Andina, Shoreditch

There's a new restaurant opened on Shoreditch High Street. It's not selling "dirty" anything, it's not a pop-up and they aren't committing any crimes against chicken, so for these things alone we should be grateful. It's the second restaurant from Peruvian chef Martin Morales, whose first spot in Soho I quite enjoyed, and although I'm afraid it suffered slightly in comparison when Lima opened a few months later, he still deserves full marks for steering clear of bandwagons and doing his own thing while so many others are falling over themselves to just be another comfort food cash-in. Ceviche was - still is - a quirky, interesting little place that introduces Londoners to the delights of Pisco Sours and Tiger's Milk and its success was well deserved.

Andina is largely more of the same, although perhaps with a more Shoreditch-y focus on the lighter side of things (salads, ceviche, smoothies, quinoa... lots of quinoa) than the meat-loving Soho crowds were after. The weekend brunch menu we tried had "breakfast" and "eggs" sections, with a number of starter-sized things under the heading "street" alongside the important ceviches. Three of us got to try quite a range of dishes, none of them being overfacingly large, although it should be pointed out that with many "small plates" menus, the bill has a tendency to creep north of comfortable once it's all added up.

Star of the show were, as you might have expected, the ceviches. We tried two; the Sato with trout and pecan nuts, sharp and refreshing and with plenty of juicy fish; and the Siwichi, seabass with sweet half-spheres of goldenberry (physalis) and raw onion. You can't really go wrong with ceviche here or in Soho, it's Morales' strongest suit and quite rightly so.

Tamalito was a kind of mini quinoa tamale stuffed with cheese and was a nice bit of filler, if a bit teeny for the asking price of £5.50. Prawn chupe was more generous in spirit and flavour, containing more quinoa, nice big juicy prawns and with a good, strong seafood kick.

Causas Amantani was ordered mainly out of curiosity, and even after after it had gone we weren't quite sure what to make of it. Cold mashed potato is not something you'd ordinarily rush to eat, and though each colourful cake was topped with some very nicely-cooked seafood (I particularly enjoyed the scallop with a good browned crust) you still ended up having to struggle through quite a bit of chilly spud. If they're going to serve the seafood hot, why not warm the potato as well? Maybe it's some Peruvian thing.

Desserts were good. Our favourite was a lúcuma fruit (no idea) mousse with a biscuit made of yet more quinoa, although the quinoa (I'm not making this up) chocolate brownie was decent too, even if it would have perhaps been better made with, I dunno, flour. It was topped with a quinoa biscuit. Of course it was.

With some interesting smoothies, a house Bloody Mary (made with beetroot and pisco, and probably quinoa) and a little bowl of incredibly moreish Peruvian corn caled cancha (which I don't think had quinoa in but wouldn't swear to it), the bill came to £84.38 for three people. This is a lot for brunch, and although we didn't walk away disappointed by any means, it still wasn't exactly a bargain. But as with Ceviche in Soho, it's an interesting, confidently idiosynractic little restaurant and if you want an introduction to Peruvian food - or are inexplicably addicted to quinoa - you could do much worse than book a table.

7/10

Cheese and Biscuits on tour: San Diego 2013/2014

I used to travel fairly frequently to the Costa Brava for my holidays - twice a year usually, always to our family's little apartment in L'Escala to revisit the same beaches, the same bars and the same faintly disappointing restaurants. It was never less than fun (and relatively inexpensive), but you would be well advised to set your expectations pretty low before eating anywhere that wasn't Can Roca - in a part of the world popular with undemanding British tourists since the late 70's, nobody was trying too hard to be any good. After a couple of years doing half-hearted roundups on the blog I noticed not much was changing or improving, and I quietly stopped writing about the place.

Something tells me that isn't going to happen in San Diego. Of course it's unfair to compare the restaurants of a major world city to a largely rural area of North-East Spain, but given how us Brits are constantly fed the line that the Catalans spend their mealtimes in idyllic medieval boltholes sipping rosé and eating calçots (which I saw on a menu literally once in 15 years of visits there), while American food is dismissed as processed, unsophisticated junk, the dissonance is still worth addressing. The restaurant scene in San Diego, while certainly having strengths in certain areas, is as dynamic, innovative and value-for-money as almost anywhere you could think of, and the bar and beer scene is world-class.

Anyway, mindful of the fact that regular followers of a London restaurant blog won't necessarily be wildly interested in everything I Did On My Holidays, here's a brief roundup of the highlights of my latest trip:

Waypoint

A brand-new North Park restaurant that does a respectful but still recognisably Californian take on the London gastropub. Above is stuffed pigs trotters, which gives you some clue where they're getting their inspiration from, but the star dish was a brilliant cassoulet using fantastic local sausages and confit duck. A cracking beer list too, but then that goes without saying - just assume for anywhere that isn't a tiny hole-in-the-wall taco joint that the beer list is far and beyond anything you've seen outside the most specialist London outlets.




Mastiff Sausage Company at Thorn St Brewery

The picture above neatly sums up all of San Diego's strengths in one go - a flight of fantastic microbrewery beers, accompanied by some top-flight street food (in this case a snappy bratwurst and homemade pickles) for little over $10.


Porterhouse from Iowa Meats

A slight diversion from the bar/restaurant thing but this piece of meat is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it was bloody delicious - whatever your thoughts on the whole USDA cattle-raising methods, the size of the fillet side of this porterhouse is quite something to someone used to the leaner grass-fed British cuts. But this is also significant as the only purchase made during the trip where the service was less than amazing - in fact, the butcher I was assigned via ticketing system at Iowa Meats was unpleasant, lazy and rude, openly complaining when I asked for a cut of meat not already on the counter before literally wandering off and serving someone else. A similarly incompetent but not quite as openly aggressive colleague finished the job. Still, good steak.


Burger Lounge

OK I've been here before. But it's still good, using all grass-fed beef, and they do a tuna burger now too.




Lefty's Chicago pizzeria

The pizza pies here are good, and cheap, but I fell in love with the hot dog, served with a mound of pickles and salad in a soft bun.




Hess Brewery

I'm going to do a more thorough report on the breweries of North Park in due course, but an evening at the stunning Hess brewery can hardly be bettered. You can specify "nitro" (nitrogen) in your beer for extra smoothness (smaller bubbles).


7 Grand

A whisk(e)y bar in humble North Park that wouldn't be out of place in the grandest of Mayfair hotels. The powerful and unique house cocktails are $5 a piece from 6-8pm, but don't leave without trying one of their rare American micro-distillery whiskies (that's whisky, not bourbon). I tried a Balcones Brimstone from Texas, which was smoky like an Austin BBQ rather than a Scottish peat bog. Who knew?


Western Steakburger

An unreconstructed mom & pop burger bar, and none the worse for it, the menu here is as big as the portions, and the portions are huge. A decent budget burger (American cheese, salad, soft sweet bun and cooked-through beef that did a job) and crinkle cut chips. Some slightly worrying right-wing propaganda on the wall, but it all added to the hillbilly vibe.




In'n'Out

Obviously.




Cuatro Milpas

If you think the waits for certain popular no-reservation London restaurants are long, then check out the queue for the tacos and tamales at Cuatro Milpas. If I'm going to be brutally honest, I didn't think the menu here was quite as accomplished as my beloved Tacos El Gordo, but they were still very, very good, all tortillas made in-house from an open bakery at the back, and served with a smoky oaxaha (I think) chilli oil sauce. The pineapple Fantas in this picture are because they had "no water". That's a first.




Venissimo cheese

This picture of our Christmas Day cheeseboard is just to prove that the cliché about there being no decent cheese in the USA is increasingly untrue. What's more, some of the best weren't imported - Big Rock is a satisfying, salty blue from Paso Robles that compare well to many good European cheeses. Midnight Moon, though labelled from California, is actually made in Holland. It's good, though.

Mitch's Seafoods

Point Loma has two main seafood restaurants perched right in the harbour - Point Loma Seafoods is the largest and most famous, but was closed on New Year's Day so we ended up at the rather less impressive but still somewhat decent Mitch's. My shrimp sandwich was pretty good, and it's hard to beat the view, but a tuna melt was pappy and unpleasant. Still, there's always the possibility you can feed the leftovers to the sealions.




Romesco

This place deserves a full review, but given I am almost definitely going to make a return trip in March, I'll leave it until then. From the same chef that brought us the wonderful Mision 19 (Javier Plascencia), I should have been confident that the food at Romesco would have been stunning. As indeed it was. But large menus still scare me, as do fusion restaurants, and having to pick from a good 100 or so Spanish-Mexican dishes like "fiduea tacos" and "albondigas al chipotle" from this new place in La Bonita just made me wonder if certain cuisines aren't better left unfused. I needn't have worried. The odd misfire aside (croquettas which were more like fishcakes), the food at Romesco is stunning - cochinita pibil yucateca was a rich, glossy pile of slow-cooked pork served with fantastic table sauces inside soft steamed tortillas, and roast bone marrow was like the finest deconstructed beef pie. Not expensive either, considering the swish surroundings and quality of food. As I say, I'll be back.




Polite Provisions

Another day, another unbelievably classy North Park/Normal Heights bar. The cocktails here, made with house bitters, are as good as you'd ever hope for, the service stellar and the beer selection (predictably) knockout. Even better, although Polite Provisions don't have a kitchen themselves, they share a building with meatball specialists Soda and Swine, where you can soak up the booze with a chorizo chipotle sub and (pictured) dirty fries.




Belching Beaver brewery

Yet another North Park microbrewery that you'd feel blessed to have as your local. The beers are even more experimental here than usual for San Diego (they do one that tastes of peanut butter, and a Milk Stout that's like toast and coffee), and you can again specify a blast of nitro to make it more creamy. Food is supplied by Crazee Burger next door but I'm afraid I wasn't a fan. Strange, isn't it, how the worst burgers photograph so well (see above), while the very best:

Carnitas Snack-Shack

If anything, Carnitas has improved from its already impressive position on my last visit. The house burger is still the best in town (quite an achievement in San Diego) but this time we also tried the slow-cooked pork belly, every morsel of which was silky and soft and drenched in a marinade of sweet molasses.

I think I'd better stop there. Apologies to those of you not in the least bit interested in a collection of bars and restaurants 5,000 miles away and rest assured that from a quick glance at the diary there'll be plenty of London things going on in the next few weeks. But if you have the time and the means (British Airways are very good and fly direct from Heathrow for upwards of around £600) there is no reason why anyone who enjoys eating and drinking would not have a ball in San Diego, even if they didn't have the added attraction of a new nephew (say hello to George, above). The only regret you'll have is not staying longer.

I haven't scored anything above as nearly everything would get 8, 9 or 10. Just take your pick

Cheese and Biscuits Restaurant of the Year 2013 - Burger & Lobster

It feels like I say this every year - in fact I probably do say this every year - but choosing just one restaurant as better than any other in London is a horribly reductive, completely thankless task that gets yet more reductive and thankless every time I do it. 2013 was packed with so many not just great but unique and groundbreaking restaurants that I can think of at least twenty off the top of my head that would make a completely uncontroversial top pick, and having set myself to task of narrowing down such a talented field to just one seems deeply insulting to everyone that isn’t somewhat arbitrarily nominated “the best”.

But I’ve made my bed and I’ll lie in it, and so for no other reason than to continue the New Year tradition on this blog and to generate a bit of healthy discussion (or as it’s more commonly known on these pages, “a shitstorm of abuse”) I will pick my favourite place to eat in 2013. First though, a list of restaurants so accomplished I won’t do them the disservice of calling them ‘runners-up’. You really can’t go wrong with a meal at any of (and in no particular order):

The Clove Club

They don’t need the publicity; they’re already booked out most evenings. And they certainly don’t need the praise; they’ve had Londoners falling over themselves to rave about the place almost since the first day of opening. But there’s no escaping that the Clove Club has, in a ludicrously short period, established itself as one of this city’s all-time great places to eat. If you’ve had one eye open to the London restaurant scene over the last eight months you’ll know all about Isaac McHale’s idiosyncratic tasting menu which treads a line perfectly between experimentation and accessibility, always surprising but never less than impressive, served by a young team that give the impression they’ve finally found their calling in life. But don’t ignore the bar menu which includes selections of their house-cured charcuterie, and a classy cocktail list.

Peckham Bazaar

The lazy way to describe Peckham Bazaar is the “best Greek restaurant in London” but that’s unfair on two counts. Firstly, the standard hitherto of Greek food in the capital has been so low that being the best is really not much to boast about. And secondly, chef John Gionleka’s food is not strictly Greek - he’s from Albania himself, but the menu takes influence from all over the Balkans with the occasional Turkish twist. All you need to know is, there’s nothing this man doesn’t know about how to grill meat, fish and vegetables, and if you recognise all of the weird and wonderful ingredients he meticulously sources from local markets and delis you should probably put yourself forward as a candidate for Foodie Mastermind. A similarly eclectic and very fairly priced Balkan wine list seals the deal.

The Dairy

To stand above the crowd in Clapham Common requires little more than to not be a completely hideous, booze-led hellhole selling frozen chips to the pre-Infernos crowd. The Dairy could have made a very tidy living doing just that, but instead we have one of the most exciting new restaurants in town, a recognisably British take on fine dining served in a refreshingly informal fashion and bursting with personality. Remember to leave room for the petits fours - the citrus jellies are worth a trip alone.

Gymkhana

Most restaurants are happy to receive more positive reviews than not from the critics and public. Only a very few are so good that they receive universal praise. But only once in recorded history (as far as I know) has a restaurant received a set of marks quite as unambiguous as Gymkhana, with five stars and 10/10s from nearly every critic to pass through the doors. And if you think this hype can’t be matched by the reality, you haven’t eaten there. Delicate pastry puris filled with tamarind juice, kid goat methi (with added brains for £3 - mmm brains), a venison biryani that may just be the most perfect thing ever done to rice - this is food of the very highest order, from a menu you want to take home and frame.

Galvin at Windows

One of the rules I decided upon in the very early days of this blog was to never delete or alter the original body of a post even if I changed my mind about a restaurant at a later date. My original 7/10 review of Galvin at Windows, based on a set menu birthday meal in the early days of the then-new head chef is still there somewhere, a relic of a hotel restaurant finding its feet, and of a then-new food blogger trying hard to justify spending £50 on lunch. Since then, I’ve enjoyed some of the finest French food in London in this wonderful spot overlooking Hyde Park, and a recent meal with my housemate to celebrate various different events (Galvin is the quintessential celebration restaurant) was - and I don’t use these words lightly - utterly faultless from start to finish.

Five highlights there, but it’s only the lack of space and time that’s forced me to drop the likes of Mayfields, the Bull & Last, Tartufo, Toast, Hutong, Apollo Banana Leaf, Elliot’s, Grain Store, Story, SushiSamba, Duck and Waffle, One Leicester Street, Sabel, Goodman, Bob Bob Ricard, Newman Street Tavern, Quality Chop House, Zedel, Clockjack Oven, and who knows how many reliably wonderful trips to MeatLiquor and Tayyabs. As I said, any of the above could have won, and whichever I decided as the overall Best In Show would have left me just as guilt-ridden about the places I left out.

Here goes anyway. My top restaurant in 2013 wasn’t just a great meal, or an impressive display of logistics, or a wallet-pleasing exercise in extreme good value. It’s all of these things, but more importantly it’s somewhere that I always take visiting friends, recommend to as many people as ask me about it, and even went so far as to book it for a group on my birthday. Burger & Lobster.

Yes, it’s a chain - there are five of them now, and there will certainly be more. It’s traditionally foodie suicide to lay even mild praise on a chain or proto-chain never mind nominate it for a best of the year award, so this choice is not likely to be uncontroversial. It’s also hardly going to please every section of society - there’s no vegetarian option (unless you really are desperate to spend £20 on chips and green salad), the queues for the more popular branches can be absolutely insane, and they are never likely to be on the PETA Christmas card list.

But every time I go to any of the Burger & Lobsters, I have a really really good time. Every time. I don’t know whether it’s my age, but increasingly I find I’m gravitating towards restaurants that are consistently excellent rather than occasionally sublime, and while “occasionally sublime” makes for good copy, it’s “consistently excellent” that more often sees a chunk of my paycheck. Each time I sit down to that lobster roll, in its sweet brioche bun and gentle fresh dressing, drizzled with lemon-butter and accompanied by a neat little pot of crunchy fries, not to mention a perfectly made martini, I know everything for the next few minutes is going to go exactly to plan. And after all said and done, there’s hardly any greater praise than that.

Anyway, I’ve prattled on long enough. Well done everybody mentioned above - you make London a better place, and you make my life in London immeasurably happier. If 2014 in London is even half as dynamic, innovative, remarkable and downright enjoyable as 2013, then we’re in for a hell of a ride.