duck and pancakes, lamb slider; kung pao chicken with peanuts, waygu beef, pork belly, “gold fish” dumplings, abalone, rice. £150 for two with not a lot of wine. Not yet convinced, but worth another try.

Our local tapas bar has been closed for refurbishment, but its sister, Las Fuentes in Selsdon was P&M’s choice for a birthday celebration for around 16 people. B and I had wild boar skewer, kidneys, chorizo, gambas pil pil and mussels. As good as the Purley version, with similar ambience.

After wine tasting we need something to soak up the alcohol, so twice in quick succession we go with T&K to Dim T in Victoria.  Each time we begin with beef wontons, chicken gyoza, edamame beans and various dim sum. The first time we go round again on the dim sum, but on the second visit we move on to firecracker prawns, special chicken stir-fry, chilli beef, pad thai, and Singapore noodles. It’s a big place, so generally no need to book. Coincidentally it cost £80 each time.

My colleagues organise a “round the world” series of lunches and this time we are in Jamaica at Cotton’s, Curtain Rd.   It’s a fairly basic place (though another outlet in Vauxhall is rather smarter) and being a “rum shack” does a good line in cocktails. I have the trio of vegetarian fritters followed by a lunchtime special of oxtail and bean stew with boiled rice. With one cocktail and a modest amount of wine my bill was £25.

Imperial China in Chinatown has become a regular dim sum place. After a wine tasting over in the City, we fetch up and order soft-shell crab followed by steamed king prawns, fillet beef and Singapore noodles. All for £100.

Masala Zone, Covent Garden  is another good place for a celebration, with lots of space and side rooms,  so we fetch up there for our housemate Christmas gathering. The Rajasthani  puppets dangling from the ceiling give it a great atmosphere, and despite the time of year we get good service too. There are 12 of us – any more and you have to have the set menu, but we are allowed to order individually. I have Delhi samosa, followed by Coondapur Duck, black dhal, spinach and steamed rice. With a good amount of wine this is £100 for two.  It would be interesting to try as a couple.

 

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.

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.

And here's March - a busy month

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.
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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.
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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 31^st, 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.

JANUARY ROUND-UP

It was B’s birthday and we finally get around to going to see the Late Turner exhibition at the Tate. So for lunch we decided to try the Rex Whistler restaurant there.  Understated it isn’t.  The semi-underground room  is covered with murals – expedition in pursuit of rare meats – making it very dark and forbidding. The place is pretty much full, with the obvious demographic – we’re probably the youngest there.  

Our table is down at the back squeezed in near the server’s area, but it is at least near one of the small windows so we do get some natural light. The “award-winning”  wine list is extensive but naturally not cheap – we settle for the Klein Konstantia SB at £30. Not  “quick wine”  though, despite being near to the servers.

The set menu is £25 for two courses, £30 for three – plus a weird £1 per table suggested donation to the Tate!  To start I have the Dorset crab with brioche crumb – two small dollops of encrusted crabmeat. The sweet brioche works well with the crab, of which there is plenty, though the fragments of shell I could have done without.  B has the crispy duck egg with ham hock and green beans. The egg was cooked just right- slightly runny – and the ham hock a good salty accompaniment. 

For mains course I have the chicken breast with mushrooms - here’s not a great choice. That’s fine its way, just a little dry and with not a lot of flavour. B has the sea bass, again with green beans, which is a rather small fillet and again not with a great deal of flavour.  I’m tempted into the dessert by the coffee and hazelnut trifle, which comes with a huge layer of whipped cream and very stodgy coffee sponge – I don’t get close to finishing it.

Overall, at £133, not a great success, apart from marvelling at the décor.

 The following week, we’re off to Ronnie Scott’s, and decide to go try a place on Shaftesbury Avenue called The Noodle House beforehand. There’s an offer on to include a glass of Prosecco – fine if you like warm wine.  But the place is buzzy and interesting and the wine (a Tempranillo) reasonable at £19.  We start with some chilli ginger edamame beans, then have crispy calamari – very nicely done, melt in the mouth and light batter – and duck dumplings full of meat.  For main course we had black pepper beef with peppers and butter prawns (spicy) with jasmine rice ( no noodles despite the name). All very tasty and pretty good for £60.

G&S are down for a few days, performing at the Jermyn St theatre and then going to conferences etc. So after the show on the Sunday we aim for Cinnamon Soho – only to find it shut.  So we wander the nearby streets and happen upon a tapas place called Pix Bar (for pinxtos) in Ganton Street. Apparently there are branches in Bateman St, Covent Garden, Islington and Notting Hill too.  It’s just a small bar really, with the pinxtos dishes on the bar in true Basque style.  £1.95 for the ones with short sticks in, £2.95 for larger ones with long sticks.  The small ones a basically slices of bread with toppings; the larger ones more interesting, some kept warm in a cabinet, chorizo, ham.  Between us we manage 11 small ones and 14 larger ones! With a couple of bottles of Rioja at £21 and a whisky that comes to £126.  The service has been very friendly and the little place is quite full, including a couple of tables of Spanish people happily chatting to each other.  A find.

The next day (Monday) we’ve signed up for the 4 of us to go for a 10-plate dinner at Crazy Bear in Whitfield St, “Fitzrovia” (is that really a place?) at a special offer price of £29.95 (normally £39.95).  Crazy is the word for it!  The ground floor is not too extreme I guess, but downstairs is a louche bar, all dark and seductive. The loos are weird – you arrive at what seems to be a brick wall and wander up and down looking for door or sign. Eventually someone comes to help you and presses a magic brick and, “open sesame”, a door appears.  Inside the loo, it’s all black and sparkles. I give up trying to find the urinals (which I guess must be somewhere in the darkness) and use a cubicle which is at least visible. Washing your hands is an experience too  - as hands from the ladies suddenly appear the other side. Very odd!

This ten-plate dinner turns out be roughly three courses.  There’s a sushi course – salmon and tuna – then a dim sum course (har gau and pork dumplings), with some edamame beans appearing on the, and then for mains duck, seabass, beef curry, pak choi and rice.  It’s all very good indeed.

Wine is not cheap £27 for a Spanish white and £29 for a Malbec, but at £233 for 4 people overall it felt like good value.

Staying down in Hove with M&G, we go out for dinner at a lovely little fish restaurant – The Little Fish Market.  It is little – perhaps ten tables – and when we arrive there is one couple already there.  The waiter is absolutely charming and friendly and chats away with us throughout  - no sales pitch just a straightforward discussion.

The main topic of that conversation was why they moved from an a la carte menu to a five course set menu for £50 a head. Basically it came down to the fact that with just one chef and one front of house it was hard to sustain a full a la carte.

So we settle down to the meal - trout terrine with crispy quail’s egg to begin – excellent, full of flavour; butternut squash ravioli – not quite my thing; for the central course there is a choice: I have the beef short rib with cabbage - B has the lemon sole; this is followed by sea bass fillet with crab mousse; and then mango and chocolate with coconut.

For taste none of these courses could be faulted. But you would have thought that perhaps the central course might have been a bit more substantial – as it was it seemed like 5 amuse bouches. A quick kebab on the way home seemed an attractive prospect!

M&G generously treated us, so I don’t recall the wines we had or the total bill.  So would I recommend it?  If you’re not that hungry and want some great flavours, then yes; if you’re starving, try the local curry house.

The following day after a bracing walk along the seafront into Brighton, we head to M&G’s favourite lunch spot – Plateau, by the Town Hall. Another small, intimate and friendly place, this also has a limited menu. The eponymous platters – meat, fish or veggie – and a few specials on the board.  B and M share the meat platter – a fine selection of cold charcuterie, more than they could cope with; G has the special option of two small plates – a boudin noir and ox cheeks; I go for the bavette steak with fries and chimchurri – a seriously hot sauce.

With a couple bottles of wine this comes to just £140 for the 4 of us. Friendly service too. Go!

G&S are down again and have a late train back to the North on a Sunday.  So what better than a dim sum in Chinatown? Lots of options, but we settle on Harbour City, a slightly smarter than average place. It’s pretty busy so we get sent upstairs – this is busy too, so they give us a table for 8 by the window.  We order wine and tea, then settle down to examining the dim sum menu. We end up with Vietnamese spring rolls (good), paper wrapped prawn (excellent), prawn dumplings (two types, both OK), beef dumplings (so-so), prawn dumpling in spicy soup (certainly spicy), grilled dumplings (fine) followed by a half crispy duck and pancakes.  At £124 for 4 (only B and I were drinking) that was a pretty good deal.

Karaoke restaurant in Horseferry Road

We’d been looking for a good Chinese around Victoria for a while, and apart from the expensive options of Grand Imperial at the Grosvenor Hotel, and Ken Lo in Ebury Street, we’d only found A Wong in Wilton Road. So when Google came up with Firecracker in Horseferry Road I thought we’d give it a try.

A Friday night seems convenient, so we head down to the less interesting end of Horseferry Rd, populated mainly with government offices and the hospital. Firecracker is downstairs, and although we are a little early, I’m daunted by the fact there’s no other punters in there – just family.  We’re shown through towards the back and seated at a pleasant enough table. 

The menu is fairly extensive so while we peruse it, we get some edamame beans with sea salt and spicy Thai crackers to go with the bottle of Argentinian Merlot (£19.50) and some Jasmine tea. As you can tell already this is not strictly a Chinese restaurant, but more an oriental fusion place.

Gradually we begin to realise that behind the glass partitions around us are a number of private rooms, which begin to fill up.  In one is clearly a hen party, a second seems to be a birthday party, and a third room fills up with people in Japanese-style fancy dress.  There are display screens in each, and only slowly do I realise that these are not some evening working sessions, but in fact karaoke.  The rooms are well soundproofed, but occasionally as the doors are opened we get a blast of the music from inside – though not enough to make an X-factor judgement.
From the long list of “small plates” and “dim sum” as starters,  we have a scallop siu mai dumpling – which is tasty but a little sticky – and a chicken and kimchi (pickle) gyoza parcel, which is pretty good.   There are loads of other options that appealed too, so maybe going in a group would give you chance to sample more options.

The main restaurant is starting to fill up a bit now too, mainly with couples, but it never gets all that full.

First choice of mains is a ribeye beef in black pepper sauce served in a hot stone pot.  This is a lovely dish, presented so well; melting beef, spicy sauce, green beans and mushrooms. To go with that we have the garlic chilli prawns. These grilled king prawns with garlic and chilli flakes are a little flabby and tasteless, certainly not a match for the beef. To support these mains we have a duck crispy noodle with beansprouts – a reasonable amount of tasty duck in amongst the carbs.

Service is friendly and attentive and the food comes in good time, especially as we are being entertained by the karaoke rooms.  With a couple more glasses of Merlot, the bill comes to £88, perhaps a little high for the food, but fine if you factor in location and experience.

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.

The best dim sum in London ?

THE BEST DIM SUM IN LONDON?

I’ve always fancied trying the dim sum at The Royal China Club on Baker Street, as it has always had great reviews, but for one reason or another never seem to have made it.  But today, we’ve been to a wine tasting at Lord’s and the bus is going right past, so now seems to be the time to go for it.

It’s about 3pm on  a Saturday, and the place is pretty busy with elegant looking people.  Although described as the smaller of the two Royal China restaurants on Baker St, it’s still quite large, and there’s no problem getting a table.

There are plenty of staff buzzing around taking orders, so we order Jasmine tea and a bottle of white Burgundy (£25), before settling down to review the extensive dim sum list.  There’s quite a range of things that you wouldn’t normally see in Gerard St, so it takes us a while to decide.  We select 7 or 8 dishes, including pan-fried duck breast, lobster dumplings and spicy crab cakes, as well as more usual steamed dumplings, sui mai and har gau.  The duck and the crab cakes arrive first – both are delicious. The rest of the dishes arrive steadily over the next 10 to 15 minutes, nicely paced, but fast enough to be tempting.  The thing that hits me is that the dumplings actually taste of something!   The dumplings themselves are light rather than chewy, and the fillings have a zing and zest which is remarkably fresh.

It’s starting to thin out a bit now, but we’re ready for another round: more lobster dumpling, sea bass rolls and pork puff, with some lotus leaf rice to bulk things out.  OK, so maybe we didn’t need all the rice, but it was good to have.

The 11 dishes, rice, wine and tea come to £103, plus 15% service, making £120.  That’s very good value for such tasty food, served smoothly and without fuss, in a lively atmosphere.  It’s the first time I’ve felt that dim sum was really tasty, rather than a vehicle for chilli sauce or soy.  We’d tried Yauatcha for my birthday back in January, and though that was good, it was rather poncy, and worked out at £158, so I think it comes second best to RCC.  Glad to have tried it at last – and to have been as impressed as I’d hoped I’d be.