Toba, St James

It's a strange part of town, is St James. Essentially a lesser-known southern extension of Mayfair, it's barely a half mile square and yet contains quite a high density of fancy hotels (Duke's, the Stafford, the Ritz), private members' clubs and the odd royal palace. Whereas some aspects of Mayfair come across as brash or showy (it is home to Sexy Fish, after all), St James is old money - genteel, refined, that little bit more exclusive.

It's a surprise, then, to find Toba in the space recently vacated by Ikoyi. Ikoyi, you may or may not know, had 2 Michelin stars and served a £300 tasting menu - pricey by anyone's standards but sort of fitting for St James. Toba is hardly a budget joint - where is these days? - but is definitely a more affordable affair than the previous residents.

All of which would amount to nothing if the food wasn't up to scratch, but it's a pleasure to report that everything we tried at Toba wasn't just unique for London - as far as I know, at least - but was absolutely wonderful. I'm no expert on Indonesian cuisine (despite having lived there for a few months back in the early noughties, long story) but it's fair to say that we have hardly been blessed with many such places. With parallels with Malaysian food, it is nonetheless its own beast, and if there's a better showcase for this kind of stuff anywhere in the country I'll be very surprised indeed.

We started with "Indonesian" prawn crackers - though apart from their relative small size and slightly increased density from your local Chinese version, they were very familiar territory. However they were great dipped in the trio of house sambal - shrimp, Balinese style and torch ginger, the latter I'm told being a very rare sight on these shores.

Another trio next, this time three flavours of deep-fried fritters. These kind of things can, in lesser kitchens, often suffer from being greasy or hard work - just think how many terrible cheap fish cakes you've suffered from a mediocre Thai restaurant. These were utterly perfect - greaseless and moreish, with a nice hot chilli oil dip to compliment the fried food. The corn in particular was a highlight, with a lovely soft, bubbly texture.

However, if anything the mains were even better. First, rendang, provided in several cubes of slow-cooked beef so ridiculously tender they were bordering on ethereal, dissolving in the mouth into pure essence of beef. Now, you may notice this isn't a huge amount of food for your £16.50 but if portion control is helping them run a business, and serve rendang this blindingly good, then I'm all in favour. Rich, complex and intelligently created, I can't imagine there's a better rendang anywhere outside of Java.

If you think you like the sound of "Deep fried chicken wings tossed with salted egg yolk, chilli and curry leaves", well then join the club - and if anything the reality was even better than the promise on paper. Great big healthy, meaty wings were soaked in a buttery, creamy coating that despite containing all the advertised bits and pieces, somehow was still so much greater than the sum of its parts. I'd say the egg salted chicken wings and the rendang are must-order items at Toba but I have a feeling there's plenty else on that menu with the potential to delight as well. It's just that kind of place.

Filling up on a bowl of fragrant yellow rice (very good, of course) and accompanied by a bottle of Italian white (£30, the wine list being one area at least where you don't feel pressure on the budget), the final bill came to just under £50 a person. And yes, it's a lot for what is essentially street food, and comparisons could possibly be made - I hope they won't mind me saying - with the Melaysian food served at Mambow in Peckham Rye, but in fact Mambow isn't that much cheaper anyway. Both are very good, and each come highly recommended.

So why not Indonesian, and why not, after all, St James? Who cares where they are if the food is as good as this? Populated by friendly, keen staff (which you'd hope for given the 15% service charge) this smart little place is about to make London fall in love with Indonesian food, and if that comes with a bit of a St James premium then so be it. Good things are worth paying for.

9/10

Cha Cha Moon, Soho

There are few restaurateurs that have had as dramatic an impact on the way this country eats than Alan Yau. The man who created an impressive number of famous restaurants such as Michelin-starred Chineses Hakkasan and Yauatcha, and plush Japanese Sake No Hana in St James (though not still involved day-to-day with very many of them), he is perhaps best known for being the founder of the extraordinarily popular Wagamama chain, which has so many branches now up and down the country - and around the globe - that they're almost as almost as ubiquitous on the high street as Boots or Marks & Spencer. To be honest, I'm not a fan of Wagamama - it's timid food served as quickly as possible, and the bench seating is infuriating for a number of reasons - but then I'm a snobby Londoner with access to places like Koya and Chilli Cool; I can easily see why they've been so popular elsewhere.


So the guy has a decent track record. And he has been very successful, perhaps thanks to the very clear set of expectations crafted by his restaurants. So far, each has filled a certain specific role; Hakkasan is posh Cantonese, Yauatcha is posh dim sum, Saka No Hana is posh Japanese. Similarly, Wagamama is budget Japanese and Busaba Eathai is budget Thai. So presumably Cha Cha Moon is budget Chinese except - what's this on the menu - Dolly mee goreng is Malaysian isn't it? And Fujian style udon is most definitely Japan. There's Thai chicken curry, Sichuan chicken, Singapore fried noodles, Indonesian satay, baby back ribs!? - geographically, it's all over the place. And if you think that pan-Asian restaurants are doomed to mediocrity because no one kitchen can master such a wide range of styles of cooking, Cha Cha Moon is unlikely to change your mind.


First thing to arrive - dishes are just brought out as and when they are ready - was a warm crispy duck salad. I suppose the duck was technically crispy in that it had been deep fried to near-oblivion, but thanks to the shredded flesh soaking up the fryer oil like a sponge, it was unbelievably greasy. The salad itself was dressed in what I can only assume was simple syrup as I didn't detect anything other than sugar, and while ordinarily I'd compliment their generosity on such a large portion for your £7.90, in this case it just meant there was more sickly, greasy gunk to wade through. Hideous.


Singapore fried noodles were better, but then so is driving a ten-inch cook's knife through your thigh. It was a bit sweet, a bit bland and despite being marked on the menu as "spicy" we couldn't detect even the slightest hit of chilli, but at least it was fresh and just about edible. Still, this was the kind of thing you could get from any High Street Chinese takeaway in the country, absolute bog-standard fare, and was £6.90.


These spring rolls tasted exactly like the ones you can get in the plastic cartons from Tescos. That's not to say they were in any way inedible, I just have this old fashioned notion that people visit restaurants to eat food they can't reheat themselves in the oven for a quarter of the price. They came with some kind of tamarind-based dipping sauce that made them taste of tamarind-based dipping sauce instead of spring rolls. We used up all of the sauce.


I can't begin to tell you how awful the baby back ribs were. The cloyingly sweet sauce (described coyly as "tangy" on the menu) they came soaked in wasn't enough to cover the appalling smell of commodity pig and the meat was so overcooked and formless it was like eating rancid pork-flavoured blancmange. Unspeakably bad, and although perhaps nothing can quite beat the ribs at Hard Rock Cafe for sheer catastrophic terror, these weren't far off. Pitt Cue in Soho is still the only place in town I've eaten ribs of any kind worth paying for.


We drank sickly lychee-flavoured cocktails and cheap white wine, as you tend to do in these places, and after gamely working at the more edible elements of the food, scurried off wondering what on earth just happened. Alan Yau has dropped so many balls with Cha Cha Moon the streets of Soho could be used to film a Sony Bravia commercial. With its directionless, geographically vague menu, timid and incompetently prepared food, and piercingly loud room fitted with those dreaded communal bench seats, it's hard to find anything even remotely positive to say about the place. Oh - the staff were very pleasant and there were lots of them so you never had to try to hard to get their attention. But for God's sake, even the toilets were shoddy - Alan Yau's places are famous for always having nice toilets, even the budget ones. It's baffling, and my meal was miserable, but all said and done, this is Soho and alternatives are hardly in short supply. Eat somewhere else. Eat anywhere else.

2/10



I was invited to review Cha Cha Moon