Fish and chips

Review: The Wensleydale Heifer, Wensleydale

I like the decor at the Wensleydale Heifer. It’s cheerfully bright and unashamedly personal: they like the things they like, and that’s how they’ve decorated. No attempt to design for an expected demographic or conjure up a particular aesthetic. Except I guess that “cheerfully individual” is an aesthetic in itself? Anyway, the cheerful individuality and …

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Sunday roast

Review: The Aysgarth Falls Hotel, Aysgarth

This was a Sunday roast, albeit in the evening, the Aysgarth Hotel being one of those places that just does nothing but the roast right through Sunday. On the other hand, being one of the few places actually serving dinners on a Sunday evening in the middle of the Dales, it’s handy to know! The …

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Pressed lamb

Review: The Sandpiper, Leyburn

The Sandpiper is a classic country pub in the diminutive but charming little market town of Leyburn. The dining room is very no-nonsense, just serried ranks of wooden tables at which two, four or six people sit quietly devouring dinner. Because the food is jolly good. I picked the grilled goat cheese salad to start, …

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The Rat Inn

Review: The Rat Inn, Anick

They’ve got a lovely view from the garden of the Rat Inn, over the Tyne Valley towards pretty Corbridge. Inside the pub is lovely too, one of those (seemingly) effortlessly ideal pub interiors, dark timbers, fireplace, brass whatsits and a chalked-up menu. The big thing at The Rat is their sharing steaks, Chateaubriand and rib …

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The Beaumont

Review: The Beaumont, Hexham

Hexham is a very handsome little market town with a lot of history and a splendid old abbey as a centrepiece. Just a stone’s throw from the abbey is The Beaumont, the town’s grandest hotel (at least, as grand as a small market town could need). It’s an old Victorian building, very effectively modernised and …

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Review: The Wensleydale Heifer, WensleydaleReview: The Aysgarth Falls Hotel, AysgarthReview: The Sandpiper, LeyburnReview: The Rat Inn, AnickReview: The Beaumont, Hexham

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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Review: Brasserie Zedel, Soho

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

5 February 2020

Zee garlic snails

Zee garlic snails

Everyone knows Brasserie Zedel, right? Everyone in London, anyway. This review is probably more useful to you rustic provincials. You know who you are. Folks for whom the centre of London is somewhere around Picadilly Circus or Leicester Square, because that’s where you invariably pop up out of the tube on those odd occasions when some special event draws you down to the city. Welcome! Welcome! I was a rustic provincial myself until last year. Now, let me tell you about the most reliable place for a great bite to eat.

Because Brasserie Zedel is quite literally spitting distance from Picadilly Circus. Easily missed as it’s not much more than a door at street level. From where you descend down a flight of stairs and emerge in some kind of subterranean timewarp fantasy where you have been whisked back to the Parisienne golden age of the early 20th century, with an American Bar for cocktails and then, through a pair of swinging doors, into the vast cathedral of the grand brasserie.

Zee vrai andouillette

Zee vrai andouillette

There is enough glass and gilt here to make Marie Antoinette blink. And it rattles to the buzz of a thousand or so people happily conversing and masticating at tables and on red velvet banquettes. And of course the food is pure unadulterated French and pinpoint accurate.

Have a plate of garlic snails to start with. Plenty of crusty bread to soak up all that garlic and parsley butter. Then if you are brave, move onto a fine big beige lumpen andouillette sausage. Sitting there on the plate, bathed in mustard sauce, leaking foul juices and reeking of offal. Er… am I tempting you? Trust me, it’s good. Just don’t expect to be kissing anyone for a day or two. If that’s too alarming, how about the rognons de veau? Veal kidneys to you. Cooked to iron-y perfection. And obviously if you don’t love offal then there’s beef bourguignon and steak and all the rest. After all that, it has to be Iles Flotante for pud.

You might pay £30 for three courses, so it’s no bargain basement bistro. But the surroundings are wonderful, the food is (whisper it) better than much you’ll find in France, and it couldn’t be more convenient for a night out at the theatre.

Zee Brasserie Zedel

Zee Brasserie Zedel

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Review: Paradise, Soho

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

5 February 2020

Paradise, Soho

Paradise, Soho

We are so ridiculously lucky in London. The entire world is presented to us on a plate. And the quality is often superb. Witness: Paradise, a new Sri Lankan place in Soho. By sheer coincidence we have just come back from two weeks in Sri Lanka. And although we didn’t relentlessly research and seek out the most authentic backwater foodie experiences in the country, we certainly made a solid attempt to eat local, listen for recommendations and avoid tourist traps. Nevertheless, Paradise served up better Sri Lankan food than anything we ate in Sri Lanka.

I said “better” rather than “more authentic”. Clearly the food you eat in a country is the authentic food of that country. The food at Paradise was just better. Cleaner, punchier flavours, better quality ingredients, more attention to detail. Obviously also five times more expensive than the same meal in Sri Lanka.

Splendid curry

Splendid curry

Anyway, I waffle. Paradise is a stylishly modern place with counter eating around the bar for couples and tables for quartets. It’s in the middle of Soho, so naturally the emphasis is on sitting you down, feeding you, watering you and getting you on your way. All with a smile and lots of passion for what they’re doing though.

Food! First up, mutton rolls. These were big, crispy rolls filled with softly spicy minced mutton. The brick red sauce of fermented chillies was just a fireworks party in the mouth. Then we move on to a charred pineapple salad, aubergine moju and pork cheek curry. Served with all the absolute Sri Lankan staples: hoppers, pol sambol, seeni sambol and pol roti.

Pol roti

Pol roti

The pork cheek curry was just beautiful silken lumps of meat in the most fire-cracker perfect curry gravy. Big, warm, earthy flavours overlaid with loads of bright lemongrass and good chilli heat. My favourite curry in a long while. The moju was great, all the sticky sweet/sour flavours I remember from Sri Lanka. The pineapple salad was a welcome juicy/fresh side plate, though I think they should have gone more nuts with the flame-grilling. Hoppers were quality, with crispy edges and a squidgy middle. Toasty pol roti with the softest texture.

Yep, I’m delighted with Paradise. The top-notch cardamom espresso martini might have helped. But this place is a blaze of Sri Lankan colour and destined to be one of my go-to spots in Soho. Dinner will probably be a tad under £30 before drinks.

Feast

Feast

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Review: Dastaan, Ewell

Categories:

Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

25 January 2020

Pani puri

Pani puri

It’s great finding special restaurants in odd places. You wouldn’t expect a daring left-field kitchen like Where The Light Gets In tucked down an alley in Stockport town. And you wouldn’t expect a blazingly good modern Indian restaurant squashed in amongst betting shops and plumbing supplies in a tired little shopping parade in suburban Ewell. But that’s Dastaan.

I actually expected to walk in and find classic curry house white tablecloths and mirrors, but the decor has be sharpened up with bare wood and an open kitchen to match the menu of street food and wickedly good grills and curries.

Duck log

Duck log

Pani puri were the best I’ve had in ages. And I’ve had a lot of pani puri. The shells were perfect, thin and crispy, with just a little flavour-bomb of filling and a lovely sweet/sour tamarind juice to pour in. Samosa chaat was a lovely filthy plate of street food, the crisp and spicy shards of samosa covered in lashings of yogurt and fruity brown sauce. So pleased to find a valid excuse to use “lashings”.

They are justly proud of their lamb chops, still juicy and chewy from the tandoor and given a seriously fierce yogurt coating. I liked the mustard mooli salad that came with them. I liked the duck sheek kebab too, although the very good pineapple chutney was rather lost against the seriously big log of grilled duck. This was the only dish that didn’t knock my socks off.

Chop chop

Chop chop

The pig cheek vindaloo most certainly knocked my socks off! But slowly, like a good vindaloo should. I distinctly remember saying, after the first couple of mouthfuls, “this is delicious, beautiful flavours, and really not very hot.” By the end I could only make gutteral noises of happy appreciation while the roaring spices continued to roll around and around in my mouth like summer thunder. Good pulao rice too.

The cooking at Dastaan is spot-on. It’s even better value for the quality; perhaps £30 per person for a big meal. I would kill for a local Indian restaurant as good as this.

Samosa chaat

Samosa chaat

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