Mayfair poshos vs market stall wanderers

Breddo’s Tacos was one of the very few Mexican eateries that I managed to miss during my recent round-up of London’s burrito and taco eateries. I finally got off my arse and tasted the market stall’s wares (also currently available at The Player), while also trying the Mexican food from an altogether very different eatery – Mayfair restaurant Peyote. This therefore isn’t a traditional ‘vs’ review as the two are very different indeed, but it was still fascinating to see two contrasting approaches to Mexican food.

Peyote, dinner

A lot of Mexican restaurants have awful kitschy decor, but the downstairs dining room at Peyote couldn’t be more different. The muted, inoffensive beige tones is livened up only by a crystal-studded skull motif on one of the walls and the colourful weaved baskets used to contain nachos and the bill. Sitting at the ‘ceviche bar’ gives you the best view of the house – that of the u-shaped kitchen staffed by at least eight Spanish speaking chefs. The black-uniformed waiters were friendly, informative and efficient, although I didn’t know where to look when it came to the receptionists’ plunging necklines.

Despite the relatively high prices and moneyed Mayfair location, the menu at Peyote is surprisingly traditional consisting mostly of tacos, tostadas, ceviches and quesadillas as well as ‘laminados’ – a vaguely South American and contemporary take on sashimi as far as I can tell.

Although tender, the small bitty pieces of flesh in the lobster ceviche made it hard to appreciate the crustacean’s texture. The small pieces of cactus and the light and fruity orange-ish brine did little to improve matters. If it wasn’t for the moreish salsa served on the side, possibly made from a mixture of tomatoes and turtle beans, this dish would have been utterly forgettable.

Why not lobster?

The tacos were better, despite the middling corn flour tortillas. While surprisingly thin and clearly hand-made with rough, uneven edges, they also lacked the nuttiness I normally associate with corn flour tortillas and therefore ultimately tasted rather bland. The soft shell crab tacos consisted of fresh, salty, zingy pieces of crustacean in a light and moderately crispy batter, although the topping of pickled veg left me unmoved.

The facade of Peyote couldn’t be more unwelcoming – stark white, shuttered windows and a small brass nameplate.

The tender meaty strands in the pork pibil tacos lacked the citrusy hints I was expecting and the same unremarkable pickled veg made a repeat appearance. The pork was complimented well though by the lightly tangy and spicy green chilli-based salsa served on the side.

Pig out.

The savoury highlight of my dinner wasn’t the tacos however, but the sea bass. The fish had been expertly cooked just to the point of being slightly done, leaving the salty, light and tender yet meaty flesh lip-smackingly zingy. The thin coriander and pineapple sauce was oddly reminiscent of a lemon curd due to its sweetness and tartness, but this was all rather weak and tended to drown out the excellent bass when smeared over it.

Fishy wishy.

A side dish of black turtle beans was tender and not too stodgy, but also rather bland.

Turtle power.

The chocolate sauce accompanying the churros was a bit sweet and tangy and complimented the deep fried dough sticks well enough although it was, in of itself, ultimately unremarkable. The sticks of churros themselves had an excellent, well-crafted texture – free of excess oil with a light, crisp bite and a fluffy interior.

More please.

Peyote, lunch

The upstairs dining room at Peyote is more colourfully decorated than the downstairs with some brightly painted skulls in particular catching the eye. Although the receptionists’ plunging necklines were unchanged, the quality of the table service was very different and not in a good way. The frenetic but ineffective waiter took 25 minutes to take my order – an unacceptable delay that was made all the more humiliating when he showed more interest in picking detritus off the floor and in taking yet another drinks order from the neighbouring table of drunken socialites. A second delay of 10 minutes to take my dessert order wasn’t as long, but no less infuriating. I double checked my cloaking device, but nope it was off. Incompetence it is then.

I’m not really a fan of tostadas, but I decided to give the cactus tostada a chance – especially as the inexcusable service delay didn’t leave me with enough time to try one of the bigger main courses which take a little longer to prepare judging from my last visit. I was unimpressed with the bland and stodgy crunchy corn tortillas. The slices of cactus were pleasingly juicy, sweet and firm though and complimented well by a smearing of crushed beans and some tomatoes.

Still not a fan of tostadas.

The tacos used far better corn tortillas compared to last time – thicker, fluffier and nuttier. The mushroom tacos were filled with slightly earthy and tender pieces of funghi, but a more unusual choice were the avocado tempura tacos.

Make room for mushrooms.

Although it sounded unusual and promising, the avocado tempura tacos were ultimately disappointing. The thick and slightly stodgy batter gave way to a hot and momentarily fluffy but very bland avocado filling. The only smidgin of flavour came from the shavings of sweet, juicy cactus.

Sozzled debutantes may be impressed, but I am not.

The only highlight of this meal was, surprisingly, the yellow tail laminados. The thin slices of firm, meaty yet light fish were served in a soy sauce that wasn’t too salty along with a few choice dollops of smooth and surprisingly complimentary guacamole.

Perhaps I was sitting in an architectural blind spot? Nope. Incompetence it is.

Things returned to their depressingly unimpressive form with the tres leches cake. Although large and fluffy, what should’ve been a rich and flavoursome cake was flat and bland.

Needless and tasteless blueberry compote.

Breddo’s Tacos

Breddo’s may be just a taco stand, but the quality of their corn flour tortillas is very consistent – thin, but very nutty and fluffy. The fillings haven’t been overlooked either – the braised beef short rib is particularly good. Dense, earthy strands of beef were complimented nicely by shavings of fresh coriander and thick, gently sharp sour cream.

The first taco I’ve had where the sour cream actually makes sense.

Just as good was the fried chicken with raspberry hot sauce. Although this sounds bizarre, it was utterly delightful. The chunk of fried chicken was firm, moist, crunchy, free of excess oil and had a hint of mint to it. The hot sauce was not only fiery but also had the unmistakable sweet sharpness of raspberry to it that was surprisingly complimentary to the chilli heat. The odd but highly effective combination of heat and sweet made the chicken so good that I went back for seconds.

Blowing raspberries at the competition.

The Verdict

We live in interesting times when a market stall can outcook a glitzy Mayfair restaurant. Awful lunchtime service aside, there were some highlights at Peyote. However, the quality of the cooking was inconsistent and its menu is surprisingly conservative which wastes a prime opportunity to introduce some of Mexico’s lesser known regional dishes, or at least interpretations of them, to a wider audience. Jalisco goat stew, Sonoran tripe soup, the seafood specialities of Veracruz or at least some inventive moles would all have been welcome. The prices aren’t cheap either, especially if you have a big main, making Peyote only fair value at best.

Breddo’s Tacos picks up the inventive taco crown and runs with it. If only Breddo’s would find a permanent home – it could then truly wipe the floor with overpriced socialite hangouts like Peyote.

Name: Peyote

Address: 13 Cork Street, Mayfair, London W1S 3NS

Phone: 0207 409 1300

Web: http://peyoterestaurant.com

Opening Hours: Monday – Friday noon-14:30 and 18:30-late. Saturday 18:30-late.

Reservations: probably a good idea for lunch; highly recommended for dinner.

Average cost for one person including soft drinks and service: £50-85 approx. 

Average price per taco: £3.33 approx. (based on £10 for three tacos)

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Name: Breddo’s Tacos

Location: varies

Phone: none listed

Web: http://www.breddostacos.com

Kitchen Hours: varies

Reservations: not applicable

Average price per taco: £2.50 approx. (based on £5 for two tacos)

Rating: ★★★★★

The Polpo guys do it again

It’s mildly myopic to say that there’s no where good to eat on Shaftesbury Avenue as the myriad delights of Soho, Covent Garden and Chinatown are only a few minutes walk away. Still, if you can’t bear to tear yourself away from the Theatreland thoroughfare then you can at least take refuge in the Ape and Bird, a pub from the guys behind the Polpo empire of Italian-esque restaurants (which also includes Mishkin’s and Spuntino).

Although I’ve categorised The Ape and Bird as a gastropub for the sake of easy searching, it’s not a restaurant in all but name like most other gastropubs. A large swathe of the ground floor, as well as the basement, is devoted to drinking while the upstairs and a small space on the ground floor are set aside for eating. Like Polpo, reservations are taken at lunch time but not for dinner. If you’re eating by yourself or as part of a two-some, then the bar in the ground floor dining area is a perfectly pleasant place to while away an hour or two as the bar staff are a chatty, friendly and informative bunch.

First things first

I first visited The Ape and Bird during its soft launch period and started off with the pig trotter scotch egg served with celeriac fries. The reasonably crisp coating gave way to a moreishly porky layer of moist and tender meat. The egg was solid all the way through – a runnier yolk would’ve been far better – and the very thin celeriac fries left me unmoved. The pork is a good start, but the egg as a whole still has a way to go to match the stonking scotch eggs at The Pig and Butcher in Islington.

Five quatloos and a ton of kudos to anyone who opens a pub called The Chimp and Puffin. Because chimps and puffins are awesome.

The roast cod has a salty and taut skin that was very moreish, but the fish flesh itself was merely okay. It had also been poorly matched with some beetroot – its earthy flavour tended to overpower rather than compliment the fish. It wasn’t all bad though – the thin, moreish sauce was lip-smackingly good.

Taking favours in the beetroot field isn’t necessarily a good idea.

A traditional side for cod is of course chips. The thickly cut chips here were soft and free from excess oil. Although they’re not a patch on the triple cooked chips available from the nearby Seven Dials branch of Hawksmoor, they’re decent enough in their own right.

Yup, those are chips.

Although I don’t love sticky toffee pudding quite as passionately as Wicket does, it’s still a personal favourite and The Ape and Bird’s sticky date version is top notch. The pudding itself was soft and fluffy with a fruity, treacly rich sweetness. The accompanying ice cream was a bit bland when eaten on its own, but took on a rum and raisin-style character when eaten with the pudding.

A sticky date isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Going back for seconds

Since my first visit occurred during the soft launch period, I had to return once The Ape and Bird was fully up and running in the interests of fairness. Don’t expect any carbs when ordering the penny buns – the name is apparently slang for cep mushrooms. The earthy, tender ‘shrooms were served in a thin but muted squash puree. Far more flavoursome was the punchy roasted garlic – squeezing the large chunks out of their skins with my fork and devouring them with some mushrooms was very satisfying.

Penny buns. Is this Cockney rhyming slang or something?

Even more satisfying was the mutton mince with English dumplings. Although this sounds like something your drunken doddery grandfather might make, it is absolutely worth your time. The small dumplings were so soft, they almost resembled gnocchi and had a tanginess to them that complimented the tangy, moreish sauce and hearty helping of mince very well. My only whine is that I wanted more dumplings.

Pub food done right.

Welsh rarebit probably isn’t eaten often as a side dish. Here, English muffins were used instead of sliced bread. The chewy, slightly stodgy disc of carbs nonetheless proved to be a good way of delivering the viscous, tangy cheese mixture into my gaping maw. The sweet, caramelised flavour almost resembled brunost – a rather odd Norwegian brown cheese that’s so sweet it’s almost like fudge.

£4 is a bit steep for Welsh rarebit. Ah, sod it.

I finished off my meal with the apple and blackberry crumble. The crunchy, crumbly crust gave way to the sharp sweetness of the whole blackberries and apple slices which contrasted nicely with the thin, sweet and eggy custard. The latter was especially good and if I could drink it with a straw on a daily basis, I probably would.

The custard is served in a jug for pouring at your leisure.

The Verdict

The Ape and Bird claims it’s ‘just a pub’, but its deceptively simple food isn’t just hearty and homely, it’s also inventive and soul soothingly satisfying. Although it’s not perfect or cheap, and it’ll be interesting to see how the menu adapts to the warmer months, The Ape and Bird nonetheless serves the best pub food I’ve had all year. My recommendation is just as hearty as its food and that’s saying a lot.

Name: The Ape and Bird

Address: 142 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8HJ (second entrance/exit on West Street)

Phone: 020 7836 3119

Web: http://www.apeandbird.com/

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday 10:00-23:30 and Sunday noon-22:30.

Reservations: only taken at lunchtime

Average cost for one person including soft drinks and service charge: £40 approx.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Brewer Street gets spicy

If you’ve got a hankering for Thai food when you’re out and about in the Soho area, then the obvious choice is Busaba Eathai. I find Alan Yau’s chain to be merely okay though, so the relaunch of Janetira on Soho’s Brewer Street piqued my interest. This small mom and pop outfit used to look like an Ikea showroom, but has recently been redecorated with lots of attractive dark wood panelling and spot lighting. It’s like a smaller budget version of the decor at Busaba – there’s no incense to sweeten the air for example. The menu is a little bigger than before, but it still concentrates mainly on dishes that rarely turn up on the menus of other Thai restaurants in London.

First things first

Janetira doesn’t take bookings unless you have a party of six or more, but Socialist Worker, Resume and I easily snagged a table for a weekday lunch. I’m not sure how authentic the Thai iced tea is, but it was pleasing – its maltiness with hints of what was almost certainly soya bean milk made for an interesting and refreshing soft drink. Even the tap water for the table was interesting – the addition of cucumber slices gave the water a distinctive sweetness.

‘Janetira’ – is that actually a Thai word, or the name of the owner (think about it)?

I started off with the amusingly named son-in-law balls which were actually eggs coated and fried in a thin, slightly chewy batter, topped with chewy fried onions and served in a shallow pool of lightly sweet and sour sauce. It wasn’t bad, but a runnier egg yolk and perhaps a crispier batter would’ve made for a more satisfying starter.

No mother-in-law jokes here. I’m not Les Dawson.

I’ve never encountered duck noodle soup in a British Thai restaurant before and while it’s been a few years since I last had it in Thailand, Janetira’s version still struck me as pretty good. The lightly salty and richly moreish soup went down a treat, while the breast meat was tender and lightly fatty which went well with the wrinkly ramen-esque noodles.

The guilty pleasure instant version of duck noodle soup, available from some Chinese supermarkets, is called ‘palo duck’ for some reason. I have no idea why.

Socialist Worker managed to overcome his crippling indecision and plopped for the chicken and noodles in coconut curry sauce. The thin sauce was more like a soup and was mildly nutty and only lightly spiced. What the sauce lacked in character, the egg noodles more than made up for – thick, moderately wide and hearty noodles which were very satisfying. Prising the chicken meat off the drumstick without splashing curry sauce everywhere proved to be a challenge for Socialist Worker, but he managed it in the end.

Which came first – the chicken or the egg noodle?

Despite describing the menu as ‘lush’, Resume did manage to pick one of the plainer dishes available – the chicken omelette with rice. The kitchen’s first attempt was actually the vegetarian-friendly meat-free omelette which Resume was unimpressed with – she described it as bland and oily. Resume, despite her protestations that it was unnecessary, was given a second omelette free of charge although this too appeared to be largely free of chicken. It was far tastier though with umami hits courtesy of tomatoes and fish sauce.

Omelette take one.

Omelette take two.

Going back for seconds

I revisited Janetira, this time with the help of The Gunner. We started off by sharing the pad thai. Although slightly greasy, the peanut-topped rice noodles were also zesty and tangy although the effect did peter out as we made our way through the surprisingly generous helping. The prawns were firm enough, but lacked the zing I’d expect from really fresh prawns.

Stir and enjoy.

The Gunner opted for the green chicken curry which was surprisingly light despite the creaminess of the sauce. There was plenty of punchy lemongrass, galangal and coconut in the sauce which made for a flavoursome curry.

Comes with boiled rice.

The Gunner isn’t fond of spicy heat, so he didn’t sample any of my mackerel curry which was a shame as it’s a corker despite the minimal presence of actual fish. The thin sauce was earthy and packed plenty of spicy heat. It also had a strong salty taste reminiscent of shrimp paste which is very much an acquired taste, but I loved it. The addition of tender lotus root was a nice touch and made up for the lack of mackerel.

Actually, I’m pretty sure all the curries come with boiled rice.

Three is the magic number

For my third and final meal at Janetira I started off with the classic tom yung gung soup. Although the button mushrooms were a typically uninteresting choice of vegetable, the firm prawns were complimented well by the sharp spice of the galangal and the sourness of the soup itself which also had plenty of zesty lemongrass hints.

Yum.

The rad naah isn’t a very attractive dish, but it proved be the perfect main course for a brisk winter’s day – homely and comforting. The thick, moderately wide rice noodles were topped with slices of tender pork and some bitter greens. The whole shebang is drenched in a viscous sauce that’s mildly tangy with some hints of ginger.

Rad Naah – wasn’t that a character in Star Wars?

I washed it all down with the Thai iced coffee which was sweet, malty, nutty and soy bean-ish. In a way, it almost tasted like condensed milk although there wasn’t any milk in this drink at all.

Not a Coke.

The Verdict

Janetira isn’t perfect – the scarcity of meat in some of its meat dishes is a recurring problem – but it’s still one of the better Thai restaurants that I’ve been to in London and I’d much rather eat here than at Busaba.

Name: Janetira

Address: 28 Brewer Street, Soho, London W1F 0SR

Phone: 020 7434 3777

Web: http://www.janetira.co.uk (down at the time of writing)

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon–23:00 and Sunday noon-18:00

Reservations: only taken for groups of six or more

Average cost for one person including service and soft drinks: £20-30 

Rating: ★★★★☆

Quince-glazed ribs and chorizo skewers on Berwick Street

Soho isn’t short of tapas restaurants – indeed, it’s an area of London absolutely overflowing with them. That hasn’t stopped a new one from opening though – Ember Yard, the latest restaurant from the group behind Salt Yard and Opera Tavern. Although it may appear similar to its stablemates at first glance, the menu not only has both Spanish and Italian influences but also focuses on dishes cooked over a charcoal grill.

Ember Yard weekend lunch

The Ember Yard charcuterie selection includes jamon iberico de bellota – cured slices of ham made from acorn-fed pigs. The board of thinly sliced pig that I tried lacked the deep woody, grassy flavour I’ve come to expect, but it was still fatty and not overpoweringly salty.

The best seat in the house has to be the counter facing the kitchen where you can watch the small team of roughly half a dozen chefs at work.

I love pumpkin, cuttlefish and nduja, so I had to try a dish that combined them all. The cuttlefish here was dressed in punchy oregano and had a firm bite and tender flesh. However, the very mild spicy heat of the nduja was still potent enough to drown out both the oregano-flecked cuttlefish and the chunks of sweet, tender pumpkin.

Seafood, vegetable and meat all in one dish.

Quince-glazed pork ribs sounds weird, but it’s not that far removed from pork chops with apple sauce. The distinctively fruity glaze suited the tender, smoky flesh of the baby back ribs perfectly, but the rib meat’s smokiness left an odd chemical-ish aftertaste that I last encountered at BBQ Whiskey Beer. Although odd, it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of these ridiculously good ribs.

Quince-y.

Eating out can be hard for vegetarians, but the vegetable section of Ember Yard’s menu is no mere afterthought. The vegetable gratin was easily a highlight of my meal. Tender, flavoursome chunks of celery and pumpkin were served in a sheep’s cheese and smoked ricotta sauce that was thin, yet silky and creamy without being overpowering. In my dreams, Aphrodite’s breast milk tastes like this.

In my dreams, Aphrodite’s breast milk tastes like this.

The burnt butter taste of the light and fluffy panna cotta would’ve made for a perfectly acceptable dessert in its own right, but the addition of a crunchy biscuit crumb crust provided a skilful contrast in texture. It wasn’t too heavy and the sweet and fruity ice cream dotted with bits of chewy raisins nonetheless provided a refreshingly icy counterpoint.

Raisin ice cream on top, apparently.

Why is it served in a jar?

Virgin Mary cocktails are simple, but surprisingly hard to do right. The version here was suitably spicy and peppery, but also a bit too watery for my liking.

Hail mary.

Ember Yard weekday lunch

Ember Yard’s menu is extensive, so I had to return at least one more time to try out some other dishes that caught my eye. Charcoal grilled pork is available in various forms. There are the chorizo skewers for example – tender, moist and lightly smoky with a mildly garlicky aioli.

The canape’s better looking, better tasting cousin.

Then there’s the pinchos morunos, a lightly smoky chunk of pork with a charred crust. It’s the texture, not the smokiness, that’s most remarkable – tender to the point of fluffiness. Pig, you died for a good cause.

It’s not nearly as greasy as it looks – blame that on the counter’s odd spot lighting.

And of course there’s the presa – a cut of pork from the shoulder/loin area as I understand it. Each tender medallion of meat had a charred crust and an almost rare center. The texture was great, but the meat was surprisingly bland on its own. Everything changed when taken with the smooth drops of lightly creamy sauce though, the pork then took on a sweet, honey-like flavour that was utterly beguiling.

Iberico pork presa is turning up on a lot of menus recently.

The flaky fillet of mackerel was bland, which was all the more disappointing given the quality of its accompaniments. The pleasingly bitter greens contrasted nicely with the fluffy, zesty cream and tart, acidic clams.

Happy as a clam?

No restaurant relative of The Salt Yard would be complete without the group’s trademark dish of stuffed courgette flowers. The Ember Yard’s version is as good as I’ve ever had it – two tender courgette flowers stuffed with bold, earthy and tangy goat’s cheese. Each flower was coated in a crisp, oil-free batter and then drizzled in a sweet honey that offset the potency of the cheese. Delightful as ever.

Hello old friend.

Pork fat chips with chorizo ketchup sounds like a sure-fire winner. The thick slices of whole potato were soft and fluffy and were at their best when taken with a mouthful of the soft, crunchy, chewy pork scratching-style topping. While the vaunted chorizo ketchup certainly wasn’t bad with its coarse, fluffy texture and garlicky taste, I could take it or leave it.

Chips and teats.

Mahon is apparently a Minorcan cow’s milk cheese and here it’s served with honey and a stewed plum. The creamy and mildly salty baked cheese bore a very superficial resemblance to halloumi, but was fluffier and had a chewy rind. It was fairly unremarkable, but the sweetness of the two accompaniments livened it up a little. The aniseed-esque flatbread was too overpowering though – the crisp Sardinian flatbread was a better way of shovelling the whole shebang into your mouth.

Mahon spelt backwards is ‘no ham’. Coincidence? Yes, it is.

The Verdict

The menu at Ember Yard is a touch hit and miss at the moment, but when the kitchen gets it right, the results are sublime. There are few other places in London I’d rather go to for quirky, inventive tapas. I’ll be back and you should go too.

Name: Ember Yard

Address: 60 Berwick Street, Soho, London W1F 8SU

Phone: 020 7439 8057

Web: http://emberyard.co.uk

Opening Hours: Monday-Wednesday noon–midnight; Thursday-Saturday noon-01.00 and Sunday noon-22.00.

Reservations: highly recommended.

Average cost for one person including service, soft drinks and coffee: £50-55 approx. 

Rating: ★★★★☆

Late to bed and early to rise makes one fat and tired

Given the number of early risers and night owls in London, there are surprisingly few breakfast spots worth seeking out and even fewer late night diners. A restaurant that combines both is rarer still. Jackson + Rye on Soho’s Wardour Street opens at 08.00 for breakfast and closes at around midnight-ish. While these opening hours won’t impress ever-restless New Yorkers, they’re notable for London.

Situated inside the premises formerly occupied by Satsuma, Jackson + Rye is split over two floors and is nothing if not a handsome place. The booths, tiles, dark wood panelling and moody lamp lighting aren’t exactly original, but it is all nonetheless attractive and comfortable.

When I say ‘diner’, think East Coast clubhouse rather than 50s rest stop.

It couldn’t look more different from previous tenants Satsuma.

Post-pub late night dinner

Stumbling through the front door of a restaurant with three tipsy mates an hour and a half before closing time usually elicits scowls or tired resignation at most restaurants. Not so at Jackson + Rye – the chatty, matey yet efficient staff took the mildly inebriated slurring of Vicious Alabaster, Templeton Peck and The Squinting Brummie in their stride.

Vicious Alabaster started off with the shrimp and grits. Although the bog standard shrimp left me cold, we both liked the light, fluffy yet mildly coarse grits. The chilli and garlic helped pep up the shrimp, but was a superfluous extra on the mildly nutty and creamy grits.

A starter, or an appetizer if you will, of shrimp and grits.

Templeton Peck was both puzzled and unimpressed by his starter of crab and avocado in a spiced tomato sauce. The overall effect was of a solidified blob of crab-flavoured gazpacho served in Heinz-quality tomato sauce.

The unappetising appetizer.

My own starter of corn bread was a bit too dry for my liking, but it was also coarse and mildly nutty. The accompanying creamed mushrooms were unremarkable, but the buttery, slippery lettuce and crisp spring onions were pleasing.

Pone.

The most impressive starter had to be The Squinting Brummie’s pick of macaroni and cheese. The nutty crust was a delight, while the underlying layer of pasta shells didn’t clump together and the melted cheese wasn’t too viscous or overpoweringly creamy.

Return of the mac.

Vicious Alabaster was pleased as punch with her steak and eggs. The thin rump cooked rare-ish was moist and not too tough, while the runny yolks of the fried eggs and the garlic butter added a rich, moreish touch. The accompanying fries were thin, floppy and bitty, but at least they were free of excess oil.

A main course, of entree if you will, of steak and eggs.

I like to think I’ve avoided Americanisms in my reviews, but they may well have creeped in.

My own main of fried chicken wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. The batter was mildly crunchy, but bland and a bit too oily. The underlying chicken wasn’t anything to write home about either, but at least there were whole chunks of meat rather than reprocessed bits.

In hind sight, I should’ve turned this plate around for a better photo. Ho hum.

I wasn’t sure what to make of my bone marrow side dish, as there wasn’t enough of the gelatinous stuff to leave an impression. The coarse, bitty crust was definitely odd.

Cut to the bone.

Both the Brummie and Peck opted for the cheeseburger cooked medium rare, which they described as roughly equal to Byron but not as good as Burger and Lobster. I have my own thoughts about the burger in the second part of this review.

Served open so you can slather it in ketchup if you’re common.

Vicious Alabaster and Templeton Peck didn’t have room for dessert, but I did and went for the pecan pie with ice cream. The shallow depth of the filling may seem disappointing at first, but this is a good thing as it already has a lot of nuttiness and a very rich treacly sweetness. An even deeper, larger serving would have been overpowering. The accompanying ice cream has a surprising booziness to it, but was nonetheless an effective palate cleanser.

[Ooops - forgot to take a photo of this one.]

The Squinting Brummie jumped on the peanut butter cookies with childish glee. The thin and crisp cookies were weakly flavoured and didn’t attempt to replicate the viscousness of actual peanut butter. The accompanying chocolate sauce was also unimpressive, but the milk ice cream was suitably refreshing and had a clean after taste.

Cookie monster.

The milk of human kindness.

I washed it all down with the iced tea, but the dominant taste was of lemon. At least it wasn’t too sugary sweet, but considering how citrusy the iced tea already is, I shudder to think what the Arnold Palmer, a mixture of lemonade and iced tea, tastes like.

For a nation of tea drinkers, we’ve been curiously lukewarm on iced tea.

Dinner

I returned to Jackson + Rye all by lonesome. Despite not having a reservation on a weekend evening, I was quickly seated as a considerable swathe of tables are set aside of walk-ins – just as it should be for a self-proclaimed diner.

I skipped starters and went straight for the cheeseburger. The medium rare patty was moist, smoothly ground and slightly chewy. The pickled rings of onion added some tartness, but these and the other vegetables had a habit of falling out as the very soft, fluffy, slippery buns did an inadequate job of holding everything together. The promised gruyere cheese didn’t leave much of an impression. Overall, it’s not a bad burger and is certainly one of the better ones in London, but there are superior burgers available from elsewhere – including from the nearby branches of Byron, Honest Burgers and Burger and Lobster.

A burger…

Speaking of lobster, Jackson + Rye also serves up a half portion of the crustacean which I had to try. I was pleasantly surprised by the firmness, mild butteriness and zingy freshness of the flesh.

…and lobster, but not from Burger and Lobster.

The side dish of creamed corn grits was more creamed corn than grits, with the hefty portion of sweet kernels making it hard to appreciate the fluffy coarseness of the cornmeal.

Should’ve had the shrimp and grits again.

The frozen soufflé sounds intriguing, but was actually a tedious chore to chow my way through. Although the large, fluffy dessert largely resembled an ice cream, the crunchy iciness oddly dotted with white chocolate buttons was unpleasant, while the vague summer berry flavour was unsatisfying.

I should’ve seen this one coming.

It’s cold in here.

The iced coffee, served in a mug, was another odd disappointment – too milky and bland.

Cough, eeeee.

Breakfast

Breakfast on a weekday at Jackson + Rye is unsurprisingly a very different experience from dinner, with the buzzing chortles of Soho’s drunken hordes replaced by the whispered murmurs of media types meeting over coffee and pastries.

A good flat white is tricky to make, so I wasn’t surprised by the substandard version served here. The head was far too foamy, while the rest of the coffee had, at best, a very mild chocolatey maltiness. The silky smoothness of the best flat whites was also missing.

I don’t have a problem. I can quit any time I want.

I clearly have an obsession with grits. The breakfast version is topped with toasted flaked almonds and blueberries with some maple syrup served on the side for drizzling. As before, the grits were light, mildly coarse and fluffy. The almond flakes left me unmoved, but the sweetness of the fruit was complimented well by the sweetness and distinct flavour of the maple syrup which wasn’t too viscous. The syrup arguably overpowered the grits rather than complimented them, but overall it was still a satisfying breakfast dish.

Grits for breakfast. Think of it as porridge made from corn instead of oats if that helps you.

Eggs are available in almost every form, apart from boiled, and served with an array of accompaniments. I opted for fried eggs served with bacon, fried potatoes, sausage and toast. I would’ve expected and preferred hash browns rather than fried cubes of potato, but the most notable thing about this breakfast was how sweet it was. Maple syrup had been infused into the thick slices of fatty American-style pork belly-derived bacon rashers and the quintessentially Yankee-style sausage meat patty. Both meats were still satisfying, especially the herby and sweet sausage patty, while the rich, runny egg yolks were a treat when eaten with the crunchy, chewy sourdough toast.

This platter of carbs and fried animal products is called the ‘farmer’s’ for no readily apparent reason.

The Verdict

The food at Jackson + Rye is hit and miss, but it’s of a good enough standard, and the service is charming enough, that you wouldn’t be ashamed to start, end or recover from a night of debauchery here.

Name: Jackson + Rye

Address: 56 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1D 4JG

Phone: 0207 437 8338

Web: http://www.jacksonrye.com/

Opening Hours: Monday – Friday 08:00-23:30, Saturday 09:00-23:30 and Sunday 10:00-22:00.

Reservations: probably a good idea

Average cost for one person including drinks and service: Dinner – £40 approx. Breakfast – £8-16 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Fitzrovia tapas and sherry

Fitzrovia, that weird part of London north of Oxford Street, south of Euston, west of Bloomsbury and east of Marylebone, is overflowing with tapas restaurants. Barrica, The Salt Yard and Fino are well established, each with their own dedicated following. That hasn’t stopped Drakes Tabanco from setting up shop, with an odd menu combining Spanish and British influences and an extensive selection of cherry.

It can be slightly tricky to find Drakes Tabanco. It’s hardly out of the way, but the cursive font of its small signage camouflages it quite effectively. This may explain why the skylit, high ceilinged dining room was almost empty on both of my visits, although the draughtiness probably doesn’t help either.

First things first – tapas for vegetarians?

The menu at Drakes Tabanco isn’t overflowing with vegetarian options, but there was enough for The Flame Haired Squelchie to get stuck into. A slight acidic zing brought out the taste of ripe, buttery avocado in a salad where it was combined with walnut, apple and baby gem lettuce. It was a competent, if unexciting salad.

[Ooops, forgot to take a photo of this one.]

The Squelchie was more taken with the roasted artichoke and hazelnuts. The dense, sweet, slightly caramelised and chewy artichoke pieces went very well with the sharp, earthy leaves and the nutty, chewy hazelnuts.

Choke on this.

The white bean and mushroom stew was certainly wintery and had a very warming feel to it. The large beans and mushrooms were satisfyingly meaty, but the stew tasted a tad overseasoned and oversalted, to the detriment of the fine ingredients.

Partially devoured by the Squelchie.

Out of the surprisingly small charcuterie selection, the cured iberico pork tongue caught my eye. The small thin slices were a little tougher than other cuts of iberico pig, but the waxy, meaty, surprisingly fatty slices had a pleasingly sweet and nutty flavour.

Speaking in tongues.

The larger dish of braised pig cheeks had a more Anglo feel to it and it was a very satisfying one too. The dense and hearty yet tender strands of pork went down a treat when taken with a mouthful of thick, unctuous mash, while the crunchy hazelnuts added contrast both in texture and taste.

Oddly, the mash is described as a ‘potato puree’ on the menu.

It’s not all about the pig though – there’s a reasonable selection of seafood dishes to go around too. The thin slices of smoked scallop were surprisingly dense and meaty which was emphasised by the distinct smokiness. The smooth avocado puree added little though.

Avocado puree, or guacamole as it’s known elsewhere.

The cured sardines were just as a meaty and smooth as the smoked scallops, although the pickled shallots and shallot mayo added little. The deboned fillets were satisfyingly salty, although this inevitably invites comparisons to Cantabrian anchovies, sometimes available at Terroirs. This is unfortunate, as those fishy little beauties are even more salty and moreish – so much so that there’s no comparison. Still, the sardines are delectable in their own right.

Packed like sardines.

The Squelchie and I managed to find enough room for the cheese board, although the selection left us underwhelmed. We lost track of which cheese was what, but both the soft and hard cow’s cheeses were instantly forgettable. The occasionally salty tanginess of the soft goat’s cheese and the blue cheese were better, but hardly remarkable. Sadly though, the Squelchie wasn’t in the mood for sherry and I don’t drink.

There is such a thing as too much cheese.

Going back for seconds

The meaty menu at Drakes Tabanco is relatively lengthy, so I had to return to try out some of the other dishes that caught my eye. I started off with the cecina, a cured cut of beef that was dense and meaty despite the thinness of the slices. The pepperiness and slight nuttiness was enhanced by the grassy olive oil served on the side.

The accompanying celeriac remoulade was nothing more than a firm and buttery coleslaw-a like. I’m starting to notice a trend for fancy names given to straightforward dishes here.

Presa, a cut of pork from the loin area of the pig, is an increasingly common sight on the menus of the capital’s restaurants. Here, it was lightly dusted with paprika and served with a lightly spicy sauce although neither really suited the pork. The meat itself left me unmoved, even though some slices were quiveringly rare. It just doesn’t compare to the similar cuts of pork sometimes available at Foxlow, Ember Yard, Jose and Pizarro, among others.

A present of presa pork.

The beef short rib was served off the bone and was tender and waxy, but also a little dry if eaten without the herby jus. However, the distinctively sweet parsnip mash tended to overpower and overwhelm the beef.

Off the bone, but not off the chain.

A similar problem affected the leeks. Although the tender leeks were moist and grassy, they were overpowered by the nutty, slightly garlicky romesco sauce.

Loituma.

At least the chunky slice of bakewell tart was a winner. The dense yet soft and moist crumb had a distinctive almond flavour with a hint of strawberry here and there.

Almond lulz.

The Verdict

Drakes Tabanco’s attempts at setting itself apart from the tapas throngs with a menu mixing British and Spanish influences isn’t a bad idea and there are some good, well-crafted dishes here. The problem is that the competition is just so strong – I’d happily eat here again, but only if I couldn’t get a table at Ember Yard or Salt Yard. To put it another way, Drake Tabanco is a nice-to-have, not a must have.

Name: Drakes Tabanco

Address: 3 Windmill Street, Fitzrovia, London W1T 2HY

Phone: 020 7637 9388

Web: http://www.drakestabanco.com/

Opening Hours: Monday-Friday noon–23:00; Saturday 12:30-23:00. Closed Sundays.

Reservations: yeah, if you want.

Average cost for one person including service and coffee: £50 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Kitsch and kitfo by the kilo*

*meat not actually sold by the kilogram. I just like alliteration.

Cities and towns across Britain are largely filled with the same ol’ usual suspects when it comes to restaurants – Italian, Indian, Chinese, Thai and perhaps a French place or a gastropub. London, thankfully, is different with some unusual restaurants tucked away in its quieter neighbourhoods. North London has a relatively large number of Ethiopian eateries, but Lalibela in Tufnell Park stands out due to its kitsch-filled decor and because it comes recommended by The Flame Haired Squelchie, one of my most trusted and articulate dining companions.

Lalibela, named after the Ethiopian town famed for its monolithic rock-hewn churches, is overflowing with Ethiopian chintz from vaguely religious iconography to a photo of Haile Selassie and Winston Churchill. The hard wooden chairs can be brutally uncomfortable though – especially the odd benches surrounding an oversized coffee table used for seating large groups. Service, while friendly, can be achingly slow. On a quiet day, it’s merely ponderous. But when the place is packed out on a Friday or Saturday evening, it becomes life-sappingly glacial.

Chairs only a Guantanamo interrogator could love.

Cutlery isn’t traditionally used when eating Ethiopian food. You instead use injera, a tart, spongy flatbread that resembles a flattened crumpet, to scoop food up and pop it in your mouth. It can get messy and finger bowls aren’t provided, so a family pack of wet wipes would be a useful thing to bring along. Food is served on a huge communal injera, with smaller rolls provided if you run out.

Look at the size of that thing!

It’s both your plate and your utensils.

It’s Madame Two Swords! Get it?

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but someone is about to get shanked by that big-ass sword.

Weekend dinner

Lalibela’s service may be slower than an arthritic tortoise with memory loss, but it was made more bearable by the Squelchie’s charmingly eccentric company. She threw aside her increasingly part-time vegetarianism to share the kitfo, an Ethiopian version of steak tartare. Although it’s also available well-done, that would be missing the point. The smoothly ground, light and moist raw beef had a light butteriness and herbiness to it. The Squelchie thinks cardamom may be involved somewhere, but wouldn’t swear to it. In any case, while Lalibela’s kitfo doesn’t quite have the same depth of flavour as the best steak tartares, or the Korean equivalent of yukhoe, it’s still a delectable must-have.

Get your hands dirty.

It’s no surprise that the Squelchie is fond of Ethiopian food given the number of vegetarian and vegan dishes. The gomen wat, for example, is a moreish dish of slightly sour and salty wrinkly cabbage, while the azifa is a helping of fluffy, mildly herby lentils. Tender sliced fingers of moist okra were cooked through perfectly and served in a fruity tomato-based sauce.

Summon the gomen.

Tear and share.

Ladyfingers.

It’s not all a complete success though. The pumpkin wot consisted of tender, but bland chunks of pumpkin in an admittedly moreish, slightly spicy tomato-based sauce.

Wot wat!

Coffee at Lalibela is a theatrical affair with the beans roasted fresh in front of you in a special ladel-like pan. The resulting brew had a weird sweaty smell, but this was largely obscured by the scents of pistachio and frankincense burned in a small ash tray-style container. The coffee itself, served black, was mildly bitter and rather anonymous but it wasn’t too acidic and had enough kick to stop me falling asleep on the Tube home.

All I need now is some gold and myrrh.

Fancy pot.

The Squelchie also had a couple bottles of St George beer, an Ethiopian brew which she described as malty and full-boded.

By George!

Weekday dinner

I returned to Lalibela on a weekday night with the help of The Lensman, Veal Smasher, Porn Master and Happy Buddha. Between the five of us, we managed to order a staggering amount of food – just thinking about it is enough to make me full. The Lensman and Happy Buddha got the ball rolling with the Ye-stom Beyaynetu, a combination of lentils and split peas in a spicy sauce. Although the sauce’s heat was tepid at best, the tender, moreish lentils and the salty peas went down a treat. Of all the accompanying sides, the one that stood out the most was the coarse, fluffy, nutty puree of chick peas – basically hummus.

Unexpected hummus.

Happy Buddha and Porn Master went for the meaty version, the Beyaynetu. The minced lamb used was both tasteless and textureless, but it came in two sauces, one mild and one hot. Both were thick, a little oily and heart warmingly satisfying. The hot sauce actually had some spice to it, but it wasn’t as potent as the third part of this platter – the minchetabesh, a chilli, peppery sauce smothered over more minced lamb and, curiously, hard boiled eggs. It was so addictive, Veal Smasher ordered another portion all for himself.

Minchetabesh.

Happy Buddha’s cucumber and yoghurt salad was a forgettable blob, but the gomem wot and okra were just as good before. The spinach was a pleasingly bitter and garlicky dish.

Popeye’s poison of choice.

Eat your greens.

Spooning.

Cabbage, potatoes and carrots sounds like the beginnings of a dull vegetable stew, but here it was a moist, warming, lightly bitter and salty blend of veg that managed to hold its own against the more powerfully spiced dishes.

Tikle my fancy.

Porn Master’s addition of sizzling lamb tibs was a complete disappointment – bland, chewy strips of meat in a so-so tomato sauce.

One should be suspicious of anything described as ‘sizzling’.

The lamb wasn’t any better in my lamb and pumpkin wot, but the pumpkin chunks were better than last time – sweet as well as tender which went surprisingly well with the thin, garlicky tomato sauce.

Awww, little lamb.

Lalibela no longer has a dessert menu, but an ice cream parlour, Ruby Violet, is just a few doors down across the road.

The Verdict

In an unexpected twist, meat isn’t Lalibela’s strong suit. With the exception of the kitfo, the vegetarian dishes are far better. Although this will put off narrow-minded carnivores, that merely leaves more space for the rest of us to enjoy Lalibela’s simple, tasty, hearty, warming food. If only the service would pick up the pace.

Name: Lalibela

Address: 137 Fortess Road, Tufnell Park, London NW5 2HR

Phone: 0207 284 0600

Web: http://www.lalibelarestaurant.co.uk/

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday 18.00-23.30 and Sunday 18.00-22.00.

Reservations: probably a good idea for large groups.

Average cost for one person including service, drinks and coffee: £25-30 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Juicy birds or plucking hell?

London has been inundated by a small flood of fried and roast chicken restaurants. I fully recognise that chicken cooked well can be a world apart from the usual fowl stuff, but I haven’t really covered these chicken restaurants largely because I just don’t care. Chicken, broadly speaking, is a meat for children – safe, predictable, comforting and uninteresting.

Given this state of mind, I probably shouldn’t be reviewing Clockjack Oven, a Soho rotisserie chicken restaurant a mere stone’s throw away from Piccadilly Circus. Nonetheless, an otherwise fruitless, ravenous late night wandering with The Euro Hedgie brought me to its welcoming, friendly door.

We started off with the chilli wings which weren’t spicy at all. The slightly crisp skin and moist meat wasn’t bad, but these wings have nothing on the sublime confit chicken wings available at Patty and Bun.

You can be my wingman anytime.

The Euro Hedgie has a guilty fondness for popcorn chicken, one of the few edible things from grease merchants KFC. The fried chicken bites here bear an obvious resemblance, but they didn’t compare well. The very small slivers of chicken coated in a bland and uninteresting batter had no taste and little in the way of texture. They were at least free of grease and excess oil.

Bite me.

The Hedgie and I split the chicken burger, discovering that the patty was just a larger version of the same bland, unremarkable battered meat found in the fried chicken bites. Although large and reasonably crisp, the underlying meat was surprisingly textureless. The slight crunch of bland jalapeños and a dollop of mayonnaise were our only consolation prizes.

Going halves.

Given the underwhelming nature of the chicken so far, the Hedgie and I had low expectations for the star of the show – four pieces of rotisserie chicken. It was pleasant enough though – moist, evenly cooked, free of grease and seasoned with large, crunchy salt crystals. We opted for just four pieces, but you can order more if you wish. Simple and good enough.

Fantastic four? Not quite.

Of Clockjack Oven’s small range of desserts, only the clotted cream ice cream and lime sorbet caught my eye. The former was reasonably creamy and rich, while the latter was icy and translucent. Its lime flavour was strangely artificial though, almost as if it had been extracted from a large Opal Fruit candy.

Icy dollops.

The Verdict

Clockjack Oven’s rotisserie chicken is perfectly acceptable as a quick, filling and reasonably tasty stomach liner when you can’t get in anywhere else or if you’re in a rush – we were in and out within an hour. You should avoid almost everything else on the menu though.

Name: Clockjack Oven

Address: 14 Denman Street, Soho, London W1D 7HJ

Phone: 0207 287 5111

Web: http://www.clockjackoven.com/

Opening Hours: Monday – Thursday noon-23.00, Friday-Saturday noon-midnight and Sunday noon-22.00.

Reservations: probably a good idea at weekends.

Average cost for one person including soft drinks and service when shared between two people: £20 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I really dislike the end-of-year roundups found on most websites. Ensuring that loyal readers have something to read over the quiet Christmas/New Year’s/Winterval period is admirable; cynically regurgitating old content and presenting it as new is not. I’m particularly against concocting a dull list of my ‘favourite’ restaurants of the past year – if you want to see what I’ve really liked over the past year, just click ★★★★★. That link is always available on the sidebar of every webpage on this site. Simple. Done.

What’s far more interesting, to me at least, is which restaurants my readers have liked and visited over the past year. In previous years I’ve relied on my records of which reviews have been read most frequently. This year, I’ve also used the statistics listing which restaurants’ websites you’ve all clicked on – hopefully giving a more accurate picture of which restaurants you’ve all actually eaten at, rather than just read about. The results, as ever, are illuminating. Here are the top 14 in descending order:

1. Smokestak
2. Miss P’s Barbecue
3. Texas Joe’s
4. Flat Iron
5. Meat Lover
6. Pitt Cue
7. Bao London
8. Tonkotsu
9. Hawksmoor (aggregate for all branches)
10. Mestizo
11. Kirazu
12. Orchard
13. Bone Daddies
14. Osteria Tufo

I chose a Top 14 rather than a Top 10 to give the list a little more variety, since the list would otherwise be dominated by American barbecue eateries, plus the top two are actually market stalls rather than sit-down restaurants. Your keen interest in high quality American-style barbecue warms my otherwise, cold, frigid heart.

Your passion for steak and ramen continues unabated, with Hawksmoor, Flat Iron, Tonkotsu, Kirazu and Bone Daddies figuring highly. Surprisingly, you lot don’t seem to care that much for Mexican food – of all the burrito and taco eateries I reviewed in the past year, only Mestizo seems to have captured your imagination.

Another set of surprises was the appearance of vegetarian cafe Orchard, Taiwanese bun stall Bao London and small north London Italian restaurant Osteria Tufo on the list. It seems that you’re not all single-minded meat fiends, which gives me hope for your continued, collective cardiovascular health. May we all survive another year unscathed.

-The Picky Glutton

S&M no more

Meat People might sound like yet another part of the burgeoning Meatliqour burger empire, but it’s actually, as far as I can tell, an independent meat-focussed restaurant. It’s located not far from the genteel sprawl of Islington’s Upper Street.

Meat People has taken over the premises formerly occupied by a branch of the now-defunct S&M Cafe chain and has a similar decor. The place feels like a retro caff with plenty of zinc and formica surfaces and period signage. Service on both of my visits was friendly and efficient, although that was helped by the almost complete absence of other diners.

Retro.

Weekend lunch

Despite having a smelly singleton fun nest nearby, The Euro Hedgie had never visited Meat People and accompanied me on my first visit. He skipped starters and went straight for the steak sandwich. He wasn’t quite sure which cut of beef had been used for the relatively thin strips of meat, but they were reasonably tender and cooked medium to well done.

There was a hint of salty fattiness to the steak strips, but this might have been due to the lardo which, along with the egg, added a touch of richness. Overall, this sarnie resembled a fattier, guiltier version of steak, egg and chips in between slices of bread. It wasn’t a well constructed sandwich though – the thin, flimsy, slightly cheesy bread did a poor job of holding everything together.

A steak through my heart.

The Euro Hedgie may have skipped starters, but I didn’t and opted for the octopus. The firm, meaty octopus was complimented well by tangy capers and salty olives. The artichokes, while juicy, were surprisingly bland although this could have been due to the stronger tastes of the capers and olives.

I’m the mood for Cthuken.

Despite the waiter’s promises of a porcine revelation, the iberico secreto cut of pork was rather ordinary. The smooth slices of mildly caramelised and salty pork was tender and pleasing enough, but it can’t compare to the sublime cuts of similar-ish iberico pressa often available at restaurants such as Ember Yard, Foxlow and Pizarro. The accompaniments of confit onions and thinly sliced roasted potatoes were nothing to write home about.

The Secret.

For dessert, I opted for the sky tocino purely because of its peculiar name. The creme caramel was custardy yet light and had slight taste of pear liqueur to it, while the firm pear had a subtle tang of star anise to it which, surprisingly, complimented not only the fruit but the creme caramel too. The accompanying vanilla ice cream was bland and unnecessary though.

‘Tocino’ is apparently bacon in Spanish. Nope, no clue.

After a bit of dithering, The Euro Hedgie went for the pavlova. He liked the chewy merginue, but his dessert snob instincts were repelled by the soft, cold and tasteless poached rhubarb as well as the insipid vanilla cream.

Was the pavlova one of Pavlov’s favourite desserts? It has a nice ring to it.

Weekday lunch

I returned to Meat People, sans Hedgie this time, to try out the zebra starter – a dish that had caught my eye the first time around but had been unavailable. The slices of zebra were slightly stringy around the seared outside, but tender and a little chewy in the rare middle. The moreishness of the moist and tender slices was brought out by the garnishes of chilli, red onion and mango. A satisfying start.

The world isn’t always black and white.

Onglet, also known as skirt of hanger steak, is an under appreciated cut of beef that can be very flavoursome indeed. Meat People’s version, cooked medium rare, was juicy and moreish although it lacked the exceptional depth of flavour present in the very best examples of this cut of beef. As expected, it was a little tough in places, but tender in others. The herby, eggy bearnaise sauce wasn’t too overpowering, but the thickly layered dauphinois potatoes were oddly inconsistent – thick and stodgy in places, light and buttery in others.

A short Skirt

The French beans were firm and fresh, but the promised garlic and shallots were thin on the ground.

Haricot vert.

I finished with the vanilla panna cotta, which was nothing if not attractively presented. On one side of the bowl was the firm, custard-ish panna cotta. The crunchy pomegranate and pistachio crumbs added a nice contrast in texture. On the other side of the bowl was a dollop of apricot sorbet. While it did indeed have the unmistakable taste of apricot, it was a poor pairing for the panna cotta with each dessert nullifying the taste of the other.

A dessert of two halves.

The Verdict

Attempting to draw Londoners away from their steak and burger fixation is an admirable goal, but Meat People isn’t the runaway success it should be. The beef and pork dominated menu needs both a little more variation and more skilful, finessed execution. It’s not a bad place to stuff your maw full of meat, but it’s a decidedly second rate option. If you can tear yourself away from N1, and can snag a reservation, Foxlow is a better bet for a meaty, non-beef meal.

Name: Meat People

Address: 4-6 Essex Road, Islington, London N1 8LN

Phone: 020 7359 5361

Web: http://www.meatpeople.co.uk/

Opening Hours: Monday – Saturday noon-23:00 and Sunday noon-22:00.

Reservations: probably a good idea

Average cost for one person including service: £35-40 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Time to pig out

There’s no shortage of steak and burger restaurants in London, but very few dedicated to pork. Although some may think that the pig is inferior to the cow, pork definitely has its own unique charms – all it takes is the right cut of pork in the hands of a great chef. Blackfoot is dedicated to pork – apart from a few vegetarian dishes and a fish of the day, it’s all about the pig at this small restaurant on Islington’s Exmouth Market.

Service was friendly and chatty on all of my visits, if a tad slow. The decor is nothing to write home about, although the place can become very noisy due to all the bare surfaces and the endless, riotous, witless chatter of sozzled Islington-ites.

First things first

On my first visit, Baron Greenback and I started off by sharing the pork tacos. Although Greenback wolfed them down like the indisciminate toad that he is, I was unimpressed by the excessively soft and rather bland pork smothered in sweet corn and mushy turtle beans. At least the corn flour tortillas were soft, fluffy and nutty.

With tacos, less tends to be more and there’s too much of the wrong things going on here.

Far better was the whipped lardo on toast. Although the sourdough toast was unremarkable, the light yet fatty, herby and buttery lardo was satisfying and delightful.

Lardo shot first.

Baron Greenback was pleased with his main course of smoked pork belly, but I was lukewarm on it. The long strip of belly was tender, but only moderately fatty and mildly smoky. The dominant flavour was of star anise, which was enhanced by the thick, coarse and treacly Chinese-style garlic and pepper sauce. It’s not bad, but the star anise and the sauce tended to draw attention away from the pork belly rather than enhance it.

At least Baron Greenback didn’t attempt to cut out the fat this time. #numpty

My own main course of baby back ribs was tender with a mild tanginess and sweetness, but the meat wasn’t smoky at all. This may be due to the fact that the kitchen apparently relies on its butcher to smoke its meat rather than doing it on-site in the small premises. The choice of baby back ribs instead of fattier, tastier spare ribs is also an odd choice. Overall, these aren’t bad ribs but they can’t compare to the very best American-style barbecue ribs in London.

If you’re superficial, you’ll be instantly impressed by the size of my rack.

Stop looking at my rack.

The coleslaw accompanying the ribs wasn’t too creamy or cloying, but it was the fennel, almond and orange side salad that really caught my attention. The combination of sharp, firm fennel and sweet, light orange chunks was very refreshing and much needed after the relatively heavy meat. There was little in the way of almonds, but I didn’t miss them.

Yawn.

Fennel. The misunderstood vegetable.

The fennel and citrus theme continued in the dessert special, a clementine and fennel sorbet. Although not as strongly flavoured as the salad, the tastes of distinctly sweet, pointedly citrusy clementine and sharp fennel were clearly evident and worked well as an icy, refreshing sorbet.

Featureless icy blobs are, unsurprisingly, tricky to photograph in low light.

The notoriously cautious Baron Greenback almost skipped dessert entirely, but eventually plumped for the oddly-named ‘like a key lime pie’. It’s so named as although it uses most the same ingredients as a traditional key lime pie, it takes a different form. Rather than a thickened layer of eggs, lime juice and condensed milk on top of a pastry base, there was instead a light and fluffy sponge with a mildly zesty, creamy filling. Although not bad in terms of texture, it was distinctly underwhelming in terms of taste – especially when compared to the best examples of a traditional key lime pie.

Like a key lime pie… but not as good.

Going back for seconds

The very presence of porchetta on the menu was enough to lure me back for a second meal and I was ravenous enough to have this Italian-style roast pork dish in a soft ciabatta as a starter. The moist and tender slices of pork had a slightly chewy, fatty edge and were topped with a lip-smackingly herby sauce of rosemary, thyme and sage. It’s not quite as good as the very best examples of porchetta, but it’s still a pretty good one.

Porketta.

Unlike the iberico pork presa served elsewhere, Blackfoot’s version isn’t served sliced – the knifing duties are left up to you. That’s hardly a problem though as the pork is tender despite the charred and lightly smoky exterior. The rare interior is sweet, juicy and lightly fatty with a good depth of flavour. The slightly smoky and coarse chipotle ketchup was a little too overpowering and isn’t needed – the beautiful pork presa is more than good enough to stand on its own.

Pork presa on a plate photo.

Pretty piece of pork presa pic.

The chipotle ketchup is instead better suited as an accompaniment for the chilli pork crackling. Although not spicy at all, the crispy, crunchy, slightly oily crackling was surprisingly light and proved to be a good way of shovelling ketchup into my gob.

They’re like pork scratchings, but far less offensive.

The rum and coke baba may be a clever play on words, but it wasn’t a very satisfying dessert. The stodgy sponge doused in a thin liquid tasted mainly of aniseed. It wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t have it again.

Baba Blackfoot, please don’t serve me anymore.

Slice and dice.

Three is the magic number

Blackfoot has a small selection of British charcuterie, such as the lomo – thin, partially transparent slices of loin from Dorset pigs. The lightly fatty slices had a delicate, milky taste that was subtle but pleasing.

Go lomo, not loco.

I’ve never heard of a pork ‘spare rib steak’, but this slab of lean meat must presumably come from somewhere in the loin area of the animal. Although largely free of fat and ever so slightly tough, it was nonetheless a very flavoursome cut of pork – tender, moist, light and sweet with small fennel seeds studded across the meat enhancing its natural moreishness. It wasn’t too far removed from the pork presa in terms of flavour. A small pot of the same sauce served with the porchetta was included, but it wasn’t necessary.

Steak your claim.

The side dish of lentils were braised in red wine which gave them a certain meatiness – no doubt a psychological connection made due to the frequent use of red wine for braising beef. The lentils were so moreish, I licked up every last kernel.

Rarely have lentils tasted this good.

My third meal ended on an anti-climactic note with the eclair. The slightly chewy pastry and chocolate sauce were unimpressive and unremarkable respectively, but at least the cream filling wasn’t too heavy.

It’s hand-made – hence the odd shape.

The Verdict

The food at Blackfoot is inconsistent – the smoked dishes were OK at best and the desserts were patchy, but the porchetta and the dishes cooked on the charcoal grill were delectable. The consistency of the kitchen’s execution will hopefully improve. Once it does, I hope the kitchen has plans for increasing its range and ambition – there are cuts of pork apart from the usual belly, ribs and loin that deserve to be eaten more widely, such as hock, cheek and jowl. Even if none of this happens, Blackfoot is still worth going to but you’ll have to navigate the menu carefully.

Name: Blackfoot

Address: 46 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QE

Phone: 020 7837 4384

Web: http://blackfootrestaurant.co.uk

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-22.30. Closed Sundays.

Reservations: essential on Thursdays, Fridays and weekends; otherwise probably a good idea.

Average cost for one person including service and soft drinks: £30 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Getting fat on big-ass kebabs

Most of the Turkish restaurants on north London’s Green Lanes have been around for years, so the arrival of an apparent newcomer such as Devran is an unusual occurrence. Its decor fits the Green Lanes template though – murals depicting the Haiga Sophia and other typically Turkish vistas adorn the walls. There are plenty of covers which turn over quickly, so the Euro Hedgie and I had no trouble snagging a table when we discovered that my usual favourite, Yayla, is currently closed undergoing refurbishment.

News that Alan Yau plans to open a Turkish restaurant on Shaftesbury Avenue with a focus on lamachun will doubtless bring this Turkish pizza-esque dish to a wider audience and this can only be a good thing. Devran’s version is pretty good – thin, lightly crisp flatbread topped with a scattering of moreish tomato and minced lamb as well as a lot of parsley.

Wait, an entire restaurant based around this? Hmmmm.

Imam bayildi is listed on the menu twice, under ‘cold’ starters and under vegetarian dishes, as it’s effectively available in two ‘sizes’ – a half or full aubergine. Served lukewarm, the stringy eggplant flesh was topped with layers of chickpeas and tomato sauce. It wasn’t bad, but the rather limp aubergine and tomato sauce made me lukewarm on this lukewarm starter.

I didn’t swoon.

The Hedgie and I shared the Devran Special, a huge platter groaning under the weight of several meats, allowing us to sample a broad swathe of the menu. The fatty shreds of lamb and chicken doner were too salty, while the lamb koftes were too dry and needed a little more fat for both moistness and flavour. A similar dryness afflicted the lamb shish, but these chunks were at least firm and slightly offally.  Both the chicken shish and the chicken wings had a pleasing, addictive smokiness to them, especially in the case of the wings. The lamb ribs and chops were almost interchangeable – small, very bony, offally and a little too chewy for my liking. The entire thing was served on strips of Turkish bread and salad, as if the basket of bread and salad plate for the table wasn’t enough already.

A mixed grill by any other name…

Salt of the earth.

King kofte.

We meat at last.

Lamb ribs – a cut you don’t see very often.

Chop shop.

Shish!

More carbs than you can shake a carton of ayran at.

The Hedgie could barely move, never mind eat dessert, but I found just enough room to squeeze in some baklava. I wish I hadn’t though – the hollow tubes of pastry were too chewy and stodgy and served with an oddly tangy pistachio ice cream dusted with crushed pistachio. Given the far better baklava available elsewhere on Green Lanes, this was all especially disappointing.

Nuts.

The Verdict

Devran isn’t bad, but the so-so quality of its grilled meat dishes makes this a rather average, second rate Green Lanes restaurant that’s only worth going to in the unlikely event you can’t get in anywhere else. Let’s hope Yayla reopens soon and hasn’t lost any more of its touch.

Name: Devran

Address: 485-487 Green Lanes, London N4 1AJ

Phone: 020 8340 2288

Web: http://devranrestaurant.com/

Opening Hours: seven days a week 08:00-02:00.

Reservations: not necessary

Total cost for one person including drinks and service when shared between two: £19 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Cheap and cheerful Chinese cuisine

The City isn’t the first place that comes to mind for eating out inexpensively, with most people heading to nearby Shoreditch instead. There are worthwhile restaurants to be found though, you just have to know where to find them. The oddly-named My Old Place is on a side street just a few yards away from the eastern side of Liverpool Street station. It’s a brightly lit, sparsely decorated place. Service is brusque and clipped, but efficient. In short, it has all the charm of a doctor’s waiting room, but it’s the food that matters.

The large plates of food on My Old Place’s ridiculously long menu are best suited for sharing, so I dragged The Lensman, Templeton Peck and Happy Buddha along for the ride. Like Oriental Dragon, there’s an extensive selection of barbecued meat skewers. The bunny-loving Lensman was adverse to the idea of barbecued rabbit, so we opted for a couple of lamb kidney skewers instead. The offally little organs had a crisp exterior and a tender interior which went down a treat. The chunks of barbecued lamb flesh had a very similar texture, but were a little too fatty in places. They were still meaty enough though and were charred and smoky with a strong hint of cumin too.

Doesn’t look like much, but tastes great.

The squeamish may balk at the idea of eating pig’s ears and whelks in chilli oil, but thankfully none of us were so lily-livered. The lightly salty whelks had a firm bite and tender flesh, while the pig’s ears had a rind-like texture and consistency to them. The chilli oil was only mildly piquant, but the whelks were still a winner.

Mollusc meat swine.

The wood ear mushrooms didn’t taste of much, but did have an interestingly soft and wrinkly fungus-like texture. The flavour came instead from the punchy, lightly salty wasabi and soy-based dipping sauce.

Play it by ear.

It’s hard to avoid whelks on the menu and we had the little blighters again, this time paired with slices of pork tripe and mashed garlic. The latter actually came in whole cloves and didn’t really add much to the dish. In any case, the tender, wrinkly, offally tripe and lightly salty whelks were good enough to stand on their own.

Swine meat mollusc.

Cuttlefish with fried, pickled peppers sounds like an unusual combination, but it was an ultimately tepid and uninspiring dish. The curled slices of cuttlefish were too soft and bland, while the peppers were rather mild and not at all tart or sour either.

Cheap, colourful and generic Chinese plastic plates? Check.

It initially seemed that we’d been cheated when our plate of clams and spinach arrived with nothing but greenery visible. The pile of seafood was actually heaped underneath all the spinach in the middle of the plate and it’s a good thing they were tender and salty as the underwhelming spinach wasn’t up to much.

Clam dunk? Not quite.

A better choice of greens were the light and crisp stir-fried French beans served with some mild chillies.

Bean me up, Frenchie.

Our meal ended on a sour note with a couple of distinctly underwhelming dishes. Thin, flat rice noodles, the house lo mein, were smothered in a generic brown sauce and were livened up only by some small flecks of earthy mushrooms. Happy Buddha insisted on having some fried chicken which arrived in a thin, tasteless batter along with some onions and peppers in a thin, uninspiring sauce.

A kaboodle of noodles.

Yeurgh.

The Verdict

There are some good dishes available at My Old Place, but finding them can be tricky. The menu is unnecessarily huge, with many entries apparently just minor variations of one another, and there are more than a few duffers too. Stick with the more unusual sounding dishes and you should end up with a good meal. The low prices make all of this more tolerable, but in the end, like the similar Oriental Dragon in Fitzrovia, My Old Place is merely good enough, rather than the great restaurant it could be with a little more thought and attention to detail.

Name: My Old Place (Liverpool Street)

Address: 88-90 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EZ

Phone: 0207 247 2200

Web: http://www.oldplace.co.uk/

Opening Hours: seven days a week noon-14.30 and 16.30-23.00-ish.

Reservations: highly recommended.

Total cost for one person including service and drinks when shared between four: £25 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Worth seeking out or just another take away for tired, drunken locals?

E. Mono is a renowned kebab restaurant and take away in Kentish Town that also has a second outpost within the confines of Finsbury Park station. Whereas the Kentish Town original has lovingly restored Edwardian premises, the Finsbury Park location is a much more ordinary retail space. It’s primarily a take away, but there is a counter and a handful of tables for a quick sit down.

Everything at E. Mono costs £3.99, but you can pay an extra £2 for a larger portion of your chosen stomach liner. Everything comes wrapped in lavash -a firm, floury flatbread that can become a little tough and cracked if not eaten very promptly. The salad is mostly there for extra moistness and you can also have, if you want, a ladel of punchy garlic sauce and a lightly spicy chilli sauce too. It’s all tightly wrapped, although inevitably there is some sauce leakage from the bottom.

Shawarma is just another term for a doner kebab and the lamb version was firm, moist and offaly. It was also a little greasy, but not disastrously so. The chicken shawarma was a little dry with a dab of grease here and there, but also a little smoky which went well with the garlic and chilli sauces.

Wrap party.

A chicken doner by any other name…

Surprisingly, the chicken shish was better than the lamb shish. The latter was moist and firm, but otherwise unremarkable. The chicken shish, on the other hand, was moist, tender and lightly smoky.

‘K-bob’ is not an acceptable spelling. It just isn’t.

Chickens. Offending no-one since 5400BC.

The best kebab of the lot has to be the lamb kofte though. Fluffy, tender, moist sausages of lamb flecked with herbs and chilli.

Do those ‘best kebab in town’ signs fool anyone? Apart from drunks of course.

One of the few vegetarian alternatives available is the falafel, but this was clearly an afterthought. Although the balls had the distinctive nutty taste of chickpea, they were also a little too hard and stodgy which doesn’t go well with the firm lavash. The cursory smearing of hummus was drowned out by the garlic and chilli sauces.

A token vegetarian option. Bless.

Despite having to deal with a cavalcade of drunks and Arsenal fans on a regular basis, the staff deserve kudos for their unflappable politeness and efficiency.

The Verdict

The Finsbury Park branch of E. Mono is definitely better than most run-of-the-mill high street kebab joints, but unless I’m very tired or in a massive rush I’d rather take the short bus ride or walk to get to Green Lanes for my kebab fix.

Name: E. Mono (Finsbury Park)

Address: 16 Station Place, Finsbury Park, London N4 2DH

Phone: 020 8045 4188

Web: https://www.facebook.com/pages/E-Mono-Finsbury-PARK/482168241871937

Opening Hours: seven days a week 11.30-23.30.

Reservations: N/A

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £5 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Hearty party

Traditional Austrian food is never going to take over the world. At the risk of making a crude generalisation, old school Austrian food at its best is tasty, but also rather heavy with lashings of meat and rich pastries. Still, there’s definitely a place for that kind of food, especially during the brisk, frigid British winter. Boopshi’s concentrates mainly on schnitzel, but also has a small selection of other Austrian dishes.

Boopshi’s itself, having taken over the premises of an older, defunct Thai restaurant, is a small, spartan place. During my first visit with The Euro Hedgie, the place was so new that we could still smell the wood glue and, according to the Hedgie, the cubicles in the gent’s were missing a door or two. Aside from all that, the decor had a sparse, Ikea-like feel to it – especially the pinewood tables. Still, the service was friendly.

Boopshi’s weekend dinner

Both the Hedgie and I opted for the amusingly-named almdudler which turned out to be a rather weakly flavoured fizzy apple soft drink.

Hey-Diddly-Ho, almdudler!

Most of the main plates can also be ordered as starters, which is exactly what we did. The Hedgie went for the board of Austrian cured meats and while we couldn’t identify them, highlights included the mildly peppery and garlikcy sausage slices and the thin, partially transparent slices of mildly salty and fatty ham.

I’m cured!

Unlike the animal tongues served elsewhere, Boopshi’s ox tongue actually looks like a tongue which tickled me. The thick, offally, slightly coarse and tough hunk of meat went down a treat with a hearty helping of soft, mildly salty lentils.

Tongue pleasure.

Both the Hedgie and I opted for schnitzel as our mains, pork and veal respectively. These flattened, bread crumb covered, bone-free and fried slabs of meat were unsurprisingly very similar, with the veal version more tender than the pork. While not as massive as the 12in or even larger versions sometimes found in Vienna, both portions were huge. Although free from oil and grease, munching my way through such a large, homogenous hunk of veal would’ve been monotonous if it wasn’t for the unorthodox topping of salty anchovies. Other toppings are available, such as the Hedgie’s choice of capers, although I found the latter surprisingly bland. An alternative smaller helping of schnitzel is available served in a bun.

He he, you said wiener. Wiener!

There’s a choice of schnitzel toppings, besides capers and anchovies. But why would you have anything other than anchovies?

The side dish of spatzle and cheese was essentially mac and cheese, but it was good mac and cheese – mildly firm and chewy pasta twirls covered in a creamy, nutty cheese.

Macaroni and cheese by any other name is even better.

The sauerkraut was surprisingly mild – I prefer mine nice and tart – but the addition of salty, chewy speck made up for it.

Almost up to speck.

The meal ended with a dismal whimper rather than a bang. The Hedgie skipped dessert, but I went for the sachertorte and I wish I hadn’t. What should’ve been a rich, moist chocolate cake layered with apricot jam and covered in molten chocolate or chocolate icing was instead bone dry with almost no jam at all. Not good enough.

Just not good enough.

Boopshi’s weekend lunch

I may have been all schnitzled out after my first meal at Boopshi’s, but the prospect of bratwurst tempted me back. The version here was long, smoothly ground, herby and mildly peppery. The sweet, fruity mustard was a good match, but the sausage is perfectly enjoyable without it.

What a big sausage you have!

Do your wurst.

There are unsurprisingly few vegetarian dishes on the menu and the goat’s cheese with beetroot was one of them. The light and fluffy cheese was mildly tangy and not nearly as powerfully flavoured as other goat’s cheeses which is a good thing if you find goat’s cheeses too overbearing. It made for a moreish compliment to the lightly earthy shreds of beetroot dressed in a fruity olive oil, although the meagre scattering of pumpkin seeds added little.

Cheese it.

Apple strudel in many other restaurants tends to be a thinly-disguised apple pie or tart, but the version here is very much a traditional strudel. Although the thin, chewy layers of pastry made for clumsy eating, the internal layers of spiced apple and raisins was pleasing. The fruity filling was made all the more warming by the addition of the thin, eggy custard served in a small jug on the side.

Get fruity.

Boopshi’s weekday lunch

I returned to Boopshi’s for one last meal, mainly to try the beef frankfurter which didn’t disappoint. Like the bratwurst, it was smoothly textured but with a slightly saltier, smokier, heavier taste. The fruity mustard made a repeat appearance and while it didn’t suit the frankfurter quite as well as it did the bratwurst, it was still a welcome condiment.

Double beef.

The smoked eel, bacon and quail’s egg salad was misnamed. Although the tender fish was smoky and lightly salty, the two smell strips were outnumbered by the rashers of sweet cured streaky bacon made from the belly. Nonetheless this was a pleasing dish with the sweet, fatty bacon and smoky eel complimented well by bitter leaves in a fruity olive oil dressing and some hard boiled quail eggs. Richer, runnier soft boiled eggs would’ve been a better choice, but that’s a minor quibble next to the meagre serving of eel.

It’s not really a smoked eel salad. It’s a bacon salad with some added eel.

The small helping of bland stewed plums in the Kaiserschmarrn was miserly, but this dessert was still pleasing thanks to the lightly shredded, smashed strips of fluffy pancakes. The texture of the pancakes was so fluffy that it almost resembled a bread and butter pudding. Given the non-presence of plum, most of the sweetness came instead from the scattering of raisins with a very mild boozy kick coming from a hint of rum.

Smash it.

The Verdict

Boopshi’s isn’t about inventive, clever cuisine, but hearty, warming, generally good quality stodge. As long as you’re happy with that, then you’ll have a good time here.

Name: Boopshi’s

Address: 31 Windmill Street, Fitzrovia, London W1T 2JN

Phone: 020 3205 0072

Web: http://boopshis.com/

Opening Hours: Monday – Saturday noon-15.30 and 17.30- 22.00. Sunday noon-21.30.

Reservations: probably a good idea for large groups on weekends

Average cost for one person including soft drinks and service: £30 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

No sniggering in the back

The vast majority of Vietnamese restaurants in London have very traditional menus and tend to be clustered together in Hoxton and Deptford, with smaller concentrations in other places such as Hammersmith. Soho’s House of Ho is a very different affair. The exposed brick walls, moody lighting and odd contemporary art are a world away from the typical chintz of Kingsland Road. Not only are the waiting staff friendly and gracious, but the menu is striking too. There isn’t any pho, banh mi or bun cha here, but more modern, inventive dishes that you won’t find anywhere else.

First things first

The menu isn’t completely devoid of traditional Vietnamese dishes. There’s the pho cuon for example, thin rice noodle rolls stuffed with the filling of your choice such as the duck. The small helping of meat had a herby sweetness that I couldn’t quite place, but it was startlingly unexpected and moreish.

Sorry for some of the iffy photos folks.

Langoustines look like prawn-sized lobsters, but taste more like shrimp than their bigger cousins. If you manage to extract the minuscule amount of meat from the prickly, skin-piercing shell without wishing to bring the little blighter back to life so you can kill it all over again, then you’re a better person than I am. The firm, juicy meat is just about worth the effort, especially the earthy brains. The minty, nutty, slightly spicy salad of firm lotus root shreds served underneath it is a winner although this doesn’t really make up for the fact that, due to the singular langoustine, there’s far more salad than seafood here.

In another life, this would’ve been scampi.

The small square of pork belly may not look like much, but it’s sublimely delicious. The tender and fatty pork is complimented exceedingly well by the thin, fruity, peppery sauce that’s moreishly addictive. The braised cabbage and egg add little to the pork, but it’s great nonetheless.

Less cabbage and egg, more pork belly.

A side dish of choyote, a sort of gourd originally from Mexico, was served in thin, crisp slices. It tastes somewhere in between a cucumber and a melon, so it’s rather bland to be honest but it’s one of your five a day.

Wiley choyote.

If you’re predictable and dull, then you’ll order the chocolate cake for dessert. The sponge’s molten interior is pleasing enough, but the oozing chocolate, and the vaguely sweet and caramel-ish ice cream on the side for that matter, was severely lacking in character. This unoriginal dessert could’ve been served anywhere.

Boring and not even especially well done.

Going back for seconds

I returned to House of Ho with the help of Bleeding Gums Murphy. He started off with the crab pomelo salad. The chunks of juicy fruit helped emphasise the zingy, zesty, minty flavours of the crunchy salad. However, the small chunks and shreds of limp crab leg meat was disappointing while the addition of prawn crackers was just baffling.

What’s with the prawn crackers?

Despite its odd appearance, the julienned vegetables in the duck salad tasted largely similar to the pomelo salad, but with unremarkable shreds of duck in place of the crab.

This duck is treading water.

Despite my advice to the contrary, Bleeding Gums Murphy plumped for the langoustine and enjoyed it more than I did (although he doesn’t get out much anymore). He did a better job of extracting the langoustine flesh from the prickly shell though, so perhaps I’m just shit at that sort of thing.

We meet again, nemesis. Don’t point your claw at me!

After a disappointing start, our meal improved considerably. Although the monkfish had been a little overcooked, so that the stodgy flesh could’ve been almost any white fish, the exceptionally tangy, sweet, almost garlicky sauce was incredibly addictive. Don’t be put off by its odd description on the menu as ‘fish caramel sauce’ – I had to restrain myself from picking up the bowl and slurping every last drop.

A difficult habit to get out of.

Despite its unusual appearance, the tender strands of distinctly smoky aubergine were a winner and unsurprisingly reminiscent of the Levantine dish of baba ghanoush. The topping of crispy, chewy and sweet fried shallots complimented the smokiness of the aubergine very well.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Vietnamese bouillabaisse isn’t as outlandish as it sounds given the history between France and Vietnam. The bouillabaisse here obviously veers away from traditional French ingredients, while remaining close in spirit. The cloudy, moreish starfruit-flecked broth is full of lipsmacking umami, no doubt thanks to the tomatoes, yet still has a clean after taste. The selection of seafood isn’t very inspiring, but it’s all fresh, zesty and with the right amount of firmness from the squid and white fish to the clams and mussels.

Fishing for compliments.

The ‘lemon-scented’ creme brulee had only the faintest whiff of citrus. In all other respects it was a small and unremarkable version of this classic French dessert. The thin crust was crisp, while the custard underneath was very soft and wispy – almost too wispy, lacking the richness I usually prefer.

Lemony fresh.

Bleeding Gums Murphy opted for the ice cream trio and was more impressed than I was with the mediocre dollops of pistachio and vanilla. Far more flavoursome was the nutty, chocolatey and malty pandan-flavoured scoop which deserves to form the basis of a dessert all on its own, rather than sharing the stage with its two ugly stepsisters.

Pandan. It’s all about the pandan.

Third time’s the charm?

One of the more traditional dishes on House of Ho’s menu is the vegetable curry. The mildly creamy, thin and coconutty sauce served over vermicelli noodles is largely identical to what you’d find in almost any of London’s other Vietnamese restaurants. More unusual were the vegetables used – tender chunks/slices of okra, pumpkin, potato and small spherical Thai aubergines as well as some mangetout too. It’s not an especially spicy or flavoursome curry, but it is a filling one and the addition of Thai aubergine and a scattering of crunchy peanuts gave this dish a slight Thai feel to it.

Currying favour.

Another dish with a foreign feel to it was, unsurprisingly, the ceviche. Versions of this originally Peruvian dish of raw fish can now be found on the menus of numerous London restaurants of all cuisines. The version here used firm, juicy prawns and meaty slices of sea bass, both raw, as well as some small, limp scallops served cooked. The seafood was bathed in a milky coconut jus which would’ve felt almost completely Peruvian if it wasn’t for the sweet crunch of bell peppers. It’s a satisfying dish, but feels out of place.

The coconut is just for show as far as I can tell.

Tofu gets a bad rep from carnivores with no taste who try a badly cooked version, which they then use as an excuse to damn all tofus everywhere. Sadly, the version here isn’t going to convince them otherwise, nor will it please more open minded diners and vegetarians. Although the tofu was suitably thick and meaty, the fruity puree-like tomato sauce didn’t suit it. Piled into the middle of the hollowed-out tofu was a small heap of chopped mushrooms, but it was hard to appreciate either their taste or their texture as they were far too small and bitty.

I’m stuffed.

The Verdict

At its best the food at House of Ho remixes Vietnamese food with influences from elsewhere to delicious effect, with bold flavours and a clean after taste in a meal that’s filling despite being deceptively light. The problem is that the menu, as it stands, is far too hit and miss with some dishes markedly better than others. Even then, only a handful of the good dishes are exceptional enough to justify the relatively high overall price of a meal here. House of Ho has great potential, but for now it’s merely okay. It’s an acceptable place to while away an hour or two, but isn’t an essential dining experience.

Name: House of Ho

Address: 55-59 Old Compton Street, Soho, London W1D 6HP

Phone: 020 7287 0770

Web: http://houseofho.co.uk/

Opening Hours: seven days a week noon-15:00 and 17:00-late.

Reservations: essential on and around weekends; highly recommended the rest of the time

Average cost for one person including drinks: £50 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Contemporary Indian small plates for sharing

I’m fortunate enough that I can almost anything I want, but others have restrictions on what they can eat. The Cape, the better half of the The Squinting Brummie, is gluten intolerant for example. A surprising number of London’s restaurants do little to accommodate those with celiac diseases, but Imli Street, an Indian restaurant formerly known as Imli, does a far better job. Although a good chunk of Indian cuisine is gluten-free anyway, Imli Street still has a guide showing which of its numerous dishes are suitable for those with various dietary restrictions, not just gluten intolerance. Although undeniably useful, its plain spreadsheet-style presentation needs work. In any case The Cape had no trouble parsing it for edible dishes.

Doesn’t look as good as my dungeon.

A bucket of naan bread – definitely not gluten free.

Imli is different from other Indian restaurants. Its menu concentrates on small plates of both classic dishes and more inventive fare, while the stripped back interior is moodily lit. Mondeo Man finds the entire experience ‘poncey’, but then he finds anything beyond meat and two veg ‘posh’ so his petite bourgeois opinion counts for little here. In any case it’s all very different from its initial incarnation which had brightly coloured walls and even brighter lighting.

Imli Street gluten-free dinner

As a visiting Yank wanting to experience traditional English delicacies, The Cape opted for Imli’s version of chicken tikka masala. The Anglo-Indian classic tasted pretty much as you would expect – creamy, mild and inoffensive. Although The Squinting Brummie was pleased with both the sauce and the tender chunks of poultry, The Cape seemed a little disappointed from both its unremarkable flavour and the slightly gristly chunks of dark meat.

The Cape wanted to complete her London experience by seeing some drunk Londoners throw up on the Tube. Tourists, eh?

Both The Cape and I were unimpressed by the crab dusted with a hint of spice and accompanied by a scattering of almonds. The bitty head meat had hardly any taste or texture to it.

I don’t like the look of your crabs.

I was pleased by the fruity sauce and the light, yet meaty salmon-esque chunks of fish in the kingfish curry. A side of baby aubergine curry was disappointing though. While the aubergines themselves were soft and fleshy, the sauce they were served in was bland.

The king of fish curries?

Curry isn’t very photogenic.

I couldn’t convince either The Cape or The Squinting Brummie to help me demolish the chicken livers, although to be fair they weren’t missing much. Although offally and coarse, they were also quite dry and tasted much like pork kidneys.

Lily livered.

The Cape may be gluten-intolerant, but The Squinting Brummie clearly doesn’t believe in sympathy-ordering. He opted for the bizarre naan pie. A rogan josh-esque layer of lamb curry was topped with both creamy cheese and mashed potato. To cap it all, strips of naan bread were planked on top forming a ‘pie crust’. It’s somewhat like a shepherd’s pie crossed with a lasagna, but the Brummie wasn’t fond of it. He found that the cheese tended to obscure both the taste and the fluffy texture of the potato. It didn’t compliment the mildly spicy lamb very well either. Like I said, bizarre.

Pie in the Brummie’s face.

A dish that I didn’t have much hope for, but which turned out to be surprisingly decent was the kothu. Thin slices of paratha bread stir fried with various vegetables and a hint of coconut proved to be a soft, addictive delight.

Kothu, not Cthulhu.

The only one of Imli Street’s desserts that’s apparent suitable for celiacs is the mango soup. If this sounds weird, then think of it as a thin mango milkshake – a milkshake served with a hint of basil and a dollop of coconut ice cream. The mildly thick and distinctly flavoured soup went down a treat, especially when paired with the smooth, moderately creamy and mildly flavoured ice cream.

Or think of it as a mango sauce. If that helps you.

Despite our national obsession with Indian food, traditional Indian desserts remain largely unknown by many and that’s a real shame. A few traditional Indian desserts are available here, such as the falooda. Sucking vermicelli rice noodles through a straw is an undoubtedly odd experience, but it’s a pleasurable one with a strong taste of rosewater complimented nicely by the dollop of sweet, milky ice cream and a dusting of crunchy pistachios.

Slurping noodles with a straw.

Imli Street weekend lunch

I visited Imli Street for a second time, this time without any of my dining companions. The selection of non-alcoholic drinks includes a mango lassi that’s suitably fruity and milky without being too overpowering or viscous. The selection of iced teas is odd though – the ‘lemongrass’ ice tea tastes mostly of pomegranate and lemon, with barely any taste of tea at all. There’s a suitably stronger hint of jasmine tea in the Jasmine iced tea, but the dominant taste here was of kiwi fruit.

A jug-sized serving would be preferable.

Tea. Apparently.

Following on from the naan pie, the naanwich is clearly evidence that the kitchen likes experimenting with odd naan-based dishes. Triangular wedges of naan are available filled with either butter chicken or ‘scrambled’ paneer and I opted for the latter. The bitty, bland mixture of paneer, rocket and peppers was disappointing with most of the taste coming instead from the mint dipping raita served in a small pot on the side.

Up next, the Sunday naanroast or some other nonsense. It’s almost as if they’re coming up with the pun-filled names first, the actual recipe second.

Broth and CTC is an odd-name for a dish. Toast soldiers topped with a mildly spicy layer of melted cheese was basic but pleasing. Dipping the soldiers into the thin, moreish tomato sauce obscured the creaminess of the cheese though. A misconceived dish and an overpriced one at £7.

Soldiering on.

Another strangely-named dish was the Chicken 65, although this one was more successful. Crispy, oil-free fried chicken wings with a mild hint of garlic that was brought out by the fruity, garlicky ketchup served on the side.

Take flight.

A dish that was generic enough to be served almost anywhere else was the roasted vegetable salad. The small slices of crisp pear, mildly sweet butternut squash and bell peppers, as well as a scattering of small paneer crumbs, were outnumbered by raddichio and other earthy leaves.

Boring and generic? Oh goody.

One of the other traditional Indian desserts available at Imli Street is the rasmalai. The bready texture of this poached paneer served cold won’t suit everyone, but I found it moderately pleasing. The lack of richness was disappointing, but the cardamom, pistachio and strawberry flavours of the milk puddle in which the paneer was served made up for this, as did the clean aftertaste.

Dessert cheese, but not as you know it.

There was nothing to make up for the weak, watered down taste of the masala chai though, unless you count sugar and milk. Sorry folks, no photo of this one.

The Verdict

Attempting to preserve the convivial aspect of Indian food, while pushing forwards with inventive dishes that go beyond just curry is an admirable goal. However, the food at Imli Street falls short. Although there are a handful of quality dishes, most are either mediocre or just plain shoddy which just isn’t acceptable at this price. Imli Street may have a central location, moody lighting and take reservations, but these are the only advantages it has over its more traditional, but far better value kin out in Whitechapel.

Name: Imli Street

Address: 167-169 Wardour Street, Soho, London W1F 8WR

Phone: 020 7287 4243

Web: http://www.imlistreet.com/

Opening Hours: Monday-Friday 08.00-23.00, Saturday 09.00-23.00 and Sunday 09.00-22.00.

Reservations: essential on and around weekends; otherwise probably a good idea

Average cost for one person including soft drinks and tea: £35-50 approx.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

18 eateries, 49 sandwiches, one verdict

Pho, or beef noodle soup, is the dish most commonly known Vietnamese dish but there’s another that deserves just as much attention and love – the humble banh mi. A baguette filled with pickled vegetables, coriander and meat doesn’t sound tricky to make or distinctive enough to seek out, but this sandwich can be uniquely delicious when done right. My criteria for a good banh mi are straightforward:

• A crisp, fresh baguette – preferably one made from rice flour as well as wheat. This makes the baguette crisper, airier, but also a little drier. Obviously, the baguette should also hold everything together and not fall apart or be overstuffed.
• Tart pickled vegetables – carrots, cucumbers, radishes etc. plus a smattering of fresh coriander and some mayo. Kewpie mayonnaise is often used here. All of this should act as a counterbalance to the following-
• Meaty filling – I typically prefer caramelised, smoky grilled pork with cha lua, a steamed pork roll/loaf that’s smooth and milky at its best, along with a pork or chicken pate. The pate should be coarse, fluffy, salty and a little spicy. I’m partial to other fillings of course – catfish, tofu, roast duck and meatballs, for example, are a little unusual but all perfectly acceptable.

A good balance between all three elements is the name of the game here. The perfect drink for washing down a Vietnamese sandwich has to be a Vietnamese coffee – chocolatey and served with just enough sweet, viscous condensed milk.

I strove to visit every London restaurant, cafe and market stall that serves banh mi during the past couple of months. Since we’re talking about sandwiches here, most of the places listed are only open at lunchtime, but a few are also open for dinner and I’ve noted this in the individual reviews below. One restaurant you won’t find reviewed here is Thanh Binh in Camden. Although the hoardings outside advertise banh mi, the sandwiches have never been available on any of the multiple occasions that I’ve dropped by. When I’ve inquired by phone, the staff deny that banh mi are even on the menu. If Thanh Binh ever get their act together, then I may include them here in an update.

If I’ve missed your favourite, then let me know in the Comments. If I don’t like your favourite, don’t get huffy – it’s not the end of the world.

Table of Contents (you can open each link in a separate tab if you prefer)

Aobaba
Banh Mi 11
Banh Mi Bay
Banh Mi Hoi An
Banh Mi Saigon
Bun Cha
Caphe House
Chi
City Caphe
Keu
OA Com Tam
Panda Panda
Pho Express
Sen Viet
Velo
Vieteat
Viet Cafe (formerly Cafe Bay)
Walk Thru

Aobaba

The now closed Wood Green branch of this odd mini-chain of Vietnamese supermarkets-cum-diners was a disappointment, but things have moved on since then with the banh mi at the Elephant and Castle branch noticeably improved.

All the banh mi I tried used exceedingly soft and fluffy baguettes that were also slightly chewy, but not disastrously so. The Classic Saigon was generously stuffed with thick slices of milky smooth pork roll, as well as some insipid shreds of carrot and coriander. The dollop of pate may have been small, but it was lip-pursingly salty and fishy. A slightly less flesh-preserving level of saltiness would be preferable.

Classic Saigon banh mi at Aobaba Elephant and Castle

The Vietnamese cookery show projected on a wall and played on a loop at the Elephant and Castle branch was surprisingly watchable.

The beef stew banh mi was served very differently from almost all the other sandwiches here. The stew was served separately in a bowl and it’s up to you to stuff the baguette yourself. It’s well worth doing though – the exceedingly tender chunks of beef shin and jelly-like tendons were very moreish, especially when taken with a gulp of the thin, mildly tangy sauce and soft, sweet carrots. Stuffing the baguette can get a little messy given the surprisingly generous helping of stew, but I can definitely live with that.

beef stew at Aobaba Elephant and Castle

beef stew with baguette at Aobaba Elephant and Castle

I wasn’t expecting much from the Vietnamese coffee here, so I was pleasantly surprised by the malty, chocolatey taste and the measured sweetness of the condensed milk. All of this made it very balanced and eminently drinkable.

Vietnamese coffee at Aobaba Elephant and Castle

Prawn loaf grilled on skewers of sugar cane is a classic Vietnamese dish and here it’s been used as a banh mi filling. The overall effect was of a takeaway prawn toast inverted in on itself – the smooth, lightly salty prawn loaf tasted more like a fish ball or prawn toast than an actual crustacean, but this was still perfectly edible as a guilty pleasure. The heap of limp carrots was of little use, but the creamy mayo and piquant sliced chillies suited the prawn loaf well.

grilled shrimp banh mi at Aobaba Elephant and Castle

The lemongrass flavour of the grilled pork banh mi variant was surprisingly strong. Complimented by crisp spring onions and fiery chillies, the bold lemongrass flavour livened up what would otherwise have been rather unremarkable strips of soft pork.

chargrilled lemongrass and sesame pork baguette at Aobaba Elephant and Castle

Like the beef stew variant above, the chicken curry banh mi is served with the curry and baguette separate from each other. Spooning the chicken into the bread wasn’t too difficult despite the thinness of the runny sauce. Although the chunks of tender potato and chicken were cut from whole pieces rather than reconstituted, the bland, insipid sauce robbed this dish of much of its pleasure.

chicken curry with baguette at Aobaba Elephant and Castle

A range of mock meat fillings is available for vegetarians. The mock roast pork was almost certainly made out of seitan, a gluten-based meat substitute that has a surprisingly long pedigree in Chinese and Vietnamese cuisine. It had the texture and appearance of lamb doner meat, but tasted slightly sweet and garlicky. I’m not quite sure what to make of this oddity.

close up of mock roast pork banh mi at Aobaba Elephant and Castle

Aobaba’s banh mi aren’t perfect, but they’re definitely among the better ones you can get in London plus they’re much improved over their previous incarnations.

Average cost per sandwich: £5

Rating: ★★★★☆

Banh Mi 11

This market stall used to be my go-to place for Vietnamese baguettes, but standards seem to be slipping judging from my most recent visit to the Berwick Street stall. The once superlative Imperial BBQ Pork baguette was no longer quite as superb, but it was still pretty good. The pork was a little dry and lacked the caramelised sweetness it used to have, but it was still reasonably sweet, salty and a little smoky. The pickled vegetables left me cold, but the squirt of punchy hot sauce made up for it. The baguette was reasonably crisp, but lacked the lightness of the baguettes sometimes found at Banh Mi Bay.

Imperial BBQ pork sandwich from Banh Mi 11

Out of curiosity and a misplaced sense of thoroughness, I visited the Shoreditch cafe location and sampled the crackling pork belly. There wasn’t any crackling though, just mildly fatty cubes of very mildly sweet and caramelised pork in the same baguette and with the same pickled vegetables as before.

crackling pork belly baguette at Banh Mi 11 Shoreditch

close up of crackling pork belly baguette at Banh Mi 11 Shoreditch

The condensed milk used in the iced Vietnamese coffee was reasonably sweet, but the coffee as a whole was too bland and watery.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Banh Mi 11 Shoreditch

Banh Mi 11 used to be the bee’s knees, but it’s now merely second best.

Average cost per sandwich: £5

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Banh Mi Bay

Banh Mi Bay has two locations – a small diner near Holborn, that’s open for both lunch and dinner, and a lunch-only take away joint in Fitzrovia. Rice flour baguettes aren’t always available, but they’re well worth having when they are – they’re far softer and fluffier than the hearty but dull brown baguettes and the stodgy, chewy white baguettes. All of the baguettes I tried came filled with refreshingly tart pickled vegetables and plenty of coriander.

The Bay Special consists of smooth pork roll and a lightly spiced cured ham. The dominant flavour, however, was of the moderately coarse pate – musky and salty with hints reminiscent of fish sauce and shrimp paste. It’s a true delight and although the pate isn’t included by default in most of the other sandwiches, it can be added for a few pence more and it’s well worth doing so.

Bay Special baguette at Banh Mi Bay

close up of Bay Special baguette at Banh Mi Bay

The spiced pork variant uses pig flesh that’s smooth, sweetly caramelised and slightly fatty, but the taste of the pickled vegetables and coriander easily dominates this sandwich.

spiced pork baguette at Banh Mi Bay

close up of spiced pork baguette at Banh Mi Bay

The caramelised shredded pork option was generally bland. Vague hints of sweetness and meatiness were blotted out by the bread and pickled vegetables.

shredded caramel pork baguette from Banh Mi Bay

close up of shredded caramel pork baguette from Banh Mi Bay

For vegetarians, the tofu banh mi uses squidgy tofu doused in a musky, earthy marinade that makes up for the relatively small, bitty slices of tofu.

(Sorry folks, no photo of this one.)

Banh Mi Bay’s coffee, whether hot or iced, tends to be very milky and sweet, with little taste of the coffee itself.

iced Vietnamese coffee from Banh Mi Bay

Banh Mi Bay’s sandwiches aren’t perfect, but the quality of the Classic stands above the rest.

Average cost per sandwich: £5.50

Rating: ★★★★☆

Banh Mi Hoi An

Located around the corner from Hackney’s local Iceland, Banh Mi Hoi An is a small place mainly built for take aways – there are only three uncomfortable window seats for eating in. I’m not quite sure if the freshly toasted baguettes use rice flour or not, but they’re crisp and fluffy nonetheless. All of the sandwiches have a good spread of mayo, fresh coriander and some rather ordinary pickled vegetables.

The amusingly-named Coldplay combines thin slices of milky meat loaf and pork belly, but there’s not much of the latter. There is a light dab of creamy, meaty pate though which makes up for it. The pork belly-only sandwich is essentially identical, but without the pork loaf and with more pork belly which turned out to be mildly caramelised. The belly really needed more fat, but the pate made up for its absence.

Coldplay baguette at Banh Mi Hoi An

Coldplay closeup at Banh Mi Hoi An

pork belly baguette at Banh Mi Hoi An

Banh Mi Hoi An’s pork-less sandwiches are far better. The version filled with beef balls has the benefit of a lightly creamy sauce generously flavoured with lemongrass which compliments the generous helping of smooth, occasionally coarse beef balls very well. Thankfully, the amount of sauce was just right – enough to tickle the taste buds, but not so much as to dribble everywhere.

curry meatball baguette at Banh Mi Hoi An

The catfish baguette was far better than I expected. The catfish was tender, flaky, earth and lightly spicy – a far cry from the bland stodge that would’ve been so easy to serve up in its place.

catfish sandwich at Banh Mi Hoi An

The tofu isn’t a second rate option either. Thick slices of wrinkly, squidgy tofu were dressed in a moreish tomato and lemongrass sauce which also emphasised the tartness of the pickled vegetables.

close up of tofu baguette at Banh Mi Hoi An

Banh Mi Hoi An’s coffee had a reasonably strong kick to it, but there was so much condensed milk that it drowned out the taste of whatever coffee was in there.

Vietnamese coffee at Banh Mi Hoi An

Banh Mi Hoi An’s pork baguettes may be only so-so and heavily reliant on pate, but the other banh mi are excellent. They’re also easily the most generously sized sandwiches here. Hackney residents should count themselves very lucky indeed.

Average cost per sandwich: £5.50

Rating: ★★★★★

Banh Mi Saigon

Banh Mi Saigon is a tiny little Barbican store front with only a handful of window seats and is located just down the road from both Morgan M and Dose. The baguettes were crisp, soft and light. If they’re not rice flour baguettes, than they’re doing a very good impersonation. Sadly, the pickled veg barely had any tartness.

The honey BBQ pork was tender and reasonably moist, but only had a mild, rather forgettable soy sauce-style saltiness to it rather than the charred sweetness you might expect from the name.

honey BBQ pork baguette at Banh Mi Saigon

The baguette stuffed with spiced pork and pork roll had more of the latter than it did of the former. In fact, there was a vanishingly small amount of spiced pork, with the lightly sweet and tangy pork roll taking centre stage instead. It was pleasing, but there was only a mild smearing of the musky, earthy pate.

spiced pork and pork roll baguette at Banh Mi Saigon

The iced Vietnamese coffee was a lightly sweet, rather watery affair that didn’t leave much of an impression.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Banh Mi Saigon

Banh Mi Saigon’s sandwiches aren’t bad, but they can’t compare to the best of the rest. For time-pressed Barbican and City folks only.

Average cost per sandwich: £3

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Bun Cha

According to some sources Bun Cha has now closed, but that’s not the case – this Exmouth Market lunchtime cafe is very much open.  It’s hard to tell what Bun Cha’s coffee, whether iced or hot, tastes like given that the sweet and slightly viscous condensed milk obscures much of its character.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Bun Cha

Vietnamese coffee at Bun Cha

Although Bun Cha’s roast duck banh mi isn’t as good as the one at Keu, nor is it as large, it’s still pretty decent. The moist, mildly fatty slices of meat have a supple layer of skin, the sweetness of which was enhanced by the plum sauce. There’s no pickled vegetables here, just cucumber slices and lettuce. Although rice flour baguettes aren’t available, the pointy-tipped baguette used here was crisp and malty.

duck banh mi at Bun Cha

close up of duck banh mi at Bun Cha

Bun Cha’s Special Banh Mi allegedly contains grilled pork, barbecued pork, pate and pork roll, but in reality the dominant filling here was the grilled pork. There was only a hint of smooth and creamy pate with barely any pork roll. At least the grilled pork was pretty good – tender, lightly smoky and sweet. The sliced veg wasn’t pickled, but the baguette was better than before – crispy and soft, if quite dry.

Special banh mi at Bun Cha

close up of Special banh mi at Bun Cha

The vegetarian sweet chilli tofu option used the same quality baguette as the Special and was filled with bready yet light, soft and tart bean curd. Surprisingly, it did indeed have a mild spicy kick that suited the tartness of the tofu nicely.

tofu baguette at Bun Cha

Bun Cha’s banh mi are solid, but they could be even better with a little more finesse and care.

Average cost per sandwich: £5

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Caphe House

I’ve reviewed Caphe House before and concluded that their banh mi were merely okay. This judgment hasn’t improved much following a more recent visit – if anything it’s dipped. The bargain basement baguettes haven’t changed much. Although moist slices of roast pork and pork roll were used in the Special, it was hard to appreciate the meat as they were smothered by the excessive tartness of the pickled vegetables. A few scattered slices of chilli pepper and a light smearing of earthy pate was a poor consolation prize.

Special banh mi at Caphe House

close up of Special banh mi at Caphe House

Caphe House’s Vietnamese iced coffee started out well with a chocolatey, creamy taste but it ended on an excessively bitter note.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Caphe House

Caphe House‘s banh mi wasn’t awful, but it just hasn’t kept pace with the better Vietnamese sandwiches in this city.

Average cost per sandwich: £5

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Chi

Having taken over the premises formerly occupied by Cafe Bebek, Chi is thankfully better at serving up banh mi than Cafe Bebek was at cooking up burritos. Although the Classic used a bog standard baguette, the filling paired sweet, mildly caramelised slices of grilled pork with an earthy and moderately coarse pate. There was plenty of coriander and vegetables, but sadly none of them were pickled and the entire thing was a bit on the small side.

Classic banh mi from Chi

close up of Classic banh mi from Chi

Chi’s iced coffee was moderately chocolatey and a little silky with a very mild kick. Not a bad effort.

Vietnamese coffee from Chi

Chi’s banh mi aren’t bad, but Banh Mi Bay serves up far superior Vietnamese baguettes and is only a short walk away. Chi does have the benefit of some counter and outdoor seating though, while Banh Mi Bay is takeaway only.

Average cost per sandwich: £5

Rating: ★★★☆☆

City Caphe

Somewhat surprisingly for a City cafe, City Caphe doesn’t accept credit or debit cards. There are around half a dozen tables or so, but these fill up quickly so be prepared for a takeaway.

City Caphe’s eponymous drink wasn’t up to much. The iced version consisted mostly of sweet and creamy condensed milk and lots of ice with sod all coffee.

iced Vietnamese coffee at City Caphe

The Classic pork baguette is stuffed with a generous helping of roast pork and thinly sliced pork roll, but both were bland. The pickled veg and pea-sized helping of pate didn’t taste of much either. Only the surprisingly hot slices of bird’s eye chillies livened things up, but even this couldn’t make up for the so-so baguette.

Classic pork banh mi at City Caphe

The version filled with chargrilled pork was a little better. Although it had the same forgettable bread, vegetables and pate, the mildly caramelised pork was sweet but it was also very dry.

chargrilled pork banh mi at City Caphe

City Caphe is clearly taking its captive audience for a ride. Unacceptable.

Average cost per sandwich: £6

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Keu

A lot of my dining companions have a knee-jerk, irrational dislike of Shoreditch, but I like this misunderstood corner of London and one of the reasons is Keu. Located just across the road from the original Cay Tre, I’m fairly certain the two share the same owner. In any case, the banh mi are delicious. In all but one of my sandwiches, the baguettes were crispy and light – the odd one out was crunchier, but still far fluffier than many other baguettes here. All were packed with fresh coriander, fiery bird’s eye chillies and crisp, sharp vegetables.

The Classic pairs a meaty slice of sweet, caramelised pork and a small amount of mildly musky and earthy yet light chicken liver pate. It’s all complimented nicely by the potent chillies, but I’d happily pay more for an extra helping of the scrumptious pate.

Classic banh mi from Keu

close up of Classic banh mi from Keu

The pork belly banh mi was the one blighted by a crunchy baguette and this was a shame, as it got in the way of appreciating the crisp crackling and the fatty, tender pork. If there was ever an example of why good bread is key to a good banh mi, then this would be it.

pork belly banh mi at Keu

Duck doesn’t turn up often in Vietnamese sandwiches, but Keu’s version is a corker. The hearty portion of tender, moist, fatty poultry also benefitted from a supple, sweet, lightly soy salty skin that would easily be good enough to serve on its own at twice the price.

roast duck banh mi from Keu

Beef brisket is another unusual banh mi filling, but it worked to great effect here. The tender, earthy and musky brisket went down a storm with the spicy bird’s eye chillies.

beef brisket banh mi at Keu

The kimchi pork variant didn’t come together well. Although the tender, mildly fatty pork was a treat, as was the tart and spicy kimchi, the strong taste of the latter tended to obscure the former.

kimchee pork baguette at Keu

kimchi pork banh mi at Keu

The only real disappointment was the weak, watery Vietnamese coffee, but that aside Keu serves up some of the best banh mi I’ve had in London. Plus, it’s open in the evenings too.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Keu

Average cost per sandwich: £6

Rating: ★★★★★

OA Com Tam

A newcomer to Holloway Road, OA Com Tam serves up several Vietnamese dishes besides banh mi. As a result, the sandwiches are clearly an afterthought. The small, soft, slightly chewy baguettes were unimpressive, but at least the pickled vegetables were very tart and the chillies packed a punch too.

The fillings I tried were underwhelming. The tofu was soft, squidgy and sweet, but the thin slices were too bitty and the sweet marinade tended to trickle out of the sandwich and down my hand. The pork version used thin slices of pork roll and grilled pig, but both were bland – the latter not helped by the almost complete absence of fat.

pork baguette at OA Com Tam

tofu banh mi at at OA Com Tam

The Vietnamese coffee, available either hot or on ice, was better. Chocolatey, slightly bitter and with just the right amount of condensed milk. Shame about the sandwiches though.

Vietnamese coffee at OA Com Tam

Average cost per sandwich: £4.10

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Panda Panda

The previously missing banh mi have since reappeared on the menu at this small Deptford cafe.  Disappointingly though, the bread used was tough and chewy which made for monotonous eating. The sliced chillies and coriander weren’t up to much, while the dull and lifeless pickled vegetables were livened up only by the addition of some very salty fish sauce.

The originally named Banh Mi Vietnam was stuffed with a reasonably generous portion of smooth and milky pork roll, although the addition of thinly sliced steamed pork was an odd one. Apart from a slightly sweet and chewy rind, the steamed pork was very bland. I could’ve done with more of the smooth and creamy pate.

Yes, you can buy Panda Panda t-shirts.

Surprisingly, the grilled pork belly was far better. Although lacking in fat, the strips of salty and sweet, lightly caramelised pork were pleasingly moreish which was emphasised by the dusting of crushed peanuts and dabs of mayo.

grilled pork belly baguette at Panda Panda

The Vietnamese coffee was a bland disappointment though. Not only was the coffee itself tasteless, the mildly creamy condensed milk wasn’t very sweet and even lacked any hint of the viscousness I’d expect from condensed milk.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Panda Panda

Panda Panda has a cute name and mascot. It also has surprisingly little competition, at least when it comes to banh mi, from Deptford’s other Vietnamese eateries which explains why it’s treading water with its more disappointing sandwiches.

Average cost per sandwich: £3.50

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Pho Express

This tiny shop front, often open into the night, only just has enough space for the minuscule kitchen and a couple of window seats. Despite the cramped conditions, Pho Express managed to whip some surprisingly good banh mi. This is due in no small part to the exceedingly crisp baguettes, although it’s a shame the pickled vegetables weren’t up to much.

Unusually, the Special packed in a dry, but pleasingly salty and musky almost jerky-like pork along with a light dab of earthy, fluffy pate and slices of smooth pork roll. Excellent stuff.

Special banh mi at Pho Express

The Classic wasn’t quite as barn storming, but it was still good with thin slices of Chinese-style lightly salty pork and smooth pork roll. Both were complimented well by a moreish mix of mayo and Sriracha-style spicy sauce.

Classic banh mi at Pho Express

The iced Vietnamese coffee was lightly bitter as well as reasonably chocolatey and viscously sweet, but it was a little too watery for my liking.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Pho Express

Pho Express may want to shout about its pho, but it has nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to its sandwiches.

Average cost per sandwich: £5.50

Rating: ★★★★☆

Sen Viet

Sen Viet is unusual for London – a proper sit-down restaurant that also serves banh mi, not just other Vietnamese dishes, but you can also get the sandwiches to go if you want. The baguette, coriander and pickled veg were nothing to write home about, but Sen Viet does better when it comes to the meaty fillings.

The Classic was stuffed with surprisingly thick slices of milky pork roll and slightly sweet slices of fatty roast pork edged with bits of rind too. Scumptious.

Classic banh mi from Sen Viet

The BBQ pork option wasn’t too shabby either – tender, lightly charred and sweet pieces of grilled pork garnished with punchy bird’s eye chillies and some creamy mayo.

pork baguette at Sen Viet

If Sen Viet could sort out its bread and vegetables its baguettes would be great, but for now they’re merely just good.

Average cost per sandwich: £4

Rating: ★★★★☆

Velo

Velo’s gimmick is that you can order using the touchscreen terminals instead of speaking to a human being. However, a minimum wage fleshbag still brings your food to your table so you’ll still have to mumble thanks or grunt and avoid making eye contact (depending on your asocial preference).

Velo used to serve a cracking banh mi filled with pate and Chinese sausage, but this combination has sadly been jettisoned from its revamped menu. The tough and chewy baguette from before has been replaced, but with a forgettable, bog-standard one. Each baguette also comes with a few fiery slices of bird’s eye chillies and a heap of tart pickled carrots, but oddly most of the latter are served on the side for some reason.

The roast pork sandwich is filled with a generous portion of garlicky, tender, almost stew-like pieces of pig that has a mild musky saltiness vaguely reminiscent of shrimp paste. It’s not too bad as a substitute for grilled pork and pate, but I couldn’t help but miss the latter.

pork banh mi at Velo

Disappointingly, the vegetarian tofu option was a let down. Eating my way through the briney, soggy bits of tofu was akin to eating salt soaked bits of bread. Unpleasant.

tofu sandwich at Velo

The iced coffee was far too milky, with the mildly sweet condensed milk overpowering what little coffee there was.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Velo

Velo’s unconventional pork banh mi wasn’t bad, but it needs to go back to the drawing board for its tofu version and its iced coffee. A return of the pate and Chinese sausage banh mi isn’t too much to ask either.

Average cost per sandwich: £5

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Viet Cafe (formerly Cafe Bay)

Previously known as Cafe Bay, this Denmark Hill eatery is more attractively presented than is the norm for banh mi joints in London – exposed brick walls, funky lighting and even a small conservatory with a couple of tables for use in warmer weather.

The Special was served with a surprisingly generous spreading of musky, salty, lightly spicy pate. That just made the rather limp pork roll, thickly sliced steamed pork and insipid vegetables all the more disappointing, but at least the coriander was punchy. The baguette was reasonably crisp and soft, but it couldn’t quite compare to the best breads here.

Special banh mi at Viet Cafe

close up of Special banh mi at Viet Cafe

The thin slices of grilled fatty pork were subtly sweet, tangy and salty which was enhanced by the pickled vegetables which were noticeably tarter this time around. The bread was also markedly crunchier and stodgier too.

grilled pork banh mi at Viet Cafe

The same bread was used in the construction of the shredded caramel pork banh mi. In a similar vein to the grilled pork variant, the sweet, lightly caramelised taste of the julienned meat was enhanced by the pickled vegetables. I largely preferred the bolder sweetness of this pork compared to the more subdued flavours of the grilled pork.

caramelised shredded pork banh mi at Viet Cafe

The mild bitterness of Viet Cafe’s Vietnamese coffee was accentuated by the condensed milk which was mildly viscous and not overpoweringly sweet. A decent enough brew.

Vietnamese coffee at Viet Cafe

hot Vietnamese drip coffee at Viet Cafe

Viet Cafe has some reasonably good quality fillings, but the inconsistent and so-so nature of its bread and veg doesn’t do it justice.

Average cost per sandwich: £5.50

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Vieteat

As pun portmanteaus go, Vieteat isn’t a very good one. In any case, this Holborn diner and takeaway is open in the evenings and serves other dishes besides banh mi.

The baguette used in the Classic sandwich was light and crisp, although it almost certainly wasn’t made using rice flour. The slices of roast pork and pickled vegetables were utterly unremarkable, leaving it to the chicken liver pate to pick up the slack. It wasn’t bad, but tasted more like a kosher-style chicken liverwurst than a Vietnamese/French-style pate.

Classic banh mi at Viet Eat

close up of Classic banh mi at Viet Eat

A far more flavoursome meat sandwich was the banh mi filled with beef stewed in red wine. The tender, moist and moreish chunks of brisket were also blessed with an occasional bite of jelly-like tendons. The beef was initially very aromatic, but the herby hit faded quickly. Excess red wine and meat juices did soak into the baguette, making it less crispy than it would otherwise have been, but thankfully this wasn’t a sloppy, messy sandwich to eat.

red wine stewed beef baguette at Viet Eat

Disappointingly, the BBQ pork banh mi used the same bland, characterless pork as the Classic. The tofu variant wasn’t especially memorable either – the slightly sweet and squidgy bean curd pieces did little to set themselves apart. At least the baguettes were as crisp as before.

bbq honey pork sandwich at Viet Eat

tofu banh mi at Viet Eat

I wasn’t a fan of the watery, overly milky iced coffee either.

iced Vietnamese coffee at Viet Eat

Vieteat’s stewed beef banh mi is a winner, but everything else was a disappointment.

Average cost per sandwich: £6

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Walk Thru

This lunchtime market stall used to make regular appearances at the Goodge Place market in Fitzrovia, but has since disappeared and I can find no official record of the place. In any case, I’ll cover it here both for historical purposes and as a warning.

The meat used in the honey garlic pork sandwich was very mildly sweet with a hint of garlic, but it was a bit too dry. The meat was outnumbered by a supermarket-quality salad occasionally livened up with a hint of mint as well as a few dabs of mayonnaise and sriracha-style sauce. Oddly, there were almost no pickled vegetables – a few discs of mildly tart radishes and that was it. Even more bizarre was the bread – a Middle Eastern-style sesame seed-flecked flatbread rather than a baguette.

honey garlic pork sandwich from Walk Thru

close up of honey garlic pork sandwich from Walk Thru

Walk Thru’s effort wasn’t bad as a generic hot sandwich, but it’s a complete non-starter as a Vietnamese banh mi. It bears almost no resemblance to all the other sandwiches here.

Average cost per sandwich: £5

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

The Verdict

The quality of London’s Banh Mi isn’t perfect, but it’s far better than I expected. Pho Express, Banh Mi Bay, Aobaba and Sen Viet all serve good quality Vietnamese sandwiches, but all fall short in one way or another.

The very best banh mi can be found at Banh Mi Hoi An and Keu. Although these two choices will lead some to accuse me of an East London bias, these two eateries really excel at both traditional and more inventive baguettes respectively. Although neither Banh Mi Hoi An nor Keu get everything right either, their sandwiches are as close as you can get to meaty, crispy, tart Vietnamese sandwich perfection.

 Classic cheap curry consumed cheerfully

For most Londoners, Tayyabs needs no introduction. Away from the tourist trap that is Brick Lane, this Whitechapel stalwart has been serving up inexpensive, quality curries and grills for years. A lot of words have already been written about Tayyabs, so rather than my usual prose I’m going to experiment by writing this review in haiku – the terse but evocative form of Japanese poetry.

Before you snort with derision, click away and mutter ‘pretentious wanker’ under your breath, I fully admit that my poetic ability is miniscule. Plus it hasn’t gotten any better since I attempted to use it for wooing back when I was studying GCSE English. My already concise, almost pithy style lends itself to faux-haiku; plus it’s all for fun innit.

Inattentive waiters
Plenty of tables
But not for you
Awkward elbows

Empty downstairs Tayyabs

Lamb chops
Sizzling crackle
Fruity baste
Tender and slightly chewy
Smoke sweetens the air

lamb chops at Tayyabs

Haleem
Scattering of lentils
Promised lamb has scarpered
Lemons?
Thick, unctuous and creamy like your mum

haleem (allegedly) at Tayyabs

Roti
Thick and fluffy
A little chewy
Sauce sponge

roti at Tayyabs

Dry meat
If this is small, what is big
No sauce, but still moist
Earthy and garlicky
Dense yet tender like your mum

small dry beef at Tayyabs

Okra
Moist fingers
Properly cooked
So not sticky like your bedsheets
Already forgotten

okra at Tayyabs

Pumpkin masala
Yielding flesh
Glistens in the sun
Tart not sweet
Confused disappointment

pumpkin at Tayyabs

Kheer
Thick rice pudding
Cardamom and cashew
Like this island chilly and small
Gulped in a flash

kheer rice pudding at Tayyabs

Mango lassi
Refreshing fruitiness
Thin not thick
By the glass or by the jug
Clink

mango lassi at Tayyabs

The Verdict

Wait you must
Meat not veg
Heavy wallet
Bulging belly
Smelly pores
Happy times

Name: Tayyabs

Address: 83-89 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, London E1 1JU

Phone: 020 7247 9543 / 020 7247 6400 / 020 7247 8521

Web: http://tayyabs.co.uk

Opening Hours: seven days a week noon-23.30.

Reservations: essential.

Average cost for one person including service and soft drinks when shared between two: £20 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Thai mini-chain sprouts again in Soho

Restaurants, especially those serving foreign cuisines, have a funny relationship with names. They will often have a cliched name related to the mother country – a disproportionate number of Thai restaurants, for example, will have some combination of ‘Thai’, ‘Siam’, ‘lotus’ or ‘elephant’ in their name.  Then there’s the menu which will be unwieldy to navigate through, not just because of their typically huge length, but because they’ll have both English and Thai names for each dish, along with the description.

The innocuously and generically named Rosa’s Cafe neatly sidesteps both of these cliches. Although far from short, its menu neatly hides the Thai names in plain sight by colouring them in a light grey below the English names. Although this doesn’t sound like much, it makes the menu far easier to parse. I wasn’t expecting much from the Carnaby Street outpost of this four-branch mini-chain, but I walked away pleasantly surprised.

First things first

Rosa’s gets unsurprisingly busy on and around weekends, but Templeton Peck, Vicious Alabaster, The Squinting Brummie and I managed to grab a table with only a few minutes waiting. Both Vicious Alabaster and I had a similar hankering for noodles. I opted for the pad thai and was reasonably pleased by the firm prawns and zesty rice noodles which were only slightly greasy. The prawns were a little lacking in taste, but the crushed peanuts added some variation in both taste and texture. Vicious Alabaster’s egg noodles with prawns were very similar to the pad thai, but with egg noodles taking the place of the rice noodles. I wasn’t fond of the rather heavy and dull noodles, but Alabaster was pleased.

Yes, I know that Rosa’s Cafe Carnaby Street isn’t actually on Carnaby Street. It’s actually on Ganton Street. Whatever, close enough.

Apostrophes matter.

Vicious Alabaster and I also disagreed when it came to the starter of soft shell crab. Although the crab legs were crisp, free of excess oil and coated in a well-seasoned batter, the actual meat underneath was bland. Alabaster was once again nonetheless pleased – perhaps the endless bottles of wine explained our divergence in opinion.

Shell game.

The Squinting Brummie loves green chicken curry and Rosa’s version is definitely a corker. Firm chunks of clucker were served in a thin sauce that was light yet also creamy, crisp and zesty with the distinctive tangs of both fish sauce and Thai basil.

It is… green.

Smoked, grilled meats aren’t what I would normally associate with Thai food and Rosa’s small selection is easy to overlook, tucked away in a corner of the menu. The smoked, grilled duck is definitely worth having though – the thin, distinctly smoky slices of duck were also mildly tangy and sweet which was enhanced by the thin dipping sauce. Some slices were gloriously fatty, but even the slices that weren’t still hit the spot thanks to their denseness.

Elmer had far better luck with Daffy then he ever did with Bugs.

Templeton Peck’s jungle curry was a melange of vegetables in a thin, zesty sauce strongly flavoured with galangal. Although good, it was surpassed by the somewhat similar but better seafood mousse. Although this sounds bizarre, it is, as far as I can tell, a steamed seafood curry presented in a quirky way. The selection of seafood wasn’t especially generous or varied, just some firm squid chunks and prawns along with a solitary mussel, but the multilayered flavours of the sauce more than made up for this. Apparently made from white fish, coconut milk and fish paste, the sharp, peppery, spicy, galangal-infused sauce was simply cracking.

King of the jungle? Not quite.

Squash your bourgeois qualms and shove this down your gullet.

While my three dining companions were content to lubricate themselves with a bottle of generic house red, I moistened my whistle with the Thai milk iced coffee. The malty brew was heavily laced with creamy soya milk and all the more refreshing for it.

I love jugs.

Going back for seconds

I returned to Rosa’s by myself for a quick bite on a rainy weekday evening. The milk-less variant of the Thai iced tea was sweet and refreshing with a clean aftertaste.

Blacker than my pitiless heart.

I’m usually more in the mood for noodles rather than rice, but not if they’re as ho hum as the flat noodles. This dish used rice noodles that were broader than the relatively narrow noodles used in the pad thai and were similar, if not identical to the rice noodles typically used in Cantonese ho fun dishes. Although grease free, they lacked any sort of seasoning. The dominant tastes here were of the light, creamy courgettes and the bready, light and tart tofu chunks. Although these two elements were pleasing, there wasn’t enough to either to make this dish truly satisfying, especially with the carrots and broccoli sitting around as limp bystanders.

Falls Flat.

Tofu and veg.

Flat rice noodles.

The grilled pork neck was far better. The boldly tangy and tart dipping sauce tended to obscure the subtly sweet and lightly smoky nature of the thin, lean pork slices. The sauce had a clean aftertaste though, so it was possible to alternate between eating the pork au naturel and then with the sauce, getting the best of both worlds.

Sticking my neck out.

Neck it.

Three is the magic number

An increasing number of Thai restaurants now serve papaya salad and Rosa’s version, while not perfect, was pretty good. There wasn’t much in the way of the promised long beans, but the firm julienned green papaya, beans sprouts and salty, chewy dried shrimp were complimented well by the thin, lightly spicy, zesty, tangy, fishy sauce.

Fruit, but not as you know it.

The scallops served out of their shells were too soft and bland for my liking, but the tangy, moreish, lightly spicy, sharp and peppery sauce partially made up for it. There was plenty of veg too.

Nothing here is really that spicy hot.

I somehow doubt that pumpkins are a traditional Thai staple, but the pumpkin curry here was nonetheless largely enjoyable. The large chunks of pumpkin varied in texture from firm to tender, but all were outnumbered by the random grab bag of vegetables. Even so, the thin, yet very creamy and lightly sweet sauce was highly addictive – I tried to refrain from picking up the bowl and slurping the sauce but caved and did it anyway. A more civilised way of enjoying the sauce was the aromatic coconut rice – it proved to be a good match.

Infinitely preferable to Zebrano’s.

Go fourth and multiply

Rosa’s has a shorter lunchtime menu than it does at dinner, although this is augmented by a list of specials which changes every now and again. Unsurprisingly, the butternut squash curry greatly resembled the pumpkin curry although the sauce didn’t have anywhere near the same depth of flavour – at best it was moderately creamy. Once again, the chunks of tender squash were outnumbered by a seemingly random selection of other vegetables.

Deja vu.

One lunchtime-only oddity that has no evening equivalent is the crispy duck wrap. Essentially a sandwich for mildly rushed office workers, the forgettable flatbread was filled with strips of dry, mildly salty and slightly chewy strips of duck along with some lettuce and a few other scabs of veg. The unrecognisable duck was deeply unimpressive and was made palatable only by the the thin, salty, slightly tangy sauce served on the side.

Wrap star?

Wait, this is duck?

Templeton Peck opted for the spaghetti pork stir fry. The noodles were a bit greasy and the pork was a touch too soft, but he still found the sweet, moderately spicy stir fry to be pleasing comfort food.

Spag without the bol.

I washed my food down with the Thai iced milk coffee, which was slightly different from last time. The taste of coffee was a little stronger than before but still very mild, somewhat akin to a coffee flavoured ice cream. Nonetheless, the malty, milky, sweet, soy-like flavour made it a refreshing drink. Interestingly, at lunchtime it’s served in a standard-sized glass rather than the larger dinnertime jugs.

Can I get this in a jug?

The Verdict

The Carnaby Street branch of Rosa’s Thai Cafe isn’t perfect, with some dishes notably better than others. Recurring flaws include a reliance on ho-hum ingredients which are then outnumbered by fillers, but there are enough crackers on the menu, such as the green curry and the grilled smoked duck, to make it worth eating at Rosa’s time and time again. It just nudges into four star territory ahead of Busaba Eatthai, but behind the nearby Janetira.

Name: Rosa’s Thai Cafe (Carnaby Street branch)

Address: 23a Ganton Street, London W1F 9BW

Phone: 020 7287 9617

Web: http://rosaslondon.com/carnaby/

Opening Hours: Monday-Thursday noon–22.30; Friday-Saturday noon-23.00 and Sunday noon-22.00.

Reservations: highly recommended.

Average cost for one person including service, soft drinks and coffee: £25-30 approx. 

Rating: ★★★★☆