Farewell Eugene

The series of farewell dinners was so long and varied that it's quite a shock to the system now that he's actually gone. It was a bit too cold to cry when I finally said goodbye to him, but the sentiment is still there. I will of course miss him for his insatiable appetite and disturbingly similar food tastes to mine, but he was also instrumental in helping me through all the recent changes in my life. *stops pukingly sentimental posting*

Somehow along the way, he has never been to Latium, despite all my evangelical rantings about the place, so it was an obviously place to have a final final dinner. Unsurprisingly Eugene became a big fan of the place afterwards, and once again I am plotting to maybe have my birthday dinner in their new(ish) private dining area.

The only slight disappointment is that they have changed their amuse bouches! I can't even remember when I started coming to Latium (2004ish?), but they have always welcomed their guests with a plate of arancini, mini pizzas and mini calzone. Now it seems to have been replaced with a series of crostini-type things. Very nice they are (cured salmon, wild mushrooms, and salami), but somehow it does take away from the magic of the place.

Given it was Eugene's first visit, we stuck to the classics. Both of us started with Latium's version of steak tartare (yes, my second tartare of the week, no wonder I am expanding again), which includes parmasan in the tartare itself, and is topped with some impossibly cute poached quail eggs:

Both of us also had the fish ravioli, which I will not bore you about again, and very competently done fish dishes (monkfish with pumpkin sauce for me, similar to the one at the bottom of this post I had a while back, and scallops for Eugene), and somehow we still had enough reserves for pudding. Now, I have never come to Latium for their desserts, and I rarely rarely order any. But as I've said before, I'm having a funny turn recently, and keep ordering desserts.

And very glad I was too! The rum baba with pistachio ice cream and marsala sabayon is something I would actually consider skipping one of the savoury courses at Latium to have again. Shocking, I know. It is huge (and again, I quite like the fact that Latium's presentation is never quite dainty), but I had no trouble shoving it all into my mouth:

Eugene then declared that their tiramisu is one of the best in London, having told me a story of when he spent an entire day sampling tiramisu's all over a few years ago. How is this boy not fat??!!

So yes, birthday dinner at Latium in the works. Who wants an invite?

Boundary

It is no longer a surprise that very very good restaurants are starting to pop up within walking distance from my house in East London. Even BA's High Life magazine has declared Tower Hamlets as the place to be, I am told, so it is all official. What is more of a surprise I guess is that Terence Conran is behind one of these, in what seems to be some kind of renaissance for him in 2009. Critics far and wide have loved Boundary in Shoreditch, a small complex including a hotel and a rooftop restaurant. Much praise has also been lavished at Lutyens on Fleet Street, another 2009 Conran opening, and the good experience we had at Boundary means that a visit to Lutyens is pretty imminent.

Let's start with the not-so-good stuff though. The space Boundary occupies is awkward to the extreme. The main restaurant is in the basement, with diners having to navigate some quite industrial looking stairs to get there. They have done their best to paint the space with celestial inspired murals, a theme which continues into the restaurant itself, but it is simply not a nice welcome.

And it also leads me to my second main complaint, and that is the toilets. You walk past them on the aforementioned stairs to get to the restaurant, and the smell wafting through made the welcome even worse. What's more is the fact that all the loos are unisex, which I don't get given that there is no shortage of space, and there was a very suspect puddle on the floor on both my visits. Yuk and ick. Loos should never be unisex if there is space available.

It is just as well then that the food and service was so good that I can get over the ickiness. The menu reminded me of Le Cafe Anglais: British classics with a hint of Frenchiness, I would be happy to eat almost anything off the menu. Most pleasing is that they don't call dessert 'dessert', they call it 'pudding'. Love love love!

I started with a steak tartare, more because I had been craving one than because of the selection on offer. I liked that it was served with a little side of gherkiny stuff, but still needed a little more kick:


Their salads were interesting, and I should have had one of these in retrospect. Lindsay had the Perigourdine, which translates into a salad with lovely ducky bits, including gizzards and fois gras:

A recovering Fil was definitely not ill anymore if he was ordering artichoke and truffle salads:


But starters were quickly rendered irrelevant when our main course came. They have roast special everyday, and we were so lucky that it is suckling pig on a Monday. 3 of us had it, potentially some of the best pig I've ever eaten (sorry Mum). Impossibly soft, although the crackling wasn't quite that crackly. The potatoes they served with it was also very lovely and nutty, like a wintery Jersey Royal:

And onto the very lovely puddings. I have had a bit of a weird turn lately, eating lots of sweet things, and I had real trouble deciding on puddings, the menu for which included Pear Belle Helene and Mandarin souffle. Again, reminiscent of Le Cafe Anglais, I was just pleased to see some stewed fruit on the menu, and shared some warm cherries with pain d'epices with Lindsay:

We also tried their white chocolate tarte du jour, very good in that they got the sweetness just right, not at all cloying, even I would have happily eaten it despite my dislike of white chocolate. Mark declared that it looked like a 'very Conran' dessert when I showed him the picture at work, haha!:

What I also really liked was they had a few surprises for us too, including some candied orange to go with our teas and coffees, nice to see they put a bit of thought into this 'petit four':

And because it is Christmas, they came round with a basket of clementines and nuts to round off the meal. This. however, turned into a bit of a nasty personal surprise. I tried some of their almonds and hazelnuts, and soon after discovered my lips and throat were very swollen, to the extent I had difficulty breathing and swallowing for the rest of the night. Now, I love nuts, never had any reaction before, and this episode really scared me, not for health implications, but because I may not be able to eat nuts again!! I have eaten nuts again since then (probably dangerous, but I wasn't paying attention), with reactions ranging from none at all to slightly swollen lips again. I knew things were going a bit too well lately, a newly developed nut allergy is dampening my spirits a little. I've just made some brownies with nuts in, they just came out the oven. So someone please come and check on me if it's all quiet on the blog front after this :)

New Soho favourite

Friends and media have been raving on about Bocca di Lupo so much recently, to the extent that I was chatting to a complete stranger about it in a coffee shop the other day (I know, these sorts of things are not supposed to happen in London) but I still haven't managed to go. To be honest, I'm not sure about the concept of Italian tapas. I am a greedy person, and I want big plates of food all to myself!

A friend of Meghana's mentioned though that there was a good new place called Polpo on Beak Street, very good and cosy, the sort of place where the proprietor is in a jumper and jeans and will sit you personally himself. I keep walking past this place recently, and to be honest, it looks very non-descript and unexciting on the outside. But I realised they must be doing something right when I walked in on a Monday evening and it was absolutely packed.

And for once, I quite like the non booking system here, it feels like it fits this sort of place, and turnover is quick enough that we waited for only a few minutes. The place inside is tiny, tables so packed together there is barely an inch between them, but again, I thought it just added to the charm of the place.

Like Bocca di Lupo, it is Italian tapas, and if you read the website, apparently it is based on a Venetian style of eating. I'd actually already eaten staff dinner only a few hours before, so it was actually good to have 'picky' food. And everything was pretty unfamiliar. We had a sausage made of pig's trotters, the name of which escapes me, which was quite reminiscent of spam, but served with pickled cabbage and mustard worked really well. Next to it was some not very exciting but well executed spinach with garlic and chilli:

The dish that worked really well was the cuttlefish in its own ink with gremolata, definitely the dish that jumps out at you from the menu, and very very good. Next to it was again an unexciting but well done pumpkin risotto:

I am finding it hard to convey how lovely this place is though. Lots of little touches that make you really warm to it, for example, wines served in individual carafes that are different on every table (and at £9 or £10 for 500mls, quite a bargain). I was also a little disturbed that they seemed to have stolen my ipod for their music here, everything they played I loved, including PJ Harvey, early Bjork, The Doves, Portishead, glad to see someone else is still living in 1990's Britpop era. I imagine I will come here lots and fall in love with the proprietor very soon.

Hix

Thanks to bad cookery programmes, I now equate Mark Hix with stargazey pie and silly jelly puddings, and that equation obviously meant that we had to go to newish Hix on Brewer Street as part of Eugene's leaving London eating marathon. And it all started off very well, the bar is very nice (although perhaps the £11.50 price tag on the Hix Fix champagne cocktail which went flat very quickly was not quite so nice), and I liked that serving pork scratchings is now in vogue:

The starter list was inventive, the sort of list that made you want to eat everything. The star of the show for me was the cod tongues with girolles, very flavoursome, very light, I should have had this really:

Eugene's monkfish starter was basically posh fish without the chips, but so well done. Big chunks of monkfish on a bed of just right tartare sauce:

The most intriguing starter was perhaps the 'heaven and earth', no explanation on the menu itself, turned out to be homemade black pudding on bubble and squeak. Very very earthy, but not quite as exciting as the name implies:

For me, I actually had the thought that sticking with simplicity might be the way to go at a place like this. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out. The smoked salmon was the most expensive starter (about £12 IIRC), which signalled that it had to be good. And when it came, you do feel a bit underwhelmed by the four naked slices:

And unfortunately, the taste was also a little underwhelming. I was expecting some taste explosions, but not even a sparkler happened here. And it all went a bit downhill from here really. The stargazy pie has to be ordered in advance, so I plumped for the oyster and beef pie. You gotta have pie! in a place like Hix:

First time I had oysters in a pie, despite the tradition, and what a good addition they are too, but there were far too few, and not well distributed amongst the pie, so you are left with quite a monotonous mount of beef under the pastry, with not even a bit of onion or carrot to balance it out.

But my main gripe was the very liberal use of salt in the main. We ordered a few side vegetables, so heavily salted that you could pick out salt crystals from the spinach and broccoli. My tongue was actually hurting, and I committed the restaurant crime of not finishing my main course. That never happens.

Nevertheless, they had some excellent special potatoes that evening, in the form of battered potatoes. The picture is a bit dark, but they were oh so amazing:

It also worries me when the best course in a restaurant is a dessert. I am not a sweet person, I just don't have the sweet tooth to appreciate desserts. But the desserts were fabulous here, mainly with the inclusion of jelly on the menu, and served in a little shot glass, is just what you need after a heavy meal:

But the winner of the evening was the buttermilk sorbet that came with it (in the lovely metall goblet as above). They laced it with little bits of what I'm guessing is grapefruit or lemon rind, it was sour and bitter, gorgeous gorgeous, my kind of dessert.

Toilets were very nice, no carpets making for a very noisy dining room. I must say I'm not rushing to go back.

Still the best roast in London, just

When Meghana asked me to pick a place for dinner on a Saturday for some trendy foodies, I was worried. For some reason, I've had a bit of a mental block with restaurant recommendations recently. I've been revisiting a lot of my favourite haunts recently, and feeling quite mentally tired with being creative. Not being tied to a computer all day long wasting my time on food blogs and websites have also contributed I guess, haha!

We ended up at Le Cafe Anglais, whilst weirdly located in Whiteley's Shopping Centre, always has reliably good food in a wonderful art deco space. I thought the quality of the food would win out over something trendy. And it all got off with a good start as I had my normal pike boudin (which I always seem to have as demonstrated here) and also some of their parmasan custard and anchovy toast for the table.

I have always spied the £5 chicken leg at this place, and finally decided to be a little ungreedy and try it. So simple, it must be amazing for them to include it on the menu. However, I had ordered something else instead, and when I told the waiter (before starters were served), I think I confused the poor man, to the extent that the service completely fell apart after this. A good hour past by after our starter plates had been cleared, and mains nowhere to be seen. We ask the waiter, who insisted there was a 'delay in the kitchen', despite the fact that the neighbouring table had had their mains even though they arrived about 45 mins after us. I suspect the waiter had simply forgot to call the mains away until we reminded him. We sat down at 7:45, but mains were not delivered until about 10:30.

I'm not one for complaining in restaurants, being so British and all, but I was squiffy at this point, so I thought I would have a go at the manager. Even I surprised myself in how aggressive I was, but I can't fault the manager for his response. We were ridiculously fussy ordering the free desserts on offer, and I was a little (just a little) embarrassed when a bottle of dessert wine appeared on the table. I obviously need to be much less worried about other people's feelings and more ballsy in my complaints in future.

Very good recovery then in the end, and I am inclined to say this was a slip up than a regular occurence. The chicken leg, by the way, was probably the best main course I've ever eaten there. Laced with a generous portion of girolles and some very very tasty chicken juices, I do plan to return in the future and just order that, with a nice glass of vino maybe.

How to debone chicken wings!

In response to the most genius idea of boneless chicken wings, Albert sent me this! Too good not to share:

Arbutus

Annabel had the most exciting idea to get some foodies together to talk about food at Arbutus the other day, and I'm not sure I've received a more exciting invitation in recent times. She's just started an externship at Innocent Smoothies, and wanted to get us together to brainstorm some new product ideas. Somehow, I managed to get slightly evangelical about puddings, even though I don't really eat them as such and would probably never buy them. But that is by the by, we had such a good time we are now trying to make it a monthly fest.

I had only been to Arbutus once before, quite a long time ago now, and I remember it being quite unmemorable. But this time round I was charmed by the very good service. I'd forgotten that they do all their wines by the carafe, and not only that, we were able to try quite a few of the wines before we 'committed' to a carafe, which takes good service just a little too far.

The food was a lot more offally than I had remembered, and unfortunately I was in a bit of a full and bloated mood to really want to go for it. For example, I really wanted to try the 'pieds et pacquets', which was an intriguing sounding lamb's tripe and trotter mix, but needed something light. Not that my starter of smoked eel with chicken wings was exactly light. The chicken wings were BONELESS, the most genius idea I have ever heard:

Annabel had the squid and mackerel 'burger' with razor clams, very interesting combination, more about texture for me than anything:

We also tried the braised pig's head, which I suspect was what I had last time I was here. I have no idea what they add to their purees to make them so starchy that they sit on the plate in such perfect forms:

I was distinctively boring in my choice of main, going for the bouillabaisse. I can't fault it, but at £19.95 a portion, it was also a little dull. And as much as I know it's not traditional, I am always a bit miffed when fish soup comes without shellfish:

We also tried the Atlantic cod:

But the main that provoked the most ooohs and aaahs was the lamb breast. As Charlie correctly noted, breasts need careful loving, and this was a very loved piece of meat indeed. Very tender, fall apart soft:

I had to skip out on dessert, but some interesting things like cold chocolate fondant with salted caramel and quince clafoutis made me regret leaving.

Overall, much more impressed with this place than last time, but I am a little dismayed by the prices nevertheless. All mains were at the £15-20 mark, standard for this type of establishment, yes, but not when they are using a lot of cheaper cuts and so much offal. Also, marks off for the bar not having any idea what a French martini was, and also for the bathrooms, falling apart to such an extent that the toilet seat was almost on the floor. The naughty booby pictures don't quite make up for that.

Alpha Course - week 4

I nearly didn't blog about this week's Alpha Course. The topic was Prayer - how to do it, and why do Christians do it, and I actually found the topic really rather dull. It really felt like what we were talking about this week had absolutely no relevance to me.

Apparently, 75% of the UK population claim to 'pray' at least once a week. A startling statistic it may seem for such a secular society, but I am definitely in the 25% who don't. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever prayed, or ever feel the need to pray. And that is in the more general sense of praying in a non-religious way too. I guess I'm one of those slightly demented people who talk to myself a lot in my own head, and I've never felt the need to talk or consult or ask for anything to 'someone up there'.

So the topic was a bit dull for me, but what was more interesting was how our Christian hosts have started to be a bit more assertive about directing the discussion. As mentioned before, they have usually been on the backfoot, letting the discussion wonder rather aimlessly. But this was the first week where we were directed to talk more specifically about the Christian interpretation of praying. I'm guessing this is because in previous weeks, us atheists/agnostics keep talking about how religion in general is a human phenomenon, rarely talking about what specifically differentiates Christianity from other religions.

And it may be this more directed discussion which meant I left feeling less satisfied this week. Although each topic begins with a talk, which includes reading passages from the Bible, I am starting to feel that without a more in-depth knowledge of Christian theology, and its semantics in particular, I am not really getting down to the crux of the problem or discussion. For example, in terms of prayer, Christians believe that they have direct access to the Father because of Jesus. We read from the relevant passages to show that, indeed, the Bible says this, and it is repeated several times for us, but what this actually means in layman terms is still a bit of a mystery to me. This is made all the more difficult by our Christian hosts never really giving an direct answer to anything.

But anyway, my work hours may mean that I will find it difficult to go every week from now on, so I'm not sure right now whether this might be my last post on the matter. A shame as the food has been getting better and better! This week, spicy rice with chicken:

Naples and Pompeii

I have returned from the little weekend trip to Naples not ever wanting to eat pizza in England ever again. Not that I eat pizza much anyway, but it has to be one of the most poorly imitated dishes of all time, just walk round Leicester Square and have a look at those rock solid abominations in cafe windows. On the other hand, I walked past a place called Rosso Pomodoro near the Ivy yesterday, which boasted authentic Napoli pizza, will have to give it a proper look.

So you may have guessed, Naples is famous for its pizza, but more on that in a second. Naples is also very famous amongst Italians for its sfoglitelle (yes, no idea how to pronounce it either), a multi-layered shell pastry filled with ricotta and orange zest:

They are very very crisp, but a little too rich for me to be honest. But if you want to try them, I discovered that my favoured Italian deli beginning with P also has them from time to time. We tried them at Caffe Gambrinus near the Piazza del Plebiscito, recommended to us by the lady in the tourist office, who we also saw coming in for her own espresso, so it must be good. Having read a bit more about it, turns out the place used to serve Oscar Wilde! We loved the atmosphere here, and returned once more for a final espresso just before we left for the airport. Even a non-coffee drinker like me was downing two espressos a day!

Right, pizza time. Apparently authentic pizzerias in Naples have a little sign on the door to say that they are the dogs's bollocks, although apart from using buffalo mozzarella, I'm not sure what the strict stipulations are. We went to Da Michele, so famous that our hostel host knew exactly where we were heading when we mentioned going to try pizza near the train station. It is certainly old skool, and only serves two types of pizzas: margheritas (tomato, mozzarella, basil, olive oil) and marinaras (tomato, oregano, garlic, olive oil, no cheese!):

This was the margherita:

And marinara (and yes, the more observant of you will notice knife marks in both pizzas, we were a little impatient...!):

OH MY GOD! So simple, so good! I think the secret is that their dough was very chewily elastic, very pleasantly so, very morish indeed. Apparently it helps you to digest it. We did eat some more pizza which was a bit more adorned later in the weekend, but once you've had the good stuff, you can never go back...

We did go to Naples for the food, but the main purpose of the trip was to go and see the ruins in Pompeii, and Naples really is an ugly city that you don't want to spend too much time in. As you can imagine, the strip next to the ruins in Pompeii is lined with tourist traps all serving pretty much the same thing, and we ended up trying a little chain restaurant Fratelli la Bufala, which specialised in all things buffalo:

Their buffalo mozzarella and chargrilled vegetables was actually very good, a nice change from the carb-overload of the rest of the trip. Incidentally, I bought back a whole kilo of mozzarella back, and am not sure what to do with it other than to make sexy salads. It's a bit too good to cook with I think, so suggestions please!

But our restaurant highlight of the weekend was during the night when we stayed in Pompeii. Most tourists go to the ruins as a day trip from Naples or Sorrento, so the hotel market is pretty underdeveloped. We stayed at a random B&B called Casa Villa Pompeii, run by Antonio and his lovely wife in the home where Antonio was born. Seriously, if you want to go to Pompeii, I have to give you the address of the place. They were the best hosts, ever. The house is a little bit out of the way of the main strip, so Antonio actually drove us to the restaurant of his friend so we wouldn't get ripped off staying on the tourist strip. And then his friend gave us a lift back!

Hang on!" I can hear you screaming. Surely he ripped us off by taking us to his mate's place, the most classic tourist trick in the book! And to be honest, the food wasn't the best, but the hospitality was so amazing. I think they were a bit shocked to see two little Asian girls being outgoing, and all the restaurant staff ended up wanting photos with us in the end. It was one of those really good nights when you're laughing non stop with the locals, even though you really can't understand each other.

Anyway, food! We actually had pasta in this place, and to be honest, all the pasta we had during this little trip was disappointing, maybe a testament that pasta is done quite well in London. This was their best pasta, ravioli stuffed with spinach:

We also had a very alcoholic rum baba (babas also famous in Naples area):

All washed down with a bottle of local red vino at only €6 each! One of the few restaurants I want to go back to, but not for the food.

Pompeii itself was tremendous. I had studied it a lot in high school during my three torturous years of learning Latin about Caecilius and his dog, but it was nothing like I imagined it to be. Thankfully, because we went during relatively low season, we were still able to get lost enough that no one else was around, and then you could get a real feeling of how it would have been like 2000 years ago. Here are a few photos (yes, I managed to somehow take 50 non-food photos on this trip, a record!).

Herculaneum, a small site near to Pompeii, where you can see Mount Vesuvius in the background:

Beautiful mosaic in Herculaneum:

Pompeii proper, we had amazing weather too, look at the sky!

Vineyards have been recreated to look like what it would have been, again, with Vesuvius in the background:

The oldest surviving amphitheatre in Italy:

The big meat-versus-veg-off

I've been reading a lot of Anthony Bourdain recently, a man who should be celebrated purely for his very eloquent attacks on vegetarianism. It takes a brave chef to marginalise a whole group like that. And if you don't know how I feel on the subject, this post will make it obvious.

Mildred's on Lexington Street in Soho is one of the celebrated vegetarian restaurants in London, and it was absolutely packed on the weekday evening we tried to visit. Leave your name at the counter, and there was a 30 minute wait. The usual Soho trendy crowd included a children's television presenter whose name escapes me; I've been good at my celeb spots recently (more on that later).

I really liked the variety in the menu at Mildred's actually, I could have happily eaten most of it. I think the secret is that even though it is vegetarian, and they are fans of alfafa here, what they serve is certainly not that diet friendly. Take the mushroom ravioli starter, which was enormous, and very very rich:

I also chose an equally cream and cheese laden main of sun-dried tomato, mozzarella and ricotta cake, served on a bed of spinach in cream sauce:

We also tried their borlotti bean burger special, which we tried to make slightly healthier by having a salad instead of fries:

We had to go and take a walk around the block afterwards because we were so so stuffed. And this was after sharing a starter and not having pudding, which I guess completely negates all the vegetarian arguments about it being a healthy diet. After all, cakes and biscuits are all vegetarian, no?

On the other end of the carnivorous spectrum, I finally made it to the original St John Smithfield this week. Somehow it has taken me this long to go there, mainly because the Bread and Wine in Spitalfields is so close to my house. Again, I was uncomfortably stuffed after the meal, to the extent that I stayed up until 1:30am watching bad telly in order to try and digest. And again, a celeb spot, although this one was way more exciting. All the boys fell in love with Thomasina Miers, who is very pretty in the flesh, helped by a very small skirt.

Anyway, the food! We had the (un)lucky vantage point of having a table right next to the kitchen, with a countdown of how many specials were remaining that night. This led to much over-ordering, including a shared starter of duck hearts and green beans, and braised lamb with white beans, on top of 3 courses each!

Four out of our table of six went for the signature roasted bone marrow with parsley salad. Personally I found it to be much less of a favour sensation than the others, although this might be to do with the fact that I was feeling hard done by because two of my bones contained hardly any marrow. Plus, politeness prevented any sucking of the bones which was what Caris and I really wanted to do!

For mains, we tried to order something different for everyone. I had the roast veal with turnips, first time I've ever really had turnips, but I think this was the best main of all. Mmmm....

Smoked eel with bacon and mash came with some amazing thick-looking bacon, but we found the whole combination to be salty in the extreme:

We liked the brill with leeks:

Mallard with swede:

Grey partridge with braised red cabbage looked impressive, with an impressive price tag too (the most expensive main at over £25 IIRC), but again, not a flavour sensation when compared to other game birds:

We did have several desserts, plus we had birthday cake for Eugene, but honestly, by now, I was finding it hard to put any more stuff into my house. That bone marrow is so so so so rich, you can just eat that for your dinner and already feel tremendously full.

Jesus, I feel stuffed just posting that! I really really need to start that detox soon, if only my friends would stop leaving town...