The limp disappointment of Cha Cha Moon - Sept 2012

Alan Yau's 'other' chain attempt Cha Cha Moon could well be described as The Danny De Vito to Wagamammas Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's like a pop up restaurant in a municipal leisure centre, and I certainly don't mean that in a good way.

Stumbling round Soho after a number of drinks we'd singly failed to find anywhere available for food and I'd singly failed to remember quite how perfect Brasserie Zedel would have been at a time like this until it was way too late.

After umpteen false starts, we finally rolled into Cha Cha Moon, somewhere I remember as a reasonable if innocuous local lunch spot from my time working in the area. Not amazing, but not bad, and at 9pm on a Friday night it was somewhere, finally, that had space for us.

The whole experience isn't one I'll be repeating, a courtesy that the food didn't extend to me.

The 'concept' and execution are frankly both lazy. A selection of generically South East Asian dishes dropped indeterminently into seemingly random categories and served as ready (seconds after ordering or minutes after we'd finished in the case of one sorry starter).

Despite the presence of a small army of wok bothering chefs in the open kitchen, the whole operation had the stench of the microwave. Nicci Polo's seafood ho fun arrived, barely lukewarm, minutes after ordering, as if it'd been hanging around from a previous mis-order. Frosty's halfhearted bun noodles were a pale and forlorn imitation of an impossible to screw up staple.

My Crispy Duck and Noodles managed to be both flabby and dry, with almost no redeeming feature except quantity, though that merely extended the torture. The noodles served alongside were undercooked and coated in a coagulating salty brown sauce, like the bastard child of a BBQ Pot Noodle and an elastic band ball.

We shared a selection of small plates, squabbling over who would (dare) finish them off. The chilli squid managed to hit every level of wrongness and thick, doughy potstickers came stuffed with what I can only describe as budget brand sausage meat. The less said about the Sichuan red chilli oil wontons the better, resembling swamp dredged body parts and putting back the cause of regional Chinese cuisine by several years.

At £20 a head including a single acrid cocktail each this isn't cheap fare. Finally seeing sense and retreating to Bar Americain in Brasserie Zedel, I was roundly mocked for not bringing the party here first. They were right.

If it was an attempt to recreate the flyaway success of Wagamammas then God knows it fails, and badly, on so many levels. It has the feel of a chain being readied for rollout but 4 years after this one arrived it's clear that this plan has fallen by the wayside. What's not clear is why this one, surrounded by some of Soho's finest eateries, has not.

   

Barrafina, still the Barrafinest (sorry...) Sept 2012

OK, I'll 'fess up... I'm a Barrafina fanboy. Other tapas joints come and go, but the tiny open kitchen surrounded by a ring of covetted stools has remained consistently one of my favourite places to eat. Freshly sourced food, cooked as simply as is needed, around that bright buzzy little bar. It's not one you'll often hear me recommend though, as it's another (possibly the first) of the no reservations crowd.

Get there dot on 12 for lunch and before 6pm if you need to know what time you're eating, otherwise just accept that you're going to have a wait, always. With a good glass of wine (or five) and great company the wait for a space at the bar won't be a problem but you will be there for a minimum of 2 hours. The small front of house team (most of the 'waiting' is done by the chefs) can be slightly stroppy and on occasions disorganised while you stand outside the hallowed ring of seats, this will be in part due to your frustrations as you inhale the tantalising fumes. They're friendly enough and endearingly quirky once you're sat at that marble counter.

Listen to the specials as they reel them off the tiny chalk board. Most are fish, different depending on the day. We started with lightly yielding razor clams doused in garlic and parsley off the board, fresh from the ice, to the grill to the plate in front of us, still alive as they hit the searing heat, a journey of no more than a metre from start to final destination.

From the same grill came tiny gamey quail, cooked well with a soft touch delivering the lightest crust. Other hits included a perfectly cooked frittata, its eggy innards oozing prawn and picante pepper, and a selection of meats, hand carved to order. So far, so excellent. If salt cod fritters, patatas and a heritage tomato salad didn't reach the dizzying heights it was because there wasn't a dizzying height needed.

A decent bottle of rose (with one or two supplementary glasses needed) and the bill came to around £50 a head. Perfectly acceptable for the quality and quantity consumed. Journey time, estimated at two hours, was closer to three, and as we finally rolled off our stools and out into mid-afternoon Soho, the queues had finally subsided.
   

                                                   

     

Kikuchi - High end sushi off the Tottenham Court Road - Aug 2012

I once took my small, Northern mother for a sushi blowout at Jenny's in Manhattan, keen to introduce her to my new favourite thing. She flashed me a helpless pleading look as the enormous plate of mixed sashimi and nigiri landed and I hastily ordered her a side salad with (cooked) tuna before nailing the lot myself. 

If you were a sushi newcomer, Kikuchi probably wouldn't the most accessible entry into the world of high-grade fish. Even for people who know their nigiri from their nitsume we had some problems with the ordering. The staff might be bright and friendly but given the extremely high ratio of Japanese customers, they assume that you know exactly what you're doing here. Asking for advice on the sake generated confusedface from our waitress, who stabbed the page at random and shrugged apologetically. Similar worry radiated when we asked whether we'd under-ordered, although looking at my ever expanding stomach probably made that a more delicate question.

The supermodel of Japanese food, black cod marinated in miso, is one of my favourite plates in a good Japanese restaurant. It's an expensive fish, but the flavour is divine, and here it's one of the best I've had. At £20 for a single fillet it's steep, but against the £42 you'll pay at Nobu it's a steal. If you wanna spend a lot of money on food, go for sushi. Every time. It's the food choice of the gourmet aesthete and the cash-loaded philistine alike. The former seeking out the rare and the subtle, the latter seeking pricey ostentation. It's overtaken caviar, even among the Russian super rich (though to be fair that's probably more the influence of their fashion conscious girlfriends).

At the other end of the pricing spectrum, we shared a small hot plate of sliced fish cakes - thin patties of crab and shrimp and other white fish, compacted into a thinly fried slice, a grownup fish ball if you will.

Nigiri - a good selection freshly made, more fish than rice, and every piece exceptional. We had 12 pieces to share, each with a different payload. Fatty o-toro tuna was, as expected, the standout for flavour. Marbled like a fine steak, potentially an ecological worry but unavoidably gorgeous. Eel was dark and brooding, a tang of the estuary to go with the fresh flesh of the open sea. Buttery and sweet silken tuna reared its fin again as thickly sliced yellowtail sashimi, close to perfect for my gaijin tastes.

The only disappointment was a final menu Tourettes order of duck skewers, too quick off the grill and still shocked to tight chewiness by the lick of the flame.

The crowd is as you'd expect from a high-ish end sushi joint in central London. There are a fair few tables of Japanese businessmen, interspersed with the odd couple on a special date night (guilty) and a scattering of braying hedge fundies, piling in with the sad acceptance that there's nothing like this for them in Zug or Zurich.

   

 

Constancia - authentic Argentinian in Bermondsey - Aug 2012

Happy little local Argentine grill Constancia has been dishing out steaks to a satisfied stream of regulars for over three years. They're obviously doing something right.

Sat on an unlovely stretch of Tower Bridge Road, if it's on the foodie's radar at all it's only due to the fact you walk past on the way to Maltby Street Market. On the evidence of this experience, I'd be happy recommending a closer examination.

Based around a central grill, you can't get away from the pervading heavenly scent of steak. After a pair of freshly cooked and suitably spicy beef empanadas, we dived straight into a mixed parrillida containing steaks and sausages.

Two big lumps of beefsteak, rump and ribeye, sizzle away on the compact coal fired tabletop grill. Two plump Argentine sausages are dense, spicy and uncommonly good. Morcilla, crumbly homemade black pudding, is also a treat. The whole plate load, combined with a bowl of parsley and garlic packed chips is verging on the excessive. We struggle manfully through, what with us being men, but it's a massive hit of fat and protein. I love it.

The meat sizzling away on the brazier is flavoursome, but unless plucked from the coals at the exact right moment inclined to toughness. There's no chance for it to rest when it's cooked at the table.

It's not the cheapest of meals, with a decent bottle of peppery Malbec we spent just under £50 a head, though compares well to the likes of Hawksmoor or Goodman and is a whole lot better than the nearby Gaucho. It's great to have another option locally though and I'll definitely be back when next hankering for a hunk of cow.