Chez Barbara

It's Easter Saturday, so it has to be Hot Cross Buns. But B has ideas for something special.

Half with Cheddar, tomato and very crispy bacon.  Half with smoked salmon, and egg mayonnaise. Yummy.

Washed down with a £6.99 bottle of Cava from Tesco.

We're saving a fortune not eating out!

Take care everyone!

Huw

Late January

We’re in Kingston, house-hunting, and I’ve found a tapas bar near where we’re looking. So we head down an unattractive road and find the Pottery Bar, well off the beaten track. Not somewhere people just happen upon. And as it’s a mid-week lunch, we’re not surprised to find that, apart from a business meeting going on, we are the only ones in there.

 The drinks list doesn’t include any Spanish wines, so we order the house white Trebbiano at £21.  The menu isn’t especially tapas either. We order steak salad off the specials board (bizarrely itemised as lamb shank on the bill) plus garlic prawns, and chorizo, chick peas and goats cheese, plus some bread with oil and balsamic to keep us going.

 Despite there being no-one else in the food – including the bread – takes an age to arrive.  When it comes the bread is lovely, slightly warm, crusty and a good sized portion, though rather they rather skimped on the oil and vinegar.   The prawns had a hit of chilli along with the garlic, and the chorizo/cheese combination worked well. The salad is a very large portion, with tender steak and nicely dressed leaves.

 The service is friendly, and we chat a bit – the waiter describes one of their dishes as “weird”. We have two more glasses of wine. The bill (with just 10% service) comes to £78. Nice enough place, but probably only if you are in the area - not worth the detour.

 With S&S we return to our favourite, Chez Bruce at Wandsworth Common. As usual, we meet in the nearby pub, The Hope, for a drink first.  Unusually, the pub is packed, with lots of family groups and kids – we don’t normally come on a Sunday. The pub menu looks quite good itself.

 Chez Bruce is busy too, but well-organised. We have a nice table in the window.  Friendly and efficient service as always, with their lovely parmesan biscuits and excellent bread to start.   The other three all have crispy, deep-fried poached egg to start – lovely. I have the trout ceviche, very fresh and clean

 For mains, two (including B of course) have duck breast with foie gras. S has roast cod with mushrooms. After asking about how it’s done, I decide to be adventurous and order the pig’s trotter, despite being a little alarmed at twice being told that the skin will be gelatinous!  It’s stuffed with chicken mousse and chopped sweetbreads – and really tasty. Luckily I start at the right end and don’t come to the tiny bones until the end.

 Desserts are ice cream (including salted caramel), pear, and yoghurt parfait that comes with something akin to polystyrene.

 We have three bottles of Chilean Viognier for £105, some water and a coffee.  The “3 course weekend lunch” is £48.50 – considerably more than what we usually pay mid-week.  But it remains undeniably good.  So the total comes to £340 for the four of us.

 Still house-hunting, but this time in Surbiton, we return to Hart’s Boatyard, our favourite pub by the river.  We get a nice table overlooking the river.  I fail to find our usual Rothschild Viognier on the wine list, so order a Gavi.  But when the waitress comes she has the Viognier – wrong, but right!   B has the steak salad – a regular choice – and I have the pork belly.  This is quite fatty, but it comes with a crispy bacon slice and some rather good pork cheeks. A second bottle of wine takes the bill to £76.

 Then for my birthday, we book a table for lunch at The French Table, also in Surbiton. We’d been once before and had a lovely 5-course set lunch.  We get as far as Clapham Junction to find all the trains from Waterloo cancelled.  We hang around for a bit, as the information board suggests there might soon be a train, but it gets later and later, so eventually we decide to go to Victoria, and I ring to cancel.  Apparently they’d had a lot of cancellations because of the trains – such a shame.

 At Victoria we decide to go the new(ish) branch of Sticks ‘n’ Sushi in the Nova complex. On arrival it doesn’t look very prepossessing, but we are shown upstairs where it is busier, buzzier and more attractive.  The tables are close together though, so we have to fight to hear each other over the job interview next door. We order the Chenin Blanc (£28) and some edamame beans while we work what to have.  We decide to order in two phases – sushi then sticks. So we begin with beef tataki, which comes with a good spicy dip,  crab croquettes that are hot and gooey, and  scallops kataifi topped with roe.  These are closely followed by duck in rice paper (with the same dip) and spicy tuna maki roll with ginger and wasabi.  All very tasty.  Then we order a second bottle and the sticks: scallop and bacon, spicy chicken, and lamb. Again all good - though the second bottle takes a while to arrive.   Good friendly service – the waiter chats to us a bit as we are the last ones in there at 3pm.  Total, including 12.5% service, is £135 – perhaps a bit much for what it was, but then it is my birthday.

JANUARY OLD FAVOURITES

It’s been a busy month so far, and there’s more to come, with visits to Chez Bruce and The French Table planned. Mainly places we’ve been to before – oldies but goldies – so just brief update reports.  

Cinnamon Kitchen

As they have a £25-off offer on in January, we go along to Spitalfields for B’s birthday for a late lunch.  There are not many people in, and those that are generally leave fairly soon after, so there’s not a lot of atmosphere. One stalwart table orders more wine, then desserts and brandies, so we are not entirely alone.

We have shrimp pepper fry and chicken leg tikka to start. The chicken is very dense and almost gamey – very good indeed. The shrimp are more prawn-sized, and quite spicy.  For mains we have Tanjore prawns and, to B’s disgust, Chettinadu-style mutton curry.  But in fact the mutton is rich and tasty, and probably nicer than the rather predictable prawns. The prawns came with rice, so we just order one garlic naan, and inevitably the black lentils.  

With two bottles of Trebbiano – practically the cheapest on the list at £28 each – the total is £120, but with £25 off comes to £95.  Good value definitely – the offer is on until the end of the month.  

Cherwell Boathouse, Oxford

The team is celebrating a successful workshop last year, so we treat ourselves to lunch in Oxford.  There are five of us, and we get a nice table overlooking the river which is bathed in sunshine.  The restaurant is quite busy, but the staff are attentive and helpful – and very French. 

There is a set lunch menu, but only one of our number goes for that, choosing a big hunk of salt beef brisket as his main. The other four of us all have confit of duck leg with cassoulet for our main course.  It’s a large portion – must have been big ducks! – two people ask to take away what they couldn’t eat. The meat falls away from the bone very easily, and the cassoulet is warming, though rather salty. I had had rillettes of pork to start – very firm meat, but not a lot of flavour. Other choices included partridge scotch egg, and haddock and octopus terrine.  

D chooses a Duoro red (Touriga National) at £29.50 – which lasts us all lunch (two people were driving, but even so!).  So the bill works out at £36 a head.  It’s a lovely place, and overall the food was pretty good, but not exemplary.  

Rosa’s Thai

Eleven of us are meeting up because our friend B2 has come down from Wigan to watch the Orient.  So we have booked into the large space of Dim T in Wilton Road, Victoria.  We’ve settled in, got our wine, and are just deciding what to have when the fire alarm goes off. It’s very loud, making conversation almost impossible. The lead waiter tries to do something to shut it off, but can’t.  Eventually our waiter comes over and explains the alarm has been set off in one of the flats above us, and so for safety reasons the gas in the restaurant’s kitchen has been automatically turned off.  All they can do is salads! And we’d have to live with the noise. 

So we decide to go somewhere else, and luckily we can fit in to two adjoining tables at Rosa’s Thai just along the road.  This has a simple café vibe but the waitresses are helpful. The menu is very extensive, with a separate regional menu (Isaan, from North-East Thailand), and a couple of vegan specials.  We have 50/50 prawn and pumpkin crackers while we decide. After much deliberation, I have prawn tom yum soup to start. This has six large prawns in it, and is a really spicy broth. B (on the other table) has deep-fried crispy prawns – five very large prawns.  Starters generally are large.  

For main course I have spicy pork off the Isaan menu, and share some brown rice.  This is marked with two chillies on the menu (max is three) and it is certainly hot. It looks a smallish portion when it arrives, but in fact I can’t eat it all. The pork is a little tough, but the dish is very tasty.  B had the spicy steak salad (also two chillies) which she enjoys.  

We ordered a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc at each table along with some Thai beers (including their own-label “Thai PA”).  When we come to order more wine, the SB has run out, so we have Viognier.  That too runs out, so finally we have the Spanish house wine.  The bill comes to £43 a head including service (plus £5 a head for drinks in Dim T).  A more than acceptable substitute that everyone enjoyed. 

Brown Derby

I’ve arranged an afternoon meeting at the Oval, so decide to go along earlier and have lunch nearby at a rather quirky pub on Kennington Park Road, just two minutes from Oval tube.  It’s a little hard to describe – it has two oriental style fans on the ceiling, six leaf-shaped, bamboo “blades” each, gently wafting back and forth; it has a traditional old-style juke box (I don’t know if it works), though Miles Davis is playing on the sound system; there is a big clown-like mask behind the bar; mis-matched tables and chairs, including a child’s set with mushrooms as seats.  

The menu is unusual too. There is an all-day breakfast and a cobb salad with chicken and avocado, but they are the only typical pub dishes. Otherwise the choices are noodles or poke bowls (rice dishes) - I choose the spicy tuna poke bowl.  It’s a large bowl, with plenty of tuna, about a quarter of an avocado, edamame beans, coleslaw and tons of rice which I can’t finish. The tuna is nearly raw, but not that spicy.  With two glasses of SB, this comes to just over £20.  Worth a visit for the setting alone. 
 

We’ve been out and about locally too.  

The Argentinian Los 4 Locos  is always reliable. I have their “gourmet special” menu choosing empanadas and a chicken milanesa. B has her usual rib-eye with (runny) fried eggs.  Both are big portions and we take half way. We have one bottle, then two glasses of their lovely, velvety Tapiz Malbec (that’s £31 + £22). For some reason they are doing a 10% discount deal, that save us nearly £10, making the final total with service about £95.  

We’ve been a couple of times to Tulsi, the quite up-class (for Purley) Indian. The first time we have the usual king prawn dish, but also try a lamb jalfrezi. This is pretty spicy. On the second visit, I try a paneer starter (not a great success) and a lamb rogan josh, while B and K have two different chicken tikka dishes. Both times – as always – the portions are so large we take half away.  

And of course there is the always reliable Las Fuentes tapas bar. Old favourites are the wild boar skewer, gambas pil pil, and kidneys; newer choices are monkfish and prawns croquettes and minced beef “patties” (a bit like empanadas).  Typically if we have two bottles of Rioja, it comes to about £75 (only 10% service charge).

Italian in Coulsdon

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


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


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


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


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


We'll maybe try the sushi place next time.

Another very good Chinese

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excellent Chinese in Soho

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 stars in Surbiton

We’re off to Surbiton looking at houses. After wandering around for a while we fetch up at the Queen’s Promenade by the river, and then pop into Hart’s Boatyard for a drink. The menu here looks quite interesting, but we are booked into The French Table, so we just have a glass of wine.

Our table is booked for 1.30pm, because they couldn’t offer us anything earlier, and when we arrive the place is packed. Maybe it’s because it is a Saturday, though we couldn’t book a table at all on Friday. They must be doing something right.

We look at the menus - £23.50 for two courses, £28.50 for 3.  We normally discount the tasting menu, but as it is just £32 for 5 courses and it looks very interesting we decide to plump for it. We also order a bottle of Sicilian Grillo at £23, rather than go for the paired wines, which would have been £23 each.

The wine comes at once, closely followed by an amuse bouche of deep-fried eel on spiced pumpkin. Quite fishy, but very good.  The first of the 5 courses arrives soon after – scallops in a shell, topped with chorizo crust, with cauliflower and seaweed chutney. This is amazing. The crust is crumbly with a kick, the scallops (2) just right and the seaweed a novel taste. Maybe you could argue that the crust overpowered the scallops, but that would be being picky.

 The second course is a change from that advertised – we had been warned in advance.  Described as a “ballotine” of foie gras, it was a round slice of paté wrapped in crushed mushrooms, and supported by roast fig and piccalilli, with a streak of port sauce. This replaced a rabbit terrine with foie gras and ham hock, which may have had more interesting textures, but was more than acceptable.

 We’re relaxing into the atmosphere now, confident that the coming dishes will also be tasty. There’s a good satisfied buzz around the busy room and, despite the table being quite close together, no overly loud guests.  There is some background music, but playing so softly as to be hard to identify.

 Next up is hake on coco beans (nope, me neither) with crispy fried samphire and a lobster sauce. The sauce smells gorgeous, the hake is nicely judged with a slightly crispy top and the samphire really fun. It’s not a big portion, as you might expect in a tasting menu, but very good indeed.

 We order another bottle, and the friendly waitress stops for a little chat, asking whether we’d been before. Apparently they have been going for 18 years, and you can tell why. The owner Eric Guignard still runs the kitchen and has resisted opening up other branches.

 Our conversation is cut short when the beef course arrives.  Three pieces of medium rare beef come with some creamy, cheese and garlic  mash (pomme aligot), girolles and a madeira sauce. The beef is simply excellent, tender and so full of flavour.

 Desserts arrive at the table to one side of us, one of them accompanied with a candle, and  “Happy Birthday, Dean” piped in chocolate around the rim of the plate.  Later we see similar plates arrive at other tables – it’s certainly a good place for a celebration – and the table on our other side pays partially with a £50 gift voucher, a lovely gift I would imagine.

 Our final course is chocolate soufflé with vanilla parfait (you could order an extra course of cheese for £12, but we don’t do that).  Normally I’m not that bothered with chocolate desserts, but this is stunning. The soufflé has a lovely crust and a melting interior; the parfait is covered in nutty chocolate. Nothing to fault at all – parfait indeed.

 Although outside the restaurant had looked very attractive, surrounded in greenery, inside it is much more restrained. The décor is a pale grey, with a number of fairly unremarkable pictures, and basically it is simply a long rectangular room. The back of the restaurant is made lighter by skylights, and the bar doesn’t intrude. So you don’t go for the decoration – but with food this good, you don’t need any distraction.

 With a bottle of sparkling water (!) and service, the bill is £128. It has been one of the top meals of our year, up with Chez Bruce, our favourite.  It regularly features in OpenTable’s list of top 10 London restaurants, and in their “best service” listings.  We’d highly recommend it, and it certainly helped B become happier with the idea of moving to Surbiton!