Shepherd's pie

Review: Cinnamon Bazaar, Covent Garden

Can I write a fair review here? We met up at Cinnamon Bazaar with friends, six of us for a sociable dinner a few weeks before Christmas (though close enough for all the decorations to be up in the streets and the festive menus to be popping up in the restaurants). So perhaps my mind …

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Edamame at Drunken Lobster

Review: Drunken Lobster, Ventnor

The Isle of Wight needs a bridge. How else am I to get over more regularly for good food? Looks to me that the Solent at its narrowest point is only a bit longer than the Isle of Skye bridge, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Loads more people live on and visit Wight than …

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Long Chim rolls

Review: Long Chim, Soho

It feels like Long Chim kinda tricked me. A little bit. Their spiel says: “Long Chim, meaning to ‘come and try,’ invites you to an authentic Thai dining experience. We strive to capture the vibrancy and energy of modern Bangkok, serving the food found in the alleyways, the markets and the shop houses in Thailand’s …

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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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Review: Cinnamon Bazaar, Covent GardenReview: Drunken Lobster, VentnorReview: Long Chim, SohoReview: The Greene Oak, WindsorReview: Koyal, Surbiton

Review: Caractere, Notting Hill

Categories:

Fine dining, London, Restaurant Reviews

6 September 2020

Risotto drama

Risotto drama

Caractere was our last meal out before lockdown began, and I lost the urge to post reviews while every restaurant in the country was closed. But it was written, so it’d be a shame not to finally put it up. Especially as Caractere was aces. And so…

I gotta congratulate the folks at Caractere for putting some character into their menu; instead of Starter, Fish, Main, Cheese, Dessert their courses are named Curious, Subtle, Delicate, Robust, Strong and Greedy. Kinda like an alternative Seven Dwarfs? Except there are only six. Anyway. Fun with menu writing aside, the food at Caractere lives right up to it’s name. Loved it.

I did something a bit different here. I asked for a vegetarian menu. I’ve got no plans to go plant-based, I was just feeling overloaded from a bunch of meaty meals in Germany. Everyone else had the fish ‘n meat. I probably perplexed the staff by trying a bite of every other dish, even though I was “the vegetarian”!

Pappardelle

Pappardelle

So. Curious was a perfect little pappardelle stuffed with soft ricotta and set in a pool of gently lemony cream. Meat-eaters had smoked herring roe and a little caviar with theirs. Didn’t need it. The pasta was delicate and silky but still kept its bite. This dish vanished fast.

Subtle wasn’t very. It was ribbons of celeriac styled like tagiatelle and still with plenty of earthy bite, covered in a heap of pecorino and black pepper, and set to humming with a few drops of some wonderfully sticky 25 year old balsamic. One of those real “why the f*ck can’t vegetarian restaurants cook vegetarian dishes as good as this?” dishes.

Delicate was for me a pair of beautifully roasted jerusalem artichokes topped with a salad of various bits and puddled with a delicate veloute whose flavour I couldn’t catch. J-chokes are fairly dominant. And there was nothing delicate about my trumpeting later that night. Monkfish and stone bass alternatives were both splendidly seared pieces of fish.

Celeriac signature

Celeriac signature

Robust for the meat-eaters was a very splendid piece of rosy veal, packed with flavour, lovely jus, paired with sturdy mushrooms and confit potatoes. I was equally happy with a wonderful risotto, dramatically coloured black and white and orange. The rice had perfect bite, the red wine reduction added a velvety strength, and the blackened crumble of burnt parmesan was just vile cheesy naughtiness! Robust indeed.

Strong was a fine piece of stichelton. Well-kept cheese can develop such an enormous mouthful of flavour and a whole world of scent. Greedy came for me in the shape of a white chocolate mousse in a delicate shell, light and amiable with flavours of bright pink rhubard. Must admit to envying the bergamot tartlet with preserved lemon across the table – really magical flavour in just one mouthful.

The tasting menu is £80 at Caractere. We were warmly looked after, helped to some good wine choices (the wine menu is strong on Italian), and generally had a great evening. I think they deserve to do well and I wish them all the best through the horrible COVID-19 crisis.

Rhubarb pud

Rhubarb pud

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Review: The Anchor Inn, Hartfield

Categories:

Pubs, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

6 September 2020

Roast beef

Roast beef

Time for Sunday lunch. And this time it’s a pub in the green Weald, in the heart of Winnie the Pooh country, the Anchor Inn at Hartfield. Lovely old building, plenty of character within, friendly service and Harvey’s on tap. A classic beer that deserves to be known far wider than its Sussex home.

We didn’t mess around with starters. Maureen’s roast beef was excellent meat, served very pink, meltingly soft to eat and with good flavour. Fine specimen of Yorkshire pud. Decent mix of veggies and some very sturdy roast potatoes. Gravy worthy of a nod.

Concrete tart

Concrete tart

My venison was even better. Great flavour on the roast loin, made more deluxe by the boozy prune gravy. Big stems of broccoli soaked this up well. And then a friendly slab of properly naughty Dauphinoise potatoes.

Puddings were a mixed bag. Apple and pear crumble was a decent specimen, though no different from what I’d knock up at home. My chocolate tart was a sad brick. It really was a brick. Twice while trying to break mouthfuls off I ended up firing them across the table or onto the floor. PING! Useless. No sense of luxury when I did eventually get to munch through some, and the accompanying raspberry ripple icecream was equally lacking in flavour or texture.

The cook a mean roast at the Anchor. Maybe try a starter instead of a pudding, though.

Venison

Venison

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Review: St Clair, Clapham

Categories:

Fine dining, London, Restaurant Reviews

18 February 2020

Ceviche

Ceviche

St Clair is an interesting new opening in Clapham. From the outside it’s looking like a refined French fish restaurant, with dark blue walls, marble tables, comfortable chairs and a wet fish counter at the front. But the sign on the window says it’s a cevicheria, the dishes on the menu stir in some Brazilian names, and a lot of the ingredients are straight from Japan. This is Nikkei cuisine and these are all things that I like though, so let’s see…

Okay, service is a little shambolic. Maureen’s main arrives (with apologies) when the rest of us have almost finished ours, and they also manage one wrong dessert (but they leave this for us to enjoy as a freebie and replace it in a few minutes). They’ve not even been open two months, and as I’ve said before: I’m much more interested in how a place reacts to cock-ups and complaints. They react generously and helpfully.

Tataki

Tataki

Starters are all colourful and exciting to look at. Crab salad looks stunning, and the causa-like beetroot coloured potato is a great base. Flavours of watermelon jelly and tiny green tobiko give the dish some pep, as does the wafer-thin and ozone-y seaweed cracker. There’s a lovely tuna tataki as well, generous slices of very good fish and a really splendid addition of fermented physalis. My only quibble: these are meant to be sharing plates, so what use is one physalis?

The St Clair ceviche is a thing of joy. Really great, sharp, fierce and yet creamy tiger’s milk, beautiful pieces of fish and good accompaniments of big corn and sweet potato. The only disappointing starter is the mackerelmole, which I’d be perfectly happy with for lunch at the office, but if it’s any more complicated than guacamole and smoked mackerel mashed together then it doesn’t reveal it.

Mains are good. My bavette is cooked sous vide and then seared, which in this case produces a perfectly toothsome piece of flavourful beef for a charming £14. That’s using the right technique to good effect in my book. Mash, gravy, pan gratata and vivid little piquillo peppers are all spot on. On the other hand, I can’t stop myself stealing spoonfuls of moqueca from the dish next door. The sauce is packed with all the flavours of salty seafood and earthy palm kernel oil I remember from Brazil, but it’s also satin smooth with sheen of sheer luxury. Maureen’s duck is excellent too, though jolly big.

Crab and potato cake

Crab and potato cake

Mochi ice creams are an easy pud for some of us, and I’m in love with the yuzu flavour. The mistaken pud was a roasted plantain with dulce de leche ice cream. The caramelised plantain had an interesting almost leathery flavour, but the ice cream was oddly unindulgent for dulce de leche. The final pud was a mont blanc, in name at least. It was actually a lovely concoction of broken-up soft dark chocolate cake, clementine, delicate sake cream and exceedingly moreish salt chocolate brittle. I just couldn’t connect it to the name.

Coming in around £45 each before drinks for three courses (plus, really, more side dishes than we needed) I’d say the price is on the high side but not excessively. There’s top-notch inventive Nikkei cooking here. There were a couple of less successful dishes and a couple of service hiccups, but I’m hoping that will polish out when they’ve been open for a bit longer. Great to have this just down the road.

Octopus

Octopus

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Review: Darjeeling Express, Soho

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

18 February 2020

Darjeeling Express

Darjeeling Express

We’ve been eating a lot of good South Asian food recently. From Dastaan to Trishna via Paradise and the Chilli Pickle, and now we’re on the Darjeeling Express. Which was my favourite? That’s very tough. Each had at least one dish that was an absolutely knock-out spectacular feast of spice and flavour, and each had at least one dish that was just jolly good. Quite brilliantly, none of these five meals had a single duff dish. South Asian food in the UK is absolutely epic right now.

Darjeeling Express is upstairs at Kingly Court. It’s a casual space with tables for two nuzzled together cheek-by-jowl. We got in at 6pm and it was lovely, but by the time 7:30pm rolled around YOU VERY MUCH. HAD TO SHOUT. AT EACH OTHER. TO BE HEARD. So it’s all very delicious and friendly, but not the venue for a leisurely romantic dinner.

Mutton kebabs

Mutton kebabs

The putchkas we started with (pani puri elsewhere, unless an expert can explain to me the subtle difference?) were excellent. The tamarind water was clean, deep flavoured and nicely fierce. The shells crisp, the filling earthy. The two mutton kebabs that followed were absolute bliss. Soft but extremely full-flavoured mutton mince, given a massive hit of smoky pungency with the generous use of black cardamoms. The yogurt and mint filling cut this nicely, as did the sweet chutney.

Oh… big shout-out to the Darjeeling Express puri! Huge puffy balloons that collapse into the most delicate and delicious flaky bread. It’s just the perfect spoon for shovelling delicious curries into your mouth.

Puff puri

Puff puri

Even bigger shout-out to the maddest dish! Mirchi ka Salaan is, quite literally, curried chilli peppers. Adding chillies to a curry, sure, we’re all familiar with that. But this is a dish of chillies, curried! Bonkers! And delicious. It kinda defies description, except to say that it was surprisingly easy to eat… and yet after a few forkfuls… it felt as though someone deep inside me was just slowly dialling up my body’s thermometer from “comfy” to “hothotHOT!”

There was also a goat curry, with some very sturdy pieces of excellent goat meat in a dry sauce. A sweet aubergine curry with a lot of peanut in the sauce; splendid, with a much more south-east Asian feel to it. And a dal… blissful… with a great grunt of earthen flavour, quite possibly the most flavoursome dal I’ve ever had.

So we loved our dinner at Darjeeling Express, in spite of the noise level. Food will be around £30 each. Their cocktails are good, their masala chai has a really big kick of spice, and their lassis aren’t bad. If it wasn’t necessary to book 3 months in advance for a table, I’d definitely be back!

Crazy chilli curry

Crazy chilli curry

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Review: Trishna, Marylebone

Categories:

London, Michelin, Restaurant Reviews

5 February 2020

Broccoli glory

Broccoli glory

You know, it’s possible I’m running out of things to say. The last few reviews have been hard to write. It’s very easy to dive straight into what a nice dining room it was, what we had for starter, main, dessert, and then a summary. But that’s not satisfying (to write or to read!). Anything worth reading has to have a story, even a review. There needs to be a hook, a theme, a narrative, whatever. Anything really, just not a straight description of what the place looked like and what you ate. Unless you can make it bloody hilarious. I’m not that funny.

Maybe I should just talk about anything that bugged me recently? Like, getting a bite to eat on the South Bank before a show. Crazy. 6:15 in the evening. Honest Burger: 30 minute wait. Ping Pong: 20 minute wait. Brasserie bloody Blanc: 25 minute wait. Pizza f*cking Express for f*cks sake! Queuing for tables! It’s sad enough that there’s nowhere remotely inspiring to eat in what is blatantly a major entertainment district, it’s just hilarious that even the relentless chain restos there are all full to bursting at 6:15 of a Thursday evening.

We had some sad square slices of ham and mushroom pizza in the Royal Festival Hall cafe. They were pants.

Corn and coconut tikki

Corn and coconut tikki

Not Trishna, though. Trishna is still bloody brilliant. The dining room is a lovely den of a place in a Marylebone side street, with cosy booths and tables. They look after you very well and there’s a fun selection of classy tea-based cocktails to start you off. My Manhattan was fragranced with muscatel tea and quince syrup. Mmmm.

We start with veggies – a broccoli for me and sweetcorn for Maureen. No, but wait, these were awesome. My broccoli was impregnated with fully spicy/yogurty gunk and then roasted to a char-edged perfection of brassica-y goodness. The bright red hot/sour chutney paired with it beautifully, so did the golden flaked almonds. Maureen’s sweetcorn and coconut tikki was a delicious patty, crisp on the outside. We agreed that it probably could have benefitted from some kinda sauce or dip to balance the dry texture, but the taste was bright and spot-on.

Maureen plumped for a mutton biryani, which came full of superb biryani flavour but did rather need the pink peppercorn raita to balance the dryness again. I will confess we’ve had a couple of better biryanis recently. My lamb curry has a classic rich gravy, full of earthy spices without ever getting fierce. The accompaniments were great: mustardy potatoes and a warming lake of golden daal.

Ultimately this was “just” a very nice curry. But everything was cooked with finesse and love. No shortcuts here. My gulab lassi was absolutely made with genuine rose petals, as much as Maureen’s mango lassi was blended with real honey mangoes. And both of them tasted as fragrant as anything without being overly sweet. That’s where the Michelin star comes in. At lunch our two courses were £25 each before drinks, and we waddled out stuffed and happy. So that’s got to be good.

Maybe they could open another restaurant over in Waterloo?

Curry spread

Curry spread

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