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

 

Toast.ED - low key and casual in nappy valley - July 2013

 

A slight apology to start with. This is yet another positive review. In a long string of positive reviews. If it feels like I've mistitled the blog (I had one wag suggest it's recently been closer to the Gushing Gourmet, though that was before this week's post on 'Why I hate food markets') then I can only apologise for misleading you. If you're looking for a side of bile and vitriol with every main course, I suggest you head over to AA Gill's muscularly snarling man-spot in The Times.

I'm not going to apologise for a run of lovely meals. I'm having far too much fun for that. I mainly put it down to my restaurant radar, vastly improved over recent years, and the result of reasonable research (or so I'd hope). While it's true that a true car crash dinner (like last year's trip to Bistro De La Gare) is a source of much amusement, generally I don't like having bad meals just so I can dissect them for your pleasure, you're more than capable of doing that yourselves.

Toast.ED is a case in point. Why wouldn't I come here when everyone I know who has been has raved about it. A new kid on the block in smugly gentrified East Dulwich, it occupies the space vacated by one of my old favourites Green & Blue. Thankfully, it's got the look and feel of a welcome reboot of that friendly if haphazard local winestore and deli rather than being a wholesale makeover by another smug middle-class chain. 

It's the second weekend in a row I've arrived for one of the rickety wooden tables in the front of the store and stretched out with well brewed Allpress coffee while pondering the menu. Last week I didn't crave for anything more than soft avocado on thick toast, perked with the lightest touch of chilli and lemon juice, this week I loitered over another excellent coffee until the lunch menu came on line.

A whole, smiling mackerel arrived lounging on a thick slab of toast, begging for finger licking evisceration and a healthily Chinese attitude towards digging the plump nuggets of fresh pearly flesh from its bones. Dusted with toasted ginger (sadly a little lost in the flavour of the fish) it's a thing of simple beauty and, assuming it pops up again on a frequently changing menu, one of the nicest summer lunches I could imagine.

If that was the starring role at lunch, it came very ably supported by a simply blanched courgette, parsley and caper salad and a lovely, if slightly shy, Muscadet from the wine vats lining the walls of the cool, refreshing industrial space.

Those vats offer reasonably priced take out or drink in house style wines, a beautiful French concept we haven't really cottoned on to here. At 11-12 quid a bottle for on sales it makes a fine argument for more people doing the same. The food prices too are very reasonable, and you won't spend more than fifteen a head without a bottle of that wine, though why you wouldn't have one, I can't imagine.

 

 

Arbutus - The opposite of pop up - Mar 2012

With the current craze being for reservation free dining, unless you're actively surfing ahead of that zeitgeist or are prepared to huddle in the cold for 45 minutes minimum even for a table at 7, you'll be left wistfully wishing you'd got 'it' before Twitter did. New dining is about social support networks, and by the time you read about it in the old media, it's probably already jumped the shark.

Thankfully you don't have to try and corral your less cool friends into the latest reservation free pop up as the plethora of these has thankfully given you an excuse to revisit slightly quieter options that don't feature on the Twits radar.

Arbutus is one of these. Just off Soho Square, it's a clean contemporary dining room serving clean and contemporary seasonal Modern European food. They specialise in some of the biggest of flavours, put together with the lightest of touches. I start with a contender for best starter of the last few years; squid and mackrel 'burger'. Infinitely better than it sounds, it's an absolutely joyous hockey puck of freshest seafood that absolutely hits the back of the net for me and my Cordon Bleu trained dining guest.

If you prefer dining out to involve a bit more effort on the part of the chef than just piling good ingredients on a plate then you'll be pleased. There's a real sense of craft demonstrated here that stops short of showing off.

Chef Demetre delights in multiple incarnations of ingredients in each dish, in this case rabbit for Cordon Bleu and tripe for me. To be honest, the portion sizes got a bit messy. I know offal is cheap but I literally have four large plates to plough through. Slow cooked as an enormous cassoulet on the side is marvellous melting and soft. Topped with crisp parsley crumb, a distinctive uric tang rises with the steam. It's not that, but the portion size that defeats me in the end.

Less successful is the small plate of slightly soft chewy crackling served alongside. It's a fatty afterthought that doesn't add much to the meal and is mostly ignored. The main dish was a Marsailles style rustic dish known as Pieds-Paquets, tripe stuffed with chopped ham, garlic and herbs, rolled into little parcels and simmered for 6-7 hours. Just when I thought I was done, a final meaty flourish gave me a toast topper of fine chopped garlicky tripe. Superb, but I had meat coming out of my ears.

By contrast Cordon Bleu's shoulder pie and saddle of rabbit were positively Lilliputian. They seemed to go down well, he was scraping the tiny Staubb receptacle clean while I was still ploughing gamely on. It's a good thing he talks more than I do...

Their set lunch is one of the best business dining options in Soho and at £50 a head including a decent bottle of something ertzatz and Italian, dinner doesn't need to break the bank. In a pleasantly surprising touch, a cheaper bottle is recommended when our first choice isn't available, I only wish more restaurants would dare to do this. Another nice touch at the three restaurants in the group is the vast number of wines available by the carafe.

Arbutus may not have the blistering white hot buzz of nearby transient neighbours, but it sure as hell competes on quality. Take advantage of the fact that everyone is currently queuing outside somewhere else.

on.com/b/link/560500/biglink.gif" style="border:none;width:200px;height:146px" />

Magdalen - Nov 2011

Where: Magdalen, Bermondsey
With who: Dr Vole and Northern Mother
How much: £20 a head without drink or service for 2 courses, £25 for two.
Come here if: you need a good local and you just can't face trekking to Andrew Edmunds.
 
I have a spectacular, cat in a bath shaped aversion to being that guy eating at the only table in a large unwelcoming restaurant. There's the sense of paranoia that comes with the assumption that everyone knows better than you, the sneaking doubt that the food can't, just can't, be any good and a wild flight of fantasy connected with the possible contamination from the tears of the chef / owner / investor peering out from the little door in the kitchen hoping against all hope that you're actually going to morph into a party of thirteen.

I mention it as heading towards an early dinner table at Magdalen, I had exactly those thoughts. After all, it's stuck in the trafficblown hinterland between London Bridge and Tower Bridge, handy for absolutely nothing, and just that bit too far away from Bermondsey Street to get much passing trade.

I really shouldn't have worried. On a misty, misserly autumn evening full of threatened drizzle and pavement leaf crunch the Magdalen engulfs you like that warm cozy welcoming local pub you know you can't have because you live in London.

Warm walls in deepest goulash line the handsome old boozer, now a fully functioning restaurant. The front bar hosts sofas for hopeful walk up and could possibly function as a working local pub, if mine smelt as nice as this though I'd never leave. The back room and the upstairs are table filled. White paper cloth and excellent lighting brighten the space.

Dr Vole started with a superb cauliflower soup. Admittedly it had more butter and cream pumped through it than strictly necessary but that worked wonders for both richness and texture... Nutty ribsticking goodness, the surface studded with roast garlic and tiny florets of cauli rested on a thick slick of autumnal comfort.

I went for a dish of fried calves brain with a mustardy, egg mayonaisey gribeche as much because I've never seen it on a menu before. It was challenging, more for the concept than the texture or flavour. Barely discernable lobes came as three breadcrumb fried patties, had it not been for the menu I might have been eating a subtly flavoured soft cheese, foie gras-like in texture. A little bland and pappy, the herby mayonnaise gave it a necessary bite, but I could have done with smaller patties, and a higher concentration of breadcrumb. The voice in my head proved a slight distraction, like having someone remind you about stillborn chicken embryos mid boiled egg.

   Mains were mostly meaty, other than a student standby potato and cheese pie in a puff pastry, saved from sanctimoniousness by deleriously good Ardrahan cheese oozing healthily through and a side salad of refreshingly different dandilion.
 
I flatly refused to share any of my beef cheek. Braised for what tasted like days in a girolle and onion reduction, sweet and tender meaty puck nestled in a smooth Jerusalem artichoke puree. The only complaint was on the texture, the meat fell apart when you showed it a fork and the whole thing, delicious as it tasted, was smoother than Justin Beiber's PR machine.

By now flushed with an excellent house red and coming close to satiation. Quince crumble, a pear and almond tart and other desserts were sadly a little too wintry to tempt. They do however have some excellent salted caramel chocolates that slid down perfectly with coffee.

Overall, Magdalen is a great example of the perfect local restaurant. Friendly service, faultless cooking of good ingredients and the feel good equivalent of a laugh with a great mate, it's certainly somewhere I'll be back to again and again.

   

Elliot's Cafe in Borough Market or why I live in London - Sept 2011

Over time I've become increasingly disaffected with Borough Market. The corporate creep and commoditisation that all but wiped Spitalfields out hasn't quite managed to destroy Borough in the same way, but building works, a huge influx of camera touting tourists who sample everything but buy nothing and a management team who seem determined to get rid of all of their best tenants (you can read the sorry saga online here) are coming close. It's got to a point now where I'm loathe to recommend it as a location, unless you're going very early or have never been to London before.

One of the gloomiest encroachments for me in recent years has been that of the restaurants around the side. I'm never going to complain about places like Brindesa that put the place on the gastro map, though the likes of Black and Blue, with it's anaemic, badly cooked cow feel grossly out of place butting up against the likes of the Ginger Pig.


I'm partly painting a desperate picture for effect. It's not all bad. There's life in the old place yet. For every story mourning the loss of yet another old faithful stall or an angry article about the pricing or the tourists there are some sparks still. On a sun drenched Friday early morning the cobbled street is filled with local office workers grabbing refined caffeine from Monmouth, the cold air from Neal Street Dairy sends a waft of Stichleton up your nose, and you think that this is how London ought to be.


New opening Elliot's Cafe feels both late to the party and like it's been here for ever. On said Friday morning, I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be. Bare brick, stripped Scandinavian aesthetic with a shared table groaning with some of the most sensational fresh baked pastries, fresh coffee smell and the buzz of a local community descending on a new spot. I pull a seat by the full height windows, sun streaming over my table as I open the paper prior to the arrival of my boss. I can't imagine ever sharing it with the tourists on a Saturday, but for this moment, it's all mine, it's all fresh and new and it's very, very good. 

   

I could no doubt eulogise about the coffee, but if you care where it comes from, you already know more than I do. It's hot, fresh and tasty. The same goes for those pastries (we take some back to the office for later) and a simple but truly perfect Eggs Florentine, yolks the colour of Spanish sunshine, spinach hours out of the ground, both served on the fresh sourdough they bake on the premises. Even a bitter old cynic like me can't help but be slightly inspired by the wonder of mornings like this - It's why I live in London. 

The Corner Room at Bethnal Green Town Hall - July 2011

Sometimes getting to the place is half the fun... Nuno Mendez (he of Viajante and the Loft Project) brings you The Corner Room. A proper unmarked, no entrance, n information New York speakeasy of a restaurant hidden in a boutique hotel in Bethnal Green. Finding it is like playing hipster hide and seek.

When you eventually guide your way through the too cool for signage, Wallpaper* fetishising hotel front of house that hosts the chic little bistro and breakfast room (if you can even guess the name of the hotel I'll be impressed) you arrive, weary and a little fecked off from the effort in a dainty white, light, tiled space, carved out of the surrounding institutional marble like a Habitat styled hobbit hole. Despite the eulogising that surrounds stablemate Viajante, the Corner Room is currently unmarked territory, certainly we had no problems with a 2 for 7, but it did fill rapidly and there's no booking. Get there early because let's face it, you're unlikely to be just passing.

Starters come in around £6 and most mains are £12. Seasonal and interesting, a baby brother of the more studied El Bulli school influenced food artistry next door, I could have gone for any combination. You'll have to pop in and check the menu as they've got no phone number and no details on the website. I eyed up a wonderful dish of heritage (read weird coloured and shaped) tomatoes with mozzarella and what looked unseasonably like asparagus (caveat, was paying attention to my companion's conversation, may not have been asparagus)

Judging by some of the more rabidly positive comments posted online already, one of the house hits looks to be a wonderfully balanced squid dish, meltingly tender tubes served with Jersey Royal potatoes, seaweed and samphire sitting on a slick of squid ink and a glorious fennel infused oil. It makes the other starter, a ceviche of stone bass, seem slightly muted. A good wedge of firm white fish, but none of the scattered oils and 'erbs really cut through with any conviction.

It was a main of two halves too (slightly). Turbot poached with artichoke and pancetta was pleasant enough, it didn't set my world alight, but anywhere else would have been a solid thumbs up. Next to a slow cooked and pink centred lozenge of pork served with a Portuguese bread pudding it very much drifted into second place. The herby sponge is baked with red pepper before being fried in butter, a crisp fluffy smack of taste against the soft pork flesh.

We didn't have time for any of the desserts available for a fiver at the bottom of the menu but did sample an excellent grassy fresh Portugeuse Vinho Verde from a short but functional wine list with prices hovering around the late 20's. It feels a lot like Angela Hartnett's, similarly excellent, Whitechapel Gallery Dining Rooms, itself a diffusion range from a chart topping talent capable of filling the intimate space many times over. If I lived close enough to either, I'd be there weekly.

Tweet