Marathon... And on, and on, and on... June 2012

To badly (and incorrectly) paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "when a man is tired of kebab, he is tired of life."

Marathon Kebab House is a local hammered foodie legend. It's a real institution. And there could be two definitions of that. Somewhere that's been in situ serving local kebabhounds so long that it's passed into popular mythology; or somewhere you get dragged screaming towards when you've lost your faculties and are desperately in need of an intervention.

For the ever smug Chalk Farm locals, it's both. A hot bed of dirty Doner kebabbery guaranteed at the end of a long boozy night and the last place you remember walking into as you wake up with the whiff of chilli scented shame on a 'too old for that, my god what did we do' Sunday morning.

Generation Y have no doubt expunged it from their moral compass, too poefaced or saddled with uni debts to have fond remembrance of the joys of the late night elephant on a stick. For the barefaced bechilded Bacchanalians it's a blast from the past. A dirty hot grill upfront and a groovy cliche of sticky tabled late night embuggerance out the back.

I'm not going to try describing the food. If you have to ask, or really want to know, you shouldn't be here in the first place. I've never walked in sober, but I've never walked out hungry. I can't deny I've never lost it down the u-bend, but it was almost certainly the fault of that second-to-last Sambuca.

Deal with the crowds on a weekend. If you haven't had enough they do lukewarm cans of lager. In the day you could get ten Bensons with your kebab roll, ideal if you'd stumbled out of a nearby gig desperate for a smoke. Oh and there's often a guy dressed as Elvis doing karaoke out the back. He's a regular, a member of staff or a fevered dream, but you won't know till you go there properly steaming drunk.

   

Bistro De La Gare - Fawlty Towers in King's Cross - June 2012

I must caveat this review by blaming the Author for everything. An urbane man of taste and distinction, tasked with the small matter of finding a destination for a festive gathering that might show the football (without being full of football fans) and would allow us to eat, drink and gossip, on a Friday night, in North central London, as a group of 8... To be fair to him, I don't think he ever realised quite how bad a choice he was making, and was almost certainly led astray by others dictating decisions.

Anywhere this close to newly fashionable King's X, with only two tables taken on a Friday night, should ring alarm bells. From the get go it was clear we were in for a comedy, if not gustatory, treat. If John Cleese as Basil Fawlty and Gordon Ramsay were clustered in the kitchen with a video camera rubbing their knees and plotting some form of post-divorce double act money-spinner they couldn't have done a better job.

The venue is cosy, kitschy and stuck in the 80's. The bad 80's. The middle class 80's. When normal people with normal jobs had started to eat out semi-regularly but my God you ate what you were given and didn't ask questions.

And questions were verboten hier. A deliberately Teutonic phrase for a casual French bistro. And the two questions seemingly most verboten were "why has my main course arrived 40 minutes after everyone else's?" and "could my food be cooked until not raw?".

Trust me, it's a long time since I've been somewhere that has deserved a slagging off like Bistro de la Gare, but my God did they strive to serve (or not in one case) one of the worst dining experiences I've experienced this year.

Of the main courses; one was allegedly pretty good (but then I defy you to screw up a Caesar Salad), two were acceptable, three were pisspoor and another, chicken based, meal failed due to being slightly bleedy in the middle... My pisspoor processed ham pizza, its semi-raw base reminiscent of bad paratha, was only cleared because it was shared two ways with the poor soul deemed unworthy of dinner. I did mention we were one main down didn't I? That's slightly unfair, it actually arrived as we stood up to leave and so they tried to charge us for it anyway...

It could have been worse I mused, watching the elderly woman next to us gamely give a stiff upper lipped response as she struggled on with not one, but two fawlty racclette machines in a row. At least I'm confident I've got a good few years of dining ahead of me. Gamely pushing a curly slice of cheese round a lukewarm hotplate, she must have felt like a pained participant at the last supper.

I'm not going to describe it further. Suffice that others suffered so that you don't have to.

An updated review of Byron burgers in Covent Garden - June 2012

The Burgerman cometh

Since I first reviewed Byron, I've been a fairly frequent visitor to what is now frankly a substantial chain of 23 branches across the capital and counting.

Every time I go back there's a light trepidation. Every new site I try there's a little fear. Will this be the point they jump the shark?

Thankfully not it would seem. And I've even tried to catch them out with a Saturday early dinner in the Westfield Shopping Centre branch.

There's a constant level of innovation on the menu; most recently with the 'Chilli Queen', a collaboration with the Admiral Coddrington's Fred Smith. Other than  the semi-regular specials they have a classic, cheese, cheese and bacon, chicken or veggie variants. It's clear what they master in and they don't try anything special. They've also focussed on the beers, introducing a short but solid craft ale menu to go alongside. 


Most importantly they get the fundamentals right. The burgers are tasty, fresh and well prepared to a consistent quality. Sides are high quality, grease free and tasty. The staff are universally happy, attentive and well drilled and the spaces while different are all clean and decorated to a similar simple formula.


All in, a chain I'm delighted to see growing and growing. Assuming the standards remain as high as they have I'll keep coming back on a regular basis.


And my first review from mid 2010, the Wellington Street restaurant is still the one I go back to most often...

Where: Byron Hamburger, Covent Garden
With who: Roger the Dodger
How much: £15 a head for the Byron Burger, fries and a chilled bottle of Peroni


I've been semi-resisting this one for a while. I hate to say it, but I thought that there may be a few too many burger reviews around at the moment. To be honest, I always thought there were few bigger burger fans than me, until I started writing me blog and realised that I was a rank amateur. I've mentioned it before, but have a look at A Hamburger Today if you want to understand true obsession. 


The Dodger and I had a pleasant afternoon meeting over a couple of beers (I love my job sometimes) and decided to grab a bite before heading off. In a sheep like tourist packed strip of chain restaurants running along the arse of Covent Garden towards the Strand, Byron doesn't initially stand out. It's a fairly substantial chain of its own now, ten restaurants strong stretching from Kingston to Canary Wharf. Despite my misgivings of chain restaurants generally, I have to admit that Byron appears to be really rather quite good. It's a clean, tiled room with church hall style chairs and basic decor. There's a cavernous space downstairs that I hope fills out regularly.


It was a quick bite, post and prior to a few beers. I went for the Byron Burger and courgette fries. Never having had courgette fries, I was pleasantly surprised. Soft and juicy courgette strips, in a light and crispy batter. Perfect. The burger was cooked medium, with a beautiful pink colour. The charred flavour I was hoping for only came through in the last last few mouthfuls but it was there, and it was good. There was a nice tang to the cheese, though the bacon was a little thick and came away in lumps. 


UPDATE - Byron Soho Sept 2010
The old Intrepid Fox on Wardour Street was a proper dive pub. Full of bikers, rockers and various other ner-do-wells, listening to rock music. Dingy, black and somewhere you could always get a pint. I was deeply saddened when it went the way of the developers.
And when they announced plans for a gourmet fast food restaurant underneath the luxury city centre flats I shrugged sadly and composed eulogies to old Soho.. So I was pleasantly surprised when it turned into a Byron. Service is as friendly as the others, food just as good, if not a little better. Maybe there is hope for Soho yet.

Everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes... June 2012

 Despite being a left of centre soft socialist - as a foodie, I can be as xenophobic as P W Botha. There are some cuisines I seem to viscerally object to. Weirdly, this is often diametrically opposed to how much I like the people and the drink. Take the Poles for example - great beers, really friendly people, and a cuisine of bland boiled meat and dumplings. Or the Germans; sure, they gave us the noble wurst but the history of Teutonic fine dining could be written on the back of a David Hasselhoff CD inlay. As I was reminded recently on a trip to Amsterdam, the Dutch don't do nuffin' if it ain't fried within an inch of its life and capable of being covered in satay sauce. And don't get me started on the Australians and their pub 'meat' pies...


So what makes me genetically incapable of avoiding these cuisines? Dear reader, it was the beer... All of the cuisines mentioned, in their dirty nasty greasy glory, seem so right after, or with, a strong pint of cold, tasty beer.

The Lowlander is a case in point. A phenomenal, if pricy, beer bar with a monstrously good list of continental brews and a monstrously bad selection of pointlessly fried, at the bar at least. There's a sub-gastro menu covering the 'highlights' of Belgium and the Netherlands, so that's moules, moules, various deep fried things and, um, burgers. Not that the Covent Garden clientelle care - there aren't many places round here you can get a Trappist ale, let alone a selection, and the food is seemingly no more than fuel.

   
De Hems, the incongruous Chinatown Dutch pub, isn't much better but at least they don't make much of their food menu. Here it's downplayed as the Dutch would do, greasy little treats to keep you stuck to the bar for longer. The bitterballen are certainly authentic, they remind me of the fat dripping vomit gobstoppers I (drunkenly) yummed up in Amsterdam. Half an hour after eating and you've got a slight curry afternote and the occasional gaseous hit of grease mingling with your exotic pint. As beery snacking goes this isn't just dated, it's practically medieval. Don't get me wrong, fried is after all one of my favourite food groups, but if you're going to go down that route, for God's sake try harder. Imagine how good your excellent beer would be if you could soak it up with a decent snack.

A beer and food based piece wouldn't be complete without the goddaddy of pissed eating. And in my life, I've had many, many great nights out that were predestined to finish with doner. Camberwell seems to have more of it's fair share including one I'm happy to declare to be up there with the finest in London, FM Mangal. Named after the mangal barbecue pit the delicious meat is laid over, the smell of happily sizzling spiced flesh hits you hard as you walk through the door. It's cheap, filling and spicy. Worth the oft scoffed decision to have a 'sit down' for their complimentary breads and dips, the former dusted with a spicy sumac style rub and the latter an addictive little bowl of pomegranate molasses and vinegar. Trust me, it tastes so much better than it reads.

Despite obvious Middle Eastern roots, the popular greasy parcel was invented, as recently as the 70's, in the large Turkish expat community of Berlin as a way of wrapping your grilled meat for the walk home. How that translated into processed nasty pitta grease traps we have in the UK I don't know, but try one in Berlin and understand how the Germans can justifiably claim to have given something great to world cuisine after all...