Review: The Greene Oak, Windsor

Coming back from a long enough trip abroad (this time, a six week jaunt around northern Spain) gives you the chance to look at what’s back home with a somewhat fresh gaze. At least, if you try hard enough. The English pub really is perhaps the most distinctive piece of our human landscape, very different …

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Review: Koyal, Surbiton

Koyal is the third branch of the Dastaan empire. Unlike their Leeds restaurant, this time they’ve opened just a couple of miles up the road in Surbiton. It should make a big difference though: Dastaan is on a suburban shopping parade miles from the nearest train station, meaning anyone from central London has quite the …

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Ukiyo

Review: Ukiyo Hand Roll Bar, Covent Garden

So I need to foreshadow this review. I love sushi and sashimi, except for one element of it. The thin seaweed sheet used for wrapping rice in various sushi forms. It’s often hard to bite through, and the texture is neither crispy nor yielding. It’s essentially the closest thing to chewing on paper that exists …

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Glass nooooodles

Review: Liu Xiaomian, The Jackalope, Marylebone

Needing lunch, we settled on noodles at Liu Xiaomian, which has been cooking in the basement of the Jackalope pub in a quiet Marylebone mews for a few years now. This really isn’t one of the modern, polished, faux-street-food restaurants that have been springing up all over the trendy corners of London recently (most of …

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Review: Bala Baya, Southwark

So. Bala Baya describes itself as a Middle Eastern restaurant, as do a few review sites that perhaps keep their info updated. But older reviews and articles, that no-one ever updates, call it an Israeli restaurant. It doesn’t take much nouse to realise why they have re-badged themselves “Middle Eastern” as thoroughly as they can! …

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Review: The Greene Oak, WindsorReview: Koyal, SurbitonReview: Ukiyo Hand Roll Bar, Covent GardenReview: Liu Xiaomian, The Jackalope, MaryleboneReview: Bala Baya, Southwark

Review: The Palm, Froxfield

Categories:

Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

12 November 2021

Really quick one. The Palm is an Indian restaurant, one of those odd ones that is planted in a totally random location along a quiet stretch of an A-road, in this case the A40 in Wiltshire.

The incongruity of the starkly modernist (circa 1990) building with bold colours, magnificent light fittings and abstract wall art… and a hand car-wash next door. It has to raise a smile.

The food is classic British curry house cooking. But it’s of the first order, with really distinctive and rich curry gravies, good quality meats and deeply aromatic spicing. Maureen’s lamb curry was the best of the picks. My “royal” dish of duck and lamb was perhaps a bit on the sweet-and-sticky side, you know, where the sour note meant to balance out the sweetness is instead just a bit cloying. That’s picky, as I certainly ate as much as I could. The aubergine side dish was superb, definitely in the same league as Dastaan’s.

To cut a long story short: if you ever find yourself in rural Wiltshire somewhere around Marlborough, The Palm is probably as good a choice as any.

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Review: Fiume, Battersea

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

12 November 2021

Aubergine n radishes

Aubergine n radishes

The river front at Battersea Power Station is a very nice place to be now – as you’d hope, given the number of multi-million pound apartments surrounding you on all sides. It has an array of places to eat and we’ve been recommended No 29 and Wright Bros to try, but on this occasion we went with Italian; Fiume.

Burrata with tomatoes and a pile of watercress was okay, but looked as though as much care had gone into it as I put into a rushed lunch before a meeting at work. Maureen’s pile of aubergine with radishes and hazelnuts was better.

Cod

Cod

My baked cod was rather over-roasted, so there wasn’t too much left to love about the sturdy piece of white fish in tomato and olive sauce. Maureen did rather better with a cacio e pepe loaded up with generously grated black truffle. This was a well-made pasta, good silky consistency to the sauce and very nice use of truffle. Good good.

Tiramisu for dessert came in an individual metal bowl, had a nice punch of marsala in the sponge but was heavy on the cocoa powder topping. It all ftuck to thu rooth ov my mouf! Maureen’s pannacotta was a wobbly well-set pudding surrounded by gooey morello cherries. It was fine.

Overall Fiume just doesn’t feel like a place where a lot of love goes into the food, and in a few dishes it really shows. Especially galling at £40 for three courses before drinks (to be fair, you’re somewhat paying for the location). I’ll be trying all the other places at Battersea Power Station before I come back to this one.

Cacio e pepe e TRUFFLE

Cacio e pepe e TRUFFLE

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Review: Kolamba, Soho

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

12 November 2021

Mackerel croquettes

Mackerel croquettes

Typical. You wait ages for great Sri Lankan food, and then two come along at once.

Kolamba is on Kingly Street. That weird back alley behind Regent Street that really should just be full of the wheelie bins and detritus of all the big flagship stores whose staff exits emerge onto it, but instead is lined with some pretty decent places to eat. I’ve a sneaking suspicion Kolamba is the best of them.

You know the deal with Sri Lankan cuisine. BRIGHT flavours. SERIOUS spicing. BOLD colours. HARMONY of sweet/hot/sour/bitter. It’s basically the perfect casual dining cuisine for anyone who just loves their food to explode with flavour. Kolamba does Sri Lankan pretty much perfectly.

Cuttlefish

Cuttlefish

We snacked on fried up pieces of cuttlefish doused in a fiery hot butter and served with cool slices of bright green mild chilli. There was an amazing fermented chilli relish that might have gone with this, or with the little mackerel croquettes, I’m not sure.

Oh let me talk about the date and lime chutney! I mean, it’s totally unsophisticated. Mash up dates with limes and chilli. You can go and make some yourself. Doesn’t make it any less brilliant, with everything. I really liked their take on a seeni sambal as well. I’m used to a sticky-sweet onion flavour, but instead this was heavy on the fish paste and somehow came out with a funky blue-cheesey flavour that was very good with a mouthful of curry.

The goat curry was excellent, a very well built curry gravy and sturdy flavourful goat chunks. Jackfruit curry also good, maybe a tad less exciting. Pineapple and aubergine curry another explosion of flavour, maxed on the sweet but with enough hot-sour to balance. Good hoppers. Very good pulau rice.

We basically scoffed everything and went away happy, our mouths singing a spicy tune for hours after. Probably £30 each before drinks (but we guzzled a couple of good cocktails each, which pushed the bill up a notch). Excellent place to know about, for when you’re in Soho.

Curry feast

Curry feast

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Review: Cornerstone, Hackney

Categories:

Fine dining, London, Michelin, Restaurant Reviews

28 July 2021

Oysters

Oysters

I’ve been wanting to get to Cornerstone for a while, but it’s in Hackney. And I’m south of the river. Pretty much always have been. For those who don’t know, there really do seem to be two worlds in London and you either belong to one or t’other. I can tell you all about Clapham, Richmond, Balham, Wimbledon, Brixton, Battersea and Bermondsey. But I’d struggle to stick a pin in Highbury, Finchley, Hackney or Walthamstow on a map. So it felt very daring to jump on an Overground train and go for an Adventure In The North.

Glad I did, though. Cornerstone is as wonderful as everyone says. We were absolutely treated to a feast of British seafood over 8 courses for the princely sum of £60.

Bream tartare

Bream tartare

Can I tell you about the pickled oyster with a dressing of horseradish and dill? The texture was perfect and the flavours completely knock-out. But then I could say the same of the sea bream tartare with a gooey egg yolk perched on top, dressed in soy with nutty notes of sesame.

Things became more beautiful with the cured gurnard in ajo blanco (beautifully chilled garlicky almond soup, apparently this year’s must-have dish). This plate was every bit as satisfying to eat as it was jewel-like to behold. Gurnard is already a favourite fish of mine, but the delicate cure here amplified the strong flavour of the fish to a new level. Besotted, I drifted on to a wickedly good crumpet covered in a brown crab salad dressed with a throwback marie rose sauce. Crumpet and marie rose sauce are a great combination that I intend to explore at home!

Hake Kiev

Hake Kiev

The main course just had us grinning ear-to-ear. A beautifully crisp, brown kiev cracked at the pressure of a fork to reveal cloudy white hake and then unleash a gooey puddle of curried brown shrimp butter. Ha! Be envious! This was even better than it sounds!

There was a nice Lancashire savoury course and a simple choux bun dessert to finish us off. We enjoyed their wines by the glass, an interesting selection and decent value. Cornerstone is an absolute belter of a restaurant, and anyone who makes the pilgrimage to Hackney will not be disappointed.

Gurnard in ajo blanco

Gurnard in ajo blanco

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Review: Mana, Manchester

Categories:

Fine dining, Michelin, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

28 July 2021

Mana

Mana

My favourite thing at Mana. They made a fudge by reducing down 120 litres of cucumber juice to a mere dollop. It no longer tasted of cucumber exactly, but still had a green note along with a deep sticky-sweet flavour a bit seaweedy. This blob made a superb relish for some insanely well cured sea trout that had managed to become both soft and meaty at the same time. The light fermented rice sauce balanced this out very neatly.

That’s a good summary of the cooking at Mana: powerful flavours, splendid ingredients, great balance. Nervous eaters need not apply! So let’s recall some other highlights of the meal…

The money shot?!

The money shot?!

Lots of stand-out canapes but I really loved the crispy potato cones stuffed with a yeasty mousse and dusted with seaweed powder. It really was umami5000 and I could have eaten a dozen! Crispy carrot skin loaded with tartare of ex-dairy cow, smoked eel and a bit of coal oil was just filthy good.

At the other end of the meal, rose ice cream was like a summer garden with bees droning quietly around the heady scent of big blousy rose blossoms. Fermented honey added something more punky to the amazing bouquet. I also very much loved the slim tube of caramelised apple with woodruff that rounded out the affair.

Rose and honey

Rose and honey

In the middle were a whole fantasia of courses, strong on the seafood. Unpreserved caviar was a special treat atop the most chilled savoury milk curds and citric sorrel, real magic. Equally magical was the single perfect mussel, cleverly filleted and filled with a garlicky mince of its meat and served in hot butter. Oh, oh, and the small but sweet scallops served raw with a savoury fudge and a broth of bright Thai flavours. Oh, and the nice piece of sirloin accompanied by celtuce. Celtuce. Expect it to be in Waitrose in a couple of years, as it’s a deeply delicious veg stalk when sliced and char-grilled like this.

The dining room at Mana is very chic, with a big open kitchen for you to watch the team at work. The chefs present most of the dishes themselves. Great wine list. It’s very easy to be charmed here, and it’s very easy to be deeply impressed by the food. Obviously at £155 each it’s the higher end of tasting menus, but this is a meal I’ll remember for a long time. I recommend you go.

Tiny potato cones!

Tiny potato cones!

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