The Ethical Butcher at the Spurstowe Arms, London Fields

Time, they say, is the great healer, and it seems that's just as true of Covid time as it ever was. Yes, the long, cold months of the last lockdown were thoroughly miserable to live through, even to those who made it through relatively unscathed to the other side, but as the days since we emerged blinking back into the sunlight have turned into weeks and then months, it feels like the odd precious highlight - an escape to the countryside, a Zoom-set pub quiz, a delivery meal - shine that little bit brighter than the abject fear, repetition and drudgery that surrounded them.

One such rare highlight was a package from the Ethical Butcher, a company that's made its name with a completely uncompromising attitude to the meat they sell, a product of sustainable, regenerative agriculture that also (either by sheer coincidence or as a direct result of the care taken to produce it) tastes incredible. I remember the aroma that filled the room when I opened the box up, not the usual butchers stale meat smell (although there's a part of me has a soft spot for that too) but of farmland, wild meadows and open countryside. All meat tastes, and smells, of the life it's lived - and if that's been a good life, that information is generously passed on.

When I received an invite to try the Ethical Butcher's residence at the Spurstowe Arms, then, I jumped at the chance - and not just because the place is a short walk from where I'm living at the moment. It's a lovely old pub, the Spurstowe - original high-ceiling Victorian bar, nice little beer garden out back, picnic tables on the street - and having some elevated, sustainable food to go with your pint of IPA would make an unbeatable combination.

And it started very well. Their regenerative agriculture charcuterie selection, salami and Cerrunos ham, were about as good as you can get anywhere - particularly the salami which had a lovely complex flavour and a texture just the right side of firm. Even some of the bits outside of the Butcher's control were worth talking about - excellent pickled chillies which despite their fierce heat we couldn't stop eating, and some nice salty olives - but I'm afraid I'm not sure we needed the very ordinary cold toast sprinkled with salt and olive oil. Without those, the dish would have been better.

I've had a lot of tomato salads, and not many of them have been very good - I think the mistake is thinking that any tomato grown in the UK has the potential to be better than those from the Med, and that really just isn't the case. These, though, from West Sussex, were superb - an incredibly deep flavour and complemented very well by a simple dressing of walnut oil and balsamic.

So far so good, and the good news about the mains is that you could tell immediately that this was very, very good meat. They arrived on the table with that familiar smell of pasture and meadow, together with a strong beefy note of aged cow. And they tasted almost as good as that smell indicated despite, sadly, both being rather overcooked. Bavette should really only be served rare, which I did ask for, but it arrived medium-well. Thanks to the fine raw product it had no hint of chewiness or dryness, and cut remarkably like fillet, but yes it would have been nice to try it a bit bloodier as it would have been even more impressive.

Similarly the burger would have been that much nicer with a bit of pink inside, but was still an excellent example of its kind, with good crunchy salad elements, a sharp homemade relish and what tasted like proper (ie. properly rubbish) American burger cheese though I'm sure there was more to it than that. The strong, dark crust on the beef itself and the nice loose ground hinted at what could have been if it had just been cooked a little hotter for a bit less, but hey, it was still worth the effort.

Overall, though, the sheer quality of the Ethical Butcher's product shone through the odd mistake from the kitchen, and this was still a good showcase for their product. And of course, if you don't trust the Spurstowe to keep an eye on the clock I can thoroughly, wholeheartedly recommend their meat boxes - particularly now it's barbeque season - where you can try their lamb chops, steaks, burgers and so on in the comfort of your own house/garden and if you overcook it you only have yourself to blame. Besides, a week or so after my meal at the Spurstowe, it's not the mistakes I remember, but the charcuterie, that amazing tomato salad and the incredible smell of aged beef filling the room. Oh, and the cat which sat at our table. Time, you see - the great healer.

7/10

I paid for the Ethical Butcher's meat box myself, but the meal above was an invite and I didn't see a bill.

Lahpet, London Fields

If you were ever coming to this blog looking for informed insight or intelligent food discussion, well you were always on a hiding to nothing. But I like to think that my exposure to the vast numbers of British, French, Spanish and Indian restaurants in London has meant at least I stand a better chance of saying something useful about those cuisines, even if occasionally just by accident, than most others. I'm getting better at Sichuan, I'm OK at Mexican, I can just about get away with stringing a few words together on Vietnamese or Thai, but Burmese?

But I can't feel too self-conscious about the fact I knew next to nothing about Burmese food before stepping foot into Lahpet because, let's face it, there aren't too many Burmese food experts knocking around anywhere outside Burma. Thanks to a military dictatorship and decades of global political isolation, this huge SE Asian country is only just now becoming known to the world, and the delights (or otherwise) of Burmese cuisine has yet to filter through to Western consciousness. The practical upshot of which is that I can be even more blithely ignorant than usual without feeling even the least bit guilty about it.

Lahpet, then, is a Burmese restaurant in London Fields, just over the road from where Som Saa did its own SE Asian thing all those years ago. It is unfortunately cursed with huge communal tables - enough to strike the fear of God into this particular diner - but fortunately on a quiet Wednesday night we had plenty of space to ourselves and didn't have to share any personal space. The menu is short, and not too baffling - a few words here and there that didn't mean much but generally not too indimidating to a Burmese food newcomer (which will be more or less everyone) and fairly keenly priced.

We ordered a couple of "fritters", two mains and - because they sounded interesting - all the sides. They offered to bring the "sun dried anchovies" side first, as they thought they would make a good snack. They sort of did - dry, crisp, with a bit of a chilli kick and plenty of umami flavour - but the pieces of anchovy were very tiny and quite difficult to scoop up, and felt more of a dressing or topping than a snack in their own right.

Fritters were fine but fairly unmemorable. Neither the triangles of fried tofu or the kidney bean "Mandalay" tasted of a great deal, and the provided tamarind sauce was underpowered and too thin to cling to the fritters when dipped in. Nice textures, but not much else.

Fortunately, the tea leaf salad was well worth the effort. Full of crunch and colour, shot through with Spanish-style dry-fried broad beans and sesame seeds, it would be vibrant and rewarding even without the tea leaf itself, which was pickled or fermented in some way as to produce an incredibly satisfying complex flavour. If this is Burmese cuisine, then consider me a fan.

Mains as of themselves were good - very good, in fact - but we could have probably done with a bit more guidance on ordering. I liked the look of the "hake masala" on paper, and enjoyed it very much in reality, the first being firm and meaty (if a tad on the dry side), and the masala sauce thick and rich. It all felt vaguely Indian, vaguely Malaysian, which I suppose is understandable given Burmese geographic borders.

Unfortunately, in their wisdom Lahpet advised us to order the coconut chicken noodles as our second main, which turned out to be dressed in exactly the same thick masala sauce as the hake. And despite the chicken itself being cooked perfectly well and a nice contrast between the normal wet noodles in the sauce and some crunchy dried noodles on the side of the bowl, eating both mains at the same time just ended up being a bit... samey. Maybe all of the Lahpet main courses come in the same sauce - maybe it's a Burmese thing. But if not, it's a strange thing to deliberately suggest.

And even stranger was the arrival of a second "side", another small sample of dried seafood (shrimp this time though the flavour wasn't markedly different), presented in another glass ashtray, defying use or explanation. If there was something I should have been doing with my two bowls of seafood crackling other than scooping them into my mouth with a slightly baffled expression on my face then, well, nobody made it obvious.

We didn't stay for "deserts" (sic) - the homemade ice creams sounded intriguing but they'll have to wait for another time. Because - and this may come as a bit of a surprise given my moaning above - I think I probably will be back to Lahpet. Despite the awkward way it was served and explained, there was something genuinely new going on here, perhaps not enough to herald a Burmese revolution in London but certainly enough to indicate that this is a cuisine that will impress more and more as it finds its feet - and an audience. As for the thorny question of authenticity, who knows - perhaps I'll leave it to actual experts like Burmese cookbook author MiMi Aye to have a look at the menu above and see how closely it represents anything from the home country. Meantime, I'll scurry back to my comfort zone and leave them to it. Have the salad. It's nice.

6/10

Som Saa, London Fields

For years, I thought I didn't like Thai food. Greasy spring rolls, rubbery chicken satays in a sickly orange sauce, soggy Pad Thai bulked out with a murky mix of frozen vegetables; at best it was boring, at worst that special kind of sweet, mushy blandness that speaks of a long time left in the freezer. And then I went to Thailand on holiday, and realised that I didn't dislike Thai food, I just disliked Thai food in the UK, which at the time (and until fairly recently) was about as close to the real thing as a Harvester is to the Hind's Head.

Why the discrepancy? The same old issues that held back food in this country for so long - lack of ambition, low expectations from the public in general, and the fact that so many considered eating out a wild extravagance held only for the most special occasions, forcing restaurants to eke through empty weekdays occasionally chipping stuff out of the freezer when needed, and hoping to shift enough Blue Nun on Friday night to make the whole enterprise worthwhile. In much of the country, this is still sadly the case - the demand just isn't there, and with very few notable exceptions, small town restaurants are pretty dire. Hell, even Liverpool struggles, and there's over two million people live there.

What any cuisine needs to be at its best, then, is an open-minded customer base, access to good fresh ingredients, and a restaurant that can make the numbers work. The problem that most Asian food, and Thai food specifically has, is that when you've had the best Pad Thai of your life from a back street in Chang Mai and it costs 40p, persuading the same people back in London that their equally tasty version is worth £10 is a bit of an ask. But if anyone can persuade London that good Thai food is worth shelling out a bit extra for, it's Som Saa.

That's not to say Som Saa is expensive; quite the opposite. It's actually incredibly good value compared to the dross trotted out in the name of Thai food in most of the capital (hang your head in shame, Thai Square) - perhaps too good value, and I'll come back to that later. There are some snacks for £3-4, various bits of grilled meats with dipping sauces for £6-7, and a couple of sharing plates that go up to £14. By anyone's standards, this is a keenly priced restaurant. What makes it an extraordinary restaurant is that the dishes produced are innovative and unusual at any price point; this is Thai food like you've never seen before, full of colour and vibrancy, authentic where it counts but making exciting use of premium British ingredients alongside Thai staples. It is, in short, the best Thai restaurant I've ever been to outside Thailand.

This is jan naem, a fermented pork snack that they apparently make by secreting bits of it away in the hottest corners of the railway arch the restaurant currently calls its home. It's sharp and fresh, quite unlike any other pork dish I've ever tasted, the acidity turning the generous slabs of pig into something approaching pickled but actually way more complex and rewarding than that.

Beef in betel leaf is something you may have seen before at one of the (many decent) Vietnamese places on Kingsland Road, and they were every bit as good here, with that familiar soft beef filling and topped with crunchy peanuts. The chilli/vinegar dip was not only familiar in flavour to the kind of thing you get in SE Asia but the pink bowl it came in was a lovely little nod to streetfood tableware as well.

This is one of the "snacks", pla bon dtaeng mor, strips of watermelon with an interesting smoked fish powder and crunchy fried shallots. Like the jan naem, I've never had anything like it before although it did remind me slightly of the very clever chilli watermelon salad at Chick'n'Sours - that same addictive mix of fresh fruit and Scoville heat that simultaneously burns and soothes.

Som tam was arguably one of the more familiar Thai dishes on the menu at Som Saa, but was done with such style that it still managed to feel completely new. Fresh and vibrant, and another great use of that "roadside pastel" tableware. I'm convinced there is no cuisine that does salads better than Thai food - the care and attention given to the play of textures and chilli in the vegetarian dishes is never less than equal that of the protein.

Excuse my attempt at an arty Instagram-style shot - that on the right is gai yang grilled chicken leg with dipping sauce. I find the different styles of butchery in world cuisine fascinating. Usually in Western cuisine a chicken will be neatly jointed into drumstick, thigh and wing, and you work your portion control around that. In Carribbean (jerk) and SE Asian food though, a sharp cleaver cuts the chicken up into equal sizes regardless of the part of the animal - it's quicker and easier to prepare, and produces bits easier for dipping.

The star dish was always likely to be this seabass nam dtok pla thort, because I can't think of a single meal that wouldn't be improved by an entire deep-fried fish to share. Isn't it magnificent? And it tasted just as good as it looked, the rich, herby dressing hitting all of those amazing Thai food pleasure points - sweet, hot, sour, crunch.

There was a pork belly curry, thick and velvety, that I forgot to take a picture of, and a very interesting smoked fish relish with dipping vegetables that I did. But by this point I imagine you'll need no further evidence that Som Saa is a restaurant at the very top of its tree. It's Thai food that successfully demonstrates everything that makes this cuisine so special at some incredibly generous prices.

So where do we go from here? Because as they'll tell you themselves, Som Saa is only in this space temporarily and needs to move to a situation, and setting that will go the distance. Shared tables and a streetfood vibe are fine when you're finding your feet and building an audience, but Andy Oliver's astonishing food deserves more - a room and an atmosphere that reflect the days of backbreaking prep that goes into each dish (days of pickling, crushing, chopping and fermenting, if rumours are to be believed; they work all week but are only open to the public Thursday-Sunday). So bizarrely for a restaurant blogger and happy customer, I think Som Saa v2 should charge more. Not tablecloths and silver service but we need to demonstrate that people are willing to pay that bit extra when the results more than justify it. With a bit of extra spend per head, this stunningly talented bunch of people can really go places. The future is bright.

9/10

We were spotted and had a couple of extra dishes brought out for free, but I think the bill per head would have been about £25-£30 otherwise including a bottle of lovely Picpoul