Norbert's, East Dulwich

They're like the buses, these rotisserie places. You wait years for a decent, affordable spit-roast chicken in the capital, and then two come along at once.

I'm being slightly disingenuous and short-memoried, of course. Soho House's Chicken Shop was a reliably enjoyable place to get the good stuff, and was remarkable value as well. But for whatever reason - who know how these things work, certainly not me - the one in Holborn closed (where I would go at least once every couple of weeks back in the day), then Kentish Town, then Tooting, and then after hanging on for a year or two the final spot in St John's Wood shuttered.

And believe me, I've tried my best at the other end of the budget too. About a decade ago I tried Hélène Darroze's Sunday roast (sorry - Dimanche poulet) at the Connaught, and while some of the starter elements were very nice (particularly a genius-level chicken consommé and Armagnac shot - hook it into my veins) the main event was overcooked, dry and disappointing. And, of course, stupidly expensive.

So until recently - with certain notable exceptions - rotisserie chicken was just not something that London did well. But hot on the heels of the Knave of Clubs (in fact I believe they opened within a couple of months of each other) is Norbert's in East Dulwich, a much more modest operation than that grand old Victorian pub in Shoreditch (I'm sure Norbert's won't mind me saying) but still aiming to apply intelligence and skill to the business of roast poultry.

The menu is short - very short, just the aforementioned chicken with sides and a couple of starters - but then that's the whole point of a specialist place like this. This is not a restaurant that does chicken, it is a chicken restaurant, and if you're vegetarian, well, you can find somewhere else to eat. We started with taramasalata which in itself was lovely but the salt and vinegar crisps it came with was, I think, a flavour too far for the same dish, the astringency fighting with the seafood. Much better would have been plain, I think. But still, an excellent tarama.

Before the main event, though, I need to talk about service - particularly wine service. My female friend had picked out a bottle she wanted to try. It duly arrived, but was poured into my own glass to taste, and without thinking (I'm afraid I've still got some way to go in situations like this) I tasted it and said it was fine. Anyone who knows me will tell you a vote of confidence in a wine from me is about as useful and prestigious as a degree from Trump University, so inevitably, when the same wine was poured into my friend's own glass she in fact didn't like it, and was offered something else. In a hapless attempt to salvage both mine and the restaurant's mistake I offered to pay for the first wine anyway, so we ended up in the end spending a small fortune on wine, not all of which we ended up drinking.

Now clearly, the first mistake was theirs (offering the first taste to the person who hadn't ordered it - let's for their sake assume that was an honest mistake and nothing too worryingly gender-based), and the second was mine (tasting it instead of offering it to my friend - there's a small chance I may have been distracted by taramasalata but that's no excuse), but I think the final mistake was the restaurant's really, for not offering to just take back the unwanted wine. But maybe there's some other nuance I've not thought of - what do you think?

The chicken, though, was just about worth the stress. A healthily thick, dark skin packed with spice and seasoning, a brined but not in the least bit 'hammy' flesh, some excellent crisp fries that held their structure and flavour until the last bite, and a supremely crunchy, fresh salad. Perhaps it wasn't quite the same level as the Turner & George chicken from the Knave, for an almost identical price (salad and fries are extra here, but included at the Knave) but was still worth the journey.

We also found space for some nice cheese from Mons cheesemongers up the road, a gruyere style from Ireland which was a perfect temperature. Which didn't help our £72pp final bill but as I say, most of that was wine, whether we wanted it or not.

I'm in two minds about Norbert's. On the one hand it is perfectly acceptable chicken for not a huge amount of money and it's an unpretentious little addition to this corner of East Dulwich. On the other hand the whole business with the wine left us wishing the whole experience had gone differently, and yes it doesn't compare well with a certain other rival rotisserie spot in Shoreditch doing things a little bit better for pretty much the same price. I think I know where's more likely to get my repeat custom.

6/10

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Oxalis at Platform One, East Dulwich

Whenever I see anyone attempting to dismiss a review of a PR-comped meal as somehow unrepresentative or worthless, I think of the Mitchell and Webb show sketch about the fake moon landings:

"Well, to start with, of course, we'll need to build a massive rocket."

"Why? We're not actually going to the moon. I thought that was the point? Have I got this wrong?"

"We'll need a massive rocket, because the first question people will ask when we show them the footage of the moon will be 'How did you get there?'. So we'll have to say, 'we went in that massive rocket you saw'."

"Hmm, so we're not actually going to make any savings on the cost of a massive rocket?"

"No..."

It's true that if a restaurant knows in advance I'll be reviewing, or even just ups their game when they see a big camera produced, then there's a chance I'll get a better table or won't have to wait as long for my wine glass to be refilled. But really, there are some things you can't fake. A bad kitchen won't suddenly start producing good food as soon as they notice a reviewer in, nor can competent service be magically summoned where no competence exists. Anyone going to the effort of cooking great food and serving it efficiently will be able to do so for everyone, not just the person with the annoying camera or face on a newspaper byline.

With that in mind, I feel more than confident in endorsing Oxalis, who hosted myself and a friend for a couple of very happy hours a few weeks back, and are for the next few months serving one of London's best value tasting menus (£40 for 6 courses) in their home at Platform One on Lordship Lane. First up was a pretty beetroot and goat's cheese starter, with a few gently-pickled onions and some good, earthy dukkah. Not earth-shatteringly innovative, but nice. And there's nothing wrong with nice.

Beef tartare had a good strong flavour and a remarkably light colour - it looked almost like veal. The blobs of yolk dotted around were a nice bit of colour, and the toasted flatbread made a good vehicle for scooping it all up, but the most interesting bit of this dish were the spots of black garlic, which had an intense umami flavour and seasoned the meat superbly. Without the black garlic this would have been a decent tartare; with it, it was memorable.

Egg, bacon and asparagus is, much like the beetroot and goat's cheese, a tried and tested combination, one you'd hardly turn your nose up at but which you may have enjoyed before a number of times. But added to this were small chunks of chicken liver, which lifted it all with an offal richness, plus the bacon was lovely and melty. I think I'd have preferred my asparagus as whole spears instead of chopped up, but this is a minor niggle.

Scallop and chorizo - favourite pairing of the early-rounds Masterchef contestant - was dressed in a nice light hollandaise and used very good, meaty chorizo - at a guess I'd say it was Brindisa, but if it wasn't then it was something to that standard. You'll have noticed by now that all the dishes made use of some very familiar ingredient combinations, and in lesser hands this could have been something to grumble about. But when it's all executed as confidently as this, who cares?

The last of the savoury courses was chicken and the only real - though hardly catastrophic - misstep of the meal. Unfortunately confit chicken needs to be treated very carefully to stop it going dry, and I'm afraid here it was a tad chewy. The grilled baby gem was lovely though, as was a dose of supremely light saffron aioli, and so overall the dish just about got a merit.

Dessert was a hot, fluffy doughnut stuffed with a generous portion of rhubarb coulis, and a nice big slab of powerfully caffeinated semi-freddo. Summer in a dish, and extra points for making use of my favourite fruit. You'd have to do something genuinely disastrous to rhubarb to not make me want to shovel it down by the plateful.

Platform One have hosted a number of exciting foodie ventures over the years, some of which have gone on to notable success. Perilla popped up here a couple of years back, and now have a permanent (and very good) restaurant on Newington Green. And Smoke & Salt who followed them (or did they preceed them? It's all a blur now) have just this month opened in the space vacated by Kricket in the container park Pop Brixton. So whether by luck or design, a stint at this East Dulwich venue seems to be as close to a seal of quality as you're likely to find in London. So, why not make the most of it? They won't be there forever.

8/10

Our meal at Oxalis was comped. Apologies for the less than brilliant photos, I was having camera issues that day.

Toast, East Dulwich

Consider the monumental achievement of opening a great new restaurant in London. Think of the time it would take to find skilled young chefs willing to work all the hours of the day for very little money, the expense of hiring an exciting interior designer, the time recruiting competent, energetic serving staff, finding suppliers, dealing with wine merchants, and the management ability required to hold all the above in some kind of tenuous harmony through those shaky first few weeks. Think of the sheer, backbreaking stress of it all.

Then imagine doing it again. And again, and again. Each new opening requires another herculean burst of recruitment, management and toil, and yet something about what you're doing works and you find yourself running four restaurants that are not just successful, but popular and incredibly well-regarded critically, with a string of glowing reviews, awards and accolades that are the envy of your peers.

We should be eternally grateful for Ed Wilson and Oli Barker, the management team behind what is surely the most accomplished handful of neighbourhood restaurants in town - Terroirs, Brawn, Soif, Green Man and French Horn, each unassuming and smart and friendly, serving great food at a very reasonable prices, and yet each with its own distinct character and focus (Terroirs vaguely Parisian, Soif influenced by the Loire Valley, and so on). In an impressive reversal of the usual turn of events when a restaurant empire starts expanding, each new Wilson/Barker outpost seems to be better than the previous, and to that end my favourite, until recently, was the Green Man and French Horn (or as it has become known by a worrying number of people, the Horny Green Frenchman) in Covent Garden, a better place to while away the hours sipping cloudy natural whites and knocking back oysters I'm sure doesn't exist anywhere in the world. Certainly nowhere else in Covent Garden.

But, continuing the improbable trend, the latest opening is even better. Toast (a stupid name, crowdsourced on the East Dulwich Forum so that'll teach them) is on the site of the old (and much missed) Green and Blue wine bar, and has retained much of the same layout as well as the "wine shop" idea of allowing people to take away a bottle at retail price. What has changed, and changed beyond all recognition, is the food, and it's this that really deserves your attention. I won't exhaustively describe everything we ate, but the following should be enough to make up your mind whether you need to visit or not (hint: you do).

Charcuterie, an important part of the other Wilson/Barker restaurant offerings, is again imployed here, albeit just the two items - a nice firm saucisse seche and a lovely peppery Tuscan salame. House bread, again never an afterthought in the other places, is also good, especially with a great big load of soft salty butter on top.

And before we get started on the menu proper, the chef brought out a little Japanese-inspired dish he'd been working on, monkfish livers and marrow with a sort of soy dip. I hope it gets through the trial stage and becomes a permanent fixture, because it was very nice indeed - the liver was firm and gently fishy without being unpleasant, and the little blobs of marrow jelly brought to mind the very traditional London staple of jellied eels.

"Fresh cheese, onions, dill", "Crab, broccoli, sorrel", "Raw mackerel, ginger, white soy". Uncomplicated, fresh, colourful, seasonal dishes each, with a confidence in the (top quality) ingredients and none over a tenner. The mackerel was particularly well-received, like something the Clove Club might do.

I can't see this 60-day-aged beef tartare, oyster sauce and kale dish on the menu, so it could have been another preview, but I hope that's not the last we see of it, was silky and richly flavoured, studded with little chunks of fat for extra muscle. "Leek, potatoes, cheddar" was less interesting, and not just beacuse it was vegetarian - there was something a bit school dinners about the flavour combinations, despite the fancy presentation. "Broad bean, grains, onion" was a vegetarian dish that did impress, though - as densely flavoured as any protein.

"Girolles, figs, parsley" was the only dish that was something approaching a disappointment. The delicate, sweet flavour of figs and the earthy notes of the girolles were beaten into submission by a shocking green parsley sauce, leaving nothing but the texture of the fruit & mushrooms, and as you might imagine, texture is neither a fig or a girolle mushroom's strongest card. But two seafood dishes, a monkfish with ground pork and a haddock with fennel and anchovy, each showcased a great technique with the fish, the skin crisped up nicely and the bright-white flesh perfectly moist and flaky.

It was when a superb plate of pink lamb paired with an heirloom tomato and aubergine sauce turned up that what was just so different about this restaurant occurred to me - it seems that finally, at Toast, the shackles of the French Bistro theme have been unlocked, and the latest of the Wilson/Barker is not even pretending, even vaguely, to be French anymore. Toast is resolutely, recognisably Modern British in the Clove Club/Dairy mold, and draws its influence from that new wave of thrusting new London brasseries rather than anywhere on the continent. We surely have a lot to thank our European neighbours for over the years, but really, time doesn't stand still, and French cuisine is no longer the influence it once was, for very good reason (I can't remember the last time I had a meal in France worth shouting about).

So Wilson and Barker, restaurateurs extraordinaire and foodie trailblazers, are, with Toast, simply taking the next logical step. If it made sense in 2008 to base their first restaurant, Terroirs, on the local bistros of Paris, in 2013 it is the ingredients-led, light and seasonal touch of our best local talent that is the greatest inspiration in much the same way. What an exciting time to be a Londoner.

8/10

PANICKY EDIT: I'm reliably informed (and who is more reliable than Fay Maschler) that Toast is not literally a Barker/Wilson joint but instead is the brainchild of Eric Narioo of Caves de Pyrene, who are connected but not really the same. Rather than rewrite the entire bloody premise of this post, I thought I'd just quietly point that out here and see if I get away with it. The food's still good, so that's the most important thing in the end, right? *slinks off shamefacedly*

ANOTHER PANICKY EDIT: Now the PR company has got in touch and want me to clarify that the restaurant is in fact a joint venture between (supremely talented) Chef Michael Hazlewood and Manager Alex Thorp. I'd love to completely rewrite the review on this basis, but as I say hopefully all the nice things I've said about the food still stand. And next time I'll not get my news about restaurant openings from Twitter.

The Dogfather and Big Apple Hot Dogs

I'm not even sure it's possible to make a completely inedible hot dog. I'm in no frantic hurry to test this theory out of course - I do have some dignity - but surely if even your local multiplex can produce something worth eating (even if it does cost a million pounds and has been kept warm out on those weird roller heater things for weeks on end) then anywhere can. I have always enjoyed a hot dog, not matter how basic; there is just a certain minimum standard in even the cheapest Frankfurters, and if you can't find it within yourself to enjoy a tube of salty mystery meat inside a bun with a bit of yellow "mustard" squirted on top then there's really no hope for you. Those other American fast food stalwarts, burgers, require skill, good ingredients, and a bit of attention, otherwise you end up with a complete disaster. Hot dogs are easy - even out of a tin they're pretty tasty, and there aren't many other foodstuffs of any kind you can say that about.


But just because the minimum standard of hot dogs is that much higher than other types of fast food doesn't mean that the top-end can't benefit from some attention. A few new street food stalls in London have, in the last few months, attempted to prove that there is more to the humble 'dog than law-dodging West-end traders and criminally marked-up cinema snacks. The Dogfather, who pitches up at the North Cross Road market in East Dulwich, is the first worth a mention. Using beef sausages similar (in fact suspiciously similar... saying no more) to those used in the excellent Meatwagon chilli dogs, the Dogfather dogs are dressed in a variety of fancy ways, from the Mexican Elvis (chilli and cheese and peppers) to the Snoop Dog (bacon, barbecue sauce and mayonnaise) and even a curry-themed version called (ho ho) the Slum Dog. I was impressed not only with the sausage itself, which was wonderfully dense and rich, but with the fact that the dressings had been conceived as a harmonious balance of ingredients in different and distinct styles, instead of just a random selection of toppings left to the customer to use as they wish. I enjoyed it very much.


If I'm going to be perfectly honest though, while I appreciated the flamboyant Dogfather and the unpretentiously filthy Meatwagon chilli dog, it wasn't until a visit to the Big Apple Hot Dog stall on Old Street that I really understood just how good this humble snack could be. Big Apple's trick isn't to glam up the toppings or play to any preconceived ideas of US fast food authenticity but to work directly with a butcher to produce a sausage that is just better than anything available anywhere else. Free-range pork is the secret ingredient, I was told, and it really shows - the sausages (I had something called a Big Frank) are almost as soft inside as mousse, with an amazing pig flavour that lingers late on the tongue and a butteryness that showcases an addictive fat content without being unpleasantly greasy. Texture, too, is provided by a firm and glossy casing which "snaps" delightfully on every bite, as well as a layer of crunchy onions beneath, fried (I know this because I saw him do it from scratch) in butter and thyme. The basic format of any hot dog you have ever tried is there - sausage, onions, bun - but the obvious care and attention that has gone into that sausage makes the end result rather special indeed. I ate mine with a healthy dollop of Polish mustard and a can of Sprite. Heaven.


I would ordinarily have signed off this post with some clichéd tribute to London's street food renaissance, about how the most exciting cooking in the capital right now is by a group of individuals serving great food directly to their customers without the distraction of service and tablecloths or even cutlery. But actually, Big Apple Hot Dogs have already gone big time. Hawksmoor Seven Dials are currently showcasing Big Apple's superb creation on their bar menu, alongside the famous Hawksmoor burger and the £25 lobster roll, and so if you want to enjoy your Big Frank in a proper grown up restaurant accompanied by a dry martini, then head to Covent Garden. I think myself though I'll continue to take the bus to Old Street, and not just for reasons of cost. There's something inexplicably right about standing up by a busy high street filling your face with meat and mustard - perhaps the best place for street food is, after all, the street.

The Dogfather 7/10
Big Apple Hot Dogs 8/10

Pictures, from the top:

The Big Apple Hot Dog stand, Old Street
The Dogfather, East Dulwich (pic courtesy of Food Stories)
Onions frying on the Big Apple hot plate, Old Street
The Big Frank from Big Apple Hot Dogs

Franklins, East Dulwich

There's a fantastic article by Russell Norman, on his blog and reprinted from the latest Fire and Knives, about the art of complaining in restaurants. It's told mainly from the restaurant's point of view, as you might expect from the man behind Polpo and Polpetto, and makes many salient points about the best ways to deal with comments from customers that, as any front of house will tell you, can range from reasonable to bizarre to downright wrong. The overall message seems to be no matter what the issue, apologise, smile and The Customer Is Always Right, which of course makes perfect sense, but it's his message to us, the paying customer, that really caught my attention -

So, should we complain in restaurants when something goes wrong? Absolutely, yes! But we should complain as soon as we can to give the restaurant time to fix the problem, not on the way out when they can do nothing. Believe it or not, I like it when customers complain because it opens a dialogue whereby I can show off and impress by how good the response and the ‘fix’ is. You should also complain about small things as well as big things – it helps the restaurant improve and, ultimately, means that return visits should get better and better as the restaurant sharpens its practices. We want to know if the knife is dirty. We want to know if the Virgin Mary isn’t spicy enough. We want to know if the table wobbles.

Which, again, from the restaurant's point of view, I can completely understand. Of course they want to know if there's something they're not doing right, and presumably if all their customers complained about everything they could think of all the time, it would be like having a vast, extremely grumpy but constantly updating market research programme specifically tailored to making your restaurant as good as it can possibly be. It would make for a very odd atmosphere for dinner, perhaps, but at least the message would get through.

The thing is, though, I hardly ever complain. If I get the wrong dish, or my beef is overcooked to oblivion, or there's a shard of broken glass in my ice cream, then of course I'll say something. But usually nothing short of a complete disaster will prompt any kind of intervention on my part, for various reasons. Firstly (and mainly, I suppose) it's that good old English attitude of not wanting to make a fuss, and to gamely plough on with the meal, hoping that if you don't mention it it will go away or fix itself. Stupid, I know, but that's the English for you - and despite the impression you may get from reading the posts on this blog, I really do always want to enjoy myself when I go out for a meal, not sit there moaning. Also, now more people know I'm a food blogger and - most importantly - know what a food blog is, I'm very conscious of coming across as rude or arrogant (or at least even more rude or arrogant than normal), showboating my superior taste and knowledge of eating out and boring everyone else senseless. And thirdly, I'm not convinced that there is always something a restaurant can do to improve things. Take, for example, this meal at Barbecoa - the quality of the produce was poor, the food unadventurous and the whole thing rather overpriced, but nothing was inedible and I wonder what our charming waitress would have said if I'd pointed that out - "I'm very sorry sir, I'll go out and find a new meat supplier this very second. And in future we won't charge any extra for the bread."

I promise there is a point to all this, so please bear with me. Franklins, a cosy restaurant in East Dulwich I sheltered in with a couple of blogger friends during the great snowstorm of 2010, served us a decent if uneven meal and the service veered between manically attentive and decisively ropey. So far so East Dulwich. But it was the things that annoyed us that we didn't mention to the staff compared to the things we didn't like that we did mention that hopefully illustrates some of the points I've rather ineptly been trying to make above. Consider, for example, these oysters:


Tiny, carelessly opened and less "loosened" than "hacked to bits", these hardly inexpensive natives (£2.40 a pop) nevertheless, despite the sad lack of briny liquor and poor presentation, tasted pretty good - crunchy and fresh. And while they were disappointing in many ways, they weren't quite disastrous enough to warrant a complaint, so in the interests of good company and a pleasant lunch, nothing was said.


Starter of confit rabbit with green beans certainly didn't warrant a complaint, because it was bloody good. The veg was crunchy fresh, the salty rabbit seasoned the dish very well, and I particularly liked the inclusion of a couple of bits of offal for interest and texture.


Ditto a main of venison haunch, which showcased tender and moist game dressed in a deeply addictive rich sauce, on an oozing mountain of savoy cabbage, shallots and (mmm) crispy bacon bits. When the guys at Franklins get it right, they really get it right, but when they get it wrong, they serve:


Unseasoned, unbuttered, undercooked and pretty much inedible sprout tops, it was like eating damp rubber, only not quite so enjoyable. This was not just a matter of opinion, this was objectively wrong, and so, emboldened by my blogger friends we mentioned it to the waitress, who apologised and took it off the bill. A good result, then, and a good example of a successful complaint.

And then, just as they were winning us back with their management of the whole sprout tops issue, the Franklins staff spoil it again by standing around chatting amongst themselves behind the bar and completely ignoring our requests to pay. In the end, one of us had to march up to the bar, credit card in hand, and physically interrupt the happily distracted group in order to get their attention. And how do you complain about that? "We think watching you socialise while we're trying to pay for our meal is incredibly irritating." I can't think of a way of making that complaint sound anything other than deliberately unpleasant, and of course nothing was said. Mind you, you'd hope they'd get the hint something was wrong when confronted by a stressed customer brandishing their VISA.

I suppose, in the end, a happy balance needs to be struck between the needs of a restaurant manager for accurate and constructive feedback on his or her restaurant, and the needs of the punter to have a nice, quiet, peaceable evening. I completely understand the frustrations of any business owner, not just restaurateurs, who serve their product to what for all they know are happy clients only to read a furious rant on a consumer review site (or, er, a food blog) the next day, but they must understand it's human nature, well, English nature at least, to not make a fuss about every little thing and run the risk of annoying your date. I will never be completely comfortable with complaining in restaurants, and to be honest don't like eating out with people who are; ultimately, I won't be made to feel guilty for not feeding back a comprehensive list of action points after a meal - it's my choice, I'm a paying customer, not a business consultant. If you think that's misguided, or just plain cowardly, then perhaps you're right, but I don't think I'm in the minority. Feel free to prove me wrong though, and I'd be very interested to see what everyone else out there thinks, so please leave comments, rebuttals and, yes, even complaints, below.

Franklins 7/10

Green and Blue, East Dulwich

A brave experiment here on Cheese and Biscuits today, as I attempt to write a post mainly about wine. Green and Blue is a wine shop and deli in East Dulwich, much loved in the local area (so I gather), who kindly invited a small group of bloggers and other interested parties in for a wine tasting to publicise the launch of their new Alsace range. With the wines came a selection of treats from the deli, forming a kind of mini tasting menu of four dishes and four different 100ml glasses of wine.


I could instantly tell Green & Blue was a serious wine shop, because I recognised literally none of the bottles on offer. That's the kind of wine knowledge we're dealing with here, I'm afraid - if I see no Wolf Blass, Jacob's Creek or Hardy's then consider me impressed - but bear with me and I'll see if I can't muddle through. Kate Thal, owner, is frighteningly knowledgeable and clearly passionate about wine and first of all gave a quick background to the Alsace region and its wines. It's a funny old place by the sound of it - separatist, war-ravaged (in many different wars over many centuries) and with its own peculiar laws on labelling and bottling. Alsace, unlike anywhere else in France, is allowed to put its grape varieties on the bottle. This may seem like a minor point, but many people believe it's the fact that you can go out and buy an Aussie Chardonnay but have to memorise the producer and region of the tens of thousands of French wines that the New World varieties are today so popular. I'm sure the French have their own very good reasons for making deciphering their wine labels an intellectual pursuit in itself, but for the rest of us, it's just a bit alienating.


The first wine was a 2007 Dirler Caude Muscat. Muscat, other than the sweet dessert types, goes with nothing, we were told. In Alsace most of this style of wine is drunk as an aperitif as it tends to clash with any accompanying savouries. Anything, that is, apart from artichokes - Kate believes that her roasted preserved artichoke hearts go perfectly (or at least very well) with this fragrant, fresh Muscat. And who am I to argue - all I can say for my part is that I slurped it all down quite happily.


Next up was the 2007 Leon Boesch Riesling, accompanied by crab on toast. This is a far more traditional pairing, Riesling and seafood, and of course worked well. The wine was honeyed while at the same time being quite acidic and minerally - quite an interesting balance. I would have liked more white meat with the brown in the crab, but at this price point (£6.50) I suppose it makes sense to have a slightly more rustic mix.


A buttery 2007 Leon Boesch Gewurtztraminer was served alongside a tasty Popina (you may have heard of these people - they have outlets around London) Aubergine Tart. There were some big Gewurtztraminer fans around the table who declared this course their favourite, and indeed it was hard to dislike this dense, rich wine.


Finally arrived a 2006 Frederic Mochel Pinot Gris, alongside a plate of smoked chicken and red pepper. This was not a polite dish - the smoked flavour was overpowering at first and it definitely needed the sweet peppers to control it. But after the taste buds had a chance to become accustomed to the assault, it all worked out rather well. The Pinot Gris was acidic, to cut through the smoke and sweetness, and fruity enough to add its own layer of flavour.

Each of these dishes and the accompanying wines can be bought for £6-7 each, or if you are hungry and thirsty the whole journey can be had for £25 - remember that's four small plates of food and the best part of 2/3 of a bottle of excellent wines. Bit of a bargain, if you ask me. Green and Blue is exactly the kind of friendly local wine bar that many other parts of London are crying out for - in fact they may have started a trend. Newly opened up the road from me in Battersea is Artisan and Vine, who appear to be trying very similar things. Watch this space.