Pork toast

Review: Mamapen, Soho

Right in the middle of Soho is apparently the only place doing Cambodian food in London: Mamapen at The Sun & 13 Cantons pub. I’m not sure how long that statement will stay true? I’ve only spent a few days in Cambodia and didn’t search out a lot of local food (indeed, the only street …

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STP

Review: The White Horses, Rottingdean

The White Horses Hotel in Rottingdean used to be a pretty typical boozer and meh restaurant on the seafront of the postcard village of Rottingdean, along the way from Brighton. Recently bought and re-vamped, now it’s like walking into the set of an Agatha Christie, all tasteful art deco furnishing, cane backed chairs and bright …

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Just chips

Review: Toklas, Embankment

Toklas occupies a very handy spot, just off the Strand in what is quite a wasteland for useful places to eat. So it’s been on our radar for a while. So having tickets to see Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell in Much Ado About Nothing at the Theatre Royal gave us the perfect opportunity for …

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Venison dim sum

Review: Row on 5, Mayfair

I’m developing some clear preferences in my old age, I think. Nowadays I’ve got a strong preference for more informal mid-range dining, preferably ambitious and often ethnic. Small plates almost always feature. But as Row on 5 has just reminded me, I also love a real splurge on a destination restaurant where you feel super …

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Baked rice and duck

Review: Asador 44, Cardiff

The food scene in Wales has improved beyond measure over the last decade, with the charge led (I would argue) by Ynyshir on the fine dining front. It sometimes feels like half the best places to eat in Wales are headed by alumni. That aside, Cardiff itself has also burgeoned with good eats; The Plate …

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Review: Mamapen, SohoReview: The White Horses, RottingdeanReview: Toklas, EmbankmentReview: Row on 5, MayfairReview: Asador 44, Cardiff

Review: Pham, Barbican

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

29 November 2022

Eel spring roll concoction

Eel spring roll concoction

Pham is a little Japanese restaurant, useful to know in the culinary wasteland around the Barbican. It’s nothing special though. One of those very typical UK-Japanese restaurants that offers everything; sushi, tempura, donburi, teppenyaki.

The chicken karaage is okay, a light batter and nice enough chicken within. Their yasai tempura is also pretty good, a whole variety of veggies in a decent tempura batter, crispy covering each piece and not oily. Sushi is pretty good, although the unagi isn’t quite as stickily unctuous as my favourite kind. I quite like the nasu dengaku, the aubergine flesh is cooked to gooeyness and there’s a hefty coating of sticky-sweet miso sauce with sesame on time. You might find it too sweet, I liked it.

Chicken karaage

Chicken karaage

The specials don’t work out quite so well. There is a toro (fatty tuna) sashimi with shiitake and jalapeno mayo. This fatty tuna is almost too melt-in-the-mouth, dissolving and leaving a really stringy length of fibre right through it. Love the shiitake though. The other special is eel spring rolls in a jalapeno sauce. There’s not enough eel in the spring rolls for much flavour to come through, it could be anything. And the pool of jalapeno sauce is a sticky-sweet slick of goo that just makes the dish taste like something from a kiddie menu.

I’d come back to Pham for some pre-theatre sushi again, but I’d stick to the UK-Japanese staples and give their specials a miss. The price is fair.

Nasu dengaku

Nasu dengaku

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Review: Tonkotsu, Battersea Power Station

Categories:

Cafes etc., London, Restaurant Reviews

25 September 2022

Cauliflower

Cauliflower

So we like a bowl of ramen occasionally, and among the ever-increasing food options around the new Battersea Power Station riverside (ignore the cynics, this is gonna be a really nice place when it’s all done) is Tonkotsu.

I go for their signature ramen, Maureen goes for the really hot one, and we order a side of sticky roast cauliflower. The cauli is good, sweet and umami, nicely roasted under the sticky sauce. They describe the ramen broth as “enriched with lardo and sea salt” and they are not messing around. It is the most seriously piggy ramen broth I’ve ever had. That’s a nice experience, for a while, but as it starts to coat your tongue, your lips, your whole mouth…

Well, with a big bowl of ramen I sometimes find myself thinking “I’m feeling stuffed, I’ll leave the rest of the noodles and just slurp some broth” but here it was definitely “I’m feeling stuffed, I’d better leave the broth and just eat some noodles!”

So if you want your broth to feel like pig soup, I’d say Tonkotsu is the place. For myself I prefer a lighter broth and will continue to pick Kaneda-Ya for my ramen fix.

House ramen

House ramen

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Review: The Elderflower, Lymington

Categories:

Fine dining, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

25 September 2022

Sea bass tartare

Sea bass tartare

So we took a last-minute weekend down in the New Forest. There was literally one place on booking.com available, The East End Inn, pretty much middle of nowhere. We got there and discovered that slightly bizarrely it was owned by the bass guitarist of Dire Straits and had a (kinda average) seafood restaurant attached. Apparently good enough for a mention in the Michelin guide though. We also got lucky with a table for lunch at The Elderflower in Lymington, a much better class of restaurant with a heavy leaning towards seafood.

Bream

Bream

It’s a nice location in the middle of this little port town, a very trad but comfy dining room, and helpful service. Their menus are all set, and the lunch is four courses. Top marks for presentation throughout; very pretty dishes.

The starter was a sea bass tartare with julienne apple, a nice avocado sorbet, crab mayo and cubes of roasted brown crab jelly. Those jelly cubes were AWESOME. Packed with deep flavour and an absolute wonder. The tartare was good and the apple and avocado made sense. I just think those wonderful crab cubes would have hit better in a crab salad. Anyway, picky. It was good.

The fish course was a chunk of bream with good crispy skin, though that did mean the fish itself was very well cooked. Given a really good seaside-y flavour with a light mussel cream sauce, samphire and purslane. The final element was a slice of leek stuffed with scallop mousse, massively flavoured with dill. This was a lovely thing and – like the crab cubes – a new one on me.

Chicken

Chicken

Chicken main was good, four pieces done four ways. I particularly liked the delicate white chicken boudin sausage. All very chicken. Pudding was a chocolate pave with cherries, a wine jelly, meadowsweet cream and a hibiscus disc and ice cream. Very good mixture of richness, tanginess, fragrance and fruit.

So I enjoyed lunch at The Elderflower. It’s £65 each before drinks, and that feels like good value for some traditional and well-executed fine dining with a couple of genuinely nifty touches.

Pud

Pud

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Review: C & R Cafe, Soho

Categories:

Cafes etc., London, Restaurant Reviews

25 September 2022

Rujak

Rujak

I probably shouldn’t write this review. C & R Cafe is a tiny walk-in only eatery down a little back-alley on the edge of Chinatown that you’d never know was there. Even so it was busy enough when we stopped in for lunch. If my blog suddenly makes it popular, we’ll never get a table!

Luckily my blog has about a dozen readers, if that. So no need to worry.

The menu at C & R Cafe goes a bit pan-Asian and I’m willing to bet that it’s all amazing, but we stuck to Malay dishes because it’s a Malaysian restaurant primarily. The decor is basic, the seating and crockery and cutlery is basic, the service is basic but effective. The food is TO DIE FOR and also RIDICULOUS VALUE.

Beef rendang to die for

Beef rendang to die for

My nasi lemak was an absolute feast on a plate, pungent and powerful sambal, beautiful coconut rice topped with a lip-smacking satay sauce, small but perfect pile of chicken curry off to one side, beautifully dark roasted peanuts (I mean, just peanuts, but these were seriously good!) and crispy-fried teeny tiny fishes. They probably have a special name but I don’t know it. I scoffed the lot, happily.

Until I took a bite of Maureen’s beef rendang, that is. Because it was EVEN BETTER and I was BOILING with envy! It’s hard to describe just how wonderful a really top notch beef rendang is, rich and silky and fiery and earthy and fragrant. This was a top notch beef rendang.

The couple of side dishes we had added to the sense of everything here being delicious, I particularly loved the rujak salad with it’s crispy-fried pieces of silky tofu, juicy bits of fruit and super-tangy dark sweet/spicy dressing.

You only need to pay £18 for a meal and a side. Cold teh tarek is a great drink to slurp down with it, if you want my opinion. Sssssssh… don’t tell anyone C & R Cafe exists!

Nasi lemaaaaak

Nasi lemaaaaak

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Review: Oxheart, Long Compton

Categories:

Fine dining, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

25 September 2022

Sitting in the kitchen

Sitting in the kitchen

I know what kind of cuisine I like. I like powerful flavours. I like them sharp, sour, bitter, umami. Ferments and pickles. Charring and smoking. Herb and spice. I’m not so bothered by delicacy and cream, butter and elegant simplicity. I think this explains why sometimes my lukewarm reviews of places like Five Fields and Core – clearly superb examples of their type – don’t agree with what everyone else is writing about them.

Conversely, I will fall happily in love with places like Oxheart, a tiny place lurking in a rural Cotswold village cooking up the kind of place-based modern British food that I prefer. There are a couple of seats at the kitchen counter, which we were lucky enough to get, because then you can spend the whole meal watching Chef Mark Ramshaw cooking and chat with him when there’s time. And there are maybe 6 or 8 other covers, that’s it. The decor is dark and woodsy, the crockery nicely rustic local pottery.

Chalk stream trout

Chalk stream trout

Lots to enjoy in the food. Very easy to scoff was a starter of sticky onions and ogleshield cheese grilled together and topped with a friendly abundance of truffle. Gimme a trug of this and a huge chunk of bread and I’d be in heaven. Oh yeah, and the bread course was special in itself: a beautiful sourdough with smoky butter, a little jar of excellent beer pickles and some slices of absolutely superb pork charcuterie.

Pork, peas and pickled strawberry was a good main course; meltingly good piece of slow-cooked meat with the strawberry making a great relish. Loads of flavour in the gravy to boot. Fish course was chalk-stream trout, cured rather than cooked but still served with a very tangy beurre blanc.

Pork

Pork

First dessert was a proper savoury: a chunk of bitter-caramel-y spiralised tarte tatin, alongside a chunk of beautifully kept local rind-washed cheese (I didn’t note the name, sorry!). Truly great pairing. The main dessert included the dramatic flair of a strawberry sorbet set to look exactly – I mean EXACTLY – like a frozen strawberry. It was spookily good and of course it tasted great. Every dish was consistently good, which with such determined local sourcing and invention, isn’t easy.

The tasting menu at Oxheart was £65 before drinks when we went. The wine list is small but interesting, we found some good stuff. If you like the same kind of food that I like, you’ll love Oxheart.

Not a strawberry

Not a strawberry

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