Food and Drink in London

From the ridiculous to the sublime

After nearly three weeks on the wagon (strange but true) I'd been drooling for most of yesterday over the thought of the cool hit of a dry martini. A dinner plan had fallen through slightly but Antonia and I stuck to the bare bones of it by arriving at Angelus for an early supper. The lounge bar behind the restaurant is a lovely space for a pre-dinner sharpener and we duly settled in and ordered one each. Quel domage. Comfortably the worst DM I have ever had. Wetter than a mermaid's wet bits.

So after a decent enough meal, at least for the carnivorous half of the party (who got to suck on a pigeon's head), we decided to pop along to The East Room, a new offshoot of Milk & Honey, the members-only drinking club in Soho. The East Room, behind an anonymous door at the southern end of Tabernacle Street, is dangerously close to the office so I was keen to find out if it would do as a new after (or during) work drinking establishment.

And a great bar it is too. The main room is big but very comfortable. Lots of comfy sofas and plenty of bar stools if you want them. There's a buffet set up in the corner (not sure what the deal is there) and Enomatic machines dotted around the walls that will serve you up taster measures or glassfuls of some very fine New World wines. Once you've equipped yourself with a special card loaded up with cash the idea is that you can sample wines outside your usual budget, or just ones you're not sure about, without committing to a whole bottle. You can apparently keep an opened bottle in these gadgets for ages without the wine going off. They're not the most attractive machines but it's a nice idea and it'll be interesting to see if it catches on. Alas, I don't think they take Oyster cards.

So in theory you could go to East Room, buy yourself a glass of wine and not talk to anyone at all. Which, this close the usual anti-service hub of Hoxton, is quite frankly a pretty attractive prospect. But then you'd be missing out on one of most compelling aspects of the whole establishment: the staff. We could not have been better looked after. From the nice ladies who took our coats to the chap who was mixing our fantastic martinis to the head barman (who I am sure is the chap who plays Spiderman) who scurried off to choose us some brilliant wines from the magic machines... everyone was polite and professional but also friendly, clearly knowledgeable and refreshingly enthusiastic. Not something you can say for many of the bars in the area.

It's open to those members of the public who can find it for the next few weeks. I think they may have said till the end of April. And look: it's nearly home-time on a Friday. I'm off there now...

The East Room, 2a Tabernacle Street, London EC2A 4LU 07000 THSTRM (if you please)

High tea

Unlike the majority of my compatriots I am not a habitual tea drinker.  When I feel fuzzy in the morning or weary in the afternoon I do not reach for a cup of comforting warmth.  It's not that I actively dislike tea, I just never really saw the point.  A few weeks ago that changed.  I didn't have a sudden change of heart about a milky cup of builders' tea.  I did visit TeaSmith, a tea shop and bar in Spitalfields, where I was introduced to a whole new world of taste.

I'd been meaning to visit TeaSmith for a while. I don't live that far from it and with a small diversion it can actually be on my walk home.  It does close at six in the afternoon though.  An early finish at work and a visit East from my newly West London friend Merilyn provided the motive and opportunity to murder a cup of cha. TeaSmith is a small niftily designed shop on the north side of Spitalfields market with a small bar at the front. We asked if we could taste a few kinds of tea and the nice shop assistant nipped downstairs to speak to the owner.  A few minutes later we were sat at the bar with freshly lasered tasting notes about to embark on a tea 'Masterclass'!

John Kennedy, the owner, is a Scot with a serious love of tea, an enthusiastic evangelist who not only believes but delights in his products.  His teas are predominantly Chinese, though with some other teas available, sourced directly from his source in Hong Kong.  The tasting was accompanied by a detailed commentary covering the history, culture, cultivation, potential health benefits (Western and Chinese) of tea and much much more.  The presentation of the tea itself is performed through a sort of rationalised version of a Chinese tea ceremony where John as the tea master is explaining what he's doing and why he's doing it.  Various tea pots with different levels of porousness are used, water is heated to different temperatures using a digital thermometer and different infusion lengths are used.  The water is poured in separate stages for each tea for rinsing and infusing . . . much ends up falling through the slats of the specially designed bar.  It's mesmerising to watch.  Teas go through multiple infusions with the tastes developing and changing over each iteration.

Another great thing at TeaSmith is the William Curley cakes on offer.

I've never really given tasting notes for anything on this website, mainly because I've always doubted my palate and my articulacy, but I think it's probably worth noting exactly what we had, what the Tea Smith notes were and what I thought.  So, here goes.

White Tea - Silver Needle (Fujian, China)

TS Notes: "Gorgeous hand-picked buds showing fragile white hairs. Delicate and subtle fresh aroma. Lingering sweet aftertaste"
Me:  Second infusion less sweet particularly in the aftertaste, but more full bodied

Chinese Green Tea - Long Jin, First Flush 2005 (Zheijang, China)

TS Notes: "Most famous (probably) Chinese green. Hand-fired characteristic blade shaped leaves. Crisp texture, malty, nutty taste"
Me:  Verging-on-bitter, chestnuts, light, reminiscent in some ways of some English Spring ales!

Oolong Tea (Floral Style) - Teguanyin Supreme (Anxi, China)

TS Notes: "Rolled, lightly oxidised leaves. Superb orchid aroma and smooth silky texture from authentic high-grown plants. Extended sweet aftertaste. Ultimate afternoon treat:
Me:  Amazing aroma from pot, geraniums, sort of green floral

Oolong Tea (Floral/Fruity Style) - Phoenix Supreme (Guandong, China)

TS Notes: "Twisted and expertly fired leaves descended from famous tea trees over 500 years old. Intense aroma of ripe fruit with an exceptionally long and sweet aftertaste"
Me: Reminiscent of red laces chewy sweet (but not chemical). Very long, peach and plum aromas from pot . . . mellower in the mouth.

Oolong Tea (Roasted Style) - Wuyi Supreme 'Big Red Robe' (Wuyi, China)

TS Notes: "Twisted, charcoal fired leaves from a direct propagation of the 500 year old 'Red Robe ' plant itself. Warm, floral aroma with a hint of charcoal. Full bodied taste with rich and complex aftertaste. Exceptional digestive.
Me: Oily, thicker mouthfeel at lower temperatures and later infusions. Very long, changing taste with sweet and bitter notes revealing themselves. Very smooth and soft.

Red Tea - Red Plum Classic

TS Notes:  "Full-bodied and exceptionally silky tea from the second flush of premium Long Jin"
plants
Me: More basic than the previous tea, but a good step sideways. Illustrative in comparison with our earlier Long Jin tasting. Had choc yuzu cake at this point :-)

Puer Tea - Extra Old Tippy (Yunnan, China)

TS Notes: Hand picked tippy leaves undergo a secondary fermentation and careful aging. Rich earthy and woody fragrance with complex smooth taste.
Me: Amazing loam taste, I was transported back to playing in the woods as a child. My friend was reminded of a smoke sauna (Estonian thing . . .). Yak sweat! I can imagine this being a great after dinner alternative to coffee.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I don't drink tea normally.  In fact, I don't drink caffeinated drinks at all . . . one of the reasons for this is that coffee makes me strangely agitated and horrible to be with.  Three hours of tea at Tea Smith, certainly made me very very very alert and put me in a startlingly good mood.  This kind of tea has a much higher caffeine content than 'normal' tea . . . be warned.  I buzzed off for a pint, no nasty comedown descended and all was well.  I shall return to TeaSmith.

TeaSmith, 6 Lamb Street, London E1 6EA  020 724 71333

The Narrow Street Bar & Restaurant?

Three weeks ago I called The Narrow, Gordon Ramsay's new East End pub . . . did they have a table that evening?  Of course not, such is the popularity of the celebrity that the earliest first sitting table offered was on Good Friday.  I took it reasoning I'd have no problem finding people to come with me.  Last Friday turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day, heralding the proper arrival of Summer.  When Antonia and I arrived at the pub Ben was already sat outside, Jess turned up soon after.

The first thing that strikes you is that it definitely has the feeling of a pub - there are people nursing pints outside, there's a short bar menu and there was a big slew of cigarette butts marring the terrace.  The name of the pub had seemingly not changed from its previous incarnation: The pub's signs still announced it as the 'Narrow Street Bar & Restaurant', it's not a bar any more ,it's 'The Narrow' - a pub.  Other things that strengthen its public house credentials are draught London Pride, they also promise a guest real ale, though this was not available when we visited.

The menu and drinks choice are firmly British.  As well as the draft ale, there's also a large range of bottles beers, including many British bottle-conditioned varieties.  They also manage to include English wine (Chapel Down Bacchus Reserve), which even, Jess, an American, found acceptable.  The menu is reassuringly short and seasonal (sides included Jersey Royals and purple sprouting broccoli).  As it was a sunny Friday and we were next to water, I had fish:  potted Cromer crab with toast, followed by deep fried monkfish with chips and mushy peas.  Ben had grilled mackerel with potato salad and then pig's cheeks with mashed neeps.  Jess had the same starter and then, despite Gordon Ramsay's well-known disdain for vegetarians, had the no meat, no fish main course . . . a cheese tart.  Antonia is an actual vegeteranian and had predicted that her choice of dishes available to her would be poor.  She was not wrong.  As a starter she had Welsh rabbit (aka rarebit) and then followed that with the tart.

The mackerel winners won the first round . . . the fish fresh and flavourful, the potatoes waxy, the lamb's lettuce offering a supple crunch.  This is not to say that my crab wasn't good . . . it was, the crab in its lightly spiced butter piled nicely on to toast made from good bread.  Antonia was pretty pleased with her rabbit but it didn't look as good as the one I'd seen at the St John bar a few weeks earlier . . . and that didn't look as good as the slightly over-the-top one I make at home occasionally.  For main courses Ben won again.  The pig's cheek was soft and melting and had a lovely robust flavour.  The cheese tart was less successful with the pastry hard and the filling overcooked.  More alarmingly,in Jess' salad there lurked piece of blue paper!  What would Ramsay the perfectionist say? Or is this ok because it's a pub?  We debated whether to raise a hullabaloo and we thought that Jess had a license to do this owing to her Transatlantic provenance . . . she declined though in the grounds that she didn't want to act like a a typical American and really she was pretty much a Londoner by now.  Fair enough.

For dessert, my choice of a gypsy tart was a mistake.  It's a cloyingly sweet confection of dark muscovado sugar and evaporated milk.  So . . . not really my thing and I shouldn't have been tempted by its name with its intimations of Romany lust.  Nor could the suggested dessert wine hold up to the onslaught of sweetness.  Antonia declined the school-dinner style desserts on offer and went for a Black Velvet.  As to what Ben and Jess had . . . I'll leave them to add that in the comments.

So, overall, what to think?  Well, for a pub it's reasonable food . . . for me the whole project does have a slightly corporate, soulless feel.  My complaint about Ramsay has always been to do with his lack of innovation, but that shouldn't be the main criterion in a pub.  What do i want in a pub?  Tasty food with a degree of comfort about it, a menu that makes sense, fresh ingredients and reasonable prices.  The Narrow ticks all those boxes.  What else does a pub need?  Charm and character . . . Mr Ramsay needs to work on those.

The Narrow, 44 Narrow Street, E14 0207 592 7950

Ambient house

To thank me for my efforts as his best man, last Friday my brother took me for dinner at Lindsay House.  It coincided with his birthday so I decided I'd take him out for dinner too.  At the same place.  At the same time.  And what was the point of that?  Well, I just thought we could be a little more expansive on the food and drink choices.  Ben's a big fan of Lindsay House but he declined the offer to join us on the grounds that he'd prefer to preserve it as a trysting corner.  I have to confess a certain hesitation about the choice, mainly because of my deep-seated distrust of telly chefs (TV's Richard Corrigan is the chef there) and partly because I'd heard some very mixed reports of meals there.

After filled-to-the-brim glasses of champagne at the French House we sauntered round the corner and rang the front door bell at the restaurant.  We were ushered into the cosy interior of the Georgian town house and shown upstairs.  Despite it being full, there's a relative hush to proceedings, due to the carpeted, cushioned, wallpapered, curtained and tableclothed nature of the place.  To me this is preferable to the modern clatter of most new restaurants even though I don't like the concomitant suburban look.  The waitress was briefly puzzled as we enquired about sherry (I'm getting use to this),  and the puzzlement continued as the waiter brought us Tio Pepe . . . we had ordered Lustau Fino.  The sherries disappeared and then re-appeared.  It was the Lustau after all.  That's alright then.  It was a bit warm though, fino should be a crisp, refreshing sherry style and you can't achieve that if the temperature's too high.  We took the easy and expansive option and both ordered the tasting menu with accompanying wine matches at £110.

The first course was cured and roasted foie gras terrine with spiced ginger bread and country toast.  This came on a slab and also included a celeriac remoulade, strangely the ginger bread actually turned out to be a sort of compote or bread sauce.  This isn't to say that these things weren't very tasty, in fact I thought the dish a success - the foie gras styles were complementary, the toast light, crispy and fluffy and the celeriac and ginger offering contrasting textures and tastes.  We had to wait a while for our wine, a 2005 Konigin Victoriaberg Riesling Kabinett, Hocheim - Rheingau.  This was a good introductory wine, not too sweet and quite subtle  - a wine that went with the foie gras, but one from which we could step down from, to a dryer wine, next course.

Next course was a trio of mackerel, prepared in different ways with a beetroot foam.  The first of the fish was a magnificent tartar, fresh and acidic, it seemed Scandinavian in style, the next bit of fish was roast mackerel which after the tartar seemed slightly mundane, lastly there was some smoked mackerel, a pate of pretty good consistency and taste - there was some crispbread to eat this with.  The beetroot foam was quite dense and matched the mackerel well.  The wine was a 2005 Lugana Ca' Dei Frati from Veneto.  This was disappointingly lacklustre and seemed to be provided to provide a neutral background to the powerful fish flavours.  We came to the conclusion that a wine with more acidity might have been a better match.  More worrying though we'd waited even longer this time with our food in front of us before the wine arrived . . .

And then on to another fish course: roast monkfish wrapped in pancetta with soy braised squid.  So90s!  The monkfish was so so.  The squid was rather good though, soft as you like, the soy lending it a deep satisfying flavour.  The wine was a lovely 2001 Savennieres, Clos du Papillon, Domaine Baumard from the Loire.  This had a rich more-ish though refreshing quality.  We couldn't get enough of it.  And because Alastair had had a word with the restaurant manager, this wine arrived in sync with the food too.

The next dish sounded like a treat suitable for a dark January day, a game pie with chestnut and game chips.  As the dish arrived we asked the waitress what game was in the pie.  Er . . . pheasant.  So it's a pheasant pie then?  This was a game pie lite, if not a game pie zero then barely a game pie one.  Disappointing.  The 2000 Rioja Reserve - Rincon de Baroja was suitably innocuous.  This course should have been the high point of the meal, it failed.

The next dish was a bounce back to form.  Served without a matching wine, a crozier blue bavarois was served with a hazelnut and celery salad.  There was also a loose [insert someone else's recollection here] jelly on the plate.  I've seen cheese masquerading as dessert at quite a few places recently - whipped Brie at Reindeer, blue cheese ice cream at Bacchus - not a bad trend.  The bavarois was light with a strong salt tang and while celery was almost entirely absent from the plate, the roasted hazelnuts were delicious.

Finally there was a glazed chocolate brownie with a yoghurt and sour cherry ice cream.  The ice cream was fairly melted by the time the plate reached us and though the brownie was nothing special the two flavours went well together.  Nothing particularly 'wow' here though.  What was wow was the way the wine matched this dish.  This was a non-vintage 15 year old Maury from Domaine Mas Amiel.  This seemed to have sour cherry notes on top of a rich fruit, perfect for both the brownie and the ice cream.

So what to make of all this?  Although there was some high standard cooking, for example the foie gras, the mackerel and the cheese bavarois and the service was ok, apart from the wine lag and the sherry wobble, there was a noticeable lack of overall care to this meal.  When we got the bill it was for £220 though, including service so they'd clearly discounted us for the iffy service.  The menu, although having some good moments, seems a little dislocated both in time and space . . . some dishes seem a bit jaded, there's a feel of slaphazard global fusion - actually that in itself seems old-fashioned now.  The place ought to tighten everything up and bring itself more up to date.  It's not a write off yet and given its location and the undoubted demand for the place on the good nights of the week it might just plod along like that for years . . . and that would be a real shame.

Lindsay House, 21 Romilly Street, London. W1D 5AF  0207 439 0450

Making a Pig's Ear of it...

[Howard here . . . Over at Ripe London, Jessica runs a dating blog thinly disguised as a food blog.  Here's our own effort along those lines by Nick, our blog secretary, guest-blogging neatly into the role of tragi-comic wooer.  Nick actually submitted this back in December and it's entirely my fault that it's taken until now to appear on the site]

It’s funny how the seasons have themes. Pigs’ ears have been a recurrent theme over recent weeks. First they came deep fried at Tom’s Kitchen. Next, Poppy, my beautiful date, who was to have been my next girlfriend, took me to dinner at the Pig’s Ear on Old Church Street in Chelsea. And then… well… the name of the venue turned out to be sadly prophetic…

Downstairs, the Pig’s Ear is a busy pub. When I arrived at 8.00pm on a Thursday evening you could hardly move. So it was something of a relief to find that the dining room was upstairs and, by comparison, an oasis of calm. Predominantly decorated in dark wood, if felt more like a Montmartre bistro than a boozer or even a gastropub. So much the better. Strangely, though, as I walked in, the overpowering smell was of vinegar. Maybe in Blair’s inverted, anti-elitist Britain, fish and chips are the latest Chelsea “it” food?

Anyway, as Poppy was 45 minutes late, I had plenty of time on my hands. The menu didn’t take long to read, but was pleasing in a low key, seasonal sort of way and left plenty of time to text my extended address book. Just as well, then that nobody was hassling me to order so that they could have the table back soonest.

Eventually Poppy arrived… and announced that the cash machine had swallowed her card and that even though she was treating me, would I mind? Not at all. Just happy not to have to have to launch second or third rounds of texting my address book.

For starters I had what turned out to be a bit like smoked eel on Caesar salad. Good apart from the green bit. Poppy had a slightly indeterminate – but by no means unpleasant - broth with some great big juicy prawns in it. She seemed to enjoy these. And I enjoyed that she’d gone out of her way to emphasise that her past was in the past and that she wasn’t carrying it around as baggage.

For mains, I had venison with red cabbage. As the venison was flavoursome and not too dense, it was a success. Poppy had a succulent piece of halibut that didn’t keep her from saying more good things. We washed this down with a bottle of Chassagne Montrachet. Not particularly well suited to all the food but still good. So much so that by the time we got to dessert Poppy had agreed to a surprise romantic weekend without me even having to think about press ganging her into it. I’m not sure who was more surprised. We celebrated with two spoons and some excellent hazelnut ice cream.

Eventually the bill was as unobtrusive as the service was discrete and charming.

We left as I had hoped we would. Arm in arm, Poppy a little closer actually to becoming my next girlfriend. Until 7.15am the following morning, when she made it be known that she had spent the night thinking about it and had concluded that she didn’t want a relationship. Period. The moral? Over-confidence is a dangerous thing and particularly if you’re somewhere you can make a pig’s ear of  . . .

The Pig's Ear, 35 Old Church Street, Chelsea, London. SW3 5BS   0207 352 2908

Pluming marvellous

It sounds like an East End gangster pub, at least to me, but the Hat and Feathers is London's newest food-inclined drinking establishment.  It's in Clerkenwell which is only vaguely east of the centre and it's recently been renovated after years of neglect.  Attractive and well located, it's a mystery why it hadn't been properly developed earlier.  It had only been open a few days and I wasn't sure if it was serving food yet, so I persuaded Tristan to join me in an exploratory visit last Thursday evening.

Downstairs was really quite busy and once we established that they were serving food we wondered if we'd be able to find seats.  It was definitely a pub.  Lots of drinking, no discernible eating.  If you did manage to sit down here and get some food, you probably wouldn't be that happy eating it there.  It's nice enough but just a bit too cluttered and noisy (all hard surfaces) to enjoy dining there.  We soon discovered that there was an upstairs dining room and so we gathered our beverages and trekked up there.  At this point it became clear that we weren't in a gastropub.  We were in fact two quite separate environments in the same building, downstairs may be a boozer, but upstairs is a significantly formal restaurant.

It's softly lit, there are carpets, there are gaslights and tasteful winter decor.  There are table clothes and cloth napkins.   There are proper waiters.  Yep, it's a fully fledged, rather nice restaurant . . . completely different to the hullabaloo downstairs. The night we went there were only two other parties in the 26 (or so) cover room.  I'll bet it will soon be hard to get a table here.  And the food?  That's rather good too.

The menu is at first glance similar to the one at Bacchus.  It's progressive haute cuisine style food, but slightly toned down to allow a less expensive dining experience.  Bacchus is more adventurous though and at the Hat and Feathers any foams, jellies, sous-vide and the like are kept peripheral or background.  There is also no tasting menu, perhaps an attempt by the restaurant to keep one for one the ground, or at least not run before it can walk.  Each dish - starter, main and dessert has an individual wine pairing available by the glass, with most of these around £6.  This is user-friendly.

Soon after sitting down two complimentary glasses of fizz arrived.  Service was attentive and friendly despite clearly being its early settling-down days.  As a starter, Tristan ordered risotto with poached smoked haddock, saffron foam and chives.  I had confit duck, orange powder, roasted beetroot and Parmesan.  The waiter warned me that this was in fact a kind of salad . . . I ordered it anyway figuring that the confit duck would sufficiently sate my appetite for unhealthy food.  For mains, Tristan had rump of lamb with breads, butternut and mint puree.  I had slow roasted fillet of beef, anchovy crumbs, onion horseradish. 

Tristan was very happy indeed with his risotto - it was competently cooked with the right sense of creaminess, just loose enough.  The fish was very well cooked indeed and the saffron foam added worthwhile interest.  Of course, saffron is a familiar flavour used with risotto (with Osso Bucco) and it's also a well known fish accompaniment.  So, a reasonably clever confluence.  My own salad wasn't quite as good but was certainly interesting and edible.  The orange powder never overwhelmed but and brought thoughts of duck a l'orange, but with a fresher, not-cloying taste.  I'm afraid this was all slightly lost in the frisee lettuce that provided the bulk of the salad - maybe a replacement for this could be found?  The Parmesan was provided as a thin wafer biscuit.  This had an intensely savoury-umaminess . . . delicious.

The main courses featured the smears and such that you'd expect to find in these kind of dishes.  My fillet of beef did not have any of the qualities of a slow roast it was succulent in the way you'd expect of a sous-vide dish.  Indeed, for a normal slow roast you wouldn't use a lean cut like a fillet - what you want is meat with a high degree of fatty interconnection, e.g. braising steak, oxtail, lamb shanks . . . with these the fat melts and you're left with a soft, unctuous meat creation.  I queried the fillet's cooking with the waiter and then later with the chef.  It had been wrapped in cling-film and then cooked at 50 degrees for five hours (he might have said seven).  I do wonder what the difference in end result between this and using a water bath and vacuum sealing would be?  This dish, as with a sous-vide one, will divide audiences, with some preferring greater and variant caramelisation.  For me, though, a beef fillet should be about succulence . . . this was achieved.

The anchovy crumbs could have been more prominent.  The horseradish presentation was clever . . . it was a sorbet, balanced on a small disc of the onion puree:  a joke about its heat.  It tasted good too and matched the beef.  Tristan's lamb was soft and pink and he seemed very pleased with it and quite excited by the entertaining components on his plate.

Dessert looked fiddly, but I like that stuff.  I had 'three strawberries'.  One of these was a firm sponge-mousse-type thing (hmm . . . need the proper term for this) with a jelly top, one was a sorbet and one was fresh in a tartlet case.  There were also three raspberries, sliced artfully on the plate and a line of wonderfully tasty strawberry powder (made by just drying strawberries in an oven and then crushing them).  I started off impressed by the dish, but overall it was just too sweet and I was predominantly left with thoughts of jam.  Tristan had a lemon tart that was not really recognisable as such, but he declared it delicious.

Overall, with a glass of wine with each course, this came to £60 a head, including service.  I haven't really mentioned the wines so far.  To go with the confit I had a Rioja that defied Rioja cliches and matched the dish well.  The felt the Bordeaux that came with the beef was a bit pedestrian.

So, what's the deal with the stark contrast in styles between the restaurant and the bar below?  My guess is that the bar is the real revenue earner whereas Adam Culverwell, the chef, will try to use the restaurant as a springboard for greater things.  That this place really wants to be a restaurant, rather than a pub, is reinforced by the loos . . . I wouldn't normally comment on this kind of thing, but the Hat and Feathers' don't really belong in a boozer . . .

Hat and Feathers, 2 Clerkenwell Road, EC1M 5PQ  02074902244

Ho ho ho cuisine

Ben and I had been strolling through cyberspace when suddenly the offer of a table at a restaurant ambushed us.  Yes, it was, The Reindeer, a guerrilla restaurant. That is to say, somewhere temporary, set up in a non-permanent location.  The restaurant as event.  It's arrival in town had been so stealthy that we hadn't noticed it.  Luckily our sharp eyed fellow gastronaut, Silverbrow, had been more alert and had made a booking for himself.  When it turned out he couldn't go we grabbed the opportunity of the table.  On Monday, Harry and I set out on our mission through the jungle of Bangla Town.  On the corner of Fournier Street and Brick Lane we halted and searched for clues . . . ah, is that a cut out Reindeer template on a coat rack, in a car park?  We peered tentatively round the corner.  "Hello, are you here for the theatre?".  We were there for the restaurant.  "Ah, go and see the man in the top hat".  So far, so Blade Runner (lots of Neon-Noir sense), so Harry Potter.

We were shown upstairs into a winter wonderland, part kitsch, part smart, very fashionable.  After a Christmas tree like construction there are two chalets, one selling hampers and other Christmassy things and one for your coats.  I swear I saw elfs' hats in the cloak-chalet.  It's all quite funny and quite stylish.  We were shown to a table in the bar area and availed ourselves of some freebie, pear, blackcurrant and cardomom bellinis, very nice, if a bit sweet.  Hmmm . . . a mulled bellini sort of.  Ben and Alice arrived, they'd had a similar adventure getting here.  Ben tucked into a black cherry and port Manhattan.  Hmmm . . . a mulled Manhattan, sort of.  Are we detecting a theme here?  Fake reindeer antler chandeliers twinkled above.  Michael Jackson's 'Beat it' on a grand piano, tinkled beside us.  Ah yes, not just kitsch . . . camp.  What else would expect from Bistrotheque, with its tranny lip-sync cabaret evenings?  Surely the pies would be mincing later.

The food is anything but camp.  It's Bistrotheque does Christmas, i.e. bistro style classic dishes but with a hearty yuletide theme.  In fact, you could construct a number of very good Christmas lunches from the menu.  Starters:  Ben opted for game pie, Alice went for seared scallops, Harry had smoked salmon.  I had a delicious celeriac and black truffle soup.  The truffles were proper T.Melanasporum Winter truffles, but I still felt getting only two shavings was rather Scrooge like, especially at £9 for the bowl.  Ben seemed very pleased with his game pie.  The speed of service was astonishing, the first dish almost arriving while the last person was putting in their order.  We speculated that they may be using Santa present delivery methods here.  By this time we were tucking into a bottle of Languedoc Viognier which hit the spot nicely.

Main courses were even more festive for Ben and Harry who both had goose breast with leeks, prunes, lardons and cranberry sauce.  Ben asked for his goose cooked at the chef's judgement but was then disappointed at its toughness.  Alice's vegetable pithivier came with Camembert, sprout tops and and chestnuts.  I had a simpler dish of roast guinea fowl with with figs and parsnip mash.  The figs turned out to be more of a sauce, but that was fine.  The full legs of the bird were served and they were well roasted with the meat succulent and coming off the bone easily.  A Languedoc Minervois served us well with these hearty dishes.

As it should be at a Christmas meal, everyone was stuffed.  I just had to try a dessert of whipped brie, nice and creamy, but couldn't quite finish it.  Ben had a fruit salad with mojito sorbet and even that seemed mountainous.  All we needed now were Christmas Crackers, but the Pop magazine crackers were £10 a pop.

So how does it compare to Bistrotheque?  Certainly the dishes have been chosen for the ability to simplify their last minute assembly, but in essence the cooking is the same.  Reliable, tasty, with well-sourced ingredients.  No fireworks . . . but you don't normally have those at Christmas . . . so in a sense this style of cookery is even more suitable for this ultra-seasonal type of enterprise.

I do hope they come back next year, one can think of all sorts of design additions - an ice bar?  A real reindeer or two? An artificial ski slope?  An ice rink?  More than this I hope that there are more guerrilla dining experiences to be had in London next year.  Just imagine a Troisgros pavilion in Regents Park!  A Blumenthal Exploratorium at the Science Museum!  Fingers crossed . . .

Well, as I mentioned, The Reindeer is temporary, last orders on 23rd December, and up until then they're fully booked.  The service is so sharp about a third of the restaurant was empty by about half way through our meal . . . so maybe there's a small chance of trying it out?

Green smiles

On the eve of the Ashes, when Harmison was still a class act and hope was still alive, Mark and I arranged to meet up to arrange our traditional side bets and elected to give Green & Red a try. This is one of those places I've been meaning to visit for ages, more or less since it opened, in fact, but have somehow failed to get to. Others include The Admiralty, Nobu, Le Gavroche... the list goes depressingly on. Happily, Green & Red has moved directly to the slightly more exclusive will-go-again list.

Green & Red is a winning combination of bar, restaurant (excuse me, cantina), tequila club and all round good humour. In various permutations (especially the latter) these are the ingredients that have made the same stable's Redchurch and Hawksmoor so convincing and successful, so it's hardly surprising that marrying all four factors together works so well.

We kicked off with some feisty Mexican tipples, a beer for Mark and something with ginger and tequila in it for me. For starters, a zingy sea bass ceviche for Mark, while I had an enormous chilli stuffed with cheese, onions, peppers and - somewhat unsuccessfully, I felt - potato. To follow, I had the signature carnitas, an intensely piggy combination of four short ribs and a generous hunk of slowly roasted pork belly. This was great, at once hearty and spikey with refreshing chilli notes. Mark had steak, well aged, well flavoured and perfectly cooked an even pink. To accompany both (and I think all the other dishes) came some shreaded cabbage, bowls of Mexican goodies, including a vividly green guacamole, and a welcome collection mini flour tortillas for wrapping all the bits and pieces together. We washed it all down with a frankly unnecessary bottle of something red and Argentinian from a short list dominated by South America.

Talking of unnecessary, we then moved on (or in my case, back) to the Owl & Pussycat to check the London Pride was up to its usual standards (it was) and that our bar billiards was as bad as ever (it was too). Howard had joined us by now but despite his protestations I successfully escaped so I could be home in time for the start of the Test. Almost. Turns out I was ten minutes too late, but thanks to Mr Harmison, the first over was still in progress...

Green and Red, 51 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA 0207 749 9670

Hello minor Tom

  A couple of years ago I had a very good birthday lunch at Tom Aikens' eponymous restaurant.  The chef has a very distinctive style - the presentations are like a baroque David Bellamy fantasy, fronds entwining seductively over a plate with no centrality to the construction.  Each dish is highly complex and it's possible to find a new element of a dish even up to your last bite of it.  My one criticism of the whole menu had been that there was too much acidity overall, that flaw shouldn't apply to any review of the place though.

Recently Tom Aikens has published a cookbook.  It's thoroughly user friendly and achieves this in two ways:  first by presenting versions of his haute cuisine dishes, simplified for home preparation, secondly by including recipes for simpler dishes that didn't feature at his formal restaurant.  These dishes do form the core of the menu at his new, informal dining venture, Tom's Kitchen.

Ben and I thought that it would be difficult to get a table close to the new place's opening, so I drafted in my well-connected friend, Nick, to act as our restaurant secretary.  Nick in an amazing piece of organizational skill and subtle use of influence, er, phoned the restaurant.  And got a booking.  Harry completed our quartet.

Yesterday, Ben, Harry and I arrived on Cale Road and entered Tom's Kitchen with all the excitement and anticipation one can muster on a Monday after work. We were immediately jettisoned up the stairs and into Tom's Cocktail Bar, or the Games Room, as he calls it.  We spurned the choice of pre-supper cocktails and tripped down to the restaurant.  It was all slightly confusing so far.

The dining room itself is clean cut, with white tiles and sharp pale wood tables and benches.  It's close quarters and we had to squeeze past diners and waiters alike.  It's also very very dark.  We sat down and waited for Nick to arrive.  The menu is one of those, like the Anchor and Hope, where you'd really like to eat everything on it.  It's solid but exciting food (if that makes sense), mainly English and French dishes but with Italian influences too.  It's divided into standard courses and also into types of beast.  Use of the kitchen's rotisserie grill features.  Macaroni cheese also squats there, as is the law these days. 

Nick and I both settled for the pan fried foie gras with bacon and duck egg (£13) followed by a roast pork cutlet with caramelised apple, cider and grain mustard sauce (£14).  Ben leapt for the deep fried pig's ears £7.50), possibly spurred on by his missing something similar at the Anchor and Hope recently, followed by the spit roast shoulder of lamb (£16.50). Harry, the steak specialist, wnt for goujons of plaice (£7.50) and then a burger (£11.50, with bacon and cheese) (add American influence here as well).  To accompany this we had side orders of mashed potato, savoy cabbage with bacon and parsnips (all at £3.50).  With this we had a bottle or two or Heinrich red wine from Austria (£23).

The foie gras was really really good, together with the crispy bacon and a perfectly fried duck egg it starting me mulling a foolhardy plan to try this out for breakfast some time.  The egg white was crispy at the edge, but the egg yolk oozed out at just the right thickness - fried in clarified butter we reckoned.  Put one of your hands up to an ear and feel its sorta rubberiness and then imagine that deep fried.  You might be imagining something resembling calamari now, which is how exactly how the pig's ears were.  A sharp sauce was a good accompaniment.  Harry thought his plaice a bit boring.

Everyone was very satisfied with their main courses.  The pork was succulent, it was slightly pink in places though overall overdone for my taste.  The crackling had been cooked separately and was presented that way, mine was crisper than cold day with a pack of Golden Wonder.  On top of the pork the caramelised apple was sweet and melting, underneath was a bed of thyme, though I thought this was woodenly inconvenient and maybe even hazardous!  I didn't try Ben's lamb, but maybe he'll comment below.  Harry had ordered his burger medium but it came rarer than that and it suited him just fine.  The side dishes were delicious but on the small side, the only part of the meal that didn't prove good value.  We were stuffed but two of us battled on, Nick with the Poire Belle Helene, poached pears with a saucepan of chocolate sauce and myself with a cherry clafoutis that was alright but not convincing enough for me to finish.

And then finally, the Games Room.  On Nick's recommendation the two of us had Ron Zacapa Centenario rum, Ben some Ardbeg and Harry, perhaps misguidedly, a Brandy Alexander.  I don't normally drink Rum, but that's pretty good stuff!  Vanilla and spice enhanced with some caramelised orange peel Nick had requested.  It was a delight to have the room to ourselves, it's a nice size with big comfy chairs and free table football.

So, what's not to like?  Well, it's still a bit shaky at this stage - our waitress hadn't been trained how not to dribble wine everywhere when pouring.  The whole place is also slightly soulless - Aikens' book and photos in the same style are all over the place, they were clearly co-designed, this makes the place feel slightly over-marketed.  And maybe some of this slight flatness of style is caused by the fact that the format will probably be a template for further expansion. Perchance the cutlery dies used as table separators were symbolic of this?

Tom's Kitchen, 27 Cale Street, SW3 3QP 0207 349 0202

Al Gorge

Dear readers.  Sorry for the lack of posts recently, blame a hectic time at work (a week of seven o'clock starts), a bit of excess in my social life and also trying to organise my brother's imminent stag event.  A general lack of getting-around-to-it-ness then.  To make up for it I've got quite a bit to post over the next few days.

To start with here's an account of the original excess, not last weekend, but the weekend before that.  My brother, Alastair, was visiting London so I thought it was time to show him some of my recent favourite eating and drinking establishments.  He has a professional interest, his soon-to-open restaurant in Pembrokeshire.  This was also an opportunity for me to visit a place Ben's been recently and vice-versa.

First off, I took Alastair to the Rivington Grill whose burgers Ben has already written about a bit. British simplicity is the key here.  All those seasonality and provenance themes that you see everywhere these days have been here for a while.  This was a Friday lunchtime so the restaurant was filled with business lunchers, we managed to get what looked like the last table and settled down to examine the menu.  My brother scanned the paper with the eyes of someone soon to be writing one.  He generally liked it, but criticised three elements.  There is a slight preference for style at the expense of clarity, for example one dish on offer was 'Heaven and Earth' . . . this is the German dish 'Himmel und Erde' that normally accompanies sausages and the like.  So, we get some clarity in the translation to English, but you probably wouldn't know what it was unless you'd actually been to Germany anyway.  The wine list is inconsistent in its wine listing - countries are mentioned for some, regions for others, grapes for some, types for others.  This means it's not easy to pick through the list.  Finally the provenance of some dishes is considered more important to convey than others, so the scallops come from Lyme Bay but the origin of the lobster is unknown.

The bread arrived at the table, warm and inviting with a thick but not troublesome crust and soft inner texture.  Very good indeed and presented well on a wooden chopping board.  The restaurant was very noisy, partly no doubt with business banter but this is certainly amplified by the dominance of hard surfaces in the dining room.

Our cauliflower soup had a very good, creamy taste and a smooth, medium-thick texture.  It was, alas, served luke warm.

We had ordered a roast chicken between two.  This arrived, like the bread, on a chopping board and had been symmetrically divided. Accompanying this were some smashing roast potatoes and some very tasty sage and onion stuffing.  There was also a small jug of well made gravy.  The chicken tasted like a good chicken should, but it was dry in parts, probably a result of a hasty roast.

So . . . could've done better.  I like the style of the place and the food though, so I'll give it some more chances.

We walked off our dinner with a cross-London trip to the Japanese Knife Shop. Sadly closed though . . . call before you go. 

In the evening after a quick pint at the Reliance we met up with Ben and our friend Guy and set off for supper at Bacchus. I was eager for Alastair to see this place as he's interested in some of the same progressive cooking techniques they use.  He'd been in contact with Phil, one of the owners but unfortunately he wasn't around that evening for a chat.  I won't go into depth about the meal, just to say that there were some signs of refinement since my last visit.  The stand out dish for me this time was a rabbit mousse starter.  This was served rolled/interleaved with very thin slices of potato that almost were almost pasta-like.  This was crowned with an aromatic floral display.  Unfortunately my photo of this came out somewhat blurry but it looks quite beautiful.  Desserts unfortunately were hit and miss.  I didn't warm to my space ball - a sort of gelatinous ball of ice cream - in either concept nor execution.  Guy hit the hay early to prepare for an audition the next day.

In the Owl and Pussycat on Redchurch Street billiard balls went down better than the space ball had.  The went down particuarly well for Ben.  It's a good, proper pub which serves a good pint of London Pride.  It does get its fair share of fashionable types, but I quite like that and if you're prone to wardrobe malfunctions you won't feel uncomfortable.  Priit, an old Estonian friend, joined us.

Ben peeled off for Brockley and the rest of us finished off the night at the Redchurch, which was packed and quite raucous.

Quite an enjoyable day really.

Next day was my first trip to the Anchor and Hope, which I'd anticipated even more since Ben's shining review.  Alastair and I met Ben at Borough Market and then went for a drink at The Rake and  waited for Mark to join us and then set off for A&H.  We loitered for half an hour or so before we were shown to a table.  This gave us a chance to peruse one of the most inviting menus I've ever read.  There was a leg of lamb for five or six to share and duck or bass for those with smaller parties.  I was disappointed not to have the opportunity to break my embarassing grouse virginity here, as it were.  Once seated a heated debate ensued over whether the four of us should have the lamb for six, unanimous gluttony was achieved. 

Alastair had pigs brain in breadcrumbs with sauce gribiche to start.  The creamy and gelatinous porcine, not-really grey, grey matter was well complemented with the crunch of the crumbs and the sharpness of the sauce.  I had ballotine of foie gras, which came with a poached pear.  It was absolutely melt-in-your-mouth and richly delicious.  A glass of Muscat was a good match.  Ben had the amusingly named bottled rabbit (photo below).  This came with a chickpeas and a vinaigrette with a soft-boiled egg on top.  The eater rated this highly but thought there were too many chickpeas.  I'm afraid my memory fails me as to what Mark had, but he may well leave a comment below.

The lamb's arrival was impressive, laid out on a huge mound of barley with carrots and celery.  It had been cooked v . . . .e . . . .r . . . . r . . . . . .y . . . . . . . . s . . . . . . .l . . . . . . o  . . . . . .w . . . . . l . . . . . . . . . y.  The meat fell off the bone with ease.  Everything was delicious.  We managed about enough for four.  It's a nostalgic dish, the kind of thing your gran might have served you long ago and the sentimentality is heightened by it being a shared dish.  We had a St Julien Langoa-Barton '97 to accompany this.  I don't normally splash out on proper Bordeaux but the lamb merited it.  It didn't disappoint and the dark purple wine charmed us with its softness and ripeness.

We waddled back to Borough and sagged into the Wheatsheaf.  I couldn't even manage a pint of Ordinary and had a teeeny digestif instead.

So what were Alastair's thoughts?  Well, he'd like to open a cross between Bacchus and the Anchor and Hope.  Is this possible?  I dearly hope so.