tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15880518310692835232024-03-17T17:54:37.627+00:00Cheese and BiscuitsRestaurant reviews in London and beyondChris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.comBlogger954125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-90041271314951073532024-03-04T15:37:00.004+00:002024-03-04T15:37:45.590+00:00Solo, Aughton<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ylk4MAblyD3eU2eflCbagerZPNb555qNOWfV2DNkg2FyDAxMLb3Td4DQyoQGrhtIM8x0WPKZxCHUEFQY9ibMGomRFVu_7xBBAVEO4OHxFLTLdy5efrBuwtAKnpEXd44JB52n7BLaeAl5DIeii5usypGEC4hbNCYTKCueepGqGE3xYjxeSpBdqufH1pmI/s2016/IMG_7874.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ylk4MAblyD3eU2eflCbagerZPNb555qNOWfV2DNkg2FyDAxMLb3Td4DQyoQGrhtIM8x0WPKZxCHUEFQY9ibMGomRFVu_7xBBAVEO4OHxFLTLdy5efrBuwtAKnpEXd44JB52n7BLaeAl5DIeii5usypGEC4hbNCYTKCueepGqGE3xYjxeSpBdqufH1pmI/s600/IMG_7874.jpg"/></a></div><br/>When I was first out of university, trying to decide what to do with my life, and with no long term plan other than the fact I knew - eventually - I wanted to move to London and stay there, I got a job as a cashier at Ormskirk Abbey National. Ormskirk is ostensibly a market town, but if you went expecting stalls laden with craft spirits, high-welfare butchery, local cheeses and organic seasonal vegetables, well let's just say you were likely to be disappointed. Cheap underwear, knockoff Chinese kids toys and somewhat less-than-official football scarves and hats they <i>could</i> do, but none of those things would really justify a special journey to the place. It was a little town of little ambition, and while there's nothing wrong with that exactly, it was hardly a scintillating destination.
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So it's somewhat of a strange situation, 20 years on, to be sat in a very smart modern restaurant in an otherwise completely unremarkable suburb of Ormskirk called Aughton, whose population of 8,000 has four - yes <i>four</i> - Michelin stars to share between them. By way of an example, the most starred city in the world, Tokyo, can only boast 50,000 people per star. And if you're thinking "why Aughton", well you're not the only one. To this day I'm not sure how they've become the Ludlow of West Lancs, but here we are anyway, with Moor Hall (two stars), the Barn at Moor Hall (another star) and now Solo (one star).
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Like a number of fine dining restaurants that charge a fair whack for dinner in the evening, at lunchtime Solo charges a much more reasonable amount - £45. Of course, this neccessitates fewer courses, and the use of cheaper raw materials - think pork, cod and trout which in the evening are swapped out for turbot, smoked eel and pigeon - but of course it's all coming from the same kitchen so you get all the same high-end techniques, bells and whistles, applied to slightly more conventional ingredients. Although in this case, still excellent - like this chalk stream trout glazed with tare with an intelligent and attractive accompaniment of dill/buttermilk sauce and cucumber "spaghetti".
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And this pork belly (I think it was belly anyway) in the form of a nugget of pulled meat inside a thick, crunchy casing of maple toffee. With it, a remoulade of celeriac and apple and then on top of it all a liberal dressing of truffle "snow" - a very Moor Hall technique I hope they don't mind me saying - which finished it all off beautifully. There was just nothing less than brilliant about any part of any of these dishes, you really do get your money's worth.
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Mains, it won't be a surprise to discover, were equally impressive. A neatly sliced loin of venison came with a deep, rich sauce that would have been worth the price of admission by itself. Alongside, a cute little plump baby cabbage - "pancetta cabbage" - which I think I detected had little teeny bits of bacon hidden within its folds, quite an achievement considering it looked like a whole fresh (albeit tiny) cabbage. A dollop of caramelised pureed cauliflower and a little stack of braised white beetroot added yet more interesting textures and flavours. I wanted this to last forever.
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And the other main, a big fillet of cod, fried to a lovely golden crust, on top of "aerated tartare", a supremely light and fluffy mousse-like dressing studded with little crunchy bits of something-or-other (perhaps puffed wheat?), kale and brown shrimp. Like everything else, it was full of strong flavours, an impressive array of textures and was so easy to eat that despite the generous portion it disappeared in record time.
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From a very attractive cheeseboard containing just enough French options to keep traditionalists happy but with Sparkenhoe Red and Berkswell amongst others forming the British offering, we were as part of the lunch menu offered Mrs Kirkham's, Garstang Blue and Camembert, enough to keep most people happy I should think. We certainly were.
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And the sweet dessert was fantastic too - a supremely light "cheesecake" topped with apple (Bramley) sorbet and cute balls of stewed apple (Braeburn) which created a nice mix of temperatures as well as textures. Oh, and I should spare a mention for the wines too, particularly those matched with the desserts and cheese, which included a sweet plum sake which was truly exceptional.
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Topped and tailed by an excellent bread course and some chocolate truffles, the total bill (minus the £20pp deposit) came to £82 each, a figure that could have been tamed if we hadn't had quite so many matching wines but hell, why on earth would you want to do that? The spirit of generosity from the kitchen matched with a sparkling front of house meant we just wanted to spend all day there, and it was a genuinely sad moment as we polished off a Caol Ila and headed out into the Ormskirk rain.
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The truth is, I couldn't fault a single thing about Solo. The cooking is exciting and inventive, full of fun and personality, and at lunchtimes at least incredibly good value. Sure, you will have had pork and cod and trout before, but they've found ways of preparing these cheaper ingredients that makes you hardly miss the premium deal at all, although I'm sure dinners are equally lovely. It's a comfortable and attractively fitted out room, with nice well spaced tables and plenty of elbow room. The Moor Hall pedigree is evident from the range of techniques and command of flavour on display, but this is very much its own own beast - a neighbourhood restaurant done good as opposed to a multi-starred international destination restaurant. Although I would happily make the journey back from London to Aughton for another lunch at Solo, just see if I don't.
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10/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-34592854686657085032024-02-21T11:21:00.003+00:002024-02-21T12:15:07.538+00:00The Garden Museum Café, Lambeth<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWP15Hw30Rgr3HUexr6R4QslSG2uvYou5Xz7ppqA-Akz5H0V7mfaPTeEISVP9FvihLBSMtmengY8ANRZJS27Q8oHbLIv1RQk9dIiSIdiuoda2PPbZyjJDbvO2jWmX1qRG_0_WQ_jW-emWYTo9r-5_hAeXvTWKjAppS5uuaogKIgSqUiLx4XgYFkvejymG6/s2016/IMG_7810.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWP15Hw30Rgr3HUexr6R4QslSG2uvYou5Xz7ppqA-Akz5H0V7mfaPTeEISVP9FvihLBSMtmengY8ANRZJS27Q8oHbLIv1RQk9dIiSIdiuoda2PPbZyjJDbvO2jWmX1qRG_0_WQ_jW-emWYTo9r-5_hAeXvTWKjAppS5uuaogKIgSqUiLx4XgYFkvejymG6/s600/IMG_7810.jpg"/></a></div><br/><br/>Beautiful 15th century Lambeth Palace is a strange London landmark - widely recognisable, with a stately position Thames-side and passed by a number of busy bus routes, it is nevertheless very rarely visited, most of the main structures off-limits as the Archbishop of Canterbury's official residence and despite the existence of an interesting little Garden Museum, the garden itself is only open to the general public two or three days a year. This spirit of reclusiveness extends to the Garden Museum Cafe, a lovely glass-box modernist annexe to the Tudor palace which, despite doing a brisk trade during the day, is open for dinner only two days a week. And yet there's something about places with weirdly restrictive opening hours (see also: <a href="http://www.sweetingsrestaurant.co.uk/">Sweetings</a>, which I'm definitely going to try one day) that makes me want to visit them even more.
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So on a rainy Tuesday night, we turned up at the Garden Cafe for our usual early sitting to find it, somewhat against expectations, completely full. "Are you here for the talk?" asked the front of house; turns out there was a special early sitting for attendees of a talk about gardening happening in the museum a little later, and sure enough by 7pm or so the room had half emptied out.
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Nothing seemed to affect the speed or attentiveness of the staff however, and both before and after the great gardening exodus, service was spot-on. House focaccia - chewy and salty and lovely - arrived alongside a bottle of <i>very</i> natural Garnacha which, admittedly, took a bit of getting used to at first but then I like a challenge. I know natural wine has its critics - and I'm sure they'd find plenty to criticise with this bottle, cloudy and funky and every other natural wine cliché - but I always get the feeling I'm doing the world, and myself, a favour by drinking it. Almost certainly rubbish, of course, but there you go.
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It's a sign of a good restaurant that it can put together a strictly seasonal menu that's just as tempting in the depths of midwinter as in the middle of summer. Pumpkin minestrone had chickpeas, carrots and kale in a hearty, herby vegetable broth and was extremely enjoyable. Also excellent was a silky smooth whipped cod's roe on toast, which for some reason I forgot to take a picture of but I'm sure you can imagine what cod's roe on toast looks like. A healthy portion too, for your £8.50.
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But best of the starters - and I would say that because I ordered it - was a snail and bacon salad, which had plenty of meaty snails and lots of lovely crisp bacon dressed in a nice sharp vinaigrette studded with fried croutons. Like the other dishes it was full of rustic charm, and generous of flavour.
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Two pescatarian main courses demonstrated the Garden Café knows how to cook a bit of fish. Monkfish came as a butter-browned chunk of tail sliced into two, dressed with a dense, salty tapenade and on a bed of green sea beet leaves. I seem to remember there was some yellow beetroot in there too.
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...and a generous fillet of plaice sat on a very buttery mash (you have failed at mash if it can't be described as "very buttery") and a genuinely lovely leek velouté, like a bonus course of posh soup. On the side, a plate of purple sprouting broccoli (PSB for those in the know) with another knockout sauce - "sauce Maltaise" which (he quickly Googles) is apparently a hollandaise made with blood orange. So now you - and I - know.
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All the dessert options sounded like they had something going for them (Munster & Roquefort is a great little combo for a cheese course) but we ended up with a rhubarb craquelin choux bun, a delicate ball of pastry stuffed with cream and topped with some glorious sugary chunks of stewed rhubarb. And despite the generosity of the previous courses, it didn't last long.
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It's a fun little place to be, is the Garden Café, and a great place to eat. Service, as I mentioned earlier, was completely spot-on and only added to the general atmosphere of easy conviviality. There are lots of restaurants, up and down the country, attempting to do the kind of thing the Garden Café is doing but it's notable how often "charmingly rustic" slips back to "plain and careless" - it takes real skill to make ostensibly simple and unadorned food work this well. "It costs me a lot of money", as Dolly Parton so famously said, "to look this cheap".
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And speaking of cheap, the bill for three people and that bottle of natural wine came to just under £55/head, which is about as good value as you're going to find in London these days. And probably most other parts of the country too, for that matter. Lambeth Palace itself may remain stubbornly restricted, but the Garden Café is more than worthy of your attention, a popular and friendly little operation with a personality all of its own.
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8/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-38896368501503632502024-02-06T14:08:00.004+00:002024-02-06T14:08:59.987+00:00Roti King, Battersea Power Station<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginGT6XtyxO9mODS9jys38mfpR2kvO82VzIB2azOIxjViWLJoDUG5e0MtOW4ZE7SGiY1VgEHKTIDogt3GD5T8T2SPI9imZkM7iSL7VljJOoRXr9gFfgLAKAuKdon7HZg1ucjDptyI9Nabdn28qaPPmaRU74e3FE8HXmpt4hgqxVZOBRXTbXhNrV2pI4IeI/s2016/IMG_7793.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEginGT6XtyxO9mODS9jys38mfpR2kvO82VzIB2azOIxjViWLJoDUG5e0MtOW4ZE7SGiY1VgEHKTIDogt3GD5T8T2SPI9imZkM7iSL7VljJOoRXr9gFfgLAKAuKdon7HZg1ucjDptyI9Nabdn28qaPPmaRU74e3FE8HXmpt4hgqxVZOBRXTbXhNrV2pI4IeI/s600/IMG_7793.jpg"/></a></div><br/>Many moons ago I made a short-lived attempt to do some shorter-form reviews of sandwich shops, street food joints, delis and the like, places that are perhaps noteworthy but for which the usual 1000+ words could be considered overkill. This resolution didn't last long, partly because I didn't find a huge number of sandwich shops worth writing about in London (though I'm open to suggestions) but mainly because it's surprisingly hard to shake the habit of writing 1000+ words in every blog post.
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So let's see how I do with this one. Roti King Battersea is a purveyor of Malaysian street food - roti (bread) and kari (curry), rendang, the odd Malaysian/Indonesian dish like nasi lemak and nasi goreng, and a couple of Singaporean-style noodle dishes. They started life in a cramped basement spot round the back of Euston station, where the queues would often snake down the road of a lunchtime, so the prospect of being able to try their food without standing in the cold for a while beforehand was obviously quite appealing.
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Thanks to the wild popularity of the new Battersea Power Station development, Roti King Battersea was almost full up even at 5pm on a Sunday afternoon, but fortunately they managed to squeeze us in (almost literally - tables are so close together it's like sitting in a tube carriage) and within a couple of minutes (service is attentive bordering on fanatical) we had ordered one each of the daal, fish and mutton karis and a plate of morning glory.
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For this committed meat-eater, it was a happy surprise to discover that not only was the vegetarian <i>dhal</i> kari more than an equal in terms of intensity and complexity of flavour to the fish and mutton varieties, but that all 3 came with their own unique sauce - they hadn't just dumped the same liquid over the three different proteins. My favourite was, of course, the mutton, which had lovely tender chunks of slow-cooked sheep in a fantastic thick, rich, tomatoey sauce spiked with turmeric and chilli, but the other version boasted big chunks of soft white fish in a lighter, more fragrant (though still packing a hell of a chilli punch) sauce. And all three came with 2 generous bits of fluffy, fresh roti as light and as crisp as French pastry, which we were able to see being made fresh to order throughout the evening in the open kitchen.
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Morning glory was not quite as accomplished as the plate we'd been served at Mien Tay the week before, being slightly on the chewy side, but still had plenty going for it, not least a nice umami-dense sauce made from shrimp paste, which clung to the frilly upper leaves and burst in the mouth quite nicely.
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So yes, it would have been nice to have had a bit more elbow room, and the morning glory wasn't perfect, but the rotis were lovely, we had more than enough food, and the bill for 3 people (with jasmine tea and a lemonade) came to £53.55 including service. So we couldn't have wanted for much more, really. Roti King Battersea stands as proof that you can expand from a tiny basement spot in Euston to a multi-billion-pound Malaysian-backed development south of the river and not lose your heart, soul or sense of value. And for that, we should all be grateful.
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7/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-54244845866158696922024-02-05T11:48:00.000+00:002024-02-05T11:48:34.008+00:00Nandine, Camberwell<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfjA0lknlAoicOMYqJmeDL6zuyu4YVB875_avVsXnV0338AroqCYeZ0qYKh3pMXXI2OyyGrflQzqVCaWO31VQpVjrAskRKi-yVZ3_KQ929bSXgx7AIK1BQWvu5rAmPwdTwqBe7fKzjYKFPLqD42dnZPCFG1ccsKSWAivx_WttnXgLsSzCJtSVXTLO8mllz/s2016/IMG_7757.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfjA0lknlAoicOMYqJmeDL6zuyu4YVB875_avVsXnV0338AroqCYeZ0qYKh3pMXXI2OyyGrflQzqVCaWO31VQpVjrAskRKi-yVZ3_KQ929bSXgx7AIK1BQWvu5rAmPwdTwqBe7fKzjYKFPLqD42dnZPCFG1ccsKSWAivx_WttnXgLsSzCJtSVXTLO8mllz/s600/IMG_7757.jpg"/></a></div><br/>Another week, another fantastic new restaurant in Camberwell. I try not to moan too much on this site about the fact that certain areas of town seem overly saturated with great places to eat, while others have to wait decades between worthwhile new options, but it's hard not to be wildly jealous of the residents of Camberwell who have such a selection on their doorstep they could conceivably eat somewhere different and good every night of the month without having to leave SE5.
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The latest addition to Church Street, fitting quite comfortably into the spot recently vacated by Mike & Ollie (opposite FM Mangal, a few doors down from Silk Road and Camberwell Arms FFS), is Nandine, a modern Kurdish restaurant. The menu at Nandine is that unbeatable combination of mostly familiar and wonderfully offal-forward ingredients treated in exciting and unfamiliar (at least to anyone who isn't already familiar with Kurdish cuisine, which definitely includes myself) ways. So although you may not recognise words like Tapsi, Tirshak, Kubba, Dandok and Jipa, you might - as I did - read descriptions such as "Pan-seared chicken heart with Kurdish Riha chilli sauce, garnished with watercress and pomegranate" and allow yourself to become very excited indeed.
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First to arrive though, was turnip. And if you think I'm playing down the description of this dish for dramatic effect, you'd be right. Because <i>Shelim e Kulaû</i> is one of the most surprising and delightful dishes I've eaten in the last couple of years. Sort of a cross between sweet potato and turnip, so sweet and soft but earthy and rich, came dressed in a remarkable black tea and mulberry molasses mixture that nimbly danced a line between sweet and sour, herby and fruity - partly strangely familiar and partly completely new. But the stroke of genius was a sprinkling of smoked sea salt on top, which created a whole other level of flavour profile, like eating salted caramel in vegetable form. We were told this is a traditional Kurdish street snack that the kids eat on the way home from school. Lucky kids.
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<i>Tirshyat</i> was a bowl of house pickles, which arrived with the warning "careful with your lighter clothing, they stain". Which is both a useful bit of advice and also a nice neat way of demonstrating how lovingly home made they were. Cauliflower, carrots and cabbage were all expertly balanced, not too sweet and not too vinegar-y, but predictably my favourite were the miniature pickled chillies which had a lovely bite and packed quite a punch of heat.
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<i>Kinger</i> were little deep-fried balls of potato, caramelised onion and Kurdish wild foraged artichoke roots, and if you're wondering how a restaurant in Camberwell gets hold of wild Kurdish artichoke then you're not the only one. Turns out that certain key ingredients (the artichoke, and the wild pistachios for the dessert) are sent over by her family back in the Middle East, so not only is the food at Nandine excellent but you have a very good chance of coming across an ingredient literally not available anywhere else in the Western hemisphere.
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Chicken hearts were also on the menu, so obviously they had to be ordered. <i>Chilfra</i> had wonderfully tender little morsels of offal, with just enough bite without being chewy, in a herby chilli sauce studded with mint and pomegranate seeds. Perhaps if I'm going to be brutally honest this dish was closer in style to the kind of thing I'd had before, but the fact this stood out as being more familiar just shows you how unique and exciting everything else had been.
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At first glance, this tray of lamb kebab may seem familiar - ordinary, even. But this is an artifice that lasts only until you take your first bite, because believe me there is absolutely nothing ordinary about the way these things are constructed. Instead of the more usual homogenous dense mince, the texture of these <i>Lula</i> kebabs is a mixture of lamb flank and mutton, with - we were told - a specific type of fat from the outside of the mutton shoulder that loosens and enriches the meat to a texture so soft and light it's apparently a skill to not have them fall apart on the grill. The result is a "kebab" closer in form to a kind of rustic grilled mousse, a dark salty crust encasing a fluffy, gamey filling that's so dangerously easy to eat they can almost be inhaled. Incredible stuff.
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I had also, of course, to order the stuffed lamb tripe - <i>Jipa</i>, which was every bit as lovely as I'd hoped. Soft, wobbly bits of fat alongside firmer - but not chewy - tripe, stuffed with fragrant cinnamon rice and almonds, and all in a smooth bone broth, it was another offal masterclass. To provide texture to contrast with the main ingredients they'd cleverly deep-fried strips of tripe into offal scratchings, which would have been a nice little snack by themselves.
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After having polished off all of the above - the food at Nandine, despite looking unfamiliar and intense on paper, is remarkably easy to eat - it's testament to the quality of this homemade <i>Qazwan</i> baklava that this, too, didn't last long. As I mentioned before, the pistachios on top are foraged from the wild and sent over by owner Pary Baban's family back home, and came on top of a silky smooth milk pudding and folds of delicate filo pastry. Like everything that had come before, it was inventive, rewarding, and that beguiling mix of unique yet eerily familiar.
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There can be no greater compliment to Nandine that I don't think there's anywhere else like it in London, and if there is then I need to know about it. It takes a lot to surprise and beguile a jaded London food blogger in 2024, and yet the team at Nandine have somehow come up with a restaurant concept at once fiercely distinctive and authentic while flattering with just enough that's familiar to allow you to enjoy it to the fullest. It's one thing to introduce an unfamiliar cuisine to a new audience, but to do it so lovingly and successfully requires real skill and a genuine gift for hospitality. Nandine has all that going for it and more, and judging by the crowds packing into this buzzy little spot on a cold Wednesday night, it's already struck a chord. Another great place to eat in Camberwell, then. I'm not jealous, honest.
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9/10
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<i>I was a friend's +1 to this invited meal, and we didn't see a bill. From a brief tot-up of our dinner though I think the bill would have come to around £50 a head with plenty to drink, so pretty reasonable.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-79817508767683607392024-01-17T16:01:00.007+00:002024-01-17T18:20:12.349+00:00Kolae, Borough Market<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA-vH_Lvy8WTQ-6sPp_3eFMoUqfztJ5GisstGVyDYkTgg4gveRFZb4skoqoizScETtiGmGqtRbIvXZxD9VrQtK_afThPXg-u8M5pCtAAw5JMqs8GWNWgbZdkOPz_7sQz9rIT4dP5_1RnmWCUsCMnn2aIlcyimYHueu9hN4XKJ_lqXu0KwAxBjDBXZOLSt7/s2016/IMG_7712.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA-vH_Lvy8WTQ-6sPp_3eFMoUqfztJ5GisstGVyDYkTgg4gveRFZb4skoqoizScETtiGmGqtRbIvXZxD9VrQtK_afThPXg-u8M5pCtAAw5JMqs8GWNWgbZdkOPz_7sQz9rIT4dP5_1RnmWCUsCMnn2aIlcyimYHueu9hN4XKJ_lqXu0KwAxBjDBXZOLSt7/s600/IMG_7712.jpg"/></a></div><br/>Everywhere you look the cost of living crisis bites, and few areas is that more evident than the restaurant industry. If you're a regular anywhere you will have noticed your favourite dishes and tipples creeping up 10%-20% every few months, seemingly in an existential race with energy prices to dare you to contemplate which you can cut back on first. Being a hopeless restaurant addict, I'd rather put a few extra layer of clothes on and sleep under a second duvet than miss out on at least an occasional meal out (although you will notice my rate of posting being down recently for that very reason), but I'm not so naive to think it's that easy for everyone. And let's not think for a second that the restaurants <i>like</i> charging these prices - everyone's stuck in the same horrible cycle of inflation and cost-cutting. Very few are immune.
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When a place comes along that offers great food for less than a fortune, then, it's a genuine pleasure to report on it. So, hot on the heels of the <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-dew-drop-inn-hurley.html">Dew Drop Inn's</a> extraordinary £39 lunch menu comes Kolae, from the <s>Smoking Goat</s> Som Saa* (see edit) team, offering fresh and very reasonable Thai food in the heart of London's Borough Market.
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Now, you may have skipped to the end of this review and noted that £90pp is not, even in these troubled times, anything that could be mistaken for super low budget. But in my defence - and theirs - we <i>hugely</i> overordered for two people and the amount of (incredible) food we ended up with could have at least fed 3 or 4, making the total per head steering a lot more towards the £ or ££ category.
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From our high seats at the kitchen table (is there any better place to sit in these kind of places?) we watch as chefs enthusiastically prepare a variety of dishes both over charcoal and a (occasionally terrifyingly deglazed) wok. First to arrive was biryani rice crackers, towered high and dressed with pickled ginger and "nahm jim". I'm not going to waste your time attempting to describe everything that goes into Thai dressings (as I'd probably get it wrong anyway, they're usually fabulously complex and contain a bewildering variety of ingredients which change from kitchen to kitchen) but this definitely had at least garlic and chilli in it and was lovely.
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Grilled mussel skewers definitely were up there amongst the best things we were served that evening. Marinated in a complex, earthy sauce very different from the winey/citrus notes you would find in Western mussel dishes, they had a wonderful note of charcoal smoke from the clearly very good fuel they were using, and a bewitching texture of just slightly chewy enough and yet yielding perfectly to every bite. They were brilliant, and worthy of the title of "signature dish" just as much as...
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... these lovely things, which had been doing the round on social media - fried prawn heads. It is testament to the skill and nous of Kolae that they've taken a bit of the prawn that is usually at least thrown away if not actually not even served in the first place, and turned it into a must-order dish. Fairly similar to the mussels, the coating was earthy - almost soily (but in a good way), with the seafood flavours mixing beautifully with the crispy coating.
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Dressed and prepared in a similar way were crispy chicken skins - also dangerously moreish and definitely worth ordering, but it's full disclosure time. Usually it's either the chicken skins or prawns that are available, the former a replacement when they're running low on the latter. We only ended up with both because either they saw us taking photos and put two and two together or (and unfortunately more likely) they overheard us muttering about the missing prawn heads as we looked over the menus. So very many thanks to them for making two food obsessives very happy indeed, and if you're planning your own visit maybe just check they have them on beforehand. Because they are well worth the effort.
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All of the 'larger' dishes were noteworthy - you really can't order badly at Kolae, just (as we did) too enthusiastically - but I'm going to say a special word about the "gung siep dried prawn and shrimp paste relish" which arrived next. We were told/warned that the dried prawn was a bit of an acquired taste, and - to put it mildly - isn't for everyone. Kolae could have easily left it off the menu and presumably suffered no major losses, but sometimes a restaurant will put certain dishes on the menu just to provide the exhilaration of the new. With its funky, salty flavour matched with an aroma of old dried fish, tempered only slightly with tomato and chilli and garlic and various pickles, it was unusual and just on the verge of wrong and yet strangely addictive. It was also fiercely hot, which presumably added to its addictive qualities. I absolutely loved this, and yet it's perhaps the kind of thing you only need once in a while - a real rollercoaster of a dish.
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I'll talk about the chicken skewers and hogget chops together, as they were great for very similar reasons - a deft skill on the grill, with a rich, complex dressing. Interestingly the hogget <s>wasn't from Warrens (as you might expect from a Smoking Goat-adjacent restaurant)</s>* (again, see edit) but Swaledale, but was still fantastic, the gamey meat standing up very well to the Thai flavours.
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Minced venison, with its blisteringly hot chilli spicing, felt to me like a kind of play on a laab. It came dressed in crisp betel leaves, and I don't think I've ever not enjoyed a betel leaf. This was one of those dishes you eat with your mouth painfully on fire but can't stop because it tastes so good, the minced venison studded with nuts (peanuts?) for extra texture. I feel like I'm repeating myself saying it was another must-order.
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There was more - a lot more. As I said, we may have gone a bit crazy. But it's hard not to over-order when everything read so well. Sour mango salad with roasted coconut and anchovies had all kinds of different textures and flavours going on, sweet and hot and salty and sour and umami. Kale fritters with fermented chilli were notable not only for the fantastic greaseless crunch of the kale but a lovely sweet/sour broth they were sat in. House pickles were all good but of particular interest were tiny green chillies which were - as you might expect - blazingly hot but also sweet and full of character. Excellent stir fried greens and a bowl of rice also appeared.
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Towards the end of the meal we were persuaded to have a dirty martini made with fermented pickle juice, which seemed like a good idea at the time. In fact, no, it <i>was</i> a good idea, I have no regrets. And of course, although we couldn't possibly hope to have polished off all of the food we ordered, they happily put the leftovers in boxes to take home, so nothing was wasted.
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So, try and ignore that rather inflated bill and imagine which of the above you would have needed to make a satisfying yet sensible meal for yourself. The mussels and prawn heads, definitely. The shrimp relish goes without saying, as does the minced venison. You have to try the herb fritters, too, and the hogget chops, too so don't forget about those and- well, you can see the problem we had. You <i>can</i> eat at Kolae quite cheaply, it's just once you're sat there and are presented with that menu, you may find it impossible. Anyway, however you order, chances are you're going to have a very good time indeed. Just maybe budget for a little bit more than you'd normally expect to eat - you may not be able to help yourself.
<br/><br/>
9/10
<br/><br/>EDIT: As I was told perfectly clearly beforehand, Kolae is from the team behind Som Saa, not Smoking Goat, so happy to correct that.
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-1206942755964140552023-12-11T14:06:00.001+00:002023-12-11T14:06:20.061+00:00The Dew Drop Inn, Hurley<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbWpRnyeDuetfXBjzRierTw4I7Slacj80aYYmu3WBR6uYfJM9rugEdzdNt6yQtz6-TBZz_Lpx9EHyyB2z2QQrXzy02Xm6uuFp31tU5ken8WEwP6EuXNwJ74zm-Mgh8g4IS_uFKdAms8DF4Z51uygDkEWKMM6Ex-cjY8MNcCsibx6JPMKEtJBpfRYAnesZ-/s2016/image12.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbWpRnyeDuetfXBjzRierTw4I7Slacj80aYYmu3WBR6uYfJM9rugEdzdNt6yQtz6-TBZz_Lpx9EHyyB2z2QQrXzy02Xm6uuFp31tU5ken8WEwP6EuXNwJ74zm-Mgh8g4IS_uFKdAms8DF4Z51uygDkEWKMM6Ex-cjY8MNcCsibx6JPMKEtJBpfRYAnesZ-/s600/image12.jpeg"/></a></div><br/>I think the Dew Drop Inn must exist, because I have photographic proof I was there on Saturday afternoon, sheltering from the wind and rain in their front bar, cozying up next to a log fire and sipping on a pint of ale. I can see the payment on my credit card statement, I can see the return to Maidenhead on the GWR app, and I have a friend who I met for lunch that day who will also confirm all of the above to be true. In all probability, the Dew Drop Inn does exist.
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And yet barely two days later, my memory of eating there is so blissful and surreal that if I didn't have a paper trail of receipts and visual aides-mémoire I'd genuinely start to question whether it happened at all. To begin with, there's the location, buried deep in the Berkshire countryside, surrounded by thick forest and at the end of a long (and frequently flooded) dirt track so far from passing trade it's like they're trying to be as inaccessible and mysterious as possible. All the way down that impossibly unlikely road you convince yourself you must have taken a wrong turn somewhere, or the sat nav is out of date, until all of a sudden you turn a corner and there it is, a quaint little 17th century pile, a quiet puff of wood smoke from the chimney the only sign, at first, anyone is home.
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Inside are stone-flagged floors, low-beamed ceilings, a cute bar serving local beers and various immensely comfortable looking tables, most tucked into the corners and within hand-warming distance of the fire. For an English pub fanatic like me, this would be more than enough - these are my happy places, these ancient pubs - the first thing I'd miss if I moved abroad, and the first places I'd seek out on my return. If I'd only had a pint of Brakspear then headed back to the big smoke, it would not have been a wasted journey.
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Except, perched on each table in charmingly florid handwriting, is a five-course menu of sophisticated French classics, exquisitely tasteful and desperately tempting, with the frankly unbelievable price of £39 stated underneath. Now, I don't know the last time you had a five-course lunch for £39 but I'm guessing a) it likely wasn't in the last decade and b) didn't look anywhere near as exciting as this. And the first thing to arrive wasn't even listed - some completely brilliant crunchy batons of - I think they said - fermented yoghurt bread, hot out of the oven and served with a dreamy salted butter.
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First course proper was a dainty little pile of white crab meat studded with tiny cubes of grapefruit, then on top of that a lattice of gently pickled apples. I've had a variation on this dish at chef Simon Bonwick's previous place the Crown at Burchett's Green (which is still going, headed by Dom Chapman formerly of the Beehive) and enjoyed it, but here it seemed improved and elevated, with a more robust crab element bound by a light mayonnaise, and more interesting citrussy accompaniments.
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Next came a stupidly generous slab of pâté en croûte, bursting with salty, porky filling and with a very clever central layer of some kind of mousse. It came with a selection of house pickles, my favourite as ever being pickled onions. I don't know why I don't have a picture of them - probably too busy eating them.
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The pâté en croûte would have been a perfectly decent main course in its own right, but the Dew Drop weren't done yet, not by a long shot. The main course - duck, from Crediton in Devon, was a hundred different masterclasses at once, and describing just how brilliant every bit of it was could easily run to thousands of words, but I'll try and keep it brief. Firstly the animal itself was cooked perfectly, pink and tender with a layer of fat on each morsel just enough to season and provide an irresistable burst of expertly rendered fat, but then you might expect at least that from a kitchen with such pedigree. It came dressed in a stunning glossy sauce, the kind of thing it takes lifetimes to learn, balanced and beautiful and studded with juniper berries which popped delightfully in the mouth.
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That would have been enough - more than enough - without two little shapes of pickled beetroot which packed full of zingy flavour, a roasted chestnut and roasted clove of garlic which were great fun eaten together, and a fondant potato so buttery and smooth it almost dissolved in the mouth. And yet, that still wasn't all. Alongside this wonderful plate of food, we were served a dollop of silky smooth mashed potato topped with crispy shallots, as well as a pot of honey-glazed (I think, apologies if I'm wrong on that) carrots and broccoli. It was all quite overwhelming, and I had every intention of just trying a mouthful of each element until I realised how good it all was and nearly did myself an injury attempting to shovel it all down. And remember, these weren't extra sides - they came as part of that £39 lunch. Included.
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Dessert was something called a "Crème Chiboust", not a phrase I'd come across before but eating Simon (and increasingly his son Charlie) Bonwick's food is never anything less than an education. It was a kind of a light cream dessert studded with tiny bits of meringue, served with a fantastic pistachio ice cream, and it all disappeared in record time. Oh and they also served a little cube of house baklava on the side, because why not.
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We still weren't done. Alongside a giant bucket of excellent Armagnac ("You must drink it all," I was told; I was hardly about to disobey) was a piping hot caramel canelé, equally the match of any of London's best patisseries. And though I might have suspected that Armagnac and canelé make a good match, it is my pleasure to report that they most certainly actually do.
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Now, full disclosure, that Armagnac didn't turn up on the bill, so many thanks to them for that because it certainly put a spring in my step for the rest of the afternoon. But something else that didn't turn up on the bill was a service charge - they leave it entirely up to you how much to add - so we happily added on the standard 12.5% and ended up with a total of £54 each for what was easily one of the most mature and sophisticated classical French menus of recent years. It's no exaggeration to say that if we'd paid three times that each, we still would have considered it value.
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So it's not just the generosity of spirit and portion sizes; it's not just the complete mastery of classical French technique evident in every last morsel of food served from that tiny kitchen staffed by two people; it's not even just the sparkling service and magical atmosphere of this ancient building nestled deep in the English woods. It's all of these things, and more - a miraculous, singular anomaly which is hard to believe exists at all. There's only one thing for it - I'll have to go back. Just to be sure.
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10/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-74769507499432163532023-11-28T11:46:00.001+00:002023-11-28T17:12:38.996+00:00Cord, Fleet Street<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjzZBT_lMvDp6QE3awl4Vuv2ADHVGGvIIG4Ic3a4mpFJ1vZFurvm-XOx9bTWEAYpychAIsc_bM-1uxeEbLL5q6f1rPSroieIB0ZY8CGq-C9xZmEL5-rCkyZVw53pXo7fnLWDwmqUx9E6aXvKmPPnTBcR5rNmFO8ldCJpcGye3M7TPe9OuShjyJ_h-x6Fi4/s2016/IMG_7122.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjzZBT_lMvDp6QE3awl4Vuv2ADHVGGvIIG4Ic3a4mpFJ1vZFurvm-XOx9bTWEAYpychAIsc_bM-1uxeEbLL5q6f1rPSroieIB0ZY8CGq-C9xZmEL5-rCkyZVw53pXo7fnLWDwmqUx9E6aXvKmPPnTBcR5rNmFO8ldCJpcGye3M7TPe9OuShjyJ_h-x6Fi4/s600/IMG_7122.jpg"/></a></div><br/><i><b>Basil Fawlty:</b><br/>
Are you dining here tonight, here in this unfashionable dump?<br/><br/>
<b>Mr. Johnson:</b><br/>
I wasn't planning to.<br/><br/>
<b>Basil Fawlty:</b><br/>
No, not really your scene is it?<br/><br/>
<b>Mr. Johnson:</b><br/>
I thought I'd try somewhere in town. Anywhere you recommend?<br/><br/>
<b>Basil Fawlty:</b><br/>
Well, what sort of food were you thinking of... fruit or...?<br/><br/>
<b>Mr. Johnson:</b><br/>
Anywhere they do French food?<br/><br/>
<b>Basil Fawlty:</b><br/>
Yes, France I believe. They seem to like it there, and the swim would certainly sharpen your appetite. You'd better hurry, the tide leaves in six minutes.</i><br/><br/>
I make no apologies for starting by quoting the greatest sitcom of all time - in fact I probably should do it more often - but I couldn't think of a better way of illustrating the fact that back in the dark days of the 70s, when British food was largely brown Windsor soup, lamb casserole and <i>gralefrit</i>, we idolised the food of France, where they did things properly. Whipped into shape back in the 19th century by towering figures like Escoffier, French cuisine was disciplined, classy and intelligent while we were none of these things, and it was hardly surprising that for most of the last century, posh food meant French food.
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Fortunately, British cuisine can now hold its head up and is quite rightfully now considered amongst the worlds finest, but the fact remains that the French got there first, and at its best <i>l'haute cuisine</i> still has the capacity to stun, bewilder and delight. In London specifically I'm thinking of places like <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2015/11/les-110-de-taillevent-marylebone.html">Les 110 de Taillevent</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/04/ottos-london-restaurant-review">Otto's</a>, where they do everything by the classical book - vol-au-vents, Canard à la Presse, Tournedos Rossini - to superb effect. And now (at least since summer last year), there's restaurant <a href="https://www.cordrestaurant.co.uk/reservations?utm_source=Review+&utm_medium=Online+review&utm_campaign=Chris+Pople&utm_id=100">Cord</a> on Fleet Street, serving food so unashamedly, strictly French it should arrive from the kitchen accompanied by a brass band playing La Marseillaise.
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French haute cuisine of course isn't just about your three courses but the extra bits of service and flair that frame the evening into something even more special. I'm thinking of things like this dainty cup of cep mushroom velouté, an amuse bouche of precisely the correct seasonality and form, which displayed the skill of the kitchen - the broth was superbly light and buttery, packing a great mushroom flavour - as well as an indication that Cord know exactly what time of year it is (not always a given in every top-end London restaurant, let me tell you), and exactly how to make the most of what's available. Cord are so proud of this dish, in fact, that they attempted to serve it again about 5 minutes after we'd finished the first - a charming little trip up that just made me like them more (we politely refused, though it took quite a bit of will power).
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All the house bread was fantastic, but our favourite - inevitably - was a kind of pastry bun thing kind of halfway between a croissant and brioche. It was so distressingly moreish I literally had to move my side plate to the other end of the table to stop myself picking at it throughout the meal, and the accompanying butters - one salted, one parsley and escargot (topped with an actual snail!), did nothing to help with that dilemma.
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The a la carte proper began, for me at least, with this lobster and sea urchin raviolo, a combination of skills and techniques that would send any lesser kitchen running in terror, but was absolutely beautifully done here. From the dainty but firm pasta to the perfect balance of flavours in the mixture (just enough sea urchin to provide a spritz of the seaside without overwhelming) to a rich lobster bisque, creamy and salty and seafoody, this was a world class example of the best French cooking. Had each element of this dish been less than brilliant, the whole house of cards would have come crashing down, but as I said, they know what they're doing at Cord. Masterful stuff.
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Lamb sweetbreads were equally classy, glazed with late autumn herbs (chervil, sorrel, cobnuts) and served with a glossy, rich veal jus and what I think was a supremely smooth parsnip purée. One of the criticisms levelled at top-end French food is that it can be overly fussy, with too many pointless frills and textures vying for attention. This of course is not necessarily true, as demonstrated by this starkly beautiful dish, where the main ingredient is highlighted and enhanced by some extremely tasteful sauces and sides, and yet still feels as French as anything.
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It's true to say, however, that there was quite a lot going on with my main course, a chicken supreme stuffed with black truffle presented with such straight, geometric exactness it was faintly exhausting to imagine the amount of work that might have gone into it. And again, all this visual flair would have been for nothing had it not impressed otherwise, but the chicken breast was beautifully tender, the black truffle mixture was rich and comforting, and the foie gras sauce impressed just as much with its buttery meatiness as the lobster bisque had with its rich seafood. Also, alongside the main tranche of chicken and truffle came a selection of winter veg in various forms that brought all sorts of colour and texture. So yes, at the Frenchier-end of French food, but all the better for it, in my opinion.
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A nice bright-white fillet of brill, topped with various seaside succulents and served on a bed of coco beans, mussels and champagne velouté, also boasted a variety of clever techniques (I do love a split sauce) but made sure the main ingredient was cooked just-so, and everything else just helped make the most of it. Each time a new dish arrived with yet another fantastic sauce, it was an excuse to soak it up with more superb house bread, which just made you enjoy the experience even more.
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"Black forest" was a kind of deconstructed <i>schwarzwälder käsekuchen</i>, with a white chocolate cheesecake base, cheery sorbet, a booze-soaked real cherry and a large fake cherry made out of kirsch mousse. Like everything that had come before, it was a great concept thoughfully and intelligently realised, with every element complimenting the whole perfectly. Oh, and some micro herbs and flowers which cleverly echoed an autumn forest floor.
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Pistachio soufflé was another masterclass, but then that should hardly be a surprise by now. The soufflé held its shape well, the texture was smooth and satisfying without being too eggy, and the pistachio ice cream had a lovely strength of nutty flavour.
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Two things to mention before we finish. Firstly, the prices - yes, I know. French haute cuisine has never, and will never be cheap, and with starters costing as much as you might expect to pay for mains in any given gastropub, you'd better hope they'd be worth the outlay. And I realise this is an invite (I realise I've been on a lot of invites recently; it's just the way it's worked out, honestly, there's no grand plan) and I didn't have to deal with the full weight of the bill, I still know value when I see it, and you can definitely pay more for worse at lots of different 5* hotel restaurants I can think of. Naming no names (DM me for details).
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Secondly, Cord is a play on words of sorts, coming as it does from the Cordon Bleu group, with test kitchens and private dining events downstairs separate from their main campus in Bloomsbury. But I am assured (and I did ask) that both front of house and kitchen are selected purely based on ability, and trainees occasionally do a day or two here as part of their course, the core staff come from far and wide. And it really shows - apart from the incident with the double velouté, everything was on point and attended to, and everything from timing to execution was fairly close to faultless. Staff, in fact, seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as we were, and why shouldn't they?
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So yes, unfashionable as it has occasionally been to say so, French fine dining has never really gone away, it just needed the right opportunity to shine. Cord is that opportunity and then some, a reminder that when done well, there's no such thing as bad cuisine, just bad restaurants. That in 2023, over a century since London started falling in love with this kind of thing, it's still finding new opportunities to endear itself to the city. Now, isn't it about time we started doing the same for Paris?
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9/10<br/><br/><i>I was invited to Cord and didn't see a bill. If you fancy grabbing a table yourself - and I very much suggest you do - use <a href="https://www.cordrestaurant.co.uk/reservations?utm_source=Review+&utm_medium=Online+review&utm_campaign=Chris+Pople&utm_id=100">this</a> link so they know you came from here. I don't get any reward, it'll just give me a bit of bragging power.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-72350512689535477222023-11-22T10:59:00.002+00:002023-11-22T15:56:23.153+00:00Little Cellars, Camberwell<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBhntgrYLV04agwEEC1-ftVH2l2_Dz2aCutwHghGZDzHQK-2CaKWz1KbOtcIOyO9IjZc8GWqLFO1d_vwjSQxG7CkzLKI8XayY91jnKwN5qTIZh5fcC_NLF8BEqXGX_8_Is5aci6lxO0te_0AeEPpbhj-h3LW0_Ra4fotZLQaL44KvnW2BqWI9eAqaNlRbd/s2016/IMG_7064.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBhntgrYLV04agwEEC1-ftVH2l2_Dz2aCutwHghGZDzHQK-2CaKWz1KbOtcIOyO9IjZc8GWqLFO1d_vwjSQxG7CkzLKI8XayY91jnKwN5qTIZh5fcC_NLF8BEqXGX_8_Is5aci6lxO0te_0AeEPpbhj-h3LW0_Ra4fotZLQaL44KvnW2BqWI9eAqaNlRbd/s600/IMG_7064.jpg"/></a></div><br/>Having enjoyed the original <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2022/10/peckham-cellars-peckham.html">Peckham Cellars</a> very much, I eagerly jumped on a very kind invitation to their new Camberwell offshoot. Little Cellars is aptly named - there's a couple of high tables for 6 in the middle of the room and 8 lower seats arranged looking out of the two downstairs windows - and I'm afraid when I saw how closely to each other complete strangers were expected to sit, my heart did sink a bit. <i>But</i> whatever you might think about communal seating, it's really the only way a venue this size is going to make any money without charging double for the menu, and actually in the end we were perfectly happy occupying a couple of seats at the end of a row, looking out onto Camberwell High Street.
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The menu at Little Cellars is, much like its sister restaurant, an unbeatable mix of small plates served at very reasonable prices, and the occasional eye-catching premium larger dish for those who fancy splashing out. So, for example, we have these lovely cheddar beignets, hot out of the fryer, a crisp, greaseless crust giving way to an ethereally light, fluffy cheesey interior. This is a bit of pastry work worthy of the very best restaurants in town, and in fact were a lot nicer than the Comté gougères I had at a recent meal in Claridge's lobby restaurant. Yeah, I'm name-dropping. Get over it.
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Charcuterie - all Italian - were of excellent quality and, at £10, a pretty generous portion for the money.
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Terrine was way bigger than you had any right to expect for a measly £8, with plenty of interesting textures including just enough fat to loosen it in a very appealing way. If I'm going to be brutal, there wasn't quite enough salt in the mix, and as always seems to be the case, the restaurants that season all their dishes perfectly have salt and pepper on the table that you never use, and whenever you need extra seasoning there's none available. Still, this was still a very good terrine (and plenty of cornichons too).
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But a dish that needed no extra seasoning - and in fact was unimprovable in every way - was the beef bourguignon. I'm always wary about ordering classic French dishes in British restaurants, because it's a style of cuisine that leaves absolutely no wiggle room. It has to be made perfectly, down to the last detail, or the whole house of cards comes falling down. This dish was absolutely perfect, from the tender chunks of melting beef shin, to the glazed baby carrots and shallots, to the thick, beefy red wine sauce studded with bacon. Underneath it all, a supremely smooth and buttery mash that, on its own as a side, would have been worth the trip to Camberwell alone. So now, one of my favourite dishes in London is served (sometimes, at least) in a little neighbourhood restaurant in Camberwell. I did not see that one coming.
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Instead of the sweet desserts, which didn't really seem too exciting - I find panna cotta to be a dessert served by restaurants that don't like desserts - we had a cheese course. For £10 (there's that value again) we were served immaculately kept room-temperature Langres (always a winner), St Maure (a fruity and firm goat's) and - best of them all - Bleu de Causses. This is a cheese, rarely seen in the UK, matured in caves in the Roquefort style not in Roquefort but in the Gorges du Tarn, a magical part of the world where medieval villages cling to the side of precipitous stone cliffs while birds of prey soar and call overhead. If you ever get a chance to try Bleu de Causses - or indeed travel to the Gorges du Tarn - you should absolutely take it.
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This was an invite, so we didn't see the bill, but I worked out with a couple of negronis to start and a couple of glasses of wine the bill would have come to about £50pp, which is a real bargain relative to what you might expect to pay for food of this standard somewhere more central. And yes, I had a couple of minor faults to point out but then that's just in the interests of documenting a more fully rounded experience - I still bounced away from the place high on the memory of that beef bourguignon and the cheeses.
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We finished, and in fact began, our evening over the road at a charming - and rightly popular - little wine bar called Veraison wines, where the enthusiastic staff offered to keep a bottle of wine in the fridge between aperitifs and post-dinner. Already a fantastic place to eat and drink - I'm sure you already all know about Silk Road, Camberwell Arms, Forza Win, Stormbird, Theo's and the Crooked Well - Little Cellars is yet another reason to take the 171 bus from Elephant (or however you choose to travel, other transportation methods are available) and deserves to bring a whole new set of food lovers to the area. Now if you could please open in Battersea, you'd have my eternal gratitude.
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9/10
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<i>I was invited to Little Cellars and didn't see a bill. Apologies - again - for the poor photos, I'm still on iPhone backup.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-10862503692329842492023-11-15T13:59:00.001+00:002023-11-15T13:59:46.016+00:00The Devonshire, Soho<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSsrG2NsLIH3pcUXdLrwsOHkNDk70CCwPG3rAj-AdPfcUtOq_Y9UqGHIc89Fwg-BI8vQoa5POzLtClw-3mBOeKdSkHvgJo-I4zQN_ZApGMogXMP6s2tUwoD2fVNS6rrigKErNP3lStZaaKbjCAIrwzMa-bkbu3O5nK1VtRorv-DDpiUFCPYhSUgojBeP3j/s923/original_5eeba166-8e7d-4433-a539-f8391e10a861_PXL_20231104_224825475.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="923" data-original-width="535" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSsrG2NsLIH3pcUXdLrwsOHkNDk70CCwPG3rAj-AdPfcUtOq_Y9UqGHIc89Fwg-BI8vQoa5POzLtClw-3mBOeKdSkHvgJo-I4zQN_ZApGMogXMP6s2tUwoD2fVNS6rrigKErNP3lStZaaKbjCAIrwzMa-bkbu3O5nK1VtRorv-DDpiUFCPYhSUgojBeP3j/s600/original_5eeba166-8e7d-4433-a539-f8391e10a861_PXL_20231104_224825475.jpg"/></a></div><br/>There's no avoiding the fact, and there's no point dancing around it. There's no need for lengthy, thoughtful or measured arguments; no sense in analysing the details. There needs to be no slow and steady building of a case, culminating in a grand and weighty conclusion. The truth is so stark and self-evident that I may as well just state it up front and let you get on with your day: The Devonshire in Soho is probably the best pub in London, and possibly even the country.
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That there's a new gastropub worth visiting in London, a city which - with one or two notable exceptions - has hitherto hardly been blessed with many classics in the genre - is remarkable in itself. Most places find proximity to local suppliers and lower Not London rents to be crucial factors in their success, which is why despite the capital being home to 9 million people it is rather unrepresented on the reliable <a href="https://www.top50gastropubs.com/list/1-50">Top 50 list</a>, with only one spot in the top 10. The Devonshire would unquestionably be one of the best gastropubs in the country if it had popped up in Devon or Lancashire or rural Kent. That it exists steps away from Piccadilly Circus, in a corner of Soho so soaked with potential customers it could (like every other pub in Soho) have offered frozen Brakes Brothers pub favourites from a laminated menu jauntily decorated with the British flag and still made a killing, is a miracle. Well, it's the first miracle.
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The reason it's not just good but brilliant, comes from an almost superheroic attention to detail. Let's start at the "pub" section downstairs, which is cozy and comfortable in the finest pub tradition, with snugs behind the bar and what they're calling a "family room" at the back where Irish musicians gather on Tuesdays. There's a wide - and interesting - selection of beers including craft stars Verdant and Deya, but there's also the small matter of - their words - the Best Pint Of Guinness In London, a claim which, based on my own observations, very much seems backed up by the evidence. And yes, it's already crazily popular, but - at least in my experience - bar staff are so practiced and efficient that you won't have to wait more than a couple of minutes to get served. Miracle number two.
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Miracle number three is at work in the restaurant upstairs. Ashley Palmer-Watts - <a href="https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/chefs/ashley-palmer-watts">yes that one</a> - works an open grill at one end of the room. Beside him, members of his kitchen brigade gingerly feed lumps of oak wood into a terrifying flame-belching furnace, in a manner that suggests if they didn't, the whole range would roar its disapproval, tear itself away from the wall and roam the streets of Soho looking for sustenance. According to Palmer-Watts, cooking on embers is difficult - <a href="https://www.hot-dinners.com/Gastroblog/Test-drive/devonshire-soho-review-pub-restaurant-grill">"which is probably why almost nobody does it"</a>, but is worth it because of the extra flavour the oak embers impart on the food.
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And my lord, what food. Perhaps you might expect a man who once held three Michelin stars to know his way around a kitchen, but I can tell you <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-bull-bear-manchester.html?m=0">from experience</a> that there's no guarantee the skills required in a world famous fine dining restaurant translate comfortably to a pub grill. But Palmer-Watts looks not just comfortable here but positively <i>beaming</i>, happily chatting with customers, bouncing from grill to grill with enthusiasm and grace. And as I'm about to explain, every bit of that enthusiasm and personality sings from every dish on the menu at the Devonshire.
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We start, though, with bread. And if you thought that the Devonshire might go down a tried-and-trusted route like sourdough, then you haven't been paying attention. What we have here is glazed brioche, baked throughout the day so that every batch is warm out of the oven. My favourite San Diego steakhouse Cowboy Star is famous for their brioch-y buns, and I've spoken at length in the past about how good they are. These are better. They are salty on the outside, golden brown and glowing, and inside so stretchy and moreish you want to eat another one (spread with the room-temperature butter) as soon as you've finished your first. This is a world class bread course.
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So the rest of the food? Obviously, it's all brilliant too. Scallops were giant sweet things, seared to a lovely crust, dressed in an interesting bacon-vinegar dressing which sounds a bit basic while I type it out but was actually probably the best scallop dish I've had ever. You'll be hearing me say "best ever" a lot in this post. I'm sorry if it gets boring.
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I'm going to talk about the rest of the food before I come back to the langoustines - I'll explain why later. This is a stunningly good, dry-aged chunk of fillet steak, with a fantastic salty crust on the outside but inside tender and medium-rare and wonderful. It was presented with a peppercorn sauce which at first seemed quite thin, but then you realise it's supposed to be used as a kind of vinaigrette, sparingly and carefully, like a kind of French chimichurri. Used in small amounts it complimented the beef perfectly. And I never want normal peppercorn sauce again.
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Duck fat chips were crunchy and addictive, definitely worth an order. I mean, of course they are.
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And this giant Iberico chop, timed to just pink in the middle, which melted in the mouth like porky heaven. These pigs are apparently from Ledbury chef Brett Graham's own farm, because I suppose if you have a chance to source your pork from one of the most celebrated chefs in the country, you just do. Nothing - and I do mean nothing - on the menu at the Devonshire is anything less than exceptional, a supreme achievement in sourcing, managing and cooking that shows every stage of the process and every person involved knows exactly what they're doing.
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But the langoustine. Oh, the langoustine. I'm sure if I tell you that these are the best langoustine I've ever had in my life you have an inclination to think I'm overstating. I know I'm prone to exaggeration, I realise that, it's an issue. But I have eaten langoustine all over the UK and the world, and you have to believe me, these are the best langoustine I've ever had in my life. They start with the very best product - Loch Fyne beasties, sweet and fresh. That would be enough already. But then they glaze them with an emulsion that's made of <a href="https://www.hot-dinners.com/Gastroblog/Test-drive/devonshire-soho-review-pub-restaurant-grill">"langoustine butter, prawn stock, cream mayonnaise, lemon juice and white soy"</a> (again thank you Hotdinners) which somehow ends up tasting many, many times greater than the sum of its parts. Salty, buttery, spritzed with citrus, brushed with wood smoke, these were langoustine designed to ruin all other langoustine. Breathtakingly good.
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We ended with a chocolate mousse with boozy cherries, and a Grand Marnier soufflé, theatrically flambéed tableside. With a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream dropped on top, it was both a dramatic and fitting end to a wonderful meal, but also a nod to the fine dining traditions where the head chef made his name. And you haven't lived until you've greedily scooped up the very last morsels of pudding soaked in orange brandy.
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It's barely a couple of weeks since the Devonshire opened its doors, and yet it already feels settled and timeless, a grand old lady of London pubs. Partly that is of course because it occupies a handsome and lovingly restored Victorian building, although how much of the interior is original and how much a very tasteful recreation and reinvention perhaps only the owners will know. Those owners, by the way, are Oisin Rogers (formerly of the Guinea Grill) and Charlie Carroll (of the amazing Flatiron chain) and they have a bit of experience in running fantastic pubs and serving fantastic food respectively, so there was a large part of me expecting to be impressed. But just how stunning every aspect of the Devonshire is completely blindsided me. I've been boring everyone I met since with stories of that bread, and those langoustine, and, well, everything else about the place. I'm booked to go back in a couple of weeks, and if it hadn't been completely booked solid I would have gone earlier.
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I'll stop now; if you aren't convinced by this point the Devonshire is worth your time, then you never will be. Every moment spent thinking and talking about the place is time better spent going there and enjoying it, and I suggest you do exactly that as soon as you can. If you want to know just how good a pub and kitchen can be, look no further than the corner of Denman and Sherwood streets, and this towering achievement in hospitality. I'll see you there.
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10/10
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<i>I was invited to the Devonshire for the above meal, but I have been back a couple of times on my own dollar and am booked for another visit in a couple of weeks' time. Apologies for the terrible photos, my main camera has died and the above - aside from the exterior, which I grabbed from the Devonshire website - were taken with my iPhone.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-55498244421651192922023-11-06T10:20:00.002+00:002023-11-06T10:28:35.368+00:00The Victoria, Oxshott<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRPWkYb19zlZIWSPSSmOqP4vJu3w4slnFdULWUA1_4fnzuywrI-qyPA_KcYoFlguDAqkQ5PEgc_K6qiVjob8ueJnBx5aBEM9CAHD8esmgi58N8MTo4Ju9thVM958jNVYXhyphenhyphenmCmHfGNDZkif5QCRaMHj0Uh0Hwdi6I2ZdiAl9f581pWC_6fCX-8_Gd5FY_-/s1600/PHOTO-2023-11-06-09-35-51.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRPWkYb19zlZIWSPSSmOqP4vJu3w4slnFdULWUA1_4fnzuywrI-qyPA_KcYoFlguDAqkQ5PEgc_K6qiVjob8ueJnBx5aBEM9CAHD8esmgi58N8MTo4Ju9thVM958jNVYXhyphenhyphenmCmHfGNDZkif5QCRaMHj0Uh0Hwdi6I2ZdiAl9f581pWC_6fCX-8_Gd5FY_-/s600/PHOTO-2023-11-06-09-35-51.jpg"/></a></div>More often than not, any given world-class gastropub is a good journey away from London. There are exceptions, of course - the Drapers Arms, the Pelican, and the Baring are all brilliant places to enjoy a pie and a pint within the M25 - but these are rare. Usually, to find that sweet spot between value and quality, comfort and availability, rural charm and culinary excellence, you have to travel. And whether that's a full day's drive to Cornwall or Lancashire, or the 4 hour round trip on Southeastern trains to Fordwich, the inconvenience of the location is offset by the reward at your destination.
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The Victoria in Oxshott is good enough to be worth a full transatlantic flight and expensive airport taxi, as I'll explain shortly, but it's a delight to report that this handsome building, a true Surrey neighbourhood pub, is only 30 minutes train ride - and, at the weekends at least, a measly £7 for the round trip - from Clapham Junction. Which, for some people (not least me), puts it closer to their front door than many London food pubs.
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And what a pub it is. Our lunch was served on a table for two next to a log fire in the smart - though not tablecloth-y - restaurant section, although it's important to point out that unlike some "gastropubs" there is a whole other half of the building which is drinks and snacks only, served by the same smiling and helpful staff but more than fulfiling its role as a proper pub. Albeit a neighbourhood pub that serves elevated Modern British food like these fried oysters with seaweed mayonnaise, which had a lovely grease-free batter and very addictive texture.
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I've got in the habit of ordering soup whenever I see it on a menu, partly because it's getting towards that time of year when being sat inside next to a log fire tucking into a bowl of hot soup just feels <i>absolutely right</i>, but also because actually, something as simple as a soup - in this case leek and potato - is quite a good way of testing whether a kitchen can get the basics right as well as the fancier end of things. And this soup was pretty much perfect - perfectly seasoned, a nice thick satisfying texture and packed full of seasonal flavour. I practically licked the bowl clean.
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And speaking of the 'fancier end of things', mushroom parfait matched some very cheffy techniques (such as a beautifully smooth and richly flavoured parfait) with strong presentational skills, slices of raw mushroom arranged delicately around the parfait. Alongside some beautiful, buttery toasted brioche, it was another near-faultless course.
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From this point, the Victoria could do no wrong. I was never likely to not enjoy a course of duck breast (pink, sliced) and leg (made into a kind of sausage), especially not when served with lovely soft girolles mushrooms and hay baked carrot. But when a neat little jug of exquisite duck jus was plonked down alongside, I was in my own personal heaven. The extremely clever thing about the Victoria is not that it does fine dining dishes like this so well - well, not <i>just</i> that - but also because it does fish and chips, a burger, and a selection of chargrilled steaks to keep the, let's say, less food-wanker element happy too.
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Halibut with courgettes, basil and nori was also good, I'm told, although it had long since disappeared by the time I scooped up the last few bits of duck from my plate, and then, when I thought nobody was looking, pouring the leftover jus straight into my mouth. I'm not exactly proud of that, but I don't regret doing it either.
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Desserts kept up the same fierce standards. Banoffee pie soufflé was everything it needed to be and more, big and bold and with a fantastic internal structure - none of that egginess or grease you get with lesser examples. This was served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, an intelligent choice which highlighted the main flavours without adding a confusing extra note.
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And Black Forest cake brought to mind the famous Heston Blumenthal version, containing a variety of different textures and techniques, and the "cherry liquor ice cream" delicate and moreish. It's worth repeating that everything was so good, so intelligently presented and skilfully built, that I can confidently predict you can't go wrong at the Victoria. This is an operation working at the very highest levels.
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Now, of course, there's the disclaimer that we didn't pay, but as I've repeated ad nauseum on these pages, that just gets you slightly better service, and if you're lucky a nice table next to a log fire - you can't make better food just for the PR invites, it's still the same kitchen. I've totted up roughly what we ordered and it comes to about £152 for food, £50 ish for booze, so it's not exactly a budget offering, but then food like this never comes cheap. If you're heading out for a top gastropub meal these days and hoping to spend under £100/head, you're only likely to be disappointed.
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And again, there's the factor of its location. If the Victoria was in Cornwall, or Lancashire, or East Kent, I'd still be singing its praises and recommending you sort yourselves out with a local AirBnB and intercity train. But in Oxshott, 30 min from London on a very cheap South West Trains weekend ticket, the Victoria has all the benefits and charm of a local rural pub, but with no need for the extra expense of a room for the night. It really has everything going for it. And you'd be silly not to take full advantage.
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9/10<br/><br/><i>I was invited to the Victoria. Apologies for the lack of photos - the above were salvaged from a friend after my main camera died.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-23732836455703054472023-10-12T14:00:00.000+00:002023-10-12T14:00:01.508+00:00Crocadon, Cornwall<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvvtmbn3Be31ZXF2lIt6wgrtHZk8lcKa-9yr2XELGHcJ395AQMCiNVQc6XRlmqMYLekEmyOIaS3NJvwYQw2KoMZRxIi88VN3eyn9Cb8HfbVfWU0JNviNe0EHM39GeH-53EW-BzrXn5ilr7h905BiBeY5zoo-rufdEJOpXq2L59og_fyGCZ96vAZkT_FwI/s4000/P1430329.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkvvtmbn3Be31ZXF2lIt6wgrtHZk8lcKa-9yr2XELGHcJ395AQMCiNVQc6XRlmqMYLekEmyOIaS3NJvwYQw2KoMZRxIi88VN3eyn9Cb8HfbVfWU0JNviNe0EHM39GeH-53EW-BzrXn5ilr7h905BiBeY5zoo-rufdEJOpXq2L59og_fyGCZ96vAZkT_FwI/s600/P1430329.JPG"/></a></div><br/>Great restaurants often involve a great journey, and the journey to Crocadon, for everyone involved, staff and guests, is greater than most. Dan Cox was head chef at Fera at Claridges when I last sampled his cooking, and although the restaurant eventually turned out to be a bit too cutting-edge for the traditionalists at this grand old dame of London hotels, it sat extremely well with me, an ideal combination of strictly seasonal ingredients treated to an impressive variety of high-end techniques. When I learned he was leaving London to set up a restaurant-farm in Cornwall, I suspected it would be exactly the kind of place I would be interested in. Little did I know that the new venture would take a full five years to open to the public, a lead time more appropriate to the erection of a city skyscraper than a restaurant.
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Alongside the metaphorical and temporal journeys, the actual physical journey to Crocadon - this being Cornwall - is also quite demanding. We'd booked the very closest AirBnB to the farm, which although only a few minutes drive away was still too far to walk (in the dark, drunk) so necessitated the booking of a taxi. The full 8 minutes we spent in the cab (four minutes there, four minutes back) cost £50, so if there are any lawyers or orthopedic surgeons out there feeling overworked and underpaid I can thoroughly recommend switching careers to taxi driving in Saltash.
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That said, once sat down in the pretty courtyard at Crocadon, all such stresses began to fade. I don't care how jaded you might be about hyperlocality and seasonality and fine dining in general, but there will always be something extremely correct and pleasing about tucking into a fig leaf negroni right next to the fig tree said leaves came from. It's that sense of immediacy and connection with where your food comes from you rarely find in London, and exactly the reason it's worth the trip out of town.
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Aperitifs - and a brief tour of the Crocadon gardens - over, we were reseated indoors. At only about 25 covers or so, the Crocadon dining space is pretty small, most of the converted barn taken up by a giant open kitchen in which chefs can be seen studiously tweezering micro herbs into charmingly handmade pottery (often crafted by the head chef himself!) throughout the evening. Lampshades are made from what looks like recycled cardboard, and seats are each covered in sheepskin rugs, another nod to the local environment. Essentially, think Noma-on-Tamar (I'm sure they won't mind me saying) with added Cornish charm.
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But what of the food? The first morsel to arrive was a shiso leaf topped with a kind of chutney made with plum and beetroot. And to be clear, it was perfectly pleasant, in the way that a chutney made out of plum and beetroot has every right to be. Whether you consider it a worthwhile addition to a £95 tasting menu rather hinges on how much value you place on hyperlocality and seasonality versus, well, something you'd ordinarily want to eat. It would have gone nicely with a sausage roll.
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The next snack had a far more robust flavour profile - mashed potato, buttery and smooth and nicely seasoned, dressed with a bright green celtuce (a kind of lettuce) oil, and topped with probably my favourite thing to do with a potato, matchstick fries. The combination of mash and vegetable oil worked well, and our whole table happily devoured this in record time. I mean, who wouldn't want a bowl of nice buttery mash?
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Less successful - from my point of view at least - were these little tartlets of delica squash and lemon verbena, which looked cute enough but unless you are a real fan of squash - which I very much am not - didn't really taste that interesting. And although my personal aversion to squash definitely was a factor, I should also say I didn't detect much enthusiasm for these things from the rest of the table either.
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Fortunately, the next couple of courses had far more going for them. Firstly, a padron pepper, delicately charred over coals and served with a wonderfully smooth and balanced lovage sauce. Not only was the padron full of flavour and the charring providing a nice texture, but it had a remarkable level of spice heat - something you're far more likely to find in home-grown than commercial peppers, it turns out.
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And then a fantastic cuttlefish consommé, clear and brightly flavoured and with just enough infusion of lemongrass to lend a slightly East Asian feel. I admit, lovely though this was, that I did briefly wonder what a nicely grilled piece of cuttlefish steak would have been like, and which of the guests earlier in the week had been lucky enough to sample the rest of the animal, but this was still a very pleasing interlude of a course.
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The next course consisted of turnip cut into thick ribbons like pappardelle pasta, in a rather astringent anise hyssop sauce. There wasn't quite enough of the advertised saddleback pork for my liking, and what there was was cold and rather tasteless, but any disappointment regarding vinegary turnip and cold pork was more than offset by a completely brilliant brioche bun glazed with pork fat, which pulled apart most satisfyingly into soft, moist halves, and some fantastic whipped butter topped with pork scratchings.
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Fish course was a fillet of mackerel topped with radish, tomatillo and shiso, and although I very much enjoyed the nice vinegar/herb sauce it came with I'm afraid the mackerel itself was a bit mushy and lifeless. Maybe I've been spoiled with restaurant mackerel recently but I think if you have access to a proper charcoal grill you should be able to get a nice crisp skin on your fish while keeping a plump, firm flesh.
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The "main" meat course was divided into two parts. Mutton from the farm's own flock arrived first as a rib piece topped with rosehip and white currant - yet more pretty sharp flavours but at least here the fattiness of the aged meat was able to offset it and produce a very pleasing effect overall. I also appreciated the way the meat slipped off the bone in one piece, which was fun.
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Then finally, last of the savoury courses was more of the sheep, this time a neat piece of pink loin alongside a swoop of beetroot (I think) purée, a lovely slice of sausage made with leg meat topped with chilli, and what I assume was a mutton stock sauce studded with capers - again rather sharp but working well with the meat elements.
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Desserts came in a number of stages, my favourite turning out to be the first - a kind of super smooth apple sorbet topped with marigold leaves which had a perfect balance of sweet and sour and full of summer flavour.
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I also enjoyed the other dessert of steeped blackberries and sweetcorn cake, and the delicate tuiles of berry and corn layered on top, although I should point out I was in the minority on this as the others found it not sweet enough and yearned for something a bit more, well, conventional.
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It's probably worth repeating at this point that you either value strict seasonality and hyperlocality above all other aspects of the restaurant experience, in which case Crocadon will be your very nirvana, or you end your dinner wishing they'd let their hair down and use a bit of chocolate or truffle or something just to provide a bit more colour. I understand completely what Crocadon is trying to achieve with their fanatically strict attitudes to super-low food miles and commitment to use only what they can grow themselves at the appropriate time of year, and normally I'd be completely on board with it, but the fact is I did feel like there was something missing from some of the courses - not always anything obvious, but <i>something</i>, perhaps some veal stock to enliven a sauce, or some fancy pastry work to zhuzh up a dessert - that would have made for a more satisfying end result.
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Also, and I know I have a soft spot for game and go a bit giddy when I see it on a menu so this might just be a personal thing, but our taxi literally had to slow down to a crawl on the Crocadon driveway because giant flocks of pheasant and partridge were threatening to throw themselves under the wheels of the car. We were slap in the middle of game season, and the food "miles" could have been measured in steps, so why did none of these birds - sustainable, local and tasty - find their way onto the menu?
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But I don't want to end on a moan, and it's worth stressing that we did have a lovely time at Crocadon, enjoying interesting natural wines and local ciders and whiskies, and service by everyone concerned was absolutely note-perfect. And although it's my "job" (such as it is) to point out faults where I find them, overall Crocadon are doing far more things right than wrong, and nobody left that beautiful building at the end of the night less than satisfied. At least, until it came time to pay for the taxi.
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With a couple of final sets of petits fours - a summer berry meringue thing, and a little tartlet containing a purée of some other kind of citrussy fruit - the bill, with plenty of booze shared between the three of us drinking that evening - came to just under £140 a head, which to me looks like pretty good value considering the amount of effort that had gone into it all. There's no doubt that the Crocadon approach is the cutting edge of sustainable hospitality, and no amount of whining from a jaded Londoner about missing chocolate is about to change that - this is, like it or not, the future of British fine dining. And I suppose the sooner I get used to it the better.
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7/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-77317016080458001592023-08-18T15:02:00.004+00:002023-08-18T15:02:49.194+00:00The Silver Birch, Chiswick<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQCR7OufHAAXi8Rq8hYLbb7bA16cTWMZ7HmL2yOwmU21g8hUuGelsQbI813gjdQRll-PGlguOiWuVlMLmY6fKV3AaZohX3lmXoH1cM_IWqDVdm1WnWdPOVFCbRnYk18ogE2-uaZd9GYf6F4R2NBu8snFHYLyeNfDJ9NTIX4tumEw38ZSlPS2QAn1ztEPk/s4000/P1430234.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQCR7OufHAAXi8Rq8hYLbb7bA16cTWMZ7HmL2yOwmU21g8hUuGelsQbI813gjdQRll-PGlguOiWuVlMLmY6fKV3AaZohX3lmXoH1cM_IWqDVdm1WnWdPOVFCbRnYk18ogE2-uaZd9GYf6F4R2NBu8snFHYLyeNfDJ9NTIX4tumEw38ZSlPS2QAn1ztEPk/s600/P1430234.JPG"/></a></div><br/>It's a pleasant novelty to, for once, not be opening a post about an excellent neighbourhood restaurant without a resigned grump about the lack of such places in my own particular neighbourhood. Until recently, my fellow SW11 residents had very little to be proud of (and even less so since the wonderful Mien Tay changed ownership, although mercifully so far this doesn't seem to have knocked standards too much), but with the arrival of <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2023/04/ploussard-battersea.html">Ploussard</a> we have been gifted the holy grail of local dining - affordable, seasonal, consistent, and fun. I booked a return more or less as soon as I'd finished my first meal there.
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And so to Chiswick, where the lucky locals of this leafy (and commendably cyclist-friendly) part of town have a genuine gem on their hands. The Silver Birch is not brand new, but had the awful initial bad luck of opening between Covid lockdowns in 2020, and by all accounts struggled to find an audience in a time when most people were afraid to leave their front doors never mind sit indoors in a small high street restaurant. But now, with a new head chef (Nathan Cornwall, ex- of the Barn at Moor Hall), a superb new front of house (our waitress introduced herself as Yas) and an ambitious (and yes, slightly more expensive) menu, this is a restaurant supremely confident of its place in the world.
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Given that all the items that caught our eye from the a la carte made up the tasting menu, the tasting menu seemed the obvious choice. A few years ago £90 would have marked you out as being at the finer end of fine dining, but these days, just as Thursday is the new Friday, £90 is the new £50. It began with "snacks", cured trout and seaweed tart which had a lovely balance between the seafood and earthy vegetal pureé underneath (plus topped with salmon roe, which I always love), a cute little blue cheese paste sandwiched between delicate parmesan crackers, and my personal favourite pig's head fritters, joyous little parcels of soft, rich pork inside crisp fried breadcrumbs.
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The focal point of the next course was some quite excellent sourdough focaccia, with a delightful delicate salty crust and gently sticky crumb. With that, whipped lovage butter provided in such generous amounts that required you put a quite thick layer on the bread to use it up. And you won't hear anyone complaining about that. But the fun didn't end there - there was also a cute little bowl of smoked bacon mousse with pea veloute, colourful and exquisitely constructed. None of the above would look out of place in a restaurant with multiple Michelin stars.
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If you look closely at this tartare you may notice that the beef itself is quite light thanks to quite extensive marbling. This is ex-dairy cattle beef, full of flavour and full of yielding, luscious fat, and complimented perfectly by crunchy fresh discs of kohlrabi, cournichon, wee little nasturtium leaves and little blobs of mustard and vegetable pureé of some kind, maybe the advertised sea herbs. For more texture, there was a few shards of house cracker which had herbs baked into them. Every inch of this dish, indeed everything up to this point as well, was considered and carefully crafted, with a strong set of cooking skills put to great use.
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Isle of Wight tomatoes, beautifully presented, skinless and sweet and perfectly seasoned, came with a tomato consommé so good it was worth the trip to Chiswick all by itself. If I'm going to be brutally honest it didn't need the pickled artichoke, which was perfectly nice but a bit of a distraction from the tomatoes, and I'm pretty sure I didn't detect any of the advertised pickled cucumber, but what the hell - that wonderful consommé, and the tomatoes, were all I needed.
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A huge, bright chunk of Shetland cod came next, expertly cooked (as you might hope and expect) and breaking into nice defined flakes. But we've all had nice cod before, and you may have even had a courgette flower stuffed with scallop mousse, which came alongside it. What really set this dish apart was a thing called "tartare roe sauce", which was a kind of vinaigrette studded with two different types of roe, which sang with seafood and summer flavours. It was one of those sauces that tasted effortlessly good, and yet you know it took a lot of skill to get right.
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There are two types of people, one that can read "Cornish lamb, wild garlic, crispy sweetbread, girolles" and think they want to eat that more than anything else in the world right now, and those that don't. I'm one of the former. The lamb was cooked to pink, the sweetbread was coated in another delicate breadcrumb crust (see also: the pig's head snack), and between them nestled girolles, braised shallot, peas and leaves of wild garlic. And of course, it was all soaked in one of those salty, meaty lamb reductions that only the very best places do well. As a climax to the savoury courses, you could not have asked for more.
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But even after all that, the desserts still wowed. I'm slightly allergic to raw cherries, so Silver Birch very kindly subsituted that dish out for some equally wonderful (I'm sure) strawberries, with a rich and zingy strawberry sorbet and bound together with "elderflower cream cheese", a very nice invention.
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The final dessert was a brown butter chocolate delice, with milk sorbet and caramelised white chocolate, and despite having polished off seven courses by this point, and fed 6 very generously portioned matching wines, it's still burned into my memory as the most beguiling balance of chocolate and dairy, with texture provided both by a lovely fresh milk sorbet and a quiff of spun sugar on top. It, too, was demolished.
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What's interesting about tastings like this, and the Silver Birch in particular, is that you could, at first glance, think that you've seen this kind of thing before. Looking at just the basics of the menu - canapes, bread, snack, veg course, fish course, meat course, dessert 1, dessert 2 - it's a structure that informs more or less any modern British tasting menu, a format repeated up and down the country.
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What sets the Silver Birch apart from the 2023 restaurant pack isn't that they're revolutionising the way we eat out, or inventing challenging new flavour pairings or wacky techniques, but instead carefully examining every element of what makes a menu like this work, from the choice of ingredients to the accessible presentation to the skill and detail in all of the sauces and dressings and elements, and making each one absolutely the best it can possibly be. It's an obvious way to win the game, and yet one that very few places have the intelligence and skill to pull off.
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So yes, the Silver Birch is quite brilliant. The point off full marks is just for the slightly less than exciting choice of fish (I'd seen John Dory and Dover Sole served in that same dish on social media that same week, but maybe that just serves me right for setting my expectations based on social media), but really there was very little else to complain about. As neighbourhood restaurants go, in fact as any restaurants go, it's right up with the best of them. I'm sure it will do very well indeed.
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9/10<br/><br/><i>The food at the Silver Birch was comped, but we paid for our wines.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-2094625702179455682023-08-07T12:21:00.004+00:002023-08-07T12:21:49.229+00:00Archway, Battersea Park<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg_YJmidqQc410lNUkD_mZtTSS8Ow1mhGpudQKIIib23ZYCUyksyLX6c4NdbAEwuxeU_nXOkhyVFXuqWb7ozj-3tCgTw5G6MeuJBsPMtSZqSlUk4Asgpx8u0GoQ2u1JTIfpBu9f-zTTApVrrWXu3_ntT5g46gm9seh4msHrl9NiIR_ewnYdkZz9bDN9m84/s4000/P1430186.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg_YJmidqQc410lNUkD_mZtTSS8Ow1mhGpudQKIIib23ZYCUyksyLX6c4NdbAEwuxeU_nXOkhyVFXuqWb7ozj-3tCgTw5G6MeuJBsPMtSZqSlUk4Asgpx8u0GoQ2u1JTIfpBu9f-zTTApVrrWXu3_ntT5g46gm9seh4msHrl9NiIR_ewnYdkZz9bDN9m84/s600/P1430186.JPG"/></a></div><br/>Firstly, I have a confession to make. Many years ago I was very kindly treated to lunch at the River Café in Hammersmith, and I didn't like it. I think I was mainly intimidated - by the well-heeled crowd, the scale and the power of that vast dining room and open kitchen, and yes, by the prices, astronomical figures seemingly chosen only to be as shocking as possible to anyone who wasn't a multi-millionare. I gave it a rather grumpy review, then vowed never to return.
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Years later, though, I did go back. The River Cafe staff are given very generous discounts from time to time, and encouraged to bring along anyone they want to share the fun. So, curious to see if they - or indeed I - had changed over the years, I found myself taking an afternoon off and joining a staffer friend for lunch.
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And I had the time of my life. Everything was briliant, from the atmosphere in that cavernous room to the friendly but extremely capable staff to the exquisitely tasteful and seasonal wood-grilled Italian food, it seemed to be the kind of place where it would be impossible not to enjoy yourself unless you had a giant wood-fired chip on your shoulder, and I felt incredibly stupid for having denied myself it all these years. And if you're thinking "well, he would like it as he wasn't paying", guess what - as soon as that lunch was over I made myself another booking in a couple of weeks' time and paid in full. And I had the time of my life all over again.
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So what's all this got to do with Archway? Well, most obviously, it was set up by ex-River Cafe staff, and if nothing else the Hammersmith place has a fantastic track record of sending out its alumni to propagate fantastic pasta around the country. We have them to thank for such names as <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2021/12/sonny-stores-bristol.html">Sonny Stores in Bristol</a>, <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2010/07/trullo-islington.html">Trullo in Islington</a>, and the sadly-departed <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2010/05/zucca-bermondsey.html">Zucca in Bermondsey</a>, although we do also have them to blame for Jamie Oliver so the less said about that the better. Anyway, now SW11 has its own little slice of Tuscany-on-the-Thames, and on a wet Wednesday evening I headed down an unlikely dark alleyway underneath Battersea Park station to see if it could carry on the noble tradition.
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From an attractively short and straightforward menu, first to arrive were flatbreads, fresh out of a wood-fired oven, one topped with leeks soaked in "brown crab meat butter" (that's poetry right there) and another with gorgonzola, figs and honey. In both, the bread was the star - full of life and crunch and comfort - and though I obviously preferred the one topped with "brown crab meat butter" (I mean, duh), they were both very impressive bits of baking. A good start.
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But it was with the arrival of the first pasta dish that Archway really flexed its River Café muscles. Cavatelli with beef ragu was - and I'm not using these words lightly - completely and utterly perfect. Perfect pasta with a perfect bite, a perfect tomato-red wine sauce studded with rich ground beef, perfectly seasoned, perfectly served. Yes, you'd hope a modern Italian restaurant with such a pedigree should be able to knock out a decent bowl of pasta but this was clearly a world class bit of cooking, astonishingly good.
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Equally good - and so yes, perfect again - was pappardelle with mushrooms, brown butter and sage, another heavenly combination of bouncy fresh ribbons of pasta, seasonal funghi and heady herbs all soaked in a silky buttery sauce. As a not-very-good cook myself, and particularly when it comes to fresh pasta, I find it hard to pinpoint exactly what sets the good pasta restaurants apart from the great, apart from the fact that some make me pleasantly surprised, and some make me with giddy with utter joy. Archway fits in the latter group.
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Fregola "risotto" (fregola are little balls of pasta a bit like tapioca, but nicer obviously) was the base for a selection of fresh clams and mussels studded with just enough chilli to provide and nice buzz above the seafood. There's something incredibly satisfying about eating a forkful of fregola soaked in salty seafood broth, lighter than a risotto but packing the same flavour punch. Dangerously moreish.
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As possibly one of the finest pasta restaurants in the country, you really don't need another reason to visit the place. But I'm happy to report that a giant butterflied mackerel was a great demonstration of Archway's skill with grilled fish. The mackerel itself was immaculate, with a dark, crisp skin holding a good amount of fat next to soft and perfectly-timed flesh, and though it would have been nice to have crunchy cubes of toast instead of soggy tomato-bread, the "panzanella" salad dressing was otherwise very nice.
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Desserts were generous of portion and of flavour. The strawberry creme brulee was my own favourite, topped with chunks of steeped berries so full of summer colour they practically glowed. And although to this day we couldn't quite decide every ingredient that formed the "torta della nonna" (and completely forgot to ask at the time), the custard filling was expertly balanced by a nice delicate pastry crust. And that's probably all you need to know.
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In the interests of this post not turning into a completely two-dimensional gush-fest, I feel duty-bound to point out two things I didn't quite get at Archway. Firstly, the wine list is presented in a font so miniscule, and the lighting in the room was so "romantic", that nobody on our table could read it, so we ended up just pointing at a price and hoping for the best. Fortunately, the Archway's choice of house white is as tasteful as the rest of their operation, so all ended well. Secondly, there are two identical unmarked doors off the main dining room; one leads to the toilets, the other to a store cupboard and office. So there's a potential problem there.
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But I am nitpicking, and the fact is there's very little to fault about Archway. Service was friendly and enthusiastic, the room is nicely proportioned (although I think some would find the tables a <i>little</i> too close together, depending on your elbow-room requirements) and the vast open kitchen, stretching back three times as far as the dining room is long, as far as I could gather, is a wonderful focal point and endlessly entertaining as you watch bits and pieces being moved in and out of the wood ovens and grills. And at £64pp it's even at the lower end of the London 2023 restaurant budget spectrum. But never mind all that - just go and eat the pasta. Everything else is a footnote.
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9/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-38299116479136041512023-07-25T11:04:00.001+00:002023-07-25T11:04:37.494+00:00Kachori, Elephant and Castle<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfNXdo6NuSPI9Qjrw2xRUCmlWhvoht0aqbpGZ0LIszK0pj6zY5h4FA0oLpdczrn3hnjinUNm4uV0FeyNcR_9CY4cY2PNety_ZLdo36FyaFGY4EeUInrHS1sMW9RSWcLZvxKPljTciQmNMOhJaoASkq38uXKCab18ec0pSKvVgobx9p1QBX10TwkARovD_c/s4000/P1430056.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfNXdo6NuSPI9Qjrw2xRUCmlWhvoht0aqbpGZ0LIszK0pj6zY5h4FA0oLpdczrn3hnjinUNm4uV0FeyNcR_9CY4cY2PNety_ZLdo36FyaFGY4EeUInrHS1sMW9RSWcLZvxKPljTciQmNMOhJaoASkq38uXKCab18ec0pSKvVgobx9p1QBX10TwkARovD_c/s600/P1430056.JPG"/></a></div><br/>There's a lot to be said about the redevelopment/regeneration/whitewashing (delete as applicable) of Elephant and Castle, and I am singularly unqualified to say it. I'm not trying to avoid the issue (honest), but am very aware that having nothing invested in the old place and being hardly a frequent visitor, I just don't know whether the old 60s shopping centre was worth saving or whether the new public spaces, footpaths, cycleways and - yes - fancy bars and restaurants are a net benefit to the community. All I will say is that they wanted to knock the Barbican down, too, in the 80s - and just look at it now.
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Anyway it's hardly Kachori's fault that they are where they are. Like a number of interesting, independent businesses here and in Vauxhall they're taking advantage of artificially low rates while the residential properties above and around are on the market, until such a time they're all sold and Kachori and the like can be kicked out to make way for a branch of Zizzi's or Wagamama. At least, I'm assuming that's the plan.
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But although it's very easy to be cynical about the area as a whole, the experience at Kachori is so utterly charming you can easily put aside worries about gentrification and the eviction of traditional communities while you nibble on your mini poppadums and house chutneys. The people involved are ex-Gymkhana which comes across very clearly in the DNA of the menu, and the quality of the food and drink offering - this is all brilliant stuff, at prices that reflect the ambition of the kitchen without being unreasonable.
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Guinea fowl tikka is the second superb guinea fowl dish I have been lucky enough to try this month, the other being a classic French version at the Beehive in Berkshire. Maybe it's just very easy to make this bird sing, or maybe - and more likely - they were just two very good restaurants. Beneath a deep, rich spice mix was a wonderfully soft and moreish boned leg, with just the right level of fat and a gentle charring from the tandoor. Great stuff.
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"Bikaneri raj Kachori" was a single giant puri filled with tamarind and yoghurt and bung beans, and scattered with pomegranete seeds and pea shoots. Breaking it apart into bitesize chunks proved a rather difficult - and messy - task, but we were rewarded with a lovely fresh starter full of crunch and colour, well worth the effort.
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Lamb chops - I am duty-bound to order lamb chops in any Indian restaurant - were also pretty much perfect, with another deliriously good spice mix and a nice crunchy char from the grill. They also, crucially, had a bit of a bite - I don't <i>mind</i> the super-soft cut-with-a-spoon texture that some places offer, I just think I want my lamb to fight back a bit. Makes the whole experience a lot more fun.
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"Lahshuni Jheenga" was a dish of three shell-on king prawns, crisped up on the grill but with a nice firm texture, served with a refreshing avocado raita thing. And OK yes, £20 is a lot to pay for three prawns, but they were good, and good seafood is never cheap.
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Naans, as you might hope for an expect somewhere like this, were tip-top too, all bubbly and bouncy with a delicate pastry-like texture. They were very useful for mopping up the leftover sauce from an excellent butter chicken dish, which used thigh meat instead of the more usual breast for a more interesting bite.
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Service - with the usual caveats applying about service on invites - didn't put a foot wrong, and managed to be attentive as well as enthusiastic about the food and drinks they were offering. It also, impressively, didn't slow down as the room filled up - as by the end of our dinner every single table in the room was taken. Not bad, really, for a new restaurant in a reshuffled part of town. Oh and this is a chai masala creme brulee with summer fruits, and a lovely little thing it was too.
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So whether you let the Elephant in the room (or in this case, the room in the Elephant) steer your judgement or not, in the end, objectively, Kachori is a very good restaurant, and if I'm here to do only one job it's to report that. An ambitious, regional Indian menu from ex-Gymkhana was always going to impress, but we should never lose sight of the fact that just because they make it <i>look</i> easy, doesn't mean it's necessarily a done deal. I enjoyed Kachori very much, and I can see myself going back. Maybe I'm part of the problem.
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8/10<br/><br/><i>I was invited to Kachori and didn't see a bill. Expect to pay about £70/head with cocktails and wine.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-12787786596206019092023-07-18T13:40:00.001+00:002023-07-18T13:40:19.386+00:00AngloThai at Outcrop, the Strand<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifSO5MZGpRHRhLEWo6snnf4sQSEDdlYD3UAgybxPk0czcq9dMf5NNXv7v6UI1TICxFoGh1GdiBMmcRf4Ur2JdWphEvQLdL1gaYmqzNpZtM4RsjnzmQ5kPzZzBLRltqPkjnI_zyz45xX1HF8qp32pBuKpoD3M0G-cQaBEsLHOqJ28vgvFjC4EHUVUsqFQoH/s4000/P1430113.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifSO5MZGpRHRhLEWo6snnf4sQSEDdlYD3UAgybxPk0czcq9dMf5NNXv7v6UI1TICxFoGh1GdiBMmcRf4Ur2JdWphEvQLdL1gaYmqzNpZtM4RsjnzmQ5kPzZzBLRltqPkjnI_zyz45xX1HF8qp32pBuKpoD3M0G-cQaBEsLHOqJ28vgvFjC4EHUVUsqFQoH/s600/P1430113.JPG"/></a></div><br/>Part of the vast, shiny new 180 Strand development, AngloThai at Outcrop is an entirely outside - albeit thankfully mainly covered - restaurant designed to make the most of the summer months. Unfortunately on Friday the weather was a bit more traditionally Anglo than Thai, bucketting down with rain and temperatures in the teens. Still, there is a certain cozy appeal to the space, attractively decorated with plenty of green and rows of growing herbs, even if I did get completely lost on the way and ended up having to enter rather dramatically through a fire exit (with the permission of the nice staff).
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I was never going to dislike AngloThai. I've had a keen interest in John Chantarasak & Diz West's husband and wife operation for many years, and was very pleased when they announced they'd - finally - found a permanent home. But as we all know, the restaurant industry is completely broken, their deal fell through, and they found themselves hosting yet another popup in this new Soho House building, albeit a popup that will last a few months instead of the usual couple of days.
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Alongside a couple of welcome cocktails - Tomato Top Negroni was lovely, a kind of half-negroni half-Bloody Mary, Crop Circle Cooler could have done with a bit less of the elderflower cordial in it as it was rather sweet, but still drinkable - we had Carlingford oysters dressed in a chilli and sea buckthorn mixture which was incredibly clever. Chilli and citrus always work well with seafood (at least, I can't think of any instance when they don't) so this was a great start.
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A couple of bits of pieces of blogger-bonus extras appeared throughout the evening. This is flatbread with shrimp paste butter and Cornish shellfish, more on the Anglo side of things than the Thai you could argue but none the worse for that, with nice fluffy fresh bread and plenty of nice fresh seafood.
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Things kicked into the next gear with the arrival of an utterly wonderful hot & sour turbot bone broth, the liquid containing both a generous amount of mussels and some hen of the woods mushrooms alongside good knows what else. The seafood and vegetables were very good, but really this was all about that broth, a perfect balance of chilli and sour notes and something I could have devoured pint after pint of.
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Equally impressive in a totally different way were violet artichoke tempura with yellow soybean and sugarcane vinegar. The "tempura" was quite different from the Japanese style, almost like fried pastry, or string hopper. The flavour of the artichoke inside shone, and the clever gels and sauces dotted on the top presumably were the soybean and vinegar elements. It all combined to be soft, crunchy, sharp, soft, sweet, sour all at once and alongside the broth I would consider this dish a must-order.
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Only slightly less successful in my opinion was the venison tartare, which seemed like it needed a lot more of the advertised scallop roe chilli jam and makrut lime to balance the rather bland protein. Or maybe it just wasn't for me; I'm a bit fussy about tartare.
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It's unusual for me to order a large sharing dish for a main - it does, after all, mean I have one less dish to talk about - but we definitely didn't regret this giant half chicken with palm sugar glaze, cooked to a nice golden skin and beautifully moist inside, and going excellently with a rather addictive soybean and elderflower dipping sauce. On the side, a nice Thai salad of julienned veg with hazelnuts, and a very meaty bowl of spelt with cured beef heart and long pepper which nearly finished us off.
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But the promise of dessert proved too great since we were enjoying ourselves so much, and both were briliant - a tea burnt cream and summer berries creme brulee thingy, and a marvellously smooth and refreshing fig leaf sorbet which came with a mandala-shaped coconut ash cracker in which they'd cleverly managed to get blobs of caramel <i>inside</i> the folds of the biscuit.
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The bill came to just over £90pp, basically the new normal for central London dining, and certainly bang on what was reasonable for cooking of this style and imagination. Look, I was never going to dislike AngloThai and I didn't, but there's a certain extra heartwarming pleasure in seeing these guys back where they belong serving Thai food made with British ingredients and a well-chosen wine list (Diz) to a room of happy punters, and served by a front of house team whipped into shape by Clove Club boys Johnny Smith and Daniel Willis no less. I really hope they do find a permanent space sooner rather than later. But in the meantime, AngloThai at the Outcrop is here, and it's great, and if you have any even passing interest in what happens when the finish British ingredients are treated to intelligent Thai techniques, look no further.
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8/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-57521055341961649092023-07-10T11:49:00.001+00:002023-07-11T10:33:04.214+00:00Chungdam, Soho<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCB06VT90S0ajJxIxVuDDthk5qu1M-XcOhPjRp9Qx_bq4fA_9GCQPFKVs64t7GGskfBQE0Wy9N9ioCWyaS2ZCbMrrgfllNrbldgrolvuSq-0c5bDLZn480Kro8wH37Pqi1GdEhH0jQ-Fwc1KNuR-yxpS6dRTfj56mhFDOJQUQqoQpcHJw-DerhA4BE8Ie-/s4000/P1430006.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCB06VT90S0ajJxIxVuDDthk5qu1M-XcOhPjRp9Qx_bq4fA_9GCQPFKVs64t7GGskfBQE0Wy9N9ioCWyaS2ZCbMrrgfllNrbldgrolvuSq-0c5bDLZn480Kro8wH37Pqi1GdEhH0jQ-Fwc1KNuR-yxpS6dRTfj56mhFDOJQUQqoQpcHJw-DerhA4BE8Ie-/s600/P1430006.JPG"/></a></div><br/>I generally try and avoid focusing too much on service on invited meals. If the front of house know you're in to review they usually try and be that extra bit more attentive, and occasionally too much so, and either way it's rarely an accurate reflection of the average punter's experience.
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However, rules are made to be broken, and I feel duty bound to mention the service at Chungdam because it's amongst the most pleasant, knowledgable and mesmerisingly efficient I've come across in a long while. The experience of eating there is like having your own personal chef and confidant, who patiently explains how everything works, offers advice on what goes best with what, and occasionally personally handles the cooking of certain items with a grace and skill that's so utterly transfixing it's like watching close up magic done with beef instead of playing cards.
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Now, great service is rarely, if ever, enough of a reason to visit a restaurant by itself, but fortunately Chungdam is serving rather nice food and drink as well, to boot. Our welcome drink was a soju cocktail served in a very pretty frozen coupe glass, wide and shallow, that felt very special even if it did require both hands to safely pick it up. Or maybe that's just clumsy old me.
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As you might hope and expect, house pickles were the first foodstuffs to arrive. Sesame beansprouts, house kimchi and pickled radish all had things to recommend them, but we particularly liked the radish which had that irresistable funk of daikon matched with a gentle sweetness.
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Japchae arrived alongside the pickles, a dish of glass noodles with beef and wood-ear mushrooms, amongst various other stir-fried veg. Perfectly decent, although looking back at the end of the meal, almost painfully overstuffed with various different cuts of beef and noodles, I think this is one dish we probably could have done without. Would make a nice lunch by itself though.
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The real excitement began with the arrival of the first beef dish, raw tartare with slices of pear. The sesame oil made a good dressing but what lifted this dish was the addition of at least an entire bulb (I may be exaggerating... but not by much) of raw garlic, which made the thing <i>burn</i> in the mouth like you wouldn't believe. I'm a huge fan of too-much-garlic at the best of times, but this was unreal. I can only apologise to anyone who shared my carriage on the southbound Northern Line later in the evening.
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Alongside that arrived seafood pancake - very good, particularly the citrussy dipping sauce it came with - but eyeing up the five more courses to come on the menu and given how generous the portions had been so far we just tried a square or two each. Bear in mind though, this was a press menu, so you should be able to construct yourself something a bit more reasonable on your own visit.
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I was very excited at the prospect of the grade 1++ Korean beef listed on the menu, and it was certainly very nicely marbled and had a good flavour, but in conversation with our waiter it turns out it's not actually Korean, or officially graded 1++ (think Japanese Wagyu grading but for Korean cows) but the closest approximation they could find from UK butchers. Which is absolutely fine and wouldn't have been a problem if they weren't listing 1++ steak on the menu, which I'm fairly sure is against some trading standards laws. So they might want to look at that and put it in inverted commas or something in the future. Anyway we greedily demolished strips of this ultra tender steak with chilli, sesame oil, salt and a number of other interesting dips and sauces, some of which I have no chance of remembering how to describe or spell.
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Brisket and short ribs both came sliced ultra-thin, thus needing no more than a few seconds on the tabletop grill before they could be eagerly gobbled down. The brisket came with some nigiry-style pieces of lovely vinegary rice which made a great foil for the beef, but in almost all cases with the beef I preferred it either with the soy dressing or the sesame salt, both of which brought out the flavours in interesting and addictive ways.
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A final savoury course of cold noodle soup with kimchi, which even through the fog of beef-addled defeat I could tell was a very intelligent and nicely constructed thing. I half thought about asking for some to take home with me but didn't trust myself not to spill it on the tube, so in the end ate as much as I could - which unfortunately wasn't much - and left the rest. I hope they'll forgive me.
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Matcha roll cake was more easy to devour - different stomach for dessert and all that - and was excellent, made by their sister Japanese cafe Shibuya. I've heard good things about Shibuya actually, particularly their ice cream, so I'm determined to make a separate visit there one day.
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Meanwhile, I shall continue to digest my meal at Chungdam and recommend wholeheartedly it to whoever asks. True, they've dropped a point or two for mislabelling the beef and for not having proper charcoal tabletop grills like they do at the more authentic New Malden joints, but the former can be easily fixed, and the latter is very likely to be a limitation of their Soho license, who knows. Either way, all that is made up for in spades by carefully presented food of vigour and imagination, and service that you'd cross oceans to enjoy. I imagine it's very, very difficult to have a bad time at Chungdam.
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8/10<br/><br/><i>I was invited to Chungdam and didn't see a bill. I think if you had a normal amount of food and a drink or two you might expect to pay something like £60/head.
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-1311354582594188022023-06-27T09:47:00.001+00:002023-07-04T19:40:59.731+00:00Bossa, Marylebone<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-BEUWiiQtEsPBy7Kgk0ed_L4rjJyxIEdXfjKD3DU6tSJe8id3xYQ3mVOM9q0SSSRrR175AlDTdFJ6ROCgFK-dnybZYSH6xTDwQeutcMrxFoXWFuRDpAwJ66vxE4WPyYNYCLsTWd2mJRK_sD19aCTyGdRg52RPvBIgTWvqTJErL03rTD3cHEK7431e0X0W/s4032/Photo%2015-06-2023,%2019%2001%2005.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-BEUWiiQtEsPBy7Kgk0ed_L4rjJyxIEdXfjKD3DU6tSJe8id3xYQ3mVOM9q0SSSRrR175AlDTdFJ6ROCgFK-dnybZYSH6xTDwQeutcMrxFoXWFuRDpAwJ66vxE4WPyYNYCLsTWd2mJRK_sD19aCTyGdRg52RPvBIgTWvqTJErL03rTD3cHEK7431e0X0W/s600/Photo%2015-06-2023,%2019%2001%2005.jpg"/></a></div><br/>I don't know whether it's by design or sheer accident that Bossa, a brand new Brazilian restaurant from chef Alberto Landgraf, has landed right next door to the Brazilian embassy. But it felt very appropriate walking under a giant Brazilian flag up to the front steps of Bossa - who knows, perhaps Vere St is on its way to becoming a new Little Brazil.
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Inside, it's smart and comfortable in the modern London style, with a good mix of booths and views of the open kitchen. I can probably be accused of taking interior design for granted - it's not really my area of expertise - but there are clearly a lot of very good restaurant designers working in the city at the moment.
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Now, hands up - I've never really tried high-end Brazilian food before. The country itself regularly features on the top fine dining lists and there are 16 Michelin stars in Rio alone, but so far London hasn't been host to too many in the category, the 2-Michelin starred Da Terra being the one notable exception to the rule. There used to be a Japanese-Brazilian fusion place called Sushinho on the Kings Road but I was never too tempted to try it and then it closed. Maybe it was brilliant (there's a long tradition of that style of food, called Nikkei, in South America) but something tells me it wasn't.
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Anyway, events began with a very nicely made Caipirinha and Mojito, and some good focaccia and olive oil. The bar is very well appointed at Bossa and staffed by clearly very capable mixerinhos (as I imagine they're called back in Brazil) so I thoroughly recommend making use of their services.
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Roasted bone marrow was nice in of itself, with a good flavour and plenty of the good stuff, but I had a bit of an issue with the strange texture of the tapioca pancake things it came with - not a million miles away from like eating cork coasters. But I am nothing if not keen to try new things, and this was certainly different. The cashew dip was good too.
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Beef tartare was very nicely seasoned, pickled and spiced and contained a very generous shaving of truffle. We liked the little bits of crunch too - toasted oats perhaps although I couldn't swear to that. It's not a very purist attitude but I always think beef tartare benefits from an element of crunch.
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Pork belly was a huge lump of nicely cooked meat with a thick, bubbly rind (as you might expect for £38, but more on the value side of things later) with a satisfying sauce they called 'feijoada broth'. Feijoada is a black bean stew so presumably this was black beans cooked in pork stock, or something like that. Either way, was very nice.
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The second main was, we were told, their house speciality. Seafood <i>Moqueca</i> is a stew apparently originating in Bahia and was very decent, with plenty of big chunks of meat and a nice tomato/coconut flavour to the sauce. Whether you think it's worth paying £49 for a fairly small bowl of seafood stew and rice, well, you'll have to decide on that yourself.
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OK so, we may as well pause to address the elephant in the room - Bossa is not a cheap place. And I appreciate all of the things that make running a restaurant in London 2023 so ruinously expensive, from energy costs to staff to the price of ingredients, which have all shot up and continue to reach skyward in the last year or so. But even so, at its best Bossa is cooking hearty, unelaborate but enjoyable food - rich stews and big slabs of pork and the like - and to be charging almost exactly for 3 courses what Alex Dilling asks at the Cafe Royal for his food of exquisite beauty and two Michelin star service experience, well it all feels a bit unearned. Alberto Landgraf may have two stars back home, but there's a certain arrogance in assuming you can get away with £90/head for 3 courses in a brand new place.
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Anyway, their restaurant, their pricing structure. Of the two desserts, a lineup of sorbets - the first two made from exotic fruits I have no chance of remembering, but the last being strawberry and rhubarb - were the easiest to enjoy, summery and well made.
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But I'm afraid I didn't enjoy the other dessert at all - tonka bean flan was a bit like chawanmushi, and that bit of it was fine, but for some reason it was paired with a "jam" made from something called cupuaçu. Apparently it's the national fruit of Brazil, and I hope I don't cause an international incident by saying this, but it was so ludicrously sour it was beyond inedible. Perhaps they'd forgot to put the sugar in that day, or maybe I'm just particularly sensitive to cupuaçu, but I really struggled with this.
<br/><br/>
Anyway, the cupuaçu dessert was a rare low point of an otherwise decent - if aggressively priced - meal. As this was an invite we didn't see a bill, but with the cocktails and a glass of wine each I work out it would have been about £145 per person with service added. Quite punchy, in other words. Bossa is a good restaurant, but for that price it really needs to be great. And although none of the dishes apart from the açai thing were actively bad, nothing was really two-Michelin-star level either. Perhaps that's not what they're aiming for, but I'm also afraid that if you put 'two-Michelin-star chef' in your press release, that's what people are going to expect. Certainly at those prices.
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I hope they take the above in the constructive spirit it's intended. It's hard being less than positive about anywhere in the current climate, but then they aren't a charity, they're a high-end restaurant in the centre of London and all I can do is compare it to other places at that price point in the local area and it just doesn't quite stand up. Still, there's every room to improve, and refine their offering somewhat, and always hope for the future. For now though, I'd wait.
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6/10<br/><br/><i>I was invited to Bossa and didn't see a bill</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-12449286770359300802023-06-21T11:32:00.001+00:002023-06-22T13:34:58.987+00:00Evernight, Battersea<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiotzSdzWaP93N4FqxVAy2nb2Vj-MddkkQ2rb15VTuhpekE8ZxVf1-AaFv2LHGMLcM7MRZOzIaHPzGhbFok9iOfwNHP02SNHBnGfJ7fUElewIWnqGuH3vazBx4PFNUp1-07p5Qs4ezszKhlp8dDzGsAPpQIjTY_mawmC3m55nxsaP2JIfiYLp-g_7xNCriJ/s4000/P1420946.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiotzSdzWaP93N4FqxVAy2nb2Vj-MddkkQ2rb15VTuhpekE8ZxVf1-AaFv2LHGMLcM7MRZOzIaHPzGhbFok9iOfwNHP02SNHBnGfJ7fUElewIWnqGuH3vazBx4PFNUp1-07p5Qs4ezszKhlp8dDzGsAPpQIjTY_mawmC3m55nxsaP2JIfiYLp-g_7xNCriJ/s600/P1420946.JPG"/></a></div><br/>Knowing we would be having dinner at Evernight I thought aperitifs at Homeboy Battersea, just around the corner in the same building, would be a nice way to kick off the evening. I was at Homeboy a couple of years ago just after it had opened, was treated to a very decent burger and ice cold martini and left thinking that, well, perhaps this weird overdeveloped bit of Legoland Embassyville with its floating swimming pools and Thamesview gyms with floor-to-ceiling windows was worth the occasional visit after all. I've always had a soft spot for Darby's, too, also nearby.
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But a strange thing happened when I tried to Google the Homeboy location - it kept redirecting me to Homeboy Islington (also worth visiting, on Essex Road), the Battersea branch seemingly wiped from existence. Of course, it turns out it had closed at some point in the recent past, and though it's probably not a good idea to draw too many conclusions about the entire area from the closure of one flagship bar - hospitality is in a very tricky place right now generally - it feels like if this very smart and mature operation couldn't survive more than a couple of years with so much money around (I refer you to that floating swimming pool, and the river view gyms) then maybe the problems run deeper than just knowing your audience.
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I hesitate, then, recommending Evernight due to a perverse combination of a) not wanting it to get so oversubscribed that I'll find it impossible to get a tablein the future, and b) worrying that like so many of these flagship openings in new developments, it won't last until the end of the year. For now, though, I'm going to assume neither of these things will happen and instead draw your attention to these lovely and colourful house pickles, a great little palate cleanser we kept coming back to between nibbles of other dishes.
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A silky smooth whipped cod's roe spread inside warm brioch-y <i>ageban</i> buns like salty seafood butter, and made another top class snack. It was also noted with some satisfaction that the pickles that came attached to this dish were both (carrot and cucumber) different to those (radish, chilli and celery... I think) that arrived with the separate snack. I always appreciate a lack of overlap.
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It was about this time that we bumped into Shaulan Steenson, executive chef at the wonderful Temaki in Brixton, on his way to serve 6 lucky people an omakase menu in the Evernight private dining room. Anyone who's ever been to Temaki will know it's one of the best - and best value - spots for Japanese food in London, and it makes absolute sense that given the opportunity to spread his wings a bit in this exciting new space he's jumped at it. Pictured here is an element of that menu, a stuffed katsu chicken wing - utterly lovely in every way - which he very kindly sent out. Anyway, more details <a href="https://evernightlondon.co.uk/homepage/evernight-x-uosei/">here</a> for those interested.
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I didn't really love the scallop sashimi, but was persuaded to risk my own personal aversion to raw scallops because of the rather interesting sounding 'potato dashi'. In the end, this didn't live up to the promise either and what we ended up with was some rather wobbly, cloying raw scallop in a fairly bland and underseasoned sauce. Still, there's every chance a scallop fan would find a lot more to like.
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Sake cured trout was much more interesting, the trout itself having a nice earthy taste and broad beans making a much more pleasant accompaniment than the more traditional edamame (come on, you know it's true).
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But the real fireworks were saved for the next course. "Smoked eel, Potato Cake and N25 Caviar" is one of those rare instances where a dish reads like a dream, and still lives up to the promise. Whether the potato cake topped with caviar was a knowing or coincidental nod to the famous Quality Chop House dish is hard to say - the two restaurants couldn't otherwise be more different - but alongside this gorgeous mouthful, which would have been more than worth the price of admission by itself - was two dainty sticks of spring onion (I think - we shared this dish a little unevenly and I didn't try that bit) and a fantastic sweet-glazed geometric portion of meaty smoked eel. You will, if all goes well, be hearing a lot more about this dish in the future.
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The savoury courses hadn't finished quite yet though - chawanmushi with morels and wild garlic was another staggeringly inventive and successful fusion dish, marrying foraged British ingredients with high-end Japanese techniques. It's going to be <i>very</i> interesting seeing how the Evernight menu evolves through the seasons as different local ingredients come and go. I wonder if they can be persuaded to do something with grouse in August?
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Before the desserts, three cute skewers of grilled mochi, smoked [Lincolnshire] Poacher [cheese] and chilli crisp. Enjoyable, certainly - particularly the fluffy cheese sauce on top - but I'm afraid we were still delirious from the smoked eel and the chawanmushi and I don't remember a great deal about these otherwise. Maybe I'm just not a mochi fan.
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Desserts continued mashing together British and Japanese flavours and techniques to the standard of that in the best of the savoury courses. This was a strawberry custard affair topped with shiso granita and I think sake ice cream, and if you can't enjoy those things together on a plate there's really no hope four you at all.
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And finally, melon, vanilla and sansho meringue, a supremely light and gently peppery meringue sat in a wonderfully summery melon and vanilla soup.
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Now, although the menu looks great value at first glance - and largely is - and we had absolutely no problem with our overall bill, it's fair to say that the dishes are often only mouthfuls and you'll often want to order one each (particularly the chawanmushi and smoked eel, as you won't ever have enough of those). Without a great deal of booze on our visit, and leaving not exactly stuffed, the bill came to £62pp, so you could realistically spend £100pp+ if you end up going for the big ticket items like the 'Turbot, asparagus and Yuzu-shu' (£26) or 'Cornish Lobster, Crab and Ikura Rice Donabe' (£52 for two). Oh, and final moan - the bench seating is <i>way</i> too low down. We asked to be moved to a high table, which was perfect, and though it was very entertaining watching other customers attempt to enjoy their dinner with their chins only just clearing the surface of the tables in front of them, you may not want the same experience yourself.
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Overall though, Evernight impresses, delights and excites far more than it needs to. Yes, it's a strange, soulless and windswept part of town which demonstrates everything that's wrong with the London real estate industry, but it would be deeply unfair to blame the team behind Evernight for that. Japanese fusion food, in this city at least, is rarely done as well as this, and I think having to eat it in Nine Elms is a small price to pay for an experience so ultimately rewarding.
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8/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-52055494504200875202023-06-08T09:19:00.002+00:002023-06-08T09:19:29.883+00:00The Rose, Deal<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDhNEXeu8z5tYm1HT2in3Qc2i7PUGQr9k4-Q7lUe4bNVw6tKeC60hkvV0SMcT72CQfF1K_t-0xWcDfZwl-Hap2W3b8-I0zOFg8cjOLZ3S8Z5xSACJtzMlSA4mE2zS4HtCxqN7I9uwIxRrIS-JoJcNigKnI1CObe3jOYEE7bLC17RjC819QV90aOKYKrg/s4000/P1420889.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDhNEXeu8z5tYm1HT2in3Qc2i7PUGQr9k4-Q7lUe4bNVw6tKeC60hkvV0SMcT72CQfF1K_t-0xWcDfZwl-Hap2W3b8-I0zOFg8cjOLZ3S8Z5xSACJtzMlSA4mE2zS4HtCxqN7I9uwIxRrIS-JoJcNigKnI1CObe3jOYEE7bLC17RjC819QV90aOKYKrg/s600/P1420889.JPG"/></a></div><br/>A stroll along the High Street in Deal reveals a town very much at the forefront of the wider Kentish food revolution. There seem to be more than the usual number of artisan butchers and fishmongers for what is otherwise a fairly small (albeit very quaint) seaside town. There's a healthy amount of interesting delis with a bewildering range of specialities, from Arno's with their home made tarmasalata and aubergine <i>kasundi</i> (a type of Bengali mustard sauce), to Filberts' fresh game pies and organic sourdough, to the impeccably tasteful cheese selection at the enigmatically-titled No Name Shop. And there are more natural wine bars, microbreweries and, er, whatever it is you call somewhere selling fiercely strong local cider, than you can even count. This is somewhere you can eat and drink well.
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At the centre of it all, presiding over the activity below like a stern Victorian schoolmistress in charge of an unruly - if talented - flock, is the Rose, a sturdy, attractively symmetrical building whose fortunes have followed that of Deal itself for the best part of 200 years. In the early days it was one of the smartest joints in town for drinking, dining and smoking (all three were equally important back then) but time eventually took its toll and in the 1980s it slumped back into a more straightforward lager-and-crisps boozer. However, in 2018 it once again became a very comfortable hotel and the downstairs menu revamped under the eye of chef Nuno Mendes.
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Now, I am not so naive as to think Mendes has much to do with the cooking day-to-day. I know how these "chef consultant" gigs work - "give them a couple of recipes, take the cash and leave them to it" seems to be how it works most of the time (is that too cynical?) but I like to think there's more than a hint of his inventive flair in the "wild garlic vinegar" dressing which accompanied these fresh Maldon oysters, which seasoned and sharpened the seafood without overwhelming the flavour. Very clever stuff.
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But these were merely "snacks". Of the starters proper, all extremely reasonably priced at £11-£12, cured sea bass was the most striking, a colourful arrangement of raw fish and pickled fruit and veg, all complimenting the main ingredient while adding texture and zing. Leaves of sea purslane draped over the top added a sharp note of the sea, but rhubarb and pickled plums were intelligent and exciting additions.
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Burrata - perfectly lovely in of itself, was presented alongside what is fast becoming the post-St-John holy trinity of seasonal English vegetables, fresh peas, broad beans and nasturtium. We particularly enjoyed, too, a layer of salty breadcrumbs which soaked up the olive oil to make a kind of rustic crunchy dressing.
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Asparagus were covered in a irresistable cheese hollandaise and would have been perfect if they'd stopped there, but I'm afraid the "yeast crisps" dropped on top were chewy and, well, a bit pointless.
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Mains followed the theme of being mainly brilliant, but occasionally not. Good news first - roast rack of lamb was a hugely generous portion, cooked nicely pink and accompanied by a wonderfully rich and vibrant mixture of wild garlic, radish and sorrel (and also too, I think, some more chunks of asparagus). There was a <i>lot</i> of fat on the lamb which probably could have survived a judicious trimming, or perhaps a bit more rendering time, but otherwise it was a very pleasant thing indeed.
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Is it a bit old fashioned to expect the main ingredient to be visible when a dish arrives on the table? Hake - very nicely cooked, don't get me wrong - was completely buried under a giant mound of wild mushrooms and though it all tasted very nice and the seaweed broth was a particularly interesting side note, there's nothing like seeing a great big gleaming white chunk of fish to get the pulse racing. Other than that, all good.
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But unfortunately we found nothing to recommend the 'charred heritage tomatoes' at all. I can understand the necessity of a vegan main on a gastropub menu in 2023, but there are ways of doing these things that don't mean you end up with something tasting like it had come from a plastic pot off the shelves at M&S. Completely devoid of flavour, texture and interest of any kind, this was an entirely pointless concession to vegetarianism that only served to demonstrate that the kitchen had no interest in vegetarianism at all. And I'm afraid these days, that's not good enough.
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Desserts, thank god, turned things round again. Rhubarb and frangipane tart was moist and full of summery flavour, and the set cream (sort of like a cross between clotted cream and custard, as far as we could tell) was a very interesting accompaniment.
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Ice cream sandwich suffered very slightly from freezer burn, and the biscuits were a little soggy, but it still had a good flavour. Maybe it had just been hanging around in the freezer a bit too long.
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And finally chocolate ganache was marvellously gooey and thick - almost like a chocolate fudge - with the 'seaweed caramel' fortunately not tasting of seaweed but instead packing a nice strong punch of butter and sugar.
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So yes, there were downs alongside the ups, but overall it's hard to dislike what they're doing at the Rose. One incident aside, where a glass of dessert wine was left tantalisingly just out of reach for almost as long as it took us to polish off our desserts, service was friendly and attentive, and I should also put in a good word for whoever designed the table layout - there was a very pleasant distance between diners and the handsome dining room felt spacious and comfortable.
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As the flagship gastropub for a foodie town, the Rose has a lot resting on its solid Victorian shoulders. And much like the town of Deal itself, there's a lot to love if you ignore the odd rough edge, and as long as you're not a vegan you will probably enjoy the Rose very much indeed. With a bill of £63/head, too, not holding back on the booze, it's also very good value - this is very much at the lower end of what you might expect to pay for three courses and wine these days. In a part of the world not short of great places to eat, the Rose more than holds its own. And you can't ask for much more than that.
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7/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-63650066032686534012023-05-26T09:45:00.005+00:002023-05-26T09:45:49.749+00:00Lulu's, Herne Hill<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcQoK9MmuTVO2W68Nf6T5MGdgC4WlL3s8AfTP-Qix1hXPaE8cfl2Wms4WUXojTTSLO0_GOaYdH6Whc9dtYcNCjPCLZVMjZyvRB5HRDa4Teay8ViFXI05XQNZqAAfGWTUo56kaNEWIogh7U0iggz5b0EcrtEUZVAGV0xw3UEoCm9eAQ_T3qOPRPPEltrw/s4000/P1420845.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcQoK9MmuTVO2W68Nf6T5MGdgC4WlL3s8AfTP-Qix1hXPaE8cfl2Wms4WUXojTTSLO0_GOaYdH6Whc9dtYcNCjPCLZVMjZyvRB5HRDa4Teay8ViFXI05XQNZqAAfGWTUo56kaNEWIogh7U0iggz5b0EcrtEUZVAGV0xw3UEoCm9eAQ_T3qOPRPPEltrw/s600/P1420845.JPG"/></a></div><br/>Thank the lord for the lengthening days, for lifting the spirits and lightening the mood and - most importantly from my point of view - dramatically improving the quality of food photography on this blog. I'm sure Lulu's would be a lovely, cozy little spot even in the depths of winter, but in the early evening in early summer its quaint corner aspect (previously completely wasted on a hairdressers) looks out over a bright and bustling Herne Hill with gaggles of kids making their way home from school, families queuing patiently for craft ice cream in the station, and friends - and their dogs, and their dog friends - catching up at the Commercial over pints of London IPA. You feel like you're in the opening scenes of a Richard Curtis film.
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Lulu's is owned by, and is an offshoot of (they share the same kitchens) the local stalwart Llewelyn's bistro next door, but is aimed at a more casual and - let's face it - younger crowd. With its loud music (inside) and enthusiastically chain-smoking clientele (outside) it may not be a place to bring your parents, but we were comfortably the oldest people in the place on Wednesday evening, and I was once called a Millennial. They also - needless to say - don't take reservations, but I made damn sure I was through the door as soon as the stool was removed from the doorway.
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The menu is an intriguing mix of Italian and Catalan, with everything having something going for it so choosing from even this quite small list of dishes was quite a struggle. While you mull it over, they bring a little bowl of those matchstick fries you see so often in the supermarkets in Spain but which, for no good reason, have yet to catch on over here. They go very well with a Marmalade Martini, but then I imagine most things do.
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There's a lot going on with the gildas, but this is no bad thing. With pickled rather than the more usual salted anchovies, alongside pickled onions, olives and topped with cute sweety drop chillis, they were a lovely mix of salty, sour and hot, and pretty little things too, to boot.
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Soppressata, on the other hand, was anything but busy - just a generous plate of sliced salami which ate very well, particularly when you came across one with a chunk of black pepper embedded in it. Also full marks to the staff for not completely ridiculing the fact we assumed they'd misspelled sobresada, and just politely pointing out that soppressata was, actually, something quite different.
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Jamon de Teruel was soft and salty and just fatty enough, and another generous portion. Perhaps we didn't <i>quite</i> need two plates of ham as a starter, and to their credit the front of houise did gently attempt to advise against it, but do you know what, I regret nothing.
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Broad beans, preserved artichoke, piatonne beans (think sugar snaps, only huge and light in colour) all arrived draped in shavings of smoked ricotta and studded with fried breadcrumbs, and was all as lovely as that sounds. Eating broad beans (not to mention piatonne, which I'd not knowingly eaten before) is one of the best things about eating out in early summer in this country - it's a genuinely sad moment when they start disappearing from menus.
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Raw scallop, cucumber and grape is a combination you may have come across before if you've ever sat down at a small plates restaurant in London in the last few years, but is popular for a reason - it's a great combination. But binding it all together was a thick, rich ajo blanco which didn't hold back on the ajo at all, and pieces of mint leaf, perched vertically on top as if carried by leafcutter ants, added a lovely extra summery note. There was also a very nice grassy olive oil.
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Lastly of the savoury courses, a roll of lamb belly so ridiculously soft and tender it basically dissolved in the mouth into pure lamb stock. On top, slices of courgette and leaves of endive more summer joy but the most interesting and clever bit of this dish were the chunks of orange which worked surprisingly well with everything else on the plate, not least the lamb. It was a sign that alongside technical skill, the kitchens at Lulu's can experiment successfully when required.
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Having had such a great time so far, thanks also in part to a bottle of riesling which disappeared remarkably quickly, attention turned to desserts. Rhubarb millefeuille was a very accomplished bit of pastry work, like everything before it very much of the season but cleverly put together and very enjoyable. We had it with a glass of dessert wine which I'm almost certain they described in loving detail but which I'm afraid is lost to me now.
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So yes, perhaps we could have gone a bit easier on the booze but I'm not going to apologise for enjoying myself as much as I possibly could in a smart, efficiently run little neighbourhood restaurant designed to be as enjoyable as possible. Lulu's is the kind of place that every corner of London deserves but which, sadly, very few have. Like the London Shell Co. in Highgate, or the Baring in Islington, it's a brand new operation that feels already like an integral part of the community, perhaps not somewhere to kill yourself travelling across town on the offchance of snagging a table, but a place for Herne Hillians to hang out, drink, nibble and eat while normal life goes on all around. And with every seat taken on a Wednesday night, it seems it's already found its audience.
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8/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-19842534691882634842023-04-27T08:49:00.005+00:002023-04-27T09:27:45.405+00:00Ploussard, Battersea<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwydWu7QZDLqmnYbrYhFhjuiSx2ijwdWiR7bfDjgbIHfk8qBWrqpp6GIttXuFnXBF2vw3PippOFkaJwP4uIuxxF5lXdOT-zQ9z4ulh2oYDCnTiU7lc85WrM54xTKLoZE4v8Zf_NaqnpherMU29HxWHXtRBDiSdajyK_J6D4qECSd4idmH5H9diC3OwbA/s4000/P1420778.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwydWu7QZDLqmnYbrYhFhjuiSx2ijwdWiR7bfDjgbIHfk8qBWrqpp6GIttXuFnXBF2vw3PippOFkaJwP4uIuxxF5lXdOT-zQ9z4ulh2oYDCnTiU7lc85WrM54xTKLoZE4v8Zf_NaqnpherMU29HxWHXtRBDiSdajyK_J6D4qECSd4idmH5H9diC3OwbA/s600/P1420778.JPG"/></a></div><br/>As much as I complained on these pages that all the exciting new restaurants were opening up not handily close to where I live in SW11, but in far-flung places like Dalston or Shoreditch or Highgate, part of me still hoped that something would eventually come along to prove me wrong. And so it happens that in Battersea, not on the restaurant desert of Lavender Hill but close enough on Battersea Rise, I learned of a new place called Ploussard whose menu was full of the kind of exciting things you'd want to eat any day of the week, at prices that seem to have ignored the last couple of years of rampant inflation.
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It really is a thing of beauty, is the Ploussard menu. Boasting an irresistable combination of fresh shellfish, seasonal favourites like asparagus, and the odd nod to the continent with things like paté en croute, most items are around the £5-£15 mark with only a course of beef in green peppercorn sauce cracking £25. This being an invite, we didn't see a bill, but having totted up our order post-event I can tell you that the total for two would have been around £100 with plenty of booze - pretty decent value for 2018 never mind 2023. Of course, there's always the risk that after the traditional "review period" is over these will start to creep up, but still, it's worth mentioning.
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That booze, by the way, came first in the form of a "Meadow & sorrel martini", ticking all the required foraging boxes whilst still being a very clean, crisp version of a gin martini. It was lovely, making me want to go back and try their other house cocktail "Sage negroni" at some point, assuming it's available (the menu changes daily).
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Whipped smoked cod's roe with squid ink crackers was another early indicator that there's some serious skill in the kitchen at Ploussard. I've had pretty flat and underwhelming versions of dishes of this type at Michelin-starred joints in central London (recently, too) but this was literally perfect, the cod's roe being supremely smooth and packed full of flavour, and the crackers crisp, salty and greaseless.
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"Lincolnshire poacher eclairs" were on the menu, and so obviously were ordered. They were very clever little things indeed, with loads of lovely salty cheese filling and a nice delicate choux casing, and were great fun to eat. I've also had pretty ropey gougere at fancy central London joints recently, so I know how difficult these are to get right. They had got these right.
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Asparagus were giant, robust UK versions - none of your limp Peruvian imports here thank you - with a lovely flavour and paired with a nice tart sauce gribiche which had been topped with toasted walnuts for a bit of extra texture.
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Even better, though - impossible though it seems - was a "Lamb and anchovy crumpet". A tried and tested flavour combination perhaps, but lifted to new levels here thanks to plenty of minced lamb soaked in lamb jus and with the anchovy coming - I think - in the form of a kind of emulsion spread on top. Sliced like a pie you had a good amount of the anchovy-spread lamb and a home made crumpet, crunchy on the outside and bubbly within. It was glorious.
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By the time the beef arrived, we had polished off quite a bit of food, and it could have been for this reason only that it was the only dish that didn't completely dazzle. Don't get me wrong, it was still impressive, with thick slices of pink beef slightly lacking in char, but with nicely charred vegetables all soaked in a salty peppercorn sauce. It was just "very good", though, whilst everything else had been "blinding".
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"Rhubarb and custard" came in the form of a rhubarb compote sitting underneath a swirl of whipped custard cream, topped with a perfect rhubarb sorbet and some nice broken biscuits. The custard just dissolved in the mouth and the sorbet had just the right balance of tart and sweetness. In short, another masterclass.
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I used to worry that I would score places a point of two higher if they were walkable from my house because of the joy of not having to navigate the London transport network after dinner. My memories of the meal wouldn't be tainted by the grim trudge through Victoria station at 9pm to discover half the trains were cancelled, or that the 344 bus was randomly terminating at Bank. I tried not to let these things affect me, but who knows.
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Ploussard, though, doesn't need that boost. Hell, it doesn't even need me - every table was taken, some more than once, on the night I visited barely a week or two after opening, each available dining spot occupied largely (presumably) by locals like me who couldn't quite believe their luck. A neighbourhood restaurant, exciting, modern, seasonal, good value and with smart service? In Battersea? Whatever next.
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9/10<br/><br/><i>I was invited to Ploussard and didn't see a bill. As I point out above though, expect to pay about £50/head.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-32265364204991029172023-04-13T10:03:00.000+00:002023-04-13T10:03:32.393+00:00Nord, Liverpool<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWvL_6Didm88T0Seg4ALwitxWWNPNI3SMz0yz2tbmkYjfkPC8UWD_LQW6rlCCA_uZOSOszR5GgLBqIyZNo9S3h0_uxNBSTmJjqP3rA7ultUYdEx1m0jM-wGKaaw1u_xGmzQ2dk7vKIh9ukMJXlmDAWj2NkYlmniz9AxM0Pw_E8hGys7NxCffMjqbTl6g/s4000/P1420720.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWvL_6Didm88T0Seg4ALwitxWWNPNI3SMz0yz2tbmkYjfkPC8UWD_LQW6rlCCA_uZOSOszR5GgLBqIyZNo9S3h0_uxNBSTmJjqP3rA7ultUYdEx1m0jM-wGKaaw1u_xGmzQ2dk7vKIh9ukMJXlmDAWj2NkYlmniz9AxM0Pw_E8hGys7NxCffMjqbTl6g/s600/P1420720.JPG"/></a></div><br/>In a town that already plays host to wonderful places like <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2019/10/wreckfish-liverpool.html">Wreckfish</a> and <a href="https://cheesenbiscuits.blogspot.com/2023/01/manifest-liverpool.html">Manifest</a>, you'd think that the opening of another reasonably-priced, seasonal modern British restaurant in the centre of Liverpool would be a shoo-in for success. With demand already proven for this kind of thing, and as far as I can tell (given the popularity of such places) nowhere near sated, early menus leaked on Instagram pointed towards exactly the kind of thing that would do well here. Foraged herbs and veg? Check. Daily changing seafood selection? Check. Local suppliers name-checked? Check.
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And yet there's something about the scale of ambition at Nord that makes you stop for a second even if you are more or less prepared for what's in store. The Plaza is a giant 12-story building, twice as long as it is tall, that takes up an entire block in the financial quarter. Nord itself is reached through two sets of revolving doors that open onto a smart mid-century-modern inspired atrium shared with, to one side, a bright coffee shop and to the other a shared office space with living wall and comfortable low furniture. Ahead is Nord itself, easily one of the biggest restaurant spaces in town, a spacious and sensitively lit area reaching from a grand island bar back towards an open kitchen. Whatever happens here needs to live up to the promise of the environment, and more.
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By and large, fortunately, it does. These are very early days for Nord, who opened their doors barely a week or two ago, and so we ran into some issues regarding service and logistics that I'm sure will be easily ironed out over the coming weeks and months. Something they <i>don't</i> need to improve though are these gougères made with Mrs Kirkham's Lancashire cheese which had a supremely light choux casing containing a gloriously warm and smooth cheese filling. I also loved how instead of dusting them with the usual grated parmesan, they'd used more baked and crumbled Lancashire cheese.
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Crab toast contained a generous amount of the good stuff, bound with a delicate touch of sour cream and topped with fennel tops. What would have been nice here, true of most cold seafood dishes, is a wedge of lemon to squeeze on top, but there was still enough to enjoy otherwise. The toasted brioche was very decent, too.
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Truffle and kelp butter appeared to not contain any truffle (misleading menu descriptions were a bit of a theme of this meal) and, at first glance, only a disappointingly tiny amount of seaweed until you realised that each one of those little pieces of kelp packed a hugely satisfying, ocean-spritzed punch. And the bread itself was marvellous - straight out of the oven with naan-like charred bubbles on the outside and soft within.
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A little like the crab, I think the seabass crudo needed some acid - even just an accompanying wedge of lime would have been enough to balance it - but the fish was obviously high quality and I even liked the "potato taco" standing in for the usual corn tortillas. One tweak away from excellence is still to be admired.
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Cod "Kiev" (although I think it's better to say "Kyiv" these days) was very nicely constructed, a giant fillet of fish in a dark breadcrumb crust which opened to spill a healthy (or rather, acceptably unhealthy) amount of garlic butter onto the plate. Fun to eat, and this time we were supplied with a required wedge of lemon, but the cod itself just needed a slightly more aggressive seasoning. Again, just slightly short of perfection.
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The first thing you might notice about this "asparagus & morels" dish is the distinct lack of morels. I did point this out (as kindly as I could) to our waitress who returned with the information that the mushroom guy had today, for reasons best known to himself, delivered wild - seemingly a mix of girolles and chanterelles - instead. Which is fine, I suppose, I just think it would have been nice to know this before we ordered. Anyway, aside from the asparagus being suspiciously thin for seasonal English varieties, they still had a good flavour and the butter sauce they came with was absolutely fantastic. I will forgive most things if they're soaked in that fluffy butter sauce.
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What appeared on the menu as "Almond & brown butter biscuits" appeared at first glance to be Madeleines, but they had a crunch and depth of flavour somewhere delightfully in between. We loved these... whatever they were, anyway - straight out of the oven and filling the room with a freshly baked biscuit aroma.
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And finally rhubarb sorbet and vanilla ice creme, a tried and true combination which worked particularly well here thanks to a deep, strong rhubarb flavour in the sorbet and a lovely buttery vanilla ice cream. In fact, I would put the house ice cream on the 'must order' list if you ever make the trip yourself.
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Service was, as to be expected a couple of weeks after opening, still slightly unsure of itself. There was a bit of confusion over the correct type of glass to use for cava at one point, and I'm not sure it's a great idea to fill said glasses with crushed ice before serving - nobody really wants diluted fizz. But it was all done with charm and enthusiasm and no harm was done.
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So yes, it isn't perfect - yet. But what's interesting is not what went wrong - largely very easily fixed things like seasoning and the odd wedge of citrus, and a slightly more experienced front of house - but what went right in the technique required to make those gougères, or the sauce with the asparagus. At its core there's a very impressive set of skills in the kitchen here, just needing a bit more time and space to be allowed to settle in and shine. By the time of my next trip up north, I expect you'll be hearing a lot more about Nord.
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7/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-44962213463913783772023-04-12T11:10:00.002+00:002023-04-12T14:09:38.555+00:00The White Horse, Churton<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5iz-CpKFUt0Y6dZULvq8yKyeijBxlq59ucnBfyrYTDs9rXZjU5KSKdPBparIbRQ-SubNYOQr3HinXR0obBM68eaBXVkUqtPVnmS_ejLHOjf09ADJ7gc6BFmp_zmWO8P6bYXOtKKozFi4rRmKiArBCH0iA7sCu9XfjZzcsxwDuJtmCESHkA6UKiT2uTQ/s4000/P1420671.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5iz-CpKFUt0Y6dZULvq8yKyeijBxlq59ucnBfyrYTDs9rXZjU5KSKdPBparIbRQ-SubNYOQr3HinXR0obBM68eaBXVkUqtPVnmS_ejLHOjf09ADJ7gc6BFmp_zmWO8P6bYXOtKKozFi4rRmKiArBCH0iA7sCu9XfjZzcsxwDuJtmCESHkA6UKiT2uTQ/s600/P1420671.JPG"/></a></div><br/>Churton is not a place you're supposed to have heard of, so don't feel bad if you haven't. Unlike its larger, and lets face it more attractive, neighbour Farndon with its pretty medieval half-timbered cottages and 14th century church tower, or Tattenhall to the east, another quaint self-contained little community with village grocers, butchers and tea rooms, Churton is (or at least <i>was</i>) just somewhere on the way to somewhere else, another hamlet stitched into the patchwork of the pleasant, gently rolling Cheshire countryside.
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The White Horse, Churton's only pub - in fact, pretty much Churton's only building of note at all - is a well-proportioned 1920s red brick structure that, along with so many community pubs up and down the country, found itself boarded up and up for sale in 2019, just the latest victim of the public's shift away from communal eating and drinking and towards supermarket booze and takeaways. And if you've kept your eyes open in the last few years - particularly since the pandemic - you will know that, tragically, they weren't the only ones.
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Has Gary Usher's Sticky Walnut group found some secret magic formula uniquely capable of turning an abandoned, unloved local back into the vibrant centre of the community it once was? On the face of it, the "formula" is pretty straightforward - serve lovely homemade food for not much money, fill the place with smiling staff that look like they're having the time of their lives, and make sure there's nice clean toilets. When you lay it out like that, I mean, it doesn't look like rocket science.
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Of course, there's more to it than that. But first, the food. Whitebait were giant chunky things, closer to mini sardines than the usual baitfish, which had been very cleverly fried to grease-free perfection, served alongside a generous mound of parsley and lemon mayonnaise. By using larger animals you really got a bigger hit of the fish flavour, which can often otherwise be overwhelmed by batter and grease. These were very good indeed.
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One of the White Horse's "tricks", if you can call it that, is to have some menu items deliberately to snare the odd offal obsessive like me, whilst still sitting happily amongst more straightforward pub fare. This is slow braised pigs trotters, a more deliriously moreish concoction of piggy flavour and soft fat I've hardly had anywhere outside of specialist BBQ joints in the US, served with a creamy, rich piccalilli so good we suggested to the waitress they should sell it in jars. She said she'd pass the message on.
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Ricotta, beetroot and spicy harissa pumpkin seeds does admittedly sound like the kind of thing you'd default to to keep the veggies happy, but I tried a bit and it was very nice despite the fact I'm not its target audience.
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Soup of the day was another classic veggie option - cream of cauliflower - but was so impressive with its bold seasoning and loose, silky texture it will be first to be ordered on a return visit (assuming its on). There is something especially heartwarming about a kitchen that takes the time to perfect something as straightforward as a cauliflower soup - get the details right, and everything else follows.
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For my own main, inevitably, I went for faggots. Arriving under a mound of salsa verde and fried shallots, the main events themselves were not immediately obvious, but a bit of digging revealed three balls of lamb mince with a lovely loose texture that brought to mind one of Islington butcher Turner and George's "blue label" aged beef burgers. But instead of beef, the flavour here was a rich, gamey mix of offal and herbs, absolutely irresistible. Oh, and I almost forgot - the buttery, smooth mash underneath and lamb gravy were superb, too.
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King prawns were huge, plump things with a lovely bite and in a very generous pool of garlic chilli butter. It was about this time we'd realised we'd ordered lots of dishes that involved bread - completely our fault of course, but worth bearing in mind for if you plan a trip yourself.
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Fish fingers on toast was another very generous mound of fish for £7.50, all crunchy and soft in the right places and with a nicely seasoned layer of crushed peas underneath. I might have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'd forgotten to provide a wedge of lemon, because it really needed a bit of acidity, but we managed to get hold of some Sarson's which did the trick.
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Oh, and "skinny" fries were just normal chip size really - I think the distinction here is because the Sticky group's style of normal chips are giant wedges. All very nicely done of course, and I'm not about to get into an argument about proper chip size, it's just something to be aware of.
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Finally, we just managed to squeeze in a portion of the Sticky group's famous honeycomb ice cream between the three of us. The ice cream was as good as ever, but of course most of the joy of this dish is smashing apart the giant slab of honeycomb it comes with. We may have made a bit of a mess doing this. Sorry.
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As I said, none of this really is rocket science. I'd like to believe - and I have to cling on to this idea for my own sanity's sake - that if you run a nice friendly pub serving home made food for reasonable prices, it will, no matter where it is, find an audience. True, the White Horse has the advantage of Gary Usher's extraordinary ability to harness crowdsourcing fever on Twitter, and that the place is so immediately, obviously successful is partly due to that, but all that Kickstarter cash really does is get you out of the gate. From then on, you need to be good enough to get people booking return visits.
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And as you might have gathered by now, the White Horse does that and more. It's the kind of place that every community up and down the country must wish they had on their doorstep, somewhere you can drop in for a pint of beer (hot tip: the front saloon is not bookable, and was empty for most of our lunch, so try your luck there if you can't get a table in the main restaurant. Oh, and there's a terrace for sunny days) and bowl of whitebait or sit down at the back on a large table and go full Sunday roast. It is, in short, the pub we all deserve. So don't stop now, Mr Usher, you're on a roll.
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8/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-2748313609985198612023-04-10T08:16:00.004+00:002023-04-10T08:16:53.505+00:00Nessa, Soho<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2fYlNEWoCDcGXgAUX5fHF_sB8Kbjjbhsswv5dLUOkQJK0YBwbYuuwPRe_csuJDuiRDszewKpzbfEfPjUGbvx0S2PpZHRdRxJqpLRPODRuqd9lsNxTxIGbQ9clBMXLBG1X4M8anlv_J5gL2oeBNf6KeFXTxEVgxYhfAE5T9Qqn8XDV6ykn0mByfc0k2g/s4000/P1420578.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2fYlNEWoCDcGXgAUX5fHF_sB8Kbjjbhsswv5dLUOkQJK0YBwbYuuwPRe_csuJDuiRDszewKpzbfEfPjUGbvx0S2PpZHRdRxJqpLRPODRuqd9lsNxTxIGbQ9clBMXLBG1X4M8anlv_J5gL2oeBNf6KeFXTxEVgxYhfAE5T9Qqn8XDV6ykn0mByfc0k2g/s600/P1420578.JPG"/></a></div><br/>Looking over the confidently international menu at Nessa the other evening, it occurred to me that it's been a while since I've had a moan about anywhere being 'inauthentic'. For all the years that we British were insecure about our place in the culinary world, and those years were many, we worked ourselves to the bone to be more French than the French, more Italian than the Italians, more fiercely Spanish than anything you could reasonably be expected to find in Spain. How dare anyone come to our shores and think we didn't take our food seriously? Look at what we can do!
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Nowadays, though you certainly still find restaurants that stick religiously to their regional remits (just look at the success of Bouchon Racine), it seems like more places are willing to just do what comes naturally, peppering their menus from influences from all across the globe. Look at the menu at Papi, for example, or (the sadly departed, though hopefully soon-to-return) Bright. Not British, not Asian, not French or Italian, just a list of dishes you immediately want to eat, using the best ingredients available. All of a sudden, it seems obvious that this is the future.
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Nessa, then, is not to be tied down to any particular cuisine. It dances through Italian, French, American and British, constructing a menu of attractive and accessible comfort foods that rarely - if ever - conform to anything so dull as tradition but still impress nonetheless. These are cheese and onion croquettes, piping hot from the fryer, on a bed of 'grape mustard mayo' which provided the perfect accompaniment.
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Panzanella made great use of those juicy, sweet (and often eye-wateringly expensive) winter tomatoes, with (as is traditional) croutons to provide crunch but also (as isn't) slices of jalapeño chilli and pomegranate seeds because, well, why not.
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Spelt risotto was constructed and seasoned perfectly, with that lovely loose bubbly texture of spelt bound with a shocking green wild garlic. They'd apparently used the excellent Montgomery's cheddar in the mix too, so it had a lovely rich farmy flavour in the background. We all loved this, and I'm not normally a risotto fan.
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Leeks were charred in the wood-fired oven then presented on a bed of "almond ricotta", something that deserves to take off. Salsa verde added some acidity, and some pieces of caramelised pecans some extra nutty/sweet/crunchy notes. Again, this went down very well.
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The black pudding brioche has become a bit of an Instagram hit, and very nice it was too - think gala pie, only with black pudding instead of egg and brioche instead of sausage and pastry. Actually, don't think of it like that, that doesn't help at all, it's nothing like a gala pie. Anyway the pudding itself was nice and crumbly and rich, and the "brown butter noisette" was a kind of thin, stock-y gravy.
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House bread was soda with whipped butter, just what was required.
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If I'm going to be brutal, the Caesar was a bit thick on rich, cheesy sauce and a bit light on everything else - maybe it needed more of a salty kick from anchovies to fight the sauce, or more mustard somewhere. I'm not sure. Still, not bad.
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Chicken "Cordon Bleu", a respectful nod to an institution that's trained up many a British chef over the years and is still going strong, was exactly as the recipe intended, with moist breast meat folded around bacon, all coated in breadcrumbs and sat in a nice salty jus. Monksbeard was added probably to stop the whole thing being a bit culinary school, but was very welcome.
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Steak tartare was impeccably done - there was just the right amount of dressing and herbs folded into the meat, but the dry aged beef shone above the other ingredients, with a fantastic funky taste and addictively loose texture. Look at the colour of that truffled confit egg too.
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Finally amongst the savouries, a giant monkfish tail on the bone, perfectly cooked and topped with chopped pickles and chives. Everyone on the table took turns lifting great chunks of bright white meat from the bones until every trace of flesh had disappeared. Plenty of it, too, for £35.
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Desserts were unpretentiously presented, but very well done. We particularly enjoyed the bay leaf custard that came with the gooseberry jam roly poly, but also, how nice to see gooseberry on a menu?
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And finally baked Alaska, with bright pink poached rhubarb surrounding a blowtorched mound of meringue coating a portion of (gorgeous) gingerbread ice cream. Whenever I order baked Alaska I am duty bound to point out how easy chefs have it in professional kitchens being able to use a blowtorch the exterior without worrying about melting the ice cream. My grandma had to do this dish with nothing more than a very hot oven and perfect timing. She always managed it though.
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Yes, we did have a lot of food - and certainly enough wine - but the bill only came to just over £64 each, which is pretty good really. Service was attentive and pleasant, and it's a very nice room to be in, with its views of the busy open kitchen and comfy plush furnishings. I did get lost on the way back from the toilet at one point, but it's a bit of a maze down there, and they're desperately missing a 'Back to the restaurant' sign or two. Something to work on, anyway.
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Overall, though, Nessa is serving nice food for not much money, and you can't ask much more than that. I'm only docking a couple of points because in my nerdy blogger way I'd quite like to have seen a bit more unusual offaly bits or rarer seafood available - the list of dishes is, necessarily I would assume, familiar bordering on safe. But when it's all done as well as this, who cares? Sometimes you just want to be rewarded, not challenged. And when you do, Nessa will be waiting for you.
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8/10
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1588051831069283523.post-48706795656220888712023-04-03T09:01:00.005+00:002023-04-03T09:01:44.160+00:00The London Shell Co., Highgate<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFw1gQV7l7e6jrQUTe2dZwaoAZryI3zJMPhV7vRaMvxvBy3K2ACnP83f1tRSDiTOwlmrDlbu2RKUD5OlYbIhti5rAqcj8gHZPgu-WPw133D_yky7_cSm7FJ69dWKiFHfauth68bqNOSh5p8riCa40E1UVw6lhmSO9vSj0s-tFRBAnLt2W1JQnGKXjdg/s4000/P1420534.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsFw1gQV7l7e6jrQUTe2dZwaoAZryI3zJMPhV7vRaMvxvBy3K2ACnP83f1tRSDiTOwlmrDlbu2RKUD5OlYbIhti5rAqcj8gHZPgu-WPw133D_yky7_cSm7FJ69dWKiFHfauth68bqNOSh5p8riCa40E1UVw6lhmSO9vSj0s-tFRBAnLt2W1JQnGKXjdg/s600/P1420534.JPG"/></a></div><br/>The first time I went to the London Shell Co., I hated it. This was nothing to do with the food, and everything to do with my aversion to anything boaty, and being trapped on one for the best part of 2 1/2 hours as it punted around the dark, damp Regent's canal in the middle of winter was not - to say the least - my idea of fun.
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So what I wanted, then, was the London Shell Co. on dry land, and specifically the lovely, leafy neighbourhood of Highgate. It's not a part of town I visit very often - and my nightmare journey home on Friday after dinner served a handy reminder as to why - but its a fantastic place to visit occasionally. Perhaps combine it with a walk across the Heath, or a drink and snack in the brilliant Bull & Last.
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The London Shell Company is by day a fishmonger and cafe, and by evening a smart seafood bistro. It's already wildly popular, based on the people streaming through the door last week, and rightly so - this fishmonger/restaurant thing is quite common abroad, especially in parts of Spain, but aside from the ill-fated Fish Club which briefly popped up on Northcote Road a few years back, I'm surprised you don't see more of them.
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This being an invite, we were offered a bit of everything to sample so our dinner is not perhaps representative of what you would normally be able to order. Still I can tell you the smoked salmon was excellent, presented with mini cournichon and some nice bubbly house crispbread.
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With the bread - all made in house, a nice cakey focaccia and a more straightforward but still enjoyable wholewheat - came crab butter, and if you're the kind of person you can resist crab butter when you see it on a menu then you're a stronger person than me. Anchovies were Ortiz, and yes I know all the arguments about paying someone to open a can of anchovies for me but surely the same applies to wine? You're in a restaurant, just enjoy it.
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Oysters were plump and fresh, a couple presented au naturel which I smothered in Tabasco, and a couple dressed with pickled cucumber (I think) and a slice of red chilli. And I will, within reason, eat oysters given to me any way at all (including deep-fried in a Po'Boy sandwich) and so the fact I polished these off in seconds is probably not some great endorsement, but there it is anyway.
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Next scallops in a garlic butter sauce, which were obviously very enjoyable too. If I'm going to be brutally critical I would have perhaps liked a bit more colour and crust on the scallops themselves - or even the addition of roe - but it's still very, very difficult to not enjoy scallops in a garlic butter sauce.
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Finally, for main, a whole roast plaice. Sorry about my useless photo - for some reason I decided that the most interesting thing about this fish was its neck - but rest assured this was a very good example of its kind, with a nicely timed flesh and robustly seasoned skin. We had great fun picking the meat from the head and collar, and left nothing but a cartoonish assembly of head, spine and tail. Also I know we weren't paying but I think £22 is quite good value for a fish of this size, isn't it?
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I didn't order, or try, the bitter leaf salad - there's no place for bitter leaves on my dinner table, thank you very much - but I was told it was very good so let's leave it at that. With a couple of glasses of wine (one a very nice English sparkling Bacchus, not Chapel Down but another winemaker) the bill would have come to something like £50pp, right on the money for a neighbourhood restaurant.
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Because although perhaps LSC isn't so stratospherically impressive as to attract people from far and wide, I very much get the impression that's not the intent. It's a little seafood bistro attached to a local fishmongers, serving up whatever's good that day for a reasonable amount of money, and it's all the better for being on the high, dry land of Highgate and having proper toilets. It is already doing - and I'm sure will continue to do - very well indeed.
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8/10<br/><br/><i>I was invited to the London Shell Co. and didn't see a bill.</i>
Chris Poplehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02668565800857295023noreply@blogger.com0