Right, I know everyone is bored of talk about burgers. Hell, I know that I am. But the truth is, I was just a little bit excited when I heard Five Guys and Shake Shack were both London bound. Two American heavy weights, ready to duke it out on the streets of Covent Garden, one I had heard little of, the other, responsible for one of my food eureka moments. It was going to be pretty interesting how these emotions translated into foodie fact.
My very own Five Guys hat. Scant reward for rude staff and a ridiculous queuing system.
Move over "Dude Food", Modern British seems to be taking over the London restaurant landscape. With a glut of chefs seemingly moving on from the old school British institutions such as the Ivy and St John, we see them trying to reinvent themselves and embrace what they love most. This can only be a good thing. At Bird, an ex Soho House alumni, expect the best of British produce updated in it's elegant upstairs dining room.
One of my favourite places in London is the Granville arcade, better known as Brixton Market, leading into the hotbed of great little food restaurants, Brixton Village. I have spent many hours wandering these hallways trying bites of food at the many food stalls lining the arcade, generally getting lost in the feeding frenzy as others swarm around you with similar ideas. This group of restaurateurs continues to grow, and one of the newer additions is Salon, a small dining room located above Cannon & Cannon (a British deli) cooking up food with a very fresh and mostly British focus.
When it comes to keeping me happy, I'm pretty easy. Throw me some gadgets, feed me some food and I'm as happy as a pig in muck. When the PR for Windows Phone came knocking asking if I wanted to play with their new phone and eat at the not-yet-open Social Eating House, I jumped at the chance. I've been on iPhone since the beginning but have been seriously been considering a move away to the newer, more innovative platforms. As for Social Eating House, it's basically yet another brasserie with a British twist, but it is the newest opening from Jason Atherton so always worth checking out.
Before we start, I'm going to lay it out there, I am NOT a ramen expert just a man who has eaten and loved a lot of noodles in his life and can consider myself a noodle fan. Over the last 6 months, London has seen a sudden influx of ramen bars with a focus on the noodle soup, as opposed to relegating this to just another item on the menu. If you aren't acquainted, it is a combination of noodles, rich broth and an array of toppings normally and can be the most wonderful of dishes when executed perfectly. Here is my rundown of three of the Londons finest:
Bone Daddies Ramen Bar
I guess you can say that Bonedaddies isn't your average ramen bar. Pumping out rock and roll (at a very acceptable decible level), it's all high tables, stools and shared dining space. The menu itself consists of eight variations, with two core broth varieties, pork and chicken. I've gone through most of the menu here and I normally opt for the Soy Ramen with some add ons (the chashu pork is delicious, but two meat ramen is always better than one meat).
The London restaurant scene is growing up at an alarming rate, but even with these new openings every week, I find it hard to be drawn in by many of them. You have the burgeoning junk food scene, for example. Let's not try to tart it up as anything else, it's simply delicious filthy food like burgers, hot dogs and fried chicken but not really something I can cope with eating every day. You have the new wave of brasseries, which have strangely ballooned over the last few months (do we really need more than a few brasserie places?). Sadly, I find these astonishingly dull in principle. You have the new wave, trying to put their own stamp on their food, but normally only either offering expensive tasting menus or bar food.
It seems there is no stopping the American invasion. It's been a juggernaut since last year where parts of the London restaurant scene are starting to resemble New York, from Wolfgang Puck (Cut) and Serge Becker (La Bodega Negra) who opened last year to Keith McNally (Balthazar) and Brendan Sodikoff of the Electric Diner who have been more recent additions. Whisper it, we still have David Meyer and his Shake Shack looming over Covent Garden in the very near future.
Chinatown holds a lot of fond memories for me. When I first moved to London, I remember the Sunday trips my family and I used to make. Dim Sum at New World and the weekly shop for ingredients at either New Loon Moon or Loon Fung supermarkets (both institutions in their own right), with a special treat of haw flakes or boxes of weird biscuits containing mini robots if we behaved ourselves. For an 8 year old child, weekends built up to these days.
As an adult, I wrote my dissertation on Chinatown, documenting the shift from being a cultural center for the London Chinese to a tourist center for the London tourists. I even worked on Wardour st to fund my university days, popping into Wong Kei for cheeky roast meats on rice. You could say I'm quite connected. Over the years, Chinatown has changed a lot, with premises seemingly changing names as often and inevitable as the seasons. One of the few constants has been HK Diner, an institution on Wardour Street, packed equally with local young Chinese students and the older generation alike.
Serving strictly Cantonese food, I hurtled in with a few of my friends and was lucky enough to stroll straight to a table. Navigating the menu in any Cantonese restaurant can often be a minefield, faced with a myriad of choices all sounding a little like the last. Playing it safe, I palmed off ordering duties to my friend who is a little more versed in Cantonese food than I am and awaited the impending feast.
There must be some sort of unwritten three point code of conduct within the restaurants of Chinatown:
Surly staff
All the food will turn up when it's ready
It's not going to break the bank
'Tick" point one. Although the staff weren't rude unlike some of it's neighbours, they took our order without so much as an upward glance. Rushing about the tables, there is an air of efficiency with a whiff of sterility. This is not a place where you are expected to hang around. All being said, the food arrived quickly and certainly lived up to it's reputation.
First up was some jellyfish. Most people who have never eaten jellyfish may balk at the idea of chowing down on jellyfish but it's really more of a texture than a flavour. Think a soft rubber band often doused in sesame oil. Still probably not sounding that appealing, but I am rather fond of it, it's well worth a try and the version at HK Diner had a hint of sweet chilli to it which wasn't displeasing.
Hot on the heels of the jellyfish came the beef ho fun. Flat noodles, slices of beef and bean sprouts cooked in a really hot wok. Simplicity itself, but it's the heat of the industrial wok which seems to reach ridiculous temperatures and impart that deep smoky flavour which really makes the dish.
I'm not really all that fond of tofu. It's bland and the texture is so soft that I rarely see the addition of tofu adding anything to most dishes. On the other hand, stuff it with mince pork and then frying it just about makes it palatable. Dousing it in a garlic and oyster heavy sauce and it becomes a joy.
I find it hard to resist ordering some roast meats the second I venture into the borders of Chinatown, so an obligatory portion of roast duck was up next. Roast Duck, roast pork and rice was my go to comfort food when I started writing this blog and it's been a while since I rated a new contender. This one was pretty decent and served without bones if requested, something I am fond of.
Pea shoots are probably the most expensive of the veggies available, but there's something about that tender stem vegetable stir fried in a little garlic which I just can't resist. I do get horrified at the cost of vegetables in Chinese restaurants (this one weighed in at about £7 a portion) but it's well worth an order for it's delicate flavour and texture.
Pork belly and preserved cabbage is one of those more traditional Cantonese dishes and is packed with flavour. This generous portion is packed with sauce you just want to smother all over your rice, the preserved cabbage adding a pleasing sourness which helps cut through the rich pork fat of the belly. Moreish.
Last but not least, a wobbly comforting steamed egg. Combining standard eggs, century eggs (which are dark in colour and add a slightly chalkier texture) and salted egg yolks, this is simply steamed and served with a bit of soy. The subtle contrast in textures of the egg, combined with the bursts of flavour from the salted egg yolks combine to form an incredibly satisfying and comforting dish.
HK Diner is one of the few restaurants which seems to have stood the test of time. It isn't going to win any awards for it's food, but it's decent and enjoyable and for around £20 a head, you can eat enough food to fill you beyond capacity (tick list point 3).
*This post was sponsored by Cox and Kings as part of their Chinatown review challenge. Check them out, they put together some pretty great holidays to China amongst other places*
Being sick doesn't half know how to put a dampener on things. Snivelling, coughing, sneezing, complaining that my throat hurts ALL the time. But these are not the worst thing about being ill, not even close. It's the lack of appetite, an idea so alien to me that it took a virus to remind me how utterly depressing not wanting to eat is.
So that is why there is no week 3, it was pretty much a write off with one highlight, a dinner at the Old Quality Chop House. After a few drinks at the new Four Roses popup bar under the Zetter Townhouse (up there with my favourite bars in London), I headed with the venerable Gin Monkey for some food to mop up the bourbon.
I wasn't really sure what to expect, its previous incarnation was a restaurant selling meatballs which I previously hadn't heard particular great things about. This version seems to have strong British and Italian influences. Sharing a plate of charcuterie to start set the whole meal off on a good footing. Delicious cured meats, but hardly genius cooking. Morcilla and apple sauce may not have been the prettiest thing to look at but was also extremely moreish, with the apple compote not too sweet and breaking up the richness of that blood sausage perfectly.
Where the Quality Chop house really came into it's element was the meat. The longhorn fillet may not have been cheap, but was cooked to medium rare perfection. Served with watercress, nuggets of bone marrow and a pickled walnut, each mouthful was a joy. Even the nuggets of bone marrow that I have never been that fond of injected that little depth of beefy flavour. The Quality Chop house is a great place, and even though we only ate in the bar area, I look forward to going back to try out their ever changing set menu in the dining room.
So, the on-set of sickness hit and I managed to miss two eagerly anticipated meals. One was a leaving party at the institution that is Tayyabs (if you ever need some fantastic curries and grilled meats, this is the place) and the launch of Melba (a new platform to find and eat at some of Londons supperclubs). Thankfully come Sunday, I had managed to get take a break from generally feeling crap to spend Chinese New Year with my family.
Every year, we end up at the same restaurant, Mandarin Kitchen in Bayswater. Our family have been coming here regularly over the last 20 years and I think you would struggle to find a better version of lobster noodles or aromatic duck in London. Some of the other things it does well here are their deep fried baby squid (packed with chilli and garlic, and one of my favourite things in London), their dry fried chicken, chilli and onion dish, and maybe best of all, their off the menu truffle, mushroom and tofu special, which is indeed very special. Rounding off all the food, the traditional Yee Sang, a raw salmon and jellyfish salad with all sorts of other bits and pieces, flung into the air by all at the table and cheered with gusto to see in the year of the Black Water Snake.
Mandarin Kitchen - 4-16 Queensway, Paddington, London W2 3RX
One of the best burgers you're going to find in London can be found at Lucky Chip, a successful convert from mobile burger shack to bricks and mortar. From Netil Market to a semi-perm residency at the Sebright Arms in Hackney, you can gorge on fries in many guises (truffle oil, cheese, chilli, all of the above, not forgetting the wasabi and ginger mayo version) and burgers named after movie stars. The special on the night, a Danny Trejo, was a punchy mix of jalapeno, bacon and sour cream amongst other things, and will set you back just under a tenner. I would go as far to say as Lucky Chip are currently best in class and unmissable if you love burgers.
Carrying on the Chinese New Year celebrations, a feast at Goldmine with friends. Located in the heart of Londons 2nd Chinatown (the Bayswater/Queensway area is awash with great Chinese restaurants), we feasted on all sorts of great Cantonese fare. Steamed egg three ways was a new dish on me, and a perfect banqueting dish. Best of all is their roast duck, a "signature" dish of so many Cantonese restaurants. Here, the meat is moist, tender and roasted to perfection. Rumour has it that students heading back to the East come here to take some duck home then, vac packed on site. If that isn't endorsement enough, I'm not sure what is.
Goldmine - 102 Queensway, Paddington, London W2 3RR
So there it is, a fortnight punctuated by illness but book ended by good eats. Hope you enjoyed.
