The Knave of Clubs, Shoreditch

I wouldn't normally feel comfortable sticking a score on a place after sampling just 2 dishes from a menu, but I will make an exception for the Knave of Clubs for two reasons. Firstly, they have put the rotisserie "centre stage" at one end of the large dining room and that is what, I imagine, the large majority of their visitors will be ordering. Secondly, I bloody loved the place, so I don't think they'll mind me writing about it even without trying most of what their kitchens can offer.

We started, though, with oysters - an extremely reasonable £20 for 6 large, lean specimens supplied with all the correct condiments. In a town when the average price per bivalve is hovering around the £5 mark (and in some cases is well above that), it's nice to know that there's somewhere still offering value like this.

The same sense of value is evident in the rest of the menu. They really could charge a lot more for a whole chicken than £38, especially given the quality of these birds (from arguably London's best butcher Turner and George), and even if they didn't come with a giant helping of sides. For your money you get loads of chicken fat roasties, a nice sharply-dressed green salad, some slices of baguette and a little pot of light, homemade aioli.

All of this generosity would have come to naught if the chicken itself wasn't up to scratch, but fortunately thanks to the provenance I mentioned, plus judicious use of brining (not too salty but just enough to ensure every bit of the flesh is tender and juicy), plus a really lovely chermoula spice rub, the end result was a truly impressive bit of rotisserie - the best pub roast chicken I've had the pleasure to tear into in recent memory; certainly the best value. We absolutely demolished the chicken then spent many happy minutes mopping up the chermoula cooking juices with the slices of baguette, and for a while, all was well with the world.

The bill, with a £32 bottle of wine came to £51pp - you really can spend a lot more than this and get a lot less, and not just in central London. In fact the whole experience, including the lovely and attentive staff, made me forgive the only real complaint I have about the place - bloody communal tables. But the spots are spread out around them quite generously, and actually just gives me an excuse to return and try the bistro-style One Club Row upstairs in the same building, where chef Patrick Powell (ex- Allegra) is really stretching his wings. I bet it's great. Watch this space.

9/10

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Lima, Shoreditch

I don't usually like to do invited reviews back-to-back, so this was supposed to be a post about a lovely Catalonian restaurant called El Molí de L'Escala. El Molí serve a daily-changing menu of exciting and unusual local seafood (they had sea cucumber on the menu last week, and scorpion fish), foraged seasonal fare (fully five different types of wild local mushrooms) and world-class premium meats (proper Txuleton from Txogitxu in San Sebastian) for prices so reasonable - even for Spain - you wonder how they make any money at all. We had 3 set menus, a bonus plate of Palamós prawns (the best prawns in the world, trust me), plenty of wine and cava and the bill came to €56 each. It was all absolutely brilliant.

Sadly, due to an unfortunate run in with a dodgy SD card reader from a roadside stall in Girona (note: if the price of an SD card reader seems too good to be true, it probably is) I lost all my photos, so the post about El Molí has been put on the back burner until I can either go back for another reasonably priced lunch or somehow un-corrupt my photos from last week. In the meantime, I may as well tell you about another towering achievement in regional Hispanic food, albeit this time from the other end of the world, Lima in Shoreditch.

I was always predisposed to like Lima Shoreditch because I was a huge fan of their original site in Fitzrovia. Then, as now, there just isn't anyone else, as far as I'm aware, at least outside of Peru itself, doing this kind of thing at this kind of level to such astonishing effect. True, there are South American restaurants all over the place, and one or two fairly decent Cevicherias in London but Lima is the finest ambassador for this cuisine as you could hope for, a really smart and exciting little place operating entirely to its own set of rules and procedures.

Even the table snacks are noteworthy - a little bowl of fried corn kernels, not tooth-shatteringly crunchy like the stuff from the packets but moreish and satisfying, like flaky peanuts. They arrived alongside one of my favourite drinks of the moment, a Margarita Picante (Homeboy in Angel do a very good one as well, if you can put up with the insane noise levels) and I heard appreciative noises made about their Pisco Sour too.

Another snack (sort of), oyster topped with a wonderful basil foam, was notable not just for the base of zingy lean oyster but the surprising chilli hit from togarashi powder, which lifted all the other flavours around it. In fact, everything you need to know about the way Lima approach their menu can be learned from this single mouthful of oyster - accessible, attractive and inviting but at the same time surprising with unexpected techniques and flavours, it was a great start to the evening.

Bluefin tuna tartare came piled on a crunchy seaweedy batter base, providing a nice greaseless contrast to the fish. But the best thing about this dish was a lovely toasted sesame flavour that had been woven into the tuna, producing another whirlwind of complimentary flavours and textures.

The trio of ceviche is a great way to cover as much ground as possible if you're either new to Lima and ceviches in general, or alternatively if you're a food blogger trying to ingest as much of the menu as possible without causing a scene. All 3 examples contained incredible fresh fish - stone bass, sea bass and more of that lovely bluefin tuna - but I think my favourite was the Classico which had some buttery sweet potato spiked with a remarkably brave amount of chilli.

They found yet another way to present tuna in this dish of gambas, tiger's milk and avocado, which burst with colour and inventiveness, little dots of flavoured oils floating in the tiger's milk. Even if the same raw ingredients had found their way into a number of different dishes, they were all different enough not to feel samey, and to be honest they were all good enough that I would have quite happily eaten 6 or 7 plates of the same dish anyway without complaints.

If there was one single element of the entire meal that I could criticize it was that these lamb chops were a little bit on the flabby side - they needed a bit more heat from the Josper to get a darker crust and possibly to render off a bit more of that fat. However the "corn tamal" underneath was genuinely excellent - packed full of buttery goodness with an addictive soft-yet-distinct texture.

And the other large plate, red prawn quinotto (risotto, made with quinoa) was another comforting and attractive thing, with bits of octopus and plump fresh clams studded into the mix. I didn't try the red prawn - there was only one of them, and it wasn't technically my order - but I believe it was very good, although I'm guessing not quite as good as the Palamós prawns from El Molí...

Anyway there's no point crying over spilt SD cards. Lima's desserts continued the theme of exciting, unique and gently dramatic - cute little Alfajores biscuits were a joy to eat and the accompanying lime sorbet exactly the right kind of thing to match with the rich dulche de leche. And a geometrically pleasing puck of light cheesecake on a delicate biscuit base came with 3 neat blobs of lucuma coulis on top. Lucuma, by the way, is a south American fruit tasting a bit like passion fruit which I'd never even heard of before. There's a lot of things that Lima does that you don't see anywhere else - that's one of the supreme joys of eating there.

So yes, after all these years and even after the new location, I'm still a massive fan of Lima. It's tempting to wonder why there haven't been a whole slew of copycat Peruvian restaurants popping up in its wake over the last decade or so as tends to happen whenever a particular trend takes off (see US-style steakhouses about 15 years ago, or more recently smash burgers) but I have a feeling the reason Lima stands alone (or rather as a pair) even today is because this stuff really isn't easy to pull off. It's a culinary style so far removed from most European kitchen skill sets that doing it at all is only within the ability of a select few and doing it this well is only possible by... well, Lima. In short, if you want to see how good Peruvian food can be without travelling 6,000 miles, you have a choice of two spots in London. Both come extremely highly recommended.

9/10

I was invited to Lima Shoreditch and didn't see a bill. Expect to pay around £150/head I think if you make the most of the drinks list.

The Princess of Shoreditch, Shoreditch

My first job in London after moving down in 2003 was in a small basement office on Wilson Street near Finsbury Square. On my first day, a Friday, the boss announced at 1pm that everyone would be going to the pub for lunch, where he ordered, over the next couple of hours, a good few pints of lager each and plates of chips. At some point mid-afternoon he half-heartedly suggested we return back to the office, where we drunkenly squinted at our screens for about 30 minutes until he decided, at 4pm, it was hometime. This, I thought at the time, was the kind of work attitude I could get behind.

That pub, our office local for many years, was the Princess in Shoreditch - even then, I think my memory serves me well enough to say, making a name for itself serving elevated gastropub food. Today, the place at first glance looks very similar to how it did almost 20 years ago, although I don't remember them serving Shoreditch Old Fashioneds (coffee-infused Buffalo Trace, Angostura, orange) in 2003. Downstairs the menu is of attractive, keenly-priced gastropub stuff like crab cocktail and beef wellington, and I'm sure it's very lovely. But on the first floor, reached via a precipitous spiral staircase, some real magic is happening.

Upstairs at the Princess of Shoreditch is where they serve their tasting menu - think the full Moor Hall experience to downstairs' The Barn. It is one of the capital's more ambitious menus, a £75 set composed of 11 individual dishes beginning with "Snacks", dainty little toasted cheese finger sandwiches, artichokes topped with crab, and clever salmon truffle things encased in a delicate layer of some kind of solid fat topped with chervil, which melted in the mouth quite wonderfully. The snacks were in fact quite reminiscent of those at the sadly-departed Greenhouse Mayfair, another place that liked to stretch its muscles in these kinds of cheffy directions.

Bread was a sourdough, a brioche, and - my favourite - salty seeded crackers which were worryingly easy to eat. There were two types of butter, too (no self-respecting restaurant can serve any less these days), one very potently truffled and another simply whipped.

Of all the dishes, though by no means a disappointment, "Sweet onion" is the only one I could really think could be improved. All the flavours were slightly muted, not least the onion soup itself which needed a lot more kick, and I could have also done with more of a hit from the little blobs of Keen's cheddar mixture dotted around inside the bowl. However - and it's a big however - this course arrived with little homemade potato chips, salt and vinegar-flavoured with - incredibly - a single sprig of chervil somehow incased within each one, like a prehistoric fern preserved inside a sliver of amber. I don't know how difficult these are to make, but I'm going to assume it's not easy, as I've never seen anyone else even attempt it. So full marks for invention and technique there.

Next, gurnard, perfectly cooked with a nice crisp skin and meaty, fatty flesh, on a bed of vegetable "risotto". The "risotto", in fact, managed to be a more accomplished bit of cooking than an actual Italian risotto I was served in Verona the week after, although in the interests of saving Italian blushes I think the Italian risotto was a timing mistake rather than a conscious choice.

Next, chervil chips aside, my favourite course - a single giant raviolo containing lamb shoulder, squash and goat's curd, and topped with pine nut and sage breadcrumbs. Its relatively simple (although perfectly attractive) appearance belied a deep, rich flavour of herbs and lamb, and it came surrounded by a thick, glossy lamb jus, also a top bit of technique as these kind of things can quite easily be too salty, too fatty or too bland. Not this one though, it was perfect.

Salt aged duck had a wonderful flavor and an even better texture, meltingly tender and with a carefully rendered skin. A potato terrine was a thoughtful and tasteful accompaniment, ditto a little blob of pickled plum, and a braised artichoke. The fact salt aged duck was served on a tasting menu and wasn't my favourite thing is far more an indication of how blindingly good most of the rest of it was, rather than any failing with the duck.

It's a strange thing that's happened in recent years, almost certainly connected to my increasing age, that whenever I get a tasting menu I'm disappointed when I'm only served one dessert instead of at least two. It seems rather unbalanced to have 8 savoury courses and only 1 sweet, so it was nice to see blood orange with a fantastic treacle sponge...

...followed by an arrangement of forced Yorkshire rhubarb, some stewed to a lovely firm texture and some I think freeze-dried, that also did very wonderful things with white chocolate and fennel.

This being an invite (thank you Tonic PR) I didn't see a bill but with a normal(!) amount of wine and service I estimate the price per head to be about £150. And as this is a tasting menu in London - and a bloody brilliant one at that - that is, in my opinion, right in the sweet spot. I would, in short, have in other circumstances happily paid for it, and I imagine - in fact I know - I'm not the only one.

At the end of the meal as we wiped up the last traces of white chocolate mousse with our fingers (nb. I saw "we"; this could just have been me) chef Ruth Hansom appeared for a brief chat about dinner and to apologise for the emptiness of the dining room of a cold Wednesday evening ("suits me just fine" I replied). I was going to mention about the Princess being my local back in 2003 until I realised she would have been about 6 years old at the time, so rather than embarrass anyone (not least me) and sensing she'd very much prefer to be back in the kitchen than making small talk with a slightly pissed blogger, I thanked her profusely and set off into the night.

The Princess of Shoreditch is, of course, and is hopefully obvious from the above, a brilliant little restaurant. But that all that ambitious, technically groundbreaking food should have been designed and created by someone still in the early stages of her career, is a rare and unusual thing. Most chefs spend their whole lives trying to get to the level she seems to have just been born with, although of course some of that is an illusion - she worked with John Williams at the Ritz (at the same age, I think, that I was still doing my paper round), probably the best introduction to fine dining any young chef would have been able to receive. What's amazing is that her food will only get better from here. Definitely one to watch.

9/10

I was invited by Frances Cottrell-Duffield of Tonic, and didn't see a bill. Sorry about the photos, blogging in winter is a pain.

Rochelle Canteen, Shoreditch

Well, here we are again. Another brief gasp of freedom after another lockdown, another frantic opportunity to have as many meals out as possible before kitchens evolve back into makeshift field canteens, another half-assed set of contradictory measures that scapegoat restaurants, pubs and bars for a disease that is overwhelmingly and proveably transmitted mainly in schools, universities and care homes. The latest slice of nonsense is the Tier 2 "substantial meal" rule, meaning that to enjoy even so much as a half pint in your local you must order with it, well, nobody's quite sure - anything has been suggested from a £3 hot dog to a £25 steak and chips minimum.

It's hard to even know where to start with explaining just how unfair, unworkable and completely counterproductive this idea is. Firstly and most obviously, as mentioned above, there's no solid definition of what "substantial" means, so venues have been left to their own devices to decide how to enforce it. Some pub chains have insisted on at least a dish from the Mains section of the menu with each drink, a couple of places have brought in a special menu with things like £3 hot dogs to try and help keep the cost down. At least one pub I know of has a £2/head 'substantial meal' charge and will dump a large bowl of instant noodles on your table to accompany your entire night out. It's up to you whether you eat it or not.

The massive effect on food waste, is of course, the first obscenity. A walk through the open-air pubs and bars of Borough Market last week revealed groups of people sat next to giant piles of untouched boxes of food that they'd been forced to order with their mulled ciders, with no intention of being eaten. On top of this, the many drinks-led venus in London - and I'm not just talking about the pubs but also cocktail bars, craft beer tap houses, wine bars and the like - are having to choose between finding something - anything - to serve as food or to stay shut completely. Sitting outside, alone, in a beer garden, nowhere near any other human and being told you can't have a pint of IPA unless you order a burger to go with it is utter madness. None of it makes sense.

So for drinks-led pubs and bars the situation is critical. For restaurants, it's merely really, really bad. Nobody is having a great time of things in Lockdown Land but if you were lucky enough to be placed in Tier 2 or lower, have a nice garden to expand into, and - most importantly - are serving some of the best food in town, then you have a better chance than most of scraping through until the end of all this. And I am optimistic as it's possible to be about anywhere these days, about Rochelle Canteen.

Alongside a negroni - this was my very last lunch before Lockdown 2, but every meal out these days has a kind of desperate, end-of-days feel to it, as if it may all at any moment be suddenly swiped from under your nose like a stolen sausage from a naughty puppy, so I think starting each one with a strong cocktail is absolutely critical - we ordered most of the snacks including these neat little salt cod fritters, and a pork and rabbit terrine. Best of all of the snacks though was something described in that typical spartan St John way as "anchovy toast" but which turned out to be a gloriously salty and silky-smooth fish paste, mousse-like in its texture and utterly addictive. We had two of these - enough for half a slice each - but immediately wish we'd ordered many, many more.

Mussels were nice and plump and very enjoyable, but of course the main point of ordering mussels is to end up with a wine-y, seafood-y broth to dip sourdough into, and so that's what we did.

There was never any chance of my not ordering the only game bird on the menu, and the mallard was everything I needed it to be - tender enough but with a decent bite, skin beautifully bronzed and all of it sat on a mash that's best described as potato-flavoured butter. Perhaps I would have liked a somewhat more substantial sauce than the watery stock that surrounded it, but this is a minor niggle. It was still great.

I didn't manage to sample any of the roast pork before it all disappeared, but it looks decent enough doesn't it? Particularly that crackling which looks so light and brittle even looking at the photo I can clearly imagine the sound it makes when bitten into. Quite jealous I didn't, in fact.

Onglet had been simply prepared and simply presented, but by virtue of an excellent raw ingredient and the brave (and correct) decision to hold it for barely a passing moment over a heat source, it arrived addictively chewy and gloriously bloody. It's not a beginner's steak is onglet, it requires an honest appraisal of the relationship between man and cow, and a bit more effort in the eating, but is ultimately so much more rewarding than many much more expensive cuts.

Partly because we were enjoying ourselves so much, and also (mainly) because this was going to be our last lunch out in who knows how long and we wanted to squeeze every last drop out of it, we ordered the cheese course (two different cheddar-alikes which made up for lack of variety with a very decent taste and texture each), and a lemon pudding. And a chocolate pot. And a cheesecake. Oh, and a glass of Sauternes and two double calvados. And we regretted none of it.

It's about this time of year that normally I'd be thinking about which place to make my Restaurant of the Year. With a full four months where every food outlet in the country was closed, and with restaurants being very different places even when they were able to open, the decision has been made extra fraught this year; it seems a bit pointless to point anywhere out for particular praise when even simply surviving is an epic achievement. As I type this, London is back into Tier 3 - effectively lockdown - but with the vaccine not just theoretically "on its way" any more but actually already innoculating over 140,000 people there really is an end to all this in sight. And when we're allowed out again to eat and drink and be merry, it will be to places like Rochelle Canteen that will be waiting to welcome you, with a negroni, anchovy on toast and some potato-flavoured butter. Not long now, I promise.

9/10

St. Leonard's, Shoreditch

Looking back over the God knows how many years I've been writing this blog, it seems that my most breathlessly enthusiastic and hyperbolic reviews have been of places that are about more than just great food. Great food is obviously a given - this is after all why you're here - but it's the stories that often turn a great experience into a special one. I'm thinking of Yianni's journey from flipping the best burgers in Britain to opening the industry-altering #meateasy popup in New Cross, the discovery deep in the rolling Lancashire countryside of two women running the platonic ideal of a food pub, or when some Italian food enthusiasts decided to open a tiny no-reservations pasta bar in Borough and it ended up being exactly what thousands of Londoners had been waiting for. It's these stories, the unusual or surprising circumstances leading up to the creation of fantastic food, that lift the whole experience into something else.

The conception of St. Leonards (that sounds like a Catholic order) has, it must be said, very little of the unusual or shocking. It is the simple story of some extremely talented people who, with one popular and successful restaurant - Brunswick House - already under their belts, decide to open another one. They find a medium-sized site recently vacated by the Spanish restaurant Eyre Bros and open it out into a bright, clean space; they hire a phalanx of charming and dedicated front of house staff dressed in smart monochrome to work the floor; and they kit out a vast kitchen with a centrepiece wood- and charcoal-fired hearth, over which hang various tantalising cuts of beef on the bone and tuna collar. And then, finally, they serve some of the most exciting and innovative food London has ever seen.

OK, so, maybe St. Leonards is special after all. Restaurants like this do not come around very often, and nor do they happen by accident. Jackson Boxer and Andrew Clarke have pooled their considerable experience into a menu of such stark, beguiling beauty that if you took it to an open mic poetry night you could read it top to bottom and receive a standing ovation. Certain phrases attack the senses even if you're not exactly sure what they imply - "soy butter", "buckthorn mollases", "tuna bone caramel", "XO crumb", and the less the menu explains, the greater is the desire to discover them for yourself.

Attention to detail - precise, exquisite attention to detail - is everywhere, even when a dish is literally no more than a product of clever sourcing, such as this Noir de Bigorre ham, sliced to order into soft, salty, nutty folds. Noir de Bigorre ham has apparently been produced in the countryside around Lourdes for longer than the Iberico pigs from Spain, and though nothing is likely to beat a top bit of Belotta to my heart any time soon, this certainly gave it a run for its money.

If you're anything like me you will fiercely resist anyone mucking about too much with oysters, and though I have enjoyed the odd baked bivalve in my time - most recently at the short-lived offshoot of Mien Tay Mrs Le's - usually I want nothing more than a squeeze of lemon. But here are St Leonard's dressed Lindisfarne to completely change everyone's mind on the subject. Wild black pepper infused pickling liquor (I mean try not loving that concept, I dare you) and pickled garlic scapes complimented and elevated the lean oyster flesh to create an extraordinary mouthful of fresh, briney sweetness. I never want oysters any other way again.

Then, a cherrystone clam, its shell shining blue like fine Wedgewood pottery, dressed in a smoky, earthy Sichuan peppercorn oil and topped with daintily chopped spring onions. All St Leonard's strengths were on display in this one bit of seafood - the playful use of Asian spices, the interesting and rarely-seen main ingredient, the beautiful and precise presentation.

Some neat oblongs of mackerel next, their silvery skins glittering beneath dandelion stalks. Underneath, a layer of dense, umami-rich soy dressing - "soy butter" - which I did my best to mop up with the mackerel before finally resorting to using my fingers. I didn't care if anyone was watching.

"Chawanmushi" is apparently a kind of savoury custard, here combined with foie gras for extra levels of meaty decadence. On top sat a few pieces of smoked eel - always impossible not to love - and crunchy pieces of pork skin. So foie gras, smoked eel and pork scratching. Together. Yes, it was brilliant.

Sweet baby onions, charred on the hearth, would have been a decent little snack even of themselves, and actually quite similar to a course at famous Scandi weeds-and-pickles restaurant Noma I had a couple of years back. But here they came on something called "tuna bone caramel", which I can best describe as possibly the greatest fish-based sauce you'll ever taste in your life. God knows how many laborious techniques go into its production, or how many grinding man hours, but the result is a thick, dark sauce somewhere between bagna cauda and treacle, so dangerously addictive it should come with a parental advisory sticker.

There are few things more reliably rewarding than a bit of charcoal-grilled bavette, even when not particularly good quality beef. Of course St Leonard's use the best beef they can get their hands on - from Swaledale of Skipton - and so the result is a tender, powerfully-flavoured dish, overhung with woodsmoke and topped with grated cured bonemarrow for bonus beef.

Maybe I don't need to say anything about the next dish. Maybe all you need is the photo above, for an object as overwhelmingly beautiful as that to do all the talking. Or maybe all you need are the words "monkfish, buckthorn mollases, beach herbs" and you can let your mind fill in the details of the firm, blinding white flesh glazed in sweet syrup, the ethereally light hollandaise underneath, the pile of salty succulents above, plump with freshness and life. As much as any dish at St. Leonard's should be a must-order - and there's some competition for that particular role - I'd wager you'd leave with the greatest regret leaving not having tried this bronzed beauty, an absolute masterclass in fish cooking.

Sorry, perhaps I need a second to compose myself. I should try and offer a bit of balance, some sour lemon to cut through the oozing cheesecake of hyperbole. OK then, here you go - the rhum baba wasn't very good. Dry and woolly, it was certainly soaked with a generous amount of rum but the alcohol could still not prevent the sponge from sticking to the roof of my mouth. So, yeah, St. Leonard's isn't perfect.

But "salt caramel & East India sherry tart with cardamom ice cream" was perfect, displaying a willingness for bold experimentation that had been a feature of the savoury courses. With an expertly-judged smooth, light filling and great soft ice cream, it was everything you'd need in a caramel tart.

I began this post with the desclaimer that St. Leonard's has no intriguing backstory, no rags-to-riches journey from street food to bricks and mortar, no heartwarming reality TV triumph against adversity. For lazy restaurant bloggers and overworked food journalists the lack of a "hook" could mean it doesn't grab the attention - or headlines - as much as other places. It doesn't even have a car lift to accommodate paparazzi-shy celebrities.

But the very fact that St. Leonard's isn't an "accident" or an "experiment", and has no eye-catching gimmicks, could perhaps in the end be the very reason for its success. It exists because certain people want it to exist, and because those same sickeningly talented individuals have nailed, at every turn, everything that makes a restaurant great, while ignoring any irrelevant extra bells and whistles that don't. Make no mistake, there's every bit as much of a revolution going on here as in that strange dark space above a pub in New Cross back in 2011, or at the end of a two-hour queue in Borough, but hiding in plain sight as a "normal" restaurant in Shoreditch means that St. Leonard's stands even more of a chance of knocking you sideways. It certainly did me. And it's only a matter of time before it does to you, too.

9/10

I visited St. Leonard's at the tail end of soft opening, so received 50% off the bill as you can see above. A more normal price per head would have been about £80.