Review: Ducksoup, Soho

Ducksoup

Ducksoup

Ducksoup is a tiny wine bar in Soho serving up small plates alongside natural wines. They try very hard to pack everyone in. If you’re sat at the bar counter your elbows will be wedged to your ribs by the folks either side of you. We were sat at one of the little tables down the side and the chairback of the chap behind me dug into my shoulderblades every time he shifted his body. Thinking this a bit rude, I turned to ask him to shift in a bit only to see that he also had his stomach tucked right into the edge of the table and could no more make space than I could.

So. We still had a delicious supper at Ducksoup, but now you can go along and try it knowing that it’s… jolly cosy? It’s certainly well beloved – some of the patrons gave out a distinct “regulars” vibe.

Courgette pesto

Courgette pesto

The wines are all natural, and I must admit that the two reds we picked with the help of our waiter were tasty enough but still at the funkier end of the natural spectrum. I’ve had better. So what did we eat?

First up, a salad of small Italian courgettes with a rough hazelnut pesto. This was a lovely salad, the courgettes crunchy, sweet and raw, the mix of basil, toasty hazel and salty pecorino really zippy. Then three chunks of deep fried mackerel encased in a very scrunchy (but not oily) batter, which ate very nicely with the lemony tahini yogurt. Our third small plate was lamb sweetbreads jumbled up with tropea onions and radicchio in a tangy/sticky agrodolce sauce. This just couldn’t help being yummy; vinegary agrodolce and well-cooked sweetbreads. Mmmm.

Mackerel fritter

Mackerel fritter

The large plate we shared was chargrilled beef with hen of the woods mushroom and lentils. The beef was one of the cheaper cuts, full of flavour and reasonably chewy but done just nicely: seared edge and dark pink inside. The lentils made a good background, with wild garlic leaves for flavour and a lovely creamy dollop of anchovy sauce. All very heart-warming.

If you had a small and large plate each, you’d be looking at £40 before drinks, about right for central Soho. So Ducksoup is a good place to know if you enjoy the squished-in cosy wine bar vibe and natural wines. They’ve been here for more than 10 years now, and to be fair there are hundreds of similar quality/price small plate places scattered around, so I can’t really find a reason to say it’s worth a special trip.

Sweetbreads in agrodulce

Sweetbreads in agrodulce

Tapas in Seville

Seafood tapas bar

Seafood tapas bar

San Sebastian might have become the darling of international foodies with its buzzing Basque pintxo culture, but Andalusia and it’s great capital of Seville are the original home of the tapas cuisine that now spans the globe. I can certainly remember that awkward phase of “British tapas”, “Thai tapas” and “modern tapas” before restaurants thankfully settled on the term “small plates” and left the Spanish to it.

So what’s it like spending a long weekend eating your way around Seville?

Well, it’s cheap for one thing. We stuck religiously to tapas bars, never ate in a traditional restaurant, and pretty much managed £30 each per evening for more than enough delicious food

Salmorejo, the local cold soup

Salmorejo, the local cold soup

and a few drinks. It’s also fun, as you can have a drink and share two tapas in one bar, then wander on to another; seldom more than five minutes walk and every one different, and with their own house specialities. Important tip: in most places we found it necessary to actively attract someone’s attention if we wanted to order or to pay. This was so common that I don’t think we were getting bad service, I think it’s just how it works in the tapas bars. Certainly service was friendly once we got it.

Aaaaaanyway… let me tell you about some of the tapas bars we liked, that you might want to look up if you visit, and some of the typical dishes I now love. I’ve picked these places out because they were all so insanely close to the main tourist attractions of old-town Seville, so there’s no questing into distant neighbourhoods needed.

Casa Ramon is right in the touristy Santa Cruz area of winding lanes near the Alcazar, but it was absolutely top-notch delicious. Salmorejo is the local gazpacho; similar ingredients but thickened with breadcrumbs to a creamier texture. Bocadito de pringá is a tiny sandwich spread with softly cooked-down meats; morcilla, chorizo, pork maybe, whatever they have.

Bocadito de Pringa

Bocadito de Pringa

Barra de Inchausti was perhaps our favourite, a bright seafood place just 2 minutes walk from the cathedral but tucked down a little road most would miss. Their tortilla de camarones is a crispy fritter full of tiny shrimps, I could munch through a dozen of them. Papas aliñás are a simple and useful starter, a sort of soft vinegary potato salad with a little dried tuna on top.

Tortilla de camarones

Tortilla de camarones

Bar Zubaran was great, we went twice, and again it’s just a minute from the Setas in the very centre of the city, but tucked in a little courtyard you’d walk past without noticing. Busy, modern, but the tapas were all classic and excellent. Shout-out here to the solomillo; pieces of pork cooked in a spiffy whiskey sauce, served perfectly with chips. And even better, the simple espinacho con garbanzos; garlicky spinach and chickpeas, which sounds austere but when done well is absolutely luscious to gobble down with wine.

Espinacho con garbanzos

Espinacho con garbanzos

Barra de Cañabota is more up-market, being a tapas bar attached to a Michelin star restaurant. But it’s still cracking prices for the most delicious seafood. I have never, ever had such wonderful salt bacalao before, served as simple, firm, warm strips on a sliver of toast with the gentlest of saltiness remaining.

Seafood tapas at Barra de Cañabota

Seafood tapas at Barra de Cañabota

La Campana isn’t a tapas bar, it’s a cake shop with a long bar attached so you can stop for coffee and a cake. And you should. It’s been here since 1885 and there’s nothing like a sticky-sweet torrija and a cortado to set you up for the day.

Torrija and coffee

Torrija and coffee

If you want to read more about Seville (it’s not just food!) then my travel blog of the trip is on Polar Steps – a pretty lovely app for recording the highlights of your travels, dead easy to use. I very heartily recommend a long weekend break to Seville, it’s a stunning city, warm except in the dead of winter, full of colour but most of all full of TAPAS.

Review: Donia, Soho

Skewered hearts

Skewered hearts

Donia, up on the top floor of Kingly Court, are serving up Philippine food through the filter of London modern high-end small-plate cooking. I find Philippine cuisine hard to pin down. It doesn’t have any of the powerful sweet-salt-hot-sour melange of other SE Asian cuisines, and doesn’t go in heavily on the spices like South Asian cuisines. They’ve got a great tradition of desserts, probably the best in east Asia. And of course, plenty of seafood. So… probably not my personal favourite Asian cuisine, but luckily the kitchen at Donia would put out great plates of food no matter how much they leaned into their home cuisine!

Sea bream kinilaw

Sea bream kinilaw

So, we have a pair of beautiful little croquettes filled with mushrooms soaked in the distinct flavour of Philippine adobo. Then there’s a heritage tomato salad, pepped up with softly mashed salted eggs and chilli. Pandesal is a lovely soft brioche-like bread typical of the Philippines, paired with whipped wild garlic butter in honour of spring. Slices of sea bream are very lightly cured in kalamansi lime (a preparation called “kinilaw”) and served with herb oil, microherbs and nasturtium leaves; it’s a very pretty plate and a beauty to eat, perfectly balanced and seasoned. Chicken heart skewers are always lovely, I think perhaps here they have been doused in an adobo sauce.

Lechon with liver peppercorn sauce

Lechon with liver peppercorn sauce

Our biggest dish is lechon – roast suckling pig – and it comes as six sturdy slices of juicy but rather dense pork, a layer of nicely crisp crackling on top. The very best bit is the generous lake of liver-peppercorn sauce the pork is served with. This is gorgeous: sweet, spiced, peppery and packed with iron-y umami flavour. We finish with a choux bun filled with ube ice cream. The bun is superb pastry, crisp and soft at the same time. Ube is one Philippine ingredient that I find overrated: a purple yam used often in desserts, probably because of the arrestingly lurid violet colour it gives to custards, creams and ice cream. Just no real flavour… maybe a hint of bean curd?

We had a couple of nice cocktails with food. Dinner would be around £45-50 each before drinks, less if you don’t need a main course each (we shared). Everything was extremely delicious and I’d call this pretty good value. Definite recommendation – maybe just don’t expect Philippine food to taste this good if you ever go there on holiday!

Ube ice cream in choux

Ube ice cream in choux

Review: The Gaff, Bath

Open kitchen at The Gaff

Open kitchen at The Gaff

Whether the name of this restaurant rhymes with the city it is set in depends on what part of the country you come from. : )

Having not visited Bath properly for a few years it was nice to go back and mooch around for a day. I was struck yet again by what a wonderfully complete place it is for shopping, eating and drinking. The eating and drinking has come on leaps and bounds in the last few years: some really top notch wine bars, independent coffee joints, gorgeous bakeries and small-plate restaurants (that said, top tip: lunch at the Fine Cheese Co is still as good as it’s been for the last 15+ years). Obviously it’s awash with tourists, but that doesn’t seem to have damned the eating & drinking to overpriced lowest denominator rubbish.

Anyway, if you’ve not been to Bath, or not for a few years, then go!

Lovely lamb faggot

Lovely lamb faggot

You could also do worse than stop for a meal at The Gaff, now occupying a spot in the very central Milsom Yard. It’s small plate dining, the dishes came out one at a time for us to share, service was great and the food lovely. The decor is modern, convivial but not particularly memorable (I’m being very literal: three days later, I can’t remember it!).

First up we snacked on battered pickles, and these were as good as I’ve ever had them – it’s tricky to keep crisp, crunchy batter on a big juicy slice of gherkin, but these were still the full-on scrunch even after they’d had time to cool. Corn ribs with chipotle mayo are very last year’s last year’s trend, but these were good and why shouldn’t a trend morph into a standard? I like corn ribs and don’t mind saying so.

Hake and gorgonzola

Hake and gorgonzola

Next to arrive was a mighty lamb faggot drenched in a shiny, sticky jus. The flavour of this beast was immense, lots of lamb and steely offal. Onions, cavolo nero and a pea puree made a good base for it. Bang-bang cauliflower involved big soft battered lumps of cauli covered in a sticky chilli glaze – well made and just very moorish to scoff. Our final dish was a piece of hake served with clams, boquerones and borlotti beans and bathing in a funky gorgonzola sauce. I bet that raised your eyebrow! I can report that the cheese was very present but not overpowering, adding a good funk that magnified the strong flavoured fish. I liked it.

We didn’t have space for pud. They’ve got a good wine list, varied and well priced, we enjoyed a great Rias Baixas full of flavour but beautifully clean. You might pay £40-50 each before drinks for a meal here, I think it’s good value for the quality on offer. Nice place to know in Bath… although there are so many other places I want to try next time I’m down here!

Bang-bang cauliflower

Bang-bang cauliflower

Review: Sindhu, Marlow

Partridge

Partridge

A rambling old Victorian pub-hotel on the banks of the Thames at Marlow called “The Compleat Angler” is an odd venue for modern Indian cooking, but that’s where Sindhu is – one of Atul Kolchar’s growing crop of restaurants in the Thames Valley. We came for a mid-week lunch and we decided on the lunch menu, a very reasonable £25 for three courses.

For starters there was chicken tikka nicely blackened from the tandoor, two chunks on a plate with a teaspoon of green relish. My starter was a nice bit of partridge fried in a tangy curry and served on a small round paratha. Others had a trio of tandoor chicken, lamb sheek and prawn, all warmly spiced and well grilled.

Mains were served classic curry style: a dish of meat-in-gravy with rice and dal for the table. The monkfish in a milder tomato curry was deemed good. My lamb in a Chettinad curry was fine, a warming and earthy curry gravy although the lamb wasn’t as tender as I’d have liked. The only oddity about this lunch menu was just how resolutely meaty it was. If you are offered a “three course menu for £25” that feels like it ought to be all-in, but (we realised after everything arrived) if we actually wanted to balance all the meat with some veggies, we really ought to have ordered some of the sides from the a la carte menu! Saving the dal and a tiny bit of diced salad with the chicken starter, the entire meal was meat n carb.

Luckily there was a very nicely executed apple tarte tatin for pudding! Definitely the best choice, even if it gave no nods to the Indian cuisine. The rasmalai that I tried was a light and tasty end, with a lovely saffron flavour in the milk (but I envied the tarte eaters!).

For £25 each, this was a very sound meal in a lovely setting. If I returned, I’d get some vegetable sides.

The Compleat Angler

The Compleat Angler