Restaurant Review: The Albion

Winner of the 2009 Observer Food Monthly Best Sunday Roast award Albion comes with a formidable reputation and a lot to live up to.  Having failed to have Sunday lunch at a reasonable hour I was particularly hoping for a good feed as I dragged my weakened body through (what must be some of the nicest) streets of London.  Hurdle number one, would such a popular place even have space, even at 9pm on a Sunday?  Answer; only just, but yes they did and the armchair I ended up in was massive in a sort of mediaval king with a serious evil ruler complex kind of way.  A good start that continued.  Service was good and efficient and the surroundings were comfortable and well presented in a very gentrified plush, countrified gastropub way.  Then my food arrived and I was ready to see if Albion had kept up with the pace or if it was 'totes noughties'.

Restaurant Review: Yipin

Any regular readers of the blog will probably have noticed the slew of Sichuanese restaurants that I have reviewed around London and my love of Chinese food in general.  Well then, imagine my excitement when walking home along Liverpool Road I wandered past Yipin.  It doesn't look like much from the outside, but on looking at the menu in the window I was happy to find Sichuan classics like pock marked old woman's bean-curd, boiled fish slices and hot and numbing beef.  On closer investigation of the menu online, however, I found that though the Sichuanese is reputedly good, Yipin actually specialises in Hunanese food, a cuisine still heavy on the chilli, but without the numbing peppers and a bit more fond of a dash of sugar.