Browns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.