The Roundup - 2012

So 2012… I have to say, it wasn't been a classic for many, many reasons. I've done a lot of working (you may have noticed that the posts dry up as the stress levels rise) and not nearly enough eating (well, that's my opinion). Hopefully the balance will sway back the other way in 2013 and I'll be back in the saddle...

Rather than 'treat' you to a top 5 or a top 10 that will inevitably be better written (and certainly better researched) by one of the pros, I thought I'd end the year by mentioning a few of my favourite things and linking to some of my favourite posts that you may have missed. In no particular order...


Opening of the year - Brasserie Zedel: 
The food isn't ever going to win an award, but it's fine, ridiculously cheap, served in the most wonderful surroundings and in doing those things so well in the centre of Piccadilly Circus managed to change the game for London restaurant openings this year. Oh and they do a mean cocktail too... (full review here)

2012 / 2013 - Food trends of note:
Street food, burgers, ramen, ceviche and the no reservation hype machine. Over. Them. All. Now... Next year I think we're going to start with much of the same, though expect the American invasion to continue unabated. Hot on the heels of MASH (Danish but heavily American influenced) and STK on the Strand, we'll be getting a sister to Keith McNally's iconic New York dinner hall and bakery Balthazar, the Standard Grill, the long, long awaited La Esquina and in the biggest news to anyone obsessed with the trend of 2012, Danny Meyer will be opening Shake Shack in Covent Garden. You ain't seen a queue till you've seen a Shake Shack queue. In slightly more interesting news, expect a few more Peruvian / Argentinian openings, a return to London for Eric Chavot and the first international venture from the father / daughter team behind the legendary Arzak in San Sebastian. 

My personal food trend: Dim Sunday

I've had a bit of a Chinese obsession this year (yeah, I know, alongside the burger obsession, the steak obsession and the calorie obsession) which has wonderfully and    reasonably frugally manifested itself in a huge propensity to do dim sum. As a weekend hangover cure, it knows no equal. Freshly steamed parcels of sweet prawn, herby pork and umami filled dumplings arriving in an endless stream to your table. We've mainly been at the redoubtable Dragon Castle and the slightly less salubrious Hong Kong City, both South East London and both highly recommended.

Openings of interest: 

Antico (lovely little Italian on the bottom of Bermondsey Street, great for eating fresh pasta and laughing at the 3 customers in Greg Wallace's place across the road) Ceviche (fresh, loud and exciting Peruvian joint), 10 Greek Street (wasn't too impressed, but I know others are wowed), La Bodega Negra (tasty if pricy haute Mexican) and the Green Man & The French Horn (a grotty Covent Garden boozer given the Terroirs treatment).

The worst things I ate:

Or, things I do in the line of misguided duty... ChaCha Moon was pretty bad and Carluccios as repressively pointless as ever but, the winner has to go to the King's Cross abomination that was Bistro de la Gare. 

Some of the best things I ate:
Damn it, despite declaring an end to my burger reviewing, any list has to include one of the many, many burgers I've slammed down my impatient cakehole… maybe one of the specials at still quality chain Byron (their three cheese is a heady delight), or one of the many MEATempire patties I've noshed, or indeed maybe the exceptional off-menu effort from Covent Garden stalwart Joe Allen, serving poverty stricken actors since Yanni Papoutsis was a lad.

Other than those, I had the best BBQ of my life while in New York recently, slow, soft smoked brisket served alongside headsplittingly strong cocktails in jam jars by Williamsburg hipsters Fette Sau (www.fettesaubbq.com). I may have been a little drunk, but I'd be willing to swear that it's worth the plane fare just for another go on one of their pulled pork sandwiches.

I'd also go a long distance for Jose Pizarro's fabulous croquettes (thankfully I don't have to) and I've been pulled back to Indian street food specialists Roti Chai a couple of times for tender, delicately spiced and moreish chicken lollipops. It's been a good year! Hype aside though, nothing beats the satisfaction of great food, simply and well cooked. And no matter what 2013 brings, it's almost certainly going to bring a couple of trips to perennial favourites like Zucca, Hawksmoor and Andrew Edmunds.

Unequivocally though, the winner has to be the fresh bread and pomegranate sauce starter at FM Mangal, foodie crack cocaine and one of the best kept secrets in South East London (until Rayner told everyone…)

 That Shake Shack burger... coming your way soon!

 A pile of sliders... 

 The most perfect veal chop from Zucca

  And ramen... This one from Bone Daddies 

When you wish a pie would satisfy - The Bree Louise - Dec 2012

As far as quality boozers serving food in the vicinity of Euston, there's not much competition. So wailing on a real ale pub serving fresh, home made food (probably for miles) feels a little harsh, like doing a Simon Cowell routine after a kid's carol service. But, in the interests of integrity...

The Bree Louise sits on one of those windblown residential side streets that exist adjacent to every hub train station in the Western world, where the patina of train grime is smeared across the windows like a derisory smear of margarine on a First Great Western ham sandwich. 

Despite the unwelcoming approach and the initial, unstructured look, the overly bright, overly heated single room isn't the sort of itinerants' boozer of last resort, filled with dealers, hooligans and the odd poor sod who missed the 5:15 to Leighton Buzzard. It's actually much better (or worse) than that. The Bree Louise is one of those 'proper' pubs. The kind of pubs where men have beards, toilet facilities are 'functional' and it's acceptable to order a half of NoseSplitter or Noggin's Best before comparing fisherman's knit or World of Warcraft anecdotes with your closest (male) friends. For the Bree Louise is a CAMRA pub...

Now don't get me wrong, I love a real ale as much as the next man, but there's something about the nerdier than thou that can emanate from the REAL ale drinker that winds me up. It's the same sort of aggressive apologist behaviour that attaches itself to train spotters, obscure indie music fans and Evertonians. A 'get the digs in now, but we know we're right', folded arms attitude that occasionally makes for a very closed shop. 

Thankfully, as well as 'Award Winning' ales, ciders and perrys (and a couple of lagers), they also serve a range of 'Award Winning' pies (and obviously feature as an 'Award Winning' pub in a guide book somewhere, given the number of confused tourists wandering through…) 

Less thankfully, with the exception of an off-piste haggis effort, the pies we had were fairly sloppily constructed, with that deeply unappealing pub habit of slopping an inch or so of pre-prepared casserole into the bottom of an earthenware bowl before covering it with a frozen puff pastry shell and reheating to order. The cider sauce was far too thin, if well enough flavoured, but there were just four small sad beige chunks of pork floating around in it, several inches below the carapace, like turds trapped under a swimming pool cover. 

I suppose for £8 a pop, it's difficult to complain too vociferously about the food, but it didn't do it for me at all. The pub is recommended if you genuinely have missed the 5:15 to Leighton Buzzard and can't face the Weatherspoons*, or need to regale chums with your latest live roleplaying anecdotes over a pint of Old Badger, less so for anything else.

* Let me make this absolutely clear. The Bree Louise is a HUGE improvement over the Weatherspo'Neill-style sticky floored hellholes you normally find near stations. It's just that isn't saying much...

Dukes Brew and Cue and MEATmission - The Hipster Diaries - Dec 2012

This month, I'm mostly loving the Hipster Express. The whizzy new London Overground train line delivering Camberwell casuals into the dark beating heart of hip Hoxton since, well, Sunday last..

In less than 25 minutes I can be surrounded by all the skinny jeaned architects, students and wanna be design agency head honchos I could ever possibly need. Like exotic aeroplane trips that take you from the safe and known before dropping you unprepared into new and exciting worlds, the new Gingerline has thrown me into the mean streets of Dalston, with no chance to acclimatise from Peckham's green and verdant lands.

And the reason for this unprecedented exploration? Food of course…

Now we may have been travelling to (culturally) the other side of the world, but they still have to eat in Hoxton we scoffed nervously on the tube. Don't they? We'd soon find out.

MEATmission
Day one delivered us to the new home of a former Peckham resident, possibly the equivalent of eating pizza in Shanghai, but I wanted to ease myself in to the local cuisine gently. Much has been written about the might MEAT burger-based empire (some of it by me) and as I've just promised not to write about burgers again, I won't say anything about them, other than they are as you'd expect and hope.

Once you get over the most ambitious of their spaces, a wonderfully deconsecrated Welsh Mission chapel with a Gilbert & George inspired backlit ceiling, you'll be straight into a broadly as expected MEATmenu. The burgers are there, the sides are there and the cocktails are lurking with faint menace.

Not seen before and worthy of note were the Monkey Fingers, thickly battered strips of chicken doused in a hot and vinegary sauce, like boneless buffalo wings, served with a (too) mild blue cheese sauce. We continued onto sodden white submarine rolls filled with succulent slow roast beef and gravy. This was cheap and cheerful wonder-food, tasting like the white bread you'd use to soak up the last of the gravy at a resolutely home style Sunday lunch. Hellishly unhealthy, mopping up the accompanying dish of gravy with salty skinny chips, but after a couple of cocktails truly the food of gods.


Duke's Brew & Cue
Further north, the illuminating light of the Overground has touched parts other gentrifiers couldn't reach and brought hipsters and prosperity (or possibly only hipsters) to Haggerston. I've been assured that there's more to the area than a fixie bike shop and an espresso bar but that was by a man with a handlebar 'tache leaving me dubious to say the least.

The rough wood panelling of Duke's Brew & Cue (in recent history almost certainly a much less salubrious drinking hole) surrounds a new to the location micro-brewery cum bar cum restaurant. It's like a million and one Williamsburg hangouts (Fette Sau in Brooklyn is definitely one of their inspirations) and is currently still a massive hit with the locals. Even on a rain drenched Wednesday early, early evening we only just managed to squeeze into one of the unreserved bar tables.

I've been a couple of times, once for a so-so brunch and a pretty reasonable (and gargantuan) burger, the second for ribs.. As you'd expect with a name like Brew & Cue, you're only really here for the ribs.

We split two orders of the home smoked ribs, one beef and one pork. This was seemingly what most of the place was doing so I'm unsure why they don't offer that as a menu option. Beef ribs sadly were sadly cooked too hot, too quick for me. The well flavoured meat was cut through with just too many strands of hard, unyielding fat to make it as easy as it should have been to stripmine the bone of every juicy morsel. The pork ribs were much better, coming with a lovely deep flavoured meat and nutty hard bones to gnaw.

Sides were a mixed bag too. A cheap and cheerful mac'n'cheese didn't try to compete with the richness of the ribs, complementing them perfectly with a comforting blandness, house fried pickles and okra were just bad. Reminicent of the sort of deep fried generic vegetable sides you'd get in a Harvester or a Toby Steakhouse.

The food promised so, so much. In reality, it delivered some. As a place to hang out with locals, it comes as a strong recommendation. The bar staff were also excellent, though the servers a little harried. The cocktails are great and the brews on tap are also well recommended, strong, punchy and self assured. It's a shame that the kitchen doesn't quite live up to it.

 The roof of MEATmission... try looking at that after too many Peckham Negronis...

    A very bad shot of some ribs... blow it, you know what ribs look like...

Burger off… Dec 2012

On a recent trip to the States, my hotel was near the Upper West Side Shake Shack. I nipped in on the way back from a meeting as there was no queue at 4 in the afternoon. I had one. It was a well prepared, flavoursome, well cooked burger. With cheese. And on a cold, depressing New York afternoon it made me as happy as only a moist fatty meat product covered in cheese and dripping with juice can. However I've also come to the conclusion that there's not much more you can say about the damn things.

It feels appropriate to reach that conclusion in one of Danny Meyer's earliest outposts. After all, Shake Shack has been one of the biggest brands in the American gourmet burger scene since the Madison Square original opened in 2004. And when it comes to London next year, the city will likely reach the sort of frothing fever pitch not seen since the Beatles. (Look at the evidence)

Now I like a burger as much as (hell, much more than) the next man, but I've reached my limit of writing about them. In the last year, London has been swamped in special secret sauce, covered several times over by steamed or brioche buns and beaten almost to death with a variety of soft meat patties. We get it. We really do.

In summary, here are the rules:

• If they don't ask how you want it cooked, or can't serve it below medium, then it doesn't bode well 
• The new wave London chains of Honest, Byron, Burger & Lobster and the various outposts of the MEATempire are generally pretty good 
• Independents (or nascent chains) such as Patty and Bun and Lucky Chip often achieve rabid followings but there will always be low grade impostors such as BRGR (just bland..) seeking to jump on the beef scented bandwagon 
• The Gourmet Burger Kitchen is poor, as is Ed's Diner (and anywhere else calling itself a Diner for that matter) 
• There are a handful of decent pub and restaurant burgers (Chelsea's Admiral Coddrington being the best) but they tend to get pricy 
• The 'secret' burger at Joe Allen has been around for longer than all of them and is the thing I want to eat on Death Row before they wheel the gurney in 
• If you go to New York or Miami then Shake Shack is good (though comes with a ludicrously long queue), if you get to the West coast then you have to try In'n'Out 
• If you ever contemplate Maccy D and you're not either very drunk, or very hungover then please just walk away from me now. 

Other than that, it ends here.

  

New York Tales 1 - A small (taste) test of the Upper West - Dec 2012

A recent work jaunt placed me on the Upper West Side for a week. It's never been an area I've spent much, if any time in, so I'm certainly not going to try and give a detailed summation of such a vast area after a single trip. If you're heading that way, then check out some of the New York food resources such as Zagat, Grub Street or Chowhound. 

Defined as the long strip up from Columbus Circle to the lower reaches of Harlem, it's a glimpse into the residential life of creative but wealthy uptown Manhattanites. Bifurcated by two lane Upper Broadway, wind whistling down Amsterdam and Columbus, on a mournful autumnal afternoon as the shadows lengthen you're stepping straight into the spiderweb of cracked Noo Yoick glamour worshipped by Woody Allen.

My fine dining food map of the affluent West Side of Central Park starts with the likes of Per Se, a brace of Bouluds, the legendary Picholine and other treats for the wealthy attendees of the squat Lincoln Centre complex before petering out as you head further north. PJ Clarkes is a fine bar and diner to be propped up against in low 60's and there seem to be decent neighbourhood places a plenty (generally Italian and Asian) and a plethora of delis (this is New York after all) but I certainly wasn't confronted with any real list of must do's.

This was no problem for the first night. On a cold snapped and mizzly Monday evening straight off a flight, all I could think about was checking in and slobbing out. Post roach motel check in (the joys of start up life) I eventually ended up in Blondies, one of the many beer based, sports focussed dive bars that line that unlovely diesel engorged artery of Amsterdam Avenue.
 
There's nothing more lovely for a solo traveller than finding a decent bar in a strange city. I've never had a problem finding a decent scattering to tide over on the nights when I haven't rustled up a working dinner and don't want to deal with room service. The secret is to check with the bar staff where they go in the area when not on shift that's a little more lively / laid-back / foodie / sporty (without sounding like you're propositioning them if you can!) and use the same trick in that recommendation. You'll generally end up having the night of your life.

That particular trick took me from The Blind Poet (too quiet), to Jake's Dilemma (nice enough, but a little too loud and only NFL playing) to the Dublin Castle (a freezing cold depressive miss-step) before I ended up in Blondies for those wings and the Nets v Knicks game. A couple of mugs of nutty brown Sam Adams under my belt, a plate of hot wings and the basketball on the big screen. Good evening New York.  
 

 

The Americans like their bar foods big, fried and accessible. Sticky wings, Gordian knots of deepfried poultry, doused in various grades of slippery orange hot sauce ranging from mild to 'let's screw up the Brit' are served in most places. Sliders come in fours, bigger than the burgers and sloppy meat sandwiches they replace. Ideal for sharing? Yeah right, but these babies are all mine… 

My other night of freedom in the area followed a similar pattern. After a few more pots of Sam Adams at the Gin Mill (fine, but no classic and with some pretty pappy bar snacks) I ended up in a lovely little place called Jacob's Pickles, more a restaurant with a bar, a few blocks north with one of the finest craft ale selections I've had the pleasure of sitting in front of. While some of the soul food coming out of the kitchen looked excellent, sadly my wild catfish tacos were overpowered and oversoaked by a mass of astringent 'slaw. A beer side of hot and sour pickled pickles were sheer spicy heartburn inducing pleasure.

The lack of TV in JP was more than compensated for by the friendliest barman in New York (an Irishman called James. A top fellow with an amazing recommendation for dirty BBQ food in Williamsburg - my destination for the weekend). We were also kept entertained by a hilarious online first date. I couldn't help listening… It wasn't going well from the outset. Him, "I've always worked in restaurants. Always been anti the whole banker, money thing.. What do you do?" Her, "I'm an equities trader". Damn it… Good night New York.

   

MASH Steakhouse - There's gold in them there basements - Dec 2012

After Brasserie Zedel, I thought we might have turned a corner in the 'restaurant-prices-like-phone-numbers' debate. A Regent Street restaurant with appropriately sky-high rents and rates offering top drawer scoff you'll struggle to spend £25 a head on. Surely everyone would be onto this?

Now the joint genius of restaurateur team Corbin & King manage this pricing at Zedel with few reservations, lots of tables and very high customer churn, turning tables three or four times a service generating many more, albeit smaller, checks.

So surely, applying that rationale, a similarly ambitious venue next door which has just undergone an equally sumptuous redesign in another vast subterranean space should (if they turn twice in a service) mean that things only cost twice as much? Sadly not. We're back to £100+ a head territory now, as next door neighbour MASH sells steak, and not much more.

The opulent (and obviously masculine) dining room feels designed to appeal to the international expenses crowd: without a view, you could easily be in Dubai, Chicago or Singapore instead of London. Deals are to be done here gentlemen... over steak, expensive wine and casual misogyny. That's a tad judgemental and almost certainly untrue but, being only a Rolex-throw from Mayfair, it is at least plausible.

It has a vaguely Mid West American inspired opulence, though my descriptor is as lazy as the broad theming. Call it essence of robber baron... Thick, plush, arterial-red carpets? "make 'em plusher". Gilded, glowing fittings? "make 'em golder". Bulging list of rare American varietals in a leather-bound list? "make 'em rarer, and add a zero on..."

The shock is that it's not American, but Danish. Despite channelling Smith & Wollensky or Chicago Cut, it comes from the land of stripped pine and Arne Jacobsen chairs. The only sign of this Scandinavian heritage on the menu came with a trio of Danish-origin 70 day dry-aged steaks. I'm not averse to the Stilton-like joys of aged steak, but a 45 day aged piece I had recently from the Ginger Pig bordered on overpowering at times, and anything getting close to 70 is going to be considerably and challengingly funky.

Diving straight in, bypassing a relatively uninspiring starter list, we shared a surprisingly petit USDA Prime Porterhouse. It was wheeled up to be carved on a butcher's block. I was hoping for a lot from an expensive if troublesome cut. Advertised as fit for two or three, in truth it was probably only enough for one and a half or two with sides and starters. The problem with porterhouse is that you have two different cuts, sirloin and ribeye, separated by the thick T bone. Lesser chefs risk missing the balance and pushing the sirloin to a med/well, or leaving unforgiving ribeye fat un-rendered. As far as steaks go, this was a good 'un. Rich, buttery and with a decently deep flavour, it did everything a good steak should.

Along with that hunk of prime meat, sides were measly for the price, and fine, generally just fine. Like supporting dancers in a meaty musical. Chilli fries came with a crunch and a crackle of heat, while a soothingly bland mac n cheese ticked our other carby box. You can't object to either, but at £4.50 a pop, I want to have the best darned carbs in the city.

With a cocktail before, a digestif and a one of the cheaper wines (the leathery New World spell book unsurprisingly offered little below £40), we managed to splash £225 for two, certainly more than I'd expected.

Tangentially, I remember being told by the International Man of Mystery, no stranger to the jet set, that this bland luxe internationalism is welcomed by many who spend half their lives in assorted high-end business hotels. "They want reassuringly expensive stuff they recognise, with the odd plain local speciality, because it's impossible to know how an authentic, highly spiced x, y or z is going to go down when you don't know which continent you're on and your body thinks that it's 4am..." With that in mind, MASH fits the bill perfectly. Just don't expect to see me back without the expense account.