Goodbye (ish) to the Grumbling Gourmet

After a most enjoyable few years with the Grumbling Gourmet, I've decided to bring the curtain down on the regular reviews. 

I've loved writing these, and despite the blog starting as a very personal project with an expected readership of my mum and my Auntie Pat, it's been great to watch audiences grow over time to current levels. Sadly (or not if you're my accountant) recent work projects have been growing and I'm unlikely to be able to devote as much time to writing these meals up.

It doesn't mean that I won't be eating out anymore... And it does mean that I might find time to go back to a few of the places I've dived through a few months after opening, pronounced lovely, and disappeared into the sunset.

It doesn't mean that I won't be writing about it either. I've had a few professional travel and food commissions in the time I've been doing this, and while they wouldn't keep the wolf from the door, they've been an enormously enjoyable challenge. I've also got some ideas for other writing that I might very well be testing out on some of you further down the line...

And it doesn't mean that I won't be telling you about the latest restaurants, bars and cafés that I've seen or been to. I'll keep London, New York and my other city maps up to date and given that I've got several recent trips to map and get to be in Berlin for much of the spring, will definitely be adding to these. I'll also occasionally be posting 'best of this' and 'best of that' lists to Twitter (@richmajor if you're not already following) and Facebook, so look out for those.

What it does mean is that you're going to have to find a new reviewer / blogger to read for your regular fix... There's plenty of them out there (the good, the bad and the ugly) so have a great year and I'll see you soon!

Gymkhana - It's curry Gym, but not as we know it - Oct 2013

Prepare to see a lot written about this place... This latest Mayfair big hitter (from the hand of Trisna founder Karam Sethi) is already a darling of, among others, Time Out, Fay Maschler and big Jay Rayner. The latter having managed to spectacularly annoy the frothing loons below the line in the Guardian by having the temerity to airily suggest that at £70 a head it was superb value for money. While there are very few who would dispute that you can get close to as good for a lot, lot less money, this wasn't deliberately a Guardianista baiting claim. Given the location on the same block as Mahiki, where clueless braying clods regularly compete to spend more of daddy's money than the other yahs on insane champagne and oh so accurately named cock-tails, it's not bad value at all, and it's a world of calm class away from the hoorays and their nightclub tuckshop Roc Lobsta.

There's something quite confidence inspiring about a short menu, though it's rarely seen in an Indian restaurant. You won't be pleased if you were desperately seeking your chicken / beef / lamb in a generic gloop, but then there aren't many places nearby that are so unreconstructed. It's a calmingly brief list that takes you by the hand, leads you to a comforting rattan Raj era chair and fetches you a gin and (matched) tonic before suggesting that you accede all thoughts of ordering and let Karam and his team decide.

We don't quite give them that leeway, but do grab what promises to be a seasonal standout on the gamey menu - the wild Muntjac biryani - as well as a host of smaller plates from the snacks and starters.
  

A minced kid goat and onion Methi Keema deeply steeped in fenugreek, pepper and other spices is sprinkled with shreds of deep fried potato, a flavoursome and texturally lip crinkling delight, genuinely one of the nicest things I've eaten in some time. After nailing the soft buttered rolls it was served with, we resorted to the serving spoon so desperately were we trying to scrape the Crown Derby pattern off the artfully mismatched dining plates.

Other small plates, from a similarly small menu, were more hit and miss. Wild mushroom and sweet potato Shikampuri kebabs were closer in taste and texture to falafel, not unpleasant, and raised from tedium by a thick girolle raita, but I wasn't fighting to claim the third puck. Venison keema naan on the other hand was exceptionally light and sweet.

Served showily with a thin crust dotted with nigella and pumpkin seeds, the pastry lid of the biryani cracked to release fragrant steam and soft, perfectly cooked insides. Morsels of braised deer were scattered throughout a subtle rice, like dark jewels in the sand. The only missed note (for me) was a pomegranate and mint raita too close to a sweet dessert yogurt in taste and texture. I'm in a minority of one here, my dining companion greedily scooped it solo from the bowl. For me a better accompaniment was a dark smokey aubergine Khati Meethi side, its seductive and silky textures inevitably will come back to haunt me in moments of abstinence.

Happy I got in there before the reviews, sad that it's unlikely to become a regular due to the, now inevitable, queues. Gymkhana stands out as one of my meals of the year so far and, if you can get a table, is a divinely decadent treat for an autumn supper. As a critical smash as well as the new favourite takeaway (yes, of course they do) to the Mayfair set, it's clear that they plan to be here for the longhaul. 

 
 

Colbert - Sloane Square's new old guard - Oct 2013

image borrowed from www.theweek.co.uk

Sloane Square manages to be one of the most outwardly pretty yet utterly vacuous London addresses and at 5 to six on a late week workday night, also seems to be home to more arseholes per square foot than a builders bum convention. 

Within seconds of leaving the tube I've been buffeted by a spry fool in a pinstripe oblivious to anything but a night on the 'lesh' with the boys ("on my way down the King's Road now squire, you'll spot me, I'm looking seriously sexy tonight") and watched as some infernal permatanned, pashmina clad princesses did her level best to get knocked over by one of the smug Astons prowling the Square by waltzing straight in front of it assuming that it would (like everything else in life) fit around her.

After that Colbert was a warm buzzing welcome. While a number of the arseholes had inevitably found their way indoors to loudly complain about the paucity of the residents parking in Ken and Chelski, there was enough space for me to slip unobserved onto a stool at the handsome marble bar. It's a classy old fashioned sort of space that, with its comfortable booths and waistcoated French staff feels like it has been there since way before George Devine reopened the Court next door in 1952. 

In actual fact, it's been there for less than 2 years, when uber-restaurateurs Jeremy King and Chris Corbin took advantage of a famous tiff between the landlord and previous tenants Oriel in which the latter were booted out following a terrible meal experienced by the Earl of Cadogan and his family. Most people would have just refused to leave a tip.

Service is friendly, prompt and efficient (perhaps mindful of the fate of their predecessors) and it'd be hard not to recommend the location at least as a great spot for dinner before a show at nearby Cadogan Hall or the Court. The food was fine brasserie fare, though maybe just without quite the oomph I'd been hoping for. 

Mini house baguettes were toasty warm spears of delight, built for scooping up thick butter, ideally the garlicky sort I'd been hoping for along with my starter of l'escarcots. The snails were plump, mild and inoffensive little fellows, like schoolboys from a minor public school. Their buttery bed was pleasant enough, though not a patch on the earthily vulgar bunch I got mugged by at Zedels. Admittedly though, these ones didn't make you feel that you'd be growling parsley and garlic at people during interval drinks. 

A Salad Nicoise was fine, but much less than the sum of its parts. Most of those parts were excellent, with the exception of a lump of slightly dry tuna, but it was difficult to ignore the keen £17.50 price point for a handful of haricots vert and an, admittedly perfectly cooked, egg.

The rest of the menu is textbook grand brasserie, with moules, confits and a section for crustacia. Plus plats du jour, all day dejeuner and some rather exciting looking patisserie to finish and you can breakfast all day or lunch from noon until night. If I'm in the area I just well might do either, or both. And it'd be the ideal place for your slightly risqué maiden aunt, just make sure she's paying.

Gilgamesh - Gilga-meah in Camden - Oct 2013

It's been a while since Gilgamesh opened. The 800 seat 'super restaurant' landed in pre-gentrified Camden Lock market in 2006 like a blinged-up supertanker gatecrashing a Levellers gig.

Visually, it's stunning. The diner-to-be ascends a narrow escalator, which opens out into an atrium space, a cavernous daylight-filled dome, stuffed with ornately carved dark woods and squadrons of hushed staff. It's definitely one of the more extravagant spaces in the city, as distinctive as the tall tower dining of the Shard and its ilk.

Sadly, it didn't take long to go downhill on a recent lunch visit. Paper towels, scuffed and peeling menus and cheap, unwrapped disposable chopsticks clash with the opulent surroundings. We were the first people in at 12.30 on a weekend lunchtime, and indeed the only diners for a while, so maybe they only bring out the good stuff (and staff) for the beautiful people later on in the evening.

It's a surprise that it's so quiet, given the vast hordes chowing down on hideously stodgy, reheated muck from the noodle merchants below. Despite the prices being more Chelsea that Camden, Gilgamesh have a set lunch menu at £12, so are not so far from competing in price and are surely a step above a styrofoam tray of MSG. I think there's more they could be doing to create a welcoming entrance - either that or they need to actively compete with the serried ranks loudly peddling their deep-fried chicken drowned in gloopy sauce, and offer people a taster.

Given the pricing on the main menu, the disparity between the pricing of the set dim sum menu and the a la carte causes some confusion. The latter offers a pan-Asian mix with most main dishes hovering in the £17 to £25 level, the former offers 3 'types' of dim sum for £12. With no idea how much that might deliver us we go a la carte.
  

Mushroom dumplings were green, glutinous and somewhat grim. They filled a steamer basket like claggy shopping bags filled with a lukewarm mushroom vol au vent mix. Similarly, an £8 dish of three unremarkable chicken gyoza arrived flabby and too cold again, their skin lacking any crisp or crunch. Mottled, soft and wrinkled like swimmers who've spent too long in a municipal pool. Overall, the mixed temperature of the food became a lunchtime theme, with most dishes just not hot enough. Admittedly, it's an enormous restaurant, but it didn't take so long to get from the kitchen to justify the tepid temperature of so many dishes.

Ribs were of decent enough quality meat, but had been cruelly treated. Cooked in (or at least covered in) a glossy oilslick of black bean sauce, tasting like a sweet soy that had been punched in the face by a rogue gang of star anise pods and not much more. A rare high came with great tempura prawns. Scattered with a sprinkle of crushed something, jade green methamphetamine maybe, they were as moreish as they were fresh, though four of them for £17.50 is definitely on the steep side. 

Conversely, the T'n'T 'sashimi' pizza (I'm not entirely sure that's where best to place the quotation marks, but they need to go somewhere in a half-baked concept like this) wasn't the best idea of the day. There's a T for the tuna, wafer-thin slices of very good sashimi, thrown away on an over-salted flat biscuit base and violently assaulted with truffle oil (that other T) and acerbic micro greens.

The Chef's sashimi selection was thickly sliced, lumpen and way too cold for the flavours of the fish to have opened up. I wasn't expecting Dinings or Umu standards, but I was hoping for better than M&S. We've moved on with Japanese and Asian dining in the capital, it just doesn't feel like the team at Gilgamesh has noticed. Two pieces each of salmon, tuna, prawn and (I think..) mackerel were plonked down unceremoniously by the server unannounced and unexplained.

At £40 a head for an a la carte lunch with no drinks it's difficult to see me being back to try their evening atmosphere, though I'm sure that for some, the idea of a roped-off luxe lounge in the heart of newly wealthy Camden is de trop. It's a world away from the Hawley Arms that's for sure. But come here for food? I'm not sure I could do it (and I'm not sure anyone else does). It's a gigantic bar and club that also serves food. Overpriced mediocrity I know your name. And it is Gilgamesh.

DISCLAIMER: We were invited to dine here (anonymously) by the restaurant. We walked in unannounced, paid in full and then were refunded by the restaurant PR after we'd left the restaurant. 

 


 

Mildred's - a review finally - Oct 2013

Another recent step back down Memory Lane. Gearing up for a trip to the Edinburgh Festival recently, I needed nothing more than vegetables and pulses. If you're that determined to give your flabby middleaged stomach and liver a kicking, at least have the decency to treat it healthily first.

I've always been a fan of Mildred's, ever since I was lucky enough to score an office opposite the place over ten years ago. It was never a place you'd waste on a dinner with suits. The unreservable tables are too close together, the service is amiable if too erratic for client entertaining and the menu a flustered mix of clichéd vegetarian comfort food and esoteric rabbit droppings. I'm delighted to report that nothing has changed in the intervening years.

Although it sounds like I'm gearing up for a slagging I'm really, really not. One of the reasons Mildred's has been there for so long is that it hasn't changed. And the regulars who crowd the front galley bar, flirting with the staff and each other while waiting for their table wouldn't have it any other way.

That cramped bar belies the gorgeously lit conservatory roofed space you walk out into. Light, bright and loud, it's packed every lunchtime and full from 5.30 every night.

Those veggie clichés are hard to get past. It's been a long time since I've been able to get past their doorstep thick mushroom and ale pie, thick chewy pastry scattered with seeds, stuffed with a glossy dark chunky filling you'd swear only a dead (and happy) cow could supply... If I sidestep that, then I get tackled by one of the tastiest bean burgers imaginable or tonight's punishing two footed tackle, a piping hot, bean and chilli feast of a burrito.

Taking up the space of a small child (or approximately an eigth of the size of Michael Gove's self regard) it squats ominously on the plate alongside some ill-judged and entirely erroneous greenery. Blistered white cheese (no one including the server is quite sure what sort) is baked into the carapace and the inside opens to a rich bean melange. It's inauthentic as hell but tasty and filling. The coconut curry with sweet potato was fine, verging on microwave hot, but instantly forgettable. There are a number of salads, various specials and a number of ways with quinoa. The wine list is

Sure it's not a place for a business meeting, and I'd think strongly about the impression you were going for before taking a first date there. But it's a wonderful place for a healthy, filling feed with your very closest friends, and that's why it's one of my favourite places in London.

 

Balthazar - power lunching in Covent Garden - Sept 2013

This was in all likelihood going to be the review that got away. I've spent time in the original Balthazar and had some lovely lunches but, especially in a white hot, can't get a table for love nor money, opening period, I'd resigned myself to forgetting about the London branch. And anyway, who really wants to go to the London branch of a slavish New York recreation of a traditional French bistro? I could be on the Eurostar before they'd answered the reservations line.

As it goes, it's reasonably quiet, even on a Thursday lunch, and therefore the perfect spot to slide into a banquette opposite the International Man of Mystery. He's never sure which city he's in at any given point in time, so this level of high class generic internationalism is perfect for him.

It's not cheap, their range of French classics, but if you've come here deliberately you know that and are comfortable paying £24 for a plate of Steak Frites and £17 for a burger. If you're a wall-eyed tourist who has just stumbled across its prime Covent Garden location then congratulations. You're going to be fleeced, but in a much more pleasant way than if you'd wound up in the Angus Steak House.

Get a back wall booth if you can, they're perfect for people watching amidst the monied buzz and much, much more room than on the cramped blood red banquettes filling the centre of the room.

After being spoilt by their homemade bread, the ceviche starter was utterly underwhelming, a few sorry rings of squid or octopus dredged in an acrid vinegar coleslaw of fridge cold mandolined bell peppers and onion. From a distance it looked perfectly pleasant, but ended up being pushed around the plate, like a refugee from a different, inferior restaurant.
 

Confit duck on the other hand was perfect. Rich and unctuous, it fell off the bone like a dark silk dressing gown might slide from a Parisian courtesan's shoulders. Lifted with green leaf and waxy, puckered little spuds to provide substance, this was definitely a contender for comfort dish of the year, though at the price it bloody well should be.

It's a lovely cavernous space, with decent food slightly over-assiduous staff (that'll be the New York influences rather than the French) but for the money, the ambience and the attitude, I'd much rather be in Zedel, sucking down champagne with the money I've saved on my steak. If it's a power lunch that I need, then I'll be back at the Wolesley first.


 

 
 

Tozi - promising and classy Victoria Italian - Sept 2013

The Edinburgh Festival is getting bigger every year. This year, as in many recent years, it manages to spread down to London to keep the party going well into September. Thankfully, though the 5am finishes stay up in Auld Reekie, in the weeks after the Festival there are almost enough shows booked in for post Festival London residencies for the discerning theatregoer to skip the trip North entirely.

If you're reading this in time, do go and see The Events at the Young Vic. It's on over October and was one of my Festival picks. There's normally a few at the Soho worth seeing (including Fleabag and There Has Possibly Been An Incident) and the scarily talented Lucy Ellinson was bringing Grounded to The Gate way before she'd won the plaudits of every man and their dog in Edinburgh. The cynical among you might wonder what these shows, hits every one of them, were doing slumming it in Edinburgh when a money making London run obviously awaited. But it's not a sure thing, this business of pre-programming critical hits, as you'll know if you'd had to sit through I'm With The Band.

Mercifully short, we were out of there by just after 9 and contemplating a schlepp into town or an early night when I remembered Tozi, a sexy sounding new Italian cichetteria unglamorously wedged under the lumpen Park Plaza Hotel like a pair of risqué kitten heels on a rugby prop forward. We weren't looking for a blow out, more a couple of glasses of fizzy and a couple of plates to take the taste of mediocre theatre away.

A couple of large, over Peroni'ed, verging on loutish tables of office boys deadened the bar slightly, but pushing past them opened up a large dark space, loudly packed with the young, the amiable and the well dressed. It's obviously an easy option for the hotel guests of the unlovely place above, but there seemed to be enough people there to suggest that Tozi might be a rare oasis in the Victoria culinary desert, capable of bringing people to it, rather than only those forced to work in it.

An uncomfortably Lilliputian table wedged us too close to our TOWIE neighbours, but at least was opposite the main pass giving a great view into the cavernous kitchen and ample opportunity to overhear and people watch. Assuming the rugger buggers aren't colonising it every night, the lighter, padded bar area seemed a better, more comfortable option.
  

Small plates arrived quickly and in no particular order, not specifically for sharing (I've never understood why the two things go together - smaller portions make me much less inclined to share) we did, going for 5 of them to share, less than the 7 recommended for two diners, but plenty for a post theatre snack. Soft shelled crab was hot, fresh and thankfully greasefree. It's one of those dishes that really reminds you you're eating a dead creature, crunching through yielding shell like a bit part character in an Indiana Jones movie. If you can cope with the vicera, there are few dishes more rewarding. Deep flavoured flesh ensconced in a tight, light batter - dreamily divine, brought higher with a sprinkle of chilli and a sharp basil oil.

Juicy baby chicken arrived on a wooden paddle, a slightly tongue in cheek mini roast, complete with copper gravy pot of deepest silky umami. This was a lovely and accomplished little plate. With a crunchy, clean side of some sort, I'd quite happily take this as a regular lunch option.

Aubergine parmigiana was sleekly and lusciously creamy, like a dowager countess in full length mink. Slow braised aubergine, cut with tomato and a hefty jolt of cheese. Definitely not the clean and healthy side to pair with the chicken. Decanting it into a lukewarm Staubb didn't do much for it, but the fundamentals of the dish were good enough to make me scrape the plate clean.

The jolly, and not so jolly, staff were certainly authentico, if a little unfocussed at times. And when your restaurant is this full at 9.30 on a wet Wednesday in Victoria, you need to be better, or at least slicker. That being said, it certainly wasn't a terminal performance front of house and, given that it's one of a (very) few decent options in Victoria, is certainly something to gloss over.
  

 
 

Festival Edinburgh - Food fail - Sept 2013

The joy of Fest...

Edinburgh has some proper restaurants. Some superb local ingredients cooked by some of the finest kitchens in the UK. I could wax on about the delights of the Leith seafood scene and it's recent renaissance, I could talk about the elegant and romantic Witchery (or it's recently lauded little sibling, The Honours). I could talk about David Bann's hearty vegetarian food, the innovative delights of 21212, Tom Kitchin's eponymous place and fish masters Ondine. I could give a few lines on the multitudes of bistros that have popped up recently serving cut back mod Scot menus comprising the finest ingredients the Islands, Highlands and Lowlands can offer.

I could tell you all of this. Though, it'd all be from someone else's experience. I could tell you all of this. Because I read enough to know about it.

I can give you chapter and verse on the places I've been meaning to go to, but in a 16 year history of coming to Edinburgh religiously every summer, often for 2, 3 or more weeks at a time, I can't have had more than 5 or so 'proper' meals out. When I say proper, I mean planned, "that sounds nice, we should definitely go there sometime", meals out. Rather than, "urgh, I'm pissed / hungover. Need chips / pie / fry up". Sadly, my Edinburgh story is entirely written and directed by the Fringe Festival.

It's 16 years since I first came to the Festival and probably my 10th or 11th visit in that time. From wide-eyed ingenue in car crash clunky student 'drama' to director (of car crash clunky student 'drama'), venue manager, producer, scout and punter, I must have seen several hundred shows over that time, including a couple of years when I saw next to none other than the ones I worked on. I've seen the inside and the outside of innumerable pubs, clubs, tents and bars and disrupted a romantic dawn marriage proposal by climbing Arthur's Seat at 4.30 in the morning with a group of fellow performers after the terrible club we were in closed. I've eaten with taxi drivers, postmen and transvestites, but yet not anywhere with a tablecloth and plates not made out of paper or polystyrene.
  

Lunch is habitually either ignored, liquid or grabbed from Pie Master, a uniquely and wonderfully doughy temple to the pastry slice just off the Royal Mile serving warmed individual pies, and nothing else. With over 25 different flavours of filling from chicken tikka and lamb stew to apple and custard (and yes, haggis too) you could literally eat here for every meal. And reader, some years I have… Standing on Tron Square in the drear, that unique Scottish weather system that feels like being in a cloud, chowing on a scalding haggis pastie is one of the rights of passage. No one looks great in a pac-a-mac, but you'll be dry and that's more important.

Anything made out of stomach, offcuts and oat is going to be challenging at first, but don't think that eating haggis is just for brave tourists and the terminally homesick. Head to Dirty Dicks on Rose Street for the real(ish) deal. That being said, eating haggis on the Royal Mile, while wearing a tartan Glengarry hat, listening to the squirl of a schemie from Portobello abusing a bagpipe, is for tourists. Avoid please.

Breakfast takes care of itself by occurring in the time you are finally, fitfully fast asleep. In the years that I needed to be up that early, generally to bother tourists on the Royal Mile by flyering at them with extreme prejudice, a matchstick thin roll up and a coffee would suffice.
  

The problems arise at what you usually know as tea time. The 5.30 till 8.30 slot is usually filled to the gills with any number of unmissable bits of theatre or early comedy. It's both a lucrative and likely award winning slot, if only because you can guarantee that most critics and audiences will have finally woken up by then…

So by the time that's out of the way, you've had a couple more pints, caught up with your New Fest Friends and been dragged into a ropey cabaret show featuring Loopy Lisa and her Luscious Lollipops. Another couple of pints to deconstruct the horrors you've just witnessed and it's close to 11. Into one of the jerry built performers bars with Loopy Lisa and her Lollipops (out of the show, all cleaned up and delightful darling) you go. Before you know it, it's 3.30am and you're watching some tool with a sparkly hat trying to play the piano in the corner of an upstairs lock in while a midget with a poncho tries to seduce your friends.

You've got to love the Festival Bubble though. It allows you to binge drink nightly and smoke heavily for 2 or 3 weeks in a row, eating nothing but fried, sleeping in a room that doubles for a scene in Trainspotting. You'll feel fine until you leave and then it all catches up with you. You have to love the locals too, and contrary to popular belief, the locals love the Festival. Like most people, they adore having their daily lives disrupted and their pubs and restaurants crammed by a bunch of strangers who own it for a month of the year. Mainly because they take such delight in helpfully directing you to the random pop up theatre you desperately need to get to. Just stop one and ask!

The JUST EAT Chinese Challenge! Sept 2013

We need to talk about noodles...

Another week, another PR invite. You lot are seemingly a desperately valuable demographic for the hospitality industry... Take a bow, no really, you deserve it.

Despite their best efforts to make it easy for me to plug their product (no I won't just 'copy and paste this press release onto my blog') I usually either turn these down or take them on condition I can review anonymously (and then only if I really like the sound if it and it's somewhere I would eat anyway). 

As a reader, you'll know when I've done it as there will be a disclaimer at the bottom. I'm always honest, and sometimes it can really backfire on the restaurant. So you need to pay it back for me. Go and eat out somewhere, that's an order. It's the start of the month and you've just been paid. There are bound to be some great new restaurants. Or you could stay in and get a takeaway…



On with the challenge!
Coincidentally, I was recently invited by takeaway aggregator JUST EAT to sample a range of the takeaways they represent (and in doing so review their takeaway technology). I've used the site before, quite liked it and so once we'd ascertained that I wouldn't just copy and paste a press release onto my blog, we briefly discussed how this could work.

Eventually, we came up with the idea of a Chinese Challenge (to be followed up with other cuisines over time). JUST EAT would credit an account with enough for me and an assembled crowd to try four or five different takeaways and we'd judge them on a range of criteria on the same night.

It worked, to a point. The site itself is a real boon. It's easy to use and navigate, allowing you to see and select from the menus of hundreds of takeaways that deliver in your area. The problem, as always, is quality. With so many to choose from, you're either reliant on prior experience, or the sites own, less than ideal, customer (more on that later) star rating system.

In order to standardise the Challenge, we went for Chicken Chow Mein as the control dish. Apparently Britain's most popular takeaway dish (oh you imaginative folk…) when done well, it's a thing of simple beauty. Crisp and crunchy bean sprouts married with soft noodles, cut with garlic, spring onion and chilli, braised with soy and scattered with chunks of flavoursome chicken. What's not to like? To contrast with that we also grabbed a special from each of the restaurants and divided the starters and rice up among the orders. Orders went in within 10 minutes of each other, we sat back with Tsing Tao and awaited a noodley landslide.

On the judging panel:
Semi-regular dining companions Dr Vole and Nicco Polo (a man of extensive Oriental travel and chowing experience), The Cousin (Oscar Wilde with better skin), The Professional (food PR by day, vigilante by night) and The Velo-Raptor. We all know our Chow Mein from our Cheung Fun and three of the six had been to China before. We know Chinese food… But was that going to help here? This was a war of attrition, with voting cards. And prawn crackers. 

 
Takeaways by order of arrival:
Oriental Star (Ordered at 20:41, arrived at 21:10, 29 minutes)
Key elements: Chow Mein and 'special' Chinese curry. Guilty pleasure - I've always been a fan of the Chinese curry. A bizarre variant on the Katsu style Japanese curry, with added raisins. Nothing special about either of the dishes, but it arrived reasonably quickly and tasted freshly cooked. This was a pretty decent stab at the standard Chinglish.

Wuli Wuli (Ordered at 20:33, arrived at 21:25, 52 minutes)
Chow Mein and Sichuan Aubergine with Minced Pork, half aromatic crispy duck. A slight cheat here, Wuli Wuli came near the top of the list, but is also a regular favourite of ours due to its excellent home style Sichuanese menu. It didn't disappoint. Aromatic duck was (barring an obscenely sweet, thankfully meagre portion of hoisin sauce) one of the better versions I've had in this country. Chunks of slow cooked creamy aubergine were the perfect foil to a dense and meaty pork mince and the Chow Mein was fresh, spicy and grease-free.

Spring Way (Ordered at 20:25, arrived at 21:45, 80 minutes)
Chow Mein and Special Chicken with Pak Choy. "Sorry mate, we're facking busy..." Unfortunately not busy enough to learn to cook. Definitely the worst of the bunch. Greasy Chow Mein with burnt oil (or possibly diesel) notes was marginally better than it's accompanying chicken with Pak Choy, saltier than Del Boy's Uncle Albert and half as authentic. Virtually untouched and entirely unloved. A bonus point for oddly moreish prawn toast, immediately removed for the portion of pre-loved pork 'rib' made entirely of knuckle.

Kam Foh (Ordered at 20:45, arrived at 22:20, 95 minutes!)
Chow Mein, 'Szechwan' Beef and Chicken with Cashew and Yellow Bean Sauce. Possibly better than Spring Way, though our tortured taste buds were definitely struggling to tell at this point. The chilli doused beef was plain nasty and the rest was generic, somewhat watery and very, very late... If this had been our only order, the 95 minute wait would have been a real deal breaker.

No go: Sun Kong (ordered at 20:37, order rejected as we were 'Too far to travel'.) Given it's around a mile away, I put this down to a polite way of saying we're too busy.. )

Our notes - Scientific!

Overall:
We challenged them. It was 8.30 on a Friday night. Prime delivery territory (with waits to match). And they didn't all step up to the challenge sadly… If I had to wait over an hour and a half for a delivery meal, no matter how good it was, I'd be seriously dubious about using that takeaway again.

The JUST EAT site works well, to a point. The menus are a godsend, there are a lot of restaurants listed and it's very easy to use. The 'but' however is a pretty big one. The recommendations and star ratings are beyond the worst excesses of TripAdvisor bad and desperately need sorting out. To give one example of how badly they've been gamed, the worst of our restaurants (Spring Way) has over 550 reviews and an average of 5 out of 6 stars. One reviewer Tinabao, loved it so much he ate from there 5 times in three days, including 3 times within the space of less than 4 hours. Now that's a dedicated food fan.

Would I use JUST EAT again? Certainly. Would I plan on using it to discover new restaurants? Probably not.

Disclaimer:
I was invited to do a round up by the team at JUST EAT who credited a voucher into an account for us to use. They didn't select the restaurants, we went with the site's top recommendations for our area. 

The winning Chow Mein...

And one of the horrors...

 

There's something about Dairy - August 2013

There's something about Dairy that's so now, so 2013 food trend, that it almost feels like a demonstration, a 'look, this is how trendy London eats'. Unfreeze a hipster in 10,000 years time and this is what they'll be talking about.

That being said, it also manages to stay just the right side of safe. There are enough neologisms and touches of painterly genius to convince the most discerning food fanboi, but (and this is certainly no criticism) you could bring your mum here and she'd be happy with most things landing in front of her.

The venue is a generic Clapham wine bar; tall bar counter style tables at the front, bigger, rounded oak jobs at the back. Other than the ever-present design lover soothing concrete carried through into the heavy serving plates, there isn't a grand unified design. If anything it's rustic chic meets Lower East Side loft bar. There's not even a jokey cow reference to justify the name.

You can either select small, but emphatically not sharing, plates from an intriguing list of 'garden', 'sea' and 'land' or you can throw yourself at the mercy of the kitchen who'll save you the agony of choice with a well priced set menu. Judging from what we had and comparing with what the table next to us ended up with on the set menu, there's little difference.

  

Smoked bone marrow butter slathered on hot, fresh wholemeal bread was a delightfully rich hello from behind the pass and one that immediately ramped our expectation levels right up. I won't go through to describe the seven or so plates we shared after this, it's a changing seasonal menu so you'll just have to take your chances, something I heartily recommend you do at the earliest possible opportunity.

We particularly loved the amuse of chickpea and cumin bitteballen, a masterful take on that most vile of Dutch pub snacks. Due to a mix up with the order, we ended up with two portions of heritage beets, delicately cooked and served with a filthily divine hazelnut purée though could quite happily have slipped back later to flirt with some cheese with dessert.

Thankfully we didn't miss out on fresh from the pod peas, served with a light mint creme and delicate celery and a light chorizo and squid scotch egg was another happy highlight, and only one of the few that brought meat to the foreground. The other we tried being a polite and gentle lamb on a bed of squelchy and moreish aubergine puree. It was delightful, but the lamb didn't quite have the depth of flavour I was hoping for, the same true of a beautifully plated but relatively pedestrian sea bass dish from the 'sea' section.

  

Overall, the small plates work well. There was enough to share, even if the heavy bowls didn't always make that easy. If I were being overly critical, I'd have to say that while it doesn't totally kill it yet, there's enough here for me to heartily recommend. There's a real sense of ambition and drive emanating from the kitchen (slightly at odds with a chilled, casual and at times an amiably almost amateur front of house). A couple of the dishes were just a little muted and the service needs to step up (as I'm sure it will once they've been open for a while), but with the ambition in the kitchen and for the price and location it will do very, very well indeed. 

Heritage beets with horseradish 'dust'

Seabass

Perfectly cooked but underseasoned lamb

Dessert - deconstructed chocolate bar

The fairly pedestrian cheese selection

Petits Fours in an old tobacco tin