Review: Chet’s, Shepherd’s Bush

I remember the first (only?) Thai meal I had in America. This was, admittedly, almost eighteen years ago in California. Huge chunks of chicken breast, capsicum peppers, baby sweetcorn, all bathed in a sauce that was gunky and thick with coconut cream and flavoured with… well, nothing. Just the mildest hint of some familiar Thai …

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Pork toast

Review: Mamapen, Soho

Right in the middle of Soho is apparently the only place doing Cambodian food in London: Mamapen at The Sun & 13 Cantons pub. I’m not sure how long that statement will stay true? I’ve only spent a few days in Cambodia and didn’t search out a lot of local food (indeed, the only street …

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STP

Review: The White Horses, Rottingdean

The White Horses Hotel in Rottingdean used to be a pretty typical boozer and meh restaurant on the seafront of the postcard village of Rottingdean, along the way from Brighton. Recently bought and re-vamped, now it’s like walking into the set of an Agatha Christie, all tasteful art deco furnishing, cane backed chairs and bright …

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Just chips

Review: Toklas, Embankment

Toklas occupies a very handy spot, just off the Strand in what is quite a wasteland for useful places to eat. So it’s been on our radar for a while. So having tickets to see Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell in Much Ado About Nothing at the Theatre Royal gave us the perfect opportunity for …

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Venison dim sum

Review: Row on 5, Mayfair

I’m developing some clear preferences in my old age, I think. Nowadays I’ve got a strong preference for more informal mid-range dining, preferably ambitious and often ethnic. Small plates almost always feature. But as Row on 5 has just reminded me, I also love a real splurge on a destination restaurant where you feel super …

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Review: Chet’s, Shepherd’s BushReview: Mamapen, SohoReview: The White Horses, RottingdeanReview: Toklas, EmbankmentReview: Row on 5, Mayfair

Review: Restaurant Nathan Outlaw, Cornwall

Categories:

Fine dining, Michelin, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

19 March 2014

Not only no canapes, but both starters came at once. Now... why?
Sometimes I like to fool myself that I’m a local when I visit Cornwall. After all, I must have visited a dozen times. I know all the obscure villages; Praze an Beble, Indian Queens, Perranzebuloe, Mabe Burnthouse. I know how to pronounce Fowey and Mousehole (Fo’y and Mowz’l). And I never, ever, ever have brown sauce with my Cornish pasty.

Obviously I’m not a local – you have to have been born here, lived through the loss of the tin and kaolin industries, and probably come to accept the fact that hordes of summer visitors flocking to the caravan parks, holiday beaches and Eden Project in the summer are now what keeps the local economy afloat. Increasingly in recent years the visitors aren’t only here in the summer, and are coming for the food as well as the surfing. And although it was genial Mr Stein who started it all, these days the King of Cornish Cooking is generally reckoned to be Nathan Outlaw. Where did his family get that name, though? Mr Baker… Mr Smith… Mr Thatcher… Mr Outlaw? Hmm. So what does your family do for a living, eh?

Totally distracted, sorry. Restaurant Nathan Outlaw…

There was no denying the pure brilliance of the sole. And my poor photograph
The St Enodoc Hotel doesn’t overlook the sea, which is a bummer. It’s a big, smart country house hotel in the middle of Rock village that has been given a totally cool, modern makeover. It’s a good’un, the owners (or designers, or whatever) obviously share my taste in furnishing, I basically wanted to nick stuff. That’s Mr Outlaw’s influence, surely. Service in the restaurant was friendly and professional; sommelier and maitre d’ seem to be a husband and wife team and looked after us well. There’s no a la carte, only the tasting menu.

For a hundred quid tasting menu I was surprised by the lack of canapes or amuse bouche. Here’s your bread, here’s your starters. The bread was good. The starters were excellent: a delicate piece of cod with bacon bits on a funky cauliflower puree, and a plate of tiny wobbly queenie scallops in a sweet broth topped with crisp celeriac. Not sure why the two starters were brought out together, I’d have been happy enjoying one then the other.

The next course was almost divine. A piece of lemon sole that could indeed have been filleted from an angel, laid over a crispy battered oyster and a mixture of leek and jerusalem artichoke with a dill broth. This was followed by another masterpiece of fish cookery; gurnard with firm flesh and crisp skin, served with a rich porthilly sauce made from roasted mussels and discs of yellow pickled kohlrabi. I’m not good enough to put into words how well these dishes worked.

Terrifically good piece of turbot on the bone
Turbot on the bone was the main event, with a scattering of tiny pickled mushrooms and vivid green kale. Nice crispy potato terrine with this, for which I must applaud Mr Outlaw as this is the first main course I’ve had on a tasting menu for a long time that has put potato on the plate. Did I mention the turbot was perfect?

A cheese course interjected next; a goaty piece of crispy breadcrumbed ragstone sitting in a puddle of melt, served with some fruity pieces of beetroot and walnut fragments. This was a r-r-r-eally good cheese course. After all this superbery, I feel a bit sad to report that the desserts didn’t cut it. Blood orange curd wasn’t orangey enough, and the rhubarb and crumble with it couldn’t make me squee with joy. Just nice. The pear tart has a sticky, grainy hazelnut coating that was… well, I love hazelnuts, I’m just not sure chef has hit upon a winning texture here. The yogurt ice cream with it was nice enough.

So, what can I say? I’m quite confident that this meal included three among the best seafood dishes that I have ever had, Nathan Outlaw is an amazing talent with anything you can pull slippery and wriggling out of the ocean. But on this outing, he’s not so magic with puds. And any other £100 tasting menu I’ve bumped into has included at least a couple of nifty little tastebud-tinglers to start your meal, maybe a pre-dessert too, so the absence here feels a bit stingy. C’mon, couldn’t you at least fry up a bit of cod skin and dust it with celery salt? A trip to Nathan Outlaw’s feels a bit like a pilgrimage to a shrine of seafood gastronomy – I’ll leave you to decide whether that’s your thing or not.

It's a pear tart. Just not as we know it.

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Review: 5 North Street, Winchcombe

Categories:

Fine dining, Michelin, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

14 March 2014

5 North Street, in a Cotswold town
It was very good of the owner of 5 North Street to phone me up a few hours before our booking to explain that they had no other bookings that evening. Not “…so we’re not going to open, sorry” as I’ve heard of happening elsewhere but “…so you’ll be alone in the restaurant, if you don’t mind?” I imagined they were probably rather hoping we’d opt for another day, but this was my only free evening for a while so I stuck to my guns. Turns out that Marcus and Kate Ashenford live right above their cosy oak-beamed dining room in the bucolic little market town of Winchcombe, so they probably weren’t too put out.

As an aside, this was the Tuesday evening just after Valentine’s weekend, so perhaps understandable! Also shows how far behind I’m getting with my blog…

Mackerel. Nice piece, but that's a hefty starter
Anyway, I rather like being alone in a restaurant. There’s an atmosphere to it, especially if the surroundings are pleasant and the food and service are good. They’ve got all three right at 5 North Street so that was pretty darn fine by me. The decor is humble for a Michelin star decorated establishment, the walls a dark brick red and the tables glossy black, but it all fits the town.

Absolutely nothing wrong with having four neat squares of crust-removed Welsh rarebit for canapes, the cheese still hot melted and the pickle beneath tangy and sweet. The amuse bouche of roast garlic and shallot soup was punchy and warming, fighting valiantly against the 200th day of crappy weather going on outside. We both picked the same starter: mackerel fillet with crab and potato galette and pickled beetroot. This was a soothing and homely dish, the mackerel cooked perfect with crispy skin, the crab only slightly there in the couple of fat little potato cakes and the beetroot delicately pickled. It would have been a lovely light lunch, but a bit big and simple for a snazzy starter.

Tell me that isn't a wickedly plated dish of nose-to-tail veal
Especially as it was followed by a couple of knock-out main courses. My venison was four perfect medallions of pink loveliness, accompanied by deep, rich and wintery flavours from choucroute, baked beans, super-sticky parsnips and a gutsy little game sausage. The sweet and sour gravy was glossy, clear magic. This was very spiffy. Maureen’s veal was just as good; softly melting meat and a pretty good nose-to-tail attempt with cubes of tongue, a ravioli of tail and pieces of kidney.

Our shared dessert, a presentation of autumn fruit, was my favourite pud for quite some time. The apple parfait sprinkled with bright green sugar carried the taste of cox’s orange pippins straight from childhood. The apple tart next door was crackingly good in delicate pastry. In the middle sat a tiny pint of guinness, which turned out to be a blindingly good mulled wine jelly with cream on top. Next door to that was a pretty pink poached pear with spicy cardamom ice cream and a cinnamon – or surely cassia? – tuile. Last but not least, a little jar crammed with a delicious plum crumble, the crumble baked with enough star anise to make it sing like Barry White.

Two dishes at 5 North Street were cracking, and maybe we just picked the safe starter. The food was £50 each for 3 courses, and I think that’s probably about bang on for the quality. There’s a decent wine list with a range of options, and we had a good half-bottle of claret. I enjoyed the peace and quiet, but I suppose when (not if) we come back we’ll probably have to put up with some fellow diners!

An intelligent, thought-out dessert selection (rather than 'five nibbles of our main desserts')

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Review: The Daffodil, Cheltenham

Categories:

Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

26 February 2014

Lunch at the Daffodil, an occasion
I was getting a distinct sense of deja vu.

I was reading the menu at The Daffodil and a dish jumped out at me from the starters: steak tartare with corned beef. Hang on, didn’t Maureen have steak tartare with corned beef at Le Champignon Sauvage last weekend? My gaze wandered into the main courses and landed on a tasty looking dish: lamb with sweetbreads and goat curds. Hang on, didn’t Maureen have lamb with sweetbreads and goat curds at Le Champignon Sauvage last weekend? I was getting a distinct sense of deja vu.

But to be clear, The Daffodil isn’t setting out its stall as a bastion of inventive haute cuisine with a celebrated chef at the helm. Nope, The Daffodil’s pitch is pretty straightforward. It goes: “yes, this is a converted 1920’s art deco cinema called The Daffodil, yes it looks bloody fantastic doesn’t it, now here’s some good food you can enjoy while soaking up the atmosphere.”

I'm never going to turn my nose up at pig's head
I started with some crispy breaded cubes of pig’s head with an apple puree, an onion salad and crispy pig’s ear. This was all pretty good, bags of flavour and the pig’s head just sticky enough to be good. Maureen’s beetroot terrine with breadcrumbed goat cheese was a very pretty plate, tasty too.

For main course I did go for the reprise of Maureen’s main course from Le Champignon. It was a lovely lamb chop, some very smartly fried sweetbreads and lively little lumps of goat cheese. I’d definitely expect curds to be softer. It’s not often you get to compare two nearly identical dishes in different restaurants just a week apart. David Everitt-Matthias needn’t worry, as you’d expect the 2-star Michelin version is a mile ahead. But hey, I’m reviewing The Daffodil, and this was a darn good main for £17. Maureen’s main was a bit of a Ready, Steady, Cook of an ingredient list: hake, orange, anchovy, broccoli, almonds. Apparently it was “okay”. Meanwhile my brother and father were sharing a splendid looking chateaubriand and making cooing noises like a pair of chuffed pigeons. I snaffled a bit, soused in bearnaise, very good. From this I surmise that your best bet when ordering at The Daffodil is to look for classics.

Good bit of lamb, and a recipe with a sense of deja vu
Mind you, my pudding wasn’t quite as classic as it should have been; baked alaska with poached rhubarb. Good rhubarb, but the alaska was essentially white marshmallow fluff with a blowtorch played over it. Then again, Maureen’s bread and butter pudding with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce was dead good.

We enjoyed the heck out of our meal at The Daffodil. It was a family celebration, there was live jazz on the small stage in front of the open kitchen, which was just brilliant in the art deco glory of the surroundings, and the food was pretty good. If the two of us had come alone to try out the food on a quiet midweek lunchtime, I think we’d have been ambivalent. So really I gotta recommend The Daffodil, it’s a brilliant place for a celebration, but the bestest (or best valuest) food in Cheltenham it ain’t.

Baked Alaska, baked marshmallow really

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Review: Le Champignon Sauvage, Cheltenham

Categories:

Fine dining, Michelin, Rest of UK, Restaurant Reviews

12 February 2014

Scallops looking handsome
In my most exhuberant burst of foody behaviour yet, I’ve moved house and am now only ten minutes’ walk away from my nearest two-star Michelin restaurant! Because it’s important to have a good neighbourhood eatery for those Friday nights when you really can’t be bothered to cook, right?

The restaurant in question is Le Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham, and although I ate here once many years ago I’d completely forgotten what part of town it was in. So stumbling upon it while looking for my nearest 7-11 for milk was a pleasant surprise. It turns out that my nearest 7-11 is further away than my nearest two-star Michelin restaurant. My priorities are clearly A-okay.

Cheltenham, incidentally, has astonishingly good sunsets. We’ve only been here a couple of months and I’d rate it higher for sunsets than anywhere else we’ve lived and most places we’ve visited. Must be something in the atmosphere. Oh yes, Le Champ…

They’ve redecorated to a more contemporary shade of grey since I visited last, though the restaurant is still essentially a pretty ordinary dining room tucked in a parade of local shops and restaurants. Mind you, I love the eclectic mixture of art on display, obviously personal choices and right up my street. Service was professionally friendly, perhaps I’ve bought into modern fadishness but I’d have liked a bit more interaction. The food’s the thing, though.

That's surely the smartest steak tartare ever plated
My scallops with charred leek and cured pork jowl were very good, small scallops with plenty of colour, wafer-thin pork cured to a spot-on porkiness and the leeks proving that it’s okay to burn your food as long as you meant to. It was good. Maureen’s steak tartare with corned beef was also good, with pickled mushrooms and wasabi cream. Across the table a pigeon pastilla was declared delicious too, as was the lobster.

For main I chose venison, in honour of the miserably wet winter evening going on outside. It was a beautiful piece, dearly tender with a gamey liver taste. Accompanied by pickled blueberries and soft sticks of salsify in milk breadcrumb, I enjoyed the whole plateful but it didn’t quite stir a 2-star “wow!” from me. The lamb with sweetbreads and goat curds was spiffy – I loved the way the goaty curds picked up and emphasised the lamby lamb. We all noticed the absence of starch from pretty much everything on the table other than the tablecloth. This isn’t particular to Le Champignon of course, it just seems that potato accompaniments are persona non gratin in fine dining menus these days. But when the food is this rich a bit of carbohydrate would help.

Dessert with zing. And bergamot!
We definitely saved the best until last. My dessert of bergamot-scented mousse was a vivid retro arrangement of orange and dark brown, as bright and brilliant as it looked. Maureen’s salted chicory root with accompanying chocolate sorbet was dreamy, but the star prize goes to the seared mango with Thai-flavoured sorbet; there was buckets of sweet basil and lemongrass going on in there. This was absolutely splendid.

People rave about Le Champignon Sauvage. I feel like a contrarian, because I just thought it was extremely good. It probably boil down to my own preference; when I go for a 2-star Michelin blowout I like to be startled or at the very least challenged and only the puds here knocked my socks off. But hey, Le Champignon Sauvage is very great cooking, and really excellently priced for the sheer quality.

Taste of the night - Thai sorbet

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In which I go on a cookery course

Categories:

Events and Visits

1 February 2014

Waiting to begin in Leith's cafe
So, for anyone who has tried any of the recipes on this blog I have a confession to make: the last cookery lesson I had was Home Economics at school, where as a twelve-year-old I turned out a thick, misshapen but edible pizza topped with tuna and cheese. Hey, I said edible, not delicious.

And I never cooked again, until the necessities of student penury forced me out of the kebab shop and into Kwik Save (for younger readers, Kwik Save was the Aldi of the 90’s). While packing boxes the other day I came upon a book where I wrote recipes in my student days. Even then I preferred making stuff up to following books. Of course, the first one I flipped to had both mashed potatoes and marmalade in the ingredients list… so I like to think my skills have developed over the years!

Chef Musa takes us through the ingredients
So I was intrigued to find myself at Leith’s Cookery School last weekend, wondering what on earth it was going to be like doing a half-day of “Malaysian Street Food with Norman Musa”. Props to my brother and sister for coming up with such a nifty idea for a birthday present!

Chef Musa is a great guy, self-taught like me, although of course he’s made a career of it whereas I tend to make a mess of it. With busy restaurants in Manchester and York, and a likely opening in London next year, he’s obviously hoping to get Malay cooking standing alongside Thai in the pantheon of imported UK cuisines.

Which it totally should be. I’ve been to Georgetown, Penang, the absolute Mecca of Malaysian food and we basically spent five days trying to eat everything. The Malay flavours are generally dirtier, richer and earthy than the super-clean spices of Thai cookery, but the range is amazing.

Chef Norman Musa at the stove

So, I suppose you think we spent an hour being lectured, watched some demonstrations, then pottered around making a laksa and took a leisurely hour’s lunch to eat it with a chill glass of wine? Not a bit. Within 20 minutes we were cooking up a genuinely excellent peanut sauce following Chef Musa’s demo, and then we just kept on cooking for four hours. Oh, with a five minute break for a drink of water, and chomping down a few satay along the way to keep us going.

Ta-da! Char kuey teow, a Malay street food classic
I knocked out ten neat sticks of satay chicken for the peanut sauce, some deep-fried battered prawn and beanshoot snacks, a mean plate of Char Kuey Teow and ended up with a very satisfying Prawn Laksa. I say satisfying because sticking my nose over the pot I could smell exactly the same smell that came off the bowls of laksa we enjoyed at the hawker stalls on Penang.

To be fair, we did celebrate with a glass of wine at the end.

I’d recommend this particular course to anyone who wants to get some confidence with cooking South-east Asian style. I’ve picked up a very handy bag of tips and techniques from Norman that no amount of making-it-up or reading recipes off the internet would have taught me. And so, yeah, I’d probably recommend a course like this to anyone who wants to get some confidence with any unfamiliar area of cookery.

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