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!

Classy tapas off Piccadilly

After a challenging session at the Anthony Gormley exhibition at the RA, we retire to the Chequers Tavern  for a much-need drink. It’s a remarkably quiet haven off Piccadilly, though with the good weather there were a lot of people drinking outside. Here we debate where to go for lunch, as the original interest in Japanese has waned.

 After a bit of Googling we settle on El Pirata, a classic tapas bar, round the back of the Athenaeum.  As we approach, we can see people sitting outside in the sunshine, but the one spare table is reserved. It’s 2pm and inside is packed. You’d have to say it was a “narrow demographic” - even compared with the RA. We are ushered to the sit at the bar (“counter”) which doesn’t really appeal, but it’s the only option. Others, having booked, or regulars known to the management do get tables.

 We order some wine – Paso a Paso, Sauvignon/Verdejo (at £25 near the cheapest on the list) – and consider the menu. There’s a wide range of options, including a special offer 2-dish lunch at £11.50, specials at around £15, paellas, and a tapas selection at £25. Or you could just choose a few dishes, which is what we did.

 The bread and aioli arrives first. Lovely soft bread, that was so tempting to keep dipping into the punchy garlic dip. Next comes the pan-fried medallions of steak in a tasty sauce.  Very tender, though the sauce wasn’t as garlic or peppery as might have been expected. With that is the chick peas with slow cooked aubergine, courgettes & peppers – a little odd, sharp and sweet at the same time.

 Then, both sizzling hot, come the gambas pil-pil and the chicken livers. Both excellent.  We had wondered whether these few dishes would be enough, but we are quite satisfied with them. Plenty of sauces to dip your bread into.

 The place is very buzzy and full, and doesn’t even start to empty out until well after 3pm. The décor is Picasso and Miro prints, with the classic display of spirits behind the bar.  Our neighbour at the bar has ordered dishes from the set menu, but his companion has failed to arrive, despite lots of calls. B decides that she must be very glamorous, as she is quite happy to keep her man waiting. He eats most of the food, but does manage to leave some for her. Eventually, a well-dressed slim Indian lady arrives – with suitcase – picks at the cold sardines and chicken croquettes, before pushing off in a taxi after no more than 30 minutes.

We order another bottle of wine while we survey the comings and goings.  Many of the dishes we’ve seen served look very good – the paella, Iberico ham, sardines, tomato bread; and there were plenty of other things on the menu we would have happily ordered.  

The final reckoning was a pretty reasonable £86 including service, given that £50 was wine.  Service at the bar had been prompt fairly friendly without being over-attentive.  It’s not in the most convenient of locations but in Michelin terms “worth a detour”. We’ll no doubt revisit, but make sure to reserve a table next time.

 

March round-up

Busy month!

Veeno, an Italian wine bar in George Street, Croydon has been open about a year. We’ve been a few times, mainly for drinks, though a couple of times for lunch with P&M. On this visit B has the tuna salad (her regular choice here) and I had bresaola panino, which wasn’t toasted enough. With two bottles of Grillo – from a constantly changing supplier – that came to (£61).

Visiting the Don McCullin exhibition at Tate Britain, we knew we would need cheering up afterwards, so I do some local research. We settle on Goya, a tapas bar on Lupus Street, as it looks like it should be relaxing.  There are a couple of other people in there, some propping up the bar all afternoon it seems.  We get the table by the window, so have plenty of people-watching opportunities with the school across the road.  There is a downstairs too, which is more of a restaurant but not open at this time of day.
We choose the El Coto Blanco Rioja (£18.95), then turn to the tapas menu. It’s a fairly long list, but nothing much out of the ordinary. The liver and onion comes with chips; the garlic prawns also have a good chilli hit. Tuna croquettes are a bit different, and the bean casserole comes with ham. I get talked into ordering the garlic bread, as something to have while we wait for the other dishes, but actually it doesn’t arrive until the others do.  It is very squidgy though, with a good mozzarella topping.
With a second bottle of wine this comes to a reasonable £78 (incl just 10% service).  But it’s just an “OK” sort of place, not really worth seeking out unless you are nearby.  It leads us to a debate about “favourite tapas places” – Mar i Terra, Lobos and, sadly no longer open, Bilbao Berria.


Later in the week after the long journey home from a visit to Theydon Bois, since we are catching an East Grinstead train, we decide to call in at the Sanderstead Tandoori.  We have garlic prawns (big butterfly prawns), chicken tikka special (very spicy), tarka dhal, and pilau rice with just one bottle of wine for £48, with a 10% loyalty card discount. Large very tasty portions, so we only manage half and ask to take the rest away.  And very tasty the dishes still are a couple of days later.


In a busy week, we are off to Leyton of all places to meet with S and a big group of her circle to celebrate A’s 30^th.  The Lion and Key at the top of the High Road describes itself as a hotel, though you’d think of it as a pub with rooms. It has been quite modernised, but is very quiet this Saturday lunchtime – perhaps because Orient are playing away.  B and I share the calamari and prawns as starters, then I have a lamb shish and she a chicken skewer. Portions are very large – the kleftiko some people ordered was huge. With a good amount of wine this was £112 for the two of us.




The next week is jazz. Tuesday, Nigel Kennedy at Ronnie Scott’s was excellent, but the food was rather average: chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms with gnocchi, burger with cheese and bacon. Two bottles takes it to £110.  

Then Thursday to Northbank for a tasting menu with a jazz trio – rather elderly it has to be said, but providing a pleasant background.  The 7-course tasting with wine pairings is nominally £65 a head, but we supplement it with a few extra glasses.  We have nduja focaccia, cod’s roe on caviar crackers as an opener, followed by watercress soup. The poached dover sole and cauliflower is pretty small, and the lamb loin with hogget breast ragu not really what you would call a main course – tasty though. Afters run to goats cheese and grapes, rhubarb with sorbet and finally pistachio doughnut. By the time they add the extra wine and service it comes to just over £200.



To wrap the month up, we wander down to Coulsdon to our favourite local Italian, Pulcinella’s. As usual it’s quiet lunchtime, with several specials on the boards. They don’t have our regular Frascati, so we go for the more expensive Italian Sauvignon Blanc – not too fruity. We share garlic bread with mozzarella and goat’s cheese in parma ham to start. B has scallops with black pudding (on the board as a starter, but she has a double portion as main) – excellent smooth black pudding and perfectly cooked scallops.  I choose the seafood pasta which is packed with prawns, mussels, clams and squid – more ordinary but good. £110 with two bottles and service (plus complimentary limoncello).  

February round-up

India Dining

It’s Valentine’s Day so of course we take our neighbour out for dinner.  We get a taxi over to Warlingham (about 20 mins), though parking is difficult and we have to jump out rapidly.  Naturally the place is festooned with red balloons, but we are offered a table where we can easily move them aside.


We’d heard of it some time ago as a place run by a chef who used to work at the Cinnamon Club. K&I next door had been before and liked it too, so we were definitely looking forward to it.
It’s quite busy, so it is hard to track down a specific server, but we get our wine (the house Merlot at £17.95) quickly enough. There are some more interesting/expensive wines on the list, but it’s not unreasonable.


There is a special Valentine’s Day 4-course menu on offer, but we decide to go a la carte, which they are OK with. We get some poppadums (with nice chutneys), then order. K passes on a starter, so we share the chilli squid (deep-fried, with a good hit of chilli) and the yellow fin tuna between the three of us. The tuna comes as slices of seared tuna, along with a few pieces of tuna tartar – the seared tuna is good, but I’m less enamoured with the tartar.
For main course, K goes with the mixed tandoori grill – chicken, lamb, prawn – with a stuffed paratha. She says that is very good. B orders the Goan prawns (or “Gowan” as the menu has it), which are excellent: good prawn flavour, soft but not cotton-wool, and a seriously spicy sauce. I choose “Nihari raan” – lamb shank in yoghurt and spice sauce. This is fine, the sauce is delicious and the meat comes away from the bone easily, but somehow the combination doesn’t really work.  We also order rice, dhal and a garlic spinach dish.


We indulge in a couple of desserts. K chooses the gulab jamun, the sticky milk balls dish, and B the pistachio kulfi. Both good.


Service has been very good despite the busy evening. At one point a senior waiter took mock offence when after asking “didn’t I take your order?”, I reply “no, a young man did!”.
The bill presented was £136 – 10% service, 2 bottles of wine and a couple of cokes. It sounded OK, so I didn’t check it until later. They had forgotten to charge us for the poppadums and starters, but had charged us for an extra side dish and coke – on balance we were ahead! 
Worth the visit if there are enough of you to justify the taxi fare.
 

Chez Lindsay

I’ve reviewed this charming French bistro before, and again we are there with S&S. It may be that is not as much on offer as you’d expect, but we end up ordering just two different starters and two different mains between us. S and B love the whole crab starter, which of course takes an age to eat. S and I go for the smoked duck salad – good, not special.


Unusually we have all gone for galettes as mains – B for the gambas, and the rest of us for the fruits de mer.  We also have a crème brulee and a crepes suzette for dessert.
£244 for the food plus four bottles of Viognier at £25 and some water.  Happy to recommend that.

Red Farm

We’d been looking for a good Chinese centrally so when we hear of this place by Covent Garden we have to give it a try. It’s a tight small space with a long central table and a few others around the side. We get seated at a two-some table in what feels like a cramped place near the bar – nowhere to put coats other than the floor. The place is fairly busy with lively young people so, once we get used to the table, the atmosphere is OK.


It’s tricky to work out what to order from the menu – what is starter or main. Some dishes seem seriously pricey and dim sum are £10 a shot. In the end we go for a selection of starters/dim sum. We choose just 4 to start with.


The “pac man” prawn dumplings are unique – there are four different flavour dumplings plus a “pac man” shaped shrimp/potato fritter.  The individual dumplings are excellent, but pac-man himself a little dull.  The other dim sum is beef dumplings – spicy and slippery. We also have “Dingley Dell” pork belly – soft and full of flavour; and lamb skewers with chilli and cumin.
To be fair the dishes have been a good size and very tasty. We order another portion of the “pac man” a chicken dumplings, with mushroom and a duck gyoza.


Service was very slow to begin with. The head waiter apologised for the delay due to a technical problem – just before we got irritated.  In recompense he provided a tray of three vegetables, which were very tasty and didn’t charge us for the gyoza.


Wine wasn’t cheap either - £29 for a standard Chenin Blanc. The total of £136 (incl 12.5% ) was more than you would expect for an average Chinese dim sum – but then it was definitely well above average.  OK for small groups – not really a party destination.

Busaba, KIngston

We’ve been to this Thai restaurant on the river in Kingston before – in the summer when you could sit outside. Despite this remarkable February weather, this time we are inside in a very busy space.  We are offered one table close to a group of little kids, so decide instead to sit between two other tables, both of which were finishing up anyway.


Although the restaurant is busy, the service is good enough to get a wine order (Chenin Blanc at £22) in quickly, along with some Thai prawn crackers – so much better than the Chinese ones.
We share a Thai calamari to start – their “signature” dish with ginger and green peppercorns. It is remarkable, nothing like I’ve had before. The calamari is cooked just short of rubbery (no batter), and the sauce a mouthful of flavour. The peppercorns are on little stalks, infusing the whole thing. Top marks.


There are several main courses that sound very interesting, but in the end we go with chilli prawns and tamarind duck (which comes with rice) plus a “sweet and sour” cucumber salad.  The prawns have a serious kick and good flavour. The duck (which requires proper sharp knives to deal with) is also an impressive dish.  The only low note is the salad, which has far more lettuce and leaves and not enough cucumber for our taste.


With the usual 12.5% service (pretty much deserved) and a second bottle of wine, the bill comes to £97 – I’m pleased with that, it’s very good value.