After the delights of Les Deux Salons last week, it was really not my intention to be going all out high end French restauranting again for a while, but then I have no power over when birthdays fall or the fact that for various reasons I had to take an old friend out in the Islington area to celebrate his. I lived in N1 for many years, and was always slightly surprised that for such a supposedly socially mobile area, the majority of its restaurants were as disappointing as the government that resulted from the deal struck in its most famous one. Granita is long gone, replaced now I think by some Tex Mex joint, although I did have a great meal there years ago. It was a date, and I seem to remember things working out for me too, despite the idiocy of taking the girl in question to see Gary Oldman’s light romantic comedy Nil by Mouth first. I don’t know what I was thinking, but clearly Granita was a magical place for negotiations, and the food was excellent.

I also ate at Almeida when Terence Conran first opened it, and was very disappointed. My overriding memory is of garlic, garlic and more garlic. Now obviously I like garlic, but not that much – I came away smelling like the French do in crap jokes. They also put tomatoes in a Coquille St Jacques, which is just plain weird. By a bizarre quirk of fate, my friend and I went to school with one of Conran’s sons, who once took him on a family holiday where most of the cooking was done by a chap called Simon Hopkinson who was trying out dishes for some new venture called Bibendum. Now that’s what I call self-catering. Almeida is no longer a Conran concern, and the chef is one Alan Jones, but I would go as far as to say Mr Hopkinson would be hard pressed to improve on what was coming out of his kitchen.

Cornish crab and avocado tian

We started with a couple of glasses of Piper Heidsieck at a frankly irritating £20, but it was a birthday, so I mustn’t carp, although in drinking terms, I much preferred the very versatile Beaujolais-Villages (still not given away at £32) we had with our food. I went for Cornish crab with avocado tian, confit tomatoes and lemon olive oil and dared them to put garlic anywhere near it. Mr Jones clearly wouldn’t dream of it – this was all the things it should be; the crab was the star, but wouldn’t have performed nearly so well without the supporting cast – with the added crunch of a melba toast and sparky green shoots to lift the whole dish. This contrasted nicely with the rich, earthy wood pigeon and puy lentils across the table, which came with lardons and a beautifully reduced sauce.The meat/fish theme continued into the main courses as my friend went for plaice with girolles, artichokes and a shellfish foam – very clever cooking, and a good example of the subtle difference between here and Les Deux Salons – both are excellent, but there are perhaps just a few more bells and whistles (and foams) involved at Almeida.

Wood pigeon and puy lentils

Whether or not that is a good thing is up to you. On a simpler level, my suckling pig was just the porkiest bit of pork I have ever eaten. It had the sort of piggyness that would have Jay Rayner reaching for tissues. Again, what he’d be using them for is up to you. Incidentally, if you didn’t know, Pommes Pont Neuf is French for chunky chips.

After the brilliance of the mains, the desserts were a slight disappointment. I very much liked my caramel and cocoa nibs crispy thing (called a brislet on the menu, although I can find no mention of this word anywhere else in the world, except in reference to a township in Polk, Minnesota,) but the pannacotta and red wine poached cherries were fairly unremarkable, and the crème brulee was a little shallow and not quite as smooth as it might have been. By this stage, we’d come to expect better things, but then the bar had been set very high.

Suckling pig, Le Chunky Chips

The bill came in at just under £150, including efficient and friendly service, although I did find the addition of a pound for Action Against Hunger a bit ridiculous. I’m happy to pay it, and obviously I admire the charity and the sentiment, but a) I had no idea it was going to be added to the bill and b) when you’ve just spent 150 quid on dinner for a blog called Food Ponce, one pound for Action Against Hunger just sounds like you’re taking the piss really, don’t you think? Again, I’ll leave that up to you.

If you had to decide between Les Deux Salons and Almeida, I have to say I would probably opt for the former, but this particular Tour de France was a close run thing, and the food at the Almeida is unrecognizable from my previous visit. Things change over time, which is of course why the birthdays keep coming. Sometimes, that’s no bad thing.

Sept 2011

Sometimes, the best intentions are best left elsewhere. I had no sooner sat at the bar in Les Deux Salons to peruse the soft drinks menu than James O’Brien sat down next to me and said ‘vodka martini, straight up, with an olive, hello Al’, like my own personal James Bond. Moments later Nick Revell arrived and ordered the same, but ‘gin, with a twist’ and so I had to follow suit, although with an olive as I actually like martinis. Our choice of three subtly different variations might be a happy metaphor for why we work so well together on No Pressure To Be Funny, but I think it’s more likely to indicate, as my girlfriend later pointed out, that ‘you three are such fucking champagne socialists.’

The room is a real charmer in itself – having caught just the right whiff of Parisian grandeur mixed with something a little louche (some of these words are French) and bohemian (one is Czech, apparently.) We took our cocktails with us through a busy, but not hurried, restaurant and settled down with the menus and some excellent bread that didn’t appear on the bill, for a change. One of the joys of working with my two companions is our propensity to have really good lunches on the pretext that we are in fact ‘having a meeting’, and so I should mention that this was our third visit. Previously, we have always gone for the set menu – very good value at £15.50 for three courses – but emboldened by ‘chemistry’ as James described the effects of his martini, it soon became clear that this wasn’t going to be one of those meals. Well, we had made a saving on the bread.

James opted for a fish soup which he declared ‘very fishy’ by which I think he meant delicious, not suspicious, as were my Cornish sardines with lemon, capers, chilli and toasted sourdough. Nick had tomato salad ‘forgotten varieties’ which true to their word, I have forgotten, but which came with fennel and olive oil – hugely fresh and tasty yet subtly palate cleansing. Between us we had ticked one of every starter section except Les Terrines (lovely chap,) but I’m sure I shall be returning to correct that soon, preferably on a Friday, as that is the day that their classic bouillabaisse ‘Marseille style’ is one of the Plats du Jour. This was a Thursday, which offers Navarin of Lamb, but we were now looking to the next chapter heading on this extensive, but impressive menu. I’m often wary of this many dishes on one piece of paper, but as there wasn’t one duff note (nôte d’uff?) in the entire meal, perhaps I shouldn’t be.

The mains were superb. Luckily, we are three people who know each other well enough to spend a considerable amount of time passing bits of food across to one another, so I can tell you that James’s calf’s liver and bacon was both succulent and rich, as well as properly crisscrossed with carbon from the grill, and I am still smiling at the thought of Nick’s bavette steak. Not always the easiest cut, this was handled perfectly – chewy yet tender and bloody and very, very tasty. In fact, possibly the only thing better was my saddle of rabbit – an absolute classic, executed perfectly; salty pancetta giving way to tender, moist rabbit and an offal stuffing that was borderline illegal. A beautiful carrot puree, spring chard and some stolen pommes frites made this probably my main course of the year.

All of this was washed down with a lovely Quatre Chemins, Pays du Gard, which felt like a snip at £18.50, and probably went some way to explaining the grabbing motions when the dessert menu arrived, and the decision to have a carafe of Sauternes from it, among other things. My tarte au citron was everything I expected – it is exactly the sort of dish that this kitchen would seem unable to get wrong – but the real stars were two iced peanut butter parfaits with roast banana. This dish alone means I am under pain of death to visit again and was sweet, crunchy, cold, hot and probably as bad for you as it felt good.

We couldn’t resist finishing off with a small plate of cheese to share – a lovely Rocquefort, surprisingly good smoked cheddar (smoked cheese usually reminds me of school dinners and plastic,) an ash coated chevre and something that was distantly related to Chaumes in that it tasted heavenly but would still make your fingers smell if you picked it up. Thoroughly sated, we ordered coffees, and Nick and I had a couple of Trepout VSOP’s – James opted out at this point as he’s got something called ‘children’ who were going to need ‘picking up’ later in the afternoon, while Nick and I ventured into Soho. After a couple of drinks, Nick headed home, while I ended up being roared at about Jesus by a Scottish actor who had seemed perfectly good company up until that point. None of this was enough to detract from the memory of a quite exquisite meal – at £225 including service it was by no means cheap, but for what we had I still think it was great value, if not of the everyday kind. I don’t do stars, but Les Deux Salons would get five, and is one.

Sept 2011

No Pressure To Be Funny will be starting a two month weekly run at The Leicester Square Theatre from Oct 12^th. Guests already confirmed include Clive Stafford Smith, Rich Hall, Miranda Sawyer, Andy Hamilton, Mitch Benn, Matthew Norman, Holly Walsh, Paul Sinha and Matt Forde. A Christmas show – No Pressure to Be Festive – will be taking place on Sunday Dec 18^th.

Ah, Nottingham. Bows and arrows, merry men and medieval taverns, or gun crime, stag nights and binge drinking, if you want to be a bit more twenty first century about it. And comedy clubs – three new ones in the last year – clearly designed to distract the townspeople from arguing about which of their pubbes is the most olde. I was at The Glee for the weekend with Ian Moore, Nick Doody and John Fothergill, who I’m very lucky to count as good friends as well as great comics. (This being Nottingham I should probably call them jesters, but I do have some rules.)

On Saturday, I wandered into the Lace Market to follow my normal routine – stare longingly at the windows of watch shops and then try on lots of clothes I can’t afford. Luckily, Flannels didn’t have a Holland Esquire jacket I wanted (at least not in the right size) so this freed up a bit of extra cash for lunch. It is thought processes like these that will see us out of the recession.

The first thing I noticed about Iberico was how close it was to a La Tasca. Now I’ve only eaten in one of these once and it wasn’t completely awful, but I’m pretty sure the proprieters of the Nottingham branch were less than thrilled when Iberico opened its doors round the corner. In football terms, this is a bit like Notts Forest finding they have to play Barcelona every day, although that analogy doesn’t work completely as Forest have had some success in Europe, which is more than you can say for La Tasca.

Iberica is located in the ‘historic’ Galleries of Justice. If that sounds a bit…Inquistiony for you, rest assured – it has nothing on the sacrilege that is The Pitcher and Piano in the church next door – but it does have something of the dungeon feel to it. It was going to be pretty difficult to import Spanish weather to the Midlands anyway, let alone into a gothic basement, so Iberico has done the next best thing and imported some quite wonderful ingredients instead. The lunch special – two tapas, Catalan bread and dessert for a very reasonable £11.95 – is only available Monday to Friday, but this didn’t bother me as I was getting quite excited just reading the menu and am clinically incapable of choosing only two tapas dishes anyway. Fresh sourdough arrived to help me think, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar so sticky it even stuck to the bread properly.

Paleta Iberico de Bolleta D.O, Aged Manchego.

We started with ham because you have to. I managed not to order the most expensive, settling for the Paleta Iberico de Bolleta D.O (still £13.95,) alongside some aged Manchego with sweet pickled figs and smoked paprika. Everyone knows all about black pigs and acorns by now. All I’ll say is that if I was on death row, I think there’s a good chance I’d order charcuterie for my last meal  – obviously I aim to get executed at a very high end place. There’s something almost forbidden about really good cured ham that does strange things to me, and with the cheese and figs I was already making the weird appreciative noises that I may have mentioned in previous posts. Meanwhile, Catalan bread – a kind of Spanish bruschetta on lightly fried bread with tomatoes, garlic and herbs – had my taste buds telling my arteries to be quiet.

Catalan Bread

They (the arteries) were in for a fairly rough ride. Next up, two courgette flowers stuffed with Monte Neblo goat’s cheese in a crispy batter and drizzled with honey. The person sat opposite me said something about things being too rich and sweet at this point, so I think we can discount her opinions. Patatas bravas, triple cooked in goose fat, were a perfect example of a dish that is often done badly because it should be easy to get right, while Truffled Onglet beef was so rich it should probably have gone back to Spain to prop up the economy. Luckily the addition of broad beans and pickled shimeji mushrooms pegged it back to the merely wealthy.

Courgette Flowers

Ensaladilla Rusa – seared tuna with tomato and soft quails eggs – was all kinds of things, but mostly very clever and very delicious. The person opposite me doesn’t like soft egg yolks, so we shall continue to ignore her, although we did both agree that the one slight disappointment was the lime, salt and pepper squid. Small pieces of squid with a bit too much batter and not quite enough lime or alioli to prevent them being a little dry – they definitely suffered by comparison with the enormously high standard of everything else.

Truffled Onglet Beef, Ensaladilla Rusa

I don’t really think of dessert when I have tapas, and in any case, by this point the arteries had had a word with the stomach and they’d both agreed they were full. The bill, with exemplary service, water and a very nice glass of white Rioja, came to £73.76. For what was essentially a treat, I think that represents pretty good value, and as most of the comedy circuit is now spending more time in Nottingham than it used to, I‘m sure I will be treating myself again. Next time I should probably try La Tasca, but after this, I doubt I would do them justice. I’ll be too busy sitting in the Galleries.

Sept 2011

It’s rare that I prepare for a three course meal by snaffling my entire protein ration for the day before I’ve even sat down, but then again it’s even rarer for piping hot sausage rolls to start flirting with you from a bar top. Rarer still that they have a Scotch Egg friend who is waiting for you in the kitchen wearing nothing but curried mayonnaise, the saucy minx (ahem.)

Possibly the world's best sausage roll

We hadn’t booked at Pub du Vin for Sunday lunch, but were looked after impeccably by very helpful staff who sat us on high stools with menus. In retrospect, it was remarkable that a table became available so quickly, as within minutes the whole place seemed full of prospective diners, but this was quite enough time for me to decide that I had to try one of those sausage rolls. This was, quite simply, a great decision. As Dickens is to Dan Brown so the Pub du Vin sausage roll is to Ginsters. Buttery yet utterly greaseproof pastry wrapped around a generous portion of beautifully seasoned, deliciously moist I-can’t-bring-myself-to-call-it-sausagemeat, helped along with the merest smear of Colman’s, but also perfect without, I’m sure. In fact this was so good that I had to try the Scotch Egg, which had also been recommended by a complete stranger at the bar. Although not in the same league as the sausage roll, the soft yolk and mayonnaise still made it a pretty darn exciting example of its oeuvre, which I desperately hope is as bad a pun as it’s trying to be.

Scotch Egg with curried mayonnaise

We were then sat in the bay window, eyed jealously by the empty Indian restaurant opposite. The room itself is light and airy, with photographs on the wall occupying that tasteful area just south of arty. I’m not a huge fan of the trompe l’oeil ‘brickwork peeping through’ paintjob; the place looks great – why make it look like your wallpaper’s peeling? I wasn’t keen on the mural in next door’s Hotel du Vin when I popped in there for coffee recently either, but this is not Art Ponce, so I digress.

The menu is refreshingly simple, with five or so starters and mains and three specials chalked on the wall. We shared a pea, broad bean and goat’s cheese salad which was delightful – sun dried tomatoes and curdy cheese giving it a real punch, balanced by the freshness of the greener ingredients.

Pea, broad bean and goat's cheese salad (sorry)

The only real problems came with the mains. My lobster bisque (one of the specials) had to go back as it was lukewarm at best, so by the time we had worked out that the roast beef was also a little on the tepid side we felt it was a bit late to send that back too. The staff did, however, deal very efficiently with the problem – the fact I had to ask for another spoon when the replacement bisque arrived meant that it also came with a free glass of a very good New World Pinot Grigio, which was appreciated. The bisque was superb – melting salmon, red mullet and a large shell-on prawn in a velvety, rich soup with none of that slight tinniness that normally stops me ordering it. I also made the unusual discovery that if you want to mop your plate, bread is for losers – steal some Yorkshire pudding and you will be rewarded with a kind of lobster choux bun that is as delicious as it is surprising. The roast – temperature to one side – was a little light on the veg, but the beef was excellent and as rare as we were told it would be. Like a flirty sausage roll.

Roast beef, Lobster bisque

I shouldn’t really have had pudding, but I feel it is my duty to try every crème brulee that is offered to me, martyr that I am. This was up there with the sausage roll – smooth custard delicately (and not over-) flavoured with vanilla, topped with exactly the right amount of caramelized sugar to shatter pleasingly under the spoon without over sweetening what lay beneath. One of the best I’ve ever tasted, and there have been a few.

The bill came in at a very reasonable £53.10, service excluded. I’d actually forgotten the sensation of being able to reward service on my own terms; something I value as both a former waiter and a sentient human being. What marks good service out is how they respond when things go wrong, as opposed to when they’re going right, which they did for the vast majority of our meal. I truly dislike the term ‘optional service charge’ when it is clearly anything but. Pub du Vin doesn’t have an optional service charge because it doesn’t need one. And you can’t say rarer than that.

Aug 2011

I wanted to review a restaurant in Mumbai, so I headed down to Phoenix Mall, another of those international monuments to Mammon that have sprung up all over the world as part of Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nations. I shouldn’t be too dismissive – it is also home to the Mumbai Comedy Store where I’ve been playing with John Moloney and Wayne Deakin to full houses of delightful and non-WKD swilling Indians. In addition, the whole place is refreshingly free of looters – it’s quite something when you feel safer in a city that has recently been shot up and bombed by gangs of fundamentalist commandos than you do at home.

The main reason I opted for Rajdhani is that I quite fancied trying some proper Indian food without risking my fragile western digestive system. I’m generally quite adventurous, but if you think I was going to conduct an in-depth survey of Mumbai street food in the name of arse-based suicide you’re reading the wrong blog. Come to think of it, you’re probably on the wrong bit of the internet.

Rajdhani is part of a chain – according to it’s website, it’s known as the ‘thali palace’ with 72 different rotating menus featuring 22,464 vegetarian delicacies from Gujarat and Rajasthan. Garfunkel’s it ain’t. It does, however, seem to be doing a thriving business and in common with much in this amazing city, is quite a hectic experience. There is no menu – as soon as we sat down, a waiter arrived with a jug of warm water for us to wash our hands, and then battle commenced. I tried to ask about a number of the dishes, but it’s quite hard to conduct a meaningful conversation with that many waiters travelling that quickly so what follows does involve a certain amount of guesswork.

The first things to arrive were the condiments familiar to anyone who likes poppadums (who doesn’t like poppadums?) – onion salad, mango pickle, green and red chutneys. There was also a small pile of sweetened powder I wasn’t sure what to do with, but whilst I was pondering this, dishes really began arriving thick and fast.

Vegetarian thali

If you look at the accompanying picture, I will try and list what we had – possibly the surest way to show my complete lack of expertise. Clockwise from bottom left: okra with onion and herbs, vegetable curry, mustard seed potatoes, paneer curry, spiced curd, mild dhal, spicy dhal, fruit curd and some sort of sweet dumpling that Wayne liked and I didn’t. The larger bowl on the left is a dhal-ish type curry with some sort of broken biscuit, the one to the right another curd, with a savoury dumpling. I suspect dumpling is not an Indian word, but I’m doing my best here. As well as the chapatti and poppadums, there was a sweetened flat bread that reminded me of an American biscuit and a herb bread which may have been a phulka, but I was getting fairly confused by now. We weren’t given much choice about a somewhat uninspiring rice curry with a little added ghee, or the ‘cheesy bread pakoda,’ which, judging by the name, were probably aimed squarely at ignorant westerners who liked them very much indeed, thank you.

Almost all of this was very good – highlights included the pakodas, the paneer and vegetable curries, and the potatoes and okra. I also discovered that I like curd – especially the spiced (cinammon?) one that tasted like the white sauce they put on Christmas pudding at school should have done but never did. The fruit salad version was delicious too, as was a very sweet cake like creation sprinkled with nuts that I noted down as an ‘Indian brandy snap,’ despite its complete lack of brandy or snap, which also put paid to my inbuilt notion that I didn’t like Indian sweets because they were too, um…sweet. I could have done without the ‘welcome drink’ with a few shreds of undefined herb and something else (barley?) floating in it, but I could see how it worked with the rest of the thali.

‘Thali’ means ‘plate’ in Hindi, and we eventually had to ask the waiters to stop filling ours up before we burst. With a couple of cokes, the bill came to a whopping 798 Rupees, or a tenner, for two of us. Downstairs, Diesel were selling trainers for ten times that price which were probably made round the corner by someone who didn’t get that much to feed their family for a month. Thoughts like these are never far away in Mumbai, but in many ways that is also what makes it such a fascinating city to visit – maybe next time I should be a little braver and try the street vendors; if the food doesn’t kill you, the traffic almost certainly will.

Aug 2011

P.S.

I will be doing a benefit for a school for street children that we visited in Mumbai at The London Comedy Store on November 7^th with both John, Wayne and a couple of people I can’t name yet but who could sell out the place ten times over by themselves. Further details to follow, but thought I’d mention it here first…

This is the first time I’ve experienced the dilemma of writing about one of my personal favourites and worrying that I mightn’t be able to get a table on my next visit, so I have brilliantly circumvented the problem by not having enough readers to make the already packed Mien Tay on Lavender Hill any busier. Added to which, approximately one hour after we left the premises, feral gangs of fuckwits began looting the Debenhams a couple of hundred yards down the road, before ‘showing the rich’ by ransacking a (wait for it) party supplies shop and then torching a couple of flats. Wow. What a way to ‘get your taxes back.’ Wish I’d thought of that, especially as I actually pay them.

Somehow I doubt the residents of One Hyde Park were exactly quaking in their handmade beds, and much as I dislike the fact that there are people living in £140m apartments whilst normal working people are priced out of their own capital city, neither should they be. At least not until the revolution is organized with a slightly more coherent agenda than free trainers for all.

As a result, it seems fairly fatuous to pontificate about on the joys of Mien Tay’s delightful signature quail starter with honey, garlic and spices or the fact that I reckon they’re a fairly strong contender for best pho in town. But I’m gonna.

I was recently working overseas with the Bath based shotgun enthusiast and rib preparer Nick Page who asked me if I’d tried the Vietnamese opposite the old Battersea Jongleurs that he’d stumbled upon by accident some time ago. When a restaurant’s fan base extends to the West Country via a dinner table in Cyprus, you know it’s a good idea to book. I haven’t been to Mien Tay when it hasn’t been full, which might explain the slightly brusque nature of the service, but in my experience they’re just being quick because they are busy, and with food this good, I really don’t mind. There are upstairs and downstairs rooms, gaudily decorated with plastic vines and bright colours, and the whole place hums with a combination of industry and the chatter of happy eaters.

Quail with honey, garlic and spices

One day I will be organized enough to order the Seafood Claypot 24 hours in advance, which is merely one of the many dishes I haven’t got round to yet because other ones keep on getting in the way. I didn’t have the sea bass with mango or the pork and beansprout pancake this time either because, frankly, I was busy, but I can definitely recommend them from previous visits. I had to start with the quail – spatchcocked and sticky and moist and delicious. A small squeeze of lime and a dip in what I think is just salt and pepper and you’ve got one of the best starters in London. Even A.A. Gill liked it, but I can’t help ordering it despite that. Exemplary prawn summer rolls were followed by the aforementioned pho for her – she had ordered the sliced steak version but by the time anyone had noticed that this one also contained meatballs she was halfway through it. I can’t be bothered with adjectives – just order a bowl, add whatever bits you like and you should understand what I’m on about.

Beef pho

I went for a simple vegetable noodle dish and morning glory – water spinach with soy sauce and garlic – which were both tasty and fulfilled some sort of amorphous five-a-day concept that was floating around in the back of my mind. They were also the perfect accompaniment to my chargrilled goat. We don’t eat a lot of goat, but this is a fine place to start – strips of juicy, gamey meat tapering out to slightly carbonized ends with a little caramelized onion and chilli. According to an elderly Vietnamese woman who was at the table next to Nick when he ate here, it also puts lead in your pencil, which is handy to know, and just the way you want to find out.

I nearly ordered the Vietnamese rainbow drink (mung beans, gelatinous seaweed and coconut milk) in the name of research, but then decided I wasn’t feeling quite that inquisitive, so we got the bill, which arrived with some fresh orange segments. £35 for this little lot seems pretty reasonable, even if we stuck to sparkling water – there is a wine list, but they don’t mind if you bring your own. One other little caveat is that they don’t take cards, but I was prepared and perfectly ready to hand over cash.

Imagine that – handing over cash? What a novel idea. I’m not sure if Mien Tay was unfortunate enough to have its windows kicked in during the idiocy that followed (I certainly wouldn’t mess with the lady who usually seems to be in charge,) but might I suggest you head down there to a fabulous restaurant in an area that now needs to support its local businesses far more than it thought it did before Croydon facelift and dumb-ass hoodboy rolled into town.

Aug 2011

I bloody love Masterchef, and I have done ever since Gregg’s tiny vocabulary and John’s three facial expressions (twinkle, furrowed and semi-tearful) took over. I have predicted every winner, and with the possible and slightly shameful exception of the last series of The Apprentice, it is the only programme where I have watched every episode. I have some puritanical misgivings about the format changes in the last series, but generally speaking I even like the base. I like the buttery base. I like the buttery biscuit ba…oh, just look on YouTube.

I’d love to eat at Matt Follas’s The Wild Garlic in Dorset as I picked him as the winner on his first appearance when he tea-smoked a scallop (the only other one I did that with is James Nathan, who now cooks at Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant which I’ve already been to, and now prefer Paul Ainsworth’s No 6 when I’m in Padstow, thank you very much.) I recently saw the 2007 champ Steven Wallis at my bus stop, and having only spotted him helping in the background on Great British Menu in the past couple of years, felt a pang of sympathy that perhaps the Masterchef crown was not the passport to untold riches I thought it was, when he suddenly hailed a cab and was whisked off into the headily glamorous world I’m sure he now inhabits.

I am a man slightly obsessed, and the first winner I remember picking is Thomasina Miers, who now pops up all over the place and runs Wahaca, a Mexican Cantina in the world’s cheeriest basement in Covent Garden, but which has now expanded to four other branches across London. Everything’s so good I wanted something to go wrong just for the hell of it. We arrived at around six, with no reservation (they don’t take them, not that I knew that,) as we were going to watch professional bile spewer and alcoholic Doug Stanhope at the Leicester Square Theatre, so maybe it’s a good thing that we tempered the performance with such a positive hors d’oeuvre. One waitress happily showed us to our table, and then sunnily let us go and sit in another section where we were not quite sitting on top of other diners. It would seem they do pack them in, but then again, if you build it… Our new and equally cheerful waitress arrived and managed to pull off that difficult trick of enquiring if we’d ever been to a Mexican before by being helpful and informative without being remotely patronising, something I hear they have difficulty with at Harvester.

We were tempted by the Wahaca selection of street food, but with the weather the way it was (illegally hot) and the fact we’d walked into town, we both decided on salads. Obviously it would have been rude not to try a few little things first though, so we had a queso fundido – cactus, onion and melted cheese served with tiny tortillas, and a chicken tostada to start. The fundido were fun, but a little bland, while the tostadas were delicious. I know, because I ate them both. There are nice touches, such as unordered dipping sauces of varying chilli heat and the waitress circling your orders and writing her name in crayon on the menu, which would normally have me twitching Britishly, but felt just right here. I was yet again on water (in large part down to some recent appalling behaviour involving pitchers of Margarita, so this was really not the place to fall off that particular wagon) but we also had ‘citrus fizz,’ which looked impressive – with fresh mint and lime – but didn’t actually do a great deal for either of us citrusly or fizz-wise.

Ceviche salad, Chicken tostadas

Both salads arrived in generous tortilla baskets; hers – tasty, chewy, char-grilled steak leaking juices through cos lettuce, spelt and pumpkin seeds, mine all zinging lime freshness over shrimp, scallop, avocado, mint and cucumber. Summer on a plate. I am no Mexican expert, but this felt both authentic and delicious. We even ordered extra guacamole (home made, obviously,) to finish the baskets with, and then I had to have a feta and broad bean quesadilla because the table two along had and I liked the look of them. They may have been no more than the Mexican equivalent of grilled cheese for the hardened veggie, but that didn’t mean they didn’t taste really, really good.

At £33.60 (excluding service,) we tottered out through the increasingly busy restaurant thoroughly sated and rather happy. As we left, lots of the staff seemed to be hugging each other. If I didn’t know better, I’d say we’d stumbled upon some sort of cult, but let’s face it, if it’s anything to do with Masterchef, I’m pretty much signed up already.

August 2011

Here’s how to annoy yourself and everyone around you. You know the way the ‘Macarena,’ Beelzebub’s insidious theme tune, burrows its way into your head like one of those earwigs from ‘The Wrath of Khan,’ and when you hear it you can suddenly find yourself chirping ‘Hey…Macarena’ and wobbling your head around for no apparent reason? Well, now that I’ve got your attention, not to say approbation, try replacing the word ‘Macarena’ with ‘Moshi Moshi’ and see how long it is before you want to kill yourself. I say this because for reasons I cannot adequately explain, I found myself doing exactly that as I walked through the bizarre combination of concrete jungle and elderly, more sedate architecture that encloses Bartholomew Square in Brighton, home of ‘…Hey Moshi Moshi’ (sorry.)

Despite its slightly confused surroundings, I rather like the building itself. You can sit outside on shaded, slatted benches, or head inside the open fronted light box of the restaurant to the bar, facing directly on to the conveyor belt for the committed sushi grabber, or onto one of a number of backless booths that appear just exotic enough to give you a taste of the Orient without actually having to sit on the floor. I sat at one of these with my back to a child, but needn’t have worried as he was foreign and therefore well-behaved. The belt glides between these seats and you can pluck away discreetly whilst checking the menu for further options.

Monkfish liver terrine

Service was efficient and friendly, to the extent that the waiter seemed genuinely upset when explaining that the soft shell crab tempura was the only dish that wasn’t included in the £2.30 Sunday lunch special. This didn’t bother me at all as a) I wanted it anyway, and b) this somehow convinced me that ordering the monkfish liver terrine as well (which was on offer) represented some sort of saving. The tempura was delightful – light batter with beautifully flavoured crab and that slightly oily feeling that you might be eating Japanese but it doesn’t all have to be good for you. A couple more pieces of vegetable tempura would have been nice, but that’s just because I love vegetable tempura. The terrine was…interesting. I can’t say I loved it because I didn’t – I wanted to try it, I appreciated it, but I just can’t say the combination of terrine texture and slightly fishy liver floated my particular boat. Having said that, the spot of (soy?) sauce it came with gave it a lift and my companion absolutely loved it.

Speaking of boats, at this point one of the waiters came by with a whole wooden model of one, packed to the gunwales with different types of sushi and sashimi that he then rather annoyingly placed on another table (to be fair, I think they had ordered it.) This looked to me like the perfect combination of showmanship, variety and excellent seafood, but I don’t know for certain as they wouldn’t offer me any and I was soon being told off for staring.

Gyoza chicken dumplings

Luckily, back at our booth, things were going rather swimmingly too. As well as edamame beans and the odd bit of sushi and sashimi that I couldn’t help liberating as they passed, we also had superb gyoza chicken dumplings and suimono soup with crayfish and a quails egg floating in it which was quite the nicest alternative to regular miso I’ve ever tried.

Korean sashimi may have been the most expensive dish we ordered, but that much fresh tuna, salmon and er, Cornish daily catch (white fish, possibly bass, can’t be sure, didn’t ask, too busy eating,) atop a pile of brown rice and salad vegetables was well worth the £11.80, even if someone ordered it without the advertised chilli sauce and sprinkled it liberally with soy instead.

Korean sashimi bowl (partially attacked)

Having polished that lot off, common sense would have told us it was time to stop, but I had heard great things about the green tea brulee. I’m normally very happy to watch Japanese desserts – those artificially coloured, sugar dusted creations specifically – head on down the track, but on this occasion, I’m glad I didn’t. Sweet without being sickly, aromatic but tasty and the perfect conclusion to a wonderful meal. At £44.50 (without service) it was also fantastic value, even if we didn’t drink anything more madcap than sparkling water. I’ve been to Moshi Moshi before, I shall be going again, and if there is anything you don’t like about it, one little tip – when you get that song in your head, in fact, any song, simply sing ‘It’s the FI-NAL COUNTDOWN…’ quite loudly and it will immediately disappear to be replaced by something far more appalling. You’ll thank me for this. Or possibly not.

July 2011

This weekend saw me performing at the Komedia in Brighton, undoubtedly one of the best venues for non-arena filling comedians in Britain, if not the world. Brighton has always struck me as the place you go to retire if you have made an irreversible fashion error in your youth – a bizarre piercing perhaps, or a tattoo of dogs playing snooker. However, if you can excuse the ridiculously high percentage of white people with dreadlocks, not to mention the stags, hens and general drunkards of a sweltering July tourist weekend, the town remains a liberal delight. Especially if you actually go to Hove, where you’re less likely to get rollerbladed into.

I have tried to go for coffee or ice cream at Marrocco’s a number of times and heard great things, but have never been so committed that I was prepared to brave the inevitable queue that snakes outside from the chiller cabinets. On this occasion, however, I wanted lunch, and there was far more space in the cool, tidy restaurant at the back than there was out front. No one’s going to win any design awards here, but for food, value and service, you’d be hard pressed to do much better. Unless you’re the table behind us, whom I heard complaining about I’m not sure what, but who had clearly ordered pie and chips in a rather good Italian on a boilingly hot summers day, so have only themselves to blame.

We thought we were ordering a light lunch. Drinking only good coffee and tap water, we shared a Guazzetto di Pesce and the Antipasto Misto, which at only £10.95 was unlikely to leave us too bloated, we thought, wrongly.

I don’t speak Italian. I visited Rome for the first time earlier this year and loved it, but I couldn’t claim any expertise in anything Italian, except perhaps for Gallo socks, which I’m not going to mention again in case anyone asks how much I spent on them. I did know I was ordering fish soup, but I think I was vaguely expecting something more akin to a soupe de poissons (nope, don’t speak French either,) or bouillabaisse. What I got was an enormous pile of mussels, octopi, prawns, calamari and cherry tomatoes in an elegant pool of clear, buttery, garlicky broth. While I began making my way through this, garlic bread and bruschetta arrived. With garlic on it. I have to say, if you don’t like garlic, this probably isn’t the place for you, but then again, if you don’t like garlic, I’d probably advise you to go away and read something else.

Then the antipasto arrived. I’m not going to lie to you – I’m going to play pretty ignorant now, because I am. I could Google feverishly and make a moderately good stab at telling you what was on the plate, but sometimes ignorance is bliss. Suffice it to say, there was lots of it and it was delicious – I took a picture of it so you can see for yourselves.

Antipasto Misto

There were definitely sun dried tomatoes and Napoli salami. And about two other types of salami. And prosciutto. And that flat dry bread a bit like one half of a pitta crossed with a poppadom. And mortadello (? – the pink one with spots of fat and pistachios in it,) and some really lovely plain, sweet, thin cut ham. And those glowingly bright green olives that I can’t remember the name of either. And something totally delicious that I know I can’t pronounce, because I asked and I couldn’t, but was some sort of Calabrian salami which looked as though it was surrounded by fat which actually turned out to be provolone cheese. As an idea this is so thumpingly brilliant (and Italian) that I can’t believe I’d never heard of it before. There was parmesan and another hard cheese, I think pecorino – you could hear the crystals crunch between your teeth. There was a bit of lettuce underneath but we need not speak of that. We almost finished everything else.

Admittedly, we had not exactly stretched the kitchen. Antipasto could be filed under that category of cooking that could be called ‘arranging,’ but when things this good are arranged this well, you’ll get no complaints from me. The bill, including service came to a mere £27.39, and my only complaint was that I didn’t have space for an ice cream. Or a pie.

July 2011

I don’t much like Chelsea. I don’t think many of us do. Whilst it might have been quite fun to wander down there in the 60’s to watch Twiggy snog Georgie, or to hang out with Vivienne and Malcolm ten years later, nowadays it seems to consist mainly of sloaney girls who aren’t as pretty as they think are looking for a Geordie to victimize or someone to buy them a house. Not even Chelsea fans like Chelsea, mainly because very few of them can afford to live there, unless they’re Russian and have managed to siphon off their entire country’s energy profits in dubious circumstances.

I have to admit to a certain fondness for the King’s Road in the late eighties, when, despite its obviously faded grandeur, I still got excited by vintage 501’s at American Classics and once spent an outlandish amount on a 50’s flying jacket that I looked terrible in but loved with a passion. And even now, as a contented habitué of Battersea, I do find myself over there quite regularly as the walk across the river is lovely and (in a sentence written entirely for the benefit of comedians Smug Roberts and Nick Revell) the farmer’s market is mah-vellous. Actually, it isn’t. The farmer’s market is full of unimaginative restaurants for those who read a menu by price and get worried by originality, but the Duke of York Square market on a Saturday is well worth a trip. Try some freshly shucked Maldon Oysters, have a pie, remortgage your house for some Spanish ham and definitely try a Rainbow box from the Caribbean stall, whilst nicking bits of cheese and chorizo from anyone nice/stupid enough to leave any out for you. Then vacate the area.

I very rarely eat on the King’s Road – I’m sure there are some decent places (ok, Pizza Express,) but I can never get away from the idea that someone is secretly pilfering an extra tenner from my wallet just because of where I am, and so many of the options (ok, Pizza Express) just seem to be offering the same old same old. I sometimes pop in to Phat Phuc for a pho, but it’s not exactly a world-beater.

However, we were going to the cinema because having, to my shame, dragged my sorry literary arse through the final installment of the Harry Potter books just to say I’d done it, we now had to go and see the last film as apparently it’s the best (it isn’t.) Working on the utterly misplaced theory that a bad book makes for a good film, I had agreed to go to Cineworld and we needed to eat, as man cannot live by popcorn alone. This led to a lot of wandering up and down and one nearly full-blown argument, until we eventually decided to risk it and go to the Trafalgar.

I say risk, because I have walked past the Trafalgar many, many times and always thought it to be full of exactly the types and all the culinary ambition I have already dismissed. Perhaps the fact it was fairly empty, especially the dining area, improved my mood. As did the décor, which has got that slightly bohemian ‘we just threw this together and somehow it looks both careworn and groovy’ look, which I believe costs thousands. Things looked up further when I overheard the barman discussing the draught ales with what sounded unmistakably like enthusiasm.

Ah. Enthusiasm. Perhaps best overheard, rather than introducing itself, sitting up on its hind legs, offering you its chin to tickle and then licking you throughout the course of your meal. Meet our waitress. She did a good enough job, and in this recession-ravaged-professional-miserablist of a country, maybe a sunny disposition is something to be treasured, but the words, “I’ll be bothering you throughout the meal because (insert tinkly laugh) I haven’t got anyone else to bother!” didn’t fill me with joy. Neither did her amazement that I was having a water and the lady was having a cider. What is the world coming to! And then I had a salad and she had fish and chips! Short of getting her cock and balls out and whapping them on the table, I can’t see what my girlfriend could have done to surprise our waitress more. Although she did come back to check how things were thirty seconds after putting the plates down the wrong way round, so maybe that’s exactly what she was looking for.

The menu is not earth shattering, but then again it’s a Chelsea pub looking to do a brisk trade, so I didn’t expect it to be. I’m not going to tell you what kind of sausages they had with their mash because you already know they’re Gloucester Old Spot. Modern not quite gastropub I would call it, and only because the word gastropub is so overused that it needs qualifying if they’re not doing astonishingly twiddly things with unexpected ingredients. Her fish and chips were, however, excellent. Crunchy batter, well cooked fish, good chips and perky tartare sauce. Apparently the peas were good too, but they’d disappeared by the time I got a look in. My crab, samphire, chicory and butternut squash salad was a revelation. I don’t like brown crab meat. I know I should – it’s the essence of the sea, the bit the Nigels and the Nigellas secretly love to lick off the spoon etc etc, but to me it’s fishy and gritty and the white stuff is delicate and moreish and everything that is perfect about seafood and exactly what we had here. Generous flakes of crab combined beautifully with slightly salty samphire, crunchy leaves and cleverly cut ribbons of squash all held together by a perfectly understated lemon crème fraiche dressing.

At £26.35 this wasn’t massively cheap, but neither was it taking the piss either, unlike the waitress, who proceeded to bring us a customer feedback form and point out that it wasn’t just to say how brilliant the service was but you could also win a meal for two which was actually quite likely between you and me because not many people fill it out so tinkle it was well worth doing wasn’t it just for the fun of it ahahahaha? Seeing as this was (approximately) her fifteenth visit to the table, I thought it best not to pass comment. I still left her a tip, partly because I’m terribly nice too, and partly because I feared if I didn’t, the whole façade would come crashing down and I’d leave the place with her grabbing my ankles and wailing ‘What did I do wrong?’ Which would have been a much better ending than Harry Potter and the Deathly Epilogue managed three hours later.

July 2011