Food and Drink in London

CellarDoor: a carry-on at your convenience

Very funny night last night. Slightly disappointing meal at Sitaaray, the Bollywood themed curry spot in Covent Garden. The gig at Sitaaray is a fixed price menu of grilled goodies and curries that - in theory - keep on coming till you've had enough. I've been once before and enjoyed it: the meats and fish were nicely grilled and well spiced. At under £20 for as much as you can manage, the prices were good; there was a full range of veggie options running alongside the meats and fish and the staff were enthusiastic and helpful, explaining the dishes as they were presenting them and offering us extra portions of anything we'd particularly enjoyed when we'd completed the full gamut of around a dozen standard morsels. All that and some jolly Bollywood dances running on a few tellies - what's not to like?

Last night, alas, was another story. The staff were interested only in finishing up as soon as possible. No explanations about what we were eating. No offers of extra courses. No joy. We made the best of it, pointedly ordering a second bottle of wine and some more of the very good mixed chicken tikka and the excellent paneer. But we were left with little doubt that all of the staff were desperate to be elsewhere, quite possibly working in another restaurant. And the price has gone up. Shame.

No matter: we finished the night in some style with a visit to CellarDoor, a funky little bar down by The Strand that glories in both its quirky address and its location in a converted public toilet. It's a great little bar, made to feel less little by mirrors on most of the surfaces. Excellent cocktails and a decent wine list mean you're sure of a pleasant tipple even if you struggle to find yourself somewhere to perch. Last night we did OK on that front, even bagging ourselves a table by the time we ordered a second bottle. Again.

When we arrived, brushing our way through the looping Casablanca projection (one of many quirky touches) a cabaret turn was in full swing. A camp singer was belting out tunes from Oliver! accompanied by a second chap on an electric piano. They later treated us to a clever segue from London Pride into London Calling, the Noel Coward delivery never slipping. It's amazing that somewhere so tiny can turn itself to live music so effectively (they do something clever with one of the booth seats apparently) but open mikes and more professional turns are a regular feature. Good stuff.

We left a little while after the final number, a raucous rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart, complete with lots of "turnarounds" deftly executed on a swivelly stool. And we felt flushed with success at having rescued an evening from mediocrity by simply spending a few pennies in what I'm afraid we still insist on calling "the toilet bar".

Sitaaray, 167 Drury Lane Covent Garden, WC2B 5PG 020 7269 6422

CellarDoor, Zero Aldwych, Wellington St London, WC2E 020 7240 8848

Le Querce - Easter excess

 

The Easter weekend began in style with an impromptu dinner at J Sheekey: few places in the capital are better equipped to cope when a greedy oyster lover and his girlfriend – a vegetarian who confesses her favourite colour is "shiny" – decide to go all impromptu. And it wound down gently but wonderfully with lunch (and more oysters) yesterday in Franklins, where the menu was thick with St John DNA (I went for the rolled spleen but not the squirrel, since you ask). In between there was take-away curry, a very pleasant surprise, Easter bunny rarebits, an egg hunt, asparagus, Jersey Royals and the first barbecue of the year. Not such a bad life...

The surprise was a meal at Le Querce, an Italian restaurant at the far end of Brockley Road. Brockley is long on fried chicken shops (the latest – Lithu's Chicken and Pizza – opened recently at the end of my road, but don't expect a review any time soon) but rather short on anything you might call a serious restaurant. The one shining exception has always been the very excellent Babur, also so far down the Brockley Road it's nudging into Forest Hill, which Harden's recently named best inexpensive restaurant in London but has so far been mysteriously untroubled by your local reviewer. According to Nick at the estimable Brockley Central, though, Le Querce can also lay claim to "proper restaurant" status so I put in a call on Good Friday, got a closed message on the answerphone but was rewarded a couple of minutes later when they 1471'ed me and offered us what appeared to have been the last table in the house.

If – like me – you tend to make dining decisions based on menus and first impressions, you probably wouldn't give Le Querce a second glance. It's nondescript exterior does little to mark it out from an unlovely stretch of road and the menu could be culled from any standard Italian you care to choose. Sitting down at pale-wood furniture to quirky crockery, a huge and frankly bizarre sprouting onion and garish offerings on the wall that speak worryingly of "local artist" and you're hardly filled with confidence about the feast to come. Happily, though, this is one of the rare occasions were first impressions are misleading and perseverance is comprehensively rewarded.

 

The clues that we were somewhere other than "standard" came thick and fast once we'd caught the eye of the manager, who I seem to remember is the chef's brother: it's palpably a family affair at Le Querce with at least three generations working front of house. He quickly rattled off a list of specials that included bresaola cured on the premises, lots of home-made pasta and an impressive selection of fresh fish. It was made abundantly clear to us that the kitchen at Le Querce thrives on seeking out the freshest and finest ingredients and treating them simply, sympathetically and with some style. The bresaola was a case in point: dense and earthy, beautifully textured and offset perfectly by some cracking Parmesan. One mouthful of this and I immediately dismissed any misgivings I'd had about lamely ordering a rocket and P salad as a side-dish later in the meal.

Antonia opted to start with the bread, also freshly baked and also well received, despite the olive oil rather randomly being charged for separately. Her main of ravioli was polished off in short order (in far less time than we'd spent waiting for it) and was pronounced some of the best pasta she could remember. This is high praise from someone who often has to go for a Hobson's Choice pasta option in places that don't really understand how to make it.

My main was lovely. Billed as simply liver and caramelised onions, the menu seriously undersold this variation on a classic. Four artfully arranged slivers of perfectly pink organ studded with silky sweet baby onions that exploded dangerously when pronged. An unadvertised stack of spinach worked much better than I expected and crispy sage leaves added just enough texture to break things up nicely.
 

Last but not least came the ice cream. From a dizzying list on the menu plus about a dozen more they'd whipped up for kicks that day we chose a scoop of chilli ice cream, a second of banana, cardamon and ginger and a cooling rose petal sorbet. Neither of us is any kind of ice cream buff so it's hard to compare with other gelato specialists but this was a blinding combination. The chilli was fierce and cool at the same time, the banana combo so much more than the sum of its parts and the sorbet like some kind of Turkish Delight lollipop. But in a good way.

I confess I'd viewed the ice cream selection in much the same sceptical way as I had the building and the rest of the menu. But by the end of the meal, helped along no doubt by a couple of shots of the strange myrtle spirit that was doing the rounds by that point, everything began to make sense: I guess even local art on the wall can be forgiven in an area that's proud of its arty leanings. Not sure about the onion, though: perhaps they're fattening it up for next week's mysterious "garlic or onion" ice cream. I might just go back to find out.

Le Querce, 66-68 Brockley Rise, London 020 8690 3761

Tierra Brindisa - Hot tapas

I struggle ever so slightly reviewing tapas restaurants. The menus are (generally) quite similar; the dishes are often too simple or simply too small to yield complex or surprising flavour combinations; the tapas themselves arrive at random, throwing together ingredients that you'd never normally consider pairing. Wine matching can be hard for the same reason. It usually all adds up to a fun night but with so much going on it can be hard to form a clear opinion about the quality of the cooking.

Perhaps it's right that tapas should resist traditional analysis, though: tapas is street food, designed to be eaten in single snacks in multiple drinking establishments: the ultimate pubcrawl accompaniment. Constructing an entire meal out of such bitesized portions is a relatively recent conceit, albeit one now rolled out ubiquitously across all manner of different cuisines: Indian tapas anyone?

It may be hard to pin down an overall impression of restaurants in the face of such issues but it's easy enough to spot when things aren't working. Chorizo is as good a bellwether as you could ask for. It's a familiar staple that most people order; it should be a proud and fiery centrepiece of the Spanish smorgasbord. Too often what arrives is pappy, cold and underflavoured, swimming in stale oil and singularly offputting. I'm happy to say that Tierra Brindisa has no such failings.

Tierra Brindisa is one of three restaurants now operated by the expanding Brindisa empire. The first, Tapas Brindisa, has long been a favourite in the Borough Market area but unfortunately seems to be the favourite of the world and his dog so it's hellishly difficult to get a table. I'm saving myself for the final member of the mini-chain, Casa Brindisa, partly because I have to steel myself to go to West London these days but mostly because I was lucky enough to bag a space there at a forthcoming Dine with Dos Hermonos event, and I can't imagine more informed and enthusiastic tapas hosts than them.

Tierra Brindisa, tucked away in the heart of Soho, is a pleasing space, smart without being stuffy, and thus pitched about right for food that is a cut above standard tapas fare. As well as the excellent chorizo, here served in a spicy cider sauce that simply demanded to be necked after the meat was finished, we had "potato omelette", "pulpo" (what's with the weirdly bilingual menu, guys?), perfectly pink lamb cutlets, a hearty chick pea stew and a strange but (I thought) rather successful salad of cauliflower, chilli and grapefruit. All dishes were perfectly executed and many demonstrated the subtle heat that comes with a true understanding of how and why to use chilli peppers.

The only qualms, apart from all the veggie options turning up first when it was clearly the carnivore who was fainting from hunger, were one or two missing dishes from the menu. Hardly the crime of the century, and certainly no reason not to herald Tierra Brindisa an excellent addition to West End dining.

Tierra Brindisa 46 Broadwick Street W1F 5AF 020 7534 1690

(Incidentally, contrary to appearances, this post was actually from me, not Howard, who is still missing presumed fed in Zurich. Apologies if that confused anyone. Twittish of me.)

And what would sir like tweet?

I was tickled by this story on the Guardian site, in which top chefs were encouraged to submit recipes in a Twitter-friendly 140 characters or fewer. Quite a challenge, and interesting to see so many rising to it. First prize, I think, must go to Rowley Leigh for managing to squeeze his restaurant's signature dish into the format without (too much) ambiguity:

Parmesan custard: Mlt 300ml crem/300mlmilk/ 100gparmesan. Cool. Whsk in 4yolk. Season. Pour buttered ramekins, cvr, bake15m, 150c

And the prize for the best comment must go to alisdaircameron for:

Get prpr recipe book. Read > 140 characts. Actlly understnd.Win.

His response was fairly typical, and par for the course for online Guardian readers, who generally seem a surprisingly conservative (small 'c', natch) bunch. Which makes this morning's "news" from the paper particulalry well judged, arguably the pick of this year's bunch, although special mention must also go to Marina O'Laughlin's almost convincing review of yet another secret restaurant in London.

... All of which is but a thinly veiled excuse for publicising the fact that you can now follow me on the Twitter if you so desire. Pop along and join the fun...

The Secret Ingredient? Home comforts

This just in from Robyn, our Stoke Newington correspondent, who previously introduced us to the wonder that is 19 Numara Bos Cirrik. Here she lets us into a little secret...

Home restaurants are the latest trend to hit the foodie scene. As the recession-struck restaurant industry fights it out above ground for our shrinking disposable incomes, London’s nouveau poor are flocking to places like The Underground Restaurant, run by food blogger MsMarmiteLover, and The Secret Ingredient, where Horton Jupiter knocks out six courses of Japanese-style food for £15 a head.

Both The Underground Restaurant and The Secret Ingredient rely on Facebook, the blogsphere and word-of-mouth to generate bookings. Recent articles in The Guardian and Metro have seen their popularity swell and what started as cooking dinner for friends and friends of friends, has grown into an illicit, alternative dining scene where keen amateur cooks seat strangers in their living rooms and serve a prix fixe menu.

Located in Stoke Newington, The Secret Ingredient is hidden away on an ordinary seeming council estate. The restaurant seats 12 with sittings at 7pm and 9.30pm every Wednesday night. It’s BYOB. In my haste to get there I dropped the nice looking bottle of rosé I’d bought at City Bev and had to make do with a bottle of Jacob’s Creek Dry Riesling from the local offie.

We arrived bang on 7pm and made our way through some back gardens to the last on a row of little houses. We were greeted by a flustered and clearly excited Horton, who hastily explained that he didn’t know where his waiter was and was running behind with the food. First to arrive, we were seated at one of three tables in the makeshift living room restaurant. We were soon joined by Ben and Mina who opted to sit with us to make up a table of five.

Our waiter Taishi eventually turned up with some last minute decorations, beautiful pink cherry blossom nabbed from a tree outside. Taishi disappeared again to get changed, appearing minutes later in a vintage kimono-style outfit which had belonged to his grandmother, the long sleeves of which turned out to be a little impractical for waiting duties (more than one drink got knocked over). By this time two more guests had arrived and been seated at a tiny table in the corner. We introduced ourselves and made conversation whilst nibbling our way through little bowls of Japanese rice crackers.

Horton came through from the kitchen, in a Dennis the Menace apron, to explain that the other guests had got lost trying to find the place but were just round the corner. When they finally arrived Taishi brought out the first course, a potent appetiser of raw onion, umeboshi plums and dried fish flakes. This was followed by a tile of beautifully presented vegetable fancies including seaweed and Chinese cabbage rolls, glazed green beans and carrot sticks wrapped in nori, a carved radish with a refreshing lemon and apple dressing and some punchy grated ginger with fresh red chili served on a presumably edible leaf. I’d scoffed it down before anyone thought to ask.

Next up was a tasty salad of potato, red pepper and seaweed sprinkled with togarishi, the Japanese equivalent of Chinese five-spice made with chili powder, orange peel, nori and sesame seeds. This was followed by a sharing plate of slow braised shiitake mushrooms, grated daikon radish and moreish gammodoki tofu nuggets. Plenty of umami deliciousness here.

A penultimate course consisted of sushi rice with a sprinkling of furikake seasoning, miso soup and some crunchy pickled vegetables. Then finally dessert, a pretty morsel of starfruit with berries and a sugar and mirin syrup served with a flask of hot sake.

We finished eating just as the second wave of diners began to arrive, prompting us to all get up to leave at the same time and causing a bit of a jam. Our delighted host grabbed his camera and snapped a photo of his hallway chock full of people. It turned out it was the first time that all the people booked in for dinner at The Secret Ingredient were total strangers to Horton, a sign that word is spreading and there is a demand for this kind of alternative restaurant experience. I’d certainly go again but judging by the number of fans on The Secret Ingredient’s Facebook profile, it might be awhile before I can get another table.

The Secret Ingredient, Somewhere in Stoke Newington.