Review: Koya, Soho

Koya

Koya

I’m not a massive ramen expert. In fact I’ve had about three ever. So I’m in one of those situations where I feel kinda shaky reviewing a noodle place when it might be that I’m just not “getting it”.

Koya feels great to be in, especially when it’s pouring with rain on Frith Street. There’s a nice long bar, with intriguing things in jars left on the counter in front of you. Salted fresh dates? Intriguing! The team are quietly industrious back there, pouring and frying and straining and scooping. I’m lucky enough to have been to Japan, and Koya really does conjure the spirit. It helps that 80% of the customers today are Japanese.

We choose two bowls of hot udon noodles; mine is the saba smoked mackerel and Maureen’s is the special; girolles and onsen tamago. Which is cute: tamago is egg, and onsen is a Japanese natural hot spring spa resort. So it’s a very lightly poached egg.

Udon with girolles

Udon with girolles

Here’s my newbie take on this. The noodles are wonderful, big soft slippery worms with plenty of texture and friendly to eat. The mackerel is a decent piece, and once my clunky chopsticking has broken it into bite-sized pieces the other little flecks and shreds lend some much-needed body to the stock. Because it’s otherwise a very subtle stock. The other times I’ve had ramen it’s been “mmmm… taste that f*cking stock… niiiiice” and maybe I’ve had thuggish dirty westernised ramen before, but maybe I also kinda like that. This stock was too etherial for me.

Maureen’s stock did well with the egg yolk stirred into it. But really I feel they should have gone for some cheaper mushrooms on their special, if that meagre pile was the amount of girolles they felt they could spare. Of what there was, they were tasty with a piquant Japanese pepper sprinkled over them.

£11 a bowl, and I did leave kinda nicely satisfied. But in all honesty, as much by the warm atmosphere of the place as by the food. I’m coming back, because I have to try the pork or beef udon. I need to know whether we just didn’t pick the right dish to get the best experience here.

Salted fresh dates

Salted fresh dates

Review: Zaibatsu, Greenwich

Spicy tuna roll

Spicy tuna roll

Greenwich and Blackheath are pretty much a foodie wasteland, at least as far as I can tell. Nothing around here ever gets a rave review and it is frankly downright weird to see most places getting TripAdvisor ratings of 3.5 stars. That’s not how TripAdvisor works! Even crappy chain restaurants average 4+ stars! You can see what I thought of Copper & Ink and Artis if you like.

Anyway, so, Zaibatsu often gets called out as one of the best options in Greenwich; good value but good quality Japanese food in a little shabby parade-of-shops outfit with a friendly sign announcing “CASH ONLY” and a very cheerful steamy bustle within on a day when it was tipping with rain outside.

Sadly the food is actually just okay. Not horrible. Just… not worth mentioning. I’m only reviewing it because it often gets called out as one of the best options in Greenwich and frankly it just ain’t worth your time.

Black cod tempura

Black cod tempura

Beef tataki was okay, nice chewy bits of beef with a crisp slice of golden roast garlic on top. Black cod tempura was poor. Thick batter and plenty oily. I’m also prepared to offer good money that this wasn’t black cod at all. Just cod. Not sure why it was served with basically lame tartar sauce in a Japanese restaurant?

The spicy tuna roll worried me a little. The tuna inside was so soft that it’s texture was more like paste than fish. That’s… not right? I mean, I’m still standing, so it was fine. Just unpleasant. To be fair, the unagi nigiri was just fine. Decent bit of sticky eel.

The salt-and-pepper spare ribs were weird. The main taste on the ribs was cinnamon and sugar, and the meat was fall-apart soft but also entirely dry. The lazy fry-up of onion, golden garlic flakes and chilli served with it was, well, lazy.

This was about £16 each. And if you went with something more in the comfort food like, like a donburi, then your meal would be even cheaper. But when my conclusion is “it’s a cheap way to fill a hole” then I’m not really reviewing anything much, am I?

Greenwich & Blackheath, you continue to disappoint.

Weird spare ribs

Weird spare ribs

Review: Kebab Queen, Soho

Watching the action

Watching the action

I bloody loved my dinner at Kebab Queen. Couldn’t stop smiling all the way through it. I defy anyone with an ounce of fun in them to have a bad time here. But on a serious note, there’s genuinely great cooking going on too.

So how do I review the experience without spoiling the surprise and giving away all the fun stuff that the staff are gonna enjoy explaining to you when you get there? Maybe just trust me. And let me at least tell you ’bout the food…

First course was a beautifully flame-kissed piece of foie gras, messed up with blobs of sticky date puree, fat raisins soaked in grand marnier, potato slow-cooked in duck fat until it was smooth as silk, and all wrapped in a buttermilk flatbread. Sick, sick, sick.

Monkfish n chicken

Monkfish n chicken

Cured mackerel was the delicate soul of the evening, very gently cured, paired up with neat disk of fried egg white and a harissa egg yolk, and a vividly green dill sauce.

Monkfish next. More filth. Seared pieces of tail, with crispy chicken skin, a soul-destroying sauce of chicken and monkfish bones, spicy cauliflower and a vein of chilli running through it. Wrapped in scorched disks of cabbage leaf.

Spit-roast duck next. Saffron and pomegranate sauce. Very, very saffron. Walnut praline puree. And on the side a lil’ caramelised donut filled with duck liver. Mmmmmmmmm.

But then the hogget. Just a brilliant piece of meat, rammed with flavour, seared and sweetly pink inside. Also done as a juicy and spicy adana kebab. Red pepper sauce with a vinegary iskander oil, a thick blob of yogurt, and a huge crinkly lettuce leaf swabbed with caramel vinaigrette to wrap with. You can see what they’re doing, yeah? It’s a kebab, innit.

Foie gras kebab

Foie gras kebab

It also came with a second serving of what was basically a bacon and ketchup roll, but the bacon was hogget. O. M. G.

The pumpkin in shredded filo pastry with chocolate orange sauce and lemon thyme goop was a satifying ending, notable for the pink peppercorn sugar sprinkled on top. I am going to make lots of pink peppercorn sugar, starting now.

My point being: that is a bloody LOVELY set of dishes, all brilliantly executed. The fact that the whole experience is huge fun because they (DELETED) and you get to (DELETED) and there’s no (DELETED) just doubles-down on the joy! The staff look after you like princes and the wines we had by the glass were all top notch. Tasting menu £65? GO! GO! GO!

Explaining the hogget

Explaining the hogget

Review: Flor, London Bridge

Flor

Flor

I can see why there’s a lot of love for Flor going around. There’s lots of smoky flame-grilled flavours, plenty of on-trend seasonal ingredients, a stylish and beautiful bar/dining room, and even though it’s a small plate place you don’t have to queue because they take bookings like civilised people. What’s not to like? Well… maybe the price. A light supper for two doesn’t usually flip over the £100 mark unless we’re drinking veeeeery seeeeriously – and we weren’t. Just two glasses each. Promise.

But look, there really is a lot to enjoy here. The delicate mushroom tart had a good dose of that smoky flame-kissed flavour, some fine chunks of sturdy wild mushrooms and a lip-smacking mushroom cream (to finish up with the jolly good sourdough). Next up was a big, plump, white burrata just ooooozing on the plate. I could tell it wanted me to eat it. And it came with chunks of fat, juicy peach that had been blackened to the flavour of caramel candy, and a good sprinkling of sweetly aniseedy fennel pollen. Just joy on a plate.

Burrata, peach and fennel pollen

Burrata, peach and fennel pollen

By contrast, toast topped with salted anchovies and a layer of fine lardo was simply filth on a plate. Mad powerful flavour. Who doesn’t love a faceful of anchovy? With lardo?

Then again, who doesn’t want a gently grilled fillet of smoked eel, topped by flame-seared red cabbage and a spoonful of cooking liquor? I love smoked eel so damn much that whenever I’m offered it on a menu I can’t help the paranoid suspicion that the kitchen is somehow trying to bribe me. And this a whole flippin’ fillet! Reader, we ate it.

And that was it for savoury. Four small plates. We had puds too. Mine was of creamy stracciatella cheese with sticky-sweet fragola grapes and a crunchy wafer. It was nice. Maureen’s was the renowned brown butter cakes. How they manage to turn an entire pack of butter into two tiny cakes the size of champagne corks I will never know, but that is the general effect and it is rather magnificent. If a bit scary.

So, Flor. Loved everything I ate. In which case, perhaps it’s a bit mean to fret over £32 each for a light supper before drinks? It’s a stylish place, they look after you well, the wine list is good. I’d definitely go back. I’d take friends there.

Anchony and lardo on toast

Anchony and lardo on toast

Review: Rochelle Canteen at the ICA, St James

Middlewhite chop and aioli

Middlewhite chop and aioli

Food has come a long way in the UK in 20 years. I can remember a time when any sort of visitor attraction – be it a zoo, a gallery, a museum or a country house – could be absolutely guaranteed to have a truly miserable canteen where, because you’re a captive audience, you could expect to pay over the odds for sandwiches in packets that conspired to be snot soggy and cardboard dry at the same time, with the filling shuffled to the front edge with deliberate cynicism to hide how little actual industrial cheddar and slimy lettuce was really inside. Or for some hideous hot special dolloped out like school dinners and needing a fistful of tiny condiment packets to give it some flavour. The hot chocolate always tasted like scorched milk peed into by a rat who might have once eaten a bit of kitkat.

Present day, and you can actually get a decent bite to eat in a lot of attractions. I had a lovely slice of lamb and mint pie at the country house somewhere Midlands-ish recently. And some places have even attracted rave-worthy chefs to their canteen. For example, the Rochelle Canteen at the ICA just off the end of Regent’s Park. To be fair, zoos do tend to still charge way over the odds for bloody criminal food; flaccid chips and hotdogs that probably need a biohazard warning. Sadly I suspect it’s because only parents with tiny kids (and us) go to zoos.

Pie

Pie

We tucked away two courses at the Rochelle Canteen before a show. The menu is short, but everything is appealing. Their style is pared down, take-as-you-find, the kind of dishes that a competent country yeoman could chuck together in his Aga kitchen from good stuff kept in the walk-in larder. Just probably better than most country yeomen would manage.

Our starters are things on toast. Maureen’s is a proudly flavourful chicken liver pate, spread thick, with cornichons. Mind is cold slices of meltingly good rump, cheerfully pink, and covering the slice of toasted sourdough two layers thick. Also covering a thick spread of punchy horseradish cream!

For main, I tuck into a well-grilled middlewhite chop. It goes very well with the friendly dollop of aioli and a very good salad of thinly sliced kohlrabi, fennel and radish. The dressing is zingy and does eventually get a bit much. Maureen’s main is a pie. To be more prosaic, it’s a gratin dish sloppily draped with a thick blanket of naughtily scrumptious short pastry and hiding a splendidly rich and satisfying filling of slow-cooked beef shin with pickled walnut. Scooping out a mouthful while the steam rises out of the pastry it was very hard not to make like the Bisto kid and “Ahhhhhhh!” out loud.

Three courses is going to be £32-ish here, and the wines by the glass aren’t at all budget. To me that’s perhaps the only teensy reservation: the quality of the cooking is excellent, but the pared-back canteen pate-on-toast feel of the place doesn’t really stack up with the price point for me. Might be a failure of imagination on my part. And after all, that pie really was sexy.

Rump cap on toast

Rump cap on toast