Little Lamb - Chinese exotica in the heart of Shaftesbury Avenue - May 2012

At risk of upsetting some people's sensibilities further (The Masticator found last month's description of 'a frothing seething circle-jerk of new' slightly too much, apologies for bringing it up again...) I found dinner at Chinese hot pot specialist Little Lamb somewhat challenging on the digestive system the following morning... It's an odd but exhilarating trip to Northern China but if you overdose on pepper spice and fermented soya bean paste, well, you get the picture!

The concept here is a simple one; shared hotpots for two of more people, flavoued broths brought to a rolling boil with tabletop heaters and used to poach a variety of meats, tofus and veggies. First, pick a base broth (or two) from the short list. We went for a steaming seething yin-yang of Sichuan spiced lip numbing pleasure and a soft mushroom broth as counterpoint. Next, select 5 or so options per person from the extensive list and, once your stock is up to speed, get (them) stuck in. 

The tiny down at heel space is tucked away, if anything can be tucked away on Shaftesbury Avenue, among the Chinese travel agents, health shops, walk in masseuses and general central London tat. If you don't read Chinese it's not immediately obvious what they sell and as we headed into the bowels of the basement I was glad to be led by the Ambassador. He'd spent much of the last decade in Beijing and Shanghai and knew his beans, not to mention his hot pots.

You can do very well here on the veggies and tofu, but the real fun is in watching the bright pink tubes of thinly shaved and rolled meats blister and boil within seconds in the scorching liquid. The numbing Sichuan pepper takes away a great deal of the subtlety but you can (just) identify the ingredients. Fish balls and crab sticks might not be from the expensive aisle in the nearby Oriental supermarket but like most things, they taste so good when drowned in molten pepper heat.

Fun, challenging and social. And at around £25 a head with sides of meat skewers and a few rounds of Tsing Tao, it's definitely a keeper.

   

Nando's Camberwell - Fast food tales 2 of 3 - May 2012

I remember being told, many years ago now, that the Camberwell branch of Nando's was top of the 'Nando's Murder League'. Apparently more had occurred in this branch than any other. As an urban legend it's a fairly plausible one, given the chain's gritty location on the corner of Coldharbour Lane. If it were alive, the squat, ugly rotunda would almost certainly be a tattooed, bulldog of a Millwall fan, offering you out for looking at him the wrong way. Even the outdoor terrace reminds you of a prison yard with sharp railings and fastened down furniture.

At variance is the bright and cheerful faux-Portugese interior, like you've just found out that the Millwall fan has a penchant for flower arranging. It smells of lemon handwipes and barbequeuing chicken. And it's busy, wow is it busy. At 10 past 9 on a Friday night it's heaving with local families and young couples. The atmosphere is bright and loud, there's a queue for the takeout counter and a cluster of kids round the self service drinks machine. Romantic it ain't. 

And the food? You come to Nando's for the chicken. And only for the chicken. Coated in marinades of various strengths, it's actually pretty tasty. Sweeter than a jerk sauce and without the sour tang, it soaks through the reasonably tender chuck, working well with the open grill cooking technique, enhanced by the char. It matches RSPCA Freedom Foods standards and likely has better provenance that other local chicken shops, thankfully given the 300 odd outlets they have in this country alone. Sadly though, that's as good as it gets. The chips are soft, doughy and taste of the box they come in, coleslaw is sweet and oily. The overriding sensation is one of sugar. God knows what it'd be like with 20 oz of Coke to finish it off.

Mediocre sides aside, I can't bring myself to dislike Nando's. It's got to be better for you than a Big Mac or a KFC meal, and the place is bright, packed and friendly. It's not somewhere I go that often, but when I do get a craving for spicy chicken, it's not a bad standby.

MEATmarket - Fast food tales 1 of 3 - May 2012

So it looks like Yanni Papoutsis is coming over all Russell Norman.... Not in the way that frotting filthy resto fan kids might dream about thankfully, but with the launch of another guaranteed hit. A newly acquired space refitted out of the blue that feels perfectly in fitting with its surroundings and makes you wonder how you (or another savvy restaurateur) hadn't found it before.

Let me set the record straight. This isn't an obvious space for a restaurant. It's not an obvious space for anything. It's the echoey, almost open to the elements balcony over Covent Garden's tat-tastic Jubilee Market. Feyne Deining it ain't, but it's a perfect dirty spot for a dirty burger.

The brains behind MEATwagon, MEATeasy and MEATliquor serve up 3 or 4 different double burgers, a brace of pimped hot dogs and a 50's rockabilly tattooed handful of sides are on offer. Simple enough and satisfying enough.

The bun holding the mustard fried Dirty Hippy (house speciality and tribute to the best burger on the planet) is a little lighter than before... I can't explain it, but something has changed. Not for the bad, but different. It survives, just, the onslaught of the sloppy sauce - dripping as seductively as a trickle of hot meat fat can. The taste of the sloppy patty is, as always, superb. I'd injure children to get one of these. Cheese and Jalapeno poppers are tiny spicy croquettes of fried. Perfectly acceptable, but nothing more than a distraction from the main meat, something I've felt about the sides in every iteration from MEATcorporation.

It's not immediately clear who MEATmarket is really aimed at. Is it a greasy, meaty lunchtime standfast for the hipster locals? A tourist tick or one of London's new foodie landmarks? I think that it's somewhere you'll hit up on an evening, after a few drinks in town, when the market has gone to sleep and the rock and roll meat purveyors can let their hair down.

    

A short review of Viet Pho - May 2012

I used to regularly drop in here when working on a show at the Palace Theatre. Straight out of stage door and over the road. You could see the cast, leave at the half (the 30 minute window of 'me' time imposed to make sure your actors are in place for beginner's call), neck a bowl of steaming noodle soup and be in your seat for curtain.

They've had a spruce up over the intervening years, but not much has changed. It's still a functional, clean little space with close set tables and an open kitchen at the back, rammed with families, friends and the occasional tourist (you are in sight of Shaftesbury Avenue after all).

Pretty good fried bits and bobs I recalled correctly, and they sell the full range of Pad Thai's and hot and cold noodle dishes. On a recent visit we wrapped piping hot, blistered and teeth-sticky Vietnamese spring rolls in lettuce leaves and slathered them in Sriracha sauce, cooling our palates with freshly made summer rolls of cooling prawn and mint. As a nod to my past memories, I went for a large bowl of chicken Tom Yam soup, a heady blend of ginger, tamarind and chilli that took a sledgehammer to my nascent cold. Cheap, comforting and very, very well done.

The Ten Cases - Bistrotastic - May 2012

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live, breathe and eat in London. The 10 Cases is so good it's practically a public service. Being a West End boy I've grown proficient at seeking out hidden gems in Soho and Covent Garden and The 10 Cases is a worthy addition to that list.

The dark panelled pocket-box of a bistro is appropriately named for its main draw, the rapidly rolling wine selection; 10 cases of 10 whites and 10 reds. When they're gone, they're gone. We sampled a light and jammy Chinon and a surprisingly good Austrian red. Both, like most of the list, pleasingly priced at £25-£30 and available by glass, bottle or carafe.

We were a bottle to the good before arriving and so immediately ploughed into a selection of their excellent small plates. You can go for starters and mains if you fancy, though there are generally only 3 big dishes at any one time. Excellent fresh bread (a £1.50 cover in case that kind of thing annoys) went with satisfying saucisson and was a great soaker-upper of the reminants of buttery potted crab and a surprising (to us) foie gras en cocotte.

Surprising only if you were expecting foie gras 'en croute', not having read the menu properly. Envisaging some form of baked butter pastry and forcefed liver combination, we were disappointed in the way that only the truly gluttonous could be. If you know your bistro dishes then you'd be expecting a pot full of soft poached egg in butter wrapped around a tiny lobe of perfectly cooked slab of foie. You'd be right, but you probably wouldn't remember quite how wonderful this dish can be, because if you did, you'd be eating it now. Right now. Silk cooked in butter, served with butter...

A steak hache or a tartare, those bistro stalwarts, wouldn't be a bad addition to the menu but other than that, it was pretty near perfect. The only slight fail for me was a deconstructed prawn cocktail. Fresh enough ingredients and the old skool styling delighted my guest but i didn't rate it as anything more than a dull assemblage. Thankfully we finished on an enormous pillowy chocolate mousse meant for sharers. Being one of the few desserts I have in my home cook repertoire I'm not sure it was entirely worth the £9.50 price tag, but as a bittersweet full stop to a sophisticated drinking session it was delicious.

Service was excellent and sealed the deal. The owner and his bar based sidekick made an affable team. Recommendations were spot on, knowledge of their small wine list couldn't have been better and there was an easy welcome for everyone. Despite being slap bang in the tourist centre of the West End, The 10 Cases manages to be the local bistro you'd want to have on your street corner.

   

Mexi-can't. Failing to eat at La Bodega Negra - May 2012

There's a Mexican restaurant I like in New York. L'Esquina. It's cool (the food has always been alright and the tequilas are amazing), it's cool (they have a secret entrance - no bridge and tunnel, past the cool as hell door-bitch, through the kitchen), it's cool (I've not walked out of there until kicked out, clinging on for another shot, performing bad dance moves as the staff finish at the end of another loooong night). In short, a New York legend. Somewhere I send everyone (I like) when they arrive...

Anyway... I heart this place. And I hear that the owner is bringing the concept to London. Cool..

I was so excited, I began telling friends. Pretty soon a group I'd whipped up into frothy enthusiasm about a night of tequila-related debauchery with a side order of Mexi street food were gathered. It was cool. I was cool. It hadn't opened yet and before you know it I'm bringing my gang. Like a hipster Robin Hood, a rock'n'roll party planner, I get my people to talk to their people and look for a big table on a Saturday night in May. I get the email below back. I win.

"All sorted Rich. Your table is now booked on 5 May at 9.30pm for 8 people. Have fun!" Get the hell in. We're the In Crowd, before the In Crowd realise it.

However things haven't started well. What grew up as a (moderately) undercover word-of-mouth frenzy over the pond arrives here with a fully-formed PR engine. A couple of weeks in and you can't open a style page without seeing models / actors / s'lebs falling out of a cab into the arms of a passing taco. It's sat on a popular street in Soho and the crowds swirl, EVERYBODY knows about the new 'hidden' eatery behind the oh so risque sex shop entrance. Not cool.

And the reviews... Oh the reviews. Poor, mixed or meh at best. Coren was broadly positive, but described the atmosphere as 80's disco try-hard. In between namedropping his guests, it inspired AA Gill to one of the most excoriating notices I've had the pleasure of reading. Wild sea-bass was described as akin to "growing antibiotics on a panty-liner"... If you can pass through the gilded rope of Times paywall it's laugh-out-loud funny.

So when I got a call from the restaurant on Friday 4th, looking to confirm a table for that evening and NOT the following evening as per the email above, I wasn't exactly devastated.

I was annoyed with them initially for right royally bollixing up my Saturday night. Very annoyed. Not cool guys... What the hell are you supposed to do with 8 people on a Saturday night when they've been promised white hot cool tequila dancing and wild crazy off the hook Nooo Yawk times? This was exacerbated by the reservations manager telling me that it can't have been possible for me to have made a reservation for the 5th in the first place, due to a block booking on the night that had allegedly been there since before they opened...

Thankfully, it wasn't a problem in the end... Enough people had read the reviews not to care, and the frothy enthusiasm had diminished in the cold light of several hundred quids' worth of tequila menu. It's probably not even the place I think it is, there's probably been a few mill spent on a diversionary hidden Mexican restaurant so that when the real one opens, no one uncool will know about it... Anyway, we went to the pub instead. Cool.

Opera Tavern REDUX - May 2012

Blimey, they've calmed down since last time I was in. Granted that wasn't on a mizzly middling Monday night but I've never known the former pub turned tapas bar anything other than energetically raucous. It was almost serene as I pulled up a perch at the bar for a pre-show solo snack.

I've had similar experiences every time I've been here. Great, great food and friendly, solicitous but patchy, forgetful and rushed service. Coming in for a solo bite on a Monday made me realise where I had been going wrong. The service this time was persistently excellent, possibly improved by the bartop positioning. 

Tapas on your own feels intrinsically decadent; stuffing yourself on something intended for sharing can't be great karma, even if solo dining is one of life's pleasures. Roaming through the menu with no one to please but myself however was a treat that made up for it.  

Before not sharing a large portion of fresh homemade tortilla I decided to not split a portion of Cornish bass ceviche, partly to test the Spanglish against the Peruvian kick of last week's ceviche at um, Ceviche, and mainly because I get a thrill from being in a 'proper' restaurant where things are served with basil sorbet. You can take the boy out of the provinces... Obviously a different style to last week's marinaded raw fish adventures here it was served with shaved asparagus and sea purslane, the latter overwhelmed by the enormous scoop of sorbet which dominated like a drama student at a house party.

The Iberico pork and foie gras slider that I couldn't have shared if I'd wanted to finished my meditative meal off perfectly (and porkily). Letting the juices drip onto the last of my tortilla, I realised why solo dining is sometimes best kept that way. There are some things you don't want anyone else to see.  

It isn't the cheapest pre-theatre bite in the area, my three plates came to £20 without drinks and service, and I'm still to be convinced at how they handle busy service, but I can't help but like the Opera Tavern. A grown up, classy tapas experience that's settled in as a fixture in a testing neighbourhood.