Esher Chinese

 We are in Esher for a showing of "The Great Escaper" in the Everyman. Someone had recommended a Japanese place, but that seems to have closed down, so we try the Chinese, the Good Earth. There are other branches in Wandsworth, Knightsbridge and Mill Hill, and a few "Express" outlets too. 

It's a smart place, with lots of red and gold, some classic Chinese pictures on the walls. Although there is only one other couple in, we are asked if we have a reservation, but then given a nice table in the window overlooking the High Street. The chopsticks are elegant, in fancy wrappers, there is a classy glass tray for dishes in the centre of the table (lazy susans on larger tables) and to B's great amusement we are presented with two little buttons, which when doused in hot water expand into hot towels. 

I'd looked at the menu beforehand, and it seemed quite expensive - £20 for soft-shelled crab starter, £25 for sweet and sour pork. The wine list wasn't so bad, so we settle on the French Viognier at £34. Fortunately though, there is also an express lunch menu at £18.80 for two courses and a range of dim sum dumplings at £5 per portion. 

So we decide on a combination of the two. From the express menu we order lettuce wrapped chicken and spicy lamb with lemongrass, egg-fried rice and vegetables. Dim sum dumplings were scallops, and prawn and chive. I also throw in a Dragon's Whiskers prawns from the starters list. 

The lettuce chicken and Dragon's Whiskers come first. The chopped chicken comes with some vegetables and a tasty sauce (billed as plum sauce, but lighter than that). A bit messy to eat, so the hot towels come in handy. DW is large prawns in shredded pastry, also rather messy, but certainly tasty. The dumplings come next. Scallops are really good; the wrapping is a bit heavy on both, so the chilli sauce is welcome. 

Finally the lamb, rice and vegetables, all served on one beautifully decorated plate on the glass tray; our starter plates have been replaced with smart blue and white bowls and plates. The lamb is good and spicy, with clear chilli flakes in it. The rice has identifiable pieces of scrambled egg, and the good range of vegetables (peppers, carrots, asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms and something that may or may not have been celery) were all fresh and deliciously al dente.  

Unusually for us we treat ourselves to a dessert. Harking back to many years ago we order the toffee bananas. These are gorgeously crispy with sesame seeds; B reckons we should have had ice cream with them, and tells the couple at the next table, who duly order that and agree.

The waiter has been smiley and helpful without intruding; wine glasses topped up efficiently. The place is quite large, but has filled up a little while we were there. No background music.  

With a second bottle of wine, the bill goes up to a bit over £130 - with an odd 13% service charge. That's fine, but I imagine an evening meal from the main menu would be much more. Admittedly, the portions do seem to be quite large from what we saw at other tables, but I think our lunch deal worked pretty well. If the Japanese doesn't open up again, we will probably go back. 

Well-known Brasserie and venerable old Indian

 We were arranging to meet up with M&L in central London, but were met with a challenge - M wanted somewhere where they served draught lager. This turned out to be harder to find than I expected. Most places do bottled lager, but those that serve draught tend to call themselves "gastropubs" and have very limited and uninteresting menus. Something of a class thing going on here perhaps. 

Eventually, I found Tutton's, the well-known brasserie in Covent Garden, who offer a Staropramen, Czech lager.   It's a lovely sunny day, so there are many people sitting out on the terrace, but we have a table inside, in a corner near open windows, which was good. Less good was the time it took them to come across to take drinks orders. (Admittedly, after the first time, they got better).  As well as M's lager, we ordered a Cape Heights SA Sauvignon Blanc at £33. 

For starter's, both M and B had the crispy poached egg with mushrooms and peas. It's quite an impressive dish, runny inside but with a well-coloured batter outside. My beef carpaccio was OK, a little small, while L's warm beetroot salad was multi-coloured, but apparently not that special.

As we start the second course, we order another round of drinks. M's lager comes all fizzy and strange. It turns out it was the end of the barrel, so they do offer to change it, and it comes back later much better. The menu for mains was not extensive, but we each found something of interest. M had fish and chips (could have gone to a gastropub) and L had what she felt to be a disappointing pork belly, which had no crispy crackling. But B's seafood risotto was a full dish and my salmon trout nicely roasted. 

Ordering more drinks, the draught lager is now "off", so M resorts to bottled lager after all. We had told them that it was M's birthday so he got a free dessert, choosing salted caramel and dark chocolate tart. I keep him company with a mango and vanilla creme brulee. 

M generously offered to pay, so I don't know the exact bill, but I would imagine it would have been around £250.  For really very central London, not bad really, if hardly ground-breaking. There were a lot of Americans in, with their cruise ships numbers on their chests, so it's obviously on the well-known beaten track. After the initial lapse, the waitress was very smiley and helpful, and the atmosphere welcoming. A good place to take undemanding out-of-towners.  

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 There are some places which are just "institutions", having been around for so long. The India Club in Aldwych is one such. But sadly it closed its doors for the final time today, with re-development of the block finally having been approved. Apparently, early versions of the place have been going for 70 years as an outpost of the Indian High Commission and - it is claimed - hosting important visitors such as Nehru. Our ex-Home Office group used to make it a regular venue for a meal after the Varsity Match and we calculated that we must first have visited some 46 years ago. 

It's not what you would call salubrious or Michelin-quality. Its claim to fame was its authentic home-cooked Indian classics.  The restaurant is up a winding old staircase on the second floor, and features formica tables. It must have had an update over the years, because these are no longer screwed to the floor. The bar is one floor down (it used to be that you had to go down to order all your drinks, but now they do have drinks service at the table too). This has some lovely old prints and photos, but little in the way of plush furnishings. 

We visit in its final week, and the queue is amazing. You could only book for 6 or more, and sadly we are just 5, so we have to put our name on the list, notify them when we had all assembled, and just wait in the bar, drinking Cobra and Kingfisher. 

After about an hour and a half, we are finally summoned upstairs, to quite a good table by the window. Understandably, they are only doing the set menus, though we do manage to order extra chilli bhajis, one of our traditional favourites that blow your head off.  Otherwise it's standard fare of poppadums and pickles, onion bhaji, samosa, butter chicken, chana masala, dhal and mounds of rice. All for £22 including service - the beers were probably about the same. Pretty slick service meant that we were through our meal in an hour.

It is sad to see it go, though we were pleased to have stuck it out and managed to get in before the final close.  You can't recreate history like this.  

 

Smart fish restaurant in Richmond

 An offshoot of its parent in Mayfair, Scott's Richmond opened in September last year. We'd heard some good things about it, so decided to push the boat out and give it a try. 

As the weather was looking OK, I decided to book outdoors on the Terrace. The choice of times was very limited, nothing between 12.45 and 3.30, so I went for the earlier time. Conscious of their strict sounding late-arrival policy, I was glad our bus delivered us to Richmond in good time. Part of the restaurant's appeal was its view over the river, so we walked along the riverside path from the bridge - only to find ourselves far down river without having seen the restaurant. After some hasty discussions, we retraced our steps and found it on the corner near the main Riverside steps - it just didn't have a river-level frontage.

We are taken in, up four flights to the Terrace, to be given an excellent table by the veranda, directly overlooking the river. Down below are swans, geese and to our surprise two herons, which we spend a lot of our time watching. The weather is ideal - warm and sunny, but with a breeze and not too hot. They do have heaters and awnings so they can perhaps deal with less good weather too. A light background track of American songbook and other easy listening plays gently (thank goodness). 

B is fascinated by the staff's dress code. We'd been greeted at the door by a black guy in a cream suit with a Panama hat - very New Orleans jazz. The reception desk staff had boring green suits. Our waiter, Vinnie, wore a smart Burgundy waistcoat and bow tie, while over-seeing the proceedings was a head waiter looking like Lurch in a really odd Burgundy suit. There seemed to be other waiters in green waistcoats, and the minions (inevitably young women) delivering bread were in dull green tunics. The head honcho, dressed in a dark blue suit and pale pink tie, smarmed his way round some of the tables (not ours) looking more like a junior Tory minister.  But nonetheless Vinnie was welcoming, friendly and lightly amusing. The service even extended to providing some diners with sunglasses and sunscreen. 

Unsurprisingly, the wine list goes up quite quickly. There is an Argentinian Torrontes for £44 and a Spanish Macabeo for £36, but I select the Rioja Verdejo at £48. There were also French rosés at £48. 

The menu is pretty wide-ranging, and there is a selection of specials - halibut (£40), oysters and lobster roll (which was quite popular). I pass over the oysters and caviar quite quickly, and though B does suggest a couple of tempura fried oysters we just go straight to starters. B unusually decides against the scallops, and instead has baked spiced crab, presented attractively in the shell. From the first mouthful she is sold. It is indeed delicious, a good hit of chilli, but with the crab flavour coming through.  That allows me to choose the scallops, seared in their shell with Thai green butter. These are excellent too, though much less spicy than B's crab. 

For main course B has the char-griddled tiger prawns (which are also available as a starter). These are also spiced, coming with jalapeno and tamarind. Deemed very good but a bit "cotton-wool", suggesting they were frozen, all eight of them were nonetheless polished off without trouble. My fillet of hake, with romesco sauce and salsa verde, was excellently cooked with a crisp thin layer of skin and very flaky fish.  We had both been tempted by the monkfish and tiger prawn masala, but thought that the sauce might have been too overwhelming - it looked good on another table though.

We also had some very good fries (at Vinnie's prompting) and a tomato salad, which included some very sweet (in both senses) yellow tomatoes.  The fried aubergine with tamarind yoghurt at another table also looked amazing.

We opted not to have desserts. Cinnamon doughnuts appeared elsewhere and we quickly despatched. 

All the other tables on the Terrace had been occupied, some had a second sitting. One table moved inside for their dessert, maybe asked to do so as new people arrived soon after. There was no pressure on us to move though. So the booking window seemed justified, rather than perverse as it had seemed to me at the time.

After a second bottle, and two bottles of Eira sparkling water, I tried to guess what the bill would be. Inexpensive was not what I expected. And it wasn't. It did come in under £250, with 13.5% service which seems to be increasingly common. Scott's is part of the Caprice group, so I guess it's no surprise that it has the same service policy as the Ivy.

Value for money? Well it is a lot. The excellent table on the Terrace in good weather was a big plus - maybe without that we might not have felt so well-disposed. I did look in on the main dining room as we left - it was elegant and imposing, but few tables had a river view. So definitely one only for very special occasions - or when someone else is paying!

Japanese in Soho

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surbiton Japanese and Kingston Turkish

 We've now been a few times to The Boat, a Japanese place near Surbiton station. It's little more than a cafe in some ways, but quite attractive in its way. It's become a regular choice after the farmer's market. The walls are decorated with boat-related images, though some are more Nelson-era ships. 

It describes itself as a Sushi and Ramen restaurant, but it does some other things too that they call "kitchen dishes", which is what we have tended to go for.  Typically we order edamame beans, but often choose the seaweed salad instead - this features two types of seaweed, and is very mild. 

Pretty regularly now we go for the karaage, deep-fried chicken served with a spiced-up salad cream. A recent favourite too is prawn katsu, prawns in breadcrumbs with a strange dense soy sauce. This latest time we also had the chicken gyoza and yellowtail tuna. We've recently taken to also ordering an inside out roll dish (rice stuffed with avocado and something) of some kind - soft-shell crab, spicy tuna, or on this latest visit beef. We don't really need it and often end up taking much of it away. The beef was a bit of an odd mix with the other dishes. There is a range of other sushi, nigri and sashimi, but we don't always go for those - the sushi sashimi sets look good though. 

Our wine choice is the Secretary Bird SB from SA at £22.  The staff are very friendly and chatty, and the light jazz background very pleasant. Total of around £75 without service (they prefer cash). Maybe not worth a visit across London in itself, but worth looking up if you're in the area.

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Another local we've now tried a couple of times is Cappadocia, near Kingston station. The Turkish restaurant is a pretty big place, with a take-away joined on. Maybe good for groups. Lots of Turkish-looking people in on both occasions. 

On both occasions we've had the lamb's liver and the acili ezme (a spicy salad) as starters. The liver is very good, dry and tasty; the salad a huge hit of chilli if you're not careful. The first time we tried the Bolu Manti,  meat stuffed dumplings with yoghurt. We were expecting something like a dim sum dumpling, but they were much smaller, so the ratio of meat to dough wrapper much less. OK, but rather heavy without a lot of flavour. This last time we had tiger prawns with garlic instead,

The first time I had the special flamed beef stew  - Testi - as a main. Elaborately presented in a clay pot on a  bed of flaming stones it looks pretty sensational. But the flaming is pointless - it is just a beef stew with red wine, a good sized portion but nothing special. That time B had the prawns as a main course, large ain a good sauce. 

On our second visit B chose the diced lamb on aubergine puree and garlic yoghurt. She found that rather too smoky for her taste.  My diced chicken breast with ginger was better, a thick almost curry-like sauce and good moist meat.  Portions are generally large. They do a range of kebabs as you'd expect and the mixed grill is huge.

Both times we had a bottle of French Viognier at £25. The first time we ordered a second bottle, but they didn't have another so proposed substituting a Chardonnay from the same vineyard - we had a Sauvignon instead. The second time, it was just a couple of glasses of house white.

Service was efficient, fairly friendly head waiter the first time, rather cold chap the second. The first time we had a 20% off food voucher and the bill was £114; the second time without it came to £110.  

A couple of places in Lymington

It's B's uncle E's 94th birthday so something special had to be planned. We had a recommendation from local wine club friends to try Elderflower, a Michelin-starred place down near the front in Lymington. They only do tasting menus (4,5 or 7 courses) which led to some heart-searching as E and son-in-law B like a nice steak. But it was duly booked and we arrived expectanlty.

The table is booked for 6.30pm - apparently only this time and 9.30pm were on offer. Which seems odd, as people did drift in over the course of the evening.  When we arrived there was only one other table occupied, but the restaurant was nearly full by the time we left.   We are shown to a nice table for 6 in the window, and feel a good welcoming vibe.

We order a bottle of French Viognier (£40), a glass of rosé and some sparkling water. We have settled on the 5-course menu at £75 a head.  Prior to the courses themselves, we are served with bread and a salmon butter, which is lovely. 

The first course arrives quite quickly - crab and potato mousse topped with caviar nestling in a Jersey Royal. The crab flavour comes through well, not dulled by the potato. Oddly our waiters are wearing gloves, not something I've seen before.

Next up is pea mousse and ham. That description doesn't really capture it. The pea mousse is squiggles across the plate, with a few peas thrown in. The ham, only small pieces, is strongly smoked with a good flavour.  A smallish course.

The fish course is unusual - skate cheeks. It comes with brown shrimps in a lovely lobster velouté. Skate cheeks were new on me, but they had plenty of flavour and not the challenge of an oversized wing that you often get. 

For the meat course, there is Black Sheep lamb - a goodly sized portion. Served in a rich wine sauce, with some potato and spinach. Mine is slightly on the tough side, but everyone else really enjoys theirs.

Finally there is a trio of desserts. There is a blueberry sorbet, melting in the heat, a strawberry mousse with a very tasty wrapping, and a rather complicated assembly of chocolate mousse and pieces. 

Throughout, the service has been excellent - friendly and informative. And the whole thing was well-paced, neither rushed nor leaving you waiting. We had three bottles of the Viognier and a Vega Douro (also £40) to go with the lamb, so with coffee and water the drinks come to £220 between 6 of us including service

The steak eaters seemed satisfied, and the rest of us were really pleased.

The following day after cruising the market, B and I have lunch at Koh Thai on the High Street. It's a lovely sunny day, so we sit outside in the garden. There's no-one else there when we arrive but soon after two ladies arrive - choosing for some reason to sit at the nearest table to us. 

It's an intriguing menu, so we have some steamed edamame beans while we make our choice. A £26 False Bay SA Chenin goes well. 

In the end we go for 5 starters and one noodle dish, served in two waves. First we had "Thai-namite" battered prawns in a Sriracha mayonnaise - nothing like as spicy as implied, but good prawns. With that came duck rolls, which were excellent - crispy wrapping stuffed full of shredded duck served with Hoisin dipping sauce (which it didn't really need). The third was the crispy beef. I fall for this every time and it is always disappointing, a bit claggy and tough. 

The noodles were spicy seafood udon - prawns and squid. Lovely sauce, good prawns, chewy squid. Some good prawn dim sum and minced chicken in lettuce leaf wraps came with that.  

We had substantially over-ordered, but they were happy enough to decant the remainder into take-away boxes.  The lonely waiter was good enough with the service, if rather distant. Total £123 with two bottles and just 10% service. 

Smart place in Islington

 Meeting up with G, she has suggested we go to Frederick's in Camden Passage in Islington. The outside retains the facade of a Victorian pub, but inside it is quite different. There's a bright modern bar at the front, and then the back of the restaurant opens up into very light and open spaces, with a garden area, something of a Tardis. The walls are whitewashed brick, adorned with large geometric modern art in bold colours. It's all very summery and welcoming. 

We're booked for 1pm, and not surprisingly the place is already pretty busy. There are several side rooms, so I can't tell if it was actually full. Service is pretty attentive, so we get to order our wine and water. The wine list is quite extensive, but there is a French Viognier at £30. G has a Prosecco. 

It's a bit hard to characterise the food as any particular cuisine. "Modern European" perhaps best captures it. The starters list in particular is very attractive - several of our long-term favourites such as salt and pepper squid, tuna tartare and dressed crab. But when it comes down to it, almost inevitably, B has the scallops and I have the beef carpaccio. G has stuffed courgette flower tempura. The large scallops come with balls of very squidgy black pudding and a very appley puree. My carpaccio is large, with an excellent topping of rocket, slices and big chunks of parmesan and a very sharp pickled red onion, all in a tasty but light dressing. G's tempura looks very light too.

I'd struggled with the main course choices a bit more, ending up with halibut, prawn and cauliflower pappardelle in what turned out to be a rich and dominant saffron cream. B was very pleased with her hake - now her go-to fish - which came with samphire and mushrooms. G had lamb rump, which she said was very tender (though she had asked for it to be medium to well-done) with "Israeli couscous" - very small, round yellow grains. 

After a little pause for some people watching - Al Murray, the pub landlord, was in - we had some dessert. G had the pear and almond tart with sorbet which seemed very light. B and I shared a chocolate fondant with pistachio ice-cream - everything you would hope it would be, gooey and rich, cooled by the ice-cream. 

Service has generally been good, though we had the usual twitching when they took the wine away and weren't quite as attentive we might have liked. A second bottle of Viognier and glass of Prosecco took the bill to £270 including service.  At first I thought that was a bit much for a neighbourhood place, but on reflection, this was above average, so it was probably reasonable enough. 

Certainly recommended to anyone in the area, but like some other places recently, probably too far for us to make a special trip there usually.