Food and Drink in London

Fuming marvellous

I started smoking again last night. And it was great.

I'm not talking cigarettes or other exotic cheroots, of course. That ship has long since sailed, although not, I hasten to add, because of any state nannying. No, the smoking in question was of the culinary variety and took place in my kitchen with one of these:

This was a very welcome gift from Howard for my birthday last year that had predictably gone the way of many kitchen gadgets and been utterly neglected beyond an initial (modestly successful) experiment with some pheasant breasts wrapped in bacon just after I got it. A Gordon Ramsay article in last Saturday's Times, however, inspired me to dust it off and have another go. This recipe in particular recalled memories of a single, dazzling smoked potato at L'Arpege back in May. Would have been rude not to give it a go...

The smoker is pretty simple and would have been easy enough to bodge with an old biscuit tin or some such. Wood chips are scattered across the bottom of what is basically a tin box with a sliding lid. A tray sits on top of this to catch any drips and to deflect the direct heat from the hob and the food sits on a raised grill to allow the smoke to move freely around it. It's a hot smoking process so the food cooks as well as smokes, and it's amazingly effective.

We had the smoked potato salad recipe more or less exactly as Ramsay suggested (I couldn't be bothered to peel that many tiny potatoes – maybe that's why we were only served on each in Paris!). It was really tasty, an unusual but welcome departure from the potato salad I usually make, which is full of goodies like mustard and egg and never hangs around too long. (If you're planning on trying this recipe I'd recommend adding a couple of minutes to the parboiling time: the potatoes were teetering on the edge of hardness.)

We also smoked some Halloumi, a standard sized block of corner-shop stuff sliced down the middle to form two appropriately fag-packet sized patties. I bottled out of using the expensive organic stuff, but I needn't have worried. A little squeaky it may have been but this is surely what home smoking is all about. Faintly coloured and with just enough delicate smokiness to lift the flavour beyond what you'd get through simple grilling.

I'm told that the vegetarian holy grail is – hardly surprisingly – a proper bacon substitute. It's still untested at this stage but I would have thought that a slice or two of smoked Halloumi quickly finished off on a griddle might be just the thing.

Way off

There has been a strong trend for Spanish food for quite a few years now.  It started with Moro, Sam and Sam Clark's iconic Moorish restaurant and the high quality food importer, Brindisa.  Then the latter opened their tapas bar in Borough Market . . . I walked past it last night and it was packed to the gills.  More recently El fantastic Faro opened its doors with an enticing blend of modernity and tradition.  Add to this Salt Yard and a couple of others and it would seem that duff paella is a thing of the past.

Many of these new restaurants place the grill at the heart of their cooking, they are trying to bring a sense of the asador to London.  In many places it works and such a simple style of is an attractive prospect for a new Spanish restaurants.  The simplicity of the grill is deceptive though.  Ingredients will be shown in a straight forward, honest way and this means the quality of ingredients used will face immediate scrutiny.  Could the boring grill become the new bad paella?

I'm getting ahead of myself . . . two paragraphs in and I haven't even mentioned the restaurant yet.  And you can probably already guess the gist.  The visit was bit exciting to start with.  Jay Rayner, the Observer's restaurant critic, had already kindly given us a mention on their blog.  When he emailed Ben asking to join him for supper this sounded good.  And where were we going?  Camino . . . A new Spanish restaurant in King's Cross that I'd walked past a couple of times and been eager to visit.  Ben and I arrived first and sought recommendations from the bar.  We were told that the Cruzcampo was good.  Not an impressive recommendation in my book, especially when they had Alhambra beer as well.  We started off quite liking the interior.  It's on two levels with a large bar stretching around to accommodate both, there is a large skylight making the place, er, lighter.  Later on the place started to seem more and more like a motorway service station, admittedly a continental one . . . there are even road signs on the walls.  This is, of course, because camino means 'way' or 'route' (any Spanish speakers feel free to leap in here as I don't speak it).  The idea is that you can take a walk through various regional styles of food.  This is illustrated on the funny little concertina menu by placing the dish descriptions along the length of a road.  Or maybe it was a river.

As to the food . . . well, it was just a little boring with some mistakes in execution.  We ordered Jabugo ham, Galician octopus with potatoes and a mackerel escabeche.  The ham was at the right temperature (i.e. not cold) but was sliced too thickly.  The octopus was unexciting and lacked vigour, despite a sprinkling of paprika.  The best of the starters was the escabeche, flavourful and just firm enough with a light citrus marinade.  Next I declined the chance to join in with Ben and Jay in tucking into some Charolais beef and went for some Romney Marsh(!) lamb cutlets instead.  I'd had an enormous Ginger Pig T Bone steak the day before so I couldn't even look at anything cow related.  The verdict on the beef seemed to be that it was ok, just rather boring . . . boring is not good enough for beef, after one mouthful you should be involuntarily slobbering and muttering, 'oh yes' (That is what happens at Hawksmoor, Santa Maria Buen Ayre, El Faro etc etc.).  Maybe for my lamb they were too reliant on natural seasoning.  Salt marsh lamb can be delicious but this lacked flavour and should have been more strongly seasoned.  To accompany this we had pan roasted potatoes with onion, green peppers and egg.  These are knockout ingredients but again Camino's dish seemed to lack soul.

We rounded things off with an almond tart, crema catalan and 'pastel de chocolate caliente' that seemed to be like a fondant.  A chocolate fondant should gradually change from a soft spongy outside to a liquid core.  This dish leapt from a too thin, dry outer sponge layer to a flood of liquid inside, suggesting it had just been cooked too quickly.  The reaction to the other two desserts was not overly enthusiastic.

Well, what a shame.  This kind of cooking, when done properly, can be hugely satisfying and quite exciting.  Not here though.  That night, at least, the place seemed to lack attention to detail and care about what they were doing.  Service was patchy too, requests for further drinks were randomly intercepted and variably interpreted.  If you're in King's Cross, there are better options.

Camino Bar and Restaurant, 3 Varnisher's Yard, The Regent Quarter N1  020 7841 7331

Hot Snazz

Howard Redux

In 2001 Fuchsia Dunlop's book, 'Sichuan Cookery', was published.  This showed a distinctively different cuisine to the normally Cantonese fare that most British are exposed to.  The book describes a region with a deep culinary culture.  Dishes are famed for their spicy heat, with  Sichuan peppers as well as red chillies used and their effects, such as numbing or tingling, used in the vocabulary of taste.  Dishes also use many varying and contrasting tastes and textures together.  I should've tracked down the ingredients and cooked some the dishes . . . I didn't.  Luckily London now has some Sichuanese Restaurants.

I've been to Snazz Sichuan, the restaurant in the New China Club, in Kings Cross, twice over the last couple of months.  The first time was with a bunch of London foodie types and I arrived after ordering had already taken place.  It all went by in a whirl but  I remember it being extremely tasty, the heat gradually building and the bill being remarkably low.  I also remember there were some quite unusual animal bits on the menu.  I knew I had to pay another visit, this time with Ben.

As well as my fellow blogger, I was also joined by Paul and his girlfriend Joanna.  Ben and I examined the menu and in a meeting of minds picked out some dishes, mostly bits of pig.  Joanna was somewhat alarmed by the prospect of very hot food as well as ears and tails and blood and stuff.  We ordered some bitter melon and some cucumber too.  So to mitigate the heat, in theory.  In order to keep things calm and ensure you concentrated on the food, the restaurant also saw fit to play James Blunt in the background.  We encountered this kind of thing at Anthony's.  Jeez, what is it about James Blunt (deservedly rhyming slang in parts of London) and restaurants?

This is 'Strange Flavour Rabbit'. An appendix in Dunlop tells me that the strange-flavour is a harmonious mix of salty, sweet, numbing, hot, sour, fresh-savoury and fragrant notes.  Indeed . . . and it was delicious.  It was served cold and nuts and sesame seed provided crunch.

These pigs ears were glutinous and crunchy . . . as with last time I had pigs ears I had to stop myself thinking about my own ears.

This dish of cucumber with garlic was to provide welcome respite when things started heating up later on.

This was another cool and crunchy dish but the melon was bitter, not sweet, with chillies and peppers lurking, ready to pounce.

I didn't take a picture of the supernice Guong Po chicken.  The central ingredients are chicken, chilli and peanuts but that doesn't capture the glorious look and taste of the dish . . . it's a mite sweet and sour, hotter than any of the preceding dishes but still a beginning really.  This was one of the more conservative dishes compared to the more offally, hotter things and was a crowd-pleaser.

Bass with pig blood - who would've thought it?  The blood in the picture are those photogenic brown blocks.  They're much lighter, than say, black pudding, they're not salty and they're soft and slightly crumbly.  The heat stepped up another notch.  Sichuan peppers both here and in earlier dishes were notable because of their citrus taste as well as their heat.  Even if you've read about them it's nicely unfamiliar when you first taste them.

These 'fire-exploded kidneys flowers' really turned up the heat.  The kidneys are cut in a special way and then quickly cooked at high temperature to unfurl them.  The dish consists of the 'flowers' and an enormous amount of Sichuan peppers - look at them glistening, red for danger.

We thought we'd ordered another dish, but it hadn't arrived . . . we nudged the waiter and a big bowl of pigs tails soon arrived.  And along with the tails . . . was that ham shank?  We picked up a block of pink meat and asked the waiter.  Ah no, that was luncheon meat, he explained.  Spam with everything then.

I think it was at this point that I thought I'd just crunch into a dried Sichuan pepper and see what it was like.  I'm really not very good with hot foods so I don't know why I did it.  It might have been the Tsing Dao beer I'd been glugging.  Reader, it was almost psychedelic.  I started sweating, I became pleasantly dizzy, endorphins flooded my body and I could've sworn there were flashes of light.  All of this provided much entertainment for my dining companions.  Would I do it again, hmmm . . . not sure.  Ben recounted to me an episode of the Simpsons where Homer eats a very hot chilli and hallucinates.  Ah, here it is . . .

Indeed, we are on a quest for knowledge.

With steamed rice and beer this ample meal came to under £30 a head.  Remarkably good value for this level of technique and such a fun and tasty experience.

Snazz Sichuan, New China Club, 37 Chalton St, NW1  020 7388 0808

All you can eat

During a standard pre-kip trawl through the channels last night I stumbled across an old episode of QI that had somehow passed me by until now. (I think there's some sort of law that ensures there's always an episode on somewhere if you look hard enough.) Usual silly banter with some funny inventions and a suspicious amount of pirate knowledge from Vic Reeves. All very entertaining and everything, but it was mostly passing me by as I tried to finish the crossword.

Suddenly, though, my ears pricked up during an item about Charles Darwin. Something to do with what he might have eaten during his botanical voyages. Anyway, the point is that a tradition has been established among some enterprising biologists to mark Darwin's birthday with a Phylum Feast, a celebratory meal involving as many different obscure species as possible. What a fantastic idea!

The link above includes a sample menu, and I love the fact they've picked whalemeat for the mammal rather than something a little more pedestrian. But turkey? Shrimp? I think we can do a bit better than that...

The search is on for the ultimate Phylum Feast, perhaps to mark Dawin's 200th birthday on 12 February 2009. With enough planning we might even make it happen.

Northern light

Before we start I have to point out that this is a post about a little trip that took place at the end of June. It's not that I particularly want to reinforce our reputation for infrequent postings, I just don't want you to think I'm indulging in multi-course tasting menus every other meal. Sometimes literally days pass between such blow-outs.

The plan was hatched by foodie chums Gavin and Anny, who spotted a cheap rail fare deal to Leeds and thought they'd take advantage by making a return trip to Anthony's. Gavin, incidentally, has been described by our friends over at Dos Hermanos as one of the scariest  people on the planet, and, while I think this is probably something of an exaggeration, it's telling that when he offered Howard and me the chance to take a trip up north, neither of us felt we were being made an offer we could realistically refuse...

Actually, it was never an offer we were going to turn down anyway. Anthony's has had a loyal following among food fans for some time and it was only its relatively remote location that had stopped us popping along before. Its reputation is for cutting edge cuisine, of the kind espoused by Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck, but perhaps without the extreme party tricks, and certainly in a no-nonsense Yorkshire environment. Head chef Anthony Flinn has worked with Ferran Adria at El Bulli, and this is the kind of CV guaranteed to get Howard's attention. OK, mine too.

The consistent refrain among fans of Anthony's – and they are legion – is that it has been unfairly overlooked by the Michelin people, who have steadfastly refused to give it a coveted star. On the evidence of my first trip, I think I can see both sides of the argument. More worrying was Anny's comment that the place had lost its wow factor and her conviction that they had become disillusioned with the quest and given up on their search for star-dom.

Things started off really promisingly. We'd popped into a pub near the station for a quick pint to be greeted by a fantastic poster for a forthcoming beer and cheese festival "with pork pies"! Upon arrival in the restaurant we'd sat down in the upstairs waiting and smoking area (there were still two days to go before the ban) to be welcomed warmly with menus and aperitifs. Downstairs into the comfortable basement dining room and the first minor irritant came. Actually not that minor: muzak. What appeared to be some sort of Radio 2 shuffle added 'atmosphere' rather too loudly throughout the meal. Oh dear.

The food, though, kicked off very promisingly. Some good bread and no less than three different butters and then the tasting menu, decent value at £60 for eight courses, began with a small bowl of brown shrimp with pistachio powder over which a smooth potato and garlic soup was poured at the table. This promised much, as did the white onion risotto with Parmesan foam and espresso powder (a signature dish and a worthy one at that). A single scallop followed, beautifully cooked and topped off with candy floss, which helped bring out the sweetness of the scallop but was (as with full scale candy floss) a little hard to eat.

Another pleasing combination came in the form of crab with Jabugo ham, cucumber and peanut foam, but with the following course things started to jar a bit. The John Dory fillet was excellent and the broad bean granite was well judged if a bit of an icy shock to the system. The addition of "chicken popcorn", however, didn't really work. It turned out to be just popcorn and some tiny rolls of rather bland chicken with some sort of mousse inside. It was not clear what this was supposed to be adding to the dish.

The final main course was sous vide pork with honey jelly, cured chitterlings, crispy pigs ear, sage macaroons and elderflower foam, and wasn't nearly as scary as it sounds. As with the previous dish there were lots of different things going on but overall this was far more successful. The pork was very dense but yielded well and was full of flavour. I wasn't completely convinced by the foam, which came in a shot glass in the middle of the plate.

Two puddings followed: a "pear crumble", which turned out to be a whole poached pear that had been crisped up with a light, doughnutty batter, was served with a fantastic smoked brie ice cream; and some balls of chocolate and (I think) fennel mousse with more of the peanut foam that had been somewhat underwhelming with the crab and ham. Both offered interesting contrasts and interplays between sweet and savoury, very much in keeping with the rest of the menu.

We followed with a good selection of 11 cheeses between us. The lack of a trolley or any other way to view the cheese rankled a bit, especially as the waiter didn't really give the impression of understanding our questions about the cheeses that were in the best condition. But the resulting plateful was very pleasing and good fun to share.

On the admittedly slim evidence of one lunch I can see why people think Anthony's deserves a Michelin star – it undoubtedly serves exciting and innovative food in a professional and pleasing environment – but I can also see a few reasons why the Michelin folks might disagree. Apart from the hideous muzak, there was were dishes where perhaps things were played a bit safe, and others where there seemed to be innovation for the sake of innovation, resulting in plates that just didn't quite work.

I've certainly had less interesting and satisfying meals in places that have been given a star, but I don't think any of us will be rushing back to Leeds, however cheap the ticket may be. Except maybe for pies.

Anthony's, 19 Boar Lane, Leeds LS1 6EA 0113 245 5922

 

No more bets please!

In Wendens Ambo, the quirkily named Essex village where I was lucky enough to grow up, there is a pub called The Bell. And in that pub, more days than not, there is a man. Let's call him Paul. In fact let's call him Paul Nelson, for 'tis he. One day, probably about 15 years ago now, he made a bet. He did this a lot. The precise details are lost in the mists of time (at least to me) but it was with the landlord and it was something to do with whether the chancellor would be raising the duty on beer in the forthcoming budget. So confident were both parties that the size of the wager quickly escalated until it reached the arcane sum of £468, apparently derived from the value of a certain quantity of beer at the time. And so concerned was the landlord that his missus would learn of the size of the bet he coined a new codeword for this precise amount of money. Henceforth £468 was known simply as a "Nelson", a denomination admittedly rarely used in any discussions not involving silly bets in the pub.

Fast forward to last autumn, when, buoyed with optimism after a moderately successful summer against whoever it was we were playing,  I felt another famous victory coming on against the old enemy in the Ashes.  Resident office Aussie Fiona was having none of it, and, not knowing of Nelsons, proposed an even money bet (what was I thinking?) that involved the loser standing the winner a meal at Gordon Ramsay's eponymous HQ in Royal Hospital Road. Clearly I lost. It seems only right that this bet, or at least the sum involved, shall henceforth be known as a "Ramsay".

I have a lot of time for Gordon Ramsay, an attitude I don't seem to share with many foodie types. In the dark days before I started going to flash restaurants on a regular basis, and before he'd become a bona fide A Lister, he cooked one of the first memorable dishes I had sampled – some sort of crêpe Suzette soufflé – when he'd been given the dessert station in a kind of Who's Who guerrilla kitchen at the Restaurant Show in about 1997. I also remember sharing a lift with him later that day and listening to him slagging off Pierre Victoire, a cheap and cheerful mini French chain that I thought was the height of sophistication at the time. Already larger than life and not inclined to pull punches or take prisoners... but clearly a gifted chef.

A decade or so on, and Ramsay's empire has flourished. His name adorns fine dining flagships and the most modern of gastropubs, trouble-shooting fly-on-the-wall documentaries and the hard-to-classify F-Word. And it this mix of celebrity trappings and extreme diversification – not to mention ill-judged advertising campaigns – that has alienated many food fans. But while I can't deny he must be spreading himself thin he's pretty consistent in preaching common sense and demanding quality and old fashioned values from his various viewers, readers, victims and staff. And his recipes somehow manage to be both challenging and foolproof: everyone should have a go at Claridge's chicken pie from the Secrets book.

Other foodies have a more fundamental objection: to his cooking. Ramsay restaurants, they say, may be long on classic flavour combinations, but are seriously short on innovation; his chefs can't or won't embrace the latest trends or the ultra modern techniques that are making stars of other members of the select three-star gang. Indeed, many were genuinely surprised when Royal Hospital Road held onto its status as one of only three three-star restaurants in the UK (and the only one in London). Never having eaten there, I couldn't really comment on this accusation. I'm in a far better, if poorer, position now.

The dining room at Royal Hospital Road is small, no more than a dozen tables evenly spaced around a curiously staid but undoubtedly smart modern(ish) environment. I was first in the room, and consoled myself during the wait for Fi (whose lateness was so fashionable it is quite possibly now the new black) with the thought that this was quite clearly the best table in the room: between the two front windows, with both chairs angled in to face the whole room. If there had been any stars to spot we could have ogled with impunity.

We nibbled discretely on canapés of foie gras parfait and taramasalata (both beguilingly light) with various crispy things to dip and studied the menu. There are three options, a limited choice set lunch for about £45, I think, an a la carte selection for £80-odd and the pompously named "Prestige" tasting menu for £110. In for a penny, in for a Nelson, of course: we went for the full whack with a couple of tweaks, and asked the consummately friendly sommelier to pick some wines by the glass for each course (the wine list is a scary tome that looked very impressive but as usual just drew my eye to all the most expensive bottles - eleven grand, since you asked).

So... Brace yourselves... Here goes:

An amuse of crab cocktail with confit tomato, a sorbet of (I think) red pepper and a chicory leaf with sour cream to scoop things up. A slightly involved opening gambit but hard to fault. Very summery.

One of the real highlights: a hot terrine of trotter, pork knuckle and black pudding with a cute quail's egg Benedict, balsamic and hollandaise sauce and a slice of summer truffle. Immensely satisfying, especially as my body basically thought this was breakfast.

For Fi, a single raviolo of lobster, langoustine and salmon poached in a light bisque and apparently served with a lemongrass and chervil velouté. I had a little taste of this and I wasn't bowled over. Very solid texture (maybe too solid) but without the subtle bisque-y flavours I was expecting.

Parmesan coated scallops on an octopus carpaccio with dollops of cauliflower purée and a Parmesan sauce. Probably the weakest link, and a real pity as the octopus was fantastic and the texture of the scallops spoke of a confident hand at the stove. Unfortunately, though, the Parmesan dominated: the crust on the scallops heading towards bitterness and the otherwise tasty sauce lingering a little too long in the mouth.

My second fish course: braised halibut with lavender pasta and pea velouté. The fish was a little bland on its own, but taken as a whole, this worked rather well, although the teetering pile of raw stuff on top was a bit annoying.

Fi's choice was monkfish wrapped in confit duck gave me serious food envy. The duck and the red wine sauce worked their magic so well that it was easy to forget this was a fish dish at all.

Fi's main course was a seared then poached fillet of Northumberland beef with a truffle and summer vegetable consommé, poured over at the table from a clear teapot (I ask you). The beef was great but Fi was put off by the unadvertised (and in this case unwelcome) bed of braised oxtail on which it was resting. I'd have scoffed the lot, but I was busy cursing my phone's photo memory and tucking into a canon of Cornish lamb, perfectly pink and resting in this case on a cushion of incredibly powerful confit shoulder. This was accompanied by a thyme jus and a fine ratatouille in a mini-roasted bell pepper and was as accomplished a classical meat dish as I can recall.

Offered the slightly unfair choice at this juncture of cheese or pre-dessert, we both went for the latter, and were rewarded with a cute yoghurt pot of what was described as creme brulée but was in fact a heavenly lemongrass custard with a dollop of raspberry compote. Wonderful.

The first dessert proper was a peach soup with some thicker apricot at the bottom and an amaretto cream on top. This felt very dated but was OK, especially when I found some popping candy somewhere in mine. Fi didn't believe me; I wasn't about to have a bet, though.

The finalé was a Granny Smith parfait on top of a layer of chocolate brownie surrounded by more chocolate, with "honeycomb", a chocolate straw and various slicks of coulis and something with coconut sprinkled on it. I thought this was all a bit confusing but Fi was enthusiastic about the combination and I had to concede that there was nothing that didn't actually work: it was just trying a little too hard. Fun to hear the waiter struggling to get his thick French accent around "Granny Smith", though.

Petit fours were fun: a foaming silver bowl of balls of strawberry ice cream in white chocolate blasted on a bed of dry ice and a little tree of silver coated truffles. Good stuff.

The wine choices were spot on throughout, but I'm afraid you'll have to hypnotise me if you want the details. I think I'd have preferred to see a fixed price wine flight to go with the menu, but in the end the sommelier struck a decent balance between luxury and price. We agreed at the end that the wine was one of the real high points of the meal.

The service was unremitting, eventually becoming a parody of itself. Apparently there's one member of staff for every customer, but I understand this is supposed to include those in the kitchen. Judging by the hordes front of house there can only be a maximum of two pour souls slaving away behind the scenes. It all got a but silly, really: did we really need to have our table scraped after every course, even long after we'd finished with the bread? Does it really need four people to place two plates in front of two people? Was the function of those two sub-maitre d's really just to wait around until someone asked for the bill? Difficult to what else they were doing.

But back to the food. My humble three-star dining experience to date is limited to the Fat Duck (OK before it got its third star), L'Arpege and now Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. It's clear that of these, the first pushes boundaries, and pushes them successfully, the second has taken ultimately refined classical techniques and applied them to the finest ingredients, and the third... Well it's clearly far closer to the classical style and is not going to win over hardened foodies who want to be amazed. There was nothing amazing, in the true sense of the word, in this meal: just (on the whole) well crafted, well presented, well thought out dishes that worked both individually and as an ensemble. It was great to see some Heston-style fun touches coming in with some of the fripperies around the edge of the meal, but there will need to be more wow factor in the substance of the menu before the foodie crowd comes back on side.

And the bill? On the basis that, technically, the terms of the bet would have allowed me to pay for Fiona to dine alone, a Ramsay appears to just a little more than a Half Nelson.

Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, 68-69 Royal Hospital Road, SW23 4HP 020 7352 4441