Food and Drink in London

Le Café Anglais – no sets please we're British

After much dithering over how to round off a week on the Isle of Wight – because surely everyone needs a treat after they've been on holiday? – we decided that rather than blow several hundred quid on a combination of boutique hotels and Michelin starred restaurants we'd head back to London and make our own entertainment. If we'd been more organised we'd have engineered a long-promised return to Bailiffscourt (next time) but we'd left it too late, and in the end the London options more than made up for the lack of outdoor hot-tubs and walks on the beach. Well just about.

So on Saturday some last-minute investigation revealed that District 9 was showing at the Greenwich Picture House at an hour that gave us just enough time for a cheeky meal at the bar in the Rivington next door. Why we have only done this a couple of times before is utterly beyond me. It's surely the most perfect combination of food and culture you could possibly find. (I think I've answered my own question there: if there's any sort of contest food – and drink – tend to win over culture every time. Ah well, this time we got it about right and after a fabulous rare burger with rarebit topping and a pair of exemplary eggs Florentine we wandered next door for a couple of moderately harrowing hours of shaky camera prawn massacre. What's not to like?

The highlight of our home-treats weekend, though, was Sunday lunch at Le Café Anglais, Rowley Leigh's majestic emporium just off Queensway. We'd been once before when four of us had effortlessly racked up a bill of such impressive proportions that Antonia's dad hasn't spoken to us since (he was there, incidentally; he's not ostracising us on the basis of our spendthrift ways). It's not that LCA is expensive. Indeed if you managed to restrict yourself to the keenish set-price menus you could eat very well indeed for less than £40-odd a head (assuming you drink from the lower end of a long but manageable wine list). It's just that there's so much gloriously tempting stuff elsewhere on the menu that the chances of anyone actually picking the set menus must be vanishingly small. I'm sure it's happened once or twice. But not that sure.

You've got to love a restaurant that establishes a signature dish for itself – in this case Parmesan custard with anchovy toasts – and then sticks in on a list of hors d'euvres so that both you know and they know you're going to order it (and a couple of others like it) before you even think about having a "proper" starter. And then there's the list of proper starters themselves, which includes such temptations as smoked eel and bacon salad, and mains that include a relatively modestly priced grouse (£25 is practically a bargain compared with the cool £38 it was going for at Hix the other week). The set menu stood no chance.

As well as the Parmesan custard (which is as good as it sounds and surely as obligatory here as the roasted bone marrow is at St John), we snacked on some mackerel paté with a soft boiled egg (a good combination slightly undermined by the fact that we'd swapped toasts so I was spreading an already salty paté on those anchovy toasts) and some artichoke fritters (slightly odd these, a bit too rich in their breadcrumby batter). Meanwhile I was tucking into the beautifully dressed eel and bacon salad (more saltiness!) and we were both washing it all down with some perfect bloody Maries.

Mains were an omelette for the veggie half of the party, accompanied by a choice of quality sides, including a dauphinoise that ticked all the right cheesy, creamy and crunchy boxes. I went for the grouse (natch), which was a trifle underpowering for my taste. It was smartly presented on a copper platter with most of the usual accompaniments – game chips, red current jelly, bread sauce, gravy and watercress. Disappointingly, though, no dense liver on toast, an omission that seemed to work as an omen: the first half of the bird I tackled packed none of the punchy flavour I associate with grouse. To be fair, though, the second flank was much more on the mark, deeper in colour and almost metallic in taste. Might have been the way it was sitting in the oven or to do with where our friend picked up its fatal wound. Either way it was like a different bird. Not for the first time with grouse: a game of two halves.

After a blow-out like this, complete with a carafe (hurrah!) each of burgundy and Chablis and a couple of good espressos we were in no kind of condition for pudding. We called for the bill, reflected on opportunity to find good value in Notting Hill comprehensively passed up, and wandered happily out into the September sunshine. A perfect end to the holiday after all. Well done us.

Le Café Anglais, 8 Porchester Gardens, London W2 4DB 020 7221 1415

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.

Wight star lines

Eighteen months or so ago I posited the most likely recipient of the Isle of Wight's first Michelin star would not be the ambitious (and by all accounts improving) Seaview Hotel but The Essex in Godshill. Well I was half right. The Essex, I believe, is no more, reborn as the Loaves and Fishes (I'll leave it up to IOW food bloggers Matt and Cat to review the new incarnation for now). But sure enough Michelin decided to shine not upon the Seaview but on a parvenu in Ventnor: The Hambrourgh. Having been treated to a night in both the restaurant and the hotel it's easy enough to understand why.

(Incidentally, I've just realised I've trotted out both "posited" and "parvenu" in the first paragraph. Almost certainly the consequence of too long a break from blogging. I'll try not to let it happen again.)

The Hambrough is gloriously situated halfway up the precipitous slope on which Ventnor somehow perches. In keeping with a town full of old-fashioned charm and old-fashioned shops it has a pleasingly relaxed and friendly air, albeit in a smart, modern style that justifies its claims to boutique hotel status (with room prices to match). We'd booked early enough to bag the star rooms on the first floor with adjoining enormous balconies and spectacular views. And very splendid rooms they were too, but worth a trip to the far end of the Isle of Wight? Probably not without something pretty special from the kitchen.

Fortunately, in chef Robert Thompson The Hambrough has bagged itself a winner. A winner, in fact, of his first Michelin star at the tender of age of just 23, a feat he's managed to repeat after barely six months at his new post in Ventnor. And here's why...

"Bread" came in the form of scary-looking but rather fun squid-ink breadsticks with excellent local butter and was followed by an inevitable (but welcome) amuse bouche: a smoked haddock velouté I think.

Next up (we were on the tasting menu: £59 for the grub rising relatively modestly to £81 with generous and well chosen matching wines) was another soup, this time a Jerusalem artichoke velouté poured over cubes of Parmesan with green beans and truffle. This was a real winner, rich and silky enough to begin with but really coming into its own as the cheese began to melt.

Next course for the meat eaters was a terrine of smoked eel, pork belly and foie gras. Surely one of the most enticing prospects imaginable. It didn't disappoint.

Squid ink breadsticks notwithstanding, Antonia was being treated to a full vegetarian tasting menu, also with carefully matched (usually different) wines. In general she fared well, this warm artichoke salad being a good example. We'd requested they didn't bombard us with wild mushroom options (default veggie fare at this time of year) but in retrospect we should maybe have let them have free rein: the fallback ingredient was beetroot instead, and let's face it: no-one likes beetroot.

Meanwhile the omnivores tucked into some perfectly cooked sea bream with ceps and more truffles and this nicely judged veal with a classic thyme jus. Good stuff.

Lemon posset pre-dessert. Was good I think, although the generous wine pairings have dulled the memory somewhat.

Finally (apart from some cute petit fours on their own little metal stand) a perfect chocolate fondant. Suffice to say that if Masterchef's Gregg Wallace ever goes there he'll be seeking out a dry cleaner among Ventnors fine retail establishments.

So a fine meal, comfortably up to one-star standard: a well-deserved accolade for an engaging restaurant cum boutique hotel. Our only gripe was the pace of the meal, which ended up being spread out over a good three hours and felt just a tad slow: on several occasions one or two of the party were pressing for a "background wine" to tide us over between the courses and their accompanying glasses. It may be simply that they had squeezed in too many covers: we were eating in the bar area but it had been completely laid for dining. Maybe slightly fewer covers would have cured the timing issue. It would have certainly given four enthusiastic guests somewhere other than an admittedly sumptuous bedroom to enjoy their preprandial fizz.

The Hambrough, Hambrough Road, Ventnor, Isle of Wight PO38 1SQ. 01983 856333

Flash lite

A couple of years ago, the good folk of Bistroteque set up a short-term "guerrilla" restaurant in a deserted car park on Brick Lane. It was called Reindeer, and managed to combine the edgy and the kitch, pulling off a Christmas theme that never quite became naff and serving some decent enough grub, all things considered. There was a chap in a green velvet top hat showing you in from the car park, Christmas themed cocktails and a goodly amount of dressing up. There was a cabaret. It was a lot of fun.

So I was really looking forward to the new incarnation: Flash, an installation restaurant at The Royal Academy. I was hoping for knowing nods to the art world, perhaps, or at the very least a reprise of the Christmas theme from last time. On the evidence of the opening night of its 80-day stint on Saturday, though, what they've come up with is not so much a one-off themed restaurant as a new business model: open a perfectly nice but perfectly ordinary restaurant that can safely avoid the embarrassment of having to close two months after opening because closing down was always the plan anyway. Of course this was exactly what happened with Reindeer (they even closed the business loop by selling off the crockery and fittings on the last day), but the difference that time round was the effort that had gone into the sparkly Christmas theme. As Howard wrote at the time the restaurant was an event in its own right. Flash, on the other hand, is just a restaurant, albeit one that's nominally part of a broader contemporary art exhibition. And despite the fact that the food seems better, the overall experience is poorer as a result.

No mysterious elvish bouncers this time round, then. Upon arriving at the back door of the gallery you're pointed via an oh-so-conventional cloakroom directly to a door at the end of the hallway... through which you walk straight into the main dining room. No bar area serving the themed cocktails we'd been anticipating (Artinis, anyone?). I'm not sure what would have happened if we'd been early.

 
The room itself is a large boxed off area, literally boxed off, as it happens, by stacks of packing cases decorated with some foodie cartoons that were quite good fun. A single big festive bauble could probably have used a few companions, and served to emphasise how lacking in bells and whistles the rest of the place is. Apart from some fancy Wedgewood plates and load of teapots along one wall of packing cases it could have been any old function space dolled up for a wedding breakfast. But without the flowers.

Which is all a bit of a pity, because the food was really rather good. A ham hock and smoked eel terrine worked pretty well with a watercress sauce and nicely exemplified the voguish robust seasonal cooking that was writ large throughout the menu. A truffled celeriac tart actually proved to be a disk of puff pastry slathered with an intensely musky mash - and was none the worse for that. A Jerusalem artichoke soup came with rabbit leg thrown in. A joy.

Mains were mainly good too. Confit duck leg was pleasant and correct, although I could have lived with more punch in the accompanying mustard sauce. And roast guinea fowl provoked an effusively positive reaction from Howard, who particularly enjoyed the salsify that came with it. The letdown was the veggie option, which was far too similar to the truffly starter, albeit with soft polenta instead of celeriac and no pastry – and therefore no texture – at all. Given that the location seems likely to encourage more than the occasional vegetarian, having two out of three veggie dishes so alike feels a bit lazy.

Puddings and cheese were good, although the latter revealed just how short of rehearsal some of the staff were on opening night. Our waitress had the cheeses written down on a tiny page at the back of her pad but she either couldn't read her own writing or had never heard of Comté or Colston Basset. Possibly both. We were happy to help.

There were other first night niggles too, not the least of which was a reduced menu due to a problem in the kitchen that ruled out grilled meats. This cut some of the more interesting items from the published menu but to be fair we had been warned in advance and it did prompt a 50% "Practice makes perfect" discount from the bill. At the resulting £40-odd a head with service this felt like good value. If we'd been paying full whack I think I would have felt a bit hard done by not to mention even more "so what" about the place than I already do.

Flash, GSK Contemporary, The Royal Academy, 6 Burlington Gardens W1S 3EX 020 8880 6111

Bulli for you (if you're lucky)

It's that time of year again, the time when ISPs throughout the world struggle under the combined volume of several million rejection letters emails from El Bulli.

Here's mine:

The demand that we have received at the first moment has again surpassed our limited possibilities for one season and we regret not to be able to full fill more reservation requests.
 
We thank you sincerely for all your interest and we will be at your disposal if you wish to revise the situation during the season, near your available dates as we must confirm all the reservations 10 days in advance.
 
Tel. +34 972 15 04 57 (during the season - after 3.00 p.m.)
 
I think there's something heroic about an establishment that only ever has to write two or three standard emails and still manages to get itself lost in translation. It's almost like they're trying to perfect a deconstructed Dear John. It's arguably an improvement on two years ago (the last time I remembered to enter the October lottery), but there's still some way to go.

Fingers crossed for next year, then...

A winter's tail

Just a quick post today about a foodie feast a week or so ago at Hereford Road. It was my first trip to the restaurant but it definitely won't be my last, and not just because my mate Neil lives round the corner. A full review can wait till the next visit, perhaps (any excuse to go back). But a day after clocks went back, there's a chill in the air and the chap who came round this morning to fit my new boiler is not sure the heating will be back on tonight. Is it any wonder my thoughts keep going back to this amazing winter warmer of a dish, one of several whole oxtails that graced the table last week?

These razor clams were not half bad, either...

 
Big thanks for Sam for organising a great night out.

Hereford Road Restaurant, 3 Hereford Road W2 4AB 020 7727 1144