Restaurant Review: Trangallan

A quick trip to Andalucia and a couple of visits to the tiny village of Setenil de las Valles reminded me how good the simple, unpretentious tapas of this region is.  Little fried squid, cured manchego stored in good olive oil, slices of jamon with fried quails eggs and all a Euro each.  So what to do upon my return dine out on some modern Spanish in Newington Green's Trangallan, price per tapita £7-11...hmmm.

This is slightly unfair.  This isn't rural Andalucia where unemployment is some of the worst in Europe after the collapse of the construction industry in the region and where agriculture is dominant (the tourist industry on the coast is mainly dominated by outsiders).  Secondly these weren't really Tapas, they were -shudder- small plates, London's newest not very new fad.  So not new is this craze in fact that the Pitcher and Piano now does what they call grazing plates.  This is progress from the begining of the trend in Bocca de Lupo and Polpo in the same way that going from the Parthenon to the Elephant and Castle shopping centre is progress in architecture.  However, before I give the impression that I didn't like Trangallan I will clarify.  The food was very good, very very good in fact and it was a pleasant little place, although with a slightly self concious air of being a trendy neighbourhood secret.

Best Food and Drink Shops: The Sampler

I tell almost everyone about the Sampler.  Winner of 'The Best Small Shop in Britain' from the Telegraph it is hardly a secret, but I think it is a shame for anyone who likes wine not to know about it.

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.

New Siam, Colombo Airport, Sri Lanka

Apparently explaining you're entering a country despite only transitting for a few hours between flights, to go and eat in the cheaper, more interesting restaurant in the arrivals part of the airport is not a good enough explanation for some passport officials. The fact that English wasn't the man's first language (though he was very good at it) didn't help. I'm pretty sure he had understood what  Ihad  said, then decided that it was too ridiculous to be right  leading him to conclude that he  must have made a mistake. After one or two more attempts I decided to just say I was going to walk to get some fresh air; that seemed to do the trick.

El Charoles, El Escorial

I've never been given a screwdriver at the end of a meal before. This one was pretty good. It had a Philips head screwdriver of two different sizes  that were easily interchangeable and one of whatever the other kind of screwdriver is called. I have no idea what it's called but its pretty useful. Thinking about it I don't actually know which one is a Philips head at all and which is the other kind whose name I don't know. Before I get too bogged down in this I'll get back to the point, which is that it is a pretty weird present after you've just eaten a big piece of beef. This was the second surprise of the afternoon. The first was at the restaurant was any good at all give it was planted firmly on the tourist trail. Having said that, things here are are markedly less touristy than in Segovia where an incredible piece of suckling pig made me remark something quite similar. Pig didn't feature in lunch this time, however.  Here the name of the game was steak.

Eat Thailand: Chang Mai

The North of Thailand has some of the countries best cuisine.  Isarn food brings us some of the perenial favourites of som tam salad and sticky rice as well as a series of delicious grills.  As in much of Thailand a lot of the best food comes from street vendors, but there are some great restaurants as well.  Where exact addresses aren't available I have included pictures to help you find you're way.

Eat Bangkok: Chinatown

So my rules when I travel are that I only eat local food (unless it is awful/consists of two dishes, though I'm not going to name and shame here).  My one exception to this is places that have large immigrant populations with great food of their own.  Imagine my joy then when I learnt that a full 15% of Thailand's population is Chinese and that Bangkok's Chinatown is one of the biggest anywhere in the world.  To quote Charlie Sheen; 'Winning!'

Eat Bangkok: Nahm

An Australian is the best Thai chef in the world.  So good in fact he is the first Thai chef to win a Michelin star.  The restuarant that received this honour is called Nahm and is right here at home in London, and it is very, very expensive.  There is however also a Nahm in Bangkok, in the Metropolitan hotel, where you can sample Thompson's cooking for a fraction (though it's still not cheap) of the price.

Sunday Roast: Hawksmoor

Hawksmoor does great steaks and cocktails, I would say the best in London, but how does it fare when cooking the classic of British cooking le rostbif (incidentally they only do le rostbif, rather tha le rostlamb or  le rostpork, so don't go if you fancy something else)?  The thing is they know meat, but a great roast is a lot more than that, I would almost, but not quite, go as far as to say that the meat is secondary to trimmings.  Thankfully with a yorkshire pudding the size of a flying saucer and bone marrow and onion gravy of unlimited refills up their sleeves they are doing very well indeed.

Mama Lan

For me hearing the combination of Beijing street food and Brixton market is pretty much like putting crack and a crack pipe in front of a drug addict at this point.  My favourite place to eat in London with some of my favourite food from when I used to be fun and travel a lot (wistful sigh... also please no comments that I never used to be fun).  Mama Lans also has the benefit of being setup by a blogger, so obviously its getting immediate points, it's also a family mother and daughter enterprise - so all very positive and cosy.  So how was it?

In short pretty good.  The cold slow cooked beef came in thin slices with a good star anise flavour as well as a lot of other warm, autumnal spicing, very nice and tender, still moist enough despite the fact that chilling has a drying effect on meat.  The pickles were great, and the dumplings were good.  It was especially fun watching them being hand rolled infront of us the whole time we were there, given the counter puts you practically on top of the kitchen.  The only dissapoinment was that despite the filling being good the dumplings were pretty underseasoned.  At this point, however, I think it's fair to put that down to teething problems given Mama Lans had only been open for a couple of days.  I will definitely go back and try this place again.

Brixton Village: Kaosan

Kaosan has been getting a lot of good press lately.  Brixton Village has made it into the Standard, Jay Rayner has review Kaosan specifically, it's loved on Chowhound.  Sadly when I first went there I was a bit underwhelmed.  But then I had Larb Gai, a combiation of toasted rice, minced chicken and coriande, which is fine, but not the most exciting thing in the world - this Saturday the Moo Ping pork skewers marinated with sugar cane, and stir fried pork with holy basil turned me around completely.

Barcelona Restaurants: Barceloneta

How much would you pay for a plate of prawns, 6 to be precise?  At a good restaurant £12-15, though baring in mind they're just grilled, no foams, or sauces maybe not.  I'm guessing you would not pay £35, but if you don't at Barceloneta you will be missing out big time (I am going to caveate this by stating quite clearly that I wasn't paying, and if I was maybe I would be less adament).  The gambas de palamos are regarded as the best prawn world wide and after trying them I can't disagree.  If I was more pretentious I would say they were the Platonic archetype of a prawn, all others being paltry shadows dancing on the cave wall... but I'm not (ahem) so I'll just say they were bloody brilliant.  Food like this is what differentiates the Spanish and Itialians in their food culture.  Simple, unpretentious food, with bags of flavour, beautifully grown, caught or bred is king and people will pay a lot (some would say an extortionate ammount) of money for a great, great prawn that hasn't had much cheffing inflicted on it.  This is a very, very good thing.

Barcelona Restaurants: Cova Fumado

Barcelona is full of experimental food, molecular gastronomy, etc, etc blah blah, I was trained with Feran Adria, blah blah, el Buli blah blah. Sadly very, very few people can do this food well, and honestly it's quite boring if people don't.  It stops being food and starts to be an infuriating attempt by the chef to convince you he's clever, and far too many kitchens seem to think this kind of experimentation and scientific apporach is a short-cut round learning how to actually cook.  After a couple of these trendy tapas/pintxos later I felt a bit deflated, I wanted a bar with proper food.  So after desperate Time Out IPhone search we decided to go to Cova Fumado, somewhere which seemed to fit the bill of proper food.
Initial signs were good.  It was heaving and not with a lot of tourists with guidebooks (as a tourist I shouldn't sneer, but it's often a bad sign).  The guy behind the bar was loud and shouting conversations at regulars and new joiners alike, his mum was behind the griddle along the other wall and the bar was made of granite and cracked and the chairs were near falling apart through years of enthusiastic eating.  The food did not dissapoint either, anything but - squid with oil and garlic was caramalised on the edges and beautifully soft and fresh.  Chickepeas with morcilla rich and moreish and the fried sardines were perfect.  Dried broad beans flavoured with black-pudding and chilli were another highlight.  The bill with beers and wine came to comfortably under £35 for two and was worked out with a pencil dirlectly on the bartop. 

This is exactly the kind of food I like, simple one to four ingredient dishes made with top quality produce and not messed around with.  The place had a great atmosphere in a been on the dockside forever kind of way, it's rough and ready and great fun.  Highly recommended.

Brixton Village: Casa Sibilla

I was saying before how difficult it has been in the past to go out for decent pasta.  Now two places open practically next door to each other in Brixton Village market.  Casa Sibilla does a lot more than just pasta though.  It's got a daily changing lunch menu and is open for dinner on days when the market is open late.  Lovely salads and more substantial dishes are all available in a lovely setting.  They even do cooking lessons.

Brixton Village: Etta's Seafood Kitchen

It can be disappointing when you read about how friendly and welcoming a cook/owner of a restaurant is and then go there and find that they're not talking to you anymore than a chef does anywhere else.  Do they not like me you think, who are these stupid newspaper reviewers who everyone talks to anyway - mutter, mutter.  Thankfully I cannot imagine this being a problem at Etta's.  Talking is what they do (that and cooking, obvously).  They are welcoming and chatty and extremely friendly the whole time.  Their caribean influenced food's pretty sharp too.

Curry Ono

I've been writing a lot about the newly(ish) rejuvenated Brixton Village lately, but it would be a mistake to ignore the good new places that have opened up in next door Market Row.  Curry Ono is one of these, and its my favourite so far.  It specialises in Japanese curries and they do them very well indeed.  In fact they do them so well that I'd say they're the best I've tried so far anywhere in London.

Brixton Village: Federation Coffee

Coffee houses used to be places where rebellions were planned and where deals were struck.  In the 18th century they were the central trading houses for shares and bonds, a fairly new idea at the time.  Lloyd's Bank has its roots in this world, having itself started as a coffee house.  However, coffee in the twentieth century was very different.  Seen as a slightly strange drink that had a peculiar popularity on the continent, good coffee was hard to find.  Then came the chains.  Still not so good, but better.  After a while they upped their game and good coffee came to be expected.  No we are in the midst of a new wave of smaller artisan cafe's that focus on high quality in preparation and detail in sourcing.  At least half of these places are run by antipodians.  Enter - 'the flat white'.

Istanbul Restaurants:Akdeniz Kokorec

Again I'd like to thank the brilliant Istanbul Eats for turning me onto this place.

I like to take every opportunity to champion offal.  I think eating the whole animal (in one sitting if I can) is crucial in limiting waste and the damage caused by mass farming.  I also think it's more respectful.  Imagine my joy then when I found out about kokorec an enormous sausage stuffed with lamb fat and sweetbreads inside a thick outer casing of wound sheep's intestines.  Imagine my even greater joy when this - admittedly slightly unappetising sounding dish - turned out to be absolutely delicious.

Istanbul Restaurants: Pera Sisore

Meze, fish and grilled meat are well known staples of Turkish food.  The last of those is probably the best represented over here in London, but you can find the others as well.  What you don't really see (and if anyone can correct me, that would be great news) is the Black Sea coast cooking they specialise in at Pera Siosore.  This has been described, by the fantastic Istanbul Eats where I found this recommendation, as similar to the soul food of the Southern USA.  This means deep rich flavours made from simple ingredients, great stocks, stewed greens and that kind of thing.  This is definitely what I remember about Sisore, that and the best Pide I've ever had.  Now this is something that you can get good versions of in London, but I've never had one like this.