Saturday brunch at The Electric Brasserie - Nov 2011

In most communities across the social spectrum (and around the world for that matter) the market cafe is a fixture. My Nana used to take me for a bacon sandwich at a tiny hole in the wall place hidden behind the stalls in Hull town centre if I volunteered to help with the weekly food shop with her. She'd been going there for years, as had all of the other old dots who'd pop in for a cup of tea and a chat. While between jobs a few years ago, I spent a lot of time people watching on East Street market through the steamed up windows of a greasy spoon full of market life. Formica table topped, fastened down orange plastic bucket chairs, a mug of tea with the bag still in and white slice, smeared with lurid yellow margarine.
 
It’s no surprise that, as one of the largest markets in London, Portobello Road has a fair few cafes strung down the mile long stretch of antiques stalls intermingled with fruit, vintage clothes and tourist tat. The look and feel changes dramatically as you go under the Westway, and the high end tourists fade away into a more local mixed crowd of different ethnicities.

The Electric Cinema and Brasserie straddles the border, but as a venue owned by the Soho House Group, you can guess which market they mostly appeal to. It’s been a fixture round here since 2001, a relatively early outlier of the gentrification that’s engulfed the streets around. The brasserie isn’t itself a private club, not that you can tell from the attitude of some of the staff, though the ‘House’ upstairs is. An intermittently appealing spot for mid-week coffee and brunch, it’s a ‘destination’ for the wrong reasons on market days.

The venue is looking a little tatty around the edges now. Battered zinc tables and dark wood stretch down the side of a long open bar and kitchen, opening up into a wider dining space at the back like a calm pool behind the frenetic waterfall. We were booked into the front though ‘bumped’ to the backroom following a whispered argument about a 20 minute wait from the party queuing in front of us. On a weekday this would be annoying, out of sight is out of mind to the whirling wait staff. On a Saturday, the chaos front of house means a back table is preferable. A snake of expectant hipsters rubberneck at your plates as they wait at the front desk, always in the way of the dfsgrgaergasergsaerg
 
The brunch menu is full of solid fare; full English and Vegetarian breakfasts with varying combinations, muffins, bacon and eggs in numerous combinations. As well as the obvious dishes, there are a fair few favourites from the full menu including fish or steak and chips and their passable fish pie. Avocado and poached egg on granary toast is a game choice, more avocado than anything else, but a relatively healthy way to cure a hangover. The Eggs Royale were a little disappointing despite their initial visual promise. Beautiful golden yolked eggs served atop a mountain of salmon with hollandaise sauce coating and dripping onto the muffin below. The ingredients were faultless, but with one egg virtually hard boiled and the other’s unset albumen having barely been cooked, it was clear that the eye for detail wasn’t covering all of the dishes to leave the kitchen.

It’s tough to damn somewhere for one undercooked egg, and I’m not going to. I’ve had some wonderfully relaxing breakfasts sat at the front of the Brasserie and a couple of reasonable lunches too, I’d just recommend avoiding it at the weekend and leave it to the tourists. If you are in the area on a weekend, it’s well worth a wander down to the unfashionable end of the market to the lower reaches of Golbourne Road to the street food stalls and the wonderful pastries at the Lisboa Patisserie. It’s one of several tiny Portuguese bakeries and cafes along the road and (relatively) untouched by the encroaching gentrification. Their pastel de nata are small egg custard gems, well worth the trip for a half dozen to take away and a much tastier egg than you’ll find elsewhere.

   

Magdalen - Nov 2011

Where: Magdalen, Bermondsey
With who: Dr Vole and Northern Mother
How much: £20 a head without drink or service for 2 courses, £25 for two.
Come here if: you need a good local and you just can't face trekking to Andrew Edmunds.
 
I have a spectacular, cat in a bath shaped aversion to being that guy eating at the only table in a large unwelcoming restaurant. There's the sense of paranoia that comes with the assumption that everyone knows better than you, the sneaking doubt that the food can't, just can't, be any good and a wild flight of fantasy connected with the possible contamination from the tears of the chef / owner / investor peering out from the little door in the kitchen hoping against all hope that you're actually going to morph into a party of thirteen.

I mention it as heading towards an early dinner table at Magdalen, I had exactly those thoughts. After all, it's stuck in the trafficblown hinterland between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, handy for absolutely nothing, and just that bit too far away from Bermondsey Street to get much passing trade.

I really shouldn't have worried. On a misty, misserly autumn evening full of threatened drizzle and pavement leaf crunch the Magdalen engulfs you like that warm cozy welcoming local pub you know you can't have because you live in London.

Warm walls in deepest goulash line the handsome old boozer, now a fully functioning restaurant. The front bar hosts sofas for hopeful walk up and could possibly function as a working local pub, if mine smelt as nice as this though I'd never leave. The back room and the upstairs are table filled. White paper cloth and excellent lighting brighten the space.

Dr Vole started with a superb cauliflower soup. Admittedly it had more butter and cream pumped through it than strictly necessary but that worked wonders for both richness and texture... Nutty ribsticking goodness, the surface studded with roast garlic and tiny florets of cauli rested on a thick slick of autumnal comfort.

I went for a dish of fried calves brain with a mustardy, egg mayonaisey gribeche as much because I've never seen it on a menu before. It was challenging, more for the concept than the texture or flavour. Barely discernable lobes came as three breadcrumb fried patties, had it not been for the menu I might have been eating a subtly flavoured soft cheese, foie gras-like in texture. A little bland and pappy, the herby mayonnaise gave it a necessary bite, but I could have done with smaller patties, and a higher concentration of breadcrumb. The voice in my head proved a slight distraction, like having someone remind you about stillborn chicken embryos mid boiled egg.

   Mains were mostly meaty, other than a student standby potato and cheese pie in a puff pastry, saved from sanctimoniousness by deleriously good Ardrahan cheese oozing healthily through and a side salad of refreshingly different dandilion.
 
I flatly refused to share any of my beef cheek. Braised for what tasted like days in a girolle and onion reduction, sweet and tender meaty puck nestled in a smooth Jerusalem artichoke puree. The only complaint was on the texture, the meat fell apart when you showed it a fork and the whole thing, delicious as it tasted, was smoother than Justin Beiber's PR machine.

By now flushed with an excellent house red and coming close to satiation. Quince crumble, a pear and almond tart and other desserts were sadly a little too wintry to tempt. They do however have some excellent salted caramel chocolates that slid down perfectly with coffee.

Overall, Magdalen is a great example of the perfect local restaurant. Friendly service, faultless cooking of good ingredients and the feel good equivalent of a laugh with a great mate, it's certainly somewhere I'll be back to again and again.

   

Dim Sum Challenge - Chinatown beaten by the Elephant and Castle - Nov 11

According to professional food whinger AA Gill, there's not much good going on in Chinatown at the moment. He describes it as a "gaudy, noxious tourist trap selling drunk slop" which while certainly a better turn of phrase than I normally use, is not too far from how I've always seen Chinatown. And to be fair to Mr Gill, a goodly amount of it is onion, gristle and MSG loaded trash. For a country with 1.3 billion inhabitants and many amazing food traditions, it's crazy and sad we have so few of these traditions represented in London's Chinatown.That being said, it's easy to mock an entire area (Clapham for example) and in truth there are a few spots still worthy of note in the area (and one I like particularly that's nowhere near) - if you feel the pull of the original small plates of dim sum.

New World Dim Sum
I've always found the cheap and cheerful New World to be one of the better places for this (assuming my intro hasn't sent you scurrying for a pizza instead). They have the generic Chinglish menu, filled to the gills with Westernised Cantonese classics, but they also race the old fashioned dim sum carts round the massive restaurant, which is hidden down a nondescript side road off Gerrard Street. Outside core lunchtime hours, they'll still do the dim sum, serving instead from a slightly straightened menu of steamed, fried and baked treats, but if you can, get a blast of old Hong Kong and go for a table on the main floor on a Saturday or Sunday lunchtime and watch the carts.
 
Everything on my last visit came freshly made. Prawn chungfun was a good example of the type, sweet prawns wrapped in silken noodle sheets served with soy, BBQ pork buns hot from the steamer, the char siu pork slowly braised in its honey-sweet five spice scented sauce slowly opening under the soft pillowy dough. Beancurd rolls with minced prawn and shrimp are certainly no lookers, extruded tubes of puckered brain, wrapped in the thin beancurd membrane, but here, fresh in a cloud of soy salt steam, they vanish in a flash. The final pair of minced pork and lettuce dumplings are exceptionally fresh and tasty, with a quick fry giving them a chewy outside texture. The juices from the filling spill out of the shells like a salty broth and pour down my chin.

Also in Chinatown - Leong's Legends has its fans, as does Imperial China, and if you fancy something a bit different, then I'd definitely make a beeline for Sichuan restaurant Bar Shu on the other side of Shaftesbury Avenue or the Oriental fusion at Haozhan, one of the few I'll regularly hit up in the area.

 
Dragon Castle
Of course, if you're REALLY into dim sum (and to be honest, what kind of person are you if you're not excited by an endless parade of fried, baked and steamed meaty treasures) then it might be worth a trip to Elephant and Castle, home of Dragon Castle. I've been nudged about this place for several years by Hong Kong Cantonese foodie friends who describe it as a home from home. Despite its unpromising location, surrounded by condemned tower blocks situated off the bleakest roundabout in Zone One, it is where a lot of expats go for their fix.      
The grander than expected entrance opens out into a pleasant space. Location and swift customer turnover aside, they've made an effort to go to town on the interior. Lazy fat carp swim in an ornamental pool reflecting the boarded up walkways of the Heygate estate opposite. It's a hell of a lot of feng shui to lump on a couple of fish, but they stalwartly shoulder (or fin?) the responsibility.


Arriving in traditional plates of three or four items, this is a meal best served family style. If there's not an argument about who hasn't had enough of what, it's not proper. Take a table with the slowly revolving 'lazy Susan' and order a lot: you'll eat it... At around £3 a portion, Dragon Castle is cheaper than most of Chinatown and for a full dim sum blowout washed down with the traditional Jasmine tea, you'll be lucky to top £15 a head between a decent sized group of you.

There's always been debate around whether Dragon Castle has a 'secret' Cantonese menu of local treats, rich in flavour and texture, that they won't serve to Westerners. I've heard this several times, mainly from Cantonese clientele, though on thorough investigation, I've put it down to rumour and the fact that many Chinese won't order from a menu here, they'll simply request their favourites and those will get made. 

Those that do hit up the menu will find it vast. Well over 40 assorted dumplings, buns, puffs and braised bits of tendon to work your way through. To get to the good stuff, I photocopied the menu, took a straw poll of several Cantonese team mates, and gave their recommendations to the waitstaff, asking simply for two portions of everything (there were a few of us, 16 to be precise, a lot of mouths to fill with dumplings...)

The steamed dumplings, particularly the prawn varieties, went down swiftly, as did the various baked pork puffs, hot from the oven, sticky glaze attaching to teeth. Various roast pork buns also proved a success, sweeter than expected. Silken mixed Chung fun and belly sticking turnip cake provided a smooth break to the textural proceedings and from the cryptic end of the menu, Crab Pork Little Lanterns were a marmite call. Deep-fried hollow egg-shaped shells with an almost mucous paste inside, sheltering an umami-rich pork filling. I could have eaten them all afternoon, though the Conologue paused between mouthfuls of textured chicken foot tendon to describe them as pointless clag. We both looked at each other's bowls and laughed. It's the joy of good dim sum, everyone has their favourites and there's (almost) something for everyone. 

Suda - The Siamese Rice Bar - Oct 2011

Where: Suda, Covent Garden
With who: The Insiders
How much: Starters around a fiver and most mains are £8 - £9. Very good value for the area
Come here if: the queues are too big for Jamie's Italian and you need somewhere after your Saturday afternoon shopping 'up in town'

OK. It's not a promising start... A newly spruced commercial 'quarter' opens out of the Covent Garden alley between disappointing up-market Mexican Cantina Laredo and Jamie's Italian, the latter begrudgingly acceptable but for the tourist horde on their daily pilgrimage.

Led here by an old friend with prior knowledge, I wasn't feeling it as I walked through the glorified shopping centre and into the enormous black box of a restaurant. The feelings didn't dissipate as I waited in the puzzling space somewhere between a bar, a tourist information centre and a cattle barn. Enormous sacks of different types of Thai rice lie around, interspersed with Thai tourism brochures. Amiable staff mill around with odd cocktails and authentic costumes avoiding your eye, it's like being at giant tourism industry trade fair World Travel Market. Upstairs it's a little more like a restaurant, and a huge one at that. Light beech Carl Hansen chairs add an odd Scandinavian feel to an otherwise quite industrial barn of a space. The staff remain, upstairs many more to service the swathes of empty tables, rabbit in a headlight like gazes while zipping around the space. Suffice to say I'm already not looking forward to this.  
 
The menu goes someway towards allaying those fears. It's (very) cheap for the area and a relatively traditional menu in style. Starters shared included very good chicken satay, with its sticky and spicy peanut sauce covering soft smooth chicken, Thai style calamari and cigars of minced pork and prawn in wanton wrappers. Tastewise the spare ribs were fine, but the watery sauce didn't really work as a shared starter.
 
I next went for a namtok ped som tum, country style duck served with som tum salad and sticky rice. A neat touch mentioned in the menu advises that you can have it as hot as you like, and, like a boy, I asked for the 'spicy' version. Som Tum salad is one of those fragranced specialities that I tend not to order in Thai restaurants, saving space for a hearty massaman curry instead, but here I'm glad I did. Green papaya salad, made with carrot, tiny dried shrimp, fish sauce and some firey chilli, I wouldn't recommend having it anything other than regularly spiced though, it cut through the rich fatty duck well, along with most of my faculty for taste. It's a shame that despite the 'Rice Bar' moniker and the Visit Thailand display downstairs, there weren't more different styles of rice. A rice tasting menu would have been amusingly different, though not likely to appeal to the legions of tourists and shoppers they need to get through the doors to sustain the location.

   

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Carmens - old school of tapas - Oct 2011

Going out in Clapham on a Saturday night is like opening a window onto a circle of Hell occupied exclusively by the mediocre. Roaming gangs of lairy, leery beery estate agents and office staff, mix and mingle in a too horrid ballet of booze and weak party drugs. Weekend nights a little like fresher's fair at one of the universities popular with public school spawn who fail their Oxbridge entrance exams, Bristol for example. Yes, it's like a Saturday night in Bristol.  


Yet it's nearby, and there's a good range of eats and so we often end up there pre or post cinema (I think that Dr Vole is more of a fan than me of the area...) Of the many restaurants that line the arterial high road, there's enough choice, and it's not bad in the main. I'm a real fan of the Pepper Tree for a quick and cheap Thai kick, Gastro on Venn Street as an old fashioned French bistro I've had some very good meals in and Eco, a passable pizzeria. The other regular favourite has been Carmens, though the last visit reminded me why I'm falling out of love with a certain sort of tapas restaurant, and have been too spoilt elsewhere in the last couple of years. 


Rickety wooden furniture, tobacco coloured walls and brightly coloured detailing in reds and yellows, it's got the look of the first tapas restaurant you ever went to. Even before you pick the menu up you know what you'll find, and you're not to be disappointed.. Sangria by the jug, patatas bravas and a variety of things fried. Sadly Carmens (like Meson Don Filipe in Waterloo) is trapped in a bit of a timewarp and there's none of the interest in provenance, innovation or passion you'd expect to find at Jose, Morito, the Opera Tavern or any number of other infinitely more exciting outlets new and old.


It's difficult not to play it safe on the menu, but less than a week later I struggle to recollect what we ate. It was fried, and overly salty in the main, though there was enough of it to fill us up from the four plates we shared. Patatas Bravas and pimento de padon were fine, the former slightly undercooked and the latter laden with salt and flabby, like tiny wrinkled green balloons. A portion of thin sliced pork shoulder steak, a regular special on the board at Jose, was grey and over cooked disappointment. A fourth dish of spinach and chickpea was perfectly fine, though also a little salty. 

   

Relatively safe food, friendly staff and a wallet kind bill ensure that Carmen's is never empty and if you are in Clapham it's not a bad option on the night. If you're looking for great tapas however, join the 21st century. There are so many better offerings out there and simply being better than La Tasca is simply not enough, even if your market is as undiscerning as this.