Two contrasting Chinese

We are in South Kensington lunchtime after visiting the Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum.  I had researched a couple of tapas bars, Casa Brindisa and Apero, but a little café-style place offering dim sum caught our eye – Jia.  We make sure to check they serve alcohol before venturing, and joining a small number of people happily eating their lunch. All the dishes looked very colourful.

The place is small – perhaps 20 covers downstairs and the same upstairs – and very simply decorated, with unusual rectangular tables, and barely any pictures. We order the Tierra Antica Chilean SB at £15.50 – there are other reasonably priced options too – and some jasmine tea.  We’re focussed on the dim sum. Steamed coriander crab dumplings, wasabi prawn dumplings, spicy chicken Su Mai. Fried garlic prawn dumplings, lamb dumplings and honey roasted pork pastry.

Fairly prompt service delivers the fried dishes first, with 3 of each. The pork pastry is good and crispy, and moist; the garlic prawn very garlicky and the lamb tasty too. The steamed dishes arrived soon after – a good hit of wasabi and two prawns in each of the 3 dumplings, fresh tasting coriander with the crab and slightly less than spicy chicken dumplings.  All were hot, colourful and a good size.

We’re quite full, but decide to try the seafood lettuce wrap with our second bottle of wine.  This too is good with plenty of prawns and scallops.

Friendly service – for a Chinese restaurant – and a total of £63, made for a good value, enjoyable lunch.
A week or so later, we’re meeting our friend D for lunch. We’ve seen that Opentable have a 50% off food offer at the Chinese Cricket Club in Blackfriars, so that’s what we go for. It’s located in the Crowne Plaza hotel, so we go into the lounge bar there first, for a reasonably priced bottle of SA Chenin Blanc.  When D arrives we head on in to the restaurant.

There are a few cricket items around at the entrance – pads, bat, balls – but overall there isn’t a great deal of cricketing decoration, despite the logo. There’s a signed bat from an England – Pakistan match and a signed team photo, but that’s about it. Nor is there much Chinese decoration – the overall effect remains that of a corporate hotel restaurant – dull and lacking atmosphere. A real missed opportunity.

Service is attentive and brisk. We order a French Viognier at £26, and some sparkling water.  We decide to start off with the dim sum platter, supplemented by wasabi prawns. The platter is a collection of 4 types of steamed dumplings, with just two of each:  duck, chicken, prawn and scallops.  Nothing special in any of them. The wasabi prawns comes as a plate of 5 good sized prawns in a rather unimpressive, topped with a wasabi mayonnaise – pretty tasteless.
We follow this up with a second order of “slippery chicken” and crispy soft shell crab, supported by Singapore noodles. The chicken is uninspiring – slippery enough though – and the crab without much flavour, mainly batter. Noodles had some good prawns and chicken in though.

We had three bottles of wine, taking the total to £163 including service, and after the £52 saving on food.  This was steep enough for what we had, but without the offer, paying over £200 for 3 people for this would be ridiculous.  A serious disappointment.

An "authentic" disaster and two old faithfuls

We’re off to see Eddie Izzard at the Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus, and have decided we fancy trying somewhere new, preferably Chinese.  Ba Shan in Romilly Street has kept coming up on Opentable, with special offers of 25% off food, so we decide to give that a go.

We’re slightly late for our 6pm booking, and the place seems very busy pre-theatre on a Friday. After just a short wait, we’re taken through the maze-like arrangement of rooms to our table in a small room of just 12 covers.  Everyone else in there is Chinese, which makes us optimistic – one table has the remains of a huge fish which they had clearly enjoyed.

We’d read about the menu from the “Revolutionary Cookbook” and about the Hunanese cuisine of chillies, chillies and more chillies. So we’re less surprised to see photos of Chairman Mao adorning the walls, though other décor is attractively classical Chinese. His exhortations are scattered through the menu too, though there’s no sign of his Little Red Book. There’s a rough and ready feel to the place, but that’s fine for a quick meal.

We order food and a bottle of South African Chenin Blanc at £22.  Our “fish-fragrant prawns” arrives very promptly – slightly odd, flabby, possibly reconstituted, deep-fried prawns with a fiery chilli dipping sauce.  We’ve finished these before the pork dumplings arrive (having been sent back by the table next to us). This is a good portion of 8 or so dumplings, slippery and messy, but with a good herbal fragrance  - no chillies.

The range of choice of mains was impressive, if somewhat bizarre.  We have settled on “bamboo-fragrant chicken” and Dry-wok twice cooked pork, with some plain steamed rice.  It’s then that we realise that “authentic” is not a synonym for “good”.

The chicken dish arrives literally covered in dried red chillies. We’re OK with that, sifting through to find the meat, and burning our mouths only a little bit. But the chicken, when you got to it, was tough and chewy, very small pieces no doubt extracted from dubious regions of the bird. Revolutionary fervour would be needed to enjoy that one.

The pork dish had slightly fewer chillies, but was every bit as spicy. Another “authentic” dish of predominantly fat on thin slivers of tasteless pork. Nothing as bourgeois as edible meat.

We surrendered. The capitalist running dogs were defeated. Less resistance than even paper tigers.

OK, the Chinese punters seemed to be enjoying themselves, slurping their way through their even more strange-looking dishes and shouting orders to the waitresses in Mandarin (I’m guessing here). So it’s not without atmosphere.   The waitress has in fact been fairly attentive, given that half the time she wasn’t in the room.

The 25% off was duly administered without question (a saving of £10) and a standard 12.5% service charge applied, bringing the total (with two extra glasses of wine) to just £73.  You’d struggle to get a meal for that price elsewhere in this area – and boy did we struggle.

Two old favourites came up trumps however.  Friends took us back to Chez Bruce to celebrate B’s birthday – the lunchtime menu there is most impressive, a wide range of excellent dishes to choose from for each course, at a very modest price. And a manageable wine list too.  My selections were brill sashimi to start (brill indeed, fresh, light with a hit of wasabi on the side) and duck cassoulet for main course – deeply rich, warming mix of duck done three ways.  Thank you guys!

And for my birthday we returned to our local Brasserie Vacherin for a late lunch. Service here can be variable, but on this occasion it was fine, though we weren’t in any rush.  The “aromatic and luscious” Viognier from Languedoc was £24.50.  B had the Atlantic prawns smothered in garlic to start – a good sized portion, while I had tuna tartare. For mains we stayed with the fishy theme and had fillet of seabass (grilled, good and meaty) and supreme of hake with mussels in a very light tomato sauce (rich and flavoursome). And to celebrate we share a lovely crepe suzettes.  A second bottle, some sparkling water and chips, plus 12.5% service take the total to £117, so just over £50 for the food, very good value.

Disappointing Boxing Day lunch

It’s Boxing Day and we’ve booked to go back to The Rendezvous in Westerham for lunch.  We’d been on Boxing Day a couple of times, four or five years ago, so we’re quite looking forward to it.  And when we’re able to find a parking spot really close by, we’re in a really positive mood.

It’s a very attractive place, with lots of light from the big windows, clearly French but without being clichéd. There are about 4 or 5 other couples in when we arrive – all of whom turn to stare at us as if we were aliens!  We have between us halved the average age in the room – yes, even us! -  and this seems to be an unwelcome intrusion!  God knows what would happen if a 25-year old strayed in.

We are given a nice table by the window, where I can watch the excitements of Westerham pass by – two dog-walkers in an hour. The table is quite small, cluttered with cutlery glasses, a Xmas table setting and the basket of bread – hardly room for the wine and water.   The bread is lovely, pain rustique-style, auguring well for the set meal to come (at a very reasonable £25 a head on Boxing Day).  The wine list is on the pricey side, but we manage to find a Picpoul Pinet Clos Isabelle for £24.

B orders the scallops (supplement £3) to start, while I go for the mushroom risotto.  This comes nicely dressed with pesto and parmesan slices. But from here it goes downhill – we’ve both ordered the roast pheasant for main course – big mistake!   When we came a few years back, D had ordered the pheasant and remarked “it wasn’t very gamey” – when we sympathised she said “No, I don’t like it gamey!”.   Well, this time made up for it. Both our portions were dry, tough and with a harsh tang. The roasted root vegetables did nothing to lift it, and we both had to leave it half-eaten.

No comment from the waitress, presuming I guess that our teeth weren’t up to it.  Dessert was a little better – a crème brulée, was tasty but not bruléed enough; the ice hockey puck of Christmas pudding was lighter than it looked, but nothing special.

The place has filled up while we’re there, with a few other tables of people under 80. But it’s not what you’d call “buzzy”!   There’s a cover charge of £1.50 each (worth it for the bread I suppose, but only a 10% service charge, which for Boxing Day is impressive, making the total just £92.  But such a disappointment.

 

Lunch in Richmond

We’re in Richmond on a Xmas shopping expedition. I have researched some places for lunch, so we cut off the shopping street down a quiet alley and go towards the St Mary Magdalene church to look at La Buvette.  The menu looks interesting (French obvs), and the place charming. A passer-by says it is really good, but we decide against because there’s an office Xmas party in full flow, complete with speeches!

 

So we head down to the river and stop off for a drink at Jackson & Rye.  It’s an attractive bar/café with lovely views from the window seats, but as we’re only having a drink we are sat further back. We peruse the menu – American accented, with egg and pancake options, New England chowder, Cajun spiced chicken and of course steaks.  It’s unusual but not quite hitting the spot, so we decide to press on to the third option – and to return here if that’s no good.

 

The third option, near the end of Richmond Bridge, is Chez Lindsay, also French.  It doesn’t look very open, but I try the door and we go in.  It’s quite a surprise, because past the small front area and the bar there is a bright open room with picture windows facing down to the river.  Sadly there are also some ugly buildings in the way. We get a seat by the window, although alongside us there is a table laid for 12.

 

From the very reasonably priced wine list we order a bottle of Viognier at £23, then order our food and some very nice bread arrives.  The party of 12 then arrives – senior gentlemen, the eldest of whom claims to be 80, greeting the waitress like long lost friends. It’s not clear what the relationship is.  They apologise for making a noise, and we are offered the chance to move to another table, but in fact they’re not too bad at all.

 

For starters, B has the salad de magret – several excellent slices of lightly smoked duck. My moules “St Malo” are also really good, in a light white wine and cream sauce that begs to be soaked up with bread – though I manage to resist.  For main course B chooses the Galette aux Fruits de Mer, which comes topped with a langoustine – perhaps too much sauce.  My king scallops “St Jacques” comes with lentils and rocket, and is very good indeed.  We also order some frites and a tomato and onion salad.

 

Service has been good throughout, apart from a slight delay for the first course. But just as well we were ahead of the big group.  With a second bottle of Viognier and 12.5% service, the total comes to just over £110, which is pretty reasonable.

September to November

Round up – September  to November.

Hutong @ Shard:  As a party of 6, we were sat away from window – go in a smaller group. The set meal was disappointing – good monkfish and sweetcorn soup, followed by fair dims um; but badly let down by the main course. The deal was 9 dishes - a con, as that included the rice and it seemed the lettuce wrap.  And they were pretty ordinary – chicken and cashew nuts in the lettuce wrap, duck with rice.  We ordered 2 desserts between us, including weird black sesame dumpling. Others report the a la carte as good, so maybe give that a go. The wine list had suitably sky-high prices, so we had 4 bottles of rose @ £45, taking the £35 set lunch up to £80 a head

Senor Ceviche, in Kingly Court, off Regent Street: our second visit, was as good as the first but we had an almost identical choice of 6 dishes, as we wouldn’t have wanted the others. Free vegetarian slider (“sanguchitos”)  to begin (as they were new to the menu),  pork belly and mixed fried squid, prawn and cod; two ceviches, one salmon, the other sea bream and king prawn; chicken skewer and flat-iron steak.  First time we had black beans too,  All good, and very filling. With 2 bottles and 2 glasses of Sauvignon Blanc plus 12.5% service this comes to £122 for the two of us.

Da Mario, Endell St, Covent Garden: second visit to this homely Italian. All the classics done well, with fish specials. £300 for six including just 10% service added.

Bacco, Holborn. A more sophisticated Italian, but still very friendly service.  I had the tuna carpaccio and the pork belly, which were both good. 3 bottles of house wine at £19 between four of us took the bill to £200 including 12.5% - good value.

Riverside Cantonese, Cardiff:  it’s match day, and we’ve left it late to book, so we end up at this Chinese in a less than salubrious area.  I was very pleased and surprised to find it was a buzzing and smartish.  We had a selection of starters (missed the dim sum menu) and a couple of mains. £93 for two, with own choice of tip added.

Ben Thanh, Twickenham. Another match day but this time have booked early - only to find no-one else there when we arrive.  This small Vietnamese restaurant is fairly basic, but the staff were friendly and obliging. The four of us shared the platter to start – Vietnamese rolls, fried squid, pork and chicken satay.  The ladies had noodles with beef or chicken, while the chaps both went for Phô, the noodle soup – meatballs or king prawn.  The meatballs were not a hit, but the rest of the meal was good.  Three bottles of quite a nice NZ SB @ £17.80 took the total for 4 to just £110 before tip.

House of Hô, Old Compton St (website is the Percy St branch). Another Vietnamese and four of us again, but different friends this time.  Starters include soft shell crab and seafood ceviche; mains lemongrass chicken and shaking beef. Also two desserts and 3 bottles of SB at £24. With 12.5% this comes to £205 for four.  Much more sophisticated place, in centre of Soho, so maybe that’s fair enough.

 

Belated catch-up - June and July

I’ve got behind on my Chompers blog recently so here is a quick catch-up. Sadly some of the details have now faded in my (fading) memory.

The Old Spot, Wells:  Our friend H lives in Wells, so when it came up in “1000 places to eat before you die”, we thought it was too good a thing to miss. With T&K we venture down to Somerset and head off out to the restaurant.  After a quick drink in a pub which used to be a prison, we head round to the restaurant.

The back garden is beautifully positioned with an excellent view of the Cathedral, but from inside there is practically none.  The main feature though, is a particularly grumpy Head of House, who clearly wishes she was somewhere else.  Service is slow and offhand, and we are unable to get a second bottle of Pinotage, going for a Malbec instead.

Which is a shame, because the food itself is not half bad.  Starters included a salmon roulade, feta salad, pork terrine and a salad. From the main menu two of us have the duck breast and three the lamb with hummus.  We also share a cheese plate.

At £205 (3 bottles of wine) it’s pretty good value, except that the service has left a very sour taste.

Percy and Founders  opened up on the site of the old Middlesex Hospital, off Mortimer Street , so is a convenient location from Oxford Street.  Six of us descend one lunchtime. It’s quite a large place, so they concentrate the few diners into one section of the restaurant, with a window through to the beautiful décor of the old hospital chapel.

Starters include a tuna tartare, “heritage” tomato and goat’s cheese and for me the speciality crab and lobster scotch egg (£12.50).  Coincidentally (or perhaps because of a limited menu), 3 of us order chicken salad, and 3 crab linguine – the latter is very good.  We also have desserts – crepe, ice cream and a stunning peanut butter parfait.

With three bottles of wine  - Picpoul  @ £23 and Poivre d’Ane @ £28 (we had two tee-totallers) and service, this comes to £260.

I’ve reviewed Chez Bruce before, but this is the first time I’ve been there with B – plus M&G and C.  Again there is the calm smooth service that makes you feel so relaxed, though this time perhaps a little jollier – maybe in response to a group rather than a couple.

I’m afraid I don’t recall the details of our meals – the bill simply records two 3 course lunches and three 2 course ones, plus a John Dory supplement (B). It also records 3 apple and elderflower G&T’s, a strawberry bellini, 3 bottles of Viognier, a half carafe of house red and a glass of muscat !  Not surprisingly perhaps I do recall a feeling of warm contentment!

The set meals are such good value at lunchtime (£29.50 for three courses, £24.50 for two), so a total of £335 for 5 (£67 a head) seems very reasonable.  Do go.

One of the extra benefits of Chez Bruce is a special offer of half price meals at its sister restaurant, the Glasshouse in Kew, also Michelin starred.  So B and I take ourselves off there a few weeks later.  Rather more beige than the Wandsworth place,  the Glasshouse still has a good relaxed feel. It’s surprisingly busy for a mid-week lunch, but the service remains unruffled.

Again my memory of the dishes has faded. The half-price £12.25 for 2 courses, £14.75 for three, though, clearly can’t be beaten. We have kirs to start, a bottle of white at £29 (that’s the challenge with offers like this) and two glasses of red to go with the cheese course, so the bill, with service, comes to £115.

I’ve also reviewed Babur Brasserie at Honor Oak Park before.  A bit off the beaten track, but “worth the detour”.  Six of us again arrive for their annual birthday event, to sample both their special menu and a very wide-ranging standard one.

Our starters included crab idli, cod cheeks, scallops, and some fiery goat patties.  Mains included special butter fish, goat curry, lamb back strap and (for me) Kalaunji prawns, which sadly were rather dry.  Sides of spinach, daal, and aurbergine were excellent.  But overall a good meal.

With four bottles of wine (Viognier and Carmenere), Cobra and coffee, we got up to £300 before service.  One of the best value up-market Indians around.

 

 

 

Excellent tapas in Lower Regent St

After going to see the “Inventing Impressionism” exhibition at the National Gallery (excellent, go if you can), we’re looking for lunch. We had considered Boyd’s on Northumberland Avenue with its garish looking furniture, but when we walked past it looked rather unwelcoming. So instead we decide to head for Bilbao Berria, a tapas and pinxtos place on Lower Regent Street.

On the way we stop off at Pall Mall Fine Wines, in the Royal Opera Terrace. This is a quirky little wine bar, featuring the cartoons of Private Eye contributor, Simon Key.  They do charcuterie and cheese but we resist this, and have a bottle of unusual Picpoul Frisant, which is very good indeed – softer and sweeter  than a champagne, but with plenty of interest.

Then on to the tapas. It’s now 2pm, and it is fairly full. But we do get a table near the window – and near a large office group, who are fortunately a) not too loud and b) about to leave.  There’s a lovely buzz to the place, and an elegant modern style – no tapas clichés. The ceiling is a maze of winding metal piping forming a false ceiling; there are three Iberico jamons ready and waiting to be sliced; and attractive looking little pinxtos perched on the bar.

There is a 3-course “Business lunch” menu at £18, but we decide to go for the interesting and unusual selection from the a la carte.  Naturally, first we order some wine – I choose a white Rioja, called “Seduccion” at £25 (one of the cheaper options), which the attractive waitress serves with a giggle. Though it may not have been the name she was laughing at – the wine was bright yellow, and seriously sweet, not at all what I expected, and probably not the best choice to go with the tapas.  Anyway, we persevere (B eventually saying “this stuff grows on you”).
We ask how many dishes to order, and as well as suggesting that four should be enough unless we were really hungry, the waitress suggests her favourites – curiously, the most expensive!  There are several very nice sounding fish dishes, a good range of ham (obvs) and a number of other attractive options.  

After much deliberation, we choose the plate of cured meats – an Iberico ham, a spicy chorizo, a salami and some lomo, served with very crisp little breadsticks, and some bread we order.  This is a good sized portion, which arrives first, and we pick at throughout the meal.  Next up is a “remarkable”  prawn dish – two king prawns, in a “kataifi” crust more like a Turkish sweet than a batter, served in a glass with a brilliant spicy tomato sauce and garlic puree. Once the prawns had gone we were still scooping up the sauce with the breadsticks, and the waitress then brought a spoon.

The third dish to arrive is the sea-bream ceviche.  This comes with what look like dark prawn crackers that taste very strongly of salt cod – ugh!  The ceviche itself is good, perhaps not as sharply cured as it might be, and cut into smaller pieces than we expected.

The waitress arrives to tell us that, our fourth dish is on its way shortly, but that 3pm the kitchen will close, so do we want to order anything else.  We decide against more food, but have a 500ml carafe of Mont Ferrutx from Mallorca (£20).

The final dish is roasted neck lamb, one of the waitress’s recommendations we’d already spotted. This comes with some chopped nuts and olives,  a (one) fig and a weird rather solid foam, but the lamb itself is tender and tasty.  The way the dishes have been phased has worked very well, especially as the cured meats lasted to the end.
With the typical West End 12.5% service, the bill comes to £105, which we think is pretty good.  As we’re finishing off, a waiter brings a replacement jamon to fit into the contraption ready for slicing. It arrives in a very lovely black sack with a gold foil over the heel.  It seems such a waste the way the waiter cuts into the sack and throws all the wrapping away.  We ask about the differences between the hams, and the waiter is happy to chat  – normally there are three different ones apparently but at the moment they only have two, one from Cordoba and one from Salamanca.  

Overall, a very enjoyable lunch experience – just avoid Seduccion if you go!