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.
  

 
 

A Wong, Victoria - An interesting addition to London's Chinese restaurant scene - Feb 2013

The feng shui inside might be stunning but it's difficult to imagine many less auspicious locations in zone 1. A Wong sits like a slightly out of place squat granite and glass monolith among the mediocre lunchtime options and sandwich chains of Wilton Road. Laid back decor inside, a clean mix of Scandinavian woodwork and soft straight stone lines.

There are three menus, a lighter dim sum focussed lunch menu, a more substantial evening list and a tasting menu spanning the both. They all dip in and out of a range of regional specialisms, so Sichuan standards like Gong Bao chicken and dry fried beans rub noses with braised lettuce, Imperial dishes and Yangzhou fried rice.

Prices are reasonable across the board, though at £1.50 a piece the dim sum will mount up pretty quickly. It isn't the place for a weekend blow out, but then you're unlikely to see many people round here during the weekend other than the confused tourists disembarking from Victoria station. Of particular note is the express menu, with two courses, a drink (and two lovely salted caramel petits fours) for a very reasonable £12.95.

A trio of dim sum wouldn't usually come close to satisfying me, even as a starter, but these are monsters. That classic shrimp har gau, here at least half again as big as the tiddlers I'm used to in Chinatown, came with an innovative twist, a protective bubble coat of sharp citrus and yuzu foam. That other stalwart pork and prawn siu mai came with its own welcome innovation, a tiny sliver of puffed pork crackling, texturally complimenting the freshly steamed and freshly made parcel. A grease free and delightfully crispy pork wonton completed the set, as delightful a dim sum experience as I've had in this country.

Of the four or so mains offered with the express menu, I went for Sichuanese speciality dan dan mian, or peddler's noodles, named after the distinctive cooking pots they were served from by wandering street sellers. Whenever I've had it before, the soft minced beef, seasoned with those numbing Sichuan peppercorns, mixed with chunks of chilli, veggies and noodles has come in a spicy broth made of noodle water, Shaoshing rice wine and stock. Here it comes, with a few beansprouts and a single vegetable, in a thick meaty gravy, dumped over pedestrian noodles. Not unpleasant per se, but unexpectedly dry, overly rich and not much to my taste.

I'll be back, if not for the tasting menu, certainly for a more detailed examination of the evening menu and some more of that super sized dim sum. The sun was out, and the open plan airy space will be gorgeous come the summer. Let's hope that the locals can tear themselves away from Nando's and the infinitely inferior Dim T just up the road and support the new kid on the block.

  

Regency Cafe - Feb 2012

Sometimes only a fry will satisfy... 

The Regent Cafe is what people think of when they imagine a 'proper greasy spoon'. Decent priced, decent grub for the hard working men and women of the post war years. Formica tables, gingham curtains, a rattling coffe machine and cabbies sucking up industrial strength cups of tea. OK it's 50 years on now, but the Regent hasn't seemingly changed much from that socialist post war ideal, albeit that the brickie can't have a smoke after his ham, eggs, fried slice and the cabbie squeezes in amid more monied Pimlico residents and trendy Asian tourists (the latter location spotting from photoshoots in Japanese Vogue and appearances in Brighton Rock.) 

A full breakfast with tea, toast, extra hash browns and black pudding comes to a princely £6.80. You'll struggle to finish it, even if you have just come off a building site. Plump properly porky sausages, decent (if slightly too salty) bacon and bright yellow eggs belie the low price.

Hunan - a proper Chinese feast - Feb 2012

China's ascendancy as a global power over recent years has done much to force and foster understanding of a massively diverse culture. Western diners have realised that there isn't just 'Chinese' food, in the same way as there isn't just 'European' food. Across the continent, there are tens and hundreds of regional variations in cooking style and ingredients, these are often broken down into 8 or so key cuisines and those further categorised into four very broad and general groups; Northern (Lu or Shangdong), Southern (Cantonese predominently), Western (Sichuan and Hunan both fall here) and Eastern (Yang or Huiyang after one of the main regions).

The problem you have with trying to categorise such diverse cuisines together is that obviously, and wonderfully, they just don't want to fit into your neat boxes. I love the idea of the four cuisines on a stage like a boy band; Sichuan, as the 'kerazee' Robbie Williams is spicy, punky and unpredictable, Cantonese Gary Barlow, gloopy and ubiquitous, for many years the only one that you'd find anywhere. Prissy Mark might match Huiyang, meticulously turned out, perfectly prepared and delicately flavoured, leaving Jason or Howard to stand in for Shandong's background soups, seafoods and, um, harmonising melodies. 

Going by this broad categorisation, you might worry that setting up a Hunanese restaurant round here would be like throwing an ultra spicy tattooed powerhouse into the refined part of Pimlico that sits just off Sloane Square and forcing them to hang out with bankers, diplomats or the wives and mothers of such. It's not ideal. 

Thankfully the joys of a generalisation (and particularly of my very stretchy analogy) are that you have plenty of room to work. Hunanese food is not the same as Sichuan. Not close. Despite the categorisation, the spice, where it is used, comes from the vinegary sour of pickle and ferment and not the numbing heat of the pepper. This doesn't mean that it's not hot at times, but the gulf in style is substantial. 

As well as the differing cuisine styles, there is a different ethos to Chinese dining. In several of the cuisines, emphasis is given to the structure and composition of the meal you are eating. Individual dishes shared by the party might be individually underpowered to give harmonising notes or emphasise other elements of the dishes but by and large, you are tasting a whole orchestra, not eating a cellist. 

It's in this last that Hunan's individuality comes out. Many Chinese restaurants will offer a group set menu intended to give an array of flavours. Hunan has nothing but a set menu. You pays your money and the orchestra plays. Solicitous staff check that you're not allergic or alarmed by any of the ingredients in the menu and from there you have a two hour roll through 18 or so courses. As most were no more than a bite, this was nowhere near as much as it sounds. 


The problem for me is that nothing really stood out. I remember a couple of interesting dishes; a brown sauce soused beef tripe was uric and hearty, prawns, featured often, excelled when combined with a thick herby stuffing and crispy, salty, garlic and chilli green beans with a light tempura batter were excellent, a Dr Jekyll to its firey Sichuan brother. Other than those, I remember little, even on reviewing the menu two days later. I know what I ate was pleasant, we left nothing and murmured assent often, but the abiding memory was of background and filler. The orchestra were competent, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you what the soloists were like.The staff were multitudinal and solicitous, the ground floor terraced room narrow and cozy and despite the toilet facilities being a little more Chinatown than Sloane Square it's difficult to pick holes with the set up. A good spot for a business dinner or lunch and a fairly good call for a classy date, just go for the light chamber orchestra and don't expect Robbie Williams to show up.

Further reading on Chinese cuisine: 

http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com/

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2011-02/04/content_11957644.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_cuisine#Traditional_Four_Schools_classifications

http://redcook.net/2008/02/27/the-four-unique-schools-of-chinese-cooking/

All Thai'ed Up... Sept 2011

On bad Thai puns - This was going to be 'Tale of Two Ci-Thais' with the opening line of "It was the best of Thai's, it was the worst of Thai's..." I then had a creative disagreement with Dr Vole. She thought Suits and Thai would have worked better, but shouldn't a day in which I'd ended up eating Thai twice not be a excuse for a Dickensian pun or two? I stood my ground for a bit and then she came over the top with the title of All Thai'ed Up, appropriately enough for a day of prior engagements...


Anyway, we'd had a Thai dinner date that had been pre-arranged, then I found I had to take some clients out for a Thai lunch and so dear reader, I ate them both...


Mango Tree - Victoria

   
The venerable Mango Tree came first. It's a popular one with our guests who work locally and one of few decent, reasonably affordable options in Victoria. That being said, a two course business lunch with soft drinks and water only still came in at £40 a head. It's a relatively soulless barn of a space under a large hotel / office building, light and bright enough on the sunniest day of the year but little ambience delivered by the large plate glass windows staring out on the traffic choked Grosvenor Place. The decor feels a little scuffed and tired round the edges these days, and the confusing, tatty menu piles three special menus on top of the banqueting options on top of the a la carte. The £17 set lunch needs to be asked for separately however.


I went for two from their seasonal Street Food Festival menu, unsure of what this was linked to but the options looked interesting enough. Kai Nok-krata Tord or Quail egg Wanton was a bit of a one trick pony. Pleasant enough, though a little cloying after a while, the portion containing six of the little orbs, hard boiled and fried in wanton skin, my anaemic chilli sauce had me eying a neighbours satay avariciously. The satay and associated chicken skewers were pronounced quite as good as anything my colleague had eaten recently in Thailand.


My main was more interesting, deep-fried sea bass with a mango salad. The former came a touch over-fried for my taste, the accompanying chewy mouthfeel tasty for sure, but killed the sea bass a little. The green mango salad worked alongside, a cooling mix of crunchy matchsticks contrasting with the heat of the fish. Elsewhere they didn't seem to compromise on flavour for pedestrian local taste buds either. Other dishes receiving plaudits round the table included a robust Massaman Lamb Shank curry, thick, creamy and almost aggressively spiced with the soft lamb falling off the bone.   

      

Wines are fairly punchy in their ambition. I'm not sure I'd waste a premier Bordeaux on such spicy fare but if you would, then they're all here and priced as you'd expect. There's plenty around the £18 - £30 mark too though the professional workers (or those with bosses) weren't able to imbibe.


Overall, it's difficult to fault the food that we had, though I might chose differently next time. Big portions of fresh and authentic, well spiced Thai banqueting specialities. But you'll pay handsomely for the privilege and if not stuck in Victoria with no escape I wouldn't necessarily travel for it. The ambience, decor and tightly packed tables rule out romantic rendezvous too. If you're craving expensive Thai in Victoria, Michelin starred Nahm on West Halkin Street is also worth a thought.




@Siam - Soho

   
Getting my eating boots back on a few hours later, we headed out into a Soho night and a Thursday crowded night. You can't miss the throb on Frith Street with crowds outside The Arts, Barrafina and Moolis merging in the quiet road. If it's dispiriting to open a restaurant next door to Koya you can't tell from @Siam's smiley staff. The smashingly simple Japanese noodle bar has achieved Rolling Stones popularity, as evidenced with a queue that stretches down the block.


Inside @Siam is clean, appropriate and fairly generic. Other than the smiling staff smartly dressed in their matching monikered black and tartan shirts you could be in Soho Thai, Thai Square or any of the other small chains.


There's the whiff of 'new' around the operation (appropriately so, as it is) and so a few bits around us don't quite work. There are people waiting for their bill, others being given wrong courses, but it's all dealt with so well by those happy staff that you don't notice anyone caring too much. Perhaps as they get busier they'll tighten up, but there are plenty of places in Soho that have built a reputation on being cheerfully shambolic (Balans, I'm particularly looking at you here).


My starter of prawns in a breadcrumb batter on a bed of iceberg wasn't the greatest of starts. The Thousand Island-style mayo drizzled over the top didn't add much and the flaccid prawns didn't dazzle either. Dr Vole's chicken satay was much better (why I should occasionally order what I want to eat, rather than what looks most exciting on the menu) with soft and moist char grilled chook and a poppy homemade satay sauce.


The main was a house special of Weeping Tiger, soy marinaded thin slices of beef steak served with a great little dipping sauce of deepest sour and sweet. If I were being picky, I'd say it had rested a little too long and was cut a little too thick, but it was simple food done well. A mineral crisp, almost sharp Gavi de Gavi went well with the meal, one of the stars on a smallish list.

    

I'm a fan of Thai food generally. As opposed to some of it's South East Asian neighbours, there's a good mix of fried and chilli and interesting textures without the challenging 'mouthfeel' of some of the more robust regional cuisines. Spicy Pad Thai or a good homemade Green Curry is a blast of pleasure when cooked at home in the evening, but I always go for something I can't do myself when I'm out and too often end up disappointed.

Caveat: The meal at @Siam was comped and offered to me through the PR company. As I will rarely turn down a meal - much less a free one - I have been happy to accept a couple of these, going incognito and reveal myself (with a letter, calm down at the back) at the end of the meal. 

Rodizio Preto - Feb 2011

Where: Rodizio Preto, Wilton Street, Victoria

How much: £15 for access to hot and cold buffets and £20 a head for the full meaty menu

Come here if: you're organising a big party for carnivores who don't take themselves too seriously.

No matter how hard I think about it, I just can't force myself to really recommend Rodizio Preto to you. It's trying so hard (and succeeding) on so many levels, but the whole just didn't quite work. I knew it was too good to be true when, scanning around for somewhere to take the Radio Star for a (very) belated Christmas dinner, I came cross Victoria's very own all you can eat Brazilian meat buffet... So many reasons why that sentence should make sense. 

The restaurant themes itself as a Churrascaria, a Brazilian BBQ restaurant. After filling your plate with hot and cold Brazilian starters and sides (don't get too much.. seriously) you sit back and wait for the Passadores to arrive. Translating essentially as meat waiters, they bring large skewers to your table, carving off hunks of animal to order. 

It's a modern but undistinguished Latin American cafe style place focussed around that large buffet counter. Think 3* hotel breakfast room in the Algarve with canned Portuguese pop pumping out of the TV on the wall and you won't go far wrong. But you're not here for the look, you're here for the meaty experience. Friendly staff give you a card to place on your table that you swivel between 'Sin' and 'Nao' depending on your need for meat. They ignore it mostly, piling delectable cut on top of cut. Feel free to turn them down early on, I looked away from my plate for a second and returned to 4 or 5 lumps of cow. It's a marathon, not a sprint...

The skewers work, really well in the main, though miss hits come with a chicken sausage, too doughy for all of us, and a too tough fillet steak wrapped in bacon (what? Why!?). Other than that, chicken thigh takes the cooking process well, caramelised, crackling skin protecting the tender flesh, but as you'd expect, the real highlights are the slivers of steak, three or four different cuts or twists, served mainly rare and oozing with taste. The umami notes in the charred edges of the steak are heady and superbly flavoursome, tastebombs in your mouth to be savoured. Pork loin is another winner, unctuous porky fat delivering a whallop of taste. I'd recommend taking a thick piece of the beef shoulder too. It's a fatty cut, but takes to the churrasco grill superbly, fat rendering into moist flavour.

The salad bar disappointed a little. It's 'traditional', if you use traditional as a euphemism for cheaply prepared, fairly bland food you don't recognise. Hot sides consisted of rock solid cheese 'puffs', insipid and tasteless polenta cubes, onion rings and little breaded torpedos of deepfried plantain. The cold options were either mayonnaise based cubed veg, rice, or selections of random veg. As I say, keep it tight and leave room for the cow. Have a salad for lunch if you're worried about the state of your waistline.

La Tasca - Sept 2010

Where: La Tasca, Victoria

With who: The Vole
How much: Tapas between £4 and £7 each. We spent £25 a head with one glass of wine each.

Fuck. It's Friday night, and I'm in a faux Spanglish restaurant, surrounded by other chain 'fun' (hello Zizzis, Nandos Ha Ha and Wagammama) in a new build shopping centre. I could be in Swindon, or Croydon, or Basildon or any other wrist slittingly dull commuter belt town in the South East of England.

But it's not. And I'm not. I'm in Victoria, self styled restaurant desert of London. Whether the rents are too high for all but chain joints or whether, like sedated battery farmed animals, the locals ignore the delights just over their doorstep and simply take what they're given.

I'm not, despite the Vole's beliefs, anti-chain restaurant (or Victoria for that matter) but I am anti mediocre food served sloppily for the sole intent of making money. And that's the deal here.

It's 'authentic' in La Tasca... In a pints of lager, sanitised flavours and faux memorabilia from the old country kind of way. Terracotta features heavily, I'm sure I saw a sombrero. Your 70's parents may have been impressed, but even the Vue Cinema going families that this chain is squarely aimed at know better these days don't they? They feature Manchego cheese in the meat section of the menu, a real lack of care about product demonstrated from the top down. A sales card on the table exhorts us to come and celebrate Spain day with them (3 weeks late to tie in with an end of the month promo they run for the local worker drones), I'd rather join Dali.

Bland, almost floury olives arrived with a soft tasteless baguette and stayed on the table throughout the meal, dessert and coffee, forlornly ignored by me and the servers.

Ham croquettes were school dinner-like. Cheesy lumps of mashed potato in a fried til crunchy carapace. The same aoli that slightly redeemed them was also found on the one relatively decent dish, small goujons of indeterminate white fish, moist and flaky in a fresh dry batter. Roast aubergine was greasily anonymous and (possibly in embarrasment) hid under a slick of cheap mozzarella. Patatas Bravas were similarly muted. My real standout came with King Prawns in chilli and garlic infused oil. Five sorry looking specimens arrived swimming in an 'authentic' terracotta serving dish. The oil was a full inch deep and judging by the lukewarm temperature, hadn't even been used to cook the cringeworthy crustacea. I wasn't sure whether to use the bread to mop it up, or save it for an engine change.

A lemon cheesecake and an apple merangue pie arrived (just after the coffee, really? Before dessert? Don't you look at what's on the table?). Both came with identical lattice plate decoration writ large and sugary in a Mr Whippy Raspberry Sauce pen. The Vole declared herself satisfied, I suspect she may just have been feeling contrary. I took my fast developing stomach upset home and dreamed of Dehesa and Meson Don Felipe.