January selection

M&S are over visiting as part of the Christmas festivities, and we’ve decided to go out to Obia, the smarter of our two fairly new local Italians. We invite K along as well. It describes itself as “Ristorante, Vinoteca, Bar”, but I think it’s unlikely you’d go in just for a drink, though there is an area with high stools.  There is a garden area too, where you can get snacks like arancini, but obviously we’re not going there on an early January evening.

It’s fairly busy when we get there at 7.30pm, with a couple of larger groups, as well as couples. Our table is near the main path through the restaurant, but as we are only 5, we can leave the most affected seat vacant.

The very friendly waiter/maitre d’ comes over and rattles off some of the specials, all of which sound nice. The menu is anyway pretty interesting.  I order the Soave at £19.50, though M has a Moretti on draught, and S a lime and soda.

Three of us have the grilled sardines and fennel off the specials list, while S has buffalo mozzarella. The sardines are very good, nicely marinated, and filleted.

For mains, between us, we have seabass fillets (specials), pan-fried cod with borlotti beans, lamb cutlets and I have pork belly; we also have zucchini fritti, steamed spinach and chips.  My pork belly portion is huge, and I’m not able to finish it, instead taking about half away. It was also a little on the dry side, making it harder to get through.  Others were very pleased with theirs, all with clean plates.

K orders the sorbet and gelati for dessert, and is offered the mince pie gelati as one of her three choices. It genuinely tasted of mince pie – very good. B has the semifreddo, which is covered in gooey toffee sauce and nuts – lovely.

The service has been very friendly and efficient throughout, despite it being quite busy. With a second bottle of Soave, the bill comes to £225 including service, pretty good value we felt. And the whole thing was rounded off with a complimentary glass of limoncello to send us away feeling very good about the place.

 

 

It’s B’s birthday, so first we do the cultural bit – Cezanne portraits at the NPG – and then on to lunch. She’s chosen a simple enough Thai place, actually from the same chain as we went to in Kingston: Busaba Eathai in Panton Street.

We finish the exhibition rather earlier than expected (it’s not that large), and so first repair

The Chandos in St Martin’s Lane. This Sam Smith’s pub has lots of character, with nice wood-panelled booths, and was surprisingly quiet for such a central location. And reasonably priced too.

Then off to lunch.  It’s pretty quiet in here too – there wasn’t really a need to book. The tables in the centre of the room are large (8-seater) sharing ones, but there are some 2’s and 3’s by the windows which is what we choose.

Service is attentive enough, and we have some edamame beans with our Viognier (French - £26) while we decide on the order. To start we have garlic and pepper chicken livers, which are excellent, and “son-in-law” eggs. These are boiled eggs with a coating and a little spice – fine, but not as interesting as they sounded.

Main courses are Asian salmon fillet – a nicely poached slab of fish with a spicy support – and jasmine beef rib – sturdy but comes away from the bone well. Supported by a “Som Tam” salad – seriously spicy.

With a couple of other glasses of wine and service  (JUST 10%!) the bill comes to a little over £100. The way prices go these days in central London that is probably fair, but at over £100 I start to feel the meal should be special, and this was only fine.

 

 

J&G are over from NZ, so we meet up for lunch with them and M&G at Mber in Pudding Lane. It describes itself as “Pan-Asian tapas”.  It’s down in a dark, seductive basement, with enormous metal stanchions. We have been a couple of times before, but after wine-tastings, so this is our first time sober!

We’re sat at a high table with stools in the middle of the restaurant. There are quite a few others in, but there’s no problem with the acoustics. The wine list shoots up pretty rapidly, but I do find a white Rioja at £35 which meets with approval – later we also have a Carignan red at £31.  The range of food choice is extensive, so with there being six of us, we decide to go for the set 6-dish lunch with a couple of add-ons.

First to arrive is the salmon salad – nicely smoked, poached salmon with cos lettuce and edamame beans.  Next the chorizo and prawn gyoza (ordered extra), which are lovely; and then the beef glass noodle salad, which was seriously spicy. These are followed by the satay chicken (vg), soft-shell crab tempura (also vg) and the cha sui pork doughnuts (nice pork but the doughnut is oddly sweet).  Finally the beef rendang curry with rice and pak choi.

That seems to have defeated most of us, but a couple of valiant souls move on to dessert. A Pannetone bread and butter pudding meets with G’s  approval; my peanut butter parfait also gets lots of takers.

In the end we have 4 bottles of the Rioja and 2 of the Carignan. That takes the bill, with 12.5% service, to over £500 for the 6 of us. Clearly, more abstemious people could have got away with less!  So very good value overall.

 

 

Meeting up with S and L, we head to The Escapologist near Seven Dials,  as the girls like to start the evening with a cocktail.  We’re there first and are surprised to find that it is 2-for-1 happy hour, even though it’s a Friday night. The place is busy, and it takes a while to take the order and bring our drinks, by which time S has arrived and can order hers. L arrives late, having got the time wrong, so just shares our drinks. Six cocktails for £35 is pretty good!

Then we’re off to Cinnamon Bazaar: in Maiden Lane. Last time we went the food was excellent, but the service shambolic, so we’re hoping for better this time.  The place is busy and buzzy, but we get help with ordering and our wine (white Rioja at £38 – the prices do go up quickly) quite quickly, so things are looking up.

For starters we share a crab bonda, watermelon chaat, dahi bhala chaat (lentil dumplings) and crisp whitebait. We’d had the crab (with beetroot) before, but today it seemed rather heavy. The watermelon was both refreshing and spicy. Lentil dumplings were also heavy, but the whitebait were indeed crisp with a good spicy powdered covering.

 Mains are served reasonably promptly despite the full house. We have Tandoori lamb fillet, pork belly with curried yoghurt, Tandoori king prawns, and haddock curry. The lamb was tender and the pork interesting, but the king prawns (though large) were rather ordinary, and the haddock curry not impressive. We had tried to order rice, but the dishes came with some, so we just had a garlic naan and a black dhal in support.

We share a couple of desserts – an excellent kulfi on a stick and chocolate golis, four different flavoured truffles, of which the dark chocolate with chilli was by far the best.

Service was much better than before: timely, cheerful and helpful – clearly the A-Team on tonight. With three bottles of wine the bill comes to a bit over £250 without tip - we left £30. £70 a head is perhaps a bit on the expensive side (to an extent due to the wine), as this time the food wasn’t stand out excellent, just good.

 

Three in May

As we are going to the Sunday Times Vintage Wine Festival at Old Billingsgate, I do some research in advance on places to eat afterwards.  We now have the Gourmet card which gives money off in various places (mainly the chains), so I look at what is nearby on their list, and come up with Ember in Pudding Lane.

We arrive a little ahead of or 3pm booking, and descend into the basement bar/restaurant.  It’s an odd style – they claim it echoes the Great Fire! – more sleazy than swanky. There are still quite a few people in finishing off lunch (well, it was Friday) -  mainly City types. In a small alcove there is a group of four or five – definitely a space for assignations. At another table, three out of four men are in pink shirts and contrasting ties – the other (the mark?) in a dark blue suit. 

The menu is “East Asian fusion”.  Quite a substantial range.   The wine list is a little scary, with nothing under £30 – we go for the Colombard-Sauvignon from Horgelus in Côte de Gascogne at £31.  After over 50 tastings, one bottle is going to be enough!!

We start with the sesame squid with a sweet paprika mayonnaise – this is an excellently cooked dish, with just enough batter and enough bite. With that we have a prawn and coconut ceviche, with lemongrass and a good chilli hit, and a chorizo and prawn gyoza. Following up, there’s an Indonesian beef rendang, which is rich and spicy as it should be. And a luscious Waygu Koji (mushroom) that is just melt in your mouth.  Plus some jasmine rice.

The service is fine – unobtrusive and efficient – without being friendly.  Our 50%-off food offer saves us £29, so the total (with 12.5% service) comes to £75. We may not have had our most sensitive palettes at work (!), but that seemed like very good value for the interesting food and venue. At full price, we might have thought differently.

 

Meeting up with M&G, and C&G, we’re off to Duck and Rice in Berwick Street, right by the market. The restaurant is up a tight spiral staircase (there’s a bar downstairs), and we are seated right at the back – it’s a little cramped and dark.

We order some wine and sparkling water – a Sauvignon from Touraine at £30 and an Argentinian Malbec (La Colonia) at £32.  The waitress is a little dippy – she pours the wine as if she has never done it before, with the smallest amount for tasting you can imagine. She’s even nervous about pouring the water, having brought a bottle of still first.

We decide to order starters first, and then order mains once we’ve had those – that seems to be a challenging concept for our hostess.  There’s a “monthly specials” list, as well as the standards, but this seems to have passed her by – she gets very confused about anything we order off that.  Luckily, most dishes come with three portions, so cutting these in half means everyone gets a taste of everything.

First to arrive, after the edamame beans, are the venison puffs and the pan-fried pork gyoza. The puffs, though small, are delicious. The gyoza come with a frilly fried surround, but are a little gooey, they could have been fried a bit more. The crispy prawn rolls, looking like Shredded Wheat, come with a tasty mayonnaise and the salt&pepper squid with a chilli dip – both very good. Then there are the jasmine tea-soaked rib bau (bun) – the rib is nice, but the bun a bit too much – and a serviceable vegetable spring roll.

Returning to the menu, we order main dishes, again to share. Duck and Rice had to be one. M fancied kimchi pork, as she’d never tried it. B went for wasabi prawn, G2 kung po chicken and I ordered the chicken claypot but that was “off”, so ended up with the crispy shredded beef.  G1 thought that was enough protein so ordered Gai Lan, an oriental broccoli. We then had a debate about how much rice to order – the kimchi pork came with rice as did the duck and rice (obvs). Dippy suggested that the egg fried rice bowls were small, so we ordered two – we didn’t need that many.

Favourites were the kung po chicken, which had a dense flavour and was quite spicy with caramelised red chillies, followed by the kimchi pork and the wasabi prawns. The duck was OK but the shredded beef was, as so often I think, not that interesting.

In all we had 3 bottles of Sauvignon, plus a couple more glasses and some coffees. Just over £300 for 6 of us was pretty fair.

 

 Down to Lymington to meet up with J&E, S&B. We’re booked into Pebble Beach at Barton-on-Sea, which J and B claim we’d been to before, but I don’t recall at all. It’s a lovely sunny day, and we are glad to sit by the door to the terrace, rather than actually outside in the heat.

Most of the others aren’t drinking much, so it’s down to B and me to get through the Kleine Kalze Chenin Blanc  (£21.50).

E has the set 3-course menu at £24.50: smoked salmon, followed by chicken breast and then ice creams. The rest of us go a la carte. Our choices were king scallops (excellent) and beef carpaccio (fine). Others included Breton fish soup with rouille (deemed to be good), and goat’s cheese curd.

Our mains were lemon sole – a neat portion, nicely done – and stir-fried prawns and monkfish in oyster sauce, which was rather too dominant and salty.  J ordered skate wing with “mussel nage”, which turned out to her disappointment be flakes of skate buried under a mound of mussels and clams in a salty soup. B2’s fish and chips (with extra mushy peas) and S’s mussels were both well-received.

Desserts were a chocolate fondant  (hot and gooey, with honeycomb ice cream, and a cheese selection (at £15.40 a bit pricey).  Afterwards we sit outside on the terrace with splendid views of the sea, the Isle of Wight and the Needles. On such a lovely day, it’s a great place to be. We have some more wine and coffees – though I’ve just noticed they forgot to charge us for those!

The service was friendly and efficient and the atmosphere smart without being stuffy. Total for 6 (two bottles of wine, but excluding the extra wine and coffee) was £224. Despite the skate that is excellent value in such a scenic location. Highly recommended.

Three January birthday celebrations

M&G invited us to lunch to celebrate B’s birthday, and came up with Northbank as a good venue, on the Embankment path just north of the Millennium Bridge.  We’d been there (or its predecessor) before, sitting outside for a drink with the great view, but hadn’t previously eaten in the main restaurant.

We have a bottle of Prosecco between us in the bar to start and then move on in to a surprisingly busy room for a mid-week lunchtime. The clientele is rather corporate-looking, as is the general design of the place – apart from a rather radical wallpaper design, replicated on the menu cover, featuring a mugging, a homeless person and police cars, against a background of London tourist sights!

G orders both some white, the enticingly named Original Sin Sauvignon Blanc, from La Vierge, South Africa, and the equally intriguing red  Saurus Select Malbec from  Familia Schroeder, Patagonia (though there were some votes for “The Idiot Shiraz”).  Both are excellent, though we later as we needed another bottle, we had some debate about whether there was such a thing as a second Original Sin!

For starter I have three excellent scallops served with black pudding and B has a rather simpler smoked salmon served with melba toast.  M’s potted chicken comes with some interesting gherkin pieces, while G’s grilled mackerel is also good. A pretty solid start.

Main courses are even better.  My pork belly has crackling that is perfect, better than any I’ve had – crisp, yet not teeth threatening, and comes with a luscious sauce.  B’s duck breast is also lovely – nicely pink and again with a good sauce. M chooses the fish of the day, whole plaice – another winner. G’s calves liver looks a little over-cooked to me, but he’s very happy with it.

We’re pretty full, but the Malbec remains enticing so we order a plate of cheese between the four of us to provide an excuse. The portions of the four distinctive cheeses (including Yarg) were quite small, but that was fine as they supported the wine excellently.

M&G generously paid (thanks, guys) so I’ve no idea what it cost – not cheap I suspect.  Apart from the slightly corporate atmosphere, this was an excellent place with some of the best food we’ve had in a while.

A couple of days later on a Friday night we find ourselves in Bam-Bou, a Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese restaurant in Percy St, at the junction with Charlotte Street.  It’s a gorgeously decorated place on several floors, with a cocktail bar at the top, which is where we join S for a drink.  We’ve had to book early, as the restaurant had said they were busy, so we’ve fallen in with the doors at 5.30pm. Obviously it’s pretty quiet then, but the bar fills up within half an hour. We each order cocktails (about £10 each) and then a bottle of Chenin Blanc at about £20. We’re joined by A who chooses a Japanese whisky from the extensive (and expensive) list.

We go to our table on the ground floor at 6.30pm – the room is only half full. In fact it never gets really full (though there is some turnover of tables) so we don’t quite get why we had to be there so early.  We make the mistake of allowing A to order the wines – his taste is a little on the pricey side, so by the end of the evening it all mounts up. Nonetheless you can’t say a word against the Cape Mentelle Sauvignon Blanc from Margret River or the Elderton Shiraz/Cabernet from Barossa Valley.

We share starters between the four of us – edamame beans while we order, then soft shell crab, crab and green mango salad, Hanoi ribs and grilled prawns. All were good without standing out, except perhaps the crab salad which was a very good fresh dish.

For my main course I had the slow braised ox cheek.  It was very tender but didn’t have much spiciness. B on the other hand had the very chilli-tasting wok prawns which was very good.  S had crispy quail which had a nice batter, and A had a vegetable noodle bowl, with some grilled aubergine.  We shared a rhubarb parfait and coconut panna cotta for dessert.

The service was very good (efficient and quiet) and the atmosphere excellent – buzzy and oriental.  Because of the cocktails and expensive wines the bill came to a whopping £377, two-thirds of which was booze.  £100 for food for four is not so bad, so more careful diners could manage to get good value for money.

On Monday we’re off to Ronnie Scott’s to see Billy Cobham (no, I hadn’t heard of him either, but he was good and the Guardian review liked him too).  So we try out Nopi, an Ottolenghi restaurant off Regent Street beforehand.

As we’re eating early, the place is nearly empty when we arrive, but we are still shown right to the back – obviously we’re not the beautiful people they expect.  The décor is restrained and relaxing beige, with light wood furniture.  We’ve opted for the main restaurant, though apparently you can eat downstairs to watch the “theatre kitchen”. 

We order some spicy roasted nuts and the cheapest white wine (Savia Viva Classico Blanco, Penedes - £25) while we consider the menu. Like Bam-Bou the wine list shoots up quite quickly (£140 for a Trebbiano anyone?).  Sparkling water is free though.

Like many places now, the approach is small sharing plates, so we order four.  The trouble is that each is the price of a main course in a more down to earth place.  The menu leans heavily on vegetarian dishes but we have two meat, one fish and a cheese dish.

The venison with caramelised yoghurt, blackberries and peanut crumble is very tender and tasty but not as interesting as the ingredient list suggests.  The “twice-cooked baby chicken” with chilli sauce is very moist and melting, with the chilli being a hint of flavour rather than dominating. Stone bass, urid dahl, hot and sour aubergine is similarly good with subtle supporting flavours. Burrata (a very soft light cheese) with coriander seeds and accompanied by blood orange is refreshing and tangy at the same time.

With an extra glass of wine each, this brings the total up to £97, broadly acceptable in the end. As we leave the place is full,  and the display of veggie dishes looks impressive.

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.

New places in Purley, Covent Garden and Shoreditch

A new restaurant opened up just down the road in Purley in January replacing Napule e’, next door to Buenos Aires. Those poor souls who support Crystal Palace will recognise the name – Speroni’s . And indeed the Palace goalkeeper played host to the whole Eagles team recently. It seems to be a collaboration with Buenos Aires, as we have seen the manager in there during the decorating work – which is perhaps not surprising as Speroni is Argentinian. 

They have done a lot of work on the place, painting the outside, replacing steps and put a lot of effort into the interior decoration. The window display is a series of shelves with kitchen utensils, bottles etc, presumably intended to give a homely feel, but in fact making it look a bit like a hardware store.  When we’d booked for 4 of us on a Friday evening we were told that the best they could was 9.30pm, but fortunately they rang back a day or so later to offer us 7.30 instead. It’s buzzy and lively, if not quite full, and the waiting staff are welcoming.

We’ve gone along with K&I, so we order both a white (Garnacha) and a red (Malbec). Both are nearly the cheapest at £28.50, and the list goes up alarmingly.  B thinks the menu is quite short, but still struggles to choose something she fancies, so goes for a staple, seafood pasta. The choice of pasta turned out to be tagliatelli or penne, when she would have preferred linguine or spaghetti. The only distinctive seafood was mussels, which was a bit disappointing.

I had a “Portobello bruschetta” to start – mushroom on bread with Parma ham and poached egg – very good.  My main was slow-cooked lamb - very tender and tasty but rather odd as it just came with a couple of potato dumplings. I’s starter was salmon gravlax, which looked good, and he had a cod in peppers dish for main course.  K’s chicken dish seemed rather ordinary. K&I ordered churros for dessert which B tried and really liked.

The service was very good, very friendly but efficient. With a second bottle of white, and a modest 10% service charge, the bill was £176 – more than half of it for wine.  B rated it a 7 out of 10, but worth another try. I certainly enjoyed the meal, but we’ll probably just go for house wine next time.

 

After working up in town one day I suggest going out for a meal as I’m all posh in jacket and tie.  B fancied a Chinese but we struggled to find one around Covent Garden or Victoria, so we settle for SticksNSushi in Henrietta Street. B said it was a “café” which makes me dubious (not up to my sartorial elegance!) but it’s far from that. In fact it’s a stylish, dark place with bare walls but comfortable chairs. Rather loud music near the entrance but as we are taken further and further inside it is quieter – in fact it is huge, going right through to Maiden Lane I think.

We’ve been given a table which would seat three,  with one on a banquette (odd arrangement). The menus (plural) are vast, so we order some Journeyman SA Chenin Blanc at £17.50 and edamame beans in a spicy sauce while we have a think.  The wine and beans arrive very rapidly (“quick wine” – excellent, and the beans are tasty too), and we work our way through the choices. There are a lot of set meals, and as I often find with Japanese it seems like either you have small portions or you pay a lot.

As the name implies there are several yakitori skewers with various things, plus a good range of sushi rolls, sashimi and nigri. We eventually (after being asked if we’re ready several times by  the waitress) order three dishes which I think of as “starters” and two “mains” – though of course they are not presented in that way.

Ebi bites are prawns in a very light, almost bubbly batter – a good few of them too for £6.80. We have two tuna skewers (Maguro chilli), which are a little disappointing, being rather dry despite the red onion, teriyaki and chilli topping.  The third “starter” is a skewer of scallops wrapped in bacon with herb butter (hotate to bacon) – excellent.

The two more substantial dishes we’ve ordered are a paper-wrapped duck roll and coal-rice soft-shell crab roll (ie black rice wrapped around pieces of crab). Both are wrapped with avocado and lettuce – and both are really good.

The service has been very good and cheery, if a little fast, but that’s OK as we started late. We have a couple of glasses of a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and that takes the bill (incl 12.5%) to £90. Well worth it for an interesting and tasty meal. With all the choices on the menu we’ll certainly go there again, or to the branch on Wimbledon Hill.

Oh and I almost forgot – it’s a Danish Japanese restaurant! All the staff have T-shirts with Danish mottoes. Not sure what the Danish connection is, but there you go!

 

The team I’m working with on one project has decided we should go out for a team dinner to build up rapport, so we have a table booked at Dishoom in Shoreditch. Not being familiar with this part of town, I allowed myself plenty of time to find the place. So I have a little time to kill wandering around beforehand, taking in the upward mobility of the area.  I walk past Maison Trois Garcons  - a “lifestyle café” (for heaven’s sake!) – and call in the Owl and Pussycat for a swift half.  

This must once have been a classic old boozer, but it has now been totally refurbished and then artfully distressed.  Where once there may have been Red Barrel, there’s now continental beers (and admittedly a couple of real ales). Pork pies have been replaced by “apple dogs” and goat’s cheese salad. The Racing Post by laptops – everywhere.  The clientele are probably refugees from Silicon Roundabout, and deals or business plans are being discussed at each table, though to be fair there was also an Everton supporter bemoaning their performance.

So it’s no surprise to find Dishoom is a stylish place too. Billed as a “Bombay café” (when did “café” change meaning?) this is a large establishment policed by elegant greeters, with a comfortable bar area.  Dark woods and tiles, and comfortable booths and tables are all around, and there’s a good lively vibe even at 6pm.

Only four of our group have arrived on time, so we press on and order a mixture of nibbles. There are no papadums, so we have the colourful and slightly spicy “far far” crisps/crackers, okra fries (excellent, little okra deep fired and dipped in tamarind or chilli), bhel (the puffed rice and tamarind dish), and calamari.

That keeps us going till the others arrive and order more, which comes pretty quickly. We have more okra fries and a keema pau (minced lamb with a sweet bread).  The main dishes I had were some spicy lamb chops (pretty meaty if not that spicy) and a chicken biryani (unexceptional). Others also had matter paneer and vegetable biryani). There were supporting dishes of black daal, raita, dishoom slaw, and gunpowder potatoes as well as plenty of naan bread.

Service has been very good. I have to rush off, so don’t know what the bill came to, but looking online the most expensive dish was the lamb chops at £11.50, and the house wine was £19 a bottle, so I’m guessing it was pretty reasonable.  Certainly worth another try, maybe at their branch next to Stringfellow’s in Upper St Martin’s Lane.

Birthday treat - a mixed experience

It’s my birthday so I get to choose where we go. I’d seen Asia de Cuba online several times, so after checking a few other options, that’s what I go for when I see that toptable have an offer on a 2-course set meal with mojito. The restaurant is in the St Marin’s hotel on St Martin’s Lane, and is totally anonymous from the outside, looking more like an office block. Inside it is also rather characterless, despite their efforts. It’s light and there are round pillars with Cuban photos or books and retro radios; there are low slung filament light bulbs over every table, giving little light and just creating a network of wires; it’s not that busy and there’s no buzz to the place. It’s not helped by us being shown to a table down the far end of the restaurant, where one of us effectively has to look at the wall.

We’d checked the menu on the website beforehand to make sure there were things on the set menu we’d like.  But we’d also been warned when the restaurant rang to confirm our booking that the menu had been recently changed, making it “better and cheaper” – unlikely we thought.  So it was without much surprise that we saw that the dishes we’d liked were no longer available, and the main course options came down to salmon, chicken, a sandwich or tofu. The old menu is still on the website, so be warned.  The price has been reduced from £22 to £18.50, but that’s not really the point

The wine list is also pretty scary, with nothing under £25; we select an Australian Viognier for £29.50.  So I’m feeling a bit scratchy when the cheery waitress arrives, and I demand my mojito - they’re on their way she claims, and within seconds they arrive. They are very good, served in small jam jars, with the clean fresh mint and a good kick of tequila, so my mood lifts a little.

The waitress is very chatty, clinking our glasses together as they arrive. She squats down to take our order, so she is at our eye-level. This could feel pretty patronising, but she gets away with it with her chatter.  There is a trio of ceviche on offer at an extra £10, so choose that. This causes some confusion, as it doesn’t actually count as one of the two courses – which I means I have to order a dessert as well.  I’m puzzled by this, but as I’d been prepared to pay the £10 “supplement” anyway, actually I come out ahead.

The trio comprises grouper, snapper and salmon. The grouper is very sharp and freshly citrus tasting; the snapper a bit dull, and the salmon comes with an avocado puree and a chilli kick. B unusually goes for the miso soup with chicken – also with plenty of chilli.

B’s main course is the roasted salmon with sweet soy topping and a cucumber escabeche. Although this sounds a little dull, actually the fish had plenty of flavour and was nicely cooked, and the cucumber was good, so the dish worked better than expected. My chicken “with BBQ sauce” and sticky rice was a large portion of sliced chicken breast with just a little (enough) sauce that didn’t dominate its juiciness.  Again a dish that exceeded expectations.  My “extra” dessert was a “Cuban coffee brownie”, served with coffee ice-cream – very good.

There’s a whopping 15% service to add to the bill – and then the credit card bill is left open for “additional gratuity”. So that takes the total to £122 with 2 bottles of wine, which I think was a bit high for what it was (though you could have got away with £37 if you’d stuck to the one mojito and water).  If we’d seen the revised menu online, I doubt if we’d have booked it, but as it was I was glad to have given it a go. If go a la carte, starters were £6 to £10 and mains £18 to £25 – maybe worth it to get what you want.

A festive round-up

First up, mid-December on our way to a drinking reunion, we call in at Wahaca in Chandos Place (Charing Cross/Covent Garden).  I’d fancied the idea of going there for a while, and B had been to one down in Westfield Stratford, so as we’re up in the area, we decide to call in.  It’s a rather soulless entrance and a typical communal table with bench seats. There is quite a large group down the end, and a few other people around, but not what you’d call character.

We get a “quick” bottle of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc (£19), and set about choosing options from the limited permutations on the list. The bean soup and prawns that B had enjoyed in Westfield are nowhere to be seen. So we work through the options and choose a Barbacoa (beef) taco and a pork taco, a black bean tostada and chicken quesadilla – all stuff in a pancake of slightly different kinds.  To be fair the black bean is interesting and the pork nicely spicy.  We’re not full, so we try a main steak taco as well off the specials list – pretty good but £10.  That comes to a pretty modest £46 without service – cheap for Covent Garden – but I don’t think I’ll be rushing back.

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Nearer Christmas, we’re out with our young friends and ex-house-sharers. We meet at the Crown and Two Chairmen, a nice pub on Dean Street.  Trouble is, of course, that at this time of year the place is heaving, and we can hardly hear ourselves think.  So it’s a relief when the time is right for us to move on to our dinner venue – Floridita in Wardour Street. 

This is a grand multi-venue place, with the Cuban bar and restaurant downstairs. So we order some wine and mojitos (managing to navigate a tricky policy about running a tab), and head for our table. There are seven of us, and we get what seems a good horseshoe-shaped banquette centrally in front of the stage. But when the band starts up (good Cuban jazz) and the dancing warms up, conversation becomes a bit tricky again!

I have Chilean beef empanadas followed by lamb tenderloin skewer. The empanadas have a good bite to them, but the pastry is not as dry as that in our local Argentinian. The lamb skewer is a fair portion of nicely charred meat, with a good deal of flavour to it.  B has the shrimp and grouper ceviche and is impressed. Followed by lamb skewer too (there’s not a huge choice apart from steaks), and then a knickerbocker glory!  This is not served in the traditional tall glass with long spoon, but in a dish, but nonetheless scores top marks.  J has lobster and a baked cheesecake but I can’t recall what the others had. There were no doubt copious quantities of wine and cocktails consumed, so I was pretty surprised to see the total bill below £500 for seven. Excellent provided you don’t need to chat!

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We managed two visits to the Spice Market in Hotel W at Leicester Square.  First between Christmas and New Year with S & A late afternoon before a session at Ronnie Scott’s.  Then early in January with T&K and H.  There is a smooth bar with “cool” ambient music and dim lighting on the ground floor, serving a range of cocktails – which can get pretty pricey.   But if you’re meeting people, you need to be specific, because there is also a first floor bar of Hotel W – rather brighter and busier, but also expensive.

On the first visit we were a bit disappointed to see that the menu was not as extensive as that we’d seen online – because it was the holidays we were told; but it was the same menu the second time too.

On our first visit, I had the salmon sashimi with warm crunchy rice to start –very good.  B had the pepper shrimp, while S&A had the salt and pepper squid and the Vietnamese spring roll.  All perfectly fine.  S&A decided just to share a Vietnamese chicken curry with fried rice – and it was ample. B & I had the duck curry (huge, really tasy), sea bass fillet (good, but out of context) and ginger rice (again a full size portion).  Wine also not cheap at £27 a bottle, so the total was £170 – acceptable for Leicester Square.

On our second visit, for some reason quoting our friend T’s name seemed to guarantee special attention.  We were shown immediately to a good seat, and after an initial bottle, were treated to a bottle of house wine free!  Not sure what’s going on there!   Overall we managed three (four) bottles of the white and one red, so that did rack things up a little. 

T&K both chose the sharing plate of starters – the chicken samosas (surprisingly) came very recommended.  H had the crab dumplings, which were light with plenty of crab, B the shaved tuna (plenty of ginger) and I had the beef skewer (after my first choice was unavailable) – average meat with a tangy yoghurt sauce.

For mains B&I again had the duck curry (I said there was a limited menu), and the grilled chicken (simple but good). Others had the monkfish with cabbage and water chestnut, cod with Malaysian chili sauce and Vietnamese chicken curry – plus we had fried rice and a  chicken pad thai. Again the portions were generous and there was plenty left over.  I was impressed, but T less so, scoring it 6 to 7 out of 10.  It was only £300 including service for 5 of us, very close to Leicester Square, so for hungry eaters, I’d certainly recommend it.
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With P&M due to return to South Africa the following week, we met up again at Il Ponte Nuovo under the flyover in Croydon, where we’d been back in October . It being a Monday early in January, the place is pretty quiet, but we end up in a banquette down in the corner.

To start P&M share the calamari, which seems to go down well. B & I share the gamberoni diavola, which although appearing to be covered in tomato sauce, are actually full of flavour with a good chilli kick.

For mains I have the pork chops off the special menu, served with small roast potatoes and rosemary.  B has the “Spigola in crosta”  - oven baked fillets of sea bass “topped with a potato crust”. I’d assumed the potato would be  grilled mash, but in fact it is fine slices of lightly grilled potato. Overall this was a lovely delicate dish.  P has the two medallions of fillet steak -  one cooked with brandy & peppercorns, the other cooked with brandy & wholegrain mustard, served with roast potatoes.  Since he practically wipes the plate clean, I assume these were good too!  M’s choice of risotto with 4 cheeses off the special lunch menu was a very modest £6  - it seemed pretty filling though.   We also shared a cheese plate – four or five interestingly different choices.

With the inevitable 5 bottles of wine, this came to a pretty modest £195 including service.
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On B’s birthday, we’re up on Regent Street, having been “cultural” at the RA (Constable, Gainsborough and Turner and Landscape – something of a con, as there’s only one or two of each and a lot of other prints).   We’ve been to the Living Room in Heddon Street a few times before for drinks and always thought it looked nice, so that’s where we settle on for lunch.

It’s a nice big space with large windows out to Heddon Street. Further in are the more intimate bar areas.  It’s not that busy but the we’re shown to a table for 2 which is not that well positioned.  But on retrospect, it does have proper seats so maybe it’s a good choice. The waiter is very solicitous and helpful and buzzing around, so gets us our pre-prandial glasses of Prosecco pretty quickly.

He’s also very sharp at suggesting “specials”. And though we’d both been looking eyeing things up off the interesting menu, in the end we do both decide to for them. As we mull things over we order the edamame beans with ginger and chilli, in soy sauce to keep us going. This is very good, with long strips of ginger to go with the kick of the chilli on the beans.

For a starter we decide to share the crispy duck and pancakes.  This is unusual, different from the Chinese version in that the duck is in larger pieces, lightly cooked so that it still tastes of duck, and in a crispy coating, a bit like KFC (but in a good way!).

B’s “special” is crab on avocado puree. Technically a “light bite”, this is not a large portion, but OK for what she wanted.  She is very impressed at the freshness of the crab, and the sharp flavours that accompany it.  Mine is venison steak, left over from New Year’s Eve when they charged £35 for it, but to you sir it’s just £17.50 (actually, I’m impressed by the fact that the waiter meticulously spells out the price of the specials – something that’s often not done). The steak comes with broccoli spears, sugar snap peas, and roast potatoes.  I’ve asked for it medium-rare, and it comes looking beautiful, with parts of it red, glistening with blood.  The consistency of the steak can’t be faulted, just a smooth regular texture, and the venison tang excellent. As near as perfect a piece of meat as I’ve eaten.

The standard menu looks pretty good too, so this is clearly a place to come back to.  The bill (2 bottles of Viognier?) comes to a creditable £110.  Try it yourself.

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Up on Regent Street again, this time north of Oxford Circus, for a late lunch we call in at Ozer, a Turkish restaurant I’d read reviews about a few years’ back.  It’s quite a cavernous place, with little natural light. There’s quite a few people in for a workday at 2.30pm – some maybe ex-BBC having a reunion lunch, some Turkish, some singletons doing odd shifts perhaps. They claim an “Ottoman” style – but it just seems large to me.

Apparently Ozer is under the same ownership as the Sofra chain, but the menu reads rather more up-market. There’s a big selection of starters, hot and cold, and of mains, though some are a little repetitive. But you can’t fault the precision, when they tell you exactly how many king prawns you get in the  starter or main (6 or 12).

To start B has the marinated Malaysian prawns, which aren’t on the online menu. The four prawns were large, fresh and tasting of prawns, in a spicy sauce which overcame the tomato base.  My starter is the spicy crisp lamb liver – a large portion of well-cooked pieces of liver, with onions, but not that spicy.

Main courses are lamb on skewer for B: good lamb shish kebab, not actually served on the skewer, with a crisp salad. I go for the spicy fish pot, which is spicier than the starter but not excessive and with nice pieces of ginger. Lots of different fish in the broth, vegetables too, a healthy portion served with basmati rice.

Turkish coffee and a bottle of Viognier at £20 take the bill up to £76. More a steady meal than an excellent one perhaps, but certainly somewhere to consider if you’re in the area.

 

High-tech oriental – not a great advert for technology

Looking for somewhere for a mid-afternoon “lunch” after a visit to the Bronzes exhibition at the RA (very good by the way), my researches threw up Inamo St James  in Lower Regent St (there is a sister Inamo Soho restaurant too).  It describes itself as an “Oriental fusion” restaurant and the menu looked interesting and pretty reasonably priced for that area.  But intriguingly all the comments on the Top Table website were about its interactive ordering system, called e-Table.  Not sure whether that’s a good sign or not (surely the food’s the point?) but I thought we’d give it a go.

It’s about 3pm on a Sunday when we get there.  There are more people in there than you might expect at that time, but it is a large place, so there should be no problems getting a table. But the waiter asks us to wait at the bar (without a drink!), so the stress levels start to rise.  

Eventually we do get shown to a table – not a great position, but never mind – and the fun starts.  The décor of place generally is very attractive – lots of smallish areas partitioned off by bamboo. But it is the table itself that is the speciality – it is interactive.  The waitress asks if we’ve eaten there before, and then proceeds to give as a quick demonstration of how the thing works.  Basically there is a touch pad for each of us which controls a cursor over the menu (ie system menu). From there you can select drinks, food, games etc, and a help/bill section.  You also get to change the “ambiance”, that is the background colour and design on the table if you wish – we stick with the bright snowflake design the waitress has chosen.

Now I like to think of myself as reasonably tech-literate, so I’m happy to give this a go.  I start by ordering some wine.  The cursor control is OK, but tapping the table to select seems a bit erratic. Anyway I do manage to find the white wine and scroll through in blocks of 4. Here one of the limitations of the system first appears – you can only see 4 options at a time, so can’t scan the whole list. Still, with wine that’s not too much of a problem, and I successfully order a Viognier at £26.

Then I start to order the “small plates”.  (Not “starters” as such, since we’re told the food arrives when it is ready).  Somehow random choices seem to pop up on my list, and I have to cancel them.  Again you can see only 4 options at a time (though you do get a big picture of one shining on your plate). This makes it harder to choose which combination to go for, but eventually we manage to select the crispy prawns, pork and apple dumplings and edamame beans (from the “sides” list).

Then comes the second limitation. The waiter arrives saying that they have run out of Viognier – it's not that interactive a system then.  A rapid review of the list is tricky to do, so I bail out and ask for a written wine list.  From there I choose the NZ Sauvignon Blanc (also £26) which had not appeared on the system. They’ve none of that either, so we end up with the Argentinian Torrontes at £19.

I now turn to the “larger plates” or main courses as we might say.  The 4 option limitation is really irritating now (bearing in mind we’ve not had a drink yet!), and stress levels are rising further.   I’m also struggling with tapping the table to select the option – softly and nothing happens, too hard and I feel I’m going to dislocate a finger.  (I once came away injured from trying to use an IcelandAir check-in terminal, as you had to hit the screen so hard –it took  4 months for my finger to recover!).  Soon I seem to have ordered a spatchcock chicken I didn’t want, and 4 portions of a beef dish. So I use the “Help” bell to call a waitress (logical problem here: if you can’t use the system you can’t call for help!). This seems to take a while and we’re on the point of leaving.  When the waitress does arrive, she says she’ll sort it out, and tells me not to hit the table so hard !

Finally I am able to order the cinnamon chicken, “beef beri bop”, and steamed rice. Actually there aren’t that many side dish options, so this feels a little limited.

The food – and drink – does now start to arrive. Small plates/starters do come first.  And very good they are too, though the projectionof the design onto the table makes the dishes look a funny colour.  The dumplings are full of melting pork, accompanied by a really flavourful apple and cinnamon/clove sauce on a spoon. The crispy prawns are in a nice light batter and come with a very spicy dip. And the edamame beans dish is ample, accompanied by a sweetish dip.  The Torrontes too is good –creamy and fruity – though perhaps anything would have seemed good by now!

As it turns out, the timing of the dishes works OK, as we’ve not long finished the starters (sorry) when the cinnamon chicken and steamed rice arrive.  The chicken (described as “poussin” on the detailed menu) is tender strips of breast, covered in a dark, dry crust, and accompanied by a spicy, dry salt on a spoon (again).  It’s very tasty indeed.

We’re making inroads into the chicken when the beef dish arrives.  This is the most spectacular of the lot.  The waiter brings a small hot dish containing slices of beef, rice, asparagus slices and a raw egg yolk. He pours over this a ginger and vinegar sauce and starts to cook the beef on the hot dish, and mix the rice and egg together.  The effect is nicely cooked slices of beef (not large or especially tasty, but quite good) on a tasty bed of rice, which has crunchy bits in it – presumably from cooked egg white. 

We polish off the beef, and the rest of the chicken, and indeed all the rice. Had we realised, we probably wouldn’t have ordered the extra rice, and maybe gone for spicy aubergines instead.

Finally I manage to ask for the bill through the system, and it duly arrives - £73. Given the location, we think that is very good value for very good food and a nice wine (even though it wasn’t what we originally chose) in pleasant surroundings, and I would certainly recommend what we had.

And the verdict on the technology?  Well, it feels like a gimmick really.  Its plus points are that you can see larger pictures of what you might choose, that you shouldn’t have to call a waiter, and that it is easy to ask for the bill. Minus points for the limitation of presenting 4 options at a time and the dodgy controls – and the lack of integration with stock control.  We didn’t play with the other features: I can’t see why you’d want to change the “ambiance”, especially with a “shuffle” option; a couple at the next table were using it to play games –duh!; and the “chef cam” option was only showing an empty room when I looked.   Without it all, we’d have come away impressed – as it was the stress levels had only just returned to normal when we finished our wine.