Ducksoup

Review: Ducksoup, Soho

Ducksoup is a tiny wine bar in Soho serving up small plates alongside natural wines. They try very hard to pack everyone in. If you’re sat at the bar counter your elbows will be wedged to your ribs by the folks either side of you. We were sat at one of the little tables down …

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Seafood tapas at Barra de Cañabota

Tapas in Seville

San Sebastian might have become the darling of international foodies with its buzzing Basque pintxo culture, but Andalusia and it’s great capital of Seville are the original home of the tapas cuisine that now spans the globe. I can certainly remember that awkward phase of “British tapas”, “Thai tapas” and “modern tapas” before restaurants thankfully …

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Lechon with liver peppercorn sauce

Review: Donia, Soho

Donia, up on the top floor of Kingly Court, are serving up Philippine food through the filter of London modern high-end small-plate cooking. I find Philippine cuisine hard to pin down. It doesn’t have any of the powerful sweet-salt-hot-sour melange of other SE Asian cuisines, and doesn’t go in heavily on the spices like South …

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Hake and gorgonzola

Review: The Gaff, Bath

Whether the name of this restaurant rhymes with the city it is set in depends on what part of the country you come from. : ) Having not visited Bath properly for a few years it was nice to go back and mooch around for a day. I was struck yet again by what a …

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The Compleat Angler

Review: Sindhu, Marlow

A rambling old Victorian pub-hotel on the banks of the Thames at Marlow called “The Compleat Angler” is an odd venue for modern Indian cooking, but that’s where Sindhu is – one of Atul Kolchar’s growing crop of restaurants in the Thames Valley. We came for a mid-week lunch and we decided on the lunch …

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Review: Ducksoup, SohoTapas in SevilleReview: Donia, SohoReview: The Gaff, BathReview: Sindhu, Marlow

Review: Le Cochon Aveugle, York

Categories:

Fine dining, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

18 March 2019

Boudin noir macaron

Boudin noir macaron

York is an awesome city to visit, absolutely saturated in history, very beautiful, and more and more full of great places for a coffee or a full-on feast. There’s even a medieval beer hall. And now imma give you a tip on a lesser known place to visit in York that I found every bit as cool as the cathedral: the York Cold War Bunker. The hour long tour is fascinating and the guides are knowledgable and charming, just like service at Le Cochon Aveugle.

See that? That’s a segue. Boom.

The menu at Le Cochon Aveugle is a blind tasting menu, which I guess is a neat way of saving time usually spent trying to decide how to label up a long list of dishes on a menu. Do we go with the stark one-word simplicity of “carrot”? Or the full-on romance of “carpaccio of Wetherby carrot with kumquat granita and Perigord truffle”? Sod it, let’s just not provide a menu, it’s not like they get to choose what they’re having anyway, let’s get back to cooking.

Creamy oyster

Creamy oyster

So, let’s talk about the boudin noir macaron. O. M. G. Beautiful to look at, filthy magic in the mouth, absolutely one of those “just give me a dozen of these on a plate and leave me be” snacks that only a few tasting menus ever come up with. It was the last of a series of really very good amuses, including a tiny young red kale leaf with a blob of delicious umami and crunch on top, and a crispy potato bite with silky smoked cod roe on top: the poshest fish and chips.

The whole meal was full of dazzlingly strong dishes. A perfectly poached plump Lindisfarne oyster made velvety with a delicately rhubarby cream. And then a toothy scallop baked in the shell, punched up with powdered scallop roe and an even more powerful sea urchin butter (lucky there was still a bit of bread left to mop this up with!). Eel and charred veg in a dashi was lip-smacking good too. Main course was pared back but very effective: guinea fowl breast and leg, rich jus, brightened happily with two early wild garlic leaves.

Sauternes egg

Sauternes egg

I need to talk about the pud, though. Glisteningly rich chocolate. Peppy crisp black pepper tuile. Sea salt ice cream, as refreshing as a walk along Scarborough seafront in a gale. And the gentle grassiness of some excellent olive oil. These elements combined sublimely and I’d have been happy with a dozen of these to follow the dozen boudin noir macarons. A silken custard flavoured with funky Sauternes and bitter caramel on top, served in an eggshell, was a lovely finisher though.

This was an assured, inventive, 100% delicious tasting menu. At the very top of the tree. And for £75 you’ve got 8 courses and 5 snacks, which is dazzling value in my book (and only £60 mid week apparently). We enjoyed the wine pairing but it’s worth noting that they’re passionate about their natural and bio wines, just in case you aren’t! York has a top drawer fine dining restaurant in Le Cochon Aveugle, no doubt.

Beautiful scallop and urchin butter

Beautiful scallop and urchin butter

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Review: The Dairy, Clapham

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

18 March 2019

The Dairy

The Dairy

Why is flat-hunting so tiring? You’re just spending a day trotting from place to place, being shown around a variety of living spaces ranging from stunning to sadly dilapidated by a variety of letting agents ranging from tooth-jarringly perky to pinstripe sleazily urbane. By the end of it you feel like you’ve done a marathon. I think it’s all the thinking. We spent hours weighing up the pros and cons of each place, and each location, in minute detail. Dinner at The Dairy was a very welcome distraction (although it had the sad side-effect of waking us to the possibility of Clapham as another cool place to live!).

It’s a cool space, a fine example of stripped-back industrial chic. Service is friendly. There’s a good drinks list and we have a couple of fine glasses of wine. The menu is one of those odd tasting plate experiences; it’s definitely not a “3 course meal” and yet the tasting plates are divided into 3 sections and you’re recommended to pick one from each section. So…? I don’t mind. At the end of the day we tend to find that if you follow the waiter’s instructions you end up with a right-size meal. The tableware is all of solid, heavy, heat-conserving, carved stone with plenty of wabi sabi chips out of it. That was noteworthy and splendid.

Gougeres

Gougeres

Maureen picked a slice of truffled Baron Bigod cheese to start, served on a slice of toasted sourdough it was a perfectly gnarly pleasure. My start was pollock cheek gougeres; satisfying mouthfuls of cheesy puff with a friendly blob of fish inside. Good start. To follow I had bone marrow agnolotti. These little pasta parcels literally exploded in the mouth. Having bone marrow jus dribble down your chin is a wicked sensation. Mmmm. Filth. The jerusalem artichoke crisps and little chunks were just the right accompaniment. Maureen’s fillet of mackerel was a splendid piece of fish but I definitely scored on this course.

Our main courses… sorry, third small plates… were just a tad below par by comparison. My sturdy tranche of middlewhite pork was very well cooked, still on the juicy side, and served with some decent cavalo nero, red cabbage and swede puree. So, yeah, kindof a decent pub main. And Maureen’s lovely pink piece of lamb with a bean stew was also another perfectly decent pub main. I may be being unfair, but that’s the thing about small plate cooking: you expect every plate to have some pizazz.

No room for pud, but the little petit four of sticky fudge with tiny pieces of caramelised jerusalem artichoke inside was veeeeeery lovely. At about £32 for three dishes I’d happily give The Dairy a thumbs up. If we end up living near Clapham then I think it’ll easily become a local favourite. Otherwise, I’m not sure if I’m likely to bother making a special trip here; it’s good, but not memorable.

Agnolotti

Agnolotti

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Review: Scully, St James

Categories:

Fine dining, London, Restaurant Reviews

18 March 2019

Tentacular spectacular

Tentacular spectacular

When you go all-out for flavour and innovation, you won’t hit perfection every single time. Some dishes will be a bit OTT or just plain weird. For me, that’s part of the joy. I’d rather have food I can talk about and maybe a couple of dishes I can absolutely rave about, than several courses of refined perfection that are just going to merge together with every other fine meal I’ve eaten in a forgettable soup of food.

Well, I won’t be forgetting Scully’s thousand-layer pork belly in a hurry! Or his salt-caramel egg yolk, for different reasons (reasons which may simply be that my tastebuds aren’t ready yet for broccoli with caramel sauce).

It’s a classy little joint in St James, with an open kitchen. Service was excellent, informed and clearly enthused. So they should be.

Broccoli with caramel egg yolk

Broccoli with caramel egg yolk

Our first plate was a snack of crispy beef tendons (think beefy prawn crackers) with a dip of pancetta kilpatrick covered in a layer of light foamy oyster mayo. This was just absolutely filthy delicious, I could have scoffed it ’til I died. Every flavour and texture: salt, sweet, spicy, earthy, umami, sour, crunchy, silky, chewy.

Next, two veggie plates. Winter tomato and coconut salad with a tomato shrub I liked a lot, Maureen less so. It was easy to add too much of the vinegary shrub and overpower things, but done right this was a fine salad. The char-grilled broccoli came with nice little blobs of dark vinegar gel, but also with dollops of “salted egg yolk”. This was actually salt-caramel egg yolk, and delicious though it was I couldn’t quite enjoy broccoli and caramel. Yet. Maybe it’s me that needs to evolve?

Back on prime form with beautifully cooked thick octopus chunks paired with a deeply funky/smoky XO pork goo and cubes of perfectly pickled daikon. This was a marvellous bit of surf and turf.

Pineapple and pepper pud

Pineapple and pepper pud

But the best was yet to come. How can I describe thousand-layer pork belly with mustard greens, tapioca and pork broth? I’m going to have to go with: PHWOOOOOOOOOOOAR! Real words escaped me. It’s also very clearly a dish that a lot of careful prep and attention goes into, so hat’s off to chef Scully. If you’re reading this, I reckon you’ve got a signature dish right here chap! We very seriously considered ordering a 2nd one instead of dessert. I wish it wasn’t only Jan 10th, because calling it “dish of the year” feels a bit daft! I’ll be lucky to eat something better in 2019.

Dessert was a bit of a let down. Black pepper ice cream and pineapple tart is a great idea, but both element were so just-barely-set that within seconds we had a plate of orange and white goo. The flavour was excellent, the texture not.

Who cares? I loved the heck out of my dinner at Scully. At £41 each before drinks, it beats the pants off a lot of £60+ tasting menus in terms of ideas, flavours and execution for my money. Wine list was good, full of interesting stuff as you’d hope. Get yourself here.

Thousand layer pork belly magnificence

Thousand layer pork belly magnificence

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Review: The Drunken Duck, Ambleside

Categories:

Pubs, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

18 March 2019

A walk in the Lakes

A walk in the Lakes

The Lake District is bloody glorious. It’s without doubt the most beautiful corner of England (and I’ve been to all the corners) and more and more it’s also got plenty of fantastic places to eat. But food aside, you need to get up into the fells. You can head up onto mighty Helvellyn or Scafell Pike, or you can take an easier ramble up Catbells, but whatever you do you need to get some height and then walk and see.

And when you get back, and have cleaned the mud off and got your fell-weary limbs into fresh clothes, you could cap off the perfect country day with The Drunken Duck – an absolutely perfect country pub.

Bread and a nibble

Bread and a nibble

It sits alone in wild hill country, with a view of the fells and Ambleside below, and has a rambling four or five rooms full of tables and a busy bar full of excellent modern local beer. Their kitchen manages a very clever thing: the food is all resolutely comfortable, country and delicious yet they absolutely refuse to fall back on old pub dining staples. Our beautifully crusty sourdough bread doesn’t come with olive oil and balsamic, no. It comes with pine oil and stout vinegar, and I can report that to be an infinitely superior and delicious experience!

So I start with a gruyere souffle sitting on top of a mess of slow-cooked onions and topped with a big handful of toasted almonds. It’s cheesy, scrunchy, cosy, oniony good. Maureen has a kipper scotch egg on a big puddle of homemade brown sauce, and the combination is killer. The amount of smoked fish in there just right, not overpowering.

Kipper scotch egg

Kipper scotch egg

My main is a generous portion of venison haunch, roasted very rare indeed and served in thick, delicious purple slices. Salt-baked swede joins up with toasted seeds and other roast veggies in a heart-warming winter dish. Maureen goes for shiitake dumplings with a hearty helping of punchy kimchi and a red pepper broth. The broth is deep and clear at the same time, soaking wonderfully into the dish. The menu fails to mention the huge pile of other mushrooms heaped on the plate with the dumplings; it’s an absolute fungal feast.

We were too stuffed for pud, but on another day we stopped in for tea and couldn’t resist a plate of fluffy pancakes with chestnut custard and spicy stewed plums. Magic. And an excellent apple crumble.

The Drunken Duck has rooms too, and I’m willing to bet you wouldn’t be disappointed. It might even make for the perfect weekend break in the Lake District. But if you base yourself somewhere near Ambleside then I’d say lunch or dinner at the Drunken Duck should definitely be on your itinerary somewhere!

For pics of the Lakes, here’s a post from my other blog: Otter Adrift.

Venison haunch

Venison haunch

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Review: The Old Stamp House, Ambleside

Categories:

Fine dining, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

18 March 2019

Black pudding amuse

Black pudding amuse

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about dining experiences, and how must expectation feeds into your enjoyment of a meal. I’ll be honest: I went to Core with so much buzz and hype about Clare Smyth’s restaurant having passed before my eyes that I was perhaps doomed to go “meh?” when I was treated to 7 courses of perfectly nice refined French cooking. Whereas I visited Ynyshir totally by chance, trying to pick somewhere to eat on a weekend walking break in Wales, couldn’t find any reviews about it, and so was absolutely blown to bits by Gareth Ward’s astonishingly original cuisine.

It’s tricky as a reviewer. You have to review your experience, but recognising where expectations have played a part in your response to a meal is kinda tough.

I think if I’d found The Old Stamp House by chance, got lucky with a table, and enjoyed their 7 course tasting menu then I’d perhaps be enthusing about a hidden gem in the Lakes. But since I’d already read a bunch of reviews wondering aloud “why they haven’t got a Michelin star yet”, I’m going to have to admit to just being whelmed.

Overwhelmed is when you are blown away by something. Underwhelmed is a distinct disappointment. So I figure “whelmed” must be just reasonably satisfied.

Splendid hogget

Splendid hogget

There were some tasty bites of black pudding to start, with Cumberland sauce jelly atop. A pile of brown shrimps in a sweet curry gravy made for a tasty beginning. Sous vide trout was kinda dull with an oyster emulsion and rather thuggish lumps of cucumber and ikura. The third dish, a good chunk of cod on a raunchy brown crab risotto and jerusalem artichoke puree was very satisfying.

The absolute stand-out dish, and I gotta applaud, was the Herdwick hogget main. Beautifully sourced and beautifully cooked piece of loin, the fat crisped lightly on the outside and having buckets and buckets of flavour. The blackened roast carrots added another great dimension of flavour, best carrots I’ve enjoyed in a while. And they plated up two other delicious elements alongside: glistening shreds of shoulder on a gooey potato puree, and a beignet of minced belly with an anchovy and mint mayo.

Spiced apple cake finished the meal well. But this was a £70 tasting menu, and for me there were just too many kinda familiar and just-nice dishes to be asking for that money. Service was perfectly good but not really engaging, and the dining room isn’t bursting with atmosphere, so really the food had nothing to hide behind. It’s good that the Lake District is getting so many excellent dining options, but my conclusion for The Old Stamp House is: good cooking, but not good value.

Excellent cod and crab risotto

Excellent cod and crab risotto

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