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.

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.


 

 
 

Bouchon Fourchette - a gorgeous Gallic supper club... in Hackney - July 2013

Watching a good friend pull a cum face as she loads soft, crumbly, chocolate cake into her mouth makes me shift uncomfortably in my chair. Trying it though, it's not difficult to see why I was (briefly, until I started my own pud) wishing I was having what she was having.

It's not that Bouchon Fourchette is doing anything innovative to make us squeal, or that its genre-bending, future fusion food is turning our knees to jelly. This is more the lovely sensation you get watching something work, pretty much, as it should do.

It's a labour of true Gallic love. For the food, and the wine, and the insouciant atmosphere of a hundred and one small town bistros. God only knows why you'd try and recreate any of that on the most unloved part of Mare Street, but someone obviously felt that they were up to the challenge. Thankfully for the casually tattooed locals, they look like they might be.

Inside, you're snugly insulated from the roaring of Mare Street by the atmosphere, if not quite the ersatz decor. Concrete floors, cabinets half-inched from a house clearance yard and reclaimed 70's school furniture are fun, but closer to a supper club in an artist's studio in the 20th arrondissement than a 'proper' restaurant. Still, it is Hackney after all...
 

  I'm sure there's a very specific European word for a menu that consists only of things you desire to eat immediately. Mackerel rillette, dense and well-seasoned with the fragrant tang of juniper berries, came with jewelled pomegranate seeds and slices of earthy brown loaf (unexpected and an improvement on the general standard sourdough). Densely lardy saucisson was more than adequate too.

Our main was a well-hung and gamey cote de boeuf, as well cooked as I've had for a difficult lump of cow such as this. Proudly carved table-side, and at £35 with sides for two people, one of the best priced cuts of steak I've had out for a very long time. The side of spinach arrived towards the end of the meal with a cheerfully shouted apology to our table by the kitchen for forgetting it, and I'm back in that supper club again.

Barely-together creme caramel whispered to me like a sultry French chanteuse, the minxy little temptress wilfully ignoring the fact that I looked (and sounded) like Mr Creosote after that Cote de Boeuf. Much as I love it, such a cliched dessert rarely lives up to expectation. This one did, and certainly made up for the fact I wasn't heading for a cocoa-based knee-trembler like my dining companion.

The wine list isn't seemingly one for experts, it's one for drinkers. A handful of bottles, all available by the glass or carafe too, with nothing that isn't fizzy over £35. They bounce casually around the world's wine regions and have obviously been selected by someone who had a bloody good night trying them all, rather than a suit seeking to maximise profit ratio.
 

Slight niggles? I'll give a shoulder shrug and a scowl for the need to pay for my bread. Lovely it might be (white baguette, natch) but it's not really done these days. I'd make a bigger deal of it if it wasn't offset by the pricing elsewhere.

Bouchon Fourchette doesn't exactly feel like a restaurant, and that may be its biggest strength. It's like being cooked for by unhurriedly fashionable friends with astonishingly good taste in food and wine. Get them to invite you round for dinner soon.
 

 
http://www.bouchonfourchette.co.uk

Quo Vadis - My, haven't you aged well? - July 2013

It's been a while now since new chef Jeremy Lee took over at Soho institution Quo Vadis, and even longer since the Hart brothers refurbishment that brought it back onto foodie radars after a decade of sliding standards.

The space gives the impression of being bigger than it is. Room after room of fresh, clean and chic off-whites and brasses open up as you penetrate deeper while thick white table linens mute the noise from tightly packed neighbours, the majority of them the loud and jolly old boys of the advertising type I thought had abandoned Soho altogether.

The little touches from the staff are delicately assured. There's still or sparkling filtered water, a banter if you need, an efficiency of clear and serve if you're obviously otherwise engaged and an eye for attention matched by some of the seasonal dishes on the well turned out rustic menu.

And it's from that short menu that we grab a short but perfectly formed lunch. I wistfully but worthily skirt a chicken and guinea fowl pie, but suffer agonies when it turns up centimetres away on the neighbouring table, huge and gleaming, its buttery smell wafting over the slim divide between the tables. I'm also deeply envious of a huge hunk of bleeding ruby hued onglet steak that arrives next to it, served up with golden railway sleeper-like triple cooked chips.

Thankfully, I get to sample some of those chips with one of the other substantial mains on offer. Coqulet isn't a bird you often see on restaurant menus. In these days of tightly managed animal husbandry too few young roosters, like their bovine equivalents, get out of early infancy. This one made a great case for them to hit more tables though. A hefty half bird was served simply roasted, with gloriously garlicky herb butter squashed into every crevice. Packed with taste, soft, supple and meaty, the bird is more than a match for its stuffing.

Alongside that, there were two simple but effective fishy salads, both ostensibly starters, that worked well to create a combined main course. Young garlic shoots, crushed olives, peas and mint came together well, though the mint was a little overpowering. Beautifully cooked squid with asparagus was much better, a lovely mix of flavours and textures.

It's an accomplished restaurant experience, as you'd expect from two of the capital's more accomplished restaurateurs, and has a quirky but polished charm that should ensure it retains its place near the top of the London dining pile this time round.

 

Top image nicked from the restaurant - 

I was on a business lunch so photography wasn't an option

Shanghai foodie report 1 - Dining at the high end - May 2013

 

Three on the Bund

Try to sum up the food scene of any city in a few hundred words and you’ll struggle. Try and do it to one containing over 23 million hungry people in its metropolitan clutches and you’re on a hiding to nothing. I might as well give up now.

Shanghai isn’t a city for sightseers. It’s a city for shoppers, and above all eaters. From the rarefied (if a little smoggy) air of the Bund and the towers of Pudong down to the lanes and shopping centres and street kerbs you can’t go anywhere without being assailed by the sights, tastes and smells of a million and one altars to the god of this secular country.

After several weeks attempting to eat my way around the place, I thought it wise to cover off a few highlights by price point rather than hitting everything I’ve experienced. I’ve updated a Google map for the city below that will contain the best of the rest as well as the recommendations I got but couldn’t find time for.

View Shanghai! in a larger map

Shanghai fine dining
Long, long gone are the days of the colonial caste that inhabited the Shanghai Club (the archaic membership ‘ran’ the city were so set in their hierarchical ordered ways that as the town fell to the Japanese in 1942, a visiting British naval officer wasn’t allowed in until a committee had been convened to vote him a temporary membership, despite the bullets peppering the building). It’s here, under the glare of the Pudong skyline, that the great, the good and the wealthy are still congregating.

Occupied still by banking and commerce, the Bund also features a plethora of high-end restaurants to match any city in the world. Three on the Bund, the only privately owned real estate on the strip, is an elegant building, the restaurants on its different floors carefully curated by superchef Jean Georges Vonerichen, the Alscace's answer to Gordon Ramsay. Unusual in that it doesn't feature rooms, in every other respect it has the impression of a very successful five star hotel.
 

Chocolate Budino at Mercato

You could stay in Shanghai for a week and only eat at Three on the Bund, such are the range of different restaurants within the different floors. We had a particularly standout meal at new Italian Mercato. It’s odd not to be eating with chopsticks, but once over that, there’s a lot to love here. A focus on locally sourced ingredients gave us amazing (in all senses of the word given the Chinese lack of dairy empathy) burratta, cut with a divine lemon compote. We followed that with Kingfish carpaccio and crispy skinned chicken to die for. The building also hosts the iconic Jean Georges, masculine Argentine steakhouse Colagreco and casual bar dining at Unico.

Also very much of note on the Bund are beautifully presented French classics ‘with a twist’ from Mr. & Mrs. Bund (their foie gras mousse is all manner of right), haute Middle Eastern at nearby M on the Bund and who knows what at the hilariously bonkers sounding Ultraviolet, an ‘immersive’ food experience where what you see and hear are given as much respect as what you eat. Like Heston Blumenthal on no sleep and an enormous bag of mind altering drugs. 

 

The dining room at Table No1 

 Other than those few, if it’s non Chinese you’re looking for, you’ll find a wealth of European and American comfort food (including the obligatory Morton’s Steakhouse) among the gleaming towers of Pudong and the usual swathe of Western friendly tastes in most of the higher rated hotels. You’ll also find Ramsay alumni and chef du jour Jason Atherton occasionally skulking behind the pass at Table No1 in beautifully Brooklyn inspired boutique hotel Waterhouse at South Bund. Visit for casual dining and the modern interpretations he’s known for in London (including Pollen Street's deconstructed English Breakfast). I loved a delicate sole dish with light aromatics and gently steamed veg. It’s also, perhaps unsurprisingly, offers another English breakfast in the morning and possibly the only ‘proper’ herby English sausages you’ll find in Shanghai. Heaven for the slightly homesick on a Sunday morning!

‘Fine’ Chinese dining is somewhat harder to track down. The Whampoa Club also at Three on the Bund serves an elegant mixture of Chinese Imperial dishes and Shanghainese classics in a beautiful art deco jewelbox, We Jing Ge at the Bund Waldorf Astoria and the Family Li Imperial Cuisine off the same boulevard also offer a la carte and ‘grand dining’ set menu recipes ‘borrowed’ from the Forbidden City. Siblings Fu 1088 and Fu 1039 also deserve a mention, the pair serving traditional and high end Shanghainese (think sweet, sauce covered and fish focused) in large elegant Latinate villas near to Jing’an Temple. They are made up of a succession of private rooms and large tables so ideal for group and family dining, the preferred Chinese way.

 

Many, Many Mao

In general though, the Shanghainese don’t seem to have quite the same desire to spend big on home style foods, preferring (and I’m in absolute concurrence) to eat good at one of the many smaller provincial restaurants dotted around the city. There’s something bewildering but utterly pleasing about seeing a Porsche parked up on a non descript side road, is owner parked on a plastic stool outside a tiny hole in the wall serving the best damn take your pick in Shanghai. Now that’s cultured capitalism… I’ll cover some of those off in the next piece. 

The Green Man and French Horn - Jan 2013

Now I have to admit to being slightly inebriated when I first visited The Green Man and French Horn. It was the glorious day that Bradford City triumphed over Arsenal in the Capital One Cup. Not a day seared into most people's memories, but enough to send me into paroxysms of clappy handed joy as I watched the giant killing unfold.

In fairness, all I really needed was something to soak up a number of pints. The output from this cracking little newcomer and youngest sibling of Terroirs, Brawn and Soif, was almost certainly beyond my faculty. So good though that, while not capable of sobering me up, it did cause me to drag a non football obsessed guest back to confirm what I'd witnessed.

We're in mixed small plate territory here. Lots of lovely little ideas, pulled together with a loose thread of the Loire Valley, intended as much as anything to show off an outrageously interesting cellar.

A thick slab of pork rillette was pushed eagerly into the contents of a hearty, fresh bread basket and consumed within minutes, hearty and flavoursome. My main plate was, as it had been on the previous visit, one of the simplest dishes I've had in a long time, three beautifully buttery fat mackerel, served with butter, garlic and a spritz of lemon. The quality was superb and the simplest of touches was all they needed.

Alongside, I opted for a grassy almost cidery fresh Cabernet Franc, refreshing and unexpected. A punch in the mouth of clean flavours that it through the thickness of the pork and the fish perfectly.

Poached pear was almost unexpectedly rich after the simple fare so far and a little too sweet for me, reclining like an early Rita Hayworth in a limpid caramel pool. I couldn't stop eating till it was gone, but in hindsight I'd have snuck in another small plate.

It was only after I'd been for the first time I realised the background to the restaurant and its owners, the terroir if you will. It was obviously going to be a winner. Until that point I got to experience the sheer joy that comes with making a real find, of discovering a new restaurant that will stay in your little black book for years. The fact it's a known quality doesn't change that fact.

Cote in the City and Mishkins - The Grumbling Gourmet goes solo - Oct 2012

I've never had a problem with eating on my own, partly because I'm lardy, and partly because I think that there's something perversely romantic about solo dining. Just you, the thoughts in your head and the flavours in front of you, with no distractions. The idea of sitting at the bar in a solo reverie makes me feel more like the be-hatted guy in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks than a lonely businessman refuelling after a long day. 

I've spent amounts of time travelling for work over the last few years and so have got used to it, now sitting at a random bar has become one of the highlights of a trip, particularly when the basketball is on. 

Cote St Pauls 

Surprisingly, given my thoughts on most chain restaurants, popping into a Cote brasserie for a bite to eat at the bar isn't an issue. I don't mind the Covent Garden and Soho branches, having used both as a passible lunch or afternoon meeting spot previously. However the one in the City doesn't have a bar, just a large basement space, and a set of tables along one wall, facing out into the main restaurant and occupied entirely by single, middle aged men. Before I realised my mistake it was too late. I'd been identified as one of them and led gently to be deposited in the arctic of solo dining. 

I'm not sure who was more on show; us or the inane works party we were facing. A works party dinner on a Tuesday night, oh what fun! I won't go into detail, suffice to say that they were definitely having a wilder time than the banquette of solo diners in silent judgement opposite. 

The menu is generic brasserie, the quality matches, tonight at least. I tried first for a steak hache, before being informed "we can't serve below medium rare I'm afraid..." glad at least that they acknowledge why they're unable to serve that simplest of brasserie dishes served at anything less than a medium rare (you're not allowed to serve at less than medium rare unless it's minced on the premises...), sad because it was all I was looking for. 

In the absence of home chopped steak I went for the onglet frites, served with a garlic butter and little else. Not bad. The solo diner in me couldn't complain at a single mouthful. Sure it wasn't the best steak i've eaten in my life, but nor was it meant to be. For the price, I could definitely have done with a thicker or more substantial slab. Served with a passible fruity Pinot Noir, it wasn't a bad experience, but the atmosphere leaves something to be desired for the solo diner. 

Mishkin's in Covent Garden 

It's been a while since i've popped into Mishkins, Russell Norman's Jew(ish) Covent Garden diner. If his other sites channel Venice or Brooklyn, then Mishkins wouldn't look out of place in the Lower East Side or the up and coming bits of New Jersey. It's a little louder and a little brassier than the others, and that's not necessarily meant in a bad way.

The beautifully designed 'found' space has settled in well, though you'll struggle to see anyone in the evening gloom. It'd be the ideal place to have a central London affair. I also had a slight quibble about the pounding baselines we're put through, but I'm probably the only one. Certainly the smiling staff don't seem to have a problem hearing. I put it down to my age, grateful for their pleasantries. I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does. 

The ubiquitous tattoligan behind the bar is a friendly enough cove, more of an Eton Rifle than an Enfield Charger though. It takes guts to get a tattoo just to get a job, so one can only hope that double inked sleeves were part of a life plan prior to hearing about Russell Norman and his cheeky chain of diners. 

I started with corn dogs as good as I've had either side of the pond, beef franks encased in a grittily accurate coating of corn, served with a piquant tomato salsa. Desperately seeking carbs mid one of those weeks I went for a mac 'n' cheese to follow; a sizzling skillet full of all of the right ingredients. It's a dangerously dairy affair, ideal for two, but physically too much cheese for my British stomach. I didn't quite manage to finish it, and it was a solidly single noted affair that needed a salad or a spicy meat to loosen it up a bit. 

Other than the pumping tunes, is there any fault with the place? I have to say that the house Merlot was truly execrable, a surprise for these boys, but regardless of that, the lovely service and the comfortable food made me vow that it wouldn't be long before I sat at the bar again.

Zedel abides... 'that' perfect West End restaurant has arrived - Aug 2012

When I was a young West Ender, a posh night out ended up in the familiar confines of Joe Allen. Slightly dirtier ones usually found you gurning round a four top in Balans or playing pinball up the rickety staircase of Bar Italia. You'd gone very wrong if you wound up in Shuttleworths... I was a little young for the Atlantic, that louche, debauched bacchanal under the old Regent Palace Hotel. It's to that space that we head tonight, now home to the newly launched Brasserie Zedel.

It's not an expensive joint. And that's an understatement. Three courses for three people, coffee, wine and service clocked in at £90, phenomenal value given the quality. If this was a vanity project by new restaurateurs, you'd laugh at the prices and imaginging the rows with accountants, vowing to get as much grub down your neck as you could before they whacked the prices up. It's not though, it's the latest venture by two of the biggest restaurant thoroughbreds this country has produced, Chris Corbin and Jeremy King. If the brains behind The Wolesley and The Ivy think that this is the way the industry should price, prepare for the cutting of some prices or the sharpening of some knives...

Bright, airy, tall and gilded. Even though you're in a basement, the whole experience is like being thrust into an Art Deco inspired cruise ship for the night. You could dress up to match if you want to but if you don't really want I can't see that anyone would mind.

The menu reads like a 'Best of France - Bourgouis edition' cookbook from the 70's, in a really good way. Hefty, non sharing, mains are generally under a tenner, soups are less than three quid and other starters swirl the heady heights of a fiver. Substantial plated salads and big slabs of pâté are consumed with gusto while I chow down on escargot as garlically exotic as you remember from that first school trip to France as a 12 year old.

Steak hache is made on site, a triumphantly large patty of the trimmings from proper cuts of beef, a tartare burger if you will. It was a little too solid in the construction but really well flavoured, coming with an inclusive metal cone of proper French fries (another pet hate of expensive places, the sides that should go with the dish should NOT be added chargable extras) and lashings of pepercorn sauce for £8.75.

If the profiteroles were a tad over baked, it only served to highlight that these weren't perfectly pre-prepared, plumped generic pap but homemade and fresh from the subterranean bakery that had been responsible for an excellent (free) bread basket earlier.

Arriving in London today, you couldn't ask for a better catch all recommendation than Zedel, it's there for groups of friends, good for serious foodies glomming at the novelty value, perfect for a classy date and suitable for clients and parents without any of them thinking you're skimping.

I hate to end the review by keeping coming back to it, but i still can't understand why they're charging so little for this food. Sure it's what you'd expect to pay in a provincial French brasserie but this is a newly and expensively renovated spot on Picadilly Circus. They must really hate their accountant, or the rest of the industry...

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.

The Ten Cases - Bistrotastic - May 2012

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live, breathe and eat in London. The 10 Cases is so good it's practically a public service. Being a West End boy I've grown proficient at seeking out hidden gems in Soho and Covent Garden and The 10 Cases is a worthy addition to that list.

The dark panelled pocket-box of a bistro is appropriately named for its main draw, the rapidly rolling wine selection; 10 cases of 10 whites and 10 reds. When they're gone, they're gone. We sampled a light and jammy Chinon and a surprisingly good Austrian red. Both, like most of the list, pleasingly priced at £25-£30 and available by glass, bottle or carafe.

We were a bottle to the good before arriving and so immediately ploughed into a selection of their excellent small plates. You can go for starters and mains if you fancy, though there are generally only 3 big dishes at any one time. Excellent fresh bread (a £1.50 cover in case that kind of thing annoys) went with satisfying saucisson and was a great soaker-upper of the reminants of buttery potted crab and a surprising (to us) foie gras en cocotte.

Surprising only if you were expecting foie gras 'en croute', not having read the menu properly. Envisaging some form of baked butter pastry and forcefed liver combination, we were disappointed in the way that only the truly gluttonous could be. If you know your bistro dishes then you'd be expecting a pot full of soft poached egg in butter wrapped around a tiny lobe of perfectly cooked slab of foie. You'd be right, but you probably wouldn't remember quite how wonderful this dish can be, because if you did, you'd be eating it now. Right now. Silk cooked in butter, served with butter...

A steak hache or a tartare, those bistro stalwarts, wouldn't be a bad addition to the menu but other than that, it was pretty near perfect. The only slight fail for me was a deconstructed prawn cocktail. Fresh enough ingredients and the old skool styling delighted my guest but i didn't rate it as anything more than a dull assemblage. Thankfully we finished on an enormous pillowy chocolate mousse meant for sharers. Being one of the few desserts I have in my home cook repertoire I'm not sure it was entirely worth the £9.50 price tag, but as a bittersweet full stop to a sophisticated drinking session it was delicious.

Service was excellent and sealed the deal. The owner and his bar based sidekick made an affable team. Recommendations were spot on, knowledge of their small wine list couldn't have been better and there was an easy welcome for everyone. Despite being slap bang in the tourist centre of the West End, The 10 Cases manages to be the local bistro you'd want to have on your street corner.

   

Le Cafe Anglais - Mar 2012

There should probably be a snidey joke about eating in shopping centres somewhere here but Le Cafe Anglais is no food court cop out. Sure, it's occupied the top floor of handsome from the outside Whiteleys for five years now, but if the shopping centre trades on past glories Le Cafe Anglais resolutely doesn't.

If you'd been told that Capice Holdings or Corbin & King had a hand in the place you wouldn't be surprised (they haven't to the best of my knowledge) - it displays several hallmarks of a well designed, well run restaurant by their exacting rulebook. Attentive, individual staff; an eye for detail; simple tastes and flavours and great, great quality ingredients.

The food was simple and excellent. It breaks neither budget nor boundaries but delivers a solid performance for £30-£35 a head. From an expansive brasserie menu I went for plump, juicy if teeny tiny scallops followed by a simply grilled veal escalope. Good as it was to tuck into after a week of more challenging dining, i admit to slight food envy watching Dr Vole and the Northern Mother tuck into a perfect piece of muscly firm hake, served under a snappy salsa verde atop dense sticky lentils. Competence can be used as an indicator of the ordinary or prosaic, here it was sublime.

The dining room is grand. High windows open up the light flooding over chandeliers and sassy banquettes. Beautiful floral displays set off the crisp white linens and serried tableware. If I had to find fault here it couldn't be with the front of house look or the intelligent wait staff, though I whoever chose such an awful, artless Jackson Pollock for public transport carpet for the space needs their head examining.

Other than that godawful floor covering; if there's a fault, it can only be in the location. It's a shame someone as talented as Head Chef Rowley Leigh was forced to spend his time leaning next to the pass checking his phone and chatting to regulars rather than locked in the kitchen. Maybe the ladies who lunch do so during the week, but you won't find much better cooking at this price level and style within the area and it's a shame that on this Saturday lunch at least, it didn't have a more appreciative audience.

Andrew Edmunds - it's our little secret Part I - Oct 2011

Where: Andrew Edmunds, Lexington Street, Soho
With who: Dr Vole, who else!?
How much: Just over £50 a head for a decent wine, champagne to start and 2 and a half courses each with coffee
Come here if: this time you know it's for real...

I've got to be honest. Since starting this blog, I've been to Andrew Edmunds at least 3 times. And there's a really good reason why I haven't told you about it. Because I don't want you to know about it.

I've also avoided telling you about it in case it's not as good as I think. Like some awful parent, am I swooning over the plank-like stage performance of their progeny - convinced they're the next Olivier or Dench. Would this, my ultimate recommendation, on a site of recommendations, live up to the billing? Or would you break my heart and just see it as so-so...

After an introduction like that, I'm at risk of coming across like Greg Wallace at the prospect of an all you can eat patisserie masterclass and so I'll take a few breaths and try not to get too carried away.

Dark, cosy and romantic. It's a restaurant that wraps you up in a slightly sexy cuddle, like a beautiful older French lady wearing her lover's jumper. Imagine a ramshackle and quaint bistro, with disarmingly efficient and yet laid back staff, a wine list curated by someone with a keen eye for a bargain and fantastically fresh, unstuffy fare prepared from whatever the chef feels is best at the market that week. The menu is handwritten before being photocopied, the wine list changes weekly. Paper cloths, mis-matching furniture and spluttering wine bottle candlesticks certainly aren't contrived, but certainly won't help win them a star.

With such atmosphere, it's all we can do to stop ourselves ripping our clothes off then and there, but I didn't get the stomach I've got today by ignoring my basest food based desires at the exclusion of all others, so we dived into the menu instead. Firm fleshed smoked eel comes with beetroot chutney and horseradish cream, complex but perfectly balanced mix of sharp and milky smooth flavour and soft but crunchy texture. Dr Vole and I somewhat share her cauliflower and cumin fritters, a firm patty fried and served with a delicate raita. There's also the house special, when available, of freshly dressed crab and a solid sounding portion of goose rillette, served with a tart fruit chutney and homemade sourdough bread. 

      

The mains follow a similar rustic tack. There's nothing too challenging here, though the kitchen isn't afraid of a little nose to tail eating, when appropriate. A muscular and resolutely unthreatened hunk of fresh cod wearing a cape of herbs reclines royally on a bed of wilted spinach and tomato coated broad beans. It's not elegant, but my god does it taste good. And that's what little I managed to scavenge from under Dr Vole's watchful eyes. 

An Angus beef shepherd's pie on the lunchtime menu didn't make it as far as the evening, I was smugly informed by our waiter it had wound up as the staff lunch. A shame, as I'd had my eye on it since walking past earlier and seeing it on the board outside. Um'ing and ah'ing between a seafood paella, heaving with langoustine and shellfish, and a lamb shank I was finally able to kick the menu Tourettes and dug into one of the best bits of throwaway lamb I can remember. Sinking into a quicksand of pureed potato, it bravely clung onto a thick branch of perfectly cooked cabbage. To no avail, I drowned it in a thick gamey gravy and slowly stripped the meat from the thick bone.

Sated, though with just enough room to share a treacle tart from the trencherman's list, the end of the excellent rose Sancerre turned my thoughts to matters romantic once more. We gazed at each other over the drippy candle and sighed... deeply... There's no doubt that the mood and the food provokes, but like Macbeth's porter and his wine, while it provokes the desire its sheer volume takes away any possibility of the performance.

Reservations are only taken a week out, which is useful to know, and the upstairs is a (tiny) bit more pleasant than the seating downstairs. Just don't ask for my table, or I'll really have to kill you.

This image has been 'borrowed' from squaremeal, it's too dark to take a decent picture of the room at night and I'd never, ever use a flash, especially not somewhere this romantic!