Foodraker

The Club at the Ivy

2010-03-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

9 West Street

London WC2H 9NE

The last time I had lunch at the Ivy restaurant was with the CEO of an ad agency. At 2pm he said "Oh god I better disappear the coach trips will be arriving". I think he wasn't altogether joking. The Ivy in crowd of media biz tycoons and show biz elite were starting to feel threatened by the arrival of 'real people' drawn by the fame of the brand. By then the in crowd had already started to migrate to The Wolseley. Then in September 2008 the Ivy, under Richard Caring's ownership, opened the Club at the Ivy.

Entering the Club is a surreal experience. You rise from the flower shop to the right of the Ivy restaurant to the floors above the restaurant in a tardis like see through lift. The Club is a clever solution to the problem of a very successful restaurant: the in crowd create the demand, the demand drives out the in crowd. The solution: open a club for the in crowd with the same name as the old restaurant and in the same place, and serve up something very similar and charge them membership.

We are having lunch in the Library restaurant. The decor is very similar to the Ivy restaurant and there are the same leaded windows. The only difference is there are books on the walls, some leather arm chairs. The menu too is very similar and, like everything at Le Caprice, J Sheekey and the Ivy, owes everything to Chris Corbin and Jeremy King the revivers of all these establishments and current owners of The Wolseley.

So the menu offers very good simple hearty fare very well executed at pretty high prices (well it is the Ivy). Mains are around £15 to well into the £20s. I have a simple endive salad, my lunch host grilled prawns; and we both follow with the pie of the day which is lamb and Guinness. It is superb. The pastry is flaky and delicious the stock thick and sumptuous. We also have an excellent bottle of oaky white burgundy. The service is also very professional. The club is full. It is more media biz than show biz. I don't see any stars and everyone is deep in conversation. Its all very civilised. Not much signs of recession inside the Club at the Ivy. You would hardly notice the media biz is in turmoil here.

Saf

2010-03-25T02:49:00.000-07:00

152-4 Curtain Road
London EC2A 3AT

020 7613 0007

"You should eat that its a dried tomato", said our waiter.

"Sun dried?", said my scottish friend.

"No. We have dehydration ovens. Four of them. They cost £1000 each.", said our waiter proudly.

Sun dried tomatoes are so passe, so yesterday. The sweep of history. I thought if those people sheltering close to here from the Blitz in the underground 70 years ago, a nanosecond in geological time, could have heard him. How things change.

Here we are at Saf in the East End of London where they now have special expensive ovens to dry vegetables. We have just finished our first course, the tasting plate £16.50. It is described as "beetroot ravioli, vegetable maki, olives and spiced nuts, tapenade, cashew cheese with raw flax seed crackers, home made pickles and samosa" and..."sun dried tomato". Ha we should have them up before the trades descriptions authority. Sun dried or oven dehydrated this was a very impressive start. The platter looked like something from the most upmarket sushi restaurant. Every piece on it was beautifully crafted and tasted equally delicious or as my pithy Scottish friend said "Its not you arse wipe Vegan bollocks. You can taste this". She is sensitive to how food can be used as a socio political statement.

Main courses were equally impressive both visually and importantly to eat. I had the Phad Thai. There is a sense in which they are struggling with descriptive labels grounding them in the non vegetarian world but adding their own detailed descriptions of what are in fact unique dishes with only a distant relationship with the heading. The Phad Thai included enoki mushrooms, mung shoots and chipotle almond sauce. Anyone who thinks vegetarian food is flavourless really should try this. It is a transporting education! I tried a bit of my scottish friend's lasagne which according to the menu description includes 'sun dried tomatoes' , or were they. Frankly I don't care if they were dehydrated in the basement. The dish was also sublime. There was olive relish and mushrooms and sage pesto in there; nothing like any lasagne I've ever tasted and ,l ike most of the food, and everything I had, cold but nevertheless fantastic.

It was a bit de trop to have puddings after this lot but we couldn't resist. I have chocolate ganache tart £5.50. This is the most conventional eating experience of the evening: its dominated by the taste of high quality dark chocolate but there is no cream; instead there is pernod ice cream, rum and pear compote, cacoa syrup. Scottish friend has Pumkin Pie £6.50 with candied pecans; again very good but closer to what I might expect to find elsewhere.

I am sitting looking into the restaurant. "I could be in Notting Hill" I say, looking at the elegant spiral lights, the wooden flooring, the attractive staff. " You need to be looking my way at the dismal little cafe outside to be reminded you are in the East End," said my Scottish friend. It was a memorable evening. Oh and vegetarian of course doesn't mean there is no drinking. They make good cocktails here (I had a Margarita) and we had a bottle of Spanish wine (see photo): organic/vegan natch and good value at £19.

Viet Grill

2010-03-23T03:49:00.000-07:00

58 Kingsland Road

London E2 8DP

020 7739 6686

I have to admit to a few prejudices before I start this. I really like Vietnamese food. We usually have a pre Christmas party and last Christmas we made Vietnamese spring rolls as canapes based on the recipe here. When they are fresh there is nothing quite like them: the soft clammy rice paper that you soak in warm water first, the mint and coriander, the vermicelli noodles, the crunchy beansprouts, the rice wine vinegar and in these soy and a prawn; they are wonderful. We wrapped about 150 of the clammy little things and they all went. I also know Malcolm Gluck who chose the wines for this restaurant and advises on the list.

Viet Grill is a new breed of Kingsland Road Vietnamese restaurant: it has decor! Purists are rather worried by this trend, would rather focus on the food in Kingsland originals which make no pretense to decor like Song Que with its stark bright lighting and crome cafe chairs. I must say I rather like the low well lit wooden tables and banana leaf murals here. Its fun and it is more decorative than its more basic competitors. There is a long bar on the right which is unoccupied at 8pm on Monday while the restaurant is filling. I wait there and order a glass of Calbulco Semillon/Cardonnay 2007 Chile £4 which Malcolm's notes tell me is "Dry yet delightfully full of stone-fruit flavours, lemon and a hint of herb. Great with sizzling seafood". One issue I have is there are only three whites and three reds that you can drink by the glass. That's a shame in a restaurant which is taking so much trouble to demonstrate wine can be a great accompaniment to Vietnamese food. The wine is simple and yes a bit sharp lemony.

I'm having dinner with an old friend and he is late. They are very charming about finding me a good table. I get the impression not that many people book on a Monday night, they just walk in so they are taking special trouble. I am even later offered another table but am happy where I am. I order fresh soft summer rolls filled with king prawn, herbs and salad wrapped in rice paper £3.50. They take a long time to come. My friend has arrived and we order when the waiter who I originally ordered the spring rolls asks if I would still like them. We say yes. They are very good with all the fresh crispy against clammy goodness they should have.

As a starter we have ordered the seafood house platter which two have to share at £7 each. It is huge and goes in the middle of the table. It has soft shelled crab which is crispy and mushy and excellent and battered prawns and lots of quite simple basic salad: cherry tomatoes, lettuce, red onion dominate. For mains we have 'slow cooked mekong catfish' £7.50. This is 'poached in caramelised fish sauce, simmered in a clay pot and finished with cracked pepper and fresh chilli'. This for me is the star dish. It comes with heat under it as you can see in the photo. The fish is flaky and sticky sweet but also chilli hot. There are two sizeable pieces: fantastic for £7. Our other choices are for me not a success. We have stewed saigon beef brisket £8, simmered in lemon grass and star anise. There are very large lumps of flaky chewy meat which are rather tasteless despite the sauce. We also order roast duck wokked with seasonal market greens and spicy sate sauce on a sizzling platter £8. The duck is tough and overcooked, flabby on the outside.

So a bit of a mixed bag overall. The food needs careful ordering. I liked the spring rolls and catfish; nothing else struck me as excellent. I nevertheless liked the place. Although it was noisy we had a lot to talk about and felt very comfortable there. Even though the first thing I ordered took a long time to come the service was unfailingly helpful and courteous. We moved to the bar and stayed a long time after finishing eating. There was no pressure to clear off as there can be in grander places. We certainly ordered more than we needed and most of the beef and a lot of the duck got left. My friend doesn't drink. I had two glasses of the Chilean white and another glass of Spanish red after the meal. As with tapas eating lots of smaller courses and drinking wine by the glass mounts up. The bill managed to get to £74 but you could eat there much more cheaply. I would go back and try other things. As I said I felt very comfortable there even though I was disappointed in some of the things we ordered.

Sahara

2010-03-14T06:44:00.000-07:00

39 Hereford Road
London W2 4AB

020 7792 0770

I've been here a few times and enjoyed the tagines; and you really don't need to order a first course here. You get harissa, olives, olive oil and good Moroccan bread before you start all thrown in.

We order lamb mechoui with roasted butternut squash, potatoes, sultanas, french beans with slow baked boneless shoulder of lamb with Moroccan spice (for two) £29.95.

Its around 8pm on a Friday night and the restaurant is very empty; there is only one other group of three. The lamb is full of spicy Moroccan flavour and flaky slow cooked but it just isn't hot enough. It also doesn't seem to me all that authentically Moroccan with the potatoes which bothers me less. What worries me, with so few people in the restaurant, is how they manage to do this, this one off dish which takes a long time to produce when there are so few customers. Is it straight from the freezer? I have my suspicions and that it is not properly heated is worrying, puts me off. I'm saddened by this, feel everything has gone off here a bit. Things are not helped by the fact that Hereford Road is all pulled up with major road works (water?), metal fences obscuring the restaurants and other businesses and making access difficult.

L.O. and I enjoy nevertheless a bottle of heavy Domaine de Larroque Moroccan wine, a merlot/syrah blend, £25.50.

Cadogan Arms

2010-03-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

298 King's Road,

SW3 5UG

020 7 352 6500

Its like a faux Edwardian hunting lodge inside with antlers on the walls and wooden panelling. Only this is a lodge for all sports. There are also fish in cabinets, the stuffed head of a fox. There are red upholstered benches in the style of the House of Lords. There are also other strange touches: an unplastered brick pillar, a panel of hispano moresque tiles on the wall. I like it. The hunting lodge theme only slightly off and hip all at the same time is fun. King Edward VII would have felt very much at home here, only he wouldn't. He would have been confused by the eastern European accent of our waitress for starters and would have been surprised the pillar was unfinished. He would have found the bar billiard sized tables upstairs much smaller than those to which he was accustomed. Its a big space and light with big windows looking out onto Old Church Street on one side and the King's road in front. The restaurant area is at the back and although its a 'gastro pub' its really, like the Harwood Arms, more restaurant than pub. There is no ordering at the bar and paying before the meal here.

We order one course: twice cooked Gloucester Old Spot pork belly, wilted spring greens, Calvados sauce, celeriac remoulade £16.50 and Hare stew, prune dumpling £15.50. The pork belly is marvellous: the pork is crispy and contrasts well with the crunchy texture of the celeriac. The apple in the sauce and the fresh greens make the whole a perfect combination. I try the rich hare stew which is thick gooey and full of flavour, the dumpling again an excellent texture contrast with real taste. We have a glass of Malbec and Shiraz each which go well with this quite heavy meaty meal for all its delicate flavours.

This pub is operated by ETM group which was founded by the Martin Brothers in 2000 and now has 8 pubs in and around London. This is impressive stuff for a group. Let's hope the standard doesn't fall off if they continue to expand!

My only criticism is for lunch the main courses offered, apart from a blue Wensleydale and pear salad, are all quite heavyweight. Maybe that's why it really wasn't as full on a Friday lunchtime as the very high standard might suggest it should be. A few more lighter choices for those who don't want to retire to the well upholstered sofa with a cigar for the rest of the afternoon would be welcome!

Byron

2010-03-11T13:30:00.000-08:00

222 Kensington High Street
London
W8 7RG

020 7361 1717

A previous visit to Byron had been a bit of a disaster: wrong wine, long wait because no gas to cook, no side orders. To the restaurant's great credit though, in a model of good customer relations, they didn't charge me anything when I said that though I acknowledged there were circumstances beyond their control, I wasn't altogether happy. When I wrote the blog post (late on a Saturday evening) they went one further. The MD of the group took the trouble to send me an email first thing Sunday morning explaining all the problems they had had and offering a further gratis meal to L.O. and I whenever we wanted to go back. Well what blogger could resist such exemplary new media relationship handling so L.O. and I, whirring having just taken off the 3D specs post Alice in Wonderland over the road at Odeon High Street Kensington, returned.

Well I said before that I thought the quality of the meat was very good and so it was again. This time, since the Byron sauce wasn't to my taste, I had the classic £6.25: just lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle: much better and you could really taste the beef. Ok this is very picky (and again personal, but hey its an upmarket burger place)... I like English mustard and I like real mustard! There is just no comparison with the preserved stuff in a jar. This and some real whole grain mustard would make a difference to me!

To try (and it really was far too much and we knew it would be!) we had sides of french fries, £2.75, home made skin-on chips £3.00, onion rings £2.75, and courgette fries £3.00. One of these to share would be quite enough! Of these the courgette fries were the best; very crispy but you could still taste the real vegetable underneath. The onion rings similarly crispy. The fries and skins I found the most disappointing: a bit soft, flabby. Maybe we were just a bit unlucky with this particular batch. We followed this with a huge, so just as well we shared, caramel and honeycomb sundae (with vanilla ice cream and crunchie bits) £4.50. It was very sweet, not sophisticated, but I'm sure would be a winner with kids.

Last time there was a procession of tupperware, bin liners etc between the centre stage kitchen and the back. This wasn't the case tonight which was a big improvement. I find the place a bit starkly overlit but families with kids might well like that. Maybe the lighting, though, could be lowered a bit later in the evening? But am getting too prescriptive here. Really the burgers are very good and that's the main point. Its really inappropriate to comment on the service this time since we were on a set up freebie but for the record it was exemplary.

Gaucho

2010-03-07T10:20:00.000-08:00

89 Sloane Avenue
London SW3 3DX

020 7584 9901

A girl passed our table and a large pendant earring fell to the ground, the gravitational pull too much for it. She apologised to us as she bent down to pick it up. I'm not quite sure why. There is a mixed crowd at Gaucho's in Sloane Avenue on a Saturday night. Its more footballers' wives manque than neighbourhood Chelsea, with a large crowd building up round the bar no doubt waiting for tables. Its dark, very dark (see photos, I don't like to use flash!). A good place for first dates because so bustly, dark and you can see some of these in progress. Choice of table is important though. We are placed, L.O. and I, on a table for four close to the open kitchen. We are enjoying seeing what's going on but had we been on a first date would probably have asked for a table close to the window. They make it uglier by the kitchen than it need be. There are tupperware boxes with ingredients in full view. The key attraction, the grill hotplate where the steaks are being seared, occasionally leaps into flame but its at the back and you can't see it all that clearly. They are busy but don't seem an altogether happy crew in the kitchen but they are under pressure; occasional smiles break out a bit later as the order flow wanes a bit.

Gaucho is now a chain of 12 London branches with two outside London: one in Manchester and the latest in Leeds. The trademark is cowhide seats, low lighting, Argentine steaks and an impressive Argentine wine list: all very macho. Our waitress we discover later is Slovakian and has been in the job two weeks. She shows us a board with all the different raw cuts of steak on it: rump, sirloin, fillet and rib-eye, or, in Argentine Gaucho speak, cuadril, chorizo, lomo and ancho. She then asks us if we would like to try some wine. I didn't have any of this when I came before. Maybe L.O and I just look the types to be up for it. We try the wine, an Argentine Malbec. Its outstanding. Its El Porvenir de Los Andes 'Laborum' 2005 from 1750 metres up in the Salta region. There is no mention of price. I ask how much it is. It is £65.75. Well ok but even if I was a footballer on a first date I wouldn't really want this heavy pressure when the new girlfriend has said "its lovely" to buy (the public embarrassment factor). I know L.O. well enough to feel no embarrassment in turning it down but the hard sell works and we have it. I think this is something that needs to be handled very carefully though and I'm not sure I like it in a restaurant. At the end of the meal we get something of the same thing when the cheeseboard is brought undemanded to our table to show us (strangely its a group of not very exceptional looking English cheeses and we turn it down).

We start by sharing a ceviche of Argentine baby squid, shallots, jalapeno, ginger, mint and guacamole £9.50. The squid is extremely tender but somehow despite all the flavours it manages to be strangely tasteless. They bring it, since we are sharing, with two small plates but oddly for a cold dish they are hot. We put them to one side and eat off the original plate.

We then of course go for steak. Its what you do here. I have been before and had a rare fillet. I remember it being fantastic: thick, seared on the outside and juicy red inside. The meat was beautifully tender as you would expect with fillet but there was something about the industrial restaurant grill that seemed to have been able to char the outside in a way you could never achieve at home. This time we opt for sirloin (L.O.) and rib-eye. Our waitress, because of the marbleised fat in these cuts, said to us that in order for the fat to melt it is optimum to have them medium rare rather than rare. We take her advice. I'm rather disappointed in my rib-eye relative to what I had before. The trade off with steak should be that if you have a 'lesser' and less expensive cut than fillet it is a bit tougher but has more taste, flavour. I didn't enjoy my rib-eye nearly as much as the memory of the fillet. I have a 300g one but it is cut thinner than a piece of fillet. I would have thought it very good in a pub but this is a high end place and I expected more. It was seared on the outside but a bit tougher, less juicy, somehow nothing out of the ordinary and I like my steaks blood red whatever the impact on the melting fat. We had humitas with it. These are mashed up corn in the corn husk (see photo). They with the wine were the most distinctive and interesting thing about the meal but difficult to get out of the husk without a spoon. We asked for one.

Our wine was brought by a sommelier from Gaucho who was training the staff, visiting this branch for 3 months. He told us current theory on the impact of altitude on Argentine Malbecs (they tell you on the wine list how many metres high the particular vineyard is at Gaucho). I discussed with him the issue of wine sampling in a restaurant and say how easily I feel this could misfire.

I love the combination of Argentine Malbec and blood red steak seared on the outside. If I go back I'll skip the ceviche and go for the rare fillet again. The wines are marked up very heavily here. I find the 'Laborum' for £21.96 here and for £28.75 in Gaucho's own retail Cavas de Gaucho. The steaks at 300g range from £16.25 for the cheapest cut to £28.50 for the fillet. Commendably for an upmarket restaurant there is no mandatory service charge. Our bill comes to £125. We leave a £15 tip. Its not surpising our waitress was keen to sell the wine. Even without it though the meal would have been close to £100.

Enterprise

2010-03-06T02:30:00.000-08:00

35 Walton Street
London SW3 2HU

020 7584 3148

In the no man's land where Knightsbridge, Chelsea and South Ken intersect, close to the great battleship landmark of Harrods sits The Enterprise. "It's informality is its drawing power and it attracts a very fashionable and up-scale client base, described as 'the only pub in town for ladies who lunch.' ", proclaims the website. Lucky ladies. This really isn't quite a gastro pub though. There is no booking except at lunchtimes in the week, but you don't order at the bar pay and sit down. Its very much restaurant style, pay at the end of the meal, table service. It does however have the informal style of a pub. We are there early, you have to be to secure a table towards the end of the week in the evening. Its sevenish pm. There is a throng of people at the bar and more than half the tables are occupied. Most of the tables are arrayed along a banquette. We sit at one of these. I am looking at etched pub glass in the windows. There are books in the window embrasures. They obscure some of the lettering which says SPIRITS on the right and for a moment because half of one letter is obscured on the left I read FINE BUMS. Its actually FINE RUMS. At the back is a tiny kitchen, open plan, where three chefs are already working furiously. Above them is a small rectangular blackboard with the specials. The clientele are not the young City types with families, public school voices and labradors that you get in Fulham and even Brook Green (see Havelock Arms ). Here they are more metro, older and international as the proximity to Harrods and Knightsbridge might proclaim. The atmosphere at the same time manages to feel residential, neighbourly. You can tell I feel uncomfortably comfortable here.

I'm shocked when writing this and looking at the website to discover that The Enterprise is under the same ownership as Christopher's in Covent Garden a place which I think, apart from the bar, has completely lost the plot (see linked review). We share tempura of calamari and courgette with a soy ginger and honey dip as a starter, £8. The batter is light, crispy, the courgette still firm, not overcooked, the calamari firm too but not rubbery. Delicious and easy to share too. A perfect not too enormous starter. I then have fettucine, wild mushroom and thyme ragout, parmesan and truffle oil, £14. It is excellent. The mushrooms have real taste, the fettucine is fresh and soft, the truffle oil flavour is not drowned out by the other tastes and it is not too creamy buttery either. I try my guest's whole roast sea bass, parmesan roasted fennel, herb butter £16.75 which has been ordered with some spinach. The sea bass is beautifully cooked: crispy on the outside flaky moist fish which falls off the bone just as it should do. We drink a bottle of Wolf Riesling, Dr. Loosen, Pfalz, Germany 2008, £25. It manages to be the perfect accompaniment to both dishes: aromatic, slightly sweet but with a dry finish. Since we arrived early we have already had two complimentary glasses of merlot. The riesling though was in a different class and a bargain at the price. Pretty perfect meal. Not cheap pub prices though at £75 all in. A central London restaurant bill. As I said earlier, lucky ladies and management, I know its trying to do something different, but please send the people at Christopher's down here to see what can be achieved!

Chisou

2010-03-05T05:27:00.000-08:00

4 Princes Street

London W1B 2LE

020 7629 3931

There is a lot of choice for japanese food around Mayfair. At Chisou just south of Oxford Circus there is a restaurant and separately next door a sushi bar and take away area. Lunch at the sushi bar. I had the five different sashimi selection on the menu, £14.50. You get three bits of each. They were very fresh and good, but small. See the three small triangles of tuna in the photo. Definitely more for less and just as good quality at Atari-Ya just north of Oxford Street. Nevertheless the presentation is more stylish here, you eat off attractive plates and you can order from your seat at the bar. For that and Mayfair you are paying. The Ikura (salmon roe) sushi was particularly glisteningly fresh but £5.40 for two pieces!

No.10

2010-03-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

10 Hogarth Place
London Sw5 0QT

020 7373 7000

I went here entirely because I had read a very flattering review by London Eater and happened to be fairly close. It was truly memorably fantastic. A destination place! There is something very heart warming when you go somewhere, meet someone whatever which has had a good advanced press and not only does it not disappoint it exceeds all expectations. They do other things here but their specialty is Szechuan food, or Sichuan (see linked article) much of which is hot, chilli spicy.

We asked our waitress what she would recommend from the Szechuan signature dishes on the menu. She suggested the boiled beef (boiled beef in extremely spicy soup lavishly topped with chilli and Sichuan pepper) £8.50. It was enormous (really I'm not kidding enough for lunch for four with some rice on its own). It came with a kind of sieve to go fishing with. You can see it in the photo. The Sichuan pepper has an interesting aromatic lemony flavour. The beef was in a rich heavy stock. It was amazing. Quite oily like much Szechuan food I have been exposed to but spicy fragrant hot, extraordinary. We also had dry fried pieces of duck with chilli and Sichuan pepper (and also a lot of sesame seeds). This was beautifully crispy and a nice contrast to the soupy beef. We had a vegetable dish: aubergine and green and red peppers, £6.50. It was a little salty for my taste. This was no doubt party because of the soy sauce involved but subsequent discussion with our waitress suggested that it was worth asking for less salt if that is what you like. The aubergine were in skinned soft strips floating in a spicy mixture of peppers. It was an excellent accompaniment to both the beef and the duck.

This amazing meal, more than enough for a hungry four, cost £32 for two of us with Jasmine tea. The restaurant is simple with little square stools with no backs, black tables, wooden floor. There is much else to try on the menu and I will return.

Browns

2010-03-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

82-84 St Martins Lane
London WC2N 4AG

020 7497 5050

Eight of us went to the theatre and had a meal here beforehand. Its was very conveniently located. Enron the play is on next door. Browns has been going since 1973 and has restaurants in 8 cities in the UK with a further 6 outlets in London. The one we were at is a big bustly stage set. Just the thing for pre theatre.

I can't fault the service. They are clearly well practised in St Martins Lane at feeding people with a deadline to meet. It was 6 30pm and the restaurant was full. Some of our party were a bit late but they brought their orders very fast and they were soon catching up with those of us who had arrived first. There was also no long wait for the bill; not that I was paying. We were being taken.

The problem is the food doesn't match the stage set or the service. I had Steak Frites (60z prime sirloin served with a lemon parsley and peppercorn butter watercress and chips) £12.95. I ordered it rare. Can't go far wrong with that I thought. The steak was seared brown on the outside but raw not rare inside, too thin and chewy sinewy tough. The chips were ok but dumped rather inelegantly across the plate (see photo which is as t came). I tried some smoked fishcakes. To me they tasted dry and of potato and sawdust, nothing fishy about them. The burger to my right, which I didn't taste, strangely had three buns (a mistake?); burger on one, salad and bits sitting on the other and one white, lonely on its own.

Cha Cha Moon

2010-03-01T07:50:00.000-08:00

15-21 Ganton Street
London W1F 9BN

020 7297 9800

I'm a fan of Alan Yau's ventures so dropped in for the second time to Cha Cha Moon his fast food restaurant in Ganton Street off Carnaby street. When it first opened everything was priced at £3.50 a promotional wheeze which didn't last. The website tells us that it is a Chinese noodle bar which goes "beyond noodle pop culture and into the soul of regional Chinese cooking". Not for me it doesn't.

I had Fujian style udon which is prawn, squid, fishcake, belly pork, choi sum and udon noodles, £6.90. The sliced fishcake resembled cheap tofu, the squid was rubbery, the choi sum not quite cooked and the pork in little tiny bits in a glutinous chili hot but otherwise flavourless sauce. The whole was dominated by tasteless noodles with a springy texture. I had a Holy Vaasna, an Apple, Carrot and Orange juice which somehow managed to be watery and much less tasty than the ones at Pho.

At £3.50 everything was at least very cheap. The wok noodles now range from £5.10 to £7.50 and the soup noodles from £6.00 to £7.00. It is neither cheap nor good. It does have something of Alan Yau's legendary style all the same: elegant huge wooden tables, low lighting, open kitchen (see photo). It wasn't full on Monday at 1pm and the Whiteley's branch has closed. Things need to change for this to roll out like Wagamama!

Tuktuk

2010-02-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

56 Old Compton Street
London W1D 4UE

020 7734 5951

Tuktuk describes itself as a Thai/Oriental noodle bar on the menu. There is certainly another one in Queensway but I don't know whether there are others. There is no website I can find. These places are fantastic value/quality. The one I know and went to today after a meeting in Soho for a quick early lunch, is in Old Compton Street. It is very simple inside: brightly lit with a thin banquette along the walls, chrome chairs and table supports. Not a place for romantic dinners. It is straight opposite 'Trashy Lingerie' as you can see in the photo.

The menu serves great and enormous noodle soups at budget prices: Tom Yam Gai £3.90 and Laksa with its distinctive coconut milk stock for £4.90. Today I had crispy aromatic duck for £5.80. As in much smarter places they come and shred a duck quarter (leg and thigh) at your table; it comes with pancakes in a metal container, spring onion, cucumber and plum sauce. It is described as a 'side' but is quite big enough for lunch. At £5.80 (along with other £5.80 dishes including King Prawn Red Curry) it is the the highest price on the menu. I also had green tea. This is not a tea bag in the bottom of a mug, but a whole teapot of tea made with real tea leaves for £1. This sophisticated lunch cost me £6.80 with tip optional. The duck was crispy, the pancakes as good as anywhere, the spring onions and cucumber fresh.

Atari-Ya

2010-02-22T06:59:00.000-08:00

20 James St
London W1U 1EH

020 7491 1178

I wanted to go here because last week I had been to their shop in West Acton. Atari-Ya is a chain of four shops, the sushi take away, and another sushi bar in Hendon. Its one of the few places where you can buy black cod (I believe you can get it in Selfridges sometimes but if anyone knows where else you can get it please leave a comment!). The shop is near a Japanese school, has a ready supply of customers, Japanese staff who really know what they are talking about and very fresh fish. With supply lines like this I thought that their little central London take-away place (it has a few seats but this is principally what it is) would be bound to be good. The black cod was excellent. Its not that difficult to make a marinade with Mirin (rice wine), Sake, sugar and white miso paste to ape the recipe available at Nobu and for that matter Hakkasan where they serve Silver Cod with a different recipe (its the same thing. The Japanese call it Gindara which means silver cod. In fact it is not cod at all but what they call sablefish in the US).

Atari-Ya in James Street proved to be just as good as the freshness of what was available in the West Acton shop heralded. I had fresh salmon roe, and sashimi. You get three slices and it is good value: Tuna £2.00, Sea Bass £2.60, Salmon £1.70 and the highest grade Fatty Tuna £3.90. Everything with a green tea was under £15.

Its a very basic place and crowded at lunch time. You queue, place your order, pay, get given a number which they call out, probably share a small table. They serve it there just as for take away (see photos). Highly recommended though.

Byron

2010-02-20T14:38:00.000-08:00

222 Kensington High Street
London
W8 7RG

020 7361 1717

[See here for return visit to Byron when the gas was working!]

Four of us went to the Kensington branch of this chain of seven upmarket burger joints in Kensington high street after going to the cinema. We order. I go for the "Byron", rare. The Byron is a burger with"dry cure bacon, mature Cheddar, Byron sauce". They come "in a soft, plain bun with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle and mayo". There are four categories of red wine: GOOD, BETTER, GREAT, BEST. That's simple then. We ask for GREAT.

Its quite a noisy place. Its around 8pm and there are a lot of kids. Its brightly lit. An attempt at romance is a candle night light in a glass dish. Not a place for a first date though. Fine, its a hamburger place. Its busy. The cooking area is open plan in the middle of the restaurant. The open plan kitchen though needs supplies from to the left of where we are sitting. I watch as large bags of chips are taken through, then a huge stack of tupperware boxes with brightly coloured ingredients, then more larger tupperware boxes, then rubbish from the kitchen going the other way in a black bin liner. If this is meant to be part of the action, bustle, it sure as hell isn't elegant. There are a few chips scattered on the floor by the table in font of me. The walls are a bit scuffed, the paintwork damaged.

After ten minutes or so we get our wine but its not the GREAT we ask for, an Italian merlot, its the BETTER, an Italian cabernet sauvignon £16.50. Ok but surely its not that hard to get this right when there are only four red wines on the list. After fourty five minutes more seriously still no food. Our waiter explains that there is a problem with the gas. What problem I ask? There is no gas ergo no cooking. Ah. We are brought a few rather soft tortilla chips, a bit of guacamole etc. I go to the kitchen area. A waiter is just loading up with some burgers on plates. How come you can serve these if there is no gas I ask? " There is still er some er heat from the grill..." he says.

Ten minutes later we are presented with our burgers but we are told there that the portion of fench fries and skin-on chips can not be cooked. I don't understand how the burgers can magically be cooked when the chips cannot but communication is not quite good enough to pursue this. Bynow we have almost finished our wine.

L.O. pronounces her burger overcooked when she ordered it rare. I must say mine is rare and the meat is really good quality; however the 'mayo' and Byron sauce (maybe its just the Byron sauce) is a pink marie rose colour and not to my taste. The molten cheddar is fine. The dry cure bacon is too limp, not cripsy at all which I prefer. The soft plain bun is, well ,a soft plain bun but hamburger buns have seldom done it for me. And of course its all spoilt a bit by the lack of chips. The burgers are served on a sheet of semi-transparent paper on the plate. I've no doubt this makes clearing for the dishwasher easier but personally I find it aesthetically unappealing.

All in all (despite for me the crucial beef filling being good) not an altogether successful experience! I complain. I say to our waiter we were brought the wrong wine. We waited for nearly an hour for our food. I acknowledge the gas situation may well have been outside their control but the fact is we had this long wait, and we didn't get all we had ordered. I said that although I understood he personally was not responsible for all the problems were we not entitled to some recompense? A future free meal ,whatever? He was about to put my credit card in the wireless machine. I had already received the bill. There was an immediate back down. He handed me back my card. We were given the meal (which came to around £45 for four) for free! well that was very handsome of them and made up for quite a bit of what had gone wrong. Neverlethess something made me a little uneasy. It was clear that management had sanctioned zero charges in the even of complaint. We had seen the manageress briefing the waiters earlier and when I had said to our waiter was he definitely authorised to make us this offer it was clear that he had been. What made me uneasy was I felt that it was only because we had complained that we had been offered our money back. It was gracious, but if the restaurant had made the offer even without us complaining it would have been more gracious. I suspected we were in a very small minority, and that most had paid up without complaint.

Our waiter said that the gas problem was not an isolated incident and had happened several times before. Thy even suspected sabotage and had put closed circuit TV cameras in place. Strange.

Trinity

2010-02-18T03:55:00.001-08:00

4 The Polygon
London SW4 0JG

020 7622 1199

We had something to discuss and Clapham happened to be equidistant so we met at Trinity for an early evening meal. They have a Prix Fixe menu. Pretty good value I thought at £20 for three courses. So it proved to be.

First there was a taramasalata amuse bouche. It was fishy fresh compared with the potted supermarket variety accompanied by lovely crisp bread. I then had tartare of mackerel, beetroot and horseradish with compressed cucumber. It was startlingly fresh, the mackerel enclosed in the crisp cucumber, the beetroot little firms discs on the plate. I can be quite resistant to this sort of picture on a plate Michelin style presentation but it did also look beautiful. Butternut squash soup with Parmesan, my co-diner's starter was pronounced not too creamy rich, just right. I had the sea bream second; it was crisp on the outside, the flesh flaky, perfectly cooked with a little stock and the orange flavoured endive worked well with it. I tried co-diner's slow cooked beef in Guinness. I was jealous. This was even better: soft and yummy with marvellous flavour.

The service throughout was consummately professional. Our waitress had been at the restaurant from the start and really did know about the food and wine. She couldn't have been more helpful without being in any way obtrusive. We left the wine choices to her (neither is on the online wine list). Since one was having fish and one a heavy meat course it was good to be able to order by the carafe and so we had one 500ml carafe each. I had Chateau Revelette, a Provencal wine: oaky, nutty excellent. I tried the red suggestion too: a minerally porty wine from Portugal: Crasto Douro. They were excellent choices.

Afterwards I was guided towards having rhubarb (not on the menu) it was firm, full of flavour in little log piles accompanied by meltingly soft biscuits and cream. Co-diner had the tarte fine, a little strip across the plate, with liquorice ice cream. Again I thought he made the slightly edgier choice. The liquorice ice cream (nothing like liquorice all sorts) was powerful, unusual.

The background is that Adam Brett started the successful Thyme in Clapham, took it across the river to Hospital in Covent Garden where it didn't succeed, retained an interest in Origin the replacement to Thyme at Hospital and came back to start Trinity in November 2006. My main reservation would be I found the atmosphere and decor a bit sterile: simple white table cloths, low lighting, largely youngish professional looking diners. I would definitely go back for the food though. The menu really was outstanding value, though its amazing how things can mount up; but then the two excellent carafes we had came to around £40.

Harwood Arms

2010-02-17T04:28:00.000-08:00

Walham Grove

London SW6 1QR

020 7386 1847

This gastro pub has quite a pedigree. Bett Graham chef of the Ledbury and Mike Robinson owner of the Pot Kiln in Berkshire along with the publican Edwin Vaux are behind a venture which opened in 2008 (see here); it has since become the only gastro pub in London to boast a Michelin star. Graham and Robinson don't actually cook at the Harwood Arms but ex Ledbury chef Stephen Williams does.

"You look so English" said the German TV producer to my lunch guest "With your newspaper...(he had a copy of the Daily Telegraph); Would you mind if we filmed you?". "As long as you don't interview me, that's fine" he said. Oh (still) the power of old meedja. He actually looked rather pleased. German television were filming at lunch time in the Harwood Arms. No doubt this is the impact of the recent Michelin star. Our waitress also acknowledged it has had a major impact on bookings. You can get a table for lunch but type in 8pm in the evening into toptable on the HA website and the next available slot is Sunday March 21st!

The Harwood Arms since its 2008 refurbishment has become a very upmarket gastro pub. It is really more of a restaurant. You don't order your food at the bar, pay and sit down. It is all brought to your table; and most choices (only one dish of the day is on a blackboard) are on the printed menu. There are simple pub tables and framed modern black and white 'sporting' photographs. There is though a dog in the pub. You wouldn't get that in a restaurant.

I have smoked ham hock and crispy pig's ear on toast with bread and butter pickles £6.50 to start. This comes on a slab of wood and is very difficult to eat without the accompanying green salad bits going onto the table. The bits of ham hock I find a bit stringy dry and eating them on toast with a knife and fork is a bit of a battle and I certainly wouldn't have been able to identify the crispy bits as 'pig's ears'. Englishman liked his winter root vegetables with grated duck egg. He had ordered an interesting bottle of redcurrant flavoured Spanish red wine, Celler Cal Pla, a Garnacha/Carinena blend which can be bought in the shops for about £11 and was priced at £27. I found my second course alogether much more successful. This was pheasant thigh stewed in red wine with smoked bacon and champ £15.75. It was flaky, moist, soft; not altogether easy to achieve with pheasant which dries out so easily. The accompanying red wine stock and vegetables were excellent. Impressively it also managed somehow to be delicate and not overwhelming as a lunch main course (see photo). The main courses came in strange bowls which reminded me of optrex eye baths only much bigger and not blue but white. Englishman had beef cheeks braised in ale with clotted cream and mashed potatoes, roast carrots and pickled walnuts £15.50. "Delicious", he said. German television were right. He is English and was not about to go all rhapsodic on me. By now we had had enough. We both had double espressos which were rather beautifully presented in little glasses. Altogether pretty good and once again demonstrated to me how great the difference in quality can be in London in what is available for £70-100 for two including a bottle of wine (which is hardly cheap by international standards); you can (as here) eat pretty well at this price level but very often you don't. I don't want to encourage anyone but in a way the differentiation between the very average and the very good is not fully reflected in what you end up paying.

Pho

2010-02-11T10:56:00.000-08:00

3 Great Titchfield Street
W1W 8AX

020 7436 0111

The Vietnamese food may be better on Kingsland Road but this sm all chain (Clerkenwell, this one close to Oxford Circus and the Westfield shopping centre) delivers good value and (for me) more convenient locations. For less than £15 per head you can have a filling meal. There is not too much choice here (often a good sign!) the focus of course being on the pho noodle soups. I had spicy prawn for £8.45, and a fresh carrot apple and ginger fruit juice for £2.95.

The pho soup with good flat rice noodles had a rather less flavour filled than I remember from previous visits, slightly watery, but chili hot stock. There was a generous number of prawns. On the side there are fresh beansprouts, coriander, red chili, mint and lime to add. Adding all the chili it really is quite spicy hot which I like. The fruit juices are zingy tasty fresh. The place was full upstairs by 1pm (there is a basement too) and is clearly doing well. There is quite loud piped music but this is no booking fast food. The service is casual, friendly but efficient.

Christopher's

2010-02-10T23:00:00.000-08:00

18 Wellington Street
London WC2E 7DD

020 7240 4222

I haven't been to the restaurant of Christopher's 'the American bar and grill' as it calls itself for a long time. It used to be rather fashionable though never a 'foodie' place. I like the bar. They make good martinis and its a place to meet in crowded Covent garden. It was freezing cold and we'd just been to a film and presentation at the LSE on the other side of the Aldwych. We decided to stop at Christopher's walking from the Aldwych down the Strand. Sad. Its completely lost the plot. Its a lovely building with great views down past the Lyceum theatre and across Waterloo bridge and beautiful staircase leading from the ground floor up to the restaurant. The menu offers lots of seafood, steak, lobster; its an American grill. We just had one course: breast of barberry duck, roast citrus fennel, black olive tapenade £16.75. L.O. quite liked it. I thought the duck sauce was too sweet, gelatinous with little pools of oil and small canned bits of grapefruit. The fennel was overcooked. It was also cold. But I'm not so charitable. To be fair the duck itself was tender and not overcooked. The problem was everything that went with it. We had a sharp not great bottle of Argentine Piropo Malbec for £19.75. The total bill including 'discretionary' service was £64.69. The restaurant was almost empty or at any rate less than a third full mid week in the evening. Two couples had been put next door to each other in a row of tables for two against the back wall presumably to create an impression of greater business than if they had been placed far apart. I won't go back; or only to the bar.

Havelock Tavern

2010-02-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

57 Masbro Road
London W14 0LS

020 7603 5374

Just west of the railway tracks that come into Kensington Olympia in rather undiscovered territory but quite close to the fashionable Brook Green is the Havelock Tavern. This in my view is one of the best 'restaurants' (its a gastro pub and you pay up front at the bar before you sit down) in nearly Kensington and much better than Cibo, Kitchen W8 and other restaurants I have reviewed on the other side of the tracks. In my Kensington league only Abingdon and L-Restaurant and Bar can compete on food of the restaurants I have reviewed so far. Both are more expensive and have a more formal restaurant style. Foodie bloggers (there are surprisingly to date no blog reviews on London Urban Spoon) you should check this place out!

I have braised octopus, chorizo, tomato & fennel stew with gremolada £14. It is herby ,spicy, garlicky, the octopus not chewy tough; lovely stock and strong flavours. There is the lemon zest of the gremolada and a strong fishy stock. It is not quite in the same class as the Brompton fish stew at Brompton Bar & Grill nor as copious; it is very different with one fish variety (the octopus). It is very good all the same. I try L.O.'s (this is what I plan to call my partner, see link to Loved One for explanation) slow roast belly of pork with bramley apple sauce, £15. She has already pronounced it succulent delicious, the crackling a shade flabby. I agree; it is excellent if not quite in the same league as that at Fino but we are making olympic comparisons here! You get very good thrown in bread and butter, and real pepper grinders without asking.

The Havelock at Sunday lunch is a very family affair. There are babies and labradors. It is a bit startlingly public school, white apartheid in the Fulham, Battersea mode (gastro pubs in these areas strictly for these immigrants however long they have been there), unlevened by the more cosmo and older mix of Notting Hill and even Kensington & Chelsea. We have a very good one course meal for two with a couple of pints of Cornish bitter (Doom Bar) for £36. A fault is the overhead blower heaters particularly close to the door. The seats nearby are empty when we arrive no doubt for this reason but the whole place is full by the time we leave. No booking so if you do go for Sunday lunch turn up before 1pm to get a choice of tables.

Hix

2010-02-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

66-70 Brewer Street
London W1F 9TR

020 7292 3518

"Nice of them to provide a cloth to dry the dishes when we can't pay the bill" said my Scottish friend seeing the HIX napkin neatly folded on our place setting (see photo). This restaurant is all very in your face, happening , of the moment. We are sitting "at the bar" on comfortable stools with backs early on Thursday evening. The place is already jumping, more than three quarters full, and it is only 7pm. We are sitting just under a Damien Hirst mobile of mini fish in formaldehyde. Its impossible not to feel very me too in this uber cool environment. You really haven't discovered anything. It is also impossible not to feel shades of deja vue because this place has lots of form. The design team did The Wolseley, the Ivy (the facade has similar leaded windows) etc. Mark Hix of Hix's Oyster and Chop House is ex Le Caprice and Ivy. Kevin Gratton the head chef is ex Le Caprice and Scotts. I find myself wondering who all these people are, the punters in the restaurant, who are organised enough to book this particular slice of chic London. If you go to the website and try to secure a booking you are offered times like 5.30pm or 10.30pm ten days out, all more convenient times scored through in light gray.

Lets start at the beginning. We meet first in Mark's bar in the basement. It too has a long deep zinc bar with rolled edge. There are sofas and rugs and low lighting in hip modern style. There are just two empty places to sit left at the bar and it is only 6pm. The barman is mixing cocktails with showtime panache. The hugely long drinks list offers Mark's Libations using fresh british ingredients. I feel I better have one of these and order a 'Spitfires over Kent'. It is composed of homemade Beefeater sloe gin and fresh lemon juice and maraschino liqueur and creme de violette. It comes in a small glass and looks like the left over dregs of over stewed tea or as my Scottish friend puts it "what's left in the bottle of sherry your grandmother offers you". It actually tastes slightly bitter, strange and delicious.

Mark Hix is renowned for British food, fresh local ingredients, seasonal. The main courses are heavy with hunks of fish and meat: john dory, pollock, deer pie, woodcock, partridge, steak. Potted shrimps, prawn cocktail and smoked salmon feature amongst the starters. Nothing textbook Michelin about this. Solid simple school of Caprice, Ivy etc. but there are stranger combinations. I have wild rabbit offal with jerusalem artichokes and rosemary £7.00 as a starter. The jerusalem artichokes are pureed , the offal sitting above in a thick gravy. It is rich gamey delicious. After I have roast woodcock and celeriac mash with a side order of steamed spinach. It is simple but excellent, the meat juicy tender which is difficult to achieve in a restaurant. It is however not cheap at £24.00; most of the mains are £18 and up. Well you are paying for all this uber chic. Rather inappropriately for such a gamey, fishy place my Scottish friend is vegetarian but impressively Hix provides a separate vegetarian menu. She pronounces her main course dominated by a "buttery lump of potato", but her mixed beet salad has beautifully fresh ingredients. Not the most imaginative vegetarian cooking she thinks, but its really not what you go to Hix for. We have a half litre of Argentine Pulenta Estate Malbec which compliments my gamey meal perfectly. The service has been immaculately friendly and professional throughout or as my Scottish friend put it "amazingly not up your own arse for an expensive place".

You are paying quite a bit here for the theatre and stage set. The dining room has the high ceilings of a traditional Paris brasserie. The artworks by Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas etc lend it modern London edge. The sound pings around a bit but it buzzes with drama, energy. The food is very good in that hearty good fare not too mucked about Caprice, Ivy, Wolseley way. The ingredients are very fresh and good. I don't however think that Hix is so far from his origins in the aforementioned camp to be doing anything radically different, but everything I had is as good and the rabbit offal rather better than anything I've had in those establishments. If you want to take visitors to London somewhere to show off both hip London and that 'British food' really can be quite good you can't do much better than here.

The Only Running Footman

2010-02-04T03:44:00.000-08:00

5 Charles St
W1J 5DE

020 7499 2988

I really like this place, and not just for its funny name. I like it but more for breakfast downstairs in the pub than the 'fine dining ' upstairs in a separate dining room which I didn't find exceptional. Its a pub which is open all day. In my experience you can always get in for breakfast without booking. Its a great place for meetings. Today only one other table was occupied when we arrived at 8.30am. By the time we left at 10.30am we were the only people there. The service is friendly and you can talk undisturbed. Although there is a formal menu (see below) you can ask for exactly what you want. I had a poached egg on brown toast with bacon. Nothing incredible but the poached egg runny, the bacon good quality and crispy and not fatty, flabby. Its mainly just that it works well to have a breakfast meeting in an uncrowded pub rather than in a too noisy pret a manger or a more formal environment; and in Mayfair there are'nt too many alternatives between pret and the very formal and expensive.

Breakfast
Monday to Friday 7.30am-10.30am
Weekends from 9.30am-12noon
Eggs Benedict £7.50
Full Farmhouse Breakfast £8.50
Loch Fyne smoked Salmon & scrambled egg £10.50
Bacon butty or Sausage sarnie with brown sauce £3.45
Croissant & Pain au Chocolat £2.95

Muckrakers and Foodrakers

2010-02-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

Somebody asked me why I called this blog Foodraker so I said I would explain here in a blog post! Muckrakers were progressive US journalists of the early twentieth century noted for exposing corruption in business and politics. Hence Foodraker is dedicated among other things to exposing pretentious overpriced restaurants! Theodore Roosevelt used the term first in a speech in 1906. He referred to the use of the term in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and was believed to have been alluding to the titles of William Randolph Hearst's publishing empire (see Wikipedia entry here).

Sakura

2010-02-01T06:45:00.000-08:00

9 Hanover Street,
London W1S 1YF

020 7629 2961

Return visit to Sakura. Miso udon soup with vegetables and chicken for two. £6.50 each. It was enormous with lots of spring onions, vegetables, chicken in delcious stock. Lunch for two with green tea for £13.00. No automatic 'discretionary' tip. Excellent and unbeatable value. See here for full review of Sakura.

Ladbroke Arms

2010-01-30T06:52:00.000-08:00

54 Ladbroke Road,
London W11 3NW

020 7727 6648

We walked across Holland Park in bright sunshine, the ground was sprinkled with patches of icing sugar snow. It was 2 degrees centigrade. The Ladbroke Arms is at the park end of Ladbroke Grove near the police station. Despite the cold there were people eating outside in the sunshine on the terrace outside. There were quite a few drinkers at the bar. Inside in the small restaurant at the back things were less busy. We were put next door to a pram and a cigarette machine in a little alcove on the only table for two. From the alcove seat the view was straight down the corridor towards the kitchen and at the end the kitchen dustbins. We had booked but if you come early enough it is better to sit at the front at the tables in the pub. The best table in the restaurant is a round one for four.

I had provencal fish stew £14. She had two starters: feta cheese , pomegranate, cucumber, orange, red onion, rocket and mint £6.75 and pork and chicken liver terrine with fig and prune compote. The fish stew was dominated by red mullet, mussels and potatoes. The soup was hardly deep enough to soak the small piece of toast covered with a thin coating of rouille. It was a thick buttery soup. To me this was nowhere near as good as the one at the Brompton Bar and Grill which had much more variety and was so big you could almost drown in it. It was also the same price and eaten in much more comfortable surroundings. The terrine was pronounced "no better than what is available at Waitrose" though the compote was fresh and full of flavour. The salad had too much raw onion. We had two glasses of perfectly adequate Picpoul, reasonably priced at £3.45 for 125ml .

The service was friendly but amateur; as it turned out the tables were not all booked as the restaurant filled and we could easily have had more space. We went a couple of years ago and remembered it being much better. They've poshed up the restaurant area and crammed more tables in (too many) but the food standards appear to have declined.

Fino

2010-01-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

33 Charlotte Street
London W1T 1RR

0207 813 8010

The food was outstandingly good. Fresh, beautifully cooked, and (it often isn't) the hot food was hot. We just ate tapas. The chorizo was fresh, succulent not dry. The razor clams cooked in garlic and butter were just right and looked beautiful too. The octopus was tender. The Jerusalem artichokes were perfect, firm, not overcooked, roast in the oven. The olive oil mash was creamy ( cream and olive oil? but it was wonderful). The crisp pork belly was crisp on the outside, the meat soft and in beautiful gravy. The bread was crunchy, hot, lovely and with really good quality olive oil. Wow!

Was anything wrong with this experience? The wine was only offered in 125ml glasses; no carafes, no half bottles. I think this is a mistake in what is primarily a tapas place. The restaurant is in a basement. Its modern, smart but a bit antiseptic with quite harsh acoustics. Its expensive. The cold meats come in 100gm sizes. The chorizo iberico is £8.20. That's a lot for such a small portion! The cooking is so good it makes more sense to have those things which really demonstrate the culinary prowess of the place: the razor clams, the artichokes, the pork belly and mash.

Fino is part of the same group as the (also excellent) Barrafina, Quo Vadis etc. Unlike Barrafina which is very difficult to get into unless you are there at opening time, here you can book.

We were having lunch on the FTs lunch for £5. This halves the food bill for one. The bill was still £41.23 for two with just two 125ml glasses of white wine. In London for this quality that's a bargain but the full price of £63.40 is not cheap.

Ask

2010-01-27T11:35:00.000-08:00

Whiteleys Shopping Centre

151 Queensway

London W2 4SB

0207 792 1977

Well I didn't intend to review nationwide chains but after the recent experience of eating in Postino and Cibo it seems fair to make the comparison. Ask may not be sophisticated eating but it was both better than either of these establishments and less expensive; in the case of Cibo much less expensive. Of course this is an 'unfair' comparison in that Cibo offers a level of decor and Postino its own one off family run theatre that a major chain can't, doesn't. But on straight food grounds I have to say I preferred it.

We had Spaghetti alla Bolognese, £7.95 and Fusilli alla Cacciattora, £8.75. The Bolognese was hot, very simple mince and tomato. Nothing special but perfectly edible. Lots of real black pepper and cheese. Not real Parmesan or Pecarino, I'm not sure what it was. The Fusilli was piquant (real chillies and fresh thyme) with real flavour. There aren't many places where you can get a Chianti flask and for 70s nostalgia we couldn't resist it: really not bad with distinctive sangiovese cherry flavours and reasonable value at £16.95.

The service couldn't have been better. We were taking somebody of a certain age and a bit lame out to dinner post the odeon cinema at Whiteleys. She needed help to get down to the ground floor and our waitress sorted asking Whiteleys security to get a wheelchair to help her to the lift and down. No fuss, just really helpful.

Cibo

2010-01-26T03:55:00.000-08:00

3 Russell Gardens

London W14 8EZ

020 7371 2085

Monday evening at Cibo, a cold January evening, not a mouse stirring; it was like someone had died. A handful of diners, about 8.15pm. It filled up a bit later to about a third full. I'm trying to cover all the restaurants of Kensington and to be honest I wasn't looking forward to this. I'd been before. The place itself is jollier than the dramatis personae. Big chunky maiolica pots, wacky modern art and statues, though a strange and rather redundant empty bar which divides up the space.

The website says: "With seafood as its main appeal this is undoubtedly one of the finest a la carte Italian Restaurants for eating out in West London. Due to its location near trendy Notting Hill & Holland Park its also renown [sic] for the celebrity clientele it repeatedly attracts." It wasn't (one of the finest...) and they weren't there is all I can say.

We had spaghetti all'aragosta in salsa (spaghetti with lobster in its own sauce) £18.50 and sautee ai frutti di mare (assorted seafood and shellfish cooked in wine, tomatoes and herbs) £18.50. During our meal there was a loud throbbing. Is it the heat I thought, or the engine of a Porsche outside. We worked out that it was a tumble drier spinning above. The lobster I think had died some time ago and been laid to rest in a deep freeze. The flesh was flaky, overcooked, the body sticking to the inside of the shell. It tasted as though it had been frozen, de-frozen, over cooked and re-heated in a microwave. I can't be certain this was the progression but its what it tasted like. The sauce tasted like fresh tomatoes with sea water. It was patchily hot on a cold plate. It was impressively horrible. I tasted one of the mussels in the frutti di mare which had a similarly unfresh tasteless quality to it and was cold. I remember going to Cibo a long time ago and thinking it good. Things change. Never again.

Postino

2010-01-25T08:20:00.000-08:00

267 Kensington High Street
London W8 6NA

020 7602 6777

Last night came out of seeing Avatar at Odeon Kensington High Street (which whatever criticisms it might have had for the Hollywood schmultz storyline is visually awesome) in need of something simple. The closest place to the cinema occupying a great site for passing trade is Postino. Postino has replaced the old Scoffs Eating House which also served Italian food but bizarrely was done as a pastiche alpine chalet and was in severe need of an overhaul.

I don't know whether the current restaurant is under the same ownership but it has certainly had a decor make over. It is now simple pine tables, modern and bare with spot lighting (rather well done and affords some intimacy despite quite a crowded space).

The welcome is almost overwhelming and multilingual. Lots of buona seras followed by good evening and mille grazies etc Nice, friendly but I felt taking the family Italian restaurant comic opera almost too far, too in your face; but if you like that sort of thing the service really was good. It just wasn't subtly unnoticeably good; but the staff and chefs in the open kitchen appeared genuinely happy with what they were doing (very often not the case!).

The menu is very long (a bad sign); eighteen different types of pasta twenty different pizzas (mostly around £7), antipasti, carne, rissoto, etc. I have a capricciosa pizza: the pizza dough is flabby, the cheese filling gooey and there are rather nasty looking little squares of ham. My fellow diner has the linguini ai frutti di mare the most expensive pasta at £10.95: rubbery seafood in canned tomato sauce, no taste of fish stock or fresh fish. We have a passable bottle of Sardinian red wine (not cheap at £24). The total bill,including 10% service which they add, comes to £46.65. For all the family theatre I'd rather go to Ask or Pizza Express.

The Square

2010-01-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

6-10 Bruton Street

London W1J 6PU

020 7495 7100

The Sq uare is a much heralded restaurant. It is one of eight London restaurants to hold two Michelin stars and chef Philip Howard's background is Roux Restaurants, Harvey's (Marco Pierre White) and Bibendum. I'm having lunch with my friend Malcolm G luck the wine critic who has recently brought out a splendidly outspoken all guns blazing attack on the crooks and cheats of the wine world: The Great Wine Swindle. He has recommended the £30 lunch menu as 'outstanding value'.

I leave it to Malcolm to order the wine and am not disappointed. He orders Altesse, Roussette de Savoie Gilles Berlioz 2002. It is one of the cheapest wines on the very long wine list at £25. Made from the Altesse or Roussette grape (exclusively when labelled Altesse) these Roussette de Savoie wine are supposed to taste of violet, herbs, honey and hazelnut. This one really does: fragrant, delicious, a bargain. High acidity means these wines can take a bit of age: this one is starting to go brown, you can taste the age, but still wonderful. The wine waiter tells us it is the last bottle in the restaurant. It is a privilege to drink it. Things have got off to a good start.

The £30 for two courses menu offers one meat and one fish starter, one meat and one fish main course. I go for the meat. Terrine followed by Venison. Before we start, though, there is a little amuse bouche in a glass. It is a chervil root veloute, with chicken gelee and bacon foam. It is a perfect little concoction of contrasting flavours and textures like a little layered roman road. The squishy gelee sits in the middle, you can see it through the glass, the foam above. The first course is a perfect little picture (above top); it is actually terrine on the left, a bit of pork rillette, some spring onions and gooey fruity chutney. Its of a very high standard but not for me as sensational as the little amuse bouche. The main course I find the least satisfying. The plate is cold and the food is the wrong side of warm; the little bits of venison are beautifully rare but not as succulent and juicy with crisp outside as what I tried not long ago at The Abingdon. The three different and cold sauces (gravy, creamy, fruity) and little muddle of vegetables I don't find what Michel Roux junior would call a 'perfect flavour combination'. Its just all trying a bit too hard and just misses it for me. We have a couple of glasses of Gevrey Chambertin 2005 which at £16 a glass isn't the bargain the Altesse was but compliments my Venison. We have the cheese for an additional £5 each. This really is a bargain: enormous variety and quality and you seem to be able to just keep going until you call a halt. After I have an espresso and again the freebie is one of the best things: little tiny slices of the most delicious nougat.

Its a personal thing but I can't give this restaurant a lot of points for atmosphere. I say to Malcolm I feel its like eating in a bank. The room is tall and rectangular, the lighting is bright. There are white table cloths with a rather strange grey under cloth overhanging the tables. Unsurprisingly at this price level it is full of suited men. There are two exceptions which stand out. Two men in tea shirts, one with cap on (chefs, says Malcolm), and a solitary female diner (from a Eurpoean guide we discover, eating in solitary splendour). They provide some visual light relief. Bits of the eating experience were unquestionably very very good but overall the cathedral to food in a bank atrium atmosphere, and some aspects of the Michelin performance picture on a plate trying too hard for arresting flavour combinations doesn't totally do it for me; but of course with high reputation comes high expectation which can be difficult to satisfy.

Canteen

2010-01-21T04:12:00.000-08:00

Royal Festival Hall

Belvedere Road

London SE1 8XX

0845 686 1122

Canteen is a small chain with branches in Spitalfields, Baker Street, Canary Wharf and the one we went to last night at the back of the Royal Festival Hall. It was 9pm and we had just been to an exhibition at the National Theatre and we wanted something quick, simple. Canteen sets out to do 'Great British Food': good value good food in a simple canteen environment. There is a Wagamama like feel to the place. Big open kitchen at the back. Long communal pine tables. Some smaller tables though too, with more comfortable banquette seating. The seating at the longer shared tables is self consciously uncomfortable: hard pine seats with no back support.

We try for a banquette table but there is only one available with side by side rather than facing seats. We go for the end of a shared table where we can sit opposite. The manager is solicitous. She sees we are having a discussion about where to sit and comes over, adjudicates, sees us to where we are happy to sit opposite each other.

The menu has fish, pies, a daily roast, stews and bakes which change daily as well as a short list of 'main dishes', steak and chicken. It is simple hearty British food. We go for the daily roast which is roast duck. It comes with cabbage and roast potatoes, gravy; and it comes fast. Five minutes after sitting down it is on the table. We have ordered red wine. It is four up from the bottom of the list in price: Chateau Saint Romains, Bordeaux 2007. It is £18.50. There is a good range of low priced wines. The food has come so fast we are worried there will be a long lag before the wine arrives. There isn't. It arrives a couple of minutes after the food.

So no complaints about the service! It is speedy. I suppose being right by the Festival Hall and National Theatre they are used to diners with a performance to catch. Our duck though is dry, overcooked. The roast potatoes are flabby. It is hot and filling nonetheless. The problem I have is that for one course with a modest bottle of wine two of us still end up paying a total of £51.90. I can eat much better than this in more comfort so the simple canteen, good food, quality equation simple doesn't stack up for me here. Why pay £13.50 for overcooked duck in discomfort when you can have the Brompton fish stew at the Brompton Bar and Grill for £14.00 (see review)? The place is nevertheless very well run. We talk to one of our waiters. Like us she is impressed by the manager who we learn is called Marianne. She is bustling about walking the floor, noticing everything, not too proud to help clear tables herself. Our waiter though is not happy. Only sharing in the tip pool brings wages above the minimum to £7 per hour. The kitchen staff are unhappy because there is no air conditioning in the kitchen. I won't go back.

Sakura

2010-01-19T09:15:00.000-08:00

9 Hanover Street,

London W1S 1YF

020 7629 2961

Its lunch time 1.30pm and there is a queue of people waiting to be seated. The entrance on the street is narrow and so is the entrance lobby where people are waiting; then it widens out at the back. There are rather fetid old colour faded carpet tiles and a large picture of sumo wrestlers. On the right a lady is seated at a desk with paperwork, rubber stamps. She stamps our bill on the way out with PAID and the date. To me it is more like something out of soviet era Russia than Japan. She stands up and calls the diners to their tables as they become available. The place is buzzing and it is full of Japanese. On the left is a sushi bar with mainly solitary, mainly Japanese diners. Just before it on the wall are a whole series of food safety and cleanliness certificates. Its as though the state of the floor tiles prompts the establishment to give you reassurance: the place may be a tip but the food is clean!

After a wait of about ten minutes we are shown to a table; it is black, spartan but large. There are signs on white cardboard with large black type saying things like TOILETS and SEA URCHINS and the price. There is a large TV screen high up.There is something rather splendidly unreconstructed about the whole experience and we haven't eaten anything yet.

We both have the raw fish set which at £14 throws in rice, a small plate of pickled vegetables, a miso soup and a simple dessert of slice of orange and melon. It is only £2.50 more than the assorted sashimi. We also have the prawn tempura.

This is all classic simple stuff (which seems to be what they specialise in rather than complicated rolls etc). The sashimi is fresh meltingly tender, very good. The tempura is as good as I have had it anywhere: the batter light, crispy and the prawns underneath tasty, fresh. They do many noodle soups, as well as hot dishes. Its right by where I work and I will go back to sample more.

Its interesting: I have seldom looked at other reviews before writing one to avoid prejudicing my own opinion but I did in this case. It gets fantastically mixed reviews. Many talk about the rudeness of the manager and to a lesser extent the staff and the poor service. They were brusque but everything was efficient, there were no long delays, nobody was rude as far as I was concerned. Some rave about the food. Others (many fewer) say it was very poor. Its funny. This from rather limited sampling of the menu is as good as anywhere I've been in London, Nobu at much higher prices included. Not as good as Kanoyama in New York though which is the best japanese food I've ever had; and I haven't been to Japan. The decor and ambience though is more of an acquired taste but there is a message here: anywhere this busy and this full of japanese locals that can afford to be this unreconstructed must be good.

Bloody French

2010-01-19T02:36:00.000-08:00

149 Westbourne Grove,
London W11 2RS

020 7727 7770

Cute attention grabbing titles invite similar responses: it wasn't bloody good enough. The best bits first: bread without asking for it for no charge, no 'discretionary' service charge and a BYOB with no corkage charge Sunday through Tuesday. The bad bits: the food. The restaurant was also ominously empty, though to be fair it was early on a Monday.

We shared Terrine de Foie Gras Maison, Chutney et Brioche £9.90 as a starter. It clearly came from a can and was not therefore a Foie Gras 'Maison' made on site from the liver as in this recipe from Sofeminine. The Chutney had a strong fruity flavour, the canned terrine the right consistency. The brioche was ok. Then for me things started to go seriously downhill. I had Lamb Shank Boulgur and Vegetables £14.50. The Lamb Shank was too dry and just didn't have that melting flakiness it should have if it has been properly slow cooked. It tasted as though it had been cooked too fast and then reheated. The vegetables in a little separate blue dish (courgettes, tomatoes etc) were cold. My companion had Duck Breast, Dauphinois and Wine and Honey Sauce. We had been told it would be cooked rare. It was overcooked. It was nevertheless crispy, good. I tried a bit. She liked it.

Bloody French tries at the whole Gallic bit: menus on blackboards (the menu is £22.90 for three courses but with lots of supplements for individual more expensive courses, and what is it with these .90s...tiresome pricing), an open fire, long communal table (its attractive with big windows looking out on Westbourne Grove), but for me the food just isn't nearly good enough. The 'bloody french' themselves can do much better than this at the most ordinary Paris bistro.

Brompton Bar and Grill

2010-01-17T08:29:00.000-08:00

243 Brompton Road
London Sw3 2EP

020 7589 8005

Brompton Bar and Grill is the successor to the old Brasserie St Quentin just opposite the Brompton Oratory and Holy Trinity Brompton and handy for a post lunch visit to the V&A; only we weren't up to it. We had eaten too much.

Sunday lunch at Brompton Bar and Grill as guests. I had jerusalem artichokes, girolles and poached egg £8 and their signature dish, brompton fish stew £14. We drank Merlot Mas de La Tour 2008 Languedoc £14.50. The decor was a modern take on simple french brasserie: black leather banquettes, wooden floors, framed cartoons on the walls. Ribbed aluminium lights low over the tables. White table cloths. A long bar in a rectangular space.

The artichoke starter was fresh and full of flavour with egg cooked just right: runny yoke mixing with the little mushrooms and firm artichokes . The fish stew was memorable and enormous, quite enough on its own. The fish stock was excellent flavoured with herbs, chilli, and full of fresh fish: salmon, white fish, mussels,clams. There was a rouille on top of a slice of toast to sink and blend with the fish and stock. This fish stew was on another planet from the one experienced at Cote Kensington.

A wine list starting at £10. A memorable main course for £14. And in Knightsbridge. Bravo!

Bibendum Oyster Bar

2010-01-16T08:21:00.000-08:00

Bibendum Oyster Bar
Michelin House
81 Fulham road
SW3 6RD
020 7589 1480

The Michelin building originally designed as the British headquarters of the tyre company and opened in 1911 was acquired by Sir Terence Conran and Paul Hamlyn in 1985. I love this place and it has been beautifully restored. I'm not that keen on the more formal Bibendum restaurant upstairs but I also love the Bibendum Oyster Bar which spills out into the hall of the building downstairs. Its particularly attractive in summer but can feel cold and stark with its bare tiled surfaces in winter.

I had what I have often had here: a bloody mary and a crab salad and if really indulgent (as today) some white wine: it is the perfect Saturday lunch in a beautiful setting. All of the work is done for you for the simple crab salad. The white and brown crab meat taken out of the shell but not mixed up with mayonnaise, presented just as it is in a white and brown dollop with a simple green salad and lemon. Excellent and not unreasonably priced at £12.50. You also get a good portion of fresh french bread and butter thrown in. We had the house wine which goes well with this: a simple french sauvignon blanc which you can order by the 460ml pot for £10. The bloody mary is spicy and delicious but not cheap at £9.

It was raining hard and a distinguished looking Spanish gentleman on the table next door was wiping his wet suede shoes with the table napkin.

Dean Street Townhouse

2010-01-14T06:59:00.000-08:00

69-71 Dean Street
London W1D 3SE
020 7434 1775

Just had lunch at the Dean Street Townhouse; smart restaurants now make a point of calling to "re-confirm your table" on the day of the booking. This means if they don't get through you have to call back. I find all this a bit tiresome. Its understandable why they do this but its still a bit annoying and I say so irritated by having to call back to the lady managing the booking diary at DTH. She is very charming about my complaint which is not with her but just a rant about the process and when I arrive at the restaurant she remembers and is even more charming. DTH also gets full marks for service of the meal. It is unobtrusive, faultless, very professional.

The place is self consciously old clubland. Across Dean Street from the Groucho Club in what used to be a Pitcher & Piano branch it could be a stage set for an Agatha Chrisite Poirot set in the 1930s. Captain Hastings would have felt very comfortable. There are red leather banquettes, white table cloths and the sort of polished faux silver cutlery you would have found on the Queen Mary liner. There is a long bar with beautiful copper pillars.

The menu is also old clubland in spirit only much better. I have grilled cornish sardines meltingly soft but not overcooked, perfect; my colleague grilled squid, spiced chickpeas (bit more modern brit this, other offerings include dorset crab, potted ham, prawns and avacado and oysters). To follow I have Salt beef, caraway dumplings and pickle. The beef is flaky tender, the pickle pungently delicious. The red leg partridge, braised lentils and root vegetables my colleague has is beautifully presented and he finds it just as delicious. Prices are fairly standard for high quality central London: £15.50 and £16.50 for the main courses. We have a stylish and not too expensive Spanish red wine from Navarra for £22: Artazauri Garnacha 2007 Bodegas Artazu.

The restaurant and hotel (it has 39 rooms) is owned by Richard Caring (who now owns Le Caprice, J Sheekey, Annabel's etc) who bought a majority stake in Nick Jones' Soho House Group in 2008. The restaurant has its own entrance and doesn't have the ambience of a hotel restaurant at all. This is Caring/Jones first joint venture. Perhaps particularly given this heavyweight corporate ownership DTH is an impressively original one off almost faultlessly executed.

Wild Honey

2010-01-12T02:15:00.000-08:00

12 St George Street
London W1S 2FB
020 7493 4549

I had lunch here just before Christmas and somehow never got around to posting about it in the race to the Christmas deadline. Like its forerunner Arbutus which I have also been to for dinner, it has received much praise. Anthony Demetre and his business partner Will Smith started Arbutus in 2006 and Wild Honey followed in 2007. The main difference between the two is ambience, decor rather than food and wine. Arbutus is Soho cramped, the tables very close together whereas Wild Honey is more spacious, private, with panelled wood and separated booths. The aim of both is high quality for good value. They deliver resoundingly. I had the £18.95 three course lunch menu at Wild Honey. The main course was slow cooked beef with mash; it was simple, beautifully tender with a rich tasty stock. It is this main course that lingers in the memory two weeks later. What I remember about Arbutus several months later is the pomme dauphinoise beautifully cooked in a little mini casserole. In addition to the food the outstanding thing about both restaurants is that wine can be ordered in 250ml carafes at one third of the bottle price thus enabling sampling and changing through the meal. We had a simple Picpoul de Pinet from the Languedoc and an Argentine Malbec which went perfectly with the beef. I find it difficult to define but if there is any crticism of both restaurants it would be that there is an elusive lack of soul, of fun. They both take themselves a little bit too seriously. They are very good but they don't make you feel warm about them. Wild Honey particularly would be an excellent place to discuss the poor returns of a hedge fund with a client, less a place for a romantic date. In Arbutus you would feel a bit overlooked for either activity. The high price at Wild Honey was entirely down to the long conversation and armagnac and bushmills whiskey which accompanied it. It was the day before Christmas Eve.

B5UK27VTQWP2

Moroccan Food

2010-01-08T02:06:00.000-08:00

"There is a holy trinity of Tagine, Couscous and Brochette/Kebab" commented our host at the wonderful Dar Roumana a riad in Fes which I thoroughly recommend but should declare is run by a friend of a friend. The implication was that once you have got through this lot it can all get a little bit dull. I love Moroccan food but the experience of eating out in Marrakech and Fes is a mixed one.

The ingredients are wonderful. You see them all the time in the souks. Here there is real 'organic' food brought in from farms by villagers who often can't afford fertilisers to increase their yields; and whilst the butchers are not for the squeamish the meat too is marvellous.

The sadness is how many places mess it all up and it is often the smartest places that are the worst. We had a particularly bad meal at the Palais Jamai which is the grandest hotel in Fes. My starter, a traditional Moroccan soup, tasted like Knorr with chick peas and a bit of mutton floating in it. This was followed by a tagine of slow cooked lamb which had stock like sludgy Bisto and was surrounded by frozen peas. The dessert was bullet proof triangles of sticky cardboard pastry. The bill for four with a bottle of quite interesting (25% Malbec) simple Morroccan wine was 2220 Moroccan Dirhams or £178. Admittedly quite a lot of what you are paying for is the luxury surroundings (see website above) with (poor) belly dancing thrown in, but the food was lamentable.

Some of the best food we had was when we were simply eating pure ingredients, unmessed up by human ingenuitiy. We visited a village up in the hills an hour's drive from Marrakech (illustrated right) and had excellent wild honey hard, boiled eggs and bread.

In the Fes souk we tried a dozen different types of wild honey and settled on Eucalyptus. The honey was kept in big blue plastic drums and we tried all the honeys dipping in a small plastic stick. It was the honey equivalent of a wine tasting and after so many taste sensations it was difficult not to get just as confused as after sampling too many wines.

Ryanair Food

2010-01-07T10:24:00.000-08:00

I've just got back to London from Marrakech courtesy of Ryanair; full marks to Ryanair for getting us back since many aiports have been closed over the last two days because of the snow. We arrived back a mere 15 minutes late. We talked to a couple at the airport who had been on an Easyjet flight from Agadir to London yesterday. They had travelled to Marrakech and the flight they were on a day later was posted "delayed" so we were very lucky to get back.

But this blog is for food reviews! I asked for a hot ham and cheese ciabatta on the flight. Unfortunately they had run out. I opted for a ham and cheese sandwich. What arrived is illustrated below. I ate half. There were what tasted like flecks of 'cheddar' in salad cream with canned sweet corn and polystyrene ham. It was I think the most disgusting sandwich I have ever eaten. In the interests of the blog I opened it up and photographed it mid aisle. One of the air hostesses laughed when she saw what I was doing. Unfortunately I then ate it. I still feel ill. This sandwich cost €5.

A better option might have been the 'cheeseburger with relish' available only on 'selected flights'. As it is illustrared on the menu (see below) surrounded by swirling naked flames this is perhaps just as well:

Mind Games

2009-12-17T04:05:00.000-08:00

Its worth checking this out from today's Independent Life section of The Independent: Mind games on the menu for a guide to how we all get psychologically duped. Menus often include a high priced item in a prominent place "to elevate in people's minds the price of what it is reasonable to pay across the rest of the menu[...]if you start putting high numbers out, then people raise their estimations of what's reasonable".

Kensington Restaurants

2009-12-14T12:58:00.000-08:00

Foodraker launches with coverage of a clutch of restaurants in Kensington where the author is a recent immigrant.

L'Etranger

2009-12-14T11:58:00.000-08:00

36 Gloucester Road
London SW7 4QT
020 7 584 1118

L’Etranger is probably best known to the English as the french title to Albert Camus’ book now usually translated as The Outsider. Etranger is an adjective as well as a noun meaning strange, unknown, unfamiliar. While the décor was modern hip attractive with well spaced tables, so it otherwise proved to be.

The wine list was like something out of the City before the credit crunch. It begins with a ‘lunch and early bird wine list’ which starts with Champagne and offers you first off a half bottle of Veuve Clicquot 1982 for £45 reduced from £65. It isn’t lunch time and I’m not an early bird but I’ve got the message. This is going to be hideously expensive. It works up to a bottle of Cristal Rose 2000 reduced from £490 to £400. I’d have to be an early bird in very serious need of flight assistance after a very large bonus payment to even consider it! After the early bird list come wines by the glass and then the wine list starts with Sake (that becomes clearer when I look at the menu). The first thing on the Sake list is a 1991 Daiginjo Nama for £115. The wine list proper then starts with Champagne, works through half bottles and starts on page thirteen with the first full bottle of still wine that isn’t early bird, Sake or Champagne! Phew! It now starts to work alphabetically white first, by region. Alsace is first with wines ranging from £45-80.

Call me conventional but this wine list gets things off to a bad start for me. I think it is helpful when you have a wine list which is 49 pages long to start with recommended wines that cost less than £50 so that the non-oenophile or those on a more limited budget are not faced with reading a book in order to make a selection, even if the restaurant clientele is dominated by hedge fund managers with a passion for Cristal .

The menu is no better. The restaurant propostion is itself strange: a mixture of Japanese and French. The confusion of choice is confounded by the number of available menus: a Menu du Jardin, an a la carte Menu, a Maki and Sashimi menu, a degustation menu all of which have starters and main courses. For the confused hedge fund manager who can’t cope with all this choice there is even a “champagne et poissons” menu which at £109 per head (minimum 2 people) throws in a bottle of Dom Perignon 2000. Personally I think the fizzy wine would be wasted on the black cod and miso or rather vice versa. Call me old fashioned I also think it is a bit vulgar.

Jerome Tauvron is a classically trained french chef who has worked with Marco Pierre White, Alain Ducasse, Pierre Gagnaire and Michel Guerard. He clearly also loves Japanese food. We shared a signature dish of his: caramelised black cod with miso and shared crispy squid with spring onion and chilli as a starter. The cod was wonderful: sweet, tender, flaky. It came with beautiful Japanese sticky rise in an elegant roll. We asked what we should have with it and selected spinach which somehow didn’t work very well. The starter wasn’t perhaps quite as crispy delicious as it might have been and was just good rather than exceptional. To drink we had a bottle of Fie Gris (a grape variety similar to Sauvignon Blanc and believed to be related) from the Loire which went well with cod (it needs something sharp and anything too buttery or grand would be quite inappropriate), and at £40 was one of the cheapest wines on the very long list! The service was admirable and the wine waiter steered us towards an appropriate wine despite my complaints about the layout of the list.
Altogether a case of delivered on the fundamentals, shame about some aspects of the presentation; better than the other way round! The service was also impeccable, helpful and friendly and managed to avoid the off putting hauteur sometimes encountered in somewhere which is performing such a delicate dance between driving for standards and pretension.

L-Restaurant & Bar

2009-12-14T11:49:00.000-08:00

2 Abingdon Road
London W8 6AF
020 7795 6969

“It’s a bit cramped up here” I say “You’ll be closer to your loved one” says the waitress referring to my partner. Loved ones unfortunately for me have connotations: Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One and Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles where the loved one can be presented just as they were before death, reading the Los Angeles Times over breakfast, before cremation. We are sitting in a narrow balcony at L-Restaurant, sky lights above looking down on the more generously spaced restaurant proper. Next time will book down there – we have just walked in but they have found us a table on a Saturday evening. There are mirrors the length of the wall below reflecting the tables underneath us. There is something rather Nordic, Heal’s like about this clean modern environment: certainly nothing Spanish, no hams hanging from the ceiling or Spanish waitresses.
We order a single tapas as a starter: Jamon Serrano y Gambas a la Plancha. This is in fact two prawns wrapped in some ham on a cocktail stick x 2. Unfortunately it arrives just after the main courses. It is salty, lemony fresh and zesty if quite small for the £6.50 – something repeated in terms of scale to price ratio with the main courses.

I have oven roasted stuffed squid with tomato and pepper salsa, chorizo and saffron rice, £14.95. There are three squidlets in a small oven dish and they are delicious: tender, and peppery hot but they are more a generous tapas portion than main course in size. The saffron rice served in a small mound comes separately. I could have eaten more of them. Frankly they are better than anything I have had in more Spanish environments.

The wine we order is also a success: Albarino Torroxal Rias Baixas 2008. The Albarino grape is thought to be Riesling in origin (though this is disputed) brought by San Juan de Compostella pilgrims to Spain: it certainly has a Riesling like minerally quality as well as being scented, floral (the big rose on the label is apt) and the mark up is not too ludicrous. A quick entry on wine searcher finds it for £12.09 compared to the £29 we pay.

Cote Kensington

2009-12-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

47 Kensington Court
London W8 5DA
020 7938 4147

I try to avoid chains but came prejudiced in favour of Cote having had drinks several times in their Wardour Street branch where the tables at the front are unlaid and used as a bar area at less busy times. I had looked at the menu without eating there and the proposition had appeared attractive. There are now locations at Covent Garden, Kensington, Guildford, Richmond, Hays Galleria, Soho, Horsham, Wimbledon with St Albans and Cambridge opening in late November. The simple bistro style and value for money concept is of its time and earned Cote the “Best Value Restaurant in the UK for 2009” award from the Good Food Guide. It is Monday lunch time yet it is busy which is a good sign.

We both order the Breton Fish Stew from one of two choices on the Specials menu. This is described as a “traditional Breton fish stew of sea bass, mussels, clams, tiger prawns and squid with tomato, white wine and chilli” and reasonably priced at £12.95. Small debris plates arrive first and though of course we won’t be eating off them it is not a good sign that they are dirty. The stew stock is watery with no taste of wine nor any flavour of fish. It tastes of watery canned tomato and chilli. The tiger prawns are from frozen, firm rubbery and flavourless, and whilst the mussels are fresh and not over cooked there was no sea bass or if there was it must have been microscopic traces. We drank glasses of sauvignon blanc de la place 2008 vin de pays des cotes de gascogne. It was nothing special at £4.80 a glass, just the distinctive grassy sauvignon grape - would have been good in the stew though!

There were nice touches: hot bread and butter at no additional charge and filtered water in a Cote earthenware bottle for free. The water though suffered from being luke warm despite the outside of the bottle being chilled – we were earlyish for lunch and expect the bottles had only just been refrigerated.

The venue had previously been a Cuban restaurant and there were clumsy touches in the conversion: a plastic wood veneer on the bar which contrasted (badly) with the wooden chairs, tiled floor bistro look.

Overall too little attention to detail: cheap yes by London standards but that’s not the same as good value.

The Abingdon Restaurant

2009-12-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

54 Abingdon Road
London W8
020 7937 3339

It looks like its going to be a gastro pub from the outside but it really is a restaurant with a bar. You enter via the bar area and then almost sectioned off is the restaurant area with a long gallery area to start (where we sat) and railway carriage seating at the back. It’s a bit of an Aladdin’s cave because the gallery area is quite narrow but there’s a lot of the railway bench seating down the back where the room widens again behind the bar area. Expectations were high because this had proven the most difficult restaurant to get into in Kensington at a normal eating time and even on Monday evening early it was filling up rapidly.

The food was really very good; not cheap but excellent. They call it international and classical modern European which covers most of the options and isn’t an unfair description of what is offered. Main courses range in price from £12.95 for the simplest vegetarian pasta to £24. I had baked Sri Lankan marinated chicken breast with puy lentil and red bean dahl, mango chutney and coriander sauce. The chicken was meltingly tender, the chutney and dahl full of flavour and freshness. My partner had the tenderest venison I have ever had and deliciously rare. We drank a bottle of Kim Crawford 2007 Marlborough Pinot Noir which at £28.50 was quite heavily marked up (you can find it for £9.21 on wine searcher ). A very fruity new world wine which for me lacked subtlety. The pudding though, which we shared, was as good as the main courses. We couldn’t resist the sticky toffee pudding which was light and fluffy rather than heavy, gungy as it should be.

So we had no complaints about the food, nor any complaints about the service. The waiting staff couldn’t have been more attentive, charming without being in any way intrusive. My reservations are all to do with ambience and décor. The restaurant was brightly lit with spots. There was garish house/garage music playing when we arrived (we had an earlyish 8pm booking) , though this was later muted; but the smultz music which replaced it was no better, just quieter.

The design/furniture/layout somehow just wasn’t it. The wavy back bench with stripes in the gallery area was so elderly sloane ranger, the heavy banquettes in the railway seating area with their high backs prevented any enticing perspective to the whole restaurant and looked so old fashioned, dull and made poor use of the available space. The inlaid marketry on the varnished blonde wood tables with its striped candy pattern was ugly. It was somehow all so, big sigh, Kensington.

Kitchen W8

2009-12-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

11-13 Abingdon Road
London W8 6AH
020 7937 0120

Kitchen has been open now for 6 weeks. It comes with some pedigree. The co-owner Philip Howard co-owns The Square (two Michelin stars) and The Ledbury. Rebecca Mascarenhas the other owner started Sonny’s in Barnes and co-owns Sam’s Brasserie in Chiswick and Harrison’s in Balham. It’s not part of a chain but there is an awful lot of ownership going on around here; perhaps that should be a warning signal.

The name Kitchen conjures up something humble, bisto-ish, informal; but it is anything but. It’s starch white table cloths and modern décor. Somehow the décor doesn’t quite do it for me. There is something of the Candy and Candy bland international five star hotel about it. The strange green banquette doesn’t quite go with the black and white and round mirrors. There is a lack of attention to detail: there is a nasty LG air conditioning unit stuck on the wall above our table and the lighting, despite many ceiling spots, is too glaring. The tables are also a bit too close together. We are sitting facing each other and the tables in either corner are for two sitting adjacent on the banquette which means, had they been occupied, they would all have been looking towards us which in such a confined space would have been uncomfortable. The lack of space is hot helped by very low ceilings.

I go for the ox tongue. The ox tongue is a tiny piece of meat and comes with a bit of heated foie gras and squashy baked potato (ok it’s a personal thing but I like them crisper, firmer on the outside) and I’m reminded I don’t like heated foie gras (ok silly me it says it comes with ‘foie gras baked potato’). The squashy foie gras is sitting on top of the squashy baked potato on top of the tiny piece of tongue. Next to it is a daub of rather bland ‘shallot puree’. Ok you are getting the picture: I don’t think this is that great. Its ok, but for £16.50 in a restaurant owned by all these co-owners of well known places I expect something better. It's also a bit pretentious. I mean nobody would build this particular little multi storey unless they were trying to impress someone. Reports of my partner’s duck breast with a ‘tarte fine of caramelised endive’ are similar: ok, a bit bland a bit pretentious and £18.00. Desserts are a chocolate pudding which is not as good as Gu from the supermarket and a passion fruit mess which is also ok: nothing edgy or interesting here and high central London prices.

The best thing about the meal is a bottle of Finca las Paredes 2008 Malbec from Argentina for only £17.95. The wine list is simple and has good choice at the lower end and only marks up the more expensive wines by a standard amount.

One of the waiters ask me if I ‘enjoyed my meal’. I tell him I thought it was ‘ok, nothing edgy a bit bland’ and that The Abingdon down the road has much better food. I get a lot of stuff about 2 Michelin stars in other places and ‘nobody else has complained’ but he is polite. The manager then comes over. I tell him I would not have complained but one of his waiters asked me so I told him what I thought. He is also very polite. It doesn’t stop me form expecting more for £79 for two courses and a bottle of modestly priced wine. Kitchen is nevertheless full (it is a Saturday night in the run up to Christmas). This may say something about the choice in Kensington, the fact that it is new and people are trying it or the season. Time will tell.

Polpo

2009-12-13T08:23:00.000-08:00

41 Beak Street
London W1F 9SB
020 7734 4479

“Polpo is a Venetian bacaro serving Italian small plates and simple northern Italian wines in relaxed and humble surroundings. Carbon filament lightbulbs, exposed brickwork, an imported tin ceiling, Victorian tiled floors and reclaimed furniture bring some old-school charm to Soho. The menu is inspired by the bacari of Venice offering traditional chicheti as well as modern takes on Italian classics.” So this new (opened September 30th) restaurant in London’s Soho proclaims on its website.

I must confess I have been to Venice several times and never discovered its bacari. I will seek them out next time. The principle is just like a Spanish tapas bar. You share many small portions rather than plough through two or three courses which you keep to yourself. I like this style of eating so I came well disposed towards Polpo. In style the bar/restaurant has many similarities to two other Soho places: Barrafina, a Spanish tapas bar and Bocca di Lupo, also Italian. Each of these is a deep rectangle in shape with a bar at the front, seating at the back. Each offers small plates to share. A difference is that in Barrafina and Bocca di Lupo the food is prepared behind the larger bars and hence it is part of the spectacle, while at Polpo it is brought to you from the kitchen.

Humble surroundings are not quite how I would put it: elegant Soho chic is more the feel: zinc bar, exposed brickwork yes, wooden furniture and the tin ceiling looks like panelled wood. The menu on recycled paper which also serves as your place mat is very right on PC but humble, no.

The wine list is uncomplicated, short and unsurprisingly Italian. The most expensive wine on the list is a Montalcino for £39. Most of the humbler wines are offered by ¼ litre, half litre carafe and 75 cl bottle. I like this: you can try more than one thing and are not forced to drink huge glasses. Better still there is no price disadvantage in drinking less: the price for the bottle is exactly three times the quarter litre. We are sitting at the bar. I ask the waiter’s advice and he suggests the Barbera D’Alba. Its simple, fruity blackberry. I like it. I ask him what the grape variety is (its Barbera) but he doesn’t know. A small complaint: its not that hard for the staff in a wine bar with a relatively short list to know a bit about the wines they are serving. There is a bit of additional clumsiness on the waiting front at the end of the meal when I ask our waitress for the bill. “Ask him” she says pointing at the guy behind the bar “His name’s Ajax”.

The menu is simply divided into Chicheti which are very reasonably priced (under £2) little snacks, then bread, fish, meat, vegetables and salads. These are small tapas style platefuls, large enough for two to share. Most are around £6 and the vegetables and salads less than £4. The Chicheti we have are on rather dry and uninteresting bread but the anchovy and chick pea, all mashed up, is interesting if a bit too salty and the mint in the fig prosciutto and mint makes a classic zing with something a little bit special. The larger plates we order, duck and cuttlefish, are marred by the cuttlefish being cold. The duck with green peppercorns, black olives and tomatoes is simple but lifted by the green peppercorn texture and flavouring.

Where we were sitting at the bar there was an open view through the window straight down Upper James Street which gave a feel of openness in crowded Soho. Altogether is was a pleasurable if not overwhelming (on the food side at least ) experience. It was good value too at £28, though a couple more of the full plates (necessary for a complete meal) and a bit more wine would take the bill up to over £40. For me both Barrafina and Bocca di Lupo have more interesting (and hotter!) food but here’s the rub for all three: they are so popular it’s impossible to get into them in the evening! This kind of chic unregimented snack eating is clearly wildy popular so more please! We arrived at 6pm at Polpo which is opening time. By 7.40pm it was jumping: there was no seating place at all. Bocca di Lupo can be booked way in advance which spoils the casualness but both Barrafina and Polpo which can’t be booked in the evening are so full you would have to wait a considerable time for a place any time post 7pm certainly towards the end of the week, or at week ends.