Cheese and Biscuits on tour - The Burgers of San Diego

There's a very widely-read blog called A Hamburger Today, all about - you guessed it - burgers. It's an offshoot of the hugely popular US website Serious Eats and as you might expect largely focusses on that part of the world (with the occasional foray abroad to the usual suspects), but it is nevertheless an interesting and pleasingly unpretentious bulletin of what's new in the burger world. AHT is just as likely to cover the revamp of the Carl's Jr. chicken burger as a gourmet $25 offering from a top restaurant, and clearly makes an effort, geographically speaking and budget-wise, to be as inclusive as possible. But very early on I couldn't help noticing how many top-rated burgers of all shapes and sizes and prices came from one place - San Diego. I took with me on my latest trip a wishlist of over 15, which for a stay lasting only 14 days is, you will appreciate, rather ambitious. And of course I didn't get to try all of them but like the fearless gastro-tourist I am I bloody well did my best.


Perhaps the first thing I should point out is that, contrary to any hugely overinflated expectations I may have had about "San Diego, Burger Mecca", not every last one I ate was worth the effort. It seemed that the more we spent, the fancier the surroundings and the more slick the service, the poorer the sandwich, a fact illustrated most neatly by an evening meal in Avenue 5, Banker's Hill where everyone on our table enjoyed a perfectly pleasant meal apart from those unlucky enough to order the cold, tough, overcooked, tasteless house burger. Which was only me, of course. But I'm not going to dwell on those that didn't make the cut; instead, here are my top 5 burgers of San Diego.


5. Miho Gastro Truck


It shouldn't be a surprise that in a city, or at the very least a state, that has a good case for claiming to be the birthplace of the street food revolution, food trucks are still the first place to go for something lovingly crafted and determinedly unique. Miho Gastro Truck do a range of gourmet sandwiches using premium ingredients popular with their well-heeled and well-fed following, such as the extraordinary buttermilk fried chicken and biscuit sandwich (above) and a lamb burger (more unusual perhaps in the states who don't eat anywhere near as much lamb as we do). But the vaguely Europeanised MGT burger, with its grass-fed beef, black pepper and truffle aioli and caramelized onion, is a thing of rare beauty. The preseasoned beef (I think) created a denser patty than you'd otherwise find but the sweet brioche held together well and I could even ignore the pesky addition of rocket - it made sense in the context of everything else. MGT also do a burger containing candied bacon. Catch 'em while you can.


Various locations in San Diego - check the website for more details




4. Neighborhood Bar


The menu at the Neighborhood Bar is a thing of wonder to an American food junkie like me. It's no word of a lie to say I wanted to order every last thing off it, from the bacon-wrapped mini hot dogs to the braised beef ribs to the grilled cheese salad. Hell, I'd even quite like to try the veggie bean burger with Swiss cheese. But on our visit we managed to whittle down our choices to a heaving pile of pasilla chilli cheese fries, a ridiculous looking thing called the Local Animal (a Polish sausage soaked in pulled pork and gravy with a fried egg on top - every bit as filthy as it sounds) and, of course, the Neighborhood Burger. Simple and satisfying, it contained just three fillings - caramelized onion, gruyere cheese (always a good choice for a gourmet burger cheese I find) and pepper greens for colour and crunch. The bun was a kind of sourdough mix of some kind, robust and full of flavour, but the real star was the beef, confidently medium-rare and boasting that addictive buttery minerality of USDA.





3. Waterfront Bar & Grill


A glorious, unreconstructed dive bar in Little Italy, I fell in love with the Waterfront the moment I walked through the doors. Noisy, dark and full of grimy nooks and crannies, the food is perfectly in character with the surroundings, being unapologetically junky and all the better for it. Starting with a portion of Buffalo Chicken Wings (crunchy, zingy, perfect) I soon got to work on the Waterfront Bacon, a glossy mound of medium rare beef, crispy bacon and neon-yellow American cheese. Excellent pickles, salad on the side and the crunchiest fries in Southern California just sealed the deal. A hoot, and actually the closest thing in style I ate during my trip to the MeatLiquor burger.





2. In'n'Out


Well, it had to feature somewhere. There's always the worry when you try and revisit a great lunch that it will fail to live up to the time-gilded memories, but it's testament to the extraordinary quality and consistency of In'n'Out that a Double Double with fries and a root beer was just as brilliant in 2012 as 2010. In many ways In'n'Out is a kind of objective ideal of a cheese burger - enjoyable, familiar and reassuring while also superbly fresh (you can easily watch the whole process whilst you wait for your food - I bet you don't know many fast food joints in the UK that peel and chip their own potatoes) and, of course, delicious. The real revelation this time though was rediscovering the fries - golden brown, crunchy outside and soft within, they had the most incredibly potatoey flavour. I have simply never had better potato chips anywhere else.





1. Carnitas Snack Shack


Picking a winner amongst competition like this was never likely to be straightforward, but the monumental Shack burger has posed a completely unexpected problem - namely, I know in my heart it's my favourite, I know it's better than any other burger I ate in San Diego, but I have no idea why. On first glance it is nothing extraordinary; a heavily poppyseeded bun, lettuce, cheddar, tomato, beef. But strange and wonderful things happen when you bite into it. Firstly, you will notice that the beef is powerfully flavoured (grass fed I believe, an increasingly common specification in the "gourmet" end of San Diego burgers) and cooked cleverly to a juicy pink despite being quite wide and not too thick (anyone can cook a burger the size and shape of a baseball to pink). Then you will notice the addition of a thin slick of bacon jam just underneath the top bun, which much like the candied bacon in the Miho burger adds a sweet and savoury seasoning and an extra tranche of flavour. And then - and I can hardly believe I'm saying this - the tomato. The juiciest, tastiest, most tomato-ey tomato I've ever tried in a burger, traffic-light red and oozing heavenly umami, it was as unexpected as it was brilliant. It's possible the bacon jam enhanced the tomato in some strange way, or maybe it was some kind of rare breed heirloom vegetable ripened under the bright California sun and picked during a full moon. I just don't know. And anyway it's not just the tomato that made this special - although I've done my best to try and figure it out, I still don't really know why the Carnitas burger was so good. It just was. Perhaps that's all that matters.





I'm tempted to end on a somewhat controversial note. I ate incredibly well in San Diego for not very much money, the sun shone, the fresh IPAs flowed freely and every minute was a blast. But if - only if - I am to focus my attention for a second purely on the burgers, I reach the inescapable conclusion that actually, ignoring the higher prices and the weather and the Piccadilly Line, the best of London really can hold its own nowadays with the best of Southern California. There are many more worse meals to be had generally in the UK than in the easygoing service culture of the USA but when passionate, talented people hunker down and make good food, be it in WC1 or 92104, geography becomes irrelevant. So I'm going to just come out and say it, and of course I'm hopelessly biased, but the best I've ever eaten is still the MeatLiquor Bacon Cheeseburger. But perhaps a return trip to San Diego and a 2nd trip to Hodad's is in order. Just to be 100% sure, you understand.

Cheese and Biscuits on tour - the Mexican food of San Diego

"I can't believe you didn't get to try any fish tacos!" was my sister's first thought on my return from San Diego all the way back in 2010. If this area of Southern California is famous for anything food wise, it's burgers (more - much more - on which later) and, thanks to its close proximity to the international border, Mexican cuisine, and yet thanks to little more than personal prejudice fuelled by a succession of mediocre Mexican meals in London, on my first trip to this part of the world I didn't go out of my way to eat any. "How good can a fish taco be?" I told myself. "Deep fried fish in a tortilla. Squeeze of lime. Boring. Mexican food is just the same 3 ingredients arranged in different ways, isn't it? I know what I'm talking about, I've been to Chiquito."


What a fool I was.

Of all the wonderful food we enjoyed over the course of the last few weeks in San Diego, it was Mexican that was consistently the most bold, exciting and - most importantly - good value. I was stunned not just by the quality of each individual thing we ate but also the sheer variety, making an embarrassing lie of any prejudice I may have previously held about Mexican cuisine. This is not an exhaustive list of the best San Diego/Tijuana has to offer (I was only there 14 days and had to squeeze some burgers in) but hopefully enough to demonstrate to any deprived Briton that there really is more out there than burritos.


Mariscos Germán Taco Truck, South Park



Of the Mexican food trucks that serve San Diego, a large number seem to specialise in seafood. I didn't really ever find out why this should be the case - perhaps their mobile nature makes it easier - or cheaper - to stock up daily on fresh fish than bricks-and-mortar outlets, or perhaps it's something to do with the cooking process that makes seafood easier to deal with than anything else. Either way, each neighbourhood in the city seems to be served by at least one of these large white trucks with a tiny serving hatch cut in the side, and I have it on good authority that most of them are pretty damn decent. Mariscos Germán certainly is.


We ate delicate, crisply-fried chunks of fresh fish in soft masa-flour tortillas doused in hot sauce, chunky fresh vegetables and coriander. We ate crispy fried tortillas topped with the most perfect, zingy, herby (thyme at least, amongst other things) fish and shrimp ceviche and vast slabs of buttery avocado. We also ate something called Aguachile, ordered blind but which turned out to be a chilli-spiked ceviche containing a bewildering variety of seafood ingredients. It was all unbelievably good and unbelievably good value - a vast meal for two with enough Aguachile left over for lunch the next day came to about $12.



Super Cocina, Normal Heights



With not a taco in sight, Super Cocina specialises in a different style of Mexican cuisine - hearty, chilli-spiked soups, stews and the all-important mole. We queued up, canteen-style, with plastic trays and ordered by pointing at various of the bubbling vats of brightly coloured liquid, and again paid a pittance (about $6.50 I think) for a rich, gently chocolatey chicken mole, a soft quesadilla soaked in some kind of Mexican cottage cheese, rice and beans. I can't pretend we had an exhaustive range of the menu but judging by the queues and online reviews for this functional little cantina, their food has a loyal and enthusiastic fan base. And they can count me in, too.




Misión 19, Tijuana, Mexico


A couple of paragraphs as part of a Mexican food roundup is probably doing this very serious (and very expensive) haute cuisine joint in Tijuana a great disservice, but I include it if only to show that Mexican food can do high-end as well as the best of them. Highlights of the multi-course tasting menu included a pretty glass of deconstructed shrimp salad containing wonderfully powerful guacamole puree; a crisp-fried octopus tentacle with garlic jam, pistachios and green chickpea; a silky risotto spiked with Mexican truffle (who knew?) and fantastic "heirloom" beans and wild mushrooms; and a meltingly tender portion of stunning Mexican beef (a first for me), cooked sous vide and served with crispy, flavoursome chayote squash and vanilla-infused olive oil.


You could probably get away from Misión 19 for less than the $200 a head we spent if you went a little easier on the wine, but I hadn't risked life and limb crossing the border into one of the world's kidnapping and murder hotspots to take it easy. In all honesty though, the border crossing was completely painless, there were plenty of smart yellow cabs waiting to whisk us to and from the restaurant and the evening was a lot of fun. If you go yourself, don't miss the interesting bar upstairs (Bar 20) where they do all sorts of fancy things involving molecular mixology (cringe, but that's what they say themselves).




Tacos el Gordo, Chula Vista



I save the best until last. We wouldn't have even found this place if it wasn't a clandestine tip from my sister's Mexican hairdresser, someone very much tuned into the San Diego food goings-on and who claimed this unassuming drive-thru in the border town of Chula Vista served the best tacos in the area. She was right, of course, but just how good they were is difficult to convey without dissolving into a heap of breathless superlatives. Beef mulas were like beef taco sandwiches, moist chunks of shredded beef inside two discs of soft, thick tortilla, accompanied by a slab of salty rubbery cheese of some kind and topped with fresh salad. Other tacos came in the form of asada, beef steak strips covered in smooth guacamole and chilli sauce, and the rather more challenging Tacos de Sesos - brain (el Gordo specialise in offal and serve tacos made with tripe, tongue and the disconcertingly vague "head") with tomatillo sauce which I tried for the sheer bragging rights but can't say I'd rush to order again.


But the spicy pork and spicy beef tacos - Tacos de Adobada, shaved to order off two revolving columns of marinaded meat and doused in a yoghurt-chilli sauce - would have been worth the trip alone. I can imagine, based on my shonky pictures and without being there to taste them yourselves, that it's hard to see quite what could be so special about them; they are, after all, "just" fresh soft tortillas topped with moist and crunchy spiced meat, fresh vegetables and coriander. But there's something about the combination of all the different textures, the spices, the earthy tortilla and the fresh dressing, that makes something that, like all great cuisine, is much more than the sum of its parts. Instantly smitten on our first visit, we made a special effort to go back on the last day to have them again. And even now, writing this up back in cold, drizzly London just thinking about them is enough to get me booking the next available flight to Lindbergh Field airport.




I will be back of course - having family there is only one of a number of reasons to visit this consistently charming and likeable part of the world. If you're not the kind of person who enjoys knocking back some of the freshest, tastiest craft beers in the world in the early evening Californian sun whilst snacking on ceviche tostadas and chilli sauce well, on the one hand I feel sorry for you but on the other, there's always the beaches, the mountains, the wildlife (Black Widow spiders aside though; I had quite enough of those), and many other kinds of food if you need any more reasons to visit. Oh, and burgers. They have a few of those. Watch this space.

Mariscos Germán 9/10
Super Cocina 7/10
Misión 19 8/10
Tacos el Gordo 9/10

Karpo, Kings Cross

A couple of weeks after suffering at the hands of a huge, geographically vague menu at Cha Cha Moon, here we are in a brand new restaurant in Kings Cross that has exactly the same problem. Look at the size of it - Brunch, Lunch, Larder, Hot Starters, Wood-fired Oven, Not Wood-fired Oven (weirdly), Puddings, Ices, it goes on and on and on. And I can see why they wouldn't want to lump quite so many items under anything so prosaic as "Starters" and "Mains" but how the hell am I supposed to know which of "Speck & pickled quince" or "Vegetables a la grecque" - both filed under "Larder" - are big enough for a starter without guessing based on their price?


Karpo is also billed as an American-style diner, but despite the appearance of a burger, "Shrimp & grits" and a Macaroni cheese, the rest of the dishes seem to hail from more or less anywhere. There's risotto with buffalo mozzarella, sourdough toast with Gentleman's Relish, a fish taco (lunchtime only) and Omelette Arnold Bennett (for breakfast). It is usually a good idea to be wary of anywhere trying to master too many cuisines under one roof, so first impressions of Karpo, not helped by the strangely soulless décor (complete with walls of plastic ivy), are not great. In that case, why did I end up enjoying myself so much?


Perhaps because, unlike Cha Cha Moon, the food at Karpo is worth the effort. The menu may be confusing and way too big but everything we ate was at least good, and occasionally very good. A trio of things on sourdough toast - whipped lardo, white bean purée and aforementioned "Gentleman's relish" (not out of a little white tub but made in-house) were all lovely - bursting with flavour and freshness. Speck with pickled quince was only adequate - I always think restaurants have something to hide when they serve their supposedly premium ham with fancy distractions - but was at least a generous portion for your £7 and disappeared quickly.


"Southern-fried quail" was as good as you'd hope, remarkably moist inside for what can be a dry bird and cleverly butchered so as to remove all but the biggest bones and sinew. It came with an astonishingly good celeriac slaw which cut through the ever-so-slightly-too-greasy quail and the breadcrumb coating on the meat contained a very commendable go at the familiar Southern-Fried mix of herbs and spices. I'd like to see the range of deep-fried poultry at Karpo expanded, based on this example.


The one main-sized dish we tried, a hanger steak with bone marrow and shallots, was also very decent. Seared deftly to rare and enhanced rather than swamped by the addition of rich marrow and caramelised roast shallots, it wasn't perhaps the hugest portion for £15 but you couldn't fault anything else about it. Boston Baked Beans were more generously pitched at £3.5 for a fairly large bowl and were just as rich and satisfying as the ones I'd ordered from a BBQ place in Boston a couple of years back, so no complaints there either. And Hasselback potatoes were a more interesting alternative to roasties and had a great flavour.



I wish we'd had more room to try some of the more interesting baked goods (Karpo do Macaroons as well as Eccles cakes and fresh cookies) but we just about managed to squeeze in a small bowl of assorted ices; all very good but I was particularly taken by a shocking pink rhubarb sorbet which is my hot tip if you go to yourself and fancy a dessert.


There will be those who find it easier to find fault with Karpo than I do; it's hardly a budget option, I've mentioned my issues with the overlong menu and the unfriendly décor, and indeed my friend wasn't taken at all - "like eating in a shopping centre" she said. But if you choose wisely enough (and make the most of the lovely staff to help you on this front), enjoy the great wine list with its healthy number of rare biodynamic and organic options (we had some lovely examples by the glass but don't expect me to tell you which - one was an Alsace Riesling I think) and start with a cold martini, there's a very good chance you'll come away happy.

7/10



I was invited to review Karpo

EDIT: I'm reliably informed that Karpo actually contains real ivy, not fake. Happy to put the record straight on this!

Roux at the Landau, Marylebone

Who'd be a chef? The long hours of backbreaking toil for next to no money, the abuse, the heat, the stress. I've often heard it said of food bloggers and restaurant reviewers that they all-too-easily criticise a meal without knowing the effort that goes into it, but actually if most of us really truly understood the herculean energy behind even a half-decent meal out, we'd just feel too guilty to enjoy any of it never mind write an honest review.

I was reminded of this while reading Alex Watts' hugely entertaining book Down And Out In Padstow And London, and in particular the chapter at the Fat Duck where he describes spending days on end painstakingly removing the individual cells from grapefruit flesh using tweezers. The grapefruit cells formed just a small part of a salmon and liquorish dish, which I vaguely remember hoovering up as part of my tasting menu a year or two ago without giving them even a second glance. Had I known then what I know now I would have not only have appreciated them a whole lot more, or at least noticed them for God's sake, but also asked to give the poor commis chef lumbered with this frankly ludicrous task a big hug.

Of course, I blame Michelin (well, it saves time). It's thanks to their spoddy obsession with technique and classical presentation that many chefs feel they have to put themselves through 12-16 hour days of absolute hell turning vegetables into neat little cylinders and creating mind-bogglingly complex sauces from twelve different types of stock. I've heard stories (from Alex's book, and elsewhere) about chefs being physically unable to eat the kind of food they produce because the association with the backbreaking toil is so traumatising. To those people working their way through Michelin-starred hotel restaurants that really are cooking the kind of food they want to cook and want to eat, good luck to you. To the rest, you have my deepest, heartfelt sympathies.


Which brings us to Roux at the Landau. In the light of the above, I'd like to say to the overworked, traumatised phalanx of underappreciated chefs working in the kitchens at the Langham hotel that I'm desperately sorry I didn't enjoy the food more than I did. I'm sorry I thought the taramasalata that came with the house chips was too salty, I'm sorry I couldn't help noticing the limp sprig of tarragon slowly wilting into the overheated plate with the scallop, and I'm sorry I thought the Iberico pork chop tasted as bland and watery as any supermarket pig. I really am so very, very sorry.


It wasn't all bad, though. The scallop itself, despite being presented strangely and slightly underseasoned, was huge and had a lovely fresh, sweet flavour. My starter of "Venison and foie gras Chausson" was actually just a posh mini venison pie, and had a commendably powerful gamey flavour and aroma; it came with a madeira jus which probably took someone weeks to make and was silky and rich as only the best classical French cooking can be. And while my rhubarb panacotta was perfectly pleasant, we were particularly impressed with two delicate sticks of salty, buttery pastry placed on top - hugely addictive.


But I can't ignore that awful pork, so insipid I'd question whether the producer should even be allowed to describe it as Iberico. And neither my friend's Pot au Feu containing chewy, dry beef and so lacking in taste she found herself grinding salt over it in an attempt to find something to enjoy. It was all presented immaculately and I'm sure took years of experience and days of preparation, but it all was curiously missing some vital element - heart? Passion? It's easy to sail dangerously close to pretention when talking about a plate of food as "passionate" but it all seemed a bit hotel-restaurant Michelin-by-the-books - solid, professional, dull.


It doesn't have to be like this. Some people are lucky enough to not only cook the kind of food they want to cook, but cook the kind of food they want to eat - take the boys at Pitt Cue for example, banging out sticky trays of meltingly tender St Louis ribs and heavenly burnt-end mash from a tiny kitchen in Soho. Classically trained in a number of high-profile and high-price-tag restaurants, they have found huge success in homestyle American BBQ because this is what they want to do. And it's not just the trendy low-budget places; I have enjoyed every single thing I've ever eaten at Racine in Knightsbridge probably because the menu is a hymn to one man's (head chef Henry Harris) lifelong love of bourgeois French cooking.


So I don't blame the chefs at Roux at the Landau. They are doing a difficult job in difficult circumstances and couldn't really have done any better. Partly I blame the stultifying atmosphere of a hotel restaurant, and the timid adherence to the expectations of fusty regulars - like the old chap on the table behind us who turned up for dinner alone and so drunk he could barely string an order together for his poor waiter. And partly I blame the whole Roux estate who are attempting to farm out this anonymous hotel-friendly cuisine all over London (see also Parliament Square) in an effort to be the next Ducasse or Ramsay (as if the world needs yet another one of either of those). But mainly, I blame the passion-clogging, soul-destroying, talent-robbing Michelin Guide.

5/10



Murky, shonky pictures of the food are mine; nice bright interior shot courtesy of Fluid London. I was invited to Roux at the Landau, but prices are here

You Decide!

This could either be a lot of fun or massively backfire. In a rare outbreak of democracy at Cheese and Biscuits, I've decided to throw open the venue of an upcoming post (most likely in late March) to the public. So please vote for whichever London eatery you'd most like to see on these pages (I'm already anticipating plenty of "ironic" support for Planet Hollywood and Rainforest Café), and may the best, or worst, restaurant win.

Click here to vote

Léon de Bruxelles, Covent Garden

I really like the idea of a Belgian moules frites restaurant. I'm sure a good moules frites restaurant would be a wonderful thing - after all, I like mussels and I like chips and I'm very much on board with the concept of combining both in one meal. Unfortunately, whilst we can probably all agree that the idea of moules frites is a Good Thing, for some reason the reality of actually eating the stuff in London has proved remarkably elusive. Belgo used to be good, at one time, before the original owners left and their replacements devoted their energies to expanding the chain rather than serving good food. And you can certainly order mussels and chips in various bistros in the smarter areas of town if you feel like throwing money at the problem, but what we are missing is a dedicated moules frites specialist, informal and not too expensive, where you can drink strong Belgian beer and splatter yourself with seafood gunk and still walk away with change from £20.


At first glance, brand-new Léon de Bruxelles on Cambridge Circus seems like it might fit the bill. It's informal, bright, attractive, populated by pleasant staff and boasting a clear and reasonably concise menu. True, £14 for a bowl of mussels and chips isn't the world's greatest bargain, but for this month only there's 50% off the mussels dishes (why just this month I'm not sure, but I guess that's up to them) and if they taste good enough then even full price they'd be worth a punt. I sat down with high hopes, assuming that a dedicated moules frites restaurant stood more of a chance of getting it right than anywhere else, and ordered the "Léon mussels".


The bread was good, I suppose. A nice crusty French baguette with a moist inside, it almost definitely wasn't made in house and would be completely unremarkable in the context of almost anywhere else but as the rest of the food at Léon de Bruxelles was so mediocre it's only really the bread that I remember as having any flavour. The chips, were example, were awful - bland, floury tubes of empty carbohydrate, like oven chips only not as dynamic or noteworthy. They were totally unseasoned, too, which I realise is only a case of having to grind your own salt on, but does indicate a lack of attention to detail.


Worse, though, was the bowl of "Léon mussels". Fresh, plump and generously numerous mussels were tragically abused by a thin white liquid so insipid it tasted of nothing more than skimmed milk. There was the odd chunk of boiled celery knocking about but I didn't detect any shallot, and ploughing through the huge bowl was a grim, entirely unrewarding slog. In an effort to make the poor wee blighters taste of something - anything - I tried adding my own salt, but only ended up with salty milk and mussels. This was a very poor dish, one that wouldn't have survived even the briefest of taste tests from someone in the kitchen; I can only assume nobody bothered. That, or Léon de Bruxelles really did mean to serve hot mussels and milk, and neither scenario puts them in a very good light.


There is also the matter of the beer. Given the astonishing variety and quality of beers from Belgium, I can think of no reason other than naked, exploitative profit-mongering that Léon de Bruxelles would unironically place Stella Artois next to Duvel on the menu, and grace it with an entirely fictitious tasting note. I guess "Malty with a pronounced hoppy bitterness" is nicer to read than "all the flavour of heavily diluted cat's piss" but it doesn't make it any more true.


A mild saving grace came in the form of the bill, which was only £7 thanks to the half-price offer and my decision to drink tap water. But from the end of the month that bowl of mussels a la dishwater will be a sickening £14, and will have graduated from disappointing-but-cheap to a genuine good old-fashioned Covent Garden rip-off. If Léon de Bruxelles want to be the Garfunkels of moules frites then good luck to them, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Perhaps it's not worth getting worked up about - after all this is only another superficial, overpriced tourist-trap in a prime location, hardly the first of its kind and almost definitely not the last. But it's also another chance for our visitors to have their prejudices confirmed about food in the capital, and I really just wish it wasn't there.

2/10