Hangover

It is August bank holiday, so you can forgive me for having a hangover today. I'm trying to branch out from my usual blue cheese linguine recipe, so created this as my hangover cure. So far, with 4 pints of Earl Grey tea, I'm almost recovered.

Smoked salmon and spinach linguine (serves 1)

100g linguine
1 clove garlic
3 tablespoons creme fraiche
1 tablespoons parmasan like cheese (I used a bit of aged gouda as that was what I had in my fridge)
Juice of half a lemon
Small handful of smoked salmon, roughly hand shredded
Handful of spinach

1. Cook the linguine, making sure to reserve a couple of tablespoons of the cooking water before you drain it.
2. In a separate frying pan, fry the garlic in a little oil very gently, before adding the creme fraiche, cheese, and pasta cooking water. Once the cheese has melted, add the lemon juice.
3. Put the spinach in a colander and pour the pasta over it, so the hot water cooks the spinach.
4. Add the pasta into the creamy mixture alongside the salmon, and mix quickly.
5. Scoff with a large glass of water.


One suggestion for next time is not to try and talk on the phone with Chirag at the same time as cooking, especially with him trying to remember why he woke up with drawings all over his face and shock pink lipstick on. I managed to burn the garlic, although it did make my house smell very nice.

Kind of Tom Kha Chicken

Many of you already know that I'm a creature of habit, to the extent that at some restaurants, I will only order one thing, deviation from that one thing always leads to disappointment. My beloved Busaba Eathai is so beloved by me because of their Tom Kha Chicken, and with a bit of time on my hands, I tried to recreate it.

Tom Kha Gai is already one of my favourite things in the world, and Busaba adds to it by making it into a full meal by adding glass noodles and spinach, with a chargrilled chicken thigh. I'm pretty sure it is completely unauthentic, and Thai people really should stop reading here before I offend anyone, but it is complete comfort food in a bowl. It is actually not a very popular dish it seems, I hardly ever see other people order it, but it is definitely in the shortlist for my death row meal.

Kind of Tom Kha Chicken (serves 2, probably)

2 cans coconut milk (I used reduced fat to try and be good)
Thumb-sized piece of galangal
2 stalks lemongrass
6 kaffir lime leaves
5 small red Thai chillis
2 chicken thighs, with skin
4 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
Juice of half a lime
Handful of rice noodles per person, previously soaked
Handful of baby spinach leaves

1. Prepare the chicken. I've found that it is impossible to buy boned out chicken thighs which still have their skins on, and you really have to have the skin for this recipe. Boning out is a bit fiddly, but quite therapeutic. And I found on this occasion that my kitchen scissors were particularly helpful. Once boned out, cover each thigh with cling film and bash it flat with the base of your hand.


2. Prepare the spices. Slice the galangal, cut the lemongrass into inch long strips and bash to release the lemony oils. Rip the lime leaves in half. Leave the chillies as they are, or halve them if you want more heat - but this soup is more about aromatics than heat for me.


3. Cook the chicken. I used my Le Creuset griddle pan to try and get some of the barbeque burnt flavour into the chicken, one of the things I love about the Busaba dish. Over a medium heat, you should be able to cook the chicken through without really burning the meat.


4. In a pan, pour in one can of the coconut milk, and then add in all the galangal, lemongrass, lime leaves and chillis. Heat until boiling.


5. Once it's at the boil, add the chicken, fish sauce, and sugar, and simmer for 5 mins to infuse the flavours, before adding the second tin of coconut milk and about half a tin of water
6. Add in the rice noodles, add in the lime juice, and cook until noodles are soft. Stir in a handful of spinach at the last minute. Et voila!

I was very proud of this - the flavours are almost there vs. the Busaba original, except this version was very very rich / thick, even though I'd already substituted with light coconut milk.

Improvements for next time:

• More lime juice
• Use palm sugar instead of golden caster sugar - I'd actually bought some last weekend but my parents managed to run off with it!!
• Maybe only one tin of coconut milk, and the rest water / light fish stock
• Add a shitake mushroom with a cross on its bottom to look even more like Busaba's
• This is probably really blasphemous, but to put the spices in a kind of bouquet garni so that you don't get little bits of lemongrass amongst your noodles. I actually reused the soup base for another handful of noodles the next day and strained out the spices. I told you Thai people should've stopped reading

Hind's Head

Continuing with the self referential theme, we also went to Heston's lesser known pub in Bray whilst we visited. As I read somewhere, Heston does seem to be taking over the little village much like how Rick Stein took over Padstow, but in some ways, I found the Hind's Head to be even more exciting than its famous neighbour 3 doors' down.

One thing I didn't mention in the Fat Duck post was that I didn't think the decor of the place was that successful. I think it was a pub conversion, and you can still see a lot of exposed beams. But the dining room is relatively small, and the beams felt oppressive, and also slightly out of place in the modern interiors. It gets even weirder when you go upstairs, where the toilet is ultra ultra modern, and there is this weird vacant space which they obviously are not sure what to do with.

But the beams at Hind's Head are exactly right. In an olde worlde pub, the beams give a cosy feel, it's just a shame that there were definitely a few WAGs in the pub who didn't quite fit in with their very small dresses. I also loved the fact you have to duck quite a bit to get the loo at the Hind's Head. Were people really that much smaller hundreds of years ago?

Anyway, the reason why I was quite excited was even though we were about to have a 13 course dinner next door, we still sneaked a peek at the menu. Lots of pub classics like good fashioned steak pies, bangers and mash, etc., but also a few edgier additions, including raw scotch beef with capers, half lobster and chips. And the prices are not ridiculous given its pedigree - about £8/10 for a starter, £12/15 for a main. It is obviously blooming far away to go for a pub lunch, but you can tell it would be cooked superbly.

And we did manage to try a few of the Hind's Head bar snacks to get us through to 9pm when our FD booking was. Unfortunately their very famous triple cooked chips was not on the menu - apparently there has been a change to the potato season - so we had to settle for normal French fries. Not very exciting as you can imagine. This was accompanied by Warwickshire wizzers (basically posh cocktail sausages) and a Scotch quail egg:

It's a shame we were all pretty hungry and dived in and scoffed the lot within 5 minutes, because the quail egg was such a wonder it deserved a picture. Somehow, they manage to keep the yolk of the egg soft, and given the size of a quail's egg, that's no mean feat! The sausagemeat encasing the egg was also wondrously fibrous and meaty. In fact, I would hazard to say that out of all the food I ate in that little village, that little egg was the thing that impressed me the most.

As a joke, we actually did wonder into the Waterside Inn to see if we could make a reservation - and somehow we managed to get one within the next 2 months. We did have a look at the menu, and it does look like I will have to take out a second mortgage to continue eating like this - starters at around £40, it'd better be good! Maybe I should ask for a few of those quail's eggs to takeaway in case it isn't...

Fat Duck

When I received the call from Peter inviting me to the Fat Duck at the last minute, I wasn't entirely sure how to feel about it. On the one hand, of course I was excited. Someone had gone through the whole booking palaver and got me a space at what one of the most talked about restaurants of the moment. For a foodie, you cannot be unexcited.

On the other hand though, the inverted snob in me didn't want to get sucked in by the hype. I'm actually very sceptical about the whole concept of molecular gastronomy: It feels more like chemistry than cooking, so clinical that I feel it saps all the passion out of creating something nice to eat. One friend argued that once you get to a certain level of cooking, there is very little creativity left, especially as it's all about the ingredients, and this sort of playing with food allows the chefs to push the boundaries a little further. I was interested to find out.

The crowd at the restaurant completely justified my scepticism about the hype. We were unfortunately sat next to a young lad and his dad, ostentiously celebrating the completion of his GCSEs. The kid was hilariously precocious, braying on and on at daddy about what a truly tremendous opportunity we have here, to dine at one of the country's very best, an experience with which even the past dinners at La Gavroche cannot compare. We guessed correctly that the young lad could only be a product of Eton College. Having to put up with their conversation for 2 hours I guess was a way to sum up the complete style-over-substance of our meal.

That sounds a bit dismissive, but it's not really intended to be. It certainly is style over substance, but it is impressively stylish, and I would say I had a tremendous experience. I really liked Giles Coren's review of the place, where he didn't even try to explain what goes on. Actually, the fact that I'd heard so much about what happens during the tasting menu meant there was little element of surprise, which I guess is partly the point.

Great sensations for the sight, hearing, and smell then, but such a shame it was not really matched by taste. There were only 2 dishes of the 13 course tasting menu that I thought were outstanding (the foie gras and the much talked about egg and bacon ice cream), where the combinations achieved were just singing in my mouth. However, I'm not sure that makes up for the fact that there was one truly disgusting dish that I failed to finish. The Anjou pigeon had been cooked so slowly to retain a lot of its raw texture, but the mouth feel is so foul that I did feel like gagging whilst eating it. Combined with blood pudding, even someone with a strong stomach like me had to push to one side. The wine gums, which were literally gummy sweets made of wine, would be one of those overly-alcoholic sweets that no one goes for even at Christmas, if it didn't have the funky presentation to go with it. For many of the other dishes, I remember what 'happened', but nothing of how they felt on the palate.

I thought the best way would be to leave my commentary here, but I will present all 13 courses as we saw them.
Given the quality of the photos, you will have obviously guessed I didn't take them! They are courtesy of Eunice, who came with a proper ass camera and some amazing technical ability.

LIME GROVE

Nitro Poached Green Tea and Lime Mousse

RED CABBAGE GAZPACHO

Pommery Grain Mustard Ice Cream

JELLY OF QUAIL, CRAYFISH CREAM

Chicken Liver Parfait, Oak Moss and Truffle Toast

ROAST FOIE GRAS

Gooseberry, Braised Konbu and Crab Biscuit

MOCK TURTLE SOUP (c. 1850)

"Mad Hatter Tea"

"SOUND OF THE SEA"

SALMON POACHED IN LIQUORICE

Artichokes, Vanilla Mayonnaise, Golden Trout Roe and Manni Olive Oil

POWDERED ANJOY PIGEON (c. 1720)

Blood Pudding and Confit of Umbles

TAFFETY TART (c. 1660)

Caramelised Apple, Fennel, Rose and Candied Lemon

THE NOT-SO-FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST

Parnsip Cereal

Nitro-Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream

Hot & Iced Tea

CHOCOLATE WINE "SLUSH" (c. 1660)

Millionaire Shortbread

WINE GUMS

Historic Trade Routes of Britain

"LIKE A KID IN A SWEET SHOP"

One last word. As I was inserting all these photos, it suddenly occurred to me how self-referential it all was. There is so much Fat Duck packaging and merchandising, you almost wonder whether Heston is just having you on; each diner is given a menu with a Fat Duck wax seal, as well as the Fat Duck cereals, Fat Duck sweeties to take away... At least I hope it is ironic, surely you can't take this all seriously.

Brotherly love

I am continuing my eating fest this week, as both Alex and Lindsay are in town, all ready for a girly foodie chinwag. I have eaten some very good food in the past in the company of these two lovely ladies, so I had to pick somewhere special for our catch up dinner.

The Galvin Brothers seems to have appeared from out of nowhere in recent years and have opened 2 restaurants, both very different, but both very lovely. I've been to their more downmarket Galvin Bistrot de Luxe on Baker Street several times before, where you can get treated to classic French bistro-style cooking at very reasonable prices.

I must say, each time I've gone to Bistrot de Luxe, I have felt like the youngeest person there by about 20 years. The decor does make you feel like you should be an old man there - think wood panelling, green leather chairs, lamps that wouldn't look out of place in the Houses of Parliament - and there is definitely a business dinner crowd. Don't let it put you off though, the service is very charming, however scruffy you look.

Last time I was there, I had their seafood lasagne to start (sorry, this was back when I still had a blackberry, sorry for the out of focus pics):

The only dull note in the dinner was my main course. For some reason I had a funny turn and decided to order chicken - I never order chicken in non-Asian restaurants - and unfortunately this one did reinforce my prejudice that chicken is only ever on the menu for people with no tastebuds and a severe lack of adventure. It was very competently cooked, the chicken was quite moist, but sooo boring!:

It all just made me jealous of Dave's calves' liver:

And now for the twist. Neither Dave nor I are great fans of desserts, and we can always do without. Dave had had a slightly disappointing starter of oysters and chorizo, which turned out to be a plate of oysters and a separate plate of chorizo, rather than some clever combination of the two. He had chosen it over his usual fish soup, and he was still wanting fish soup. So what does he do? Orders the soup for his dessert! The waiters were completely baffled, but they were also quite cute in how they were actually quite impressed by the weirdness. The soup came, it was lovely, and it was accompanied by a couple of cute madeleines:

Bistrot de Luxe, I guess, is the little brother to the much more glamorous Galvin at Windows. Situated on the top floor of the Park Lane Hilton, you do suspect it's going to be one of those restaurants where it's all views and no substance. However, I'd heard consistently good things, and this was where I ended up taking Alex and Lindsay and Jeff. The views are gorgeous, although I was rubbish at identifying all the major landmarks - I have lived in London for over 5 years, honest!:

We were doing yet another cheapo menu courtesy of toptable, this time £33 for 3 courses. The thing that impressed me was how much of an overlap there was between the cheapo menu and the 'proper' menu, which at £58 for 3 courses, is nearly twice as much. Both my main and my dessert was from the proper menu, and two of the starters are also the same. There was also a lot more choice vs. the other cheapo menus I did last week - 5 choices for all the courses.

I was, however, almost disappointed when they bought out an amuse bouche of gazpacho. I am starting to find these extremely gimmicky now, invariably it is always some kind of soup, you know it was pretty cheap to make, it's all bordering on parody. Give me big food that I don't need to eat with a spoon made for toddlers, please!:

Joking aside, the big food they delivered were all of excellent standard. The veloute of sweetcorn with smoked Haddock croquettes was a clever play on textures. Along with the sweetcorn soup was some salty, crunchy popcorn, and underneath you had the fabulously crisp croquettes, the smokiness balanced well with sweetness of the soup. The portion was just right too, just enough:

My main was summer on a plate - braised halibut on peas, lettuce, and girolles. I just looked up halibut on wikipedia, and it has a delightful Latin name of hippoglossus hippoglossus - the fish was anything but hippo-like though, very light, soft, delicate:

The fellow diners were all pudding people, and were torn between lavender creme brulees and a strawberry Vacherin. Myself, I went for the chocolate palet, mainly because it featured cherries. All of them are very 'adult' desserts. I really quite liked the chocolate actually, completely non-sweet, cherries soaked in booze!:

Service was all very gracious, you hardly noticed it was there, leaving us plenty of time to gossip. A nice surprise was a little jar of homemade marshmallows that came with the bill.

The only problem I have is the direct opposite to its little brother though - given its location, it attracts a lot of bling, this place. I was wearing quite a smart dress, and I still felt scruffy with all the backless numbers and sparkly high-heels here. And I'm not sure they would have reacted that well if we'd suggested having soup for pudding!

Vital Ingredient - please don't go here

As much as I love my new job in the restaurant industry, the only food-related thing I dislike about is there is no microwave in the oven, which does limit my lunch options. I had got into a very good habit of packing my own lunch, normally leftovers from the previous day's dinner, which meant saving a ton of money.

I have enjoyed discovering the lunch options around Wardour Street, my favourites so far being the (if slightly expensive) Itsu takeaway option. I do, however, miss Tossed on St Martin's Lane, which not only did a good line in fresh tailor-made salads, but also nice jacket potatoes and healthy soups. So I was very pleased when I came across a clone called Vital Ingredient in Berwick Street. Unfortunately, it also prompted me to write one of the rudest complaint letters I've ever written.

I had wanted salad, but the queue was ridiculous, and every salad was over the £5 mark. So I went for the soup. How wrong I was. This is the complaint I just wrote about their Pacific Prawn Ramen Noodle Soup:

I have perhaps just made one of the most fundamental lunching mistakes of my career by purchasing your Pacific Prawn Ramen Noodle Soup. I've never visited your shop before, but I am a fan of your competitors Tossed, and I was hoping for an equally good experience. How misled I was. I'm not sure how you got past the trades descriptions act with your soup - there were no ramen noodles in it, but I did find a bout a teaspoon full of dreadfully overcooked rice noodles swimming in what appeared to be the contents of my dishwasher litter tray. There were no beansprouts, no coriander, no lemongrass. The only place the description got right was the prawn - there was exactly one prawn in there, mushed up to such an extent I suspect it died a few centuries ago. I am now contemplating where to buy a second lunch after eating your abomination. The location of your store is right by Chinatown, and very near some of the best Asian eating establishments in London. Please remove your soup from your menu before you offend any more tastebuds.

Even more offensive is their website. I don't mind them banging on about how great their ingredients are, but I do mind them using 3 different fonts on the same page, their overuse of comic sans in particular.

But I will calm down, and try and think of some nice things instead. Let me try and lament my favourite lunch places around the Strand:

1. Tossed: if you can get past the cutesy marketing, everything they seem to do is pretty good. My favourite was their house signature salad (baby mozzarella, chicken, apple, nuts) but they also do a nice line of Asian inspired soups. They appear to be able to exercise salt-control, which is unusual most places that make soup (Eat in particular)

2. Chequers: a firm favourite amongst the crowd at Uncle B, especially the boys. Contrary to popular opinion that their HIC (Hot Italian Chicken) was the best, my favourite thing from here was chicken escalope with spinach and cheese on baguette. Just remember not to waste your time with their free soup

3. Wasabi: obviously, don't ever come here for their sushi, which has normally been sweating in their individual plastic wrappers all morning. But I do like their noodle soups here, a recent new addition - a seafood one with prawns, mussels, fishcake will set you back less than a fiver. This was what I was expecting from Vital Ingredient, oh how they didn't deliver.

4. Farmer Brown's: the assured road to an early heart attack, but there is no better hangover cure. Just accept the fact that them frying the bread will make you feel better about life.

5. Ben's Cookies: ok, you're not really supposed to eat this for lunch, and it is actually quite a walk in Covent Garden, but I wanted to plug this little place. I've been addicted to them ever since my uni days in Oxford, where we had one in the Covered Market - my tip is to always ask what's just come out of the oven. Why do people go to Millie's Cookies when this is on offer. Mmmm.

6. Kastner & Oven's: I'm editing to add this one that I forgot! And what an omission! Again, a bit of a walk right by the Opera House, but it's like going round to someone's house, with lovely salads, quiches, and also a gorgeous choice of hot stuff too. The only thing to beware of is that despite the array of salads, this is definitely not a healthy option. The quiches ooze with butter, you will find it hard not to buy a cake as well.

Best Cantonese in London, supposedly

Good Cantonese food often pop up in the most unlikely of places in London. Most people already know never to go to Chinatown, and that Bayswater is now probably more suitably named as such, but venture out further and you will often be pleasantly surprised.

My family and I have been going to Shanghai in Dalston for many years now, but since it has changed hands a year or so ago, we saw quality plummeting, although the friendly camp waiter is still there. Emily went there the other day and pronounced it to have the best Cantonese food she's tasted in London, so I feel it is probably worth a repeat visit soon.

But this post is not about Shanghai, but about a restaurant in even darker depths of town. Most people have no reason to go to Elephant and Castle, unless they are fans of subways smelling of wee, or need to take their bulletproof vests out for a walk. However, ever since Dragon Castle 金龍堡 opened a few years back, I keep on hearing consistently good things about it. My favourite review of the place is this one by Giles Coren in The Times - I still can't decide whether I really dislike the guy, or have more of a crush-of-shame on him, but I liked the fact that in this review, for once, he doesn't pretend to know what he's talking about.

And upon arrival at Elephant and Castle, we discover that maybe it isn't that scary after all. The place is about a 8 minute walk from the tube station, and you do have to go down the dodgy subway, but the entrance of the place is pleasant enough, with fake Chinese doors and the prerequisite stone lions outside. Inside, it is very much like a big Chinese banquet restaurant that you'd find in Hong Kong, with the tacky chandeliers and waitresses in chongsams. The clientele is also very interesting - a very clear split between big Chinese families, and equally big Afro-Caribbean families too. The carpets were of a nice thick red pile.

We had a very good crowd of 4 Chinese and 4 token Chinese with us, so we were able to sample quite a large variety of the food. Yes, you will find the awful set menus with sweet and sour pork, spring rolls, and special fried rice, but you will also find lots of little gems that I haven't seen anywhere else before. For example, the crispy duck we ordered came with these little buns rather than pancakes, and it was clearly all about the skin. For those of you who take skin off duck, look away now:

They also were very skilled at doing fried things here, certainly not greasy or 油膩, such as this fried aubergine with salt, pepper, and chilli, which was very light:

The dish I ordered was a bit of a disappointment, but I think nothing will beat the 回鍋肉 or double cooked pork I had in Sichuan. It had the right kick of spice, but the pork was a bit bacony for me:

My favourite dish of the night was also potentially the most adventurous we had - eel balls with fermented tofu 腐乳脆鰻球, not sure anyone would order it if they'd just read the English. Again, they manage to fry it so it's not greasy, and the fermented tofu sauce gives it a sweet tangy taste. Not sure what happened to my camera here, hope you get the gist. It really reminded me of that wonderful eel dinner I had in Peakhurst, Sydney with Uncle Mak:

The other things we loved loved loved were all really the things our mums cooked us at home. Jess rightfully ordered a steamed sea bass with spring onion and ginger, which us 4 Chinese were soon mixing gleefully into our rice. We also loved the 豆苗 or pea shoot, which for once was the same price as all the other vegetables, and simply stirfried with garlic was probably the dish that disappeared the quickest.

We had about 10 dishes between 8 of us, and the bill came to around £17 a head including tip. Not bad at all given that we'd completely stuffed ourselves, and at least it made us feel more bulletproof for the walk back to the tube station. I think if I brought my parents here, they would like it, and probably order better things too. The only slight reservation is that the English translations were very dodgy - e.g. 麻婆豆腐 or mapo dofu was translated as 'tofu mummy style'. I really should explore job opportunities in the Chinese menu translation industry...

Boxwood Cafe - mmm cheapo menu

In our little adventure into the various toptable cheapo menus this week, I actually had very high expectations of Orrery, and much lower ones for Boxwood Cafe. I do have some level of prejudice against the various Gordon Ramsay ventures - as much as I loved my one and only visit to Royal Hospital Road, you know that given the huge number of restaurants and side projects Ramsay has now, he more or less certainly has nothing to do with the day-to-day running of each individual restaurant anymore. I was also a bit dismayed to read that the signature dish at Boxwood Cafe is a burger - ok, it's a veal and fois gras burger at £25 a pop, but I'm never sure of these upscale reinventions of lowscale dishes.

How wrong I was though. Even just stepping into Boxwood Cafe I felt there was much more of a buzz, and what a lovely, cosy space. Even on a Wednesday night, the restaurant was packed full, but all the soft furnishings (including very clean, smooth, beige carpets, and yes, I did take my shoes off) means it's never noisy. Obviously it benefits from its Knightsbridge location, as well as the Ramsay name, but what a different in atmosphere it made.

The cheapo menu here was £23 for 2 courses including a 185ml carafe of wine (or £28 for 3 courses). The prices on the a la carte menu were a lot punchier than I'd actually expected, £10-15 for a starter, £20-35 for a main, which makes the cheapo menu pretty good value. Choices were limited to 3 per course, but I thought they were simple and well-chosen, and reflected the style of the cooking well.

For starters, there was a choice of ham hock terrine, grilled sardines, and goat's cheese creation. Jess and I both plumped for the terrine. Accompanied by piccalili and garlicky ciabatta, the terrine was wonderfully flavoured, lovely chunks of meat, why don't I eat more of this kind of stuff?:

Emily went for the grilled sardines, which came with hummus and beetroot. Again, I liked how they really showcased cheaper ingredients in order to make their cheapo menu work, rather than compromising really expensive ones:

The main choices were a seafood risotto, a chicken milanese, and a somewhat suspect vegetarian option. We all ordered the seafood risotto, which was divine, one of the best risottos I've eaten in a restaurant. The copious amounts of butter may have helped, but again, the theme of using cheap ingredients well came back. The seafood included wasn't extravagant - mussels, clams, squid - but cooked to their best. This would have rivalled any lobster risotto. The little bits of samphire was a nice sharp contrast to the extreme creaminess:

The dessert options were quite uninspiring, and only Emily went for the peach melba sundae (posh peaches and ice cream basically). But all in all, what a lovely surprise, and for once it didn't really leave me craving for the expensive a la carte menu. A complete opposite to Orrery in some ways - one of the most expensive main courses at Orrery was actually pig trotters! OK, it came with truffles, but the experience at Boxwood shows you don't need to sex up good, honest ingredients.

Orrery - meh cheapo menu

It has been a straight back-to-London reality foodwise for me since I got back from Africa, mainly because Emily is about to leave London, and we are helping her eat round London as much as possible. Well, that's my excuse anyway. There is also the helpful fact that the recession is still here, which means lots of top restaurants are doing some ridiculous deals right now to get footfall.

Orrery has been our second stop already this week, which is currently doing a £25 for 3 courses offer via toptable. It is situated on one of my favourite streets in London, Marylebone High Street, and I have always wanted to go given its good reputation. However, it lost its Michelin star a few years back, and I'm not convinced it's doing too well. Although we were there on a Tuesday, it was more than half empty, and I suspect most were there for the cheapo menu.

I will spend a paragraph talking about the space. We ate in the main restaurant, but there is an even more attractive terrace upstairs, which you can peek into, and feels very exclusive. However, I liked the main room well enough, even if the decoration is a little bland. The thing I like best were the windows - the restaurant is named after Charles Boyle, the 4th Earl of Orrery, who also had a mechanical device depicting the positions of the planets of the solar system named after him. The windows are round, and open out like a globe, very pretty. No carpets, but lots of soft furnishings with sofas means its relatively quiet.

The cheapo menu had decent choice, with 3 starters, 3 mains, and 3 desserts. Given the limitations, the choices were generally quite inoffensive, but given that I was in a group of Chinese people, we all more or less plumped for the seafood options. But a nice surprise was that even on the cheapo menu, there was an amuse bouche - a little cup of tomato soup with olive jelly, quite spicy and bloody mary-esque:

Four out of five of us went for the seafood tortellini in a seafood veloute. I'm always a sucker for seafood / pasta / soupy combinations, my only criticism was that it was 2 tiny tortellini, whereas I could have easily polished off a whole main course sized plateful of it:

All of us went for the fish du jour, a pan-fried seabass with cauliflower, girolles, and a champagne foam, which was very competently executed if probably a little uninspiring. But again, the portion size was tiny tiny. There really was not a lot of fish on the plate, and you got 2 girolles, a squirt of cauliflower puree, and a teeny cylinder of potato. You do get lots of coriander fluff though, which they seem very fond of here:

There was also a little pre-dessert of blueberry moussey stuff on top of jelly stuff, with a bit of lime sprinkly stuff on top. One thing we observed was that their dessert chef seemed to have a very tart palate - the lime sprinkly stuff was tear-jerkingly sour, as was the passion fruit sorbet that one of us had for their dessert. Given that I don't have a sweet tooth, I quite liked this:


The dessert choices were actually very good - a blueberry frangipane with blueberry sorbet, blackberry souffle with fromage frais sorbet, or you can just get a plate of sorbet. However, by this time, they had cleverly wheeled the cheese trolley over, and the waft of cheese and the ridiculous choice quickly swayed me. There were literally about 50 cheese on that trolley. And they were very generous with it too - I only really wanted about 3 soft and stinkies, but ended up with a much more diverse and full selection, including comte, camembert, ewe's milk cheese and a goat's cheese:

However, this was also the first time that I knowingly had some fourme d'ambert (because normally I'm more than a little tipsy by the time i get to cheese). It has easily elevated itself to be my cheese of the moment - a lovely cross between a creamy gorgonzola and a more tangy stilton, but there is a little something extra about it. Dave informs me that they inject vouvray wine into it as the mould forms, which probably explains why it's addictive. Anyone know of a good decent supply of the stuff?

All in all, not bad for a cheapo menu, although I'm not sure it really gave them a chance to showcase what they can really do. I had gandered at the full a la carte menu on their website (£43 for 3 course), and I particularly liked the sound of 'lobster, lobster, lobster, lobster', which was one of the starters. I also would have preferred that they skipped the pre-starter/pre-dessert and just gave slightly bigger portions of the actual courses.

And to complete the review for GUers, the bathrooms were lovely (lovely branded toiletries that I didn't recognise, not Molton Brown, and not stolen), and comfortably 2 hour chairs.

Swaziland for the day

We were initially supposed to have had 9 build days in Mozambique. However, the village we were working in at the last minute decided to hold a grand meeting for the whole village for 2 days - something about doing some rain dancing, or to prepare for the government elections, I'm still not sure which - which meant we had to find something else to do! Given that we were very near the southern tip of the country, about an hour away from the border with Swaziland, we ended up going to a new country as a day trip.

I actually know very little about Swaziland, except from the limited information I got from Esther and Clare, who have both done Technoserve there. Apparently it is one of the more developed countries in southern Africa, 'a bit like Switzerland'. When we told Aida our Habitat contact in Mozambique that we were going, she literally screwed her face up and said 'it is very cold ... and very small'. Hmmm.

Our main destination was Hlane Royal National Park, a game reserve focused on the conservation of animals, which were previously almost wiped out in the area. After having been to Selous in Tanzania and the Maasai Mara in Kenya, I thought I would be safari'ed out by now, but it is magical seeing animals in the wild.

We saw masses and masses of white rhinos:

Got scared by elephants - we also did a walking safari where we were told to walk very quickly away when we saw one!:

And there were my favourite animals, the hippo - if you squint really hard they really are in this picture, honest:

We managed to try some Swazi food too whilst we were there. They had their own version of porridge-like stodge, which was much coarser and nowhere near as nice as xima. We also inadvertently had some wildebeest sausage. We all thought it was beef, and then found out what it was! It was all a bit heavy though:

We also sampled their local beer - although I suspect this is a South African brand brewed in Swazi:

All in all, not a bad little day trip! We only saw a little part of the country, but it was certainly a lot better than Aida had prescribed it to be.

Mozambican food

You are probably amazed that I've managed to write 2 whole posts without mentioning food, and also with so many photos too! However, I absolutely fell in love with Mozambican food, both in the village and in the city.

The food in the rural areas was very similar to the food I've had before in its neighbouring Tanzania and also in Kenya. The focus is on bulk and carbohydrates, with the aforementioned xima, as well as rice, yams and potatoes, accompanied by a small amount of saucey vegetables and beans. Our favourite was 'kor-fu' (not a Greek island), some kind of kale cooked in coconut milk. Perhaps the best food we had was on the build site, cooked by the wonderful wonderful Maria. She did absolute wonders with the food, made even more amazing by the fact that she did it all on open wood-fires. Here is the making of xima (the white stuff being stirred):

Everything is done on the floor, the ladies all have just amazingly strong backs. They also appear to have asbestos hands, not a tea-towel or oven glove in site to lift the lids of pans! And here is Maria herself - one of the most cheerful people I've ever met:

We stayed in accommodating provided by a Spanish Mission called Casa de Gaito in the nearby village of Massaca. It was very basic, with no hot water, frequently no running water, but we were fed very well by the Mission's cook Emilia. She did a mixture of traditional cooking for us, such as rice with cabbage:

She also tried her hand at making us some Westernised food. I guess it was to appease previous teams who were less keen to try the local food, but in general these were less successful! Here's a pasta bake, topped with plastic Kraft cheese slices!:

Outside of building, we had 2 days of rest and relaxation in and around Maputo. Our trip to the beach on the Macaneta Peninsula was hilarious. Everyday we were in Mozambique, it was 25-30C, bright sunshine, but of course the day we go to the beach was also the day we had storms and pouring rain. We did brave it on the beach for about 20 minutes before huddling back inside, but at least the food made up for it. The seafood here was wonderful, here is the grilled red snapper:

And it was also the first time I ate the very famous Mozambican prawn. These were enormous, and sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. Very juicy, and very much benefited from being barbequed. The rest of the team (composed of a real vegetarian and 2 fake ones) were a bit disturbed watching me suck out their heads:

The restaurant scene in Maputo itself is extremely cosmopolitan, and you can more or less eat whatever you want here, from Indian to Thai food. However, I decided to try something more traditional, this time a prego, which was basically a Portuguese steak sandwich. Leonie the real vegetarian was very brave to try this, given that it was quite rare in the middle:

Maputo also hosts the famous fish market, and it was an experience in itself going there and buying the fish! Thankfully we had our taxi driver Franco to help us, but the whole confusing process involves buying the fish from one guy, getting another guy to clean/gut it, then getting another guy to cook it for you. Unfortunately if you are a tourist, they really hassle you and you feel like you're being swindled the entire time, but the seafood was extremely fresh, and extremely cheap! We had 1.5kg of prawns for 450MT, which is about £12, and a guy will clean/gut your fish for you for 20MT/50p! The best thing we ate here though was the crab - again ridiculously cheap at around 40MT/£1 each, I wished we'd bought more: