Lobster

Review: Skof, Manchester

Skof is the third restaurant recently where we’ve been given a playlist to take away along with the menu. I didn’t realise a chef’s musical tastes were also more refined than the average punter? The funny thing is, they’re never edgy or full of interesting acts I’ve never heard of, just a string of classics …

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Tartare

Review: Juliet, Stroud

I really love the bit of the Cotswolds around Stroud and Nailsworth. Stunningly beautiful valleys full of all manner of tiny villages and abandoned industry, swallowed by wilderness. Far fewer tourists than the chocolate box villages further north and yet far more interesting! If I were to live in the Cotswolds, I’d pick this part. …

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Counter 71

Review: Counter 71, Shoreditch

Wow there are a lot of fine dining options out east these days. Shoreditch and Hackney are now huge hotspots for splash-out meals, perhaps shaped by cheaper rents while still being pretty accessible on the tube and train network? The latest we tried was Counter 71, where as the name suggests, all the covers are …

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Town

Review: TOWN, Covent Garden

I’d say TOWN is a pretty good candidate for meal of the year already. Combination of superb food, lovely setting and really excellent service. The interior is wonderful, lots of clean curves giving something of a 60’s modernist retro vibe but with all the furnishing and other decor carrying a burgundy and baked earth colour …

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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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Review: Skof, ManchesterReview: Juliet, StroudReview: Counter 71, ShoreditchReview: TOWN, Covent GardenReview: The Wensleydale Heifer, Wensleydale

Review: Lorne, Victoria

Categories:

Fine dining, London, Restaurant Reviews

2 June 2019

Lorne

Lorne

Have I reached the end? Should I stop blogging when I can’t think of any witty, amusing, interesting or tangential theme with which to start a review? Or do I have a duty, nay a calling, to provide the internet-reading public with short, punchy, considered reviews of some of the most delicious places to eat in the UK whether there is a sarcastic preamble or not?

Yeah, that.

So Lorne was good. It’s in Victoria, just five minutes amble from the station, and it’s got a sort of posh country kitchen vibe going on that makes me think of Petersham Nurseries. The food is attractive, balanced and tasty with clean and precise flavours. It’s very pleasing.

Pork belly and half a lettuce

Pork belly and half a lettuce

I start with veal sweetbread, with a nice crust of nutty buckwheat and a blob of burnt apple puree. Enjoyed it, though the little sticks of celery(-like?) stalk seemed worthy and unhelpful. Maureen’s crispy soft-shell crab was perfect with a sweet and tangy katsu-curry sauce, the blobs of avocado and sliced radish very much in keeping with the Lorne vibe.

Main for me was pork belly. Four cubes had a very good crisp crackling topping, although the belly itself wasn’t as yielding and unctuous as other recent specimens. They served it rather startlingly with half a lettuce. Yes. With tiny cubes of smoked eel hidden among the head of leaves. I call that torture. Forcing me to eat a whole head of lettuce just to make sure I don’t miss out on any smoked eel! There were some nice bits of sharp cheese and ham in amongst the leaves too.

Turbot with morels

Turbot with morels

Maureen’s turbot main was the star, as it should be. Beautifully cooked piece of cloud-white fish with a dollop of caviar and a wild garlic leaf on top. Served with white asparagus, slices of morel and a fantastically yellow vin jaune sauce. This was every bit as elegantly rich as you’d hope.

And they turned out some splendid puddings too. My brillat-savarin pannacotta was fairly epic, the delicate cheesy flavour making the wobbly white pud come over very savoury. Nice sharp apple sorbet and crispy candied walnuts went very nicely. Maureen had fun with a strawberry tart. And we all had fun with their epic list of red dessert wines, which go back to 1946! And brilliantly a glass of the 1961 Rivesaltes will only set you back £15. It’s not often you get to sample such ancient plonk and I was easily talked into a 1978 Maury for £12. Bliss.

So… some lovely cooking. About £42 each for 3 courses before drinks, and you definitely need to save some budget for that epic dessert wine list. I think my main course struggled to live up to its price tag, but looking (and tasting) around the table I reckon most of the other dishes did. Still, although I think Lorne is a good find I can’t bring myself to rave about it – I’m just not sure it quite hits the heights of the final bill.

Brillat savarin pannacotta

Brillat savarin pannacotta

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Review: Kiln, Soho

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

2 June 2019

Kiln be bijou

Kiln be bijou

Kiln is a narrow little joint, mostly bar. Places like this come and go in Soho all the time – queues out the door on year one, vanished three years later. I’ve no idea what the recipe for longevity is, but I like Kiln so I hope they find it.

Inspired loosely by northern Thailand and bits of Burma and Laos across the border (perhaps the term “Upper Mekong cuisine” could be coined?) there’s lots of shameless power in the flavours and a strong hit of chilli in almost everything. Be ye warned.

Fermented sausage

Fermented sausage

So, they’re mucking about. We have ox heart larb, but rather than a meat salad this is served hot in a gravy and without much more than a pinch of herbs. Then there’s a rabbit curry, with some of the flavour profile of a khao soi but with balancing sweet and citrus mostly left out in favour of bitter and sour. Two skewers of aged lamb are beautifully cooked and heavily dusted with roasted cumin. Could eat a few more of those. Best of the lot is an “Isaan style Tamworth sausage” which I believe means they’ve fermented the bugger. It’s an absolutely genius taste and texture, funky and chunky and porky and meltingly good.

We’re spice fiends, and I’m sure most people would find our home-cooking a bit OTT, so when I say we’d be in Kiln every day if it was around the corner then that’s not a recommendation for you all. But £25 each will probably be enough for a good meal without drinks, which is decent value for inventive and relentless Upper Mekong cooking with style.

Ox heart larb

Ox heart larb

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Review: Padella, London Bridge

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

19 May 2019

Padella, simple and abuzz

Padella, simple and abuzz

Padella is hot right now. So hot that when we arrived at 6pm last week looking for a table, the next available was 9:30pm! Determined souls that we are, this time we (or rather Maureen!) got there by 5 and so managed to secure a table for 6:45. Was it worth it?

Well, yeah. This is absolutely top pasta, at really quite ludicrously good prices. We chuck down negronis at £5 a pop while waiting for antipasti. A fiver! Later I enjoy a good glass of dark Primitivo for a similar price. They kept the decor dead simple, black and white, stripped back. Staff are friendly enough but mainly super-super efficient. The vibe is definitely quick, casual eats.

Buratta excellente

Buratta excellente

Keeping it simple to start, with a bowl of lovely briny green olives and a burrata. This comes on a plate with a generous pour of golden and grassy olive oil, and a grind of pepper. It’s absolutely bloody perfect. Onto the pasta.

My lurid green plate of worms is nettle tagliarini. It comes with a warm, generous and gentle aroma of nutmeg, and a deeply amber egg yolk to stir into the verdant nest. The whole plate eats beautifully, and very easily. It’s a deceptively simple pleasure.

Maureen’s pappardelle is more excitement, with a fennel sausage and peppercorn ragu. This is really punchy and meaty, just balanced by the soft ribbons of perfect pasta.

We finish with a couple of slices of tart; one lemon, one almond with loquat, both lovely. The crazy thing about Padella is that this you couldn’t spend £20 on three courses even if you tried, and the drinks – including wine by the glass – are superb value too. No wonder the queues are epic.

Stunning pasta

Stunning pasta

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Review: Smoke and Liquor, Rochester

Categories:

Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

19 May 2019

Rochester's epic castle

Rochester’s epic castle

I love Rochester, it’s loaded with character and history, I just wish it attracted more hipsters. Purely for their tendency to cause delicious food and drink venues to appear, you understand. Although I can report that Rochester has at least one decent place for a bite.

I can’t help but think they might have named Smoke and Liquor better. I get it, smoke relates to the barbecue that drives a good bit of the menu. But… well, unless we’re now completely in the post-cigarette age, “smoke and liquor” just sounds a bit like a seedy dive bar.

Smoke n Liquor - no dive

Smoke n Liquor – no dive

It’s not, it’s lovely inside. They’ve looked after the interior of what is a bloody old building, maybe 17th century or sommat, but given it a modern hipster/barbecue vibe. The staff need more tattoos, but apart from that minor point it was great. We stopped for a lunch of small plates, so we didn’t really give the BBQ a proper try.

And the food was way better than I expected from Rochester. Slow cooked oxtail on cornbread worked well with a warm chilli heat. Goat cheese croquettes were really satisfyingly goatsome, with a blob of sriracha mayo on the side for warmth. Tempura asparagus with gin-cured salmon had a great combination of texture going on, with a thick slice of toothsome salmon, al dente

Asparagus and salmon

Asparagus and salmon

asparagus and the crunch of batter. Nice salsa verde as well, to give it some welly. Smoked haddock dashi. Interesting idea, and very pleasantly smoky haddock. The dashi was gently flavoursome, with herbs and bamboo shoot, and fragments of samphire. The samphire was brilliant – like a salty little POP whenever you got a bit in your mouthful of soothing broth.

Maybe £20 each would make a good meal out of small plates, before drinks, and that’s perfectly good value for the quality. They’ve got a ridiculous number of gins available, along with a wide collection of other booze. I wouldn’t expect great things from the wine list, but the beer selection is solidly crafty. Nice one, Rochester.

Ox cheek small plate

Ox cheek small plate

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Review: Brigadiers, City of London

Categories:

London, Restaurant Reviews

19 May 2019

Brigadiers, in the city

Brigadiers, in the city

I like a place where they’ve put some effort into the decor and taken their own road, rather than following along with the latest identikit hipster trends. On the other hand, I’m not sure whether it’s very PC to enjoy the gloriously British-colonial club atmosphere at Brigadiers. Well, at least “the Brigadier” who gazes down on the dining room is quite definitely an Indian officer of the Raj, with sad jowls and toothbrush moustache.

I’m not sure what he’d make of the food, though. It’s Indian street food meets modern barbecue, it’s all bloody delicious, and as usual I’ve eaten too much.

Smoked aubergine roti

Smoked aubergine roti

Poppadoms and chutneys are okay. Smoked aubergine on tiny rotis with burnt corn is absolutely top-boss awesome, deeply smokey and ravishing. Beef keema with bonemarrow is rip-snortingly amazeballs, packed with flavour and humming with smoky cardamom goodness. Goat belly vindaloo samosas! The pastry is seriously crispy. Like, you could use these little triangles as shuriken! But the goat inside is velvety boss-level great, spankingly hot but elegantly so.

Oh, and it’s worth pausing to note that – like other modern Indian places I love – at Brigadiers they’ve paid a lot of attention to creating truly memorable alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages that go down nicely with all these layers of spice.

Gnarly ribs

Gnarly ribs

The main event is a BBQ rack of pork ribs with a wild boar rajma. The rajma is a new one on me: textured like a dal but based on beans rather than lentils. Anyway. RIBS! These bad boys are just meltingly perfect meat. But wow oh wow… whatever devilry they have been basted in knocks my socks straight off my feet. As usual, I struggle to pick out the individual spices, but there’s a tripily bitter fruit flavour that I think might be amchoor mango powder…? Anyway, it’s straight out gorgeous.

No room for pudding, I sip my (beautiful) cup of chai slowly as possible but still have to waddle out onto the street. Stuffed again. You’d probably look at £25-£30 each before drinks for a proper stuffing. There’s massive flavour. I’d happily eat here a lot.

The Brigadier

The Brigadier

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