The Real Man Pizza Company - One for goodfellas, not for tough guys... Dec 2011

"Home of the hottest pizza in the United Kingdom". I'd assumed that the 'Real Man' referred to the cojones needed by anyone sampling the aforementioned Diablo, but there's allegedly a Manx connection at this newish Farringdon pizzeria just down from the Eagle. The small island, better known for TT racing and tail-less cats hasn't on the surface anything significant to add to the pizza story, but the kitchen gamely attempt to inveigle the local queenies - a small, sweet scallop found in the waters off the island - into a couple of the dishes.

The special one, a tricked up margarita, delivers its kick though a ferociously spicy tomato sauce. It's sweeter than expected, with a residual heat that builds after initial impact. To be honest, it could have done with a modicum more texture. Chunks of spicy sausage or ham would have given a little welcome variation.

It's not an expensive meal, nor an overly salubrious location, though it works well for the local lunchtime and post work crowd of office workers and creatives who don't want to fight through the crowds of Exmouth Street Market.


Other pizza related reviews and links:
A brief history of pizza - "when the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that's the most popular fast food in the world..."
A tale of two pizzas - Reviews of Firezza and The Gowlett

The Bleeding Heart bistro - Aug 2011

Where: The Bleeding Heart, Farringdon
With who: A whole load of us, for Mrs International Traveller's birthday
How much: £7 /£9 for starters, £11 / £18 for mains
Come here if: you're looking for good quality if unexciting food without the price tag of the main restaurant.

Caveat - some two hours and some more wine after this dinner, I was in a small room in a karaoke bar belting out musical standards and Elton John hits after way too much white wine. Some details may not be well remembered.

Bleeding Heart Yard is a little cobbled church to the consumption of meat and the libation of wine. Their own vineyard supplies the later, house red, white and rose all coming from Hawkes Bay in New Zealand and exceptional quality for the price.

Thee are four venues clustered round the yard, each different but with strong similarities and approaches. I've eaten at the main restaurant before; gutsy and accomplished, if not anything spectacularly unique. Luckily the local suits don't appear too bothered, filling the rough wood hewn space daily. They also run a little tavern and cater for events under nearby St Ethelred's church, an atmospheric crypt seemingly designed for the timeless menu of steak and sundries. I've been to a couple of evenings there too and enjoyed what they're capable of for event dining, so while my expectations for the bistro weren't impossibly high, I was looking forward to seeing how the menu translated to a more casual setting.

As mentioned, the kitchen doesn't attempt anything too tricky, and serves up no shocks. A starter of foie gras and chicken liver terrine was perfectly competent, if a little too smooth in consistency. A week later I struggle to recall it. The rib eye steak was likewise, a perfectly acceptable accompaniment to an evening with friends, but not something that should trouble the Premier League players at Hawksmoor or Goodman.

The 'safety first' approach extended to the waiting staff too it would seem, a wry smile came with the whispered argument between the waiting staff and one of the guests over the steak hache, a rough French patty of chopped beef steak, lightly cooked as a very loose hamburger. He, son of a French butcher and wise in the ways of meat, wanted it blue, they were initially very unwilling, fearing who knows what, if a steak isn't 'safe' enough to be served blue, it's probably not safe to serve at all...

Overall, the bistro didn't hit the (albeit safe) highs of the main restaurant, but is a good quality local standby in an area that loses out gastronomically to nearby Clerkenwell. It won't cause you any problems, unless you're a Frenchman who likes his meat raw...

  

Morito - Farringdon Tapas - July 2011

Where: Morito, Farringdon
With who: The Ginger Prince
How much: £35 a head for 8 shared plates, with a glass of fino each (slightly spoilt by remembrance of Jose's Manzilla) and a carafe of decent if forgettable house red.
Come here if: you're too old for Shoreditch, but want to sit on the street eating tapas watching hipsters cycle by.

The concept of the post beer bite definitely changes as you get older. I remember the days, particularly with the Ginger Prince, when a dirty kebab or a curry take out from Tooting High Road's finest were the best we could hope for after a night on the ales.

Civilisation is a wonderful thing. A couple of artisan pale ales in Farringdon's recently opened Craft Beer Co. started off the evening, followed by a stroll along Exmouth Market and a sherry while waiting for a space to open up at reservation free Morito.**

I'm a sucker for small sharing foods, helping me avoid 'other people's dinner envy' for a fraction of the price of a tasting menu. Even though we don't have the culture to support lanes of tiny little tapas bars here, there are enough decent places where you can shovel down plates of Spanish influenced nibbles.

Unlike bigger and slightly more upmarket neigbour Moro (the one your parents will really approve of) there are no reservations at the orange formica clad bar, where sharp elbowed trendies joust with local suits for space to pile their terracotta plates and baskets of fresh soft roundels and densely spiced flat breads made in Moro's bakery next door.

The bread is essential. Warm if you're lucky, moreish either way. It soaks up the fresh olive oil bottled on each table and its soft, open structure is perfect for scooping up little piles of za'atar (a piquant Arab herb mix on the table with the salt). The za'tar is a giveaway that this isn't a typical tapas bar, but one heavily influenced by Spain's Southern and Middle Eastern neighbours.

We started with one of the most remote of these influences, a soft, silken, oil infused Iranian Borani. Pureed beetroot with feta, dill and walnut was a perfect accompaniment to the breads and vanished swiftly with another Moorish dish of soft spiced lamb mince served on creamy roast aubergine. Lest there was no crunch to the meal, we sampled salt cod croquettas, soft fish yielding under a buttery breadcrumb carapace so good we followed it almost instantly with another plate, this time of jamon and chicken, a little too mushy inside but forgivably so. I was less forgiving of a dish of Butifarra sausage. Four thin discs drowning in an over oily mass of soft white beans, oddly tepid and served with a splodge of garlicky aioli.

I can never resist pimientos de Padrón when they appear on a menu, here a good value £3.50, hot, flame charred and oiled like tiny green Lucha Libre wrestlers, the rare 'Hot One' threatening to kick your throat in. No luck tonight, though they provided a sharp salty contrast to a menu a little steeped in oil and cream. A final hurrah came with a small wooden platter of crisp baby squid. We realised half way through that they were whole, inch long tubes of fried fry or battered baby. Either way it felt like piscine infanticide on an epic scale.
Busy and buzzy even at 9.30 on a Tuesday night there was a wait, this really is somewhere you stumble into rather than a planned 'eat at eight' mission. If you want that, go to the slightly more upscale Moro next door. Just make sure you eat well enough to drown out any envy of the snake hipped youth hanging outside.
** My 15 year old self just re-read that line and cried big tears.

The Eagle - possibly the best steak sandwich in the world - June 2011

We've all been there. Half way through a night out and you're regretting the straight from work sprint that meant you didn't eat since lunch. If you're as lucky as I was, you're in Farringdon and The Eagle is round the corner.

Most days you'll struggle to get a table in the stripped back, frequently copied old saloon bar. Seen in a thousand, thousand pubs since the place opened in 1991, it's hard not to feel at home among the mix and match furniture and the junkshop aesthetic. There are a couple of spots to watch chefs and bar staff dance behind the bar cum kitchen that ranges down the back wall too, but these tend to be taken with drinkers, thankfully as welcome as diners in the first come first served hierarchy of the place. That being said, there aren't many drinkers who don't dine when the food is as well known as this. Lunchtimes are local, it used to be the Guardian's de facto office canteen when they lived next door, now it's full of the crazy and the creative. Close enough to piggyback Exmouth Market's vibe and established as a gastro mecca, it's never too quiet in the evenings either.

A handful of regularly changing mains each night scrub from the long blackboard above the bar as they finish. Maybe they were too early for the small plate revolution, but other than a lonely Serrano ham, olives and bread, there's not much for the snacker here. Arriving mid-session, my belly was crying out for the Bife Ana, their sandwich of thinly sliced rump, marinaded in a garlic and oregano heavy chimchurri and slapped on that open grill behind the bar. Thick and tasty meats squish into floury white rolls, holding together long enough to soak the juices before collapsing like a beefy sigh into your mouth. One word of warning though... If you're there with a date, just make sure you share, there's enough garlic there to dent an entire vampire trilogy.

Steak Club @ A la Cruz - The Second Meating - Apr 2011

Where: A la Cruz, Farringdon
With who: 15 good steaks and true
How much: starters between £3 and £6, mains vary wildly, but for £20 you'll have more meat than you can cope with
Come here if: you're organising a big party for carnivores.

While Gaucho have cornered the market in the pricier end of fine Argentine dining they're not the only cooks on the block specialising in the meat heavy cuisine of the region. John Rattagan, of Buen Ayre fame, is making his own slower push into the market. His original has been a popular authentic local staple on Hackney's Broadway Market since 2004 and the management team have moved a little up market to a converted pub between Farringdon and Exmouth Market. Opened in 2009, it's the first proper asador (named after the traditional fire pit that cooks most of the meat) in the UK.

Where the original is a little rough and ready with a large open firepit on which hunks of meat sit and sizzle, they've tricked this one out slightly differently. White walls, dark woods and a more refined air should justify a higher end price tag, but thankfully they don't hike the prices to match. You can eat well here for not much more than a starter at Gaucho. Thankfully too, the grill at the heart of the restaurant remains.

Empanadas, the rock and roll brother of the Cornish pastie, stuffed with densely packed spiced mince (beef naturally) and deep-fried for extra emphasis, they are a staple of Latino street food. Here they're petit recreations, almost a little too refined, served with a fairly forgettable salad of roast veggies and thankfully, lest we saw them as too healthy, a slice of melted provolone cheese. 

These were followed swiftly by plates of mixed sausages and charred, chewy sweetbreads, known as Mollejas in Argentine. The latter were served with vegetarian taunting similarity to barbequed halloumi, jazzed up with a sharp lemon drizzle. The sausages were fine in the main though the morcilla, Argentine blood sausage based on pork, was best. Dark, herby and with a subtle chilli tang, it was soft enough to spread on bread and truly a thing of beauty. 

Nice as these all were, the steak's the thing. Served to the table on Parillada grills, thin metal trays heated with charcoal, they're mighty meaty lumps of rump and rib-eye. The advertised 300g per head feels like an under-estimation initially but it's more than enough to tame the most savage beast and we're forced to send shamefacedly for doggy bags. Great cuts, cooked well. The secret here is to get enough onto your plate before the residual heat of the grill takes it past the desired level of done.

Unable to give it true justice, I remember enjoying a dulce de leche ice-cream and some fine coffee to finish, but I only had thoughts for home, my bed, and a long snooze. Meat dreams are made of this...

Eating the World Cup - England v Germany 27 June

Where (in South Africa): England v Germany, Bloemfontein, Sun June 27. This article is part of my Eating the World Cup series, to start at the beginning, have a look here

Where (in London): Only one option really,we went to Zeitgeist in Vauxhall. 

With who: Teacher Boy and a horde of football fans (some of who I actually knew) though I've been there before with a more sedate crowd
How much: Mains from £7 to £9 each

We've got an awful lot in common with the Germans. An obsession with beer, a football team less than the sum of its parts, cliched tabloid antipathy towards the French and a near religious relationship with pork. 

It's fitting therefore that they have elevated the humble sausage to the status of national dish. It doesn't have much competition to be fair, and served properly it can be a thing of beauty. In towns and cities across Germany you're never far from an Imbiss kiosk, a semi permanent food stall selling hungry folk a range sandwiches, chips, drinks (including beer, always a shocker to the Brit) and the omnipresent wurst. Grilled or boiled (Frankfurters mainly), damn tasty either way, they'll have a couple of alternatives with the drinkers favourite, the Bockwurst (cut with chives and parsley), found on most grills. You'll also spy the pale casing of the solid pork tubes of bratwurst and the juicy creaminess of the weisswurst (particularly in Munich) on many menus. My particular favourite however was always the currywurst - a concoction so iconic that the Berliners have opened a museum to it.

Kurz and Lang is a fair to middling takeaway counter in Farringdon. Styling somewhere between the traditional German sausage booth and a British butchers, it serves sausage in several styles and to go with them, the salty, golden potato cubes known as Bratkartoffeln. It's difficult to get such a simple joy wrong, and they thankfully don't. A recent visit served up a perfect currywurst, steamed, sliced and served under a thick blanket of 'curry' sauce, in reality a heavy mix of tomato ketchup and curry powder.

I've been to Zeitgeist before with the Vole. It seems slightly incongruous, a chocolate dark inside hidden away down Black Prince Road in Vauxhall within a barely rebranded frontage bearing the Jolly Gardener brand. We walked past it twice before realising where it was. Described as London's first German gastropub (a fairly safe claim) they offer 40 odd different beers. Some excellent choices, if a little pricy. DAB, a light and crisp easy drinker from Dortmund is a semi regular treat when bought from Oddbins, here it's over £4 a pint. They offer a range of wurst (including the ubiquitous currywurst) alongside a selection of schnitzels, a more Austrian treat, but one known across both countries. On previous visits I've sampled these, and can particularly recommend the Schnitzel Kolsche Art, the traditional pan fried pork escalope coated in breadcrumbs, served in this instance with a black pudding and apple sauce mix. It isn't gourmet, but does as its makers intended and serves up a hearty filler to put a cap on the foamy lager you've just sculled.

Review of Pho, Farringdon - Mar 2010

Where: Pho, Farringdon
With whom: Me, Vole and a couple of others
How much?: £20 per head, 2 courses and a couple of beers

A Saturday night treat, prior to a few beers and a slightly embarrassing dad dance at a 90's Indie club in Farringdon...
   
So it didn't get off to the best of starts... there were a few places I'd like to spend more time at in Farringdon, and while Pho is good, very good, it's not St John (or Vinoteca) and so I was living up to my name before we got there, and very nearly had a rant when the Vole attempted to steer us into a random pizza joint.


It's the kind of chain that you'd be happy seeing more of, and I'm very lucky to work just near one. The quality is usually fairly high, and that was handy, with two 'challenging' eaters (one who doesn't like spicy food, yeah, didn't figure that one out early enough, and the other a vegetarian who lives off cheese) to entertain...


We went for a mixed set of starters, the summer rolls proved slightly pointless without any meat (seriously.. it's shredded lettuce and coriander in a soft rice wrapper), and the veggie spring rolls were crispy and slightly chewy on the outside, with a coating like a Macdonalds apple pie. But I'm a sucker for the special, and there were two to try that don't appear on the daytime menu. The slivers of tofu and mushroom in a sharing (sized) crepe snapped with unami, though the crepe had the texture (and oily touch) of a sheet of grilled cheese on the bottom of an oven tray (the veggie cheesehound was delighted). My main was another evening 'special', a slightly too soupy Cari Ga (chicken curry) served with rice and it wasn't great. A very creamy light sauce with way too much sugar and coconut for me (and way too little chilli heat)... I knew I should have stuck with their simple and clean Bun noodles.


The others adored it, but I've definitely had better from them...
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