munchingmadness

[munchingmadness]

Local Food at Laekjarbrekka

I was in Reykjavik in Iceland with F and T and we wanted to have a special dinner so we booked into Laekjarbrekka on the Saturday night - a top-end Icelandic restaurant specialising in local classics.  When we got there, we realised the local classics were a bit more unusual than we'd assumed with 4 pre-starters on offer of fermented shark, minke whale tataki, wind dried fish and hot smoked puffin.  Whilst F and T stuck to the puffin as the most 'normal' of the dishes (1st picture below), I was feeling more experimental so I also tried the fermented shark and wind dried fish (all of us felt the minke whale was a step too far).  Whilst I'm glad I tried both these local 'delicacies' (shown in the second picture below) - they weren't something I'd choose to eat again.  The wind dried fish was a bit tasteless and papery, whilst the fermented shark was as unpleasant as it sounds.  Luckily the puffin was tastier with a gamey texture, and the following dishes were much more suited to our palates (I had a lovely langoustine soup and a lamb main).  Overall, a good night, especially as we finished it off by hitting the local rather rowdy Reyjavik night life, but I wouldn't rush back.  

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The Menu at Maze

Having worked in Mayfair for five years its a bit surprising I've so far failed to make it to Maze for a business lunch. Therefore, when I got invited last week for a lunch with one of the banks there I was looking forward to it. The restaurant is light and airy with a good view of Grosvenor Square gardens but its open and relaxed decor is slightly at odds with the relative pretentiousness of the service. Whilst I do like being reminded of what the dishes I've ordered, especially if the restaurant is like Maze and encourages you to have four different small dishes, I found the over the top seriousness more in keeping with a special occasion, white table cloth sort of restaurant than somewhere serving a light business lunch. Saying that the food was delicate and interesting making their four 'mini' courses for 30 pounds set menu a very good deal. Of particular note from the dishes I picked was the beef tataki and steamed sea bream - by comparison the chargrilled octopus was a little unexciting and the choc peanut bar for dessert lacked a bit of balance. Overall, definitely somewhere I'd return to.

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Moorish Food at Moro

I went to Moro for dinner with MMR. I'd been waiting for ages to find a good time to get a booking at Moro as it seems to be eternally popular - and unfortunately whilst my charcoal grilled lamb was a perfectly nice dish, it felt a little boring versus my admittedly high expectations. In fact I found Morito, the small plates version of Moro that is just next door, a bit more interesting to eat at the few times I'd visited it previously. We also ordered a few desserts and this is where Moro did manage to produce a stand out dish - a delicious yoghurt cake with pistachios and pomegranate - but unfortunately M ordered it, not me. Whilst she was very nice about letting us steal bites - I still had a killer case of food envy.

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Ceviche at Coya

Coya is one of the more expensive restaurants that opened up a couple of years ago when Peruvian food suddenly became the next big thing. If I'm honest I prefer places like Ceviche in Soho as the atmosphere is a bit more lively, but some of the dishes at Coya are pretty special. For example, the Corvina Trufa ceviche has a realky unusual truffle taste that complements the white fish beautifully, whilst the Gambas anticuchos and the beef dishes have a lovely smokiness to them. Unfortunately, the Mayfair location results in the price being out of kilter with the quantities of food so a light meal could end up setting you back much more than you would expect - making it best to go to if someone else is picking up the bill.

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Rocking at Roka's Shochu Lounge

I had planned a weekend party for my 30th, so on my actual birthday I didn't want to do much - instead I met up with a couple of close friends at the Shochu Lounge underneath Roka for after work drinks and nibbles.  The bar is great - good seating, nice background music and some excellent drinks and food.  In addition to some very nice cocktails (the twinkle is a favourite of mine) we ordered some nibbles to share.  We particularly loved the lamb cutlets and aubergine dish - as well as the delicious desserts I took photographs of below. 

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Cake at Caravan

Dinner with the girls at Caravan was a real treat - though the restaurant was a bit noisy when we got there.  We shared a whole load of small plates for our mains allowing us to try most the dishes on the small plates menu. They had recently changed the menu so I hadn't tried any of the dishes before but all of them were fantastic - some personal favourites were the mussels and the sweet potato inari.  However, the desserts were even better with two of us having the chocolate delice with salted caramel, blood orange and creme fraiche sorbet and the other two having the blueberry frangipane.  

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Morsels at The Modern Pantry

I went to TMP with H and A for H’s birthday as its a bit of a favourite - TMP is that rare combination of fantastic food, a lovely setting and a reasonable price.  Its in a converted Victorian house on St John Square and has a lovely airy feel to it - though I would suggest trying to get a table on the first floor if poss as there the house feel has been retained better.  The beauty of TMP is that its very creative in its flavour combinations but all for the right reasons - for example the lychee, rose and raspberry bellins we kicked off with didn’t just sound more exciting than a peach bellini, they also tasted awesome. We all had the salmon sushimi starter with truffled yuzu and then I tried a juniper crusted venison haunch and A had the persian spiced lamb rump - both were delicious.  A set of cinder toffee affogatos for dessert finished off the meal nicely.

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Cavorting at The Canton Arms

The Canton Arms comes from the same team as Great Queen Street and its heritage certainly tells.  Aged wood, slightly awkward seating and large chalkboards covered in the specials are all pretty much identical to GQS.  As I was with F who maintains the American susceptibility to anything vaguely 'old English' (if I'm honest its a weakness I share) this was a good start - particularly for Stockwell which as a true Londoner falls squarely in the centre of places south of the river I don't need to go and so had already lowered my expectations.  The menu was promising and we (accompanied by J and one of F's uni friends) picked out two squid and two crab soup starters.  Unfortunately neither particularly impressed - the soup was reasonable but the squid was slightly cold, marginally over cooked and the sauce clashed with the squid (saying that F's friend must have liked it as she swapped my squid for her soup so maybe I'm just being fussy).  By comparison the main, a neck of lamb shared between all four of us, was AWESOME.   A simple dish with some couscous and cabbage underneath, the massive amount of meat fell off the bone in meaty layers of deliciousness and could have fed another two people.  Combined with a decent red wine it made the meal to the extent I can't even remember if we had dessert or not.  Service was friendly but not particularly well timed - and they were particularly slow about getting drinks.  However, they also put up with catching fag ends of our increasingly bizarre conversation with equanimity and let F corner the owner at the end to talk his ear off for half an hour whilst they wanted to clear our table so they deserve a lot of points for that.  Overall its definitely one for a repeat (with careful menu selection) - particularly vs local competition. 

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Food at Flesh and Buns

Met R and M at Flesh and Buns for an after work catch up and as I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs a wall of noise hit me.  F&B may be the new 'cool' izakaya but the granny in me (and indeed R/M) thinks that its nice to be able to hear your dinner companions whilst your eating.  However, as the menu looked promising I was still looking forward to the meal.  The cocktail i had was pleasant and various starters were relatively good, with the corn on the cob with lime butter being the winner whilst the squid was a bit tasteless.  Unfortunately the main event, the buns, disappointed.  The buns themselves don't really taste of much and dilute the already very limited flavour of the duck and sea bass we ordered to go inside them.   I generally love the trend for specialist Japanese restaurants focusing on one type of food - Abeno's okonomayaki is phenomenal, Bincho's yakitori morish and Koya and its like deliver plate after plate of delicious noodles - so F&B's failure to deliver was very disappointing.  Not one I'll be returning to.

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Tipples at The Zetter Townhouse

I should really kick off by reviewing the dinner I had with S at Bistrot Bruno Loubet in the Zetter hotel first - but whilst the vietnamese braised beef with mango salad I had there was an interesting and delicious combjnation it is overshadowed by the drinks we went for afterwards at The Zetter Townhouse.  I feel like i shouldn’t be such a fan - after all TZT is a cocktail bar that has a port emulsion but no port and that offered to make me a brandy alexander but didn’t have creme de cacao.  However the cocktails they do make are fantastic (try the aptly named Twinkle), the service is a comfortable mix of responsive but restrained, the decor would look run of the mill in a pokey Shoreditch bar yet becomes an interesting twist on the classic when gracing a couple of Victorian townhouses in clerkenwell, and they even serve apple crumble with custard.  Comfortable chairs, a weekend in-bar brunch menu and a hidden ping pong table all suggest this could well become my favourite place ever so there is a decent likelihood i will be permanantly installing myself here for the forseeable future - see you there?

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Steaks at STK

STK is cool - perhaps too cool for what is in the end a steakhouse.  This is particularly brought home to me when I head to the ladies to find two girls who have clearly never eaten even a mouthful of steak in Herve Leger bandage dresses and very high heels.  When STK claim that they "are not your daddy's steakhouse" they are very much telling the truth.  The menu is also great - the bread is stroked with truffle butter, you can have lobster in your macaroni cheese, there are ceviches and tartares galore for your starters and a number of great sounding mains in addition to the steak selection (I even end up going for the beef short rib in place of a steak).  The food also delivers - its tasty, satisfying and served in reasonable, if not generous, portions.  My dinner companion doesn't really like her steak but she claims she's just overly fussy so I'll skip over that.  The decor is tasteful, I can hear what I'm saying and service is pleasant if a touch over friendly for a Brit like me (this is after all a franchise that started in the US).  However, nothing I eat is particularly memorable and in the end my reaction to STK London is the same as when I tried STK New York.  I'm just not sure such an unexciting meal is worth the high prices - instead you might want to give your daddy's steakhouse a chance (or my preference, Gaucho).  At these prices, it seems a shame to settle for reasonable when London has so much that is fantastic.

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Bubbles at Beach Blanket Babylon

We headed to BBB straight from Callooh Callay so immediately the superior air conditiining won the bar some points.  Equally promising, BBB’s high ceilings and cohesive decor provided a pleasant respite to the undifferentiated eccentricity of most of Shoreditch’s bars and the cocktail list was weighted towards more accesible ingredients such as the elderflower, lychee and champagne that graced my babylon cooler.  Unfortunately, despite the bar being fairly quiet the bartenders were much too busy being conciously cool to bother with the finer details such as serving us cocktails leading us to wait half an hour or so for each round of drinks.  I also can never understand why a nice cocktail bar would have a jaegermeaster shot girl (even if the guys I was with embraced the concept).   When the drinks finally came they were good if uncomplicated (bearing in mind that by this point in the evening i’m not sure i was at my most discerning) so overall I would rate BBB a nice safe place for a decent cocktail but somewhat lacking in the soul to make you fall for it properly. 

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Callooh Callay for Cocktails

I met up with S and A in Callooh Callay’s back bar, winner of the world’s best cocktail menu and a good example of the Shoreditch propensity for Alice in Wonderland/random stuff mish mashed together themes where you literally go through the wardrobe to get to the bar.  However, the hint of 80s glamour in the back room decor is fun and they hit a personal favourite of mine by serving a number of the cocktails in old fashioned champagne glasses - nothing is more likely to make me feel elegant than sipping out of one.  As for the cocktails themselves - they were reasonably innovative, very well balanced and a delight to drink.  The only sour note with the menu was their strange decision to name the cocktails after made up, beano-esque school kid characters - how anyone concluded that a juxtaposition of school kids in uniform and high end cocktails would be hip i have no idea.

As the night progressed the very helpful hostess helped us expand our table for 3 to accommodate another 5 at the same time shifting us to their upstairs pop up - Havana Nights.  With a much less interesting cocktail list, beyond lacksadasical service and a room temperature it would be illegal to transport cattle in - the pop-up did make me think I was Havana, just not in a good way.  Despite this the atmosphere was good and the crowd surprisingly unpretentious and relaxed making for a good overall experience if you weren't wearing long sleeves.  All in all, Callooh Callay is clearly a winner, just try to book early enough to stay in the back bar for the whole night.