Fatt Pundit

 We are meeting up with E and J, and they have suggested the Fatt Pundit in Berwick Street, having previously been to the one in Maiden Lane.  The unusual name apparently reflects their Indo-Chinese heritage, with Fatt being a common surname and Pundit meaning scholar. 
We are meeting on a Saturday at 1pm, so it's no surprise the small restaurant is busy when we arrive. They have to move some people around to accommodate us. It's a very functional, grey place, but the head waiter is a larger than life figure brightening the place up. The turn-round in tables is quite rapid, meaning that it swings from full and noisy to nearly empty quite quickly - but everyone seems to be having a good time. 

E is vegetarian, so from the limited choice of starters we focus on the momo dumplings - a vegetable one for her (very green ones containing spinach and courgettes), while rest of us share the chicken, beef and goat ones, which conveniently come as 3 portions each. The goat is interesting, the beef really quite spicy. 

We follow this up with chilly prawns and soft shell crab, Manchurian chicken and chilly venison, with burnt ginger rice. E has deep-fried okra and chilly paneer, despite the waiter pushing the crackling spinach because she thinks that the sweet yogurt, date and place sauce and pomegranate will be too sweet. 

The prawns are excellent - could have had a second portion. They are spicy but with a warm, smooth sauce. The crab is a very pretty example - a lightly battered, visibly whole crab with plenty of meat on it. The meat dishes are less special but still pretty good. E's okra is a big portion, very similar to zuchini fritti in Italian restaurants. 

E&J like their desserts, so we have a sizzling chocolate brownie and something called a Lady Kenny to share. The brownie comes a hot plate and is topped with ice cream - super - while the other dish (origins of its name vary online and may or may not have something to do with the first Viceroy's wife's name) is a sort of gulab juman - good but not special. 

We were drinking Vinho Verde at a modest £28 a bottle; J has a couple of cocktails. The bill comes to £338 including service, which is pretty fair for an interesting meal in this part of town. We may well try out the Maiden Lane branch sometime. 

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!

Return to Soho Vietnamese

 The plan is to meet E and her new squeeze before going to the theatre. But unfortunately he has to work late so it's just the three of us. As one of the options we suggested, E has booked us in quite early (5.30) for dinner at Cay Tre in Dean Street. We had been there some time ago with 131-ers and it's also a possibility for an upcoming reunion.

We arrive a bit early and are shown to our table, though we are warned the kitchen won't open for 10 minutes.  Before we are settled in, E joins us. It's a buzzy place and we are towards the back, where the group area would be. We order a bottle of Chilean SB at £32 and some sparkling water (£2). 

The menu is quite extensive, and includes many vegetarian dishes that will suit E. There's a whole page of pho. After a little discussion about a set seafood dish, we opt to stay with standard starters and mains. 

I have the crispy crab parcel to start. This is quite dense, including pork, prawn and mushrooms as well, but still tasting of crab. It's also very deep fried. B has the salt and pepper soft shell crab. This is a good size, recognisably crab-shaped. She is also impressed with the dressing that comes with it, fresh and bright. E chooses a mango salad with tofu. This seems quite small with not a lot of mango but she is happy with it. 

I'd been trying to decide between the chilli and lemongrass chicken and the "shaking" beef, and eventually settle on the latter. It comes as cubes of beef with fried peppers and onion, and a garlic sauce. The first few pieces are melt in the mouth, but a couple of the later ones had some gristle. B has "one bowl" vermicelli with prawns in chilli and garlic. There are plenty of prawns (shell on) and lots of flavour - she even eats lots of the vermicelli. E chooses the okra and aubergine curry, and we share some jasmine rice (which we don't really need). 

Service has been fine, they are used to rushing people through, so we get away in time for the show. It has been rather noisy, so not sure it's ideal for our group. Other tables have some huge bowls, much larger than B's, presumably the pho. With a second bottle of wine, the bill comes up just short of £180 (13% service again). It works as an interesting pre-theatre place, but not one for an intimate restful dinner.

Japanese in Soho

 We've arranged to meet up with T&K for lunch and decided upon Robata, a Japanese in Old Compton Street. It features grills as much as sushi, to suits us better.  Then a tube strike is announced, so we decide instead go to La Gamba, as it's within reach of Waterloo.  But the strike is called off, so we revert to Plan A.

We meet for a drink beforehand at the French House just round the corner. This throw-back place is full of character and charm - but for its prices, where anything other than the house wine is £36 a bottle.

The style of the restaurant is modern cafe, with lots of stools and high tables. Fortunately, our table is not one of those. There's a rather odd motto in neon on the wall, something like "I used to love you but now I love sake". 

The staff are friendly and smiley. We order the Chilean SB (£30), which is delivered promptly. We also order a dish of spicy edamame beans (other options are available) while we select from the lengthy menu. This is amazing - not just a few sprinkles of chilli on top, but a deep and dense sauce that really sets your a-tingling. A very good omen of what it to come. 

We choose from the menu divided into raws and sushi; small plates; robata skewers (oddly priced by the piece, but with a minimum of 2); bao buns; and robata large. There are sides and rice, but we decide against these, though the truffle fries did get some attention. 

Soft shell crab (always a favourite) features as a sushi roll or bao bun - we settle on the former, as we will have a beef brisket bun as well.   We have the tuna tartare and beef tataki off this list too.  The soft shell crab roll was good - not as good as a whole crab - the beef came with an interesting sauce, but I thought the tuna was a little dull. 

The karaage - now our favourite Japanese chicken dish - was good and hot, with a moderately spicy sauce - maybe not quite as good as the one in Yatay in Wardour Street we had some time ago but pretty acceptable. We had two types of gyozas - pork and kimchi - the latter also having a kick. 

For skewers we had the scallops (nicely judged, moist but with a crispiness) and the lamb breast (fatty, but very tasty).  And we also plumped for the signature dish of Iberico pork pluma as a "large plate". B had her eye on this from the start - and it was indeed excellent, moist, tender, full of flavour. 

After all this, we decide we haven't had quite enough, so order a prawn tempura roll (which as a sushi roll was not quite what B had expected) and chicken thigh skewer, which was rich and dense. 

With three bottles of wine, and 12.5% service the total comes to £280.  So it's not a cheap option, despite its low-key decor. But the flavours and quality do make it feel like a reasonable price. WE'd go back and happily recommend it to others. 

Japanese in Wardour Street

 We're meeting up with a gang of old friends, so need somewhere interesting that can fit in 10 of us and two kids. B had spotted a Japanese place in Wardour Street  - Yatay - that had featured in the Guardian "Blind Dates" column, so that is where we end up choosing. 

With that number they ask that you book one of their set menus, at £45, £65 or £95. Unsurprisingly, we opt for £45. So after a quick drink in O'Neill's across the road, we fetch up at 1pm. It's not very busy downstairs, but we get shown upstairs where we have the place to ourselves. Downstairs had high tables and stools but upstairs is better for us old folk, with normal tables. Plenty of room for the pushchair too.  It's a dark, sultry looking place, with quite loud music - natural blind date sort of place - but also some interesting abstract art.

The charming maitresse d' welcomes us and explains the menu. Basically it comes down to five courses. First up is "Bites".  Edamame beans are common enough - a large portion. "Dirty fries" is an unusual mix of gyoza skins fried with jalapeno mayo - very good, spicy and crunchy. Plus a selection of pickles that went far beyond what you might expect.

Then there are "Small Plates". These are an interesting -and again spicy - seaweed salad, a raw salmon tataki - less interesting- and chicken karaage. This last is super, spicy chicken nuggets fried in garlic and ginger supported by a stunning yellow/pink tofu dip.

Next come Robata, in two waves. First there is a trout skewer, beautifully done, crisp on the outside, melting inside. This is matched with a pork skewer - large pieces of tasty pork - and a surprisingly good beetroot and garlic skewer. 

Plates are cleared away and larger ones replace them for the last main dishes. These are "hen" supreme (a large dish of chicken in a sticky sauce), charred sweet potato and a mouth-tingling spinach in sesame and chilli. Plus portions of steamed rice. By this time most of us are struggling, and we end up getting quite a lot to take away in cleverly wrapped foil parcels. 

Finally there is a house dessert, a fairly dull sponge cake with a tooth-achingly sweet sauce. 

The wine list is short but not cheap, so we end up with the house white, a Spanish Verdejo at £30, plus a few beers and soft drinks. Service has been very attentive, a bit swift if anything, and we get used to the volume of the music. Dishes have been served so that each pair of us has the full range, so it would be quite easy to replicate in a smaller group.  Total £740 with service between 10, including a few bits for the children. Very good indeed.

  

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.

Good food, poor service

Tamarind has a Michelin star, which presumably means they do everything well. So I wonder what the owners think of their off-shoot Tamarind Kitchen.  Sitting on Wardour Street on the site of the much-missed Imli, Tamarind Kitchen is attractively decorated and presumably has a menu designed by the Tamarind chefs.  But in a demonstration that you need to get everything right, the poor service means the place leaves a lot to be desired.

It’s not as if it is busy.  The four of us occupy a nice table in the window, and there are just two other people in.  The staff are friendly, but having to apologise for extremely slow service over and again, and delivering lukewarm food doesn’t make for the greatest  experience.

Our table is laid for 6, but for some reason the waitress only clears one place setting. And though we say we don’t want water, the water glasses only get cleared when we pile them all together on the side.

The menu is divided into Starters, Grills and Mains, but the grills are described to us as not being a meal in themselves, despite being priced as if they were.  There’s soft shell crab as a starter, so B and T both have to order that. K goes for the Pav Bhaji and I have the lamb mince version Keema Pav – some time later.  Maybe the oven isn’t working properly and they can’t produce more than one dish at a time: the Pav Bhaji arrives and is almost completely finished before the soft shell crab is served, with my dish bringing up the rear.

To be fair, the Pav dishes are both full of flavour, with K’s having quite a kick. B is less impressed with the crab, which is predominantly batter.

It’s a similar experience with the main courses. They did manage to get three of the dishes and the rice and dhal to arrive together, but T’s mixed platter of chicken tikka, lamb kebab and prawns followed some way behind.  My bhuna gosht was rich and very tasty, but not warm enough. B’s prawn curry was good and K’s chicken rezala (a curry with yoghurt and cashews) excellent. T’s platter was rather average and was as suggested not that large.

The side dish of 24 hour cooked black dhal was again tasty but not hot enough; the spinach was fine. We also had a steamed rice and a couple of naan breads.

We chose a SA Chenin Blanc (at £34 one of the cheapest wines on a list that shoots up quickly), and the first bottle arrives promptly enough. But when we order a second, the waitress drains the first one and seems to decide that that’s enough for now, and then to forget all about it.  She’s a bit better with the third bottle.

So with service charge that all comes to £270.  If the service and temperature of all the dishes had been OK, then that would have been fair, but it feels a bit much for what we experienced. I suppose we could have taken off the “discretionary” service charge, but one rarely does.

We’ve had a similar experience, though with ruder staff, at Cinnamon Bazaar once, but on a second visit it was fine. Perhaps the same may be true here.  In an evening when it is busier maybe the A-team are on duty and things go smoothly – but I’m not sure I’m going to rush back to find out.

Soho Japanese

We’re meeting up with M&G and they wanted to go to a Japanese restaurant, as they will be off to Japan soon.  We’re pleased with this idea as many people reject Japanese places as being all about raw fish, when usually there is plenty of other choice too, so we don’t often find people to try them with.

M finds a place in Old Compton St called Shack-Fuyu, which turns out to be part of the Bone Daddies group. We’d been before to a Bone Daddies ramen bar in Peter St after B had seen the head chef on TV. That had been good (we had salmon tartare, soft-shell crab; Thai green chicken curry ramen)  but a bit café-like and rushed.  Shack-Fuyu is more stylish, with booths for 6 as well as tables for two.

They have an extensive range of saké, including sparkling ones which I’d never heard of before, but we stick with the wine – Le Versant viognier from France at £28.  When G arrives he chooses an Asahi beer.  A very friendly waitress, Teresa,  (Italian, Spanish? Certainly not Japanese) introduces herself to us as our dedicated waitress – which since she’s the only one there is not surprising.  But it does make it easier to question her about the menu.

It’s a “concept” again. It’s not entirely clear which dishes are for sharing and which not. The beef hot stone rice comes recommended.   So we choose that along with others chosen by price – 4 cheaper ones, 3 more expensive plus a burnt cauliflower (that’s how it’s billed) as a token vegetable.  We ask to have the cheaper ones first, but in the end they come as and when.

First to arrive is the raw tuna tacos. There are just two, but they divide up easily enough. The prawn tempura are brilliant – such a light batter and a spicy mayo on the side – and the waygu beef tataki with a ginger soy dressing amazing,  Crispy squid arrive in a huge bowl – good, though they need the mayo from the prawns to perk them up a bit.

Next up is the Iberico pork “pluma” with spring onions (loads, finely chopped) which is also good, the burnt cauliflower, with jalapenos and in a sesame sauce, which was probably the only disappointing dish, and duck gyoza. The five gyoza are presented in a a unique way – they claim nowhere else in London does this – linked together by a light crispy topping.  Finally the beef hot stone rice – good and filling but not as special as some of the other dishes.

I’m still a little peckish so G and I tuck into a pork cheek skewer and seabass ceviche as well.  Both of these excel too.

We’ve had three bottles of wine and G had a second pint. With service that takes the bill to £212, excellent value for all the tasty dishes. 

As we come out we see there is a big queue for the Japanese restaurant next door. Young people obviously! Maybe that’s cheaper, but I think it would struggle to beat Shack-Fuyu for flavour.