Joe Allen - the theatrical old trooper of Covent Garden - Oct 2011

Where: Joe Allen, Exeter Street, Covent Garden
With who: The Daddy and Mr Pipes
How much: You're going to top £40 a head for 2 courses and drinks, though 'that' burger and chips is sub £15 all in...
Come here if: you can't get into The Ivy but want to hang out with the theatrical crowd.

There are a number of places I've been reticent to talk about. Not necessarily places with food hipster cred that I don't think you're cool enough for, but places I associate some form of insider ownership over, no matter how misguided or loose the connection. One such place is Covent Garden's Joe Allen. Still ludicrously popular with the staff of theatreland, it was such a go to at one point that I knew, and was known to, most of the front of house team by name. The popularity of that crowd comes with from the late performer-friendly hours, the proximity to the theatres of Covent Garden and the now famous 'secret' burger, allegedly designed to allow hard-up actors to eat with their wealthier friends post show.

Descend down the dark staircase into the basement space, bare brick walls covered in West End folio posters from shows currently on and those that are 30 year old. It's comfortable, clubby and always busy. Grab a drink at the long bar and listen to Jimmy the pianist hit a range of showtune standards on late week nights.

The menu is a dogs dinner of vague Americana and 70's oddities. It's hardly a thing of beauty, but guests can chose from a mash-up ranging from Caesar Salad, Chilli Con Carne and cornbread through to 70's relics such as chicken with orange sauce. The best advice I can give you is not to follow suit. The portions might be large, it's an American restaurant after all, but what I've sampled over the years has struggled to raise the bar beyond the pedestrian at best, and can be sub-TGI Fridays at it's worst.

Go for the burger. And only the burger. It's not on the menu, but don't feel bashful, everyone knows about it these days. It's a thick charred bombe of a patty served medium rare as standard housed within the soft sweet cathedral of a brioche bun. Good crispy bacon and melted (cheddar) cheese are a worthy accompaniment, as are the spears of gherkin served on the side. Add skin on fries, occasionally over salted but generally as good as these things can be, and serve with a side of salacious gossip, preferably about who's doing who in the current show you're working on.

Andrew Edmunds - it's our little secret Part I - Oct 2011

Where: Andrew Edmunds, Lexington Street, Soho
With who: Dr Vole, who else!?
How much: Just over £50 a head for a decent wine, champagne to start and 2 and a half courses each with coffee
Come here if: this time you know it's for real...

I've got to be honest. Since starting this blog, I've been to Andrew Edmunds at least 3 times. And there's a really good reason why I haven't told you about it. Because I don't want you to know about it.

I've also avoided telling you about it in case it's not as good as I think. Like some awful parent, am I swooning over the plank-like stage performance of their progeny - convinced they're the next Olivier or Dench. Would this, my ultimate recommendation, on a site of recommendations, live up to the billing? Or would you break my heart and just see it as so-so...

After an introduction like that, I'm at risk of coming across like Greg Wallace at the prospect of an all you can eat patisserie masterclass and so I'll take a few breaths and try not to get too carried away.

Dark, cosy and romantic. It's a restaurant that wraps you up in a slightly sexy cuddle, like a beautiful older French lady wearing her lover's jumper. Imagine a ramshackle and quaint bistro, with disarmingly efficient and yet laid back staff, a wine list curated by someone with a keen eye for a bargain and fantastically fresh, unstuffy fare prepared from whatever the chef feels is best at the market that week. The menu is handwritten before being photocopied, the wine list changes weekly. Paper cloths, mis-matching furniture and spluttering wine bottle candlesticks certainly aren't contrived, but certainly won't help win them a star.

With such atmosphere, it's all we can do to stop ourselves ripping our clothes off then and there, but I didn't get the stomach I've got today by ignoring my basest food based desires at the exclusion of all others, so we dived into the menu instead. Firm fleshed smoked eel comes with beetroot chutney and horseradish cream, complex but perfectly balanced mix of sharp and milky smooth flavour and soft but crunchy texture. Dr Vole and I somewhat share her cauliflower and cumin fritters, a firm patty fried and served with a delicate raita. There's also the house special, when available, of freshly dressed crab and a solid sounding portion of goose rillette, served with a tart fruit chutney and homemade sourdough bread. 

      

The mains follow a similar rustic tack. There's nothing too challenging here, though the kitchen isn't afraid of a little nose to tail eating, when appropriate. A muscular and resolutely unthreatened hunk of fresh cod wearing a cape of herbs reclines royally on a bed of wilted spinach and tomato coated broad beans. It's not elegant, but my god does it taste good. And that's what little I managed to scavenge from under Dr Vole's watchful eyes. 

An Angus beef shepherd's pie on the lunchtime menu didn't make it as far as the evening, I was smugly informed by our waiter it had wound up as the staff lunch. A shame, as I'd had my eye on it since walking past earlier and seeing it on the board outside. Um'ing and ah'ing between a seafood paella, heaving with langoustine and shellfish, and a lamb shank I was finally able to kick the menu Tourettes and dug into one of the best bits of throwaway lamb I can remember. Sinking into a quicksand of pureed potato, it bravely clung onto a thick branch of perfectly cooked cabbage. To no avail, I drowned it in a thick gamey gravy and slowly stripped the meat from the thick bone.

Sated, though with just enough room to share a treacle tart from the trencherman's list, the end of the excellent rose Sancerre turned my thoughts to matters romantic once more. We gazed at each other over the drippy candle and sighed... deeply... There's no doubt that the mood and the food provokes, but like Macbeth's porter and his wine, while it provokes the desire its sheer volume takes away any possibility of the performance.

Reservations are only taken a week out, which is useful to know, and the upstairs is a (tiny) bit more pleasant than the seating downstairs. Just don't ask for my table, or I'll really have to kill you.

This image has been 'borrowed' from squaremeal, it's too dark to take a decent picture of the room at night and I'd never, ever use a flash, especially not somewhere this romantic!

  

Banana Tree Soho - a whistlestop tour of 'Indochina' - Oct 2011

Where: Banana Tree, Soho
With who: The International Traveller
How much: £25 a head for two courses and a drink (on this occasion we were anonymous guests of the restaurant - see below for caveat)
Come here if: you need a spicy blast of Thai heat but want to play on the safe side.

Following in the footsteps of other 'alright to like it' chains Wahaca, Byron and Cay Tre, The Banana Tree Canteen has opened its doors on the lucrative corner of Old Compton and Wardour Street. They've stripped back a relatively new concrete clad build to reveal, surprise shock horror, a bland concrete interior, complete with a ceiling full of air con and shiny piping. Unnecessarily New York. 


The menu takes you on an interesting twirl round Indochina, an accurate description, if slightly colonial and not a word you hear oft used to describe the Thai / Viet / Malay cuisine on the short snappy list. Like trailblazing neighbour Busbai Eathai (they of the legendary hour long post work queues) it's aimed squarely at the office crowd. There's a good mixture of sweet and spice, nothing too challenging, and you'll get away for £25 a head, perfect for that leaving lunch or a postscript to a few drinks.

A selection of mainly fried dim sum style starters thankfully feel homemade, or at least freshly made, and skip the sacherrine sweet MSG chilli toilet cleaner that often accompanies such dishes. We pulled little morsels of salty porky flesh from their bones and hoovered up moist and juicy minced chicken 'moneybags' - deep fried in bulbous wonton wrappers, pleasingly large, and definitely more than Monica from HR could cope with in one mouthful. Steamed dumplings were sadly less successful. Waterlogged, still born gzoya in an acrid burnt sauce.

Mains were pleasingly meaty, coming in two principle variants - the marinaded to dark almost bitter perfection meat, a char-grilled blackened chilli pork and a blackened beef both fell into this category, or the softer strops of al dente noodle curled round various sauces. The meat arrived punctuated with pillowy mixed vegetable rice and more dipping sauce, they had enough heat for the casual chilli hound, though not enough for me, lacking as they did the kick from the missing, surely obligatory, bottle of Sriracha sauce.

Cocktails are a bit of a let down sadly, in an All Bar One kind of way. Overkill of nutmeg gave (too much) Oriental flavour to a watery Mai Tai and the freezer cold lychees in a second were just nasty. That being said, I'm sure I'll be back, it's a sufficiently above average offering in an everyman kind of way and sometimes frankly, only a Thai can satisfy.

*Caveat: The bulk of the cost of this meal was comped and offered to me through the PR. As in other situations I accepted because I wanted to try the food here and am a big fan of Thai food. I was given a voucher to redeem for a portion of the meal at the end of my visit. 

 

Locanda Locatelli - rustic Italian, Mayfair prices - Oct 2011

Where: Locanda Locatelli, Marble Arch
With who: The International Man of Mystery
How much: £135 for 2 courses, wine and coffee
Come here if: you need to entertain a super spy or impress a client


As the result of a work auction of promises, I needed to take James Bond to dinner. Of course I wasn't dining with Craig, or even Brosnan, but our own real-life International Man of Mystery, an well bred, well educated type - at home in any situation -who travels the world for mysterious business reasons. Due to the similarities, I'd assumed that what was good for 007, would have worked for him. Unfortunately for both of us, and despite the original being quite the foodie, very few actual places were namechecked in the novels. I rejected Scotts (other than his fictional club the only London restaurant mentioned) and instead agreed on somewhere similarly classic, chic and understated - Evergreen North Italian Locanda Locatelli.

Locanda Locatelli oozes money. The staff, the decor and the clientele. They all scream, in a modest understated way, that if you have to ask the price of anything, you shouldn't be here. Now beating up a restaurant on Portland Square, next to Little Arabia and just up from hedgefund-land, for its pricing might feel a tad unnecessary. It's like attacking the child infused atmosphere of a Harvester during the middle of the summer holidays or as someone less verbose than I would put it, like shooting fish in a barrel. That being said, I feel it's important to make the point, as unless price is entirely and utterly irrelevant to you, pricing this steep can easily get in the way of even a very good meal.

Baccala’ Mantecato, that Venetian treat of salt cod blended with olive oil to a smooth paste with the lightest hint of the sea came with aromatic pomodoro tomatoes, watercress and a crumble of tasty polenta crisp. A rustic winter classic, scoffed by the ton as a way of getting the most out of the preserved fish in leaner months. A beautiful and expansive starter with tons of contrasting flavour, followed a vast and interesting breadbasket, opening well, but at £14.50 a plate, enough to give all but the most homesick of Venetians a moment's pause.

We both went for a pasta course as our main, the International Man of Mystery sampling the Strozzapreti pasta, a rougly rolled penne style ideal for holding a thicker tomato sauce full of olive and spicy soft n'duja salami. I went for perfectly cooked risotto over, slightly salty, duck ragu, served with a handful of girolles. It was good ribsticking fare, the kind that you'd expect at any trattoria across the Italian countryside, but with both at over £20 a plate when you pay the main course 'supplement', a little (or a lotto) on the steep side. The carne and pesci selections are also often recommended by regulars, small selections of pan fried or char grilled fresh fish and meats with simple accompaniments.   

As you'd expect, the wine list is aimed at the high end, but there are a number of reasonable surprises and it's telling that they've won a number of awards for the long, well thought out (predominently Italian) list. It's not just the obvious regions they cover, we went for a Nero Di Troia from unfashionable Puglia in the South, it's bright blackberry and prune notes with only a hint of tannin balancing perfectly against the rustic tomato and meat sauces. You'll find a few below fifty a bottle, but you have to look hard.   

Despite the vast number of night clad servers, roaming and floating between the soft white clad tables and gold banquettes like exclusive, sleek and designed water taxis through the Venetian canals, the attention to detail was mixed at best. The water server seemingly over-compensated, leaning across us to refill after every gulp of (not offered until asked for) tap, for the stingy smear of Sicilian extra virgin, poured, providenced but never topped up and the long, long wait to get the bill. Minor quibbles sure, but, as with the food itself, the caveat has to be that you expect better for the price.

Overall, it was a cracking evening, as much for the conversation and the company than the food, good as it was. Long overdue thanks to the International Man of Mystery's commitments to fighting international terror, we've agreed to go to Zucca the next time he returns from action, food fit for a double 0 agent, at prices designed for a bobby on the beat.

Da Polpo - when you realise how old you've become - Oct 2011

Where: Da Polpo, Covent Garden
With who: The Ginger Prince 
How much: a parade of small plates between a fiver and £8 each. You can eat well for £15 a head and like a king for £25...
Come here if: you keep failing to get a table at one of the others

Da Polpo is the fourth outpost from restaurateur Russell Norman and closer to the Beak Street original in size and atmosphere than the middle, smaller two. The bare walls, industrially salvaged furniture and fittings and dim lighting remain a common theme. I'm beginnning to think that Norman has shares in one of the reclaimation companies, or alternatively is manufacturing former industrial shabby chic from scratch, extruding it out by the roomful in a dark pit of indentured workers somewhere in a former Soviet state.

The service is bright, funky and considerably more tattooed than yours truly, the sparse and snacky drinks and food menus appears on clipboards and as artfully recycled placemats and even at 9:30 on a wet and windy Wednesday they still having trouble seating you. So far, so fair for another Norman conquest.

We arrived and grabbed a seat at the downstairs bar which meant we got to eat sooner, though did leave us feeling like we were in an East German factory canteen. The lighting is low, the murmur was loud but the smell from the kitchen was divine... Perched at the battered zinc bar (another division in the owner's manufacturing empire no doubt) we kicked back with an Aperol spritz and perused the familiar menu.

We went on recommendation in the end, a selection from the different sharing plates littering the list, happy enough to chat and take the suggestions of the cool but knowledgable staff. Starting and finishing with rounds of arrancia, little hot shotputts of risotto rice round a molten mozzarella core, fried with a crisp toothsome breadcrumb crust. Textbook examples of a relatively simple bar snack, you'd be slightly pissed if you queued an hour for one, but better than a rather plain chicken liver crostini, too much pate with that drying sensation of the meat left it a little cloying in the mouth, less would have been more here.

The nearest to a main in size was a shared plate of Frito Misto, seafood selection (in reality 95% of it was prawns, calamari and whitebait) competently deep fried, maintaining the integrity of the fish without being doused in oil, though oddly served without an aoili to cut through the crumb. It may be authentic, but the lemon wedge didn't do enough to lift it from dryness. Better still was the pork shoulder pizzette, one of 6 or 7 baby pizzas, a smear of rich pasata covering the small, crisp base with thin slices of smoky marbled shoulder, all cut through with piquant peppers. Having eaten similar recently, cooked by a local Italian mama from a pizza oven facing the open air, I can attest to the authenticity of these little plate shaped platters of goodness.

Like the other branches, the meatballs are excellent. Not afraid to bring up the accompanying herbs, fennel in the case of the ones we went for, they're punchy cannonballs of well seasoned meat. the seasoned tomato sauce a great accompaniment and, after another round of those arrancia (OK, maybe they are worth waiting for when served hot and fresh, dripping with mozz) we stumbled off into the night.

So is anything really different to the other branches of the 'chain'? And does it matter when the quality is high enough? While there's an element of Norman by Numbers about Da Polpo, for the neighbourhood (deepest, darkest touristic Covent Garden) it's nice to have another option in the area, though by the time you've waited for a table, there'll be another one along to take the crowd.

Rasa - Take a walk on the meaty side - Oct 2011

I'm conflicted...
 
Despite being in North London, I love Stoke Newington. If it isn't twinned with Camberwell, then it should be. A fiercely independent villagelike enclave of London with strong and proud local communities and immigrant flavour influencing the shops, restaurants and entertainment. Lovely people too; independent, diverse and proud (like their shops) and none of the identikit shop-bought cool you'll find in watered down Angel or Hoxton.

Separated from 'normal' London by a, for some unforgivable, lack of a tube network, it's been allowed to get on, relatively unhindered by the vagiaries of fashion. Half hearted arguments from locals of Stokey and Camberwell occasionally ring out, "It's on the bus!", we all cry, "with many more options home on a boozy Thursday night than the smug marrieds of Ealing or Clapham have with their uncomfortable crowded sweaty holes in the ground." That being said, we're not too fussed that you haven't found our den yet. We kinda like it that way.

Being a mecca for food too, authentic and chain free spicy food at that, I'm not sure why I don't spend more time in Stokey. It might be the nosebleeds I get going North of Zone 1, or it might be simply a lack of knowledge, but if you live closer than I, then I do urge you to support your local London village (just don't spoil it...)

   

Village favourites for many years, I was keen to try one of the outposts of South Indian restaurant Rasa. Specialising in Keralaite cuisine and particularly that from the southern part of the region, it's traditionally vegetarian or fish based, steeped in coconut, rich spices and fruit flavours and served with plain rice or flaky, butter filled parathas.

The two restaurants face each other across Stoke Newington Church Street; Rasa on one side, the more established and entirely vegetarian original and the mixed and more meaty Rasa Travancore on the other. I don't mind a vegetarian restaurant, indeed, some of my favourite restaurants are vegetarian, but given the choice, and seeing the reception that the veggie end of the Travancore menu got from Dr Vole, we went for the meaty side of the street.

Once inside the garish pink portal, you're not transported to a open air joint on the humid Kerala coast, more a generic curry house on a suburban high street. The thick faux leather menu that clumps down does its best to get you there though. First there's the pricing, and that pleasant holiday sense of surprised "how much!". Then there's the list of food, rich in interesting difference, a world of exotic Malabar, Keralian and Travancore rarities poetically arranged in Ariel Bold.

A starter of lamb puffs were slightly irrelevant. Homemade sausage rolls in perfectly fine pastry cocoons, the mince richly and appropriately spiced, but nothing that would be cause for more than a murmur appearing in a home packed picnic on nearby Clissold Park.

   

The meat free Travancore Kayi Curry was, considering the restaurant's vegetarian roots and the fact it was labelled as signature dish, surprisingly pedestrian. Potatoes, peas and carrots in a thin mild coconut curry sauce. A student staple, though at £3.90 for a big bowl, student pricing too.

Tharavu Roast Duck was a different beast altogether. A thick, technically dry curry, brought to life with a hefty whallop of black pepper, cardamom and ginger. The richness of the meat, braised and shredded, contrasted with the deep and complex sauce. Suggested with the aforementioned doughily delicious parathas, it was the sort of cooking you'd come back for again and again. I wouldn't necessarily say the same for the veggie main, but maybe that's what you cross the street for.

Elliot's Cafe in Borough Market or why I live in London - Sept 2011

Over time I've become increasingly disaffected with Borough Market. The corporate creep and commoditisation that all but wiped Spitalfields out hasn't quite managed to destroy Borough in the same way, but building works, a huge influx of camera touting tourists who sample everything but buy nothing and a management team who seem determined to get rid of all of their best tenants (you can read the sorry saga online here) are coming close. It's got to a point now where I'm loathe to recommend it as a location, unless you're going very early or have never been to London before.

One of the gloomiest encroachments for me in recent years has been that of the restaurants around the side. I'm never going to complain about places like Brindesa that put the place on the gastro map, though the likes of Black and Blue, with it's anaemic, badly cooked cow feel grossly out of place butting up against the likes of the Ginger Pig.


I'm partly painting a desperate picture for effect. It's not all bad. There's life in the old place yet. For every story mourning the loss of yet another old faithful stall or an angry article about the pricing or the tourists there are some sparks still. On a sun drenched Friday early morning the cobbled street is filled with local office workers grabbing refined caffeine from Monmouth, the cold air from Neal Street Dairy sends a waft of Stichleton up your nose, and you think that this is how London ought to be.


New opening Elliot's Cafe feels both late to the party and like it's been here for ever. On said Friday morning, I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be. Bare brick, stripped Scandinavian aesthetic with a shared table groaning with some of the most sensational fresh baked pastries, fresh coffee smell and the buzz of a local community descending on a new spot. I pull a seat by the full height windows, sun streaming over my table as I open the paper prior to the arrival of my boss. I can't imagine ever sharing it with the tourists on a Saturday, but for this moment, it's all mine, it's all fresh and new and it's very, very good. 

   

I could no doubt eulogise about the coffee, but if you care where it comes from, you already know more than I do. It's hot, fresh and tasty. The same goes for those pastries (we take some back to the office for later) and a simple but truly perfect Eggs Florentine, yolks the colour of Spanish sunshine, spinach hours out of the ground, both served on the fresh sourdough they bake on the premises. Even a bitter old cynic like me can't help but be slightly inspired by the wonder of mornings like this - It's why I live in London.