No kebabs here, sorry late night drunks

Kebabs are usually the first things that come to mind when someone mentions take away Turkish fast food, but other dishes from that storied culinary tradition also lend themselves to quick bites on the go. Two of the most obvious are lahmacun and pide, a pair of separate but related dishes that are, at the risk of being overly simplistic, the Turkish equivalent of pizza.

The originally-named Pide Oven isn’t the first dedicated pide restaurant in central London – antecedents include the bigger, flashier and comfier Babaji Pide and a few long gone hole-in-the-walls. But Pide Oven is inexpensive – you can eat yourself to the point of bursting for £15 or less – and its majority stool seating means it’s aimed more at the office worker lunch crowd and at take aways.

Even so, waiting times could be a problem with lengthy waits of around 25 minutes common during Pide Oven’s first few weeks of operation. This eventually shortened to a much more reasonable 10 minutes, although occasional lapses did still occur. Order mix-ups happened intermittently too, but are also increasingly less frequent.

Pide at Pide Oven, Fitzrovia

Turkish food has a reputation for being meat-heavy, but the cuisine has plenty of vegetarian dishes and this is reflected on Pide Oven’s menu. The aubergine and zucchini pide could’ve been better though. There was only a very occasional hint of smokiness from the eggplant and there was next to no butteriness or pepperiness from the courgettes. The dough ranged from soft and elastic to a little tough and chewy.

The pides, when ordered as take away, come sliced up for easy eating with your fingers.

Lightly crumbly and salty feta, as well as umami tomatoes, crisp onions and sharp peppers, made up for a minced lamb. The quality of the base improved, with a soft and pliant texture.

How does one make grease-proof paper greaseproof?

Don’t order the pastirma pide if you’re expecting Kayseri-style pastrami-esque pastirma. The coarse beef sausage slices used here were more like sucuk. It was still meaty enough to be pleasing though, especially in combination with the creamy and elastic mozzarella-esque kashar cheese and the salty, squidgy, taut and firm halloumi.

Not the pastirma I was hoping for.

I want a pide of the action.

The same kashar cheese made a repeat appearance in the Black Sea Vegetarian pide. Although the promised paprika and aubergine were missing in action, the presence of bitter spinach and umami tomatoes meant that this pide was far from a lost cause, especially as the quality of the base hadn’t regressed.

I’d kill for some Trabzon-style pide.

Pide Oven’s kitchen is capable of improvement though, as already shown by the up tick in the quality of the base. A second Black Sea Vegetarian had thin and stringy, but still reasonably fleshy and buttery aubergine. The spinach and tomatoes were just as good as they were before, while the cheese was a touch smokier this time around although this might have been the eggplant rubbing off on it.

I once had to spend many late nights near Fitzrovia, hence the endless takeaways from Pide Oven.

The chicken and halloumi pide was unsurprisingly stodgy. The halloumi was tamer this time around, so it was easily drowned out by the earthy and heavy chicken as well as the umami tomatoes. At least the dough base was just as good as it was before.

Chi-loumi.

The three cheese pide was similarly stodgy, with the blended morass of cheeses little more than an uninspired melange of yellow dairy. The sharp, umami tomatoes and the quality base were the only saving graces here.

It takes this many cheeses to make something taste this disappointing.

Lahmacun at Pide Oven, Charlotte Street

Pide Oven’s first attempt at the staple minced lamb lahmacun was pleasantly and not overpoweringly piquant. It made up for the lacklustre meat and limp herbs, but the base was far too chewy and stodgy.

On the lamb.

Above the fold.

The turkey variant wasn’t much different from the lamb when it came to the meat, but the dough was softer and more pliant this time around. It was a touch more piquant too with fresher, zingier parsley.

Turkish turkey.

Second and third attempts at a lamb lahmacun were far better with mildly spiced, satisfyingly meaty flecks of baby sheep accompanied by umami tomtoes layered on top of a baby soft dough.

No bleating around the bush.

Don’t call it a pizza.

It doesn’t cost you much dough.

Don’t mince your words.

The kitchen is only human though and still capable of cocking it up. A fourth lamb lahmacun wasn’t as satisfying in the meat stakes with the mealy mince more like a paste which was just as unsatisfying and unpleasant as it sounds.

This review’s procrastination was brought to you by videos of pandas on YouTube.

Zoom.

The aubergine and feta lahmacun was a masterclass in deceptive advertising with zero feta present and only occasional bits of smoky aubergine making a cameo appearance. The toppings here were dominated by sharp onions and sweet peppers. Although pleasing in their own right, especially as the dough hadn’t devolved in quality, this was a disappointing lahmacun overall.

A lot happened that night.

No bleating about the lack of vegetarian options. There are plenty at Pide Oven.

Side dishes at Pide Oven

The standfirst above stating the absence of kebabs isn’t entirely true. You can order lamb or chicken koftes as a side, but under no circumstances should you do so. The lamb was bone dry with a grainy, bitty texture and only a mild lemony herbiness as a consolation prize. The only thing more teeth gnashinly awful was the chicken koftes which were just as diabolically disgraceful, except there wasn’t even a hint of lemon or herbs this time around to help disguise the waste of animal lives and human effort.

War crime.

What did I put in my mouth.

Thankfully, there were no surprises when it came to the halloumi side – gently salty, squidgy, taut and firm slices of cheese although it wasn’t immediately obvious if this was cow’s milk or goat’s milk halloumi.

My captions are sometimes a bit cheesy.

A salad of tender, nutty chickpeas and lightly bitter spinach was topped by sharp and crisp onions. The latter was emphasised by sumac and parsley, making this a particularly refreshing salad that was also capable of cutting through the relative richness of the meat and cheese pides.

Turkish can be a tricky language to learn, even in passing.

The kitchen can foul up the salads, just like everything else though. A second chickpea salad somehow managed to consist of overcooked and unsatisfyingly stodgy chickpeas that were outnumbered by spinach leaves.

The carpal tunnel of love.

Lightly broiled chicken wings and mini drumsticks were a little greasy for my liking. The lemon and sea salt variant mostly tasted of lemon and parsley. The black pepper and coriander variant wings were, surprisingly, indistinguishable.

I suppose Pide Oven is a slightly more imaginative name than the possible alternatives.

Time to chicken out.

Hot wings were extraordinary, not for their spicy heat but for their mildness and excessive amounts of grease. Only stepping up to the ‘crazy’ hot wings actually elicited wings with any actual chilli heat, although its garlicky warmth should be well within the curry house spice tolerances of most people.

‘Hot’ wings.

You’re crazy if you think these wings are spicy.

Neither set of hot wings were blazing enough to need a cool refreshing jolt of yoghurt, but it’s available if you need it anyway – thick, milky and just set. Alternatively, there’s the thick and nutty hummus. If it’s not made with fresh, high quality tahini then it’s doing a very good impression of it.

Beige on beige action.

The coban salad was a refreshing combination of umami tomatoes and crisp onions, although the latter could’ve been sharper and a more generous helping of sumac would’ve been appreciated. The onion salad was effectively a tomato-free version of the coban. It flip-flopped between one version that was tart, sharp and bright resplendent with the zing of sumac and another, much tamer, disappointingly subdued version.

What this shepherd’s salad needs is a shepherd’s pie.

I like onions.

Perhaps a little too much.

The Verdict

Pide Oven isn’t bad, but it is surprisingly uneven with the quality of some dishes see-sawing far more than they should. It’s not reliably quick enough to be the prime office worker lunch spot that it appears to be, bur nor is it comfortable and consistent enough to be the go-to neighbourhood restaurant that it aspires to be. Pide Oven is still good enough as a take away joint with a difference, even though this feels like a waste of potential.

What to order: Lamb lahmacun; Pastirma pide; Most of the salads; Hummus; Yoghurt

What to avoid: Chicken wings; Chicken and Lamb Koftes

Name: Pide Oven

Address: 45 Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia, London W1T 1RS

Phone: 020 7637 8635

Web: https://www.facebook.com/pideoven/home

Opening Hours: seven days a week 11.00-22.30 

Reservations: not taken

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £15 approx.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Botched burgers and bungled barbecue

Conflating burgers and barbecue into the same menu is a common mistake. It’s easy to see why – alongside mac and cheese, they are the emblematic dishes of American cuisine in the popular imagination. But they’re also very different. The best burgers are cooked medium rare at high temperatures with a cooking time thus measured in mere minutes. The best American-style barbecue, on the other hand, is slow-cooked at relatively low temperatures with cooking times of hours or even the better part of a day.

Cattle and Co doesn’t seem to appreciate this distinction and its shows in the food. Even the name feels wrong – ‘cattle’ would imply a beef-themed menu, but there’s also plenty of pork dishes available too.

First things first

Baby back ribs were surprisingly small with an odd shape and cut. The bland white meat hardly seemed smoked at all. It was thus quite hard, requiring a forceful amount of knifing, cutting and henching to separate one bone and tranch of meat from the rest. Its blandness meant it was entirely dependent on the tingly spice of the sauce (possibly habanero-based) for flavour. A poor start.

Red faced.

You’ve got red on you.

Pulled pork was a tad on the soft side with a lack of fat and porkiness. It would’ve been nothing without the sauce which alternated between mild sweetness and subtle tartness.

Lulled pork.

The St Louis cut pork spare ribs arrived in two slabs, one large and one small. Although both had a lot of meat on the bone, the larger slab didn’t have enough fat. The fat that was present hadn’t been rendered properly, while the bark was non-existent. This made for a dull, hard portion of meat with the same sauce from the baby back ribs picking up the slack once again.

The smaller slab, almost certainly including part of the belly, was bizarrely misshapen – neither it nor its bigger counterpart was adequately trimmed enough to qualify as St Louis cut ribs in my opinion. It did at least taste more porky and unctuous – the increased presence of properly rendered fat was noticeable. Even so, this was too little and too late – these spare ribs still weren’t anywhere as good as the best examples available elsewhere.

Again with the spring onion garnishes.

Crossbones.

Pale rider.

The accompanying ‘rosemary’ fries arrived far too hot – more resting time was clearly needed. Although reasonably crisp and golden, and not too oily either, these were definitely fries in all their bitty glory rather than proper chips. There was sod all of the promised rosemary though.

Rosemary is missing.

The coleslaw wasn’t bad either, largely because it wasn’t like the sickly stereotype of coleslaw. Firm, lightly bitter cabbage served naked might not be very ambitious, but it was a good enough counterpoint to the relatively heavy meat.

Going back for seconds

There are signs that Cattle and Co’s kitchen is capable of improvement, however modest. Although the baby back ribs were unchanged when it came to the sauce and cut, the meat was somewhat more porky and tender. It’s still not enough to insinuate itself into my affections, but it’s better than it was before which is certainly better than nothing.

This review’s procrastination was brought to you by home baking.

‘Better than nothing’. Damning with faint praise.

Despite its dark wood-like colouring, the bark on the beef short rib was almost non-existent. The top millimetre or so of beef was much dryer and blander than the rest – so much so that I suspect that it had been quickly braised after smoking to raise the temperature. Fools sometimes complain that proper barbecue is served ‘cold’ given the lower than usual cooking temperatures of traditional smoking – in lesser restaurants, a quick dip in the pan to appease the uninitiated is sadly all too common.

Meat stilts.

Anyway, the rest of the Jacob’s Ladder was moist with a good amount of collagen present. The latter was reasonably easy to remove and wasn’t too waxy or hard, but neither was it properly rendered enough. A bigger problem was the lack of character in the beef. Even so, this short rib was reasonably satisfactory – especially given the poor to mediocre quality of the pork ribs.

Beef cudgel.

Bovine.

Cajun fries were no different from the rosemary fries. A somewhat better side dish was the cornbread, but only somewhat. Although tightly crumbed and moist, its nuttiness was drowned out by the added flecks of chilli and chives.

Yellow brick road.

Threedom at last

The baby back ribs were almost entirely unchanged from their second iteration. Although the lack of further improvement is disappointing, at least they didn’t get any worse.

A topping of vaguely crispy fried onions instead of chopped spring onions is barely worth mentioning.

Given the number of burger restaurants that have flooded the capital, you’d be forgiven for thinking that good burgers are a given now. Sadly, Cattle and Co’s burger shows that assumption is a mistaken one. The beef had not only been cooked well done, but also had a bitty grind- both taste and texture, if the beef ever had any, had been obliterated. Even if it had survived, it would’ve been obscured by the buttery bun and the creamy burger sauce with its occasional hint of spice.

Dust in my mouth.

The rosemary fries had been rested for longer this time, so they weren’t as scorchingly hot as the first attempt.

Sadly, that lesson hadn’t been applied to the spiced apple and rhubarb custard. The tart slices and chunks of fruit were uncomfortably hot. The soft, bitty crumble wasn’t very satisfying either, nor was the thin, watery custard.

Fifty Shades of Beige.

The Verdict

Contrary to popular belief, it’s rarely enjoyable to write a negative review of a restaurant. This is someone’s living that’s on the line – a fact emphasised by the presence of the owner’s wife and child at the next table on one evening. This doesn’t change the fact that Cattle and Co isn’t good enough to warrant your custom. There are even worse burger and barbecue bandwagon restaurants in London, but that’s small comfort to everyone involved here.

What to order: Beef short rib (perhaps)

What to skip: Burger; Spare ribs; Baby back ribs; Crumble

Name: Cattle and Co

Address: 3-9 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD (amazingly, Cattle and Co managed to get their address wrong on their website)

Phone: 020 7693 7278

Web: http://www.cattleandco.com

Opening Hours: seven days a week, noon-midnight. 

Reservations: not really necessary

Average cost for one person including soft drinks and service charge: £30-35 approx.

Star rating: ★★☆☆☆

Plus the most mumbling tasting menu ever

The overall trend in London restaurant menus, for the past few years, has been brevity. A few dishes, done well. Avoiding the false benefit of ‘choice’ and focussing instead on quality has been a very welcome development, but not every restaurant believes in short menus. A Wong has not one, but four menus – Dim Sum, a la carte, a tasting menu and a Beijing-style duck-only menu.

Formerly Kym’s, a name which still shows up on credit card receipts

To be fair, the full Dim Sum menu is only available at lunch time and some dishes make repeat appearances across all four. And none of the menus at A Wong are anywhere as sprawling as the Biblical tomes that thump down on your table at some Chinatown restaurants. Even so, this relative lack of focus gave me cause for concern.

The toilets have far higher quality wallpaper than one would expect.

Tasting menu at A Wong

A Wong offers a multi-course tasting menu, even though the dining room isn’t really suited for that kind of dining. Most egregiously, the verbal explanation before each course detailing its inspiration and provenance. Even if you hate those Tasting Menu Spiels™, you can’t avoid them here even though the generally buzzy atmosphere of the restaurant means you can only make out every other word. These bits of commentary can work well, but Veal Smasher, Happy Buddha, Templeton Peck and Vicious Alabaster had little patience for them here. Then there’s the open-back seating which works well for the shorter menus, but not for the multi-hour tasting menu.

An amuse bouche of glossy, meaty and distinctly smoky herring was paired with a taut and glossy squid skin – a neatly tantalising pairing of taste and texture. Another amuse bouche of crunchy prawn cracker, only moderately more impressive than the takeaway variety, was less successful.

Red herring.

Crackpot.

Har gau skins were a touch too fragile, but nonetheless pearlescent and stuffed with a chunky prawn filling pepped up with what appeared to be crisp bamboo shoots. The odd foam was inconsequential, but this modestly modernised har gau was still a success overall. The siu mai was less rousing. A chunky filling, mostly of prawn, was fine, but the touch of crackling and an unidentifiable sauce left me unmoved.

I sometimes get commenters foaming at the mouth.

Guangdong.

A runny, just-cooked egg stained with tea wasn’t especially rich, but it did mesh well with the crisp, golden, light, shredded and oil-free filo pastry.

Empty nest syndrome.

Conveying the xiao long bao into my maw was surprisingly easy despite the delicately taut skins of the dumplings. Instead of coming with a vinegar dipping sauce, as is standard, the broth inside was infused with the vinegar. Although not especially meaty, the filling was still pleasingly sticky and umami. I still want a branch of Din Tai Fung in London, but this will do nicely in the mean time.

Shanghai.

Glossy, meaty, just-cooked cod was topped with crisp skin and pepped up further by a fermented fish sauce that reminded me of Vietnamese-style condiments. The sauce had to applied using a brush which seemed like a showy bit of frivolity as it wasn’t anywhere as potent as our waitress warned us it would be. A well-cooked mix of leafy greens was served on the side.

Anhui.

Abalone is a prized Chinese delicacy, but you wouldn’t know what the fuss was about from this version. It was very easy for the abalone and the taut, gently earthy shiitake served with it to blend together into an amorphous whole. Perhaps that’s the idea, but it makes shiitake, of all things, seem like a filler substitute in place of the admittedly much more pricey abalone.

Hong Kong.

I was sceptical that A Wong’s Shaanxi-style pulled lamb bao would be better than Xian Impression’s version, but to my surprise it was. Despite the meh sauce, the moist and meaty strands of cumin-infused lamb went down a treat with the crisp salad and shallots stuffed into a soft and gently toasted bao.

Shaanxi.

Bao-ntiful.

Medium rare, somewhat chewy beef was neatly complimented by a subtly complex sauce of mint and fruit, while the accompanying cucumber hearts had an almost citrusy quality to them. The combination was uncommonly delicious with deep layers of sophisticated flavours. Just as good was the accompanying side dish of gently earthy and aromatic truffle shavings served on a ‘nest’ of deep-fried yet malty noodles.

Yunnan.

Do the truffle shuffle. Do it!

Sichuanese food is renowned from the numbing heat of the Sichuan pepper, but the cuisine has other, subtler, hidden depths and A Wong gave us a taste of that with its version of gongbao chicken and aubergine.

The somewhat fleshy eggplant would’ve been unremarkable but for the impressive sauce, a sophisticated layering of modest sweetness, tangy sourness and a gentle spiciness. Chicken, served separately in lettuce wraps, came in a zippy sauce full of nutty flavours and, of course, the distinct numbing hotness of Sichuanese pepper. The latter wasn’t quite as intense as the Sichuan pepper sauces available elsewhere, but that wasn’t a bad thing in this context.

Turning over a new leaf.

Sichuan.

Distinctly sweet roasted pineapple came paired with a lumpy, gently milky yoghurt reminiscent of tofu. My dining companions reported tinges of chilli in the pineapple that I couldn’t detect, but this was a slick dessert nonetheless.

Cherry on top.

Dairy in a Chinese restaurant. You don’t see that very often.

A meringue with a delicately crisp bite and a fluffy follow-through came filled with a cool, but not uncomfortably icy sorbet. Its blood orange flavour could’ve been bolder and more persistent, though.

A lychee-flavoured granita sitting atop mango puree was similarly fleeting. This made for a somewhat downbeat finish given the strength of the meringue opening.

Fruit of the loom.

That’s no moon.

Drawing blood.

Grain bowl.

All that glistens is not gold.

Mahjong domino-shaped white chocolate mini-bars filled with a gently flavoured strawberry ice cream made for a understated, but nonetheless pleasing finish. If only all petit fours could be like this, rather than the hurried afterthoughts they usually are elsewhere.

The only Domino’s you’re likely to find on this website.

Dim Sum lunch at A. Wong

The hints of dim sum in A Wong’s tasting menu prompted me to return one weekend lunchtime to sample the wider selection. It didn’t get off to a good start. The xiao long bao appeared identical at first, but the broth inside was noticeably less potent.

A spoonful of soup.

Conversely, the siu mai had improved with earthy bits of mushroom and a crunchy, chewy pork crackling adding extra depths to this chunky pork and prawn dumpling.

It wasn’t greasy as my phone camera makes it appear.

The har gau had a stronger skin this time around which was also smooth and supple. The prawn filling itself took a back seat to the initially delicate, then boldly citrusy yuzu-esque foam. It’s a somewhat uneven har gau, but I liked it nonetheless.

Seems odd that fresh whole yuzu is rarely ever served anywhere.

Cheung fun was silkily seductive in texture. Its filling was unexpectedly delightful – bitter greens and a rich egg yolk that meshed with the exceptionally umami soy sauce and the noodle skins to give a velvety mouthfeel worthy of a teenage first kiss.

You won’t find this in a gimmicky egg/brunch restaurant.

The kitchen clearly loves making softly seductive, supple and delicate dumpling skins. It’s just a shame that the mushroom, pork and truffle filling here was forgettably generic in its earthiness and umami.

A surprisingly large number of Chinese expats and tourists seem to visit A Wong.

Sauce-less cheung fun rolls came filled with the crunch and chew of fried bean curd, meaty crab and the sharp tang of cockles. The trio complimented each other neatly; under-appreciated British seafood gems like cockles really need to make a wider comeback.

This warms my cockles.

A gently chewy sesame dumpling was supposed to come filled with foie gras, but this was missing in action. The delicately chewy skin and the gelationus stickiness inside was still worth slurping and savouring though.

Sticky balls.

Although eye-catching, the beetroot-tinged crunch of the deep-fried floral pastry obscured the delicate scallop filling within.

Purple haze.

A crunchy fried dough stick was evocative of the Hong Kong breakfast classic, while forging its own path with an umami meat floss and a chewy, sticky rice roll – all of which made for a sensual rustling of tastes and textures.

Speak softly and carry a thick dough stick.

Wasabi prawn dumplings may now be a modernist dim sum cliché, but the deep-fried version here was the best rendition that I’ve had yet in this city. The delicate nasal heat of the wasabi didn’t seem out of place nestled atop the meaty prawn. The latter had the sensuous texture I’ve now come to expect from A Wong.

Wasabi!

If it wasn’t evident by now, the kitchen clearly has a whimsical streak as shown in the carrot-shaped deep-fried rabbit puff. The crisp, grease-free pastry was sticky and moreish in its own right, even without the fatty, meaty rabbit mince inside. Although rabbit meat really is best appreciated unminced, I’ll forgive the textural transgression in support of the visual gag. The kitchen hasn’t forgotten practicalities – the pickled, spiralised carrot on the side was a welcome palate cleanser.

Tweak my bunny ears.

The coconut ice finisher was reminiscent of Taiwanese shaved ice desserts. It was a bit of a mish-mash though. The white chocolate and strawberries were merely okay, while there wasn’t enough for the chewy mochi bits and firm yet somehow delicately quivering yoghurt to go around. Even so, this was a pleasingly sweet and refreshing dessert for a hot indian summer’s day and a relatively heavy dumpling lunch.

Shaved ice.

Beijing-inspired duck feast at A Wong

A Wong is one of the few London restaurants, that I know of, which serves a Beijing-style duck feast (although you have to book in advance). Although the kitchen does utilise the entire animal, it has also put its own unique spin on many dishes so it diverges from the traditional.

Given its use of duck live pate, it’s no surprise that the foie gras glutinous rice ball makes a repeat appearance here. It was much the same as it was before, but with the actual presence of a trapezoidal chunk of foie gras at the centre of the ball. Its character was muted though and further obscured by the sweet sticky sauce and the gelatinous gooeyness of the ball itself. An inauspicious start.

Like Hitler, you only get one ball per person.

Hong Kong-style waffles look odd to Western eyes with an appearance half-way between a sheet of honeycomb and a half-formed sheet of Malteser shells. Somewhat malty, it was used to scoop up the cubes of dense, reasonably meaty and smoky duck that managed to hold its own against a crisp, sharp relish and a gently tingly wasabi-based sauce. It didn’t quite come together, but it earns a place in my affections for its quirky and inventive use of Hong Kong waffles.

I try not to waffle on.

Shanghai soup dumplings made a return appearance, with its appearance here justified by a topping of reasonably crispy duck leg skin. Duck or no duck, it’s still not a patch on the best xiao long bao which sadly remain on the other side of the world.

Duck soup, but not as you know it.

Although a dish based around a lone, understandably small duck heart is consistent with the conceit of this feast based around the meat from a single animal, it feels a bit cheap when halved and shared between two. Duck hearts, like almost offal, are cheap as the Euro Hedgie rightly pointed out. Reasonably dense and mildly offaly, its Sichuan pepper sauce started out with a gentle sweetness that crested in a moderate numbing heat. An accomplished dish, but my organ of contention remains – more hearts, please.

Heart breaker.

Although gently buttery foie gras was largely obscured by dense and fruity candied pork and sweet, sharp segments of pomelo, this dish was still pleasing in its own right. It won’t set the world of foie alight, but the idea of combining and contrasting buttery meatiness with sharper, sweeter elements is an old one and still valid. It just needs a little more oomph in execution and balance.

Liver bird.

The duck consommé was not what I expected at all. The opaque, reddish-brown broth tasted mostly of sweet goji berries with a slight earthy finish courtesy of shiitake. Although not bad on its own terms, the use of the word ‘consommé’ is unfortunate – that quite specifically suggests a heavily clarified and reduced soup which this most certainly was not.

Cup-a-soup.

Neither the Euro Hedgie nor I were impressed with the roasted duck skin. It had none of the unctuous crispiness that is the hallmark of classic Beijing-style duck skin. It was instead quite floppy, verging on flaccidity, with a light sweetness and moreishness enhanced by a dipping garnish of cinnamon and sugar. Although acceptable enough on its own terms, it pales into comparison next to the best examples of this dish.

Skin job.

Another helping of the skin was paired with dense, meaty and moist breast meat. Despite the skin’s textural problems, this pairing was still pleasing. It was best appreciated without the sauces and spring onions served on the side though, nor wrapped in either the pancakes or the gluten-free alternative of dried, brittle tofu skin. These accompaniments tended to obscure the natural richness of the breast meat.

Slurp up all the meaty breast juice.

The ginger oil and plum sauce were distinctive and flavoursome in their own right, but neither were really necessary given the singular sumptuousness of the puddle of rich duck juices sitting underneath the meat. The decapitated head was included, so you can extract the duck tongue as we did – although this organ is very much an acquired taste.

Sheet music.

Bring me his head on a plate! Oh, thanks.

After the simple, direct richness of the breast meat, the three follow-up dishes made from the rest of the duck were almost bound to be relative let-downs. Crispy and sweet deep fried bits of duck were free of excess oil, but weren’t at all meaty and lacked the promised chilli heat.

Duck gujons.

Much better was a helping of minced duck paired with crisp, firm French beans. Despite the fine grind, the duck managed to be meaty and moreish.

No serving spoon. That made things… logistically interesting.

Sliced bits of mildly earthy offal were served in a numbing Sichuan pepper sauce. I love Sichuan pepper almost as much as A Wong’s kitchen does, but a little variety or just some natural offaly earthiness wouldn’t have gone amiss. There were no complaints about the hearty helping of crisp, gently garlicky bok choi though.

Bits and pieces.

Green party.

Disappointingly, the coconut mochi, yoghurt and strawberry dessert wasn’t anywhere as good as it was before – especially as I’d been hoping to win over the Euro Hedgie’s notorious dessert snob sensibilities. Flavours were muted and there was far less yoghurt and mochi skins to go around this time – a double offence that prompted some loud passive-aggressive comments from the Euro Hedgie.

So loud, that I was afraid the kitchen would spit in our second and final dessert.

The Euro Hedgie was far more impressed with the steamed duck egg custard bun. Shaped like a tangerine or yuzu, the soft and fluffy gua bao-ish dough gave way to reveal a rich, eggy, runny, custard-like filling – a combination superlative enough to win over the Euro Hedgie.

Creamy buns.

I don’t drink alcohol, but the Euro Hedgie drinks like a fish so he was happy to slurp down my cocktail as well as his own. At least, he was until he had a sip. Allegedly a concoction of port and cherry juice with a whiskey sour foam, there was far too much of the foam while the rest of the drink was dominated by the taste of cherry juice. The Hedgie was singularly unimpressed.

Wine and dine.

The Verdict

There is some delightful cooking at A Wong, but just as importantly there’s a sense of quirky fun and whimsy that sets it apart from the other comparable Chinese restaurants in London which take themselves far too seriously. Sadly, one too many dishes were merely so-so – all the menus need some ruthless pruning and more focus – while the casual and laid back dining room just doesn’t lend itself to enjoying the tasting menu. Even so, it’s worth eating at A Wong at least twice to get a deliciously fun taste of an alternative vision of Chinese food.

What to order: Yunnan beef; Pineapple with yoghurt; Gai lan and poached egg cheung fun; Pickled cockles cheung fun rolls; Breakfast in Causeway Bay dough stick; Rabbit and carrot glutinous puff; Roast duck breast

What to skip: Nothing at A. Wong is truly dire enough to be worth avoiding entirely

Name: A. Wong

Address: 70 Wilton Road, Victoria, London SW1V 1DE

Phone: 0207 828 8931

Web: http://awong.co.uk/

Opening Hours: Lunch, Tuesday-Saturday noon-14.30. Dinner, Monday-Saturday 17.30-22.30. Closed all-day Sunday and Monday lunchtime. Last orders for tasting menu – 20.30.

Reservations: highly recommended; mandatory for duck feast

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £50-70 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Less of a sibling and more of a cousin

Second acts are hard, whether you’re switching careers, releasing a second album or opening a follow-up restaurant. With the latter, the easiest ways forward is to copy the same template as the original or dilute your idea for a wider audience. Sometimes, second restaurants feel like poorly-planned spill-over rooms for the original or are actively worse. The guys behind The Smoking Goat, one of my favourite restaurants of 2014, have taken a different tack with their follow-up Kiln.

Located a short walk away from the original in Soho, Kiln has taken over the premises of what was an old-school Soho Italian cafe and is thus only slightly less cramped than its forebear. It does at least shed the dive bar feel of The Smoking Goat, which was always part of the Goat’s charm while simultaneously holding it back.

Norwegian wood.

Whereas the Goat had a short, focussed menu on Thai-esque barbecue along with a handful of other dishes such as curries, Kiln takes in a slightly wider swathe of other northern Thai dishes with occasional forays into neighboring countries. The end result is an experience that, while having echoes of the Goat, is also very different.

Only the basement tables at Kiln are bookable and only for groups of four or more. Apparently.

First things first

It would’ve been easy for the lamb skewer to have been little more than a weak kebab homage. Although the fat wasn’t as well rendered and rich as I would’ve liked, the meat was almost beef-like in its density. Although the dusting of cumin was only modest, this was still a subtly pleasing skewer of baby sheep – it’s worth having two.

Infant quadrupedal ruminant mammals are almost always damn tasty.

The mackerel dry red curry wasn’t as visceral as the counterpart dish at the neighbouring Janetira, but it still had plenty of its own unique charms. Glossy flakes of fish had the unmistakable punchy taste of mackerel, while the mix of herbs and spices had a floral scent that started out sweet on the tongue and then crescendoed into a chilli heat intense enough to make my brow glisten with sweat.

Fishing for compliments.

Red mackerel, not a red herring.

Kiln’s kitchen clearly has a talent for fish – flaky, delicately glossy yet reassuringly meaty sheaves of brill were dressed in a thin yet lip-smacking sauce heavy with the bitter citrus of lemongrass and the light heat of galangal. It was so beautiful, you could frame it and mount it in a gallery.

This brill was brill.

No less superlative was the mushroom salad. Earthy shiitake and delicately sweet shimeji were made even better by a herby sweet, bright and gently acidic sauce.

There’s not mush room for improvement here, as far as I can tell.

The ‘curry soup’ is oddly named from a Western perspective – it’s a hearty dish, but very different from the Thai curries most of us are familiar with. It’s still a winner though, not because of the small and merely so-so if dense bits of pork but because of the soup itself. The herbal sweetness and fragrance of Thai basil transitions seamlessly to a musky moreishness. Sublimely seductive.

Silky pig.

Going back for seconds

Chicken may be the meat of choice for the infirm and the beige of mind, but Kiln shows that it doesn’t have be a second-best choice. Dense, smoky morsels of chicken sheathed in a slightly chewy skin were made even better by the potent but not overpowering umami of the soy sauce glaze. It was a beautiful, deceptively simple combination that shows just how uncommonly good chicken can be.

You reap what you soy.

Although the grilled pork loin didn’t quite reach the same heady porcine heights achieved by the admittedly very different kitchen at Pitt Cue, it was still a high-class piggy delight. Delightfully porky and tender meat, marbled with fat, was gently sweet and moreish. This was slightly unbalanced by the application of the dipping sauce, but it was a fine condiment in and of itself and well worth slurping up. A concoction of what I’m pretty sure was fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar and chilies (although I’ve been wrong before), it would’ve been better paired with a less accomplished meat that wasn’t already naturally delicious.

The attention-grabbing sauce was a bit too Kanye, if you know what I mean.

The other side of the loin.

Tender and yieldingly soft medallions of beef short rib, off the bone, came in a musky sweet sauce that also had the gentle, cumulative heat of what I thought was galangal but was actually wild ginger. This meat-sauce duo was utterly seductive in its hot silkiness.

Go wild.

Even a simple side dish of stir-fried vegetables had been given due care and attention. Crisp, lightly bitter greens would have pleasing enough on their own, but were made even better by a thin brown-coloured soy-based sauce that was lip-smackingly moreish.

Green with envy.

Hot Threesome

Coarse and lightly smoky sausage had an initial light maltiness that gave way to the gentle heat of turmeric. South East Asia isn’t well-known for its sausage making traditions, but it should be.

For some reason, I always misspell ‘turmeric’ as ‘tumeric’.

The delicately quivering body flesh of the langoustines combined with the milky, suckable head gunk was a textural triumph. The sharp, bright dressing with sweet undertones added to the langoustines, rather than detracting from them, making this starter worth killing for.

Watch out for the slightly spiky shells. Pick up and handle with care.

Belgo serves up mussels in a green-ish curry sauce, but the combination of limp, faded seafood and tame sauce is about as tempting as a ready meal past its use-by date. Kiln’s mussel dish was, unsurprisingly, far superior. Small but fleshy mussels had a taste and smell evocative of the salt and grit of the seaside. This was emphasized by the musky sweetness of the sauce that grew into a punchy, sweat-inducing heat.

Kiln flexing its mussels.

Dense and earthy, yet moist bits of pork came bathed in a peppery sauce that also somehow managed to have sweet undertones. Its gentle tingly heat quickly grew into a lip-pursing hotness that nonetheless held onto its layered complexity. Top notch.

Peppa the Pig.

Go fourth and multiply

The coarse and smoky turmeric sausage was just as good as it was before, if not a little better with a more tingly, peppery but still gentle heat.

Variety is the spice of life.

Light yet meaty flakes of plaice and a selection of crisp, clean greens would have been nothing without the bright, sharp sauce and its lip-tingling heat.

This is the plaice to be.

I’ve avoided glass noodles in the past, preferring the more immediately accessible charms of thicker and wider egg, wheat or rice noodles, but this wouldn’t have the case if all glass noodles were as good as Kiln’s. The thin, transparent noodles here had a gentle umami that slid into my affections as easily as it did down my throat.

Although the amount of pork belly and crab meat was relatively small, it punched well above its weight. The thinly sliced belly was suitably fatty, while the brown crab meat showed that it doesn’t necessarily have to be the poor relation to claw meat. Grainy and soft yet meaty with the tang of the sea, it was the perfect bedding for the glass noodles.

What lies beneath.

The Verdict

As my dining companions know, it takes a lot for a restaurant to truly impress me. There are plenty of mediocre eateries in the capital, a relatively small number of good to very good restaurants and an even smaller cadre of truly exceptional establishments. Kiln easily falls into the latter category – along with Som Saa, its stablemate The Smoking Goat and, to a lesser extent, the neighbouring Janetira, it sets the standard for Thai food in London – a very high bar of excellence that’s hard to meet.

I could nitpick about the relatively cramped bar seating on the ground floor or about the fact that the basement dining room only takes reservations for groups of four or more, but the bar stools are well-padded and the interior as a whole manages to escape the somewhat grungy feel of The Smoking Goat.

Plus, the almost flawless menu trumps all of these niggly problems. I can’t think of a single dish that I wouldn’t want to have again and again. The food at The Smoking Goat and Som Saa are akin to a riotous first date that repeatedly spanks you on the chaps and bites your lip hard, while occasionally forgetting the safety word.

Kiln, on the other hand, takes it more slowly and sensuously, caressing your tongue seductively before unleashing its unremitting yet complex potency leaving you disheveled and panting for more. Stop reading this and go. Go now. Don’t wait, don’t stop, don’t hesitate. Go.

What to order: Everything

What to skip: Nothing

Name: Kiln

Address: 58 Brewer Street, Soho, London W1F 9TL

Phone: none listed

Web: http://www.kilnsoho.com/

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-14.30 and 17.00-22.30. Sunday 13.00-20.00.

Reservations: only taken for groups of four people or more

Average cost for one person including soft drinks and service charge: £45 approx. (you’ll pay around £10 less if you’re not as ravenous as I am)

Rating: ★★★★★

Curry that makes you feel at home. Sort of.

I’ve never understood the compulsion for restaurants to describe dishes as ‘home made’. When eating out, I want professionally made dishes – culinary delights that I couldn’t make at home. That conceit is slightly different at Calcutta Street though.

Originally a supper club that has now traded living rooms for the homey premises of a former Italian restaurant, Calcutta Street presumably wants you to think of its food as the uniquely delectable products of a motherly bosom previously only available to a select few.

Like most London flats though, Calcutta Street’a menu is small which leaves less room for its flaws to hide. The cramped premises are perfectly comfortable if you’re seated at one of the cushy corner tables or in the semi-private dining basement – less so if you’re placed next to the drinks fridge on what feel like glorified garden furniture. That’s probably not the homey feel the proprietors were aiming for.

The Italian restaurant that used to occupy these premises was a weird, suspicious looking joint.

Where can I get that lamp shade?

Why is there almost never any one down here?

First things first

Phuchka, or crisp semolina puff balls, reminded me of the chickpea-flour shells at Gunpowder but here they were served chilled/at room temperature. Filled with potato chunks and zingy sweet tamarind, they weren’t quite as delectable as their rough counterparts at Gunpowder but still make a fine alternative to poppadoms.

Apologies for the iffy photos, folks.

Although the sliced vegetables at the heart of the battered, deep-fried aubergine were unremarkable, it was an entirely different story for the chickpea-flour batter. Exquisitely crisp then soothingly fluffy, it was neatly complimented by the mild heat of the mustard sauce.

Frittering my life away.

Seeing red.

Snaggletooth and I had the whitebait all to ourselves as The Frowner’s pescatarian sensibilities didn’t extend to these little sardine-like fishes. Fleshy and downed in one, the rub of chilli and cumin was disappointingly timid with the recurring mustard sauce left to pick up the slack.

Fishing with bait.

Watching Snaggletooth grapple messily with crab for the first time was a hilarious sight for both myself and The Frowner. The firm bouncy flesh had been expertly cooked, but I was less enamoured with the sauce. Thin yet chunky, it was surprisingly plain with only a mild tomato-ish sharpness and umaminess to its name.

Described as ‘the best crab kari ever’ on the menu. I think not.

The Frowner is notoriously hard to please – especially for a vegetarian/pescatarian. We both enjoyed the firm, squidgy cubes of paneer served in a mild, creamy and nutty sauce. The sauce had a surprise in store though – an occasional burst of fiery heat courtesy of potent little green chillies. I loved it, even if it did make me lust for a lassi. The Frowner merely frowned.

I’m no expert, but should it not be Kolkata Street?

Snaggletooth once again demonstrated his toddler-levels of dexterity when manhandling the tiger prawns. The shells should be easily peelable for just about everyone else though. The firm, bouncy, meaty big-ass crustaceans were neatly complimented by the bright, sharp and flavoursome lemongrass-based sauce. It’s not quite the showcase for lemongrass compared to the brill dish sometimes available at Kiln, but it’s still wonderfully enjoyable in its own right.

Tiger roar.

Given the ice age length of time that it took for the sea bass to reach our table, it was something of a disappointment. Steamed in banana leaf, the fillet was surprisingly small which made it difficult to share amongst three hungry diners. The blank slate of a fish was unremarkable in texture and dependent on the mustard sauce for flavour. Even if Snaggletooth didn’t find it a little too overpowering, our excessive familiarity with the sauce was starting to breed boredom if not contempt.

Bass jump.

Fried, puffy and airy luchi flatbreads weren’t absorbent enough for mopping up sauce, but were more than enjoyable enough in their own right. Portion size was a bit meagre though, especially if you’re eating as part of a group.

Puffy cheeks.

Snaggletooth and The Frowner skipped dessert, which was a real shame for them given the quality of the pithe. Slightly chewy rice flour pancakes, somewhat thicker than a crepe, had a mild coconut flavour to them. The runaway star was the supremely fluffy and sweet jaggery filling – I could’ve eaten a whole bowl of the stuff, tooth decay be damned.

Insert Pithe caption here.

Put your pithe helmets away.

Going back for seconds

I had mixed feelings about my first meal at Calcutta Street, prompting a second and final meal – this time without the aid of Snaggletooth and The Frowner. The latter, as a pescatarian, wouldn’t have approved of the chicken kebab. It was a very well executed chicken kebab though – cooked just so, the flesh was moist yet tender and yielding. Its mild herby sweetness was easily overwhelmed by the lightly zingy dipping sauce, served on the side, but this shish-style kebab was a success nonetheless.

No, you can’t have chips with that.

The meat in a curry is usually the least interesting part of the entire dish, with the focus firmly on the sauce. While the lamb curry here didn’t overturn that formula entirely, it did show that a little care and attention showered on the meat can go a long way. The chunks of lamb were dense and reasonably earthy, but the best bit was easily the small strip closest to the bone. Resplendent with connective issue, it was made even better by the mildly zingy, gently moreish sauce.

Bleating.

I have abnormally strong opinions and feelings about rice, but that also means I inevitably opt for bread with my curries if only because it provides a welcome break from getting my rice knickers in a twist. A fried paratha bread was relatively thick, crisp and malty, but the star had to be the roti. While not as tissue-soft and pliant as the roti at Roti King, it crisp flakiness coursing with the taste of coconut was still a sublime example of the bread-making arts.

The ruti to my heart.

The lentils in the musurir daal were only intermittently earthy with a gentle mung bean-ish taste, but there was no faulting the bright, sharp and gently zingy yellow sauce.

Victory of the daal-eks.

Reasonably thick and fluffy pancakes had the slight medicinal flavour of aniseed which won’t suit everyone, but it’s a taste profile worth savouring every now and again in my book. Sweet, sharp banana slices offset the aniseed-ishness and were themselves complimented by a hint of cardamom. While not quite as viscerally enjoyable as the pithe, it was nonetheless a very accomplished dessert.

You can call these ‘Indian pancakes’, if that helps you.

The Verdict

Calcutta Street wasn’t an overwhelming success, but there’s more than enough class and finesse bouncing around in the kitchen to make this quirky Indian restaurant worth visiting. The eclectic décor does a reasonable job of evoking Mumbai’s exotic climbes (as long as you’re not sitting at the duff table), while the majority of the dishes on the short menu have unexpected depth and complexity.

The service could use a little more breaking-in though. Whether slow and ponderous or efficient if overly chatty, depending on some indiscernible whim, my servers always had the deer-in-headlights look. Like a Glee character just about to discover their inner confidence through a rousing chorus buster, they clearly need a little push to achieve excellence.

Calcutta Street is a quiet, informal place that’s not for the beer-and-poppadoms crowd or for the Cinnamon Kitchen/Trishna-esque tasting menu aficionado. And that suits me just fine.

What to order: Phuchka, Battered deep-fried aubergine, Paneer curry, Tiger Prawns, Chicken kebab, Lamb curry, The breads, The desserts

What to skip: Seabass

Name: Calcutta Street

Address: 29 Tottenham Street, Fitzrovia, London W1T 4RP

Phone: 020 7636 2744

Web: http://calcuttastreet.com/

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-15.30 and 18.00-23.00. Sunday and bank holidays noon-17.00. 

Reservations: only taken for the semi-private group dining room in the basement 

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £35 approx.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Smoke is the new black.

It’s easy to rant and rail against hipsters and their rapidly gentrifying east London hub. For many, such as my dining companion Vicious Alabaster, they’re all little more than pompous, shallow, fad-chasing Macaroni twits. That may or may not be true, but I generally don’t care. From a utilitarian perspective, they can live their lives as they wish since that has little real impact on me or anyone else. Plus, like members of other misunderstood subcultures such as goths and Trekkies, hipsters tend to be pleasant and easy-going with a live and let-live attitude – which is more than can be said for the rest of the Western world right now.

Having said all that, Vicious Alabaster’s words of condemnation came to mind as I ate at Smokestak. This former street food stand, and a winner of my original American barbecue group test, has found a permanent home a stone’s throw away from Shoreditch High Street station.

And what a teeth-grindingly on-trend home it is. Minimal signage, an all-black interior darker than a UKIP voter’s soul and counter stools with almost zero foot purchase might look good, but are all woefully impractical. Then there’s the service which can cross interpersonal boundaries in its overbearing chumminess. Asking whether I’m happy with my life is the sort of existential question reserved for second dates, not whether I want still or sparkling.

‘Darling, I don’t think he’s just going through a phase’.

The menu, more importantly, is a significant evolution of Smokestak’s original street food dishes and moves away from the American Deep South canon with interesting results.

First things first

Vegetables are rarely a highlight at a barbecue restaurant, which made the mushrooms on toast at Smokestak all the more welcome. Supple, buttery and lightly tart girolles layered on top of toast that was crunchy then soft and richly buttery – an excellent combination.

Mushroom stak.

Cured pig jowl was served thinly sliced on toast, increasing its resemblance to back bacon and pancetta. The relative lack of texture allowed its rich fattiness, emphasised by the unctuousness of the toast on which it sat, to take centre stage. It’s not the best example of fatty pig meat ever devised, but it was nonetheless enjoyable.

The cure.

I was eager to try Smokestak’s version of beef brisket. Not only because the market stall had never attempted it (as far as I know), but because a good smoked brisket is the sign of a top-notch barbecue restaurant.

While far from bad, it was a tad too dry and lacking in character. Reasonably but not exceptionally tender, the anonymous bark and paucity of connective tissue were also conspicuous. It was far too reliant on the small garnish of salt for taste.

I suspect the fault here was not only in the length and quality of the smoking, but also in the cut of brisket chosen. This only makes me more thankful for Texas Joe’s continued existence – it continues to set the standard for barbecued beef brisket in London.

It’s not all hum-drum – the gentle heat then vinegary tartness of the pickled chillies were top notch.

Julienned celeriac was lightly earthy and neatly complimented by tart apples and a musky, distinctly flavoured walnut vinegarette. A touch more tartness would’ve been welcome, but this was still a well-crafted side.

Green party.

If you’re still in any doubt that Smokestak is deviating from the US-canon, then the presence of sticky toffee pudding on the menu should settle the matter. The squidgy, airy pudding wasn’t too heavy, while the rich toffee smacked of malty molasses and the distinctive sweetness of dark brown sugar. Although the mildly buttery ice cream didn’t add much to the mix, it was at least cooling and certainly didn’t detract from this comforting, well-executed pudding.

If the thought of the uncomfortable counter stools puts you off, there are tables available. But only for groups of four or more.

Going back for seconds

Deep-fried pigtails were crisp and crunchy, but also surprisingly unctuous given the paucity of meat and extant fat on the little segments of bone. Although a bit too similar in texture to sweet and sour pork for my liking, it was unexpectedly nuanced on the tongue with a gentle moreish undertone.

The tail that wagged the pig.

The pastrami was everything the brisket was not – tender, moist and lightly smoky with a quivering gelatinous rind of connective tissue still attached and a hint of chewy bark. Tart sauerkraut-style cabbage and sweet, vinegary pickles were spot-on palate cleansers. The pastrami was an evocative homage to the take-away salt beef-filled bagels that the nearby Brick Lane is justly famed for. If anything, the resemblance is a little too strong – although not mirror images of course, they’re similar enough to almost me think twice before ordering given the three-times price markup.

The delicate veining in the connective tissue was a work of art.

The beef short rib was surprisingly small in size, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing given the mammoth portions of ho-hum Jacob’s Ladder ribs served at lesser barbecue restaurants. The lightly chewy bark gave way to reveal a tender, dense, reasonably moist and gently smoky hunk of beef on the bone. A bit more extant fat and connective tissue – which was taut, chewy and slippery – would’ve made it taste even better. It’s not as dramatically satisfying as I remember it, but it was still a winner – especially with the tangy and sweet sauce judiciously daubed on top.

Flesh and bone.

Beef off the old block.

Smooth and silky buttermilk contrasted well with supple and taut cabbage. The latter’s mild vegetal bitterness was offset by the nuttiness and earthiness of tenderised walnuts. The latter made this side seem a little too similar to the celeriac with walnut vinaigrette from my first meal, but it’s still worth having.

Cabbage patch kid.

The plum crumble arrived hot and steamy – just the way I like my lovers, but not my puddings. It could’ve done with a little more resting time. Once it had settled down, the sweetness and surprising tartness of the squidgy plum segments came to the fore. The lightly crunchy and malty crumble contrasted neatly with the fruit. The ‘burnt butter’ ice cream didn’t taste of much, but at least it didn’t have any crunchy ice crystals and its cool sweetness offset the heat and tartness of the plums well.

I crumble/They’re gonna eat me alive

Meaty threesome

From a distance, as I saw it prepared in the kitchen, the pork scratching looked like a huge curl of wrinkly tofu or perhaps a giant Quaver. Crunchy and a tad oily, it was a world away from the enamel-cracking pub snack that we’re all familiar with. Even so, it would’ve been nothing without the oddly fruity dusting of salt.

Curling.

The ox cheek croquettes were oddly described on the menu as ‘crispy ox cheeks’ which might surprise those of you expecting a slab of flesh rather than deep-fried meat cubes. They’re still worth your time though – crispy and free of excess oil on the outside, unctuous on the inside. The gently zesty and garlicky aioli on the side helped cut through the relative richness of the meaty strands inside the cubes.

Cosmic cubes.

Beef cubes.

The pork ribs – probably a St. Louis-style cut of spare ribs, if smaller in size than usual – weren’t quite tender enough. The fat could also have done with a little more rendering. Even so, the chewy bark, fruity rub and dense meat snuck their way into my affections with their candied jerk-like qualities.

Sadly, the smoker is no longer in the shape of a steam train.

Hearty chunks of lightly sweet and earthy beetroot also had a salty edge to them. A creamy, earthy, funky goat’s curd and gently sweet, crunchy nuts added extra layers of nuance and complexity. Spot on.

Hard to Beet.

I’m not sure what ‘toasted oak’ ice cream is supposed to taste like, but the scoop here had a gentle caramel-ish flavour with a sweet and vaguely aniseed-like herby undertone. The powerfully salty, nutty crunch of the pulverised salted hazelnut praline was pleasurable, even if the overall combined effect was of a somewhat unbalanced salted caramel ice cream.

By any other name.

The Verdict

Smokestak isn’t quite the superlative standard-setter that it was a few years ago as a street food market stand. It’s not only because the competition has refused to stand still, but also due to the kitchen stumbling here and there – most notably with the brisket. And the issues with the décor, atmosphere and service, while not showstopping, will put off anyone without the patience of a saint and the body of an especially pliable yoga instructor.

Still, there’s enough verve and joy to be had with dishes such as the pastrami and beef rib. With the presence of both Smokestak and the branch of Red’s True Barbecue nearby, there’s little reason for local hipsters to eat at the Hoxton branches of mediocre money grabbers Bodean’s or Red Dog Saloon – unless it’s out of a misplaced sense of irony.

What to order: Mushrooms on toast; Sticky toffee pudding; Pastrami; Beef rib; Pork rib; Crispy ox cheek; Beetroot

What to skip: Perhaps the pork scratching 

Name: Smokestak

Address: 35 Sclater Street, Shoreditch, London E1 6LB

Phone: none listed

Web: https://smokestak.co.uk

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-15.00 and 17.30-23.00. Sunday noon-21.00. 

Reservations: For lunch, probably a good idea. For dinner, only taken for groups of four to six. 

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £35-43 approx.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Chicken? Where we’re going, we don’t need chicken.

I try not to pay too much attention to a restaurant’s PR push before I eat there, as the nauseating buzzwords, jargon and marketing waffle can colour my view of the place before it’s even opened. This was hard to do when it came to Temper though, Neil Rankin’s latest restaurant serving up heaving portions of barbecued and grilled meat in the heart of Soho.

Serving barbecue, shawarma and tacos all under the same roof smacked of bandwagon-jumping, shoving three of the most popular London restaurant cuisines of recent years – barbecue, Mexican and Levantine – onto the same menu. In an unplanned and somewhat ill-tempered Twitter conversation a few months before opening (pun intended – all my puns are intended), Rankin himself tried to convince me that this wasn’t the case – his use of entire animal carcasses meant that shawarma was a logical way of using shreds of leg meat that would otherwise have gone to waste. Meanwhile, the tortillas used in the tacos were made using animal fat that would’ve otherwise gone unused and they were apparently made using a proper nixtamalisation technique to boot which would be a mean feat.

As is usually the case, the best seats in the house are at the counter surrounding the kitchen.

First things first

Although Rankin’s words were moderately persuasive, most of my fears were only properly assuaged when I stepped through the shiny front door. Although the presence of tacos is still rather conspicuous, the shawarma is served mixed in with other cuts of whatever meat you order with thankfully little sign of tzatziki, labneh or other Middle Eastern staples shoehorned in. And the prolific Rankin is, of course, known for his barbecue at other restaurants.

Having said all that, the quality of the tortillas used in the tacos on my first meal were disappointing. Although made from maize rather than wheat, they were a little too thick, stiff and flavourless. They were also a little too small for the generous helping of filling which, combined with their inflexible, unyielding stiffness, made for messy eating.

A taco filling of crab and pickled onion pork skin was nothing more than a generic, bland and textureless white blob with only the punchy, tingly chillies standing out.

If you don’t agree with what I’ve written, then please don’t lose your temper in the Comments.

Far superior were the tacos filled with raw soy-cured beef. Chewy, a little gelatinous and resplendent with umami, the cubes of beef almost resembled sashimi-quality tuna in their glistening moreishness (not the fatty toro or otoro tuna, of course). Plenty of crisp, fresh and sharp vegetal garnishes helped cut through the umami richness of the meat.

Temper your enthusiasm, if you will.

Temper’s kitchen clearly as an affinity for cow. The cuts of smoked beef you get will vary as the kitchen and other diners work their way through the animal. If you’re lucky, you’ll get the chance to feast on juicy, expertly cooked bits of rib, feather blade and sirloin. Charred and chewy, then moist and exceptionally tender with the gentle metallic tang of an animal that had lived and died well.

All the main dish meats are sold in 100g portions so you can eat as little or as much as you want.

Jerk sweet potato and pineapple wasn’t the Brixton-aping fusion mash up that I feared it would be. The fruity and lightly spiced mash wore its pineapple influence lightly, presenting a far more balanced and less garish taste then I had expected.

The stools at the counter surrounding the kitchen are actually comfortable – even for my voluminous backside and stubby stature.

Kougin amman is a notoriously tricky Breton pastry to make so it’s no surprise that Temper’s version needed a bit more finesse – a bit too chewy and not quite soft enough, it erred on the wrong side of stodgy. The dulce de leche ice cream spooned on top was bland as well as a bit too crunchy and icy. It was up to the butterscotch to save this dessert with its intense and addictive sugary sweet burnt butteriness. Give me a tub of that stuff, instead, and a spoon.

Everyone pronounces ‘kougin amman’ wrong.

Going back for seconds

Temper’s kitchen doesn’t stand still, especially when it comes to its maize tortillas. They were better than they were before, but there’s still room for improvement. While more pliable and noticeably less stiff than the first time around, they were still lacking in character compared to the very best corn tortillas.

Tacos filled with aubergine and chipotle miso were reminiscent of the somewhat overwrought fusion-y fare at Foley’s. Baba ghaboush-esque pureed aubergine clashed with the nori, radish and, most notably, the blunt force chipotle. The subdued miso, meanwhile, was lost in the mix. It might sound good from the menu description, but the lack of balance on the tongue was evident from the first mouthful.

A weak link in the chain.

Far more successful were tacos filled with blowtorched mackerel. Quivering, punchy slivers of fish were neatly complimented by a sharp, sprightly sauce and an umami pairing of nori and tomatoes. Fix the tortillas and you’d have a knock-out pair of tacos right here.

Unlike some other meat-focussed restaurants and steak/chophouses, the atmosphere here wasn’t toxified by starched collar wideboys with testosterone poisoning. It was a much more mixed and laid back crowd in my experience.

While Temper’s grab bag selection of smoked and grilled pork didn’t have the same extraordinary depth of character as the exquisite swine flesh at Pitt Cue, there was still plenty to savour. The crunchy, unctuous crackling was bettered only by the quiveringly salty and richly juicy fat. As with the beef from my first meal, the thin flatbread wasn’t quite up to the task of absorbing the rich run-off juices.

Think of Temper as a sitting somewhere in between a chop/steakhouse and a barbecue joint. Sort of.

While the smoked goat wasn’t quite as funky on the tongue as I would’ve liked, it was still earthy enough with dense, moist meat layered with plenty of chewy connective tissue and skin. Only The Smoking Goat does this beast better, albeit with somewhat more inconsistent levels of quality.

Bearded goat.

An Italian burrata seems incongruous amongst the other, far heartier side dishes, but it served a valuable purpose as a refreshing counterpart to the richer, heavier mains. Although the liquid centre wasn’t as milky and briskly cold as I would’ve preferred, it was still a mouth pleaser thanks to its creaminess and lightly chewy, elastic exterior. A burst of zesty lime and tingly jalapenos added extra layers of flavour that, while not strictly necessary, were at least fittingly bracing.

All hail the dark lord of the twin moons.

Having a giant ‘cookie’ for dessert sounds like a regression to childhood, but this six-inch pie-like dish was in no way a collection of crumbs and dull chocolate chips. Almost resembling a crème brulee in construction, the relatively crisp crust gave way to reveal a gooey soft, malty sweet interior. Although texturally pleasing, it was a tad one-note in taste. Plus, while heartier than a crème brulee and lighter than a pie, this cookie wasn’t quite as satisfying as either.

Cookie monster.

Heartier than a crème brulee, but lighter than a pie.

Meaty threesome

Temper’s menu changes frequently, with specials coming and going depending on what ideas the kitchen can come up with and what animal parts it has to hand. A Thai-esque dish of burnt ends started off well with a strong burst of fish sauce, herbs and chilli, but this faded quickly. The bits of beef brisket and pork couldn’t pick up the slack as they weren’t anywhere as dense or intensely flavoursome as the best American-style burnt ends.

Kiln, you have nothing to worry about here.

I didn’t mind Temper’s neutral-tasting tortillas for once, as a taco filling of beef fat captured and held my attention like a vice. Smooth, slick and unctuous, but also surprisingly gentle, not one drop was wasted thanks to the coddling of the tortillas. A zip of lime juice cut through its relative richness. If you feel squeamish about eating something so sublime just because it’s animal fat, then you need to leave right now.

This review’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by random cat videos on YouTube.

Only the cheeseburger tacos came close to upstaging the beef fat as my favourite of all of Temper’s taco fillings. More like punky hedgerows of meat rather than patties, the beef morsels were nonetheless delightful thanks to their dense, chewy, moist and woody nature. Cooked medium rare, exceptionally moreish and with a moderately coarse grind, they were more than good enough to put most full-size burgers in London to shame.

And that was before the finishing touch – parmesan-crusted potato cubes for a deep umami snog and a sprightly, zingy sauce to slap you in the face and keep you from slipping into a hazy, meat-tinged daydream. Class. Pure class.

Better than Killer Tomato’s burger tacos by a country mile. Or a country kilometre.

Following the superlative cheeseburger tacos, the mutton and beef kofte (also sold by weight, like the bigger meat mains) seemed like an unnecessary redux that wasn’t as good. It was by no means bad though – dense, chewy, moist and moreish with a moderately coarse grind just like the cheeseburger taco patties. The only real flaw was that its slight greasiness was a bit too conspicuous with no bread, salad or sauces to mop it up.

Do you want chilli sauce with that, mate?

Don’t tell me about Wonder Bread.

Temper does actually offer a selection of sauces and garnishes to go with its meaty mains, but I don’t think they’re really necessary. The lamb, like all the other smoked and grilled hunks of flesh available here, needed no embellishment – tender, gently earthy and with a giggly pinkness in the middle. If that isn’t testament enough to the kitchen’s care and attention, then the judicious amounts of delicately rendered fat and the lightly chewy, fruity bark most certainly are.

This is better than a kebab. There, I said it.

Szechuan avocado didn’t have the spicy numbingness of Sichuanese pepper, but did have a gentle sweetness and strident bright fruitiness – other, lesser known hallmarks of that cuisine – that was enhanced by the creaminess of the avocado. It was an unusual but nonetheless effective combination.

No feckin’ toast here.

I’ve always been sceptical of the merits of baked cheese, with the notable exception of raclette, but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise. Temper’s baked cheese on flatbread didn’t change my mind. A trio of cheeses were reduced to a generic goo. Although the crispified flatbread bore a faint resemblance to a Jacob’s cream cracker, the overall effect was of a tomato-less bianca pizza. The saving grace wasn’t the ineffectual sprinkling of nuts, but a delightful honey that had a gently herby sweet, aniseed-ish quality to it. It had the nuance and depth that the rest of this pudding did not.

All that glistens is not gold.

The Verdict

Temper isn’t perfect. Some of the tacos need work (especially the tortillas and indeed the other breads), while the desserts aren’t anywhere as accomplished as the carved portions of meat which serve as the mains. But what mains they are – a love letter to carnivores sealed with a juicy, flame-licked kiss. The various cuts of meat were smoked and grilled with care and dedication leading to self-evidently superb results.

The question with Temper isn’t whether you should go, but how much beautiful bounty your stomach can hold.

What to order: Soy-cured beef tacos; Smoked and grilled beef, lamb and goat; Mackerel tacos; Burrata; Beef fat tacos; Cheeseburger tacos

What to skip: Aubergine and chipotle tacos; Crab tacos; Baked cheese

Name: Temper

Address: 25 Broadwick Street, Soho, London W1F 0DF

Phone: 020 3879 3834

Web: http://temperrestaurant.com/

Opening Hours: Monday-Wednesday noon-22.30; Thursday-Saturday noon-23.00; Sunday and Bank Holidays noon-18.00. 

Reservations: highly recommended the closer you get to the weekend. 

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

Rating: ★★★★☆

The meal so bad, I had to apologise to my dining companion

The cliché about the suburbs, especially those south of the river, is that there’s nowhere good to eat. That’s not quite true anymore, if it ever was, especially as London’s property crisis and the increasingly brutal restaurant market push more and more restaurateurs further out from the West End and other traditional areas for dining out. But it’s still very easy to have a bad meal in the ‘burbs and nowhere is that more true than Blue’s Smokehouse.

Sorry Snaggletooth. You can blame Happy Buddha for recommending this place to me.

This mini-chain of barbecue restaurants has a few branches dotted here and there. Knowing nothing about Blue’s or Twickenham, other than the latter’s reputation for rugby, I had some hope that this meal would be half-way decent. Twickenham’s high street has more than its fair share of seemingly independent restaurants and small chains, avoiding some of the identikit megabrands that have bland-ified so many high streets up and down the country.

The cheesy interior, blanketed in chintzy Americana, didn’t inspire confidence. What followed on the plate was even worse. The baby back ribs weren’t just below average, but were actively revolting with its oddly sour sauce. The meagre rib meat would’ve been better off without it, even if this would’ve reduced its already limited appeal to that of a mouldy rice cake.

It’s a sad state affairs when a restaurant’s baby back ribs taste worse than a McDonald’s Pork McRib.

Backed into a corner.

Moderately dense burnt ends started off with a modest hit of salt, before settling into an excessively soft and bland rut. Slices of beef brisket were only moderately moist and tender, blighted further by having none of the salt, smoke, rub-flavoured bark or rendered fat and connective tissue that I would expect from proper barbecued beef brisket.

At wit’s ends.

People have to be warned.

It takes a special kind of kitchen to make pork belly, a cut of pig naturally blessed with flavoursome fat, dull and uninteresting. But the belly here was nothing more than a hard breeze block of lifeless white meat topped with a solid slab of fat that hadn’t been rendered at all. While it didn’t require the same amount of shoulder-wrenching hacksawing to cut as the even worse cuts of meat at the truly diabolical Low, Slow and Juke, it was still far from the yieldingly moist hunk of pig that it should’ve been. Half-decent gastropub kitchens can manage what Blue’s kitchen could not.

If you’re superficial enough to think something taste’s good merely because it looks good, then this is the placebo for you.

Belly laughs. And cries.

The less said about the bone-dry, grey-tasting pulled pork the better. The St Louis-cut spare ribs was the one cut of smoked meat here that wasn’t soul-sappingly mediocre or ashes-in-your-mouth bad. It had a mildly porky, ham-like taste to it, but there was surprisingly little fat, a non-existent bark, only a modestly tender bite and little depth of character.

Shredded meat.

Seeing red at Blue’s.

Stick a fork in me, I’m close to done with this hole.

Snaggletooth, my dining companion for this pale shadow of a meal, was just as unimpressed with the meat as I was – despite having eaten at far fewer American-style barbecue restaurants. He was perhaps attempting to salvage something from his trip to zone 5 by claiming to like the Daim pie. While identifiable as a homage to the classic chocolate bar, the majority of this dessert appeared to be an ejaculate of various lifeless creams.

Armadillos!

Blue’s Smokehouse allegedly sources its gelato from Joe Delucci’s, which would explain the underwhelming impression it left. Both gelati I tried were moderately smooth, but weren’t anywhere as elastic or as dense as they should’ve been. The dulce de leche flavour had a very mild caramel-ishness, while the raspberry was generically sweet with little of the sharpness that would’ve made it truer to the fruit.

This review’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by the Your Name soundtrack.

The Verdict

While the barbecue at Blue’s Smokehouse wasn’t as misbegottenly unedible as the dreck served at Low, Slow and Juke, it was bad enough that I felt it necessary to apologise to Snaggletooth for dragging him out so far from home for so little gain.

The wantonly indiscriminate, as well as the naively inexperienced, will probably lap up Blue’s third-rate fare without a second thought. It is perhaps unrealistic to expect a suburban chain restaurant to match the best barbecue that London has to offer, given difficulties in attracting kitchen talent, a centrally dictated supply chain where excellence is a low priority and a location highly dependent on weekend and event trade that values quantity over quality.

But BBQ Whisky Beer (since rebranded as Smok’d) in nearby Kingston shows that crass exploitation doesn’t have to be the case. While far from the standard-setter it once was, it still manages to serve up a better standard of barbecue than this limp, lazy, uninspiringly cynical hole.

What to order: Possibly the spare ribs

What to skip: Everything else

Name: Blue’s Smokehouse

Branch tried: 11 London Road, Twickenham TW1 3SX

Phone: 0208 891 2211

Web: http://bluessmokehouse.com

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-23.00 and Sunday noon-22.00

Reservations: probably not necessary unless it’s a match day

Total cost for one person including soft drinks (when shared between two) but excluding tip: £30 approx.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Farringdon Britalian is a mash-up in more ways than one

Although there are Italian restaurants of every shape and variety in London for all budgets, it’s the expensive ones that I’ve always found most amusing. Along with French and Japanese, Italian restaurants can easily get away with charging high prices that would be harder for other cuisines, such as Chinese and Indian, to get away with in the eyes of many diners – even if the food justifies the prices.

Things have come a long way in London, of course, with the likes of Gymkhana, HKK and Yauatcha convincing at least some people that ‘ethnic’ cooking isn’t just ‘cheap’ fare. Even so, for many inside and outside the capital there still exists an implicit mental hierarchy that places greater value on the cuisines of some peoples and traditions than others. I find this hierarchy, and its implied system of ethnic biases, deeply distasteful.

All of this came to mind when eating at Luca. Although this Farringdon restaurant is the Italian-ish spin-off of the superlative Clove Club, you wouldn’t know it at first glance.

While Luca, like the Clove Club, eschews the expensive restaurant uniform of plush carpets and table cloths that has generally fallen out of favour in London, this place still feels monied as soon as you venture past the bar. A besuited maître d’. Inoffensively beige surroundings. An unnerving chorus of ‘good evenings’ as you make your way to your table.

While exceedingly polite, the somewhat stilted and uneasy demeanour of the front of house makes it feel as if you’re being served by a cabal of Westworld androids on the verge of a cybernetic midlife crisis. Especially when the soundtrack jolts between The Rolling Stones and 70s funk, indicative of a surprising uneasiness in meshing high-end polish with a more easy-going and relaxed attitude. That’s something The Clove Club managed with aplomb.

None of it is anywhere as ridiculous as some expensive restaurants, it’s still jarring if you’ve been away from finer dining for a while and have gotten used to tattooed, bearded and chirpily matey hipster waiters.

First things first

It’s easy to be blasé about parma ham, until you encounter a specimen so beautiful that it takes your breath away. Gauzy thin and tissue soft, these utterly splendid sheets of pig were deeply sensual with their musky, woody, umami smoothness.

Pass the tissues. I might cry, this was so lovely.

Bread was soft and fluffy, but it was the crust that captivated my attention with its popcornish taste reminiscent of toasted maize. The olive oil for dipping was no wilting wallflower either. Initially grassy and bitter, it ended with a peppery finish. Although delectable, don’t go overboard – bread coated with an excessive dousing of the stuff was enough to cause a coughing fit with its overpowering flavour profile.

You should order four courses as is usually the case with other, more traditional Italian restaurants.

Turnip tops were seductive in their simplicity. The bitterness of the wrinkly greens was neatly balanced by the buttery sauce.

Hard to top.

Latium is still the king of ravioli in London as far as I’m concerned, but Luca’s grouse ravioli is a worthy competitor. Supple, moderately thick and very sturdy pasta skins came stuffed with a dense, woody and earthy mince. A moreish sauce, allegedly made from potato and whiskey, was the cherry on top. Although an expert combination of taste and texture, I do wonder if the same effect could’ve been achieved with another, less controversial game bird.

Pillow talk.

Beef rump may not sound or look like much, but it was a lip moistening delight. Tender rolled saddles of beef may have only had a small strip of pancetta tucked away inside, but it ensured a consistent level of moistness throughout and a touch of unctuousness. It was the denseness, beefy tang and deep purple hue of the saddled cow that struck me most though – this was an exceptional animal that died for an exceptional dish. Don’t overlook the tender and gently earthy root veg accompaniments – the almost hash brown-like caramelisation of the salsify was just as notable as the beef.

Back in the saddle.

Molten chocolate desserts tend to be deeply dull and uninteresting affairs, but Luca’s baked chocolate mousse managed to avoid this fate. The deep brown goo retained the bittersweet darkness of the base chocolate, probably the result of a skilled pastry chef choosing a robust yet characterful cocoa and exerting fine-tuned temperature control. The bittersweetness of the chocolate was offset by a refreshing cream that was neither too thick and cloying nor too thin and inconsequential. The so-called ‘prune kernel’ cream, whatever that is, didn’t taste of much, but that’s not a bad thing given the strong profile of the chocolate.

A blacktop worth bothering with.

Going back for seconds

Kangaroo Face joined me for my second and final meal at Luca, providing an even higher class of verbal repartee than usual – one that was both erudite and expletive-laden. Although the generous heap of fennel salami took a surprisingly lengthy amount of time to arrive, we both agreed that it was an exceptional bit of charcuterie. The tangy and lightly bitter hits of fennel effectively cut through the meaty fattiness very well. Chunky bits of pork were discernible in each slice, as if they had just been packed into the sausage casing before slicing and was in danger of falling apart. Nothing so calamitous happened of course – these were sumptuously smooth slices of salami.

This review’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by the Your Name soundtrack.

Disappointingly, the bread and olive oil weren’t as exemplary as they were before. While still mildly nutty and modestly grassy respectively, neither had the same depth of character as their counterparts from my first meal.

Crumbs.

Although the alleged roe topping on Kangaroo Face’s turnip tops were marginal at best, this sublimely simple starter was just as well-executed as it was before.

Unseen Two.

Moderately thick and eminently fleshy slices of beef carpaccio were the smooth sinewy conveyors for a creamy, mildly umami oyster emulsion and a somewhat subdued scattering of capers. While far from terrible, this starter felt a little too subtle and cerebral for its own good.

Someone has creamed over my beef flaps.

Moderately thick, ribbed and coiled ribbons of garganelli pasta were soft and supple. The specks of pork sausage didn’t leave much of an impression though. The tomato sauce with reduced anchovies was also underwhelming, but it did at least cling to the garganelli like an overly affectionate bat. Kangaroo Face was more taken with this pasta dish than I was, but we both enjoyed the intermittent tickles of freshness from the touches of mint.

A penne for your thoughts.

Cannelloni was also a dish of two halves. The filling of calves head ragu was neither here nor there, but the thin yet sturdy and silky pasta sleeves was one of the smoothest things to ever pass through my lips. It was made even better by the creamy umami of the melted, possibly blow-torched parmesan on top.

Pastafarianism.

Kangaroo Face was taken with his yieldingly tender lamb chops, but less impressed with the rosemary breadcrumbs and vegetables served alongside it. While the lamb here was perfectly competent, it didn’t come close to matching the exemplary heights of the lamb once served by The Cornwall Project at The Newman Arms. Sadly, the Newman Arms’ dining room now has a new, unrelated team in its kitchen.

Chop block.

If the red mullet wasn’t caught only a short time before being butchered and served, then my next review will be of a Wimpey. Evocatively fresh, zingy and yieldingly tender fillets were topped by a satisfyingly crisp skin. This sublime interplay between different textures was made even better with the gentle bounciness and doughiness of the small-grained fregola pasta thrown in. The butteriness of this cous cous impersonator was an integral part of this dish, adding a degree of well-judged richness to some expertly cooked fish.

The other kind of mullet.

Luca’s dessert menu is a short and simple affair. Although bereft of the usual Italian dessert clichés, its selection of the baked mousse from my first meal alongside an ice cream, a sorbet and a cheese seems lacking in ambition. Whether this will change, or whether this says something about the pastry chef’s vision or lack thereof, is unclear.

Having said that, the baked mousse from my first meal was a delight as was Kangaroo Face’s hazelnut ice cream. It’s not billed as a gelato and rightly so – it wasn’t anywhere as smooth and dense as the best gelato in London. It was no dud though. It was very supple, despite its somewhat odd graininess which wasn’t anywhere as unpleasant as it sounds. Crucially, its profoundly bold hazelnut flavour was true to the original nut and more than made up for the tame salted caramel sauce.

Salted caramel sauce is hard to get right, but still.

I don’t drink wine (or any booze for that matter), but I can get an inkling of what it feels like to pay three times the retail price for something (or more) and get just a puny fraction of the whole thing in return by ordering cheese. The ‘five ages of parmesan’ is almost unjustifiably expensive at £21 which is triple the cost of the other desserts and costs almost as much as some of the mains.

There’s no doubting the provenance of the cheese morsels which gradually increased in umami and hard crumbliness as I worked my way clockwise around the plate from twelve o’clock. The penultimate selection had to be my favourite, with a powerful sense of umami and woodiness without being utterly overwhelming as was the case with the final, oldest morsel of parmesan.

As enjoyably decadent as it was experiencing the difference that time can make on the taste and texture of a cheese, I can’t get in good conscience recommend this dessert. If you like cheese as much as I do, then buy a wedge of parmesan from a knowledgeable cheese shop. That really is the best way to be as happy as a pig in fondue.

What am I doing with my life.

The Verdict

Luca’s cooking can be somewhat variable with some utterly superlative dishes making the merely satisfactory ones seem all the more mundane. This isn’t a surprise as The Clove Club also displayed some wobbliness, but that kitchen had the benefit of forging its own singular path while Luca fights in a far more contentious and fractious market for Italian(ish) cuisine.

Luca has immense potential and I don’t regret eating here one jot (not even the parmesan). But as exemplary as it can be, Italian-label or not, it can’t quite justify the high average cost per meal – even when taking into account the effects of London’s insane property bubble and the referendum’s effect on food prices. Luca will no doubt be a roaring success – it’s already a hard task securing a reservation – but this will be in spite of its niggling problems.

Name: Luca

Address: 88 St. John Street, Farringdon, London EC1M 4EH

Phone: 020 3859 3000

Web: http://luca.restaurant

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-14.30 and 18.00-21.45; Sunday noon-17.00. 

Reservations: essential 

Average cost for one person excluding drinks: £80-90 approx.

Rating: ★★★★☆

This review of a Tokyo restaurant is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage

A lot of words have been written about the glamourisation of ‘dirty food’ in London. Dishes such as burgers, previously only the preserve of fast food restaurants and other very casual eateries, are now taken very seriously indeed. This has been met with consternation in some quarters, hence the morally-loaded ‘dirty food’ finger-wagging terminology.

I find such class- and faux morality-laden bitching extremely tiresome – applying care and attention to food, so it’s the best that it can possibly be, shouldn’t be the preserve of cuisines and dishes traditionally associated with the upper classes.

Having said all that, I had my doubts about Birdland. This restaurant in Tokyo’s pricey Ginza district serves a high-end take on yakitori, grilled skewers of meat previously the preserve of smoky, blokey izakayas. It even has one Michelin star to its name.

Finding Birdland can be an arduous task, even if you have the benefit of Google Maps and GPS on your smartphone, unless you know where to look. The entrance is underground, adjacent to one of the many entrances to Ginza’s sprawling metro station, but with no street-level signage. This is what you need to look for:

Go down the staircase on the right-hand side, right below the giant glowing W sign.

Avid gastronomic travellers will almost certainly recognise this as the street-level entrance for Sukiyabashi Jiro, the famed sushi restaurant of Jiro Dreams of Sushi fame, which is Birdland’s only subterranean neighbour. Indeed, we saw Jiro himself shut up shop at the hilariously early hour of 8.30pm just as we sat down to dinner. It’s highly advisable to book ahead if you can – we managed to snag the last seats of the evening at Birdland without one as our group was small enough to sit at the counter surrounding the kitchen and we were willing to wait around half an hour for the seats to free up.

Birdland does have an a la carte menu, but we opted for the cheapest, dessert-less tasting menu which kicked off with a light yet meaty and surprisingly grainy gizzard served in jelly. It was an odd, yet tasty morsel. I preferred the lightly vinegary chicken skin though which had a hint of umami miso-ishness to it. Leafy, yet delicately earthy and tart greens and wrinkly ear fungus with a light woodiness rounded off this accomplished beginning.

I could do with a gizzard of my own.

You need to have a thick skin to be a restauranteur.

Green gown.

It sorta looks like an ear. I guess.

A chicken pate was the last thing I’d expect at a yakitori restaurant, but this was delightfully different from any other pate I’ve had. Apricot undertones proved to be surprisingly complimentary to its creamy and buttery qualities. Plus, the meaty spread wasn’t drowned out by the accompanying bread.

This is quite a spread.

Skewered morsels of chicken breast were moist and yielding. It was arguably a tad too plain, with only a daubing of subtly sweet then warming wasabi to liven things up.

This review’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by Fall Out Boy.

Speared chicken livers were, as expected, much more interesting than the breast, but I was still surprised by the depth and nuance on display. The airy, yieldingly firm then tender flesh tore apart easily under the pressure of my teeth. Gently seasoned, it had hints of creaminess and an earthiness that made its presence felt without becoming overpowering.

Take flight.

It’s not clear whether Birdland uses whole birds or not, but the kitchen certainly isn’t afraid to use parts of the chook that are unusual by most Western standards. Alternating segments of neck meat and skin were unctuously crisp, chewy, dense and smoky. This is one of the most joyously impressive servings of chicken that I’ve ever eaten.

Sticking my neck out.

A brief meat-free intermission started off with chilled tofu. Airy, yet firm and creamy, the delicate cubes were seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper – the distinct flavours of which really stood out against the cool background of the tofu.

It almost resembled a curl of cheese.

Gingko nuts deserve to be appreciated far more widely in the West than they currently are. Crisp then fluffy, like a jacket potato, but with a taste profile of chestnuts and cashews. It’s a somewhat unusual taste-texture combo that worked delightfully well.

Grape-ful for the opportunity.

Chicken returned with skewered leg meat. Its dense crispiness and then smoky chewiness was perfectly enjoyable, even if it did feel like a partial repeat of the neck meat and skin. Ideally, each course of a tasting menu like this one wouldn’t be too similar to any other course.

Foghorn Leghorn.

A crisp, fruity and gently earthy selection of leaves counterbalanced the relative richness of the leg meat skewers, paving the way for the sausage-like chicken meatballs. Although finely ground with a tender bite, the glaze was both too lightly applied and subdued to leave much of an impression.

Tokyo needs more greenery.

The counter seating at Birdland is reasonably kofte-ball.

The glaze on the chicken teriyaki didn’t taste of much either, but it did give the surface of the meat here a crispy, chewy texture that contrasted neatly with the tender, yielding moistness underneath.

That last pun above. I might as well quit now. I’ll never top that level of pun-fulness ever again. 

Birdland’s kitchen clearly needs to up their glazing game. Firm, but only lightly earthy shiitake once again came brushed with a tame and limp sauce.

What does the kitchen do with all the stems?

Breast meat made a repeat appearance, joined this time by yieldingly taut spring onions. While, moist, tender, meaty and neatly complimented by the spring onions, this final yakitori wasn’t as complex and satisfying as some of the preceding skewers.

Skewered. One sympathises.

Oyakodon is classic Japanese comfort food – simmered chicken and egg on rice. The version here wasn’t bad with lightly creamy omelette-like folds of egg and soft, small-grained rice, but the chicken was uninspiringly anonymous. Tapering down the savoury dishes in preparation for a dessert is a valid way of structuring a tasting menu, but not when diners have opted for the dessert-less option. It just feels anti-climatic.

Chicken and egg problem.

A gently sweet and herby consommé followed by briney and sour pickles were a palate-cleansing finish.

I keep spelling Birdland as Brideland.

Time for a convenience store dessert.

The Verdict

Birdland is a polished place but doesn’t, unsurprisingly, have quite the same camaraderie as a good izakaya. Nevertheless, it’s still a remarkably cosy experience. The yakitori, at its best, surpasses what a traditional izakaya can do and that’s saying something. The best yaiktori here are sizzlingly sublime, yet seductively simple skewers of stupendous skill. When joined by the best of the non-skewered dishes, it makes for an evening of delicious meat deftly crafted with a light touch.

A few below par dishes and structural issues marred the experience though, making a meal at Birdland just that bit harder to justify over a night at a standard yakitori-ya or izakaya. Even so, if you can, Birdland is worth a visit for a peek into just how elevated the art of yakitori can be.

Name: Birdland

Address: Tsukamoto Sozan Building B1F 4-2-15 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Phone: 0081 (0)3 5250 1081

Web: https://restaurants-guide.tokyo/restaurants/detail/46/

Opening Hours: Tuesday-Friday 17.00-22.00; Saturday 17.00-21.30 (last orders 30 mins before closing time). Closed Sunday-Monday and national holidays. 

Reservations: highly recommended 

Total cost for one person excluding drinks: ¥7668 (£53 approx. at time of writing).

Rating: ★★★★☆

This Japan-focussed article is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage

For a country on the far side of the world with a reputation for being expensive and inscrutable, Japan holds an outsized place in our collective culinary consciousness. Its quixotic and singular culture might be one reason, becoming the archetype of the exotic East – familiar yet faraway, just over the horizon and yet tantalisingly out of reach. A more prosaic reason is evident once you sample even a middling California roll-YoSushised version of the country’s food – Japan’s distinctive and diverse cuisine tastes fantastic, straddling the world like a yukata-wearing colossus.

While it looks deceptively small on a map, Japan is 50% larger than the UK and has an even broader gastronomic diversity. That makes it all but impossible to get more than a brief taste of what the country has to offer on a single, average-length visit.

The following two-part overview of dining out in Tokyo, Kyoto and the southern part of Wakayama prefecture is thus far from a systematic survey of what Japan has to offer. It’s more a chronicle of three Westerners bumbling their way around the land of Hokusai and Kurosawa with exceedingly basic Japanese language skills, dog-eared JR Passes and stomaches bigger than their brains.

There was one modest hiccup though – a change in my financial circumstances just before the trip meant my budget for dining out had become a lot tighter. Sterling’s unprecedented weakening in the exchange rate from ¥170 to the pound just before the referendum to a mere ¥127 to the pound at the time of my autumn trip certainly didn’t help either. This meant that my initial plans for non-stop haute kaseiki and kappo ryori dinners (think multicourse tasting menu-style meals, the former in a private room and the latter at a counter facing the kitchen) went out of the window.

This hiccup turned out to be a blessing in disguise though – it made everything much more interesting.

I could upload a nighttime Shinjuku or Shibuya cityscape photo, but that’s been done to death. Here’s a shot of Tokyo’s surprisingly interesting wholesale catering supplies district, Kappabashi, instead.

Tokyo tonkatsu – Tonkatsu Santa

For a start, it made me realise that the seemingly more-mundane Japanese dishes that I usually overlook back home due to their dreariness are actually cruelly misrepresented. Tonkatsu, breaded and deep-fried pork cutlets and not to be confused with tonkotsu ramen, is the epitome of this. Little more than a thicker, smaller schnitzel in London, or perhaps a porcine kiev but without the retro charm, it’s a much more accomplished yet elegantly simple dish at Tonkatsu Santa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district.

The panko batter was beautifully done – crunchy, crisp and airy yet free of excess oil. The moist hunk of pork underneath was a revelation – unctous and tender, glistening with rendered fat, yet not at all greasy or heavy. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was what every London version of tonkatsu has never been – delicious and multilayered. It didn’t really need the sweet molasses-like taste of the brown sauce served on the side in a giant pot, but it was welcome in moderation.

Santa baby

If you’re averse to pork for whatever reason, Vicious Alabaster’s big, firm and fresh tiger prawns were an exceptionally worthy substitute. The accompanying scallops were creamy and sweet in their own right, but these qualities were lost admist all the crunchy batter – a rare misstep for Tonkatsu Santa’s kitchen.

Sign your ‘X’ on the line, Santa cutie

I’ll wait up for you dear, Santa baby

If you’re aghast at the idea of eating something deep-fried despite having inexplicably wandered into a tonkatsu restaurant, then the sauteed and batter-free pork loin is by no means a consolation prize. Tender, moist strips of meat had rinds of quivering fat rendered just-so. A sweet and umami glaze of soy and mirin isn’t a cherry-on-top, but an integral part of this deeply satisfying dish.

Next year I could be just as good

Each of the mains above cost just ¥1300 each (£9 approx. at the time of writing), with an extra ¥500 (£3.50) getting you a ton of soft and fluffy small-grained boiled rice, a bowl of inky miso soup that overdid the umami and a choice of either hot or iced tea. The former was a so-so oolong, the latter was a far superior brew of crisp, sweet and refreshing roasted barley. Although the cantaloupe sorbet was small in size and uncomfortably cold, it wasn’t excessively icy and captured the distinctive taste of the fruit well.

there’s one thing I really do need, the deed – to a platinum mine

The Lensman, who sadly wasn’t able to accompany us on this trip, was right – tonkatsu outside Japan just doesn’t compare. At all.

speaks volumes about the value of restaurants focussed on a single dish

Tokyo tempura – Tempura Tsunahachi

Although tempura isn’t nearly as shoddily represented in London as tonkatsu is, it rarely reaches the heights that it does at Tempura Tsunahachi. Although there are branches dotted around Tokyo, with additional outposts in Kyoto and Sapporo, the original in Shinjuku is almost certainly the most atmospheric. The old-fashioned wooden building sticks out amidst Shinjuku’s neon like a country gentlemen in tweed twirling his handlebar moustache at a rave.

The tempura batter here was so magnificent, it acted as a stinging rebuke to every leaden, bland, greasy and heavy deep-fried dish you’ve ever had anywhere else. Crisp and creamy, yet with very little excess oil and not at all stodgy or bloaty despite the small dumpster truck’s worth of tempura that I’d ordered.

A knot of shimeji mushroms were creamy and a little tart, while lotus root was exceedingly crisp and lightly starchy. Honkingly big tiger prawns had crispy little legs and quiveringly tender body flesh. A big clump of smaller shrimp arrived together in a big ball all intwined together, a tender aggomleration that I won’t soon forget.

Mushroom kingdom.

This article’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by Westworld.

Golden age.

Thick and meaty scallops had a light creaminess that wasn’t obscured by the batter at all. A whole sardine was salty and tender, while an oyster arrived after having been battered and fried in its shell. The oyster flesh itself was briney and surrounded by the complimentary tartness and earthiness of little mushrooms and an umami sauce.

Fishing for opportunities.

It’s not an egg tart.

Tokyo is your oyster. If you can figure out the insane address system.

Thanks Tempura Tsunahachi. You’ve ruined all other tempura for me.

Kawagoe street food

The timing of my trip to Tokyo with Vicious Alabaster and Templeton Peck proved fortuitous as we got to experience the Kawagoe Matsuri, the annual festival of a medium-sized town located a 45 min train ride to the northwest of Tokyo. Given the incomplete nature of the English-language information online about the Matsuri’s religious meaning, Kawagoe’s festival was odd, surreal and even a little creepy to our eyes. Around a dozen floats were pulled around the town’s pedestrianised streets, with teams of ritual musicians and masked dancers onboard, competing against each other musically for the approval of a small lantern bearing crowd.

Float like a weird funky-ass butterfly.

Despite the immense crowds, the festival was supernatural in its orderliness. No litter, public drunkenness, random scuffles or misbehaving tantrum-throwing children could be seen anywhere. Another surprise was the street food. Although dozens and dozens of market stalls occupied almost every major thoroughfare, the fare on offer was surprisingly repetitive by London standards – takoyaki, okonomiyaki, various seafoods on skewers and the occasional yakisoba. The only foreign muck on offer, not that we were looking for it, was – surprise, surprise – doner kebabs. I almost regret not having one, if only to find out what meat was used – lamb is almost non-existent in Japan.

Although Vicious Alabaster enjoyed the takoyaki, the dough of these little octopus balls was too squishie for my liking. The limp bonito flakes, kewpie mayo and brown sauce didn’t impress either, but at least there was a reasonably firm octopus tentacle amidst all that excessively soft doughiness.

Balls.

The okonomiyaki was another disappointment with an excessive amount of cabbage, not enough batter and tame pork belly. There was plenty of bonito flakes and sauces, but it’s a sad okonomiyaki when the most enjoyable thing here was the pickled ginger.

Our piss-poor Japanese meant that we couldn’t identify the names for any of the stands here. Soz.

Not visible: giant sacks of cabbage filler.

Squid body on a stick was a tad too rubbery and needed more glaze too, making for a disappointing chew. Far better was the firm and umami squid tentacles and cuttlefish. The highlights of the evening for me, apart from the crazy musical floats, was the firm, then tender and briney whelks and the exceptional geoduck which was even more evocative of the sea. London needs more geoduck.

One day Vicious Alabaster will get over her squid fixation.

The Incredible Whelk.

It’s pronounced ‘gooey-duck’.

An unremarkable chocolate-coated banana dusted with sprinkles wasn’t the oddest thing we ate on a stick – that honour goes to the lightly brined cucumber dressed with a punchy, somewhat bluntly umami miso sauce.

chocolate banana pic

If you wanted dessert, it was this or something from the very occasional ice cream shop.

Not the best that the world of Japanese pickles has to offer.

The street food may have been mostly shrug-worthy, but the festival itself was well worth it. I hope to return to Japan in the not-too-distant future, if only to hopefully find Japanese street food that wasn’t as disappointing as Kawagoe’s.

Little Okinawa, Tokyo

This trip sadly didn’t have time for an jaunt to Okinawa, Japan’s southern archipelago which has a very different culture from the rest of the country and, due to Imperial China’s influence and its tropical climate, looks more like Taiwan than it does the rest of Japan. We had to instead be content with Little Okinawa, a restaurant in the middle of Tokyo’s Ginza district.

Little Okinawa’s pub-like surroundings couldn’t feel more different from its much pricier neighbours. The squidgy then silky tofu served with vinegary onions and mushrooms might possibly be found in the ‘mainland’ restaurants next door. ‘Grape’ seaweed, with tiny little translucent spheres dangling off the stem, almost certainly wouldn’t. Although you wouldn’t think its sweet and sugary taste would be complimented by the gently umami soy sauce served on the side, it most certainly was.

Ginza is weird. Personal shoppers tote bags with their hands encased in white gloves, while besuited pimps loiter in the shadows.

Grapes of wrath.

‘Okinawa-style’ onigiri tasted like little more than fried rice shaped into a triangular arrangement. Far more impressive was the seaweed ‘tempura’ – not the battered indulgences we’re all familiar with, but deep-fried patties resplendent with the umami, salty taste of concentrated seaweed. The soft and oil-free patties were neatly emphasised by a dipping sauce of soy and vinegar.

Striking out.

Oddly familiar.

The Chinese influence was most evident in the stewed pork cubes. Reminiscent of both Sichuanese twice-cooked pork and braised hong shao rou, the tender, fat-laden pork belly here was drenched in a sticky, gently umami sauce. Although not quite as multi-layered as the best hong shao rou, it was still a joy to savour – especially with the julienned parsnips and vinegared onions cutting through the unctuous porcine richness.

Three-by-three.

If you cut the fat off, then I will have no choice but to cut you.

Peanut tofu was somewhat similar to the Chinese dish, but with a firm creme brulee-ish crust, a creamy interior and a gentle, but still distinctively nutty sauce.

May contain nuts.

Templeton Peck was sceptical of the sliced bitter melon, but came to appreciate these vegetables. Bitter, gently softened gourd slices were classily combined with bready, eggy tofu for a light, yet satisfying series of mouthfuls.

I have a a book, a gourd and a bunch of twigs.

The generally excellent savoury mains made the shoddy desserts all the more disappointing. Stodgy, stale and almost hard bits of doughnut mixed in with bland ice cream that was a touch too icy made for a poor pairing – each half of this dessert tended to bring out the worst in each other.

Okinawan ceramics are hypnotically sparkly. I wish I’d bought some.

A doughnut served by itself was slightly better – served warm and much softer than the hard scabs dotting the ice cream, it was still a bit too crusty and definitely too bland.

You wouldn’t know it from this, but there are some top-notch bakeries in Tokyo – of both the Japanese and Western varieties.

Tokyo soba – Kanda Yabu Soba

Kanda Yabu Soba is a remarkable soba restaurant. For starters, it’s a surprisingly tranquil and classical-looking place despite being located amidst grey office blocks 10 minutes walk away from the frantic cyberculture of Akihabara. Although its sliding paper doors and timber beams are a reconstruction (the original building burnt down a few years ago), something else is even more distinctive – the waitresses sing. Not in the canned operatic canto of numerous gimmick restaurants in London and other European cities, but a soft, gentle melodic hymn that somehow carries from a station in the airy main dining room to the kitchen. It’s certainly a damn sight more charming than an iPad or notepad.

All of that would be nought if the soba wasn’t up to scratch, but it was and then some. The restaurant’s trademark nameko soba is served cold, ideal for a hot Tokyo day. Surprisingly light buckwheat noodles faded into the background, allowing everything else to shine. Mushrooms were sticky, richly umami and lightly creamy. The cool soup had a deep, layered umami with an undertone of sweetness best enjoyed in short slurps. Nori shavings and crisp spring onions were the cherry on top. It’s all deceptively simple, belying the kitchen’s adept artistry.

Kicking ass and taking nameko.

‘Fish paste cakes’ turned out to be fish sticks, effectively a lighter, creamier and more subtle antecedent of surimi ‘crab’ sticks. Served cold, it acted as a carrier for top-notch wasabi – subtly sweet and creamy, then hitting you with a modest nasal heat. The fish paste cakes turned up again as a topping for Templeton Peck’s hot soba. The broth was a warm version of the one served with my cold nameko soba and was just as satisfying, although a little something in the broth was lost in translation from cool to hot.

Cut and paste.

Copy and paste.

Don’t dawdle if your order the hot tempura soba as Vicious Alabaster did – the tempura prawns will quickly get soggy in the piping broth, depriving you of the opportunity to savour the batter. This did at least allow her to see that whole chunks of fresh prawn had been used underneath the coating.

Soggy bottoms.

Fresh yuba skin cubes were served chilled, yet were still creamy and refreshing – quite a surprise as I’m more used to the heartier nature of the dried and fermented versions of this tofu-esque soybean preparation.

This article’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by Led Zeppelin.

Slices of duck breast served cold were nonetheless very dense and lightly smoky. It was made even more delectable by the light tingly heat of mustard and a dipping sauce with layered, sophisticated umami. All in all, it’s one of the best duck dishes I’ve had to date.

I still try to keep abreast of Tokyo restaurant news.

The water in which the soba noodles were cooked is served after the meal as a drink. It’s an odd but utterly slurpable libation – sort of like a tea that had somehow been made from eggs, it was simultaneously refreshing and eggishly creamy. It’s one of the most delightfully distinctive drinks I’ve downed.

At around ¥1000 per bowl of soba (£7 approx. at the time of writing), you’d be mad not to eat at Kanda Yabu Soba.

Tokyo izakaya – Sakagurakomachuu

Templeton Peck has a bizarre fascination with salarymen. This proved to be almost our sole reason for stumbling into Sakagurakomachuu, an izakaya a few blocks northeast of the famed Tsukiji fish market. The place was indeed packed full of besuited blokey desk drones, ties loosened and banter flowing, with very few women present. It was a nonetheless welcoming place with an English language menu, allowing Vicious Alabaster to indulge in her new-found ginkgo nut fixation – a peanut-sized snack akin to a cross between cashews and potatoes in taste. Give ’em a try – they’re addictive.

That seems like an excessive amount of salt to me.

Neither Templeton Peck nor Vicious Alabaster would touch the squid innards, but I love the funky, bitter, sour and mildly astringent taste as well as the somewhat gooey texture.

Good to know that some things are reassuringly, stridently funky no matter where in the world you are.

Breaded pork cutlet on a stick was forgettable. It initially appeared that the tofu might turn out that way too, but underneath its anonymous fried exterior was the pleasingly silky, squidgy texture that I’ve come to appreciate over the years. Shame the bonito flakes weren’t up to much though.

Frankly, I’m surprised that this hasn’t caught on somewhere in the North already.

Fool’s gold.

As much as I’ve grown to love tofu over the years, I’m not having tofurkey for Christmas.

The exotic sounding ‘fried fish paste’ was really just fish cakes, but these were squidgy, light and umami fish cakes that were well worth having.

Paint it black.

Thinly sliced octopus sashimi was meaty and firm, while the surf clam sashmi was firm then tender with a gentle, beguiling sweetness.

Leg work.

Enjoy the silence.

Although the saury, also known as sanma, was in season, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the grilled version here. Very bony with mackerel-ish flesh, but without mackerel’s distinctively flavoursome punch. Serving it with the guts intact or adding a touch of pickling Wakayama-style may have added more of a flavour profile.

Japanese kitchens usually have wee little fish grills instead of ovens. I find that quite amusing, for some reason.

The poultry used in the karaage tasted anonymous, even after allowing it to cool down – more resting time after emerging from the deep fat fryer would’ve been beneficial. The batter was truly superlative though – free of excess oil, crispy and then simultaneously unctuous and fluffy. Pair this sumptuous batter with better meat and you’d have a fried chicken for the ages.

Partially devoured.

The best of the assorted yakitori had to be the wonderfully textured hearts and gizzards. Very similar to the yakitori that Yumi Izakaya used to serve back in London (before its sad closure), these bits of offal somehow managed to be taut, crisp and tender all at the same time. It’s different, but no less delectable than the chicken yakitori from the famed Birdland in nearby Ginza.

Identity parade.

Not everything at Sakagurakomachuu was a resounding success, but there were more than enough delights to go around to make this izakaya worth a visit if you’re in the neigbourhood and don’t want to spend more than around ¥4500 per person for dinner (approx. £31 at the time of writing).

Bento lunch boxes from Tokyo Station and Kyoto Station – Bentoya Matsuri/Ekiben-ya Matsuri and Awaji-ya

Long-distance train travel in Japan can mean only one thing – a bento lunch box, with those eaten on trains known as ekiben. The Daimaru department store just outside Tokyo Station is purported to be one of the best places to get an ekiben with a larger selection and lower prices than shops inside the station past the ticket gates. A time crunch meant that we had to be content with ekiben from Bentoya Matsuri/Ekiben-ya Matsuri (different sources give different translations for the name – any help from Japanese speakers would be appreciated!) which is located in between platforms 6 and 7, but this choice turned out to be far from a burdensome one.

Spending around ¥1000 on a boxed lunch (approx. £7 at the time of writing) seems like a costly extravagance indicative of all the stereotypes about pricey Japan, but these ekiben more than justified their price as a travelling treat. Seasonal vegetables gently simmered to bring out their natural earthiness were joined by a choice selection of pickled root vegetables which were eye-opening in their dynamic range. From sharp to sweet, tangy to vinegarish, Japan’s pickling arts deserve to be more widely appreciated.

Reasonably crisp, light and oil-free vegetable tempura and a hefty helping of soft and fluffy small-grained rice provided the bulk. Gingko nuts had been softened, increasing their resemblance to potatoes while retaining their distinctive cashew-like quality, while tamago was sweet and fluffy. Meat made a brief but memorable cameo in the form of a dense, umami, jerk-like hunk of slow-cooked pork. Lightly glazed and gently cooked salmon teriyaki was pleasant enough and a couple of chewy sweets finished things off.

It must be quite the culture shock for Japanese tourists to arrive at a British train station and be confronted by the solidified dust that is an Upper Crust sandwich.

A cheaper ekiben at around ¥750-800 (approx. £5) consisted of a lot more rice, but there was still plenty of simmered and pickled vegetables to chuff down as well as fillets of neatly grilled snapper. It may be a cheaper and less varied option, but certainly not a lower quality one.

There was a camera crew at Bentoya Matsuri/Ekibenya Matsuri, for some reason, when we were there.

Bentoya Matsuri/Ekiben-ya Matsuri spoiled me as other ekiben I tried from other vendors just couldn’t compare. A bento box of gyudon from Kyoto Station’s Awaji-ya was certainly big, but it didn’t do enough to justify its ¥1000 price tag – especially as gyudon outside the station confines can be had for as little as ¥300. The saucey beef was tender but dull-tasting, leaving it to the firm prawn and slice of octopus, as well as the reasonably earthy vegetables to pick up the slack. One admittedly neat, small touch was dividing the carb bedding in half between fluffy rice and wrinkly noodles.

Take your beef outside.

Kyoto tonkotsu ramen – Hakata-Nagahama Ramen Miyoshi and Seiryu Ramen

By some quirk of fate or geography, almost every ramen eatery we spotted in Kyoto appeared to be dedicated to tonkotsu ramen – which is fortunate as I have an obsession with it. Hakata-Nagahama Ramen Miyoshi is little more than a dozen stools facing onto a tiny kitchen. With some seats, there’s little more than a curtain separating your back from the bustle of Kiyamachi-dori street, but everything we ate was worth this minor inconvenience – heck, it was worth crawling over broken glass for.

Kyoto is a surprisingly low-rise and unassuming city when viewed from above. If this was the high-res version, you’d just be able to pick out Nintendo’s headquarters.

There are few things in this world more slurpable than this shop’s tonkotsu broth. Wonderfully fatty, rich, umami and creamy, it puts the vast majority of London’s efforts to shame. The thin noodles were firm, cooked just-so, while the thin slices of char siu pork were moreish and lightly sweet. Due attention had even been paid to the cabbage – each and every one of the earthy and slippery leaves was devoured.

Bone broth.

It would be a grave error to skip the side dishes. Bamboo shoots were earthy with a gentle musky sweetness, their texture slightly fibrous and then gently yielding. The kimchi was a little unusual, with a taste reminiscent of funky fermented bean paste rather than the tart, spicy sharpness I was expecting, but no less scoffable for it.

Shoots to thrill.

There’s a Mexican restaurant just across the road. I was in no way tempted to try it.

The highlight of the sides had to be the stewed chunks of beef with root vegetables. Although the tender fatty pillows of bovine flesh were spot-on, the immensely moreish tendons were even better with their squidgy moistness and the absorbent connective tissue soaking up the lip-smacking sauce.

Love me tendon.

Unlike much of the rest of Kyoto, Hakata-Nagahama Ramen Miyoshi stays open late well into the wee hours and becomes understandably popular. Even with the rapid rate at which most Japanese slurp down ramen, it can sometimes be tricky to snag a stool. Don’t be tempted to settle for Seiryu Ramen a few doors down though.

Avoidance strategy.

The only good thing about the tonkotsu ramen here were the firm, wrinkly noodles. The tepidly flavoured broth didn’t have anywhere close to the same levels of rich complexity as the broth at Hakata-Nagahama Ramen Miyoshi. Even the roast pork, fungus and onsen egg were underwhelming. It was roughly on par with the uninspired average level of most tonkotsu ramen in London and, thus, probably a meal of last resort for the locals.

That rare thing: a duff meal in Japan.

Kyoto gyoza – Hohei Gyoza

Stepping over Hohei Gyoza‘s threshold into the small dining room (just over a dozen covers or so, including the stools at the bar) brought us face-to-face with a wall-to-wall group of belligerently affable Antipodeans. Hohei is just as popular with Kyoto-ites though, who quickly replaced the Aussies and Kiwis in a surprisingly swift and wholesale customer shift-change.

As with many of our Tokyo meals, the dumplings at Hohei Gyoza were so startlingly good that it altered our perception of what this staple dish, so averagely misrepresented elsewhere, can be. It speaks volumes about the value of restaurants focussed on a single dish.

The thin yet sturdy skins, supple on one side and judiciously fried on the other, came apart under our teeth and not our chopsticks. The pork filling wasn’t the star here, with the additions of either ginger or garlic and leek grabbing the spotlight. The bold flavours of both variants were immediately appreciable – a simple thing that shouldn’t be remarkable, but most certainly was in this world of piss-poor dumplings. The umami of the recommended miso sauce for the ginger pork gyoza complimented those dumplings delightfully. The mix of soy and vinegar for the garlic and leek variant wasn’t as pleasurable due its subdued weakness, although this wasn’t a huge loss in the end given the punchy garlic and bitter, supple bits of leek.

I’ll have a rack of gyoza, please.

The onigiri were brought in from elsewhere, but don’t let that put you off – they were well worth having while waiting for your gyoza. The rice in all of them was soft and fluffy. The kelp version was suitably umami. While the fillings in the miso pork and the cod roe variants were meagre, the former was still reasonably meaty and moreish while the latter had a pleasing, gently spicy hit to it. The meaty and salted grilled salmon went down well with everyone.

Self-kelp.

Hog tied.

Pink in the middle.

Wrap star.

Following our encounter with whole pickled cucumbers on skewers in Kawagoe, we chuckled at their reappearance, without sticks, at Hohei. They were only lightly brined and dressed with a surprisingly weak miso sauce though. A far better umami dish was the chilled miso pork. Tender almost to the point of disintegration, the gentle umami of the pork was neatly offset by a bed of sharp, vinegary bean sprouts – and I usually hate bean sprouts. It was surprisingly refreshing as well as gutturally satisfying.

If only I had managed to convince Templeton Peck to try Hohei’s potato salad.

Chillax.

A single clam at the bottom of a full, if small, tea cup may not look particularly impressive – but that’s because looks can be deceptive. The clam consommé was richly earthy and yet also had a gently sweet mushroom-like flavour, with the chewy clam at the bottom of the cup providing a chewy, salty finish. An exceptional consommé. Truly, singularly exceptional.

Cup a soup.

Hohei Gyoza is an unassuming yet truly wonderful restaurant that could easily getaway with charging twice as much in London and still have a queue stretching out the door and down the street.

Kyoto tofu vegetarian – Sagatoufuine

I have to suppress the urge to roll my eyes every time someone complains about how much they hate tofu. It really is a testament to my self control that I haven’t given in to homicidal acts of animalistic rage and righteous indignation. The tofu that most Britishers will have encountered is all about the texture and not the taste. To be fair, the squidgy, silky texture of such tofu is an acquired delight, but there’s a whole world of tofu beyond that.

Sagatoufuine is a tofu-vegetarian restaurant with two large branches on the main drag just outside the Tenryu-ji temple in Kyoto’s Arashiyama suburb. This, along with a well-oiled kitchen and front of house, meant that the large set menu arrived with almost indecent haste.

Soft small-grained rice arrived soaked in a sticky, lightly moreish goo and topped with surprisingly peppery leaves. The star of this dish was, of course, the soft and wrinkly fresh yuba which was also surprisingly sturdy with a mild amount of elasticity despite its thinness.

Attempting to decipher Hiragana and Kanji characters when you have a negligible grasp of the language is bloody hard.

A tub of ‘thick soy milk skin’ came filled with a creamy and lightly sweet soup that had been lightly thickened. The fresh yuba (or tofu ‘skin’, if you prefer) made a welcome return and was made even better by the umami and sweetness of the soy and mirin dipping sauce on the side. Pour the excess dipping sauce into the soup for a powerfully satisfying umami hit.

Yes, I’d like a bath tub’s worth of tofu please.

A deep-fried tofu fritter was hearty with a slightly gritty, grainy texture and wasn’t at all greasy. The taste came from gently simmered vegetables which provided a light earthiness that didn’t overwhelm the palate.

A Western tourist is wanted by Kyoto police for questioning in relation to a recent rampage of violent selfie stick smashing incidents. Which has nothing to do with me, I swear. Honest.

The tofu chawanmushi doesn’t look like much, but this savoury tofu and egg custard (for the lack of a better term) was an incredibly satisfying, multilayered concoction of rich creamy egginess and milky crispness with a deep umami. And yet, it also had a surprisingly clean aftertaste. This was a dish of immense character.

Deciding on how to Romanise Japanese names and terms is also a minefield.

Namafu is a combination of a mochi-grade rice flour and wheat gluten, resulting in oddly smooth glops-on-a-stick that were also weirdly sticky and a tad gooey. One had a reasonably strong taste of sesame, while the other was too subtle for its own good with a restrained mung bean-ish quality to it. While not bad, the surreal experience of eating the namafu was neither here nor there.

Glop-on-a-stick.

Although the white miso soup had less umami than I was expecting, it did have a beguiling and gentle earthy sweetness. The pickles didn’t fail to impress either – crisp and sweet with a light vinegarishness.

Opaque. Yet, in places, almost crystalline in its clarity.

Japan has made me fickle about pickles.

Although the dessert of warabimochi had a similar texture to the namafu, this smooth, slightly gooey and somewhat tacky dessert was more pleasing. Its texture along with its light sweetness and starchiness won’t be to everyone’s taste, nor will the dusting of nutty toasted soybean flour. Still, if you keep an open mind, it’s a light and undemanding way to finish a meal.

Pass the spatula.

Some of the most common complaints levelled at vegetarian food is that it’s derivative, bland and unsatisfying. Sagatoufuine refutes such nonsense in the strongest possible terms.

Nara kaiseki ryori – Hirasō

The ancient and surprisingly compact city of Nara is an easy and thus popular day-trip from Kyoto. The hordes of tourists that throng the historic centre of the city during the day seem to vanish by nightfall though, leaving it a far more tranquil place. It’s worth sticking around if only to sample some of Nara’s unique dishes for dinner. Hirasō, roughly 10-15 minutes walk south of the city’s picturesque five-storied pagoda, specialises in this traditional cuisine. That aside, it was almost worth eating here just to see Templeton Peck and Vicious Alabaster struggle with sitting cross-legged on cushioned tatami mats at the decidedly traditional low-slug tables in the semi-private dining room.

One dish particular to Nara’s traditional cuisine is sushi wrapped in persimmon leaves. The latter are alleged to have anti-bacterial properties which aid in the preservation and consumption of the lightly cured fish. Regardless of the veracity of these claims, the leaf-wrapped nigiri rolls were larger than usual and noticeably lacking in wasabi. Delicately fruity and meaty salmon-like fish, resplendent with a brilliant tangerine hue, was nonetheless pleasurable as was the salty and tangy mackerel-like silver-skinned fish.

Maki rolls with sharp and sweet bell peppers at the centre provided a touchstone of familiarity.

Apparently the fish in persimmon leaf-wrapped sushi is also lightly cured.

What’s with the numerous varying names for persimmons?

Imperial purple.

Creamy, eggy tofu with the appearance of scrambled eggs was tinged with sesame. It was sumptuous enough already, but the extra layers of flavour provided by the earthy vegetables and the distinctively sweet goji berries were still welcome and didn’t unbalance the dish.

Bowled over.

Another dish of tofu didn’t taste of much, instead relying on its two-part texture to please. Initially firm, then squidgy, it was akin to a clean-tasting savoury crème brulee.

Jade dining.

A big gluten-packed vegetarian meatball was light despite its size. Sweet and small-grained, its somewhat oat-like flavour was enhanced by the lightly nutty, umami, sticky and gooey sauce as well as by the gently sweet and earthy mushroom.

Goo ball.

Aju is apparently a prized seasonal fish in Nara and it’s not hard to see why. Judiciously grilled, the fish here was meaty despite its small size and had an oddly grainy, almost roe-like texture. It was nonetheless pleasing, especially with its citrusy taste emphasised by shiso leaf. Accompaniments of creamy tamago, sweet and starchy ginkgo nut, crisp lotus root and sharp pickles were no less accomplished.

Aju-rn for dinner.

As a long-standing opponent of congee, I didn’t expect to like Hirasō’s rice porridge and was thus surprised to find myself quite taken with it. Far from the neutral tasting goop that I’ve avoided over the years, its taste was highly reminiscent of barley tea. This quality was only enhanced by the popcorn-like taste of toasted, puffed rice served on the side and applied yourself. My dining companions seemed somewhat ambivalent over our sticky gruel, but this chagayu is definitely a congee I can vouch for.

Unsure if cha-ga-yu is technically a congee or not, but I’m sticking with that description.

Dessert was an odd, but light and refreshing dish of narrow glass noodles served in a thin, lightly sweet syrup that tasted a lot like orange honey. A taste reminiscent of the Near East rather than the Far East (to use geographically relativist terms) was unexpected, but certainly welcome.

Dessert noodles.

There’s so much to savour and enjoy in Kyoto that it would be easy to overlook Nara’s culinary delights, but Hirasō’s take on this city’s quirky traditional cuisine is easily worth your time. Plus it’s hardly unaffordable at ¥3785 (approx. £26 at the time of writing) for our set menu.

Convenience store and vending machine food

The unexpected budgetary crunch for this trip meant that convenience store food played a bigger part in my diet than originally planned. Although comparable on paper to a Tesco Metro, the archetypal 24-hour Japanese convenience store’s bigger focus on food means that the various snacks and take away meals are more interesting and surprisingly better tasting than your average corner shop Cup-a-Soup.

Lawson has nothing to do with Nigella, but is one of the biggest convenience store (or konbini) chains in Japan. I regret allowing Templeton Peck and Vicious Alabaster to talk me out of dipping into the steaming bain maries of oden (stewed Japanese fish cakes). It’s worth downing Lawson’s range of savoury snacks – dried squid was chewy and umami with the tentacles possessing a suitably ribbed texture. A roughly equivalent bag of dried squid strips from Family Mart was less pleasing – far too chewy and hard for too little umami gain.

It’s no weirder than beef jerky when you think about it.

Just what I needed.

This article’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by The Foo Fighters.

Family Mart’s sandwiches were a better bet than their dried squid snacks. A chicken tonkatsu sandwich sounds bizarre, but it’s not that different from the ‘southern fried chicken’ sandwiches you’d find in a Tesco or Sainsbury’s. The limp batter won’t set your world alight, but at least the moist chicken underneath was a meaty fillet with discernible muscle fibres and a light smearing of tingly mustard, all sandwiched in soft white bread.

All Japanese convenience store sandwiches appear to be crustless. What do they do with all the crusts?

A surprisingly more moreish alternative was a temaki-style ‘sandwich’, but with nori and then a layer of fluffy rice taking the place of the bread. The same moist chunks of battered chicken made a repeat appearance.

Not the pengest chicken ever.

Family Mart’s mini bento-style meals pack a lot of variation into a small plastic container. Sweet tamago, a crunchy croquette, a slice of salty frankfurter and moist, lightly sweet onigiri rice balls were far more palatable than a supermarket tuna nicoise or falafel salad back home. Bulking up with an additional nori-wrapped onigiri, such as the vaguely umami miso pork variety, is pleasing enough and costs mere pocket change like all the konbini foods here.

Mini mart.

While London ignores onigiri, naff stuff like poke catches on instead.

Daily Yamazaki is a far smaller chain of convenience stores, but that doesn’t mean its cheap and cheerful food is any less edible. Umeboshi onigiri wasn’t quite as tart and sour as I would’ve liked, but that may make it more palatable to some and the rice was fluffy enough. Stir-fried chicken noodles were surprisingly good – moist chunks of chicken and hearty noodles all doused in a modestly umami garnish of aomori (chopped seaweed).

Eat and Pret *dream* about takeaway convenience food this good.

Given the hot weather prevalent during my visit, convenience store ice cream was alluring even if the reality was somewhat underwhelming. A Family Mart dorayaki was a disappointment once you got past the soft pancake with limply flavoured adzuki beans and matcha ice cream presenting themselves for your disapproval.

Not your grandfather’s ice cream sandwich.

Dorayaki explorer.

A lot of mass-produced Japanese ice creams seem designed to preclude any possibility of unsightly drippage. Ice cream sandwiches, such as a Haagen-Dazs branded matcha-flavoured option, didn’t just use a pair of wafers but encased the entire serving of ice cream in a wafer coffin. Unsurprisingly, the Haagen-Dazs effort tasted of mediocrity and compromise. An oddly ingot shaped Ohayo chocolate affair was even less convincing.

This is simultaneously the most exotic and most mundane food item I’ve ever written about.

At least I think it’s supposed to be chocolate.

It looks more enticing in the photo on the packet.

A better option, surprisingly, was Lawson’s sweet potato ice cream sandwich. Although the wafer casing looked more convincingly realistic on the box than in the flesh, it was still a reasonably charming recreation – especially with the smooth ice cream and syrup inside managing to stay true to the taste of the original tuber.

Lloyd George’s sweet potato.

Ice cream sandwich? More like an ice cream bullet.

I was tempted to try some gelato in Tokyo’s cavernous department store food halls, but decided not to. I kinda regret that decision.

Imuraya is a company dedicated to making sweets and other dishes made from adzuki beans, a very savoury and distinctively nutty dessert staple in this part of the world. It’s a favourite foodstuff for most Japanese, but gets a decidedly more mixed reaction amongst most Westerners. Imuraya’s adzuki bean ice lolly would be a suitably gentle introduction for such adzuki bean sceptics. A crunchy, tame and pale icy shell with a pared back core of inoffensively moreish and lightly sweet adzuki beans at the centre.

Food doesn’t just fall into your lap, you know.

Days bean and gone.

The cool dollops at the centre of the Lotte-branded ice cream mochi didn’t taste of much, but were refreshing enough with suitably elastic, chewy mochi-style skins.

Konbini ice cream can be a Lotte-ry.

Yes I took this photo in the fridge. Buy me a coffee and maybe I’ll explain why.

I could easily devote a whole website to the endless kombini vittles as well as the foodstuff wares available from Japan’s ubiquitous vending machines – both of which I only managed to scratch the surface of. ‘Ubiquitous’ doesn’t quite do justice to the seeming omnipresence of the Japanese vending machine though, which seem to materialise in herds on every street corner, urban and rural, with multiple brands having dedicated machines of their own.

The apparently universal availability of iced coffee from vending machines meant that I had no trouble keeping my caffeine addiction in check, even if some of the brews available left much to be desired. Pokka Sapporo’s Biz Time Black had plenty of kick, keeping me motoring along from an early start until after lunch time, but the sour taste was grim.

Back in black.

Kirin is only known for beer in the West, but the company appears to have several soft drinks available from its home territory vending machines. A salt and lychee libation was surprisingly refreshing, capturing the taste of the fruit with the hint of salt alluding to the crispness of the fruit’s flesh – a visceral point which obviously couldn’t be recreated directly in a bottle.

Try it. Don’t bottle it.

Royal Milk Tea is a smooth and refreshing but very odd cold drink. The taste of tea is tangential at best, with the brew dominated by the intense sweetness of what tastes like condensed milk but with none of the viscosity.

Well, it’s more like tea than that wretched bottled Lipton’s stuff.

Hot items are also available from some vending machines, an oddity that I found quirkily charming. Hot sweetcorn soup in a can from Bistrone Select (a Coca-Cola brand) wasn’t just coasting by on its toasty warmth – it was actually filling with a creamy consistency and a natural-seeming sweetness that wasn’t overpowering.

It was more of a corn chowder really and I’d have it again in a heartbeat.

Up next: Eating my way around Japan, part 2 – Wakayama’s Kii Peninsula and the Kumano Kodo

The Schrodinger’s cat of Mexican food in London

Street food has been a significant force for change in the way Londoners eat out. Street food market stalls lack the comfort and convenience of a fully fledged restaurant, but they can easily rival, match or even exceed the culinary standards of some restaurants – especially when it comes to cuisines that, historically, have been badly or under-represented in the capital. They can be inexpensive too – high quality cheap eats are always welcome in a city that’s becoming increasingly expensive to live in.

Some street food stalls have acquired permanent premises and made the transition to become proper restaurants. But, to my surprise, that trend doesn’t suit everyone. A surprisingly large minority of Kangaroo Face’s work chums decry this as ‘selling out’. Even without a fuller account of their point of view, this seems immensely stupid and short sighted. The move from food truck to restaurant not only means broader opening hours and an easier to find address for the customer, but also proper facilities (such as running water and shelter from the elements) for the kitchen to give its vision better form. Plus, it frees up stalls for the next generation.

Breddos Tacos is the latest street food operator to trade tarpaulins and portable hotplates for indoor toilets and the ability to accept credit cards. It’s just around the corner from Luca, but it couldn’t be more different with semi communal tables, moodily dim lighting and hipster-ish décor that’s more Hoxton than Clerkenwell.

It’s the menu that makes Breddos interesting though. I was greatly impressed by their earlier street food iteration which, while deviating from tradition in its choice of taco fillings, was easily good enough to trump far glitzier and plusher competition.

First things first

Breddos’ restaurant continues this Mexican-but-with-other-influences theme. A taco filling of battered sweetbreads was immediately and intensely impressive. A crispy, lightly chewy batter somehow managed to hold in a bulging, bulbous bauble of offal. Softer, squidgier and richer than a Davos attendee, it was an offal tour de force.

Sweetbread sweetheart.

The only slight against the sweetbread tacos was a modest problem that also afflicted the other tacos – the quality of the tortillas. Apparently made from corn and properly nixtamalised, the tortillas were nonetheless oddly chewy and verged on blandness with a very muted nuttiness. They were far from bad though – moderately thick and fluffy as well as defiantly sturdy under the groaning weight of the generously proportioned fillings which were prone to a little spillage.

Distinctly sweet and fluffy chunks of sweet potato were delightful in their own right, even if they did drown out the various garnishes and sauces. A more balanced vegetarian taco filling was one of fried egg. The rich and runny yolk, its orange hue enhanced by the neon hues of Breddos’ lighting bleeding in through the windows, didn’t overwhelm the subtly moreish mole or the refreshing and wispy cheese.

Tater tops.

You only get one taco per portion. This allows more mixing and matching, but also makes the pricing appear artificially low if you’re used to, and expecting, the two tacos per portion standard of elsewhere.

Don’t skip straight ahead to the desserts after finishing your tacos – the Al Pastor pork is a must have. A dense, chewy and well-seasoned fillet of Old Spot pork almost resembled game. Its fruity undertones meshed well with the wallop of the pickled watermelon, veg and chillies served on the side. These accoutrements only made the sharp pineapple, which was lovely in its own right, all the more unnecessary in the end. It’s not the best pork dish you’ll have in London, but it’s not far off.

That hit the spot.

It would be easy to overlook the tortillas and sauces served at the beginning of each meal at Breddos, but it would be a mistake to do so. Nutty, crisp and light tortilla chips were the perfect conveyors for the sauces. These can vary from week to week, but a zesty and sprightly green sauce was perfect for those that can’t handle chilli heat. A smoky, sizzingly punchy red salsa was a delight for those that can, but without overwhelming and spoiling the palate for everything else.

The chips are down.

Tres leches ice cream was an odd beast. It was very dense and elastic, much more so than gelato, but not to the same extent as Turkish dondurma. Even so, it was substantial enough to fuel hill walkers and mountain climbers. It didn’t really capture either the sweetness or milkiness of traditional tres leches cake though. The crunchy peanuts were neither here nor there, while a drizzling of fudge quickly congealed into surreal ribbon-like strips that added even less to the mix. An interesting, but ultimately flawed dessert.

This review’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by eating at London’s other new Mexican restaurants. Reviews coming imminently. Honest.

Going back for seconds

Musky Rider is a novice to the joys of non-Tex-Mex food and is a riotous laugh too, making him the perfect dining companion for my second and final meal at Breddos. He was immediately taken with the beef short rib tacos – tender, unctuously moreish beef was a true delight, with sweet vineagary onions cutting through the fatty bovine richness.

The tortillas were a tad nuttier and sweeter this time around, but there wasn’t much in it.

Although less visceral and immediately accessible than the beef short rib tacos, the filling in the pork tacos shouldn’t be overlooked. Moist and tender pig meat was blessed with a subtly fruit moreishness, while sharp pickled onions and lightly soured cream neatly offset the meatiness. A class act.

Where ‘cream over my meat’ is finally no longer either a joke or an obscenity.

I’m usually underwhelmed by fried chicken, especially with the so-so poultry typically stuffed into a taco, but that wouldn’t be the case if everyone could match Breddos’ artistry with the deep fat fryer. The apparently corn-based batter here was exceptionally crisp and light, entirely free of excess oil, with the chicken underneath somehow managing to be wispy and light, almost to be point of resembling fish, yet finishing off with a squidgy, meaty plumpness.

Penging munch.

A few other reviewers have turned up their noses at the sea urchin tostada. Don’t listen to them. The funky, salty umami of the buttery soft sea urchin was a visceral, sensual pleasure fit for a queen. Creamy sweet and equally soft scallops with a clean aftertaste was the perfect follow-up. The only let-down was the crunchy, stodgy fried tortilla base which tended to get in the way of the double-punch seafood.

Puffy Ami-Umi.

The octopus tostada didn’t quite reach the same visceral heights as the sea urchin variant, but it wasn’t too far off. Tender, yielding segments of octopus had a gentle yet evocative salty tang of the sea that was somehow complimented, rather than overwhelmed by the creamy sweet avocado puree. All of this managed to hold their own against the stodgy fried tortilla base too.

I’m not usually a fan of tostadas, but I can get on board if the toppings are as excellent as these.

Plump and juicy mussels, already far more impressive than the flaccid and underperforming molluscs at Belgo, were taken to another level by a gently spiced sauce dotted with a hefty helping of minced pork. The levels of umami, sea saltiness and peppery spice were intensely, thigh-rubbingly satisfying. It was almost like a miniature Som Saa curry and came close to outclassing the mussels themselves.

The sauce is unpictured. There’s only so much I can do in dim lighting, y’know.

Breddos’ tlayuda was noticeably smaller than the ones I tried in Oaxaca and with a base of just one rather than two tortillas. It was a good ‘un though – lightly baked with a gentle chewiness. It was topped by a duo of moreish and moist, if somewhat underwhelming chicken and a far more interesting cheese that was wispy and light, yet creamy too. There’s potential here, but it’s telling that, at the time of writing, Breddos has yet to roll out a more extensive selection of tlayudas as promised in their initial sample menu. I await their future efforts with keen anticipation.

Don’t call it a Mexican pizza.

A version of pork Al Pastor using a standard cut of pig was, unsurprisingly, not as superlative texture-wise as the Old Spot version from my first meal at Breddos. It’s still worth savouring though – tender, occasionally fatty strips of swine flesh had hints of fruit and a moreish undertone. Sharp pineapple segments as well as a briney and vinegary selection of pickled onions, chillies and carrots proved complimentary, both with each other and with the pork itself. The interplay of meatiness, tingly heat and sharp sweetness was a lip-smacking delight.

Don’t laugh too much or too loudly, otherwise the wannabe Sloaney, cocktail-sipping brigade will give you dirty looks.

I wasn’t expecting much from the passion fruit sorbet, which made its smoothness and lack of uncomfortable icy crunch all the more welcome. Just as importantly, it captured the evocatively sweet sugary sharp essence of the fruit.

Refreshing.

The Verdict

The state of Mexican food in London has progressed since my original burrito and taco group test, albeit in fits and starts. Breddos’ cooking doesn’t quite have the same precision and nuance as the now sadly-closed Santo Remedio, but it comes very close. Even so, the bold, uncompromising and layered flavours of its sauces, meats, taco fillings and even its tostada toppings are treasures to be savoured. Breddos is one of the few Mexican restaurants in London that captures some of the feel of Mexico’s complex and strident food culture, while also charting its own course and crafting its own identity with non-traditional ingredients and techniques.

The dining room is a little too dark, the friendly service can be scatty and the seating could be plusher. But Breddos’ food more than makes up for all of that. It’s not only thumpingly good, it’s a soothing balm for the soul and I hope it never closes.

What to order: Almost everything

What to skip: Possibly the tres leches ice cream and chicken tlayuda

Name: Breddos Tacos

Address: 82 Goswell Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1V 7DB

Phone: 020 3535 8301

Web: http://breddostacos.com

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-15.00 and 18.00-23.00. Closed Sunday.

Reservations: not taken

Average cost for one person including soft drinks and service charge: £31-38 approx. (£50 approx. if you really push the boat out)

Rating: ★★★★★

Borough Market tacos has its ups and downs

Restaurant decor has fallen into a bit of a rut in recent years. From exposed brick walls and concrete floors to reclaimed furniture and brass fittings, it’s rare to be truly surprised by the interior of any London restaurant these days. While El Pastor, on the edge of Borough Market, doesn’t quite escape some of these interior design cliches, it’s still much more distinctive than most. Situated inside an old railway arch, El Pastor’s fusing of shipping container-style corrugated metal with curved brickwork is surprisingly elegant. Festoon string party lighting isn’t terribly original either, but it all feels quite coherent rather than a jumble of architectural and interior decor fads.

There are some oddities and problems with the design of El Pastor’s interior though. I’m sceptical of the odd Jubilee line-style padded half-standing half-seated perches at the tables near the bar – especially given how sluggish the service can be. The lack of curved banquette seating in the corners means those tables can be a tight, uncomfortable squeeze – especially when the service inadvisedly insists on shimming a group of four into it, as it did on my second meal here, when it’s suited for no more than three.

That aside, El Pastor is one of the new wave of Mexican restaurants in London following in the wake of Santo Remedio. As if the exemplary standards of that now-closed Shoreditch restaurant wasn’t a high enough bar, El Pastor is also the latest venture of the Hart brothers – the owners of the vaunted Barrafina and the current incarnation of Soho institution Quo Vadis. Expectations are tricky beasts; especially when they involve mastering the art of Mexican cuisine.

First things first

Breddos Tacos, El Pastor’s Clerkenwell competition, has been slowly winning me over to tostadas which made the effort here all the more disappointing. Raw tuna had a light umami and a delicately nutty sesame glaze, but this was easily overwhelmed, not by the creamy guacamole, but by the stodgy and hard fried tortilla base.

The Borough Market location is almost a licence to print money.

El Pastor gets its name from its signature dish, a pork taco that owes its doner-like origins to Mexico’s Lebanese immigrants. If you’re within sight of the open kitchen at the back, then you may catch a glimpse of the elephant leg of meat on the upright spit. The corn tortillas, as with all the tacos at El Pastor, tasted tame, but were at least sturdy and reasonably fluffy. This was oddly fitting for the pork filling though, allowing its chorizo-like and chipotle-esque smoked chilli taste to shine through. This was conveyed on fleshy, moist and tender strands of pig. This utterly sensual delight wasn’t too rich, but the refreshingly crisp onions were nonetheless welcome and cut through the porkiness. Deceptively simple and excellent.

Less is more.

The pescetarian version of the Al Pastor taco was less successful, with sea bass substituting for swine. The moist and flaky bits of fish were fine, but this proved to be a less satisfyingly visceral conveyor for the Al Pastor-style rub which was itself surprisingly muted here.

According to Snaggletooth, those padded half-standing half-seated perches inside Jubilee-line carriages are, in TfL-speak, the prosaically named ‘multi-purpose areas’. We’re not sure if the equivalent perches at Jubilee line stations have an official name or not.

A far better alternate way of getting another Al Pastor fix was the gringa quesadilla. A big, smooth, sweet and wheat-based tortilla had the exceptional Al Pastor pork within its folds alongside a gooey dollop of melted Oaxacan-style cheese. The latter didn’t have the same level of saltiness as the Oaxacan cheese I had in Oaxaca City itself, but it still made for a fine quesadilla filling.

The stools at the small bar are somewhat comfortable.

I wasn’t expecting much from the chicken tacos, which made the gently smoky and moreish rub on the chicken shreds all the more satisfying. The chicken itself had a lightly chewy and caramelised crust which sounds weird, but added some pleasing variation in texture that chicken usually lacks.

Here’s the thing about opinions: they’re all wrong unless they’re mine.

The ‘Bounty chocolate bar’ was more like a supermarket-level caramel square with the addition of desiccated coconut. Even the squirt of refreshing sour cream couldn’t hide the mundanity of a dish that you could rustle up yourself from left-overs in the middle of the night when you develop a case of the munchies.

Note to pedants about the last caption: it was a joke.

Going back for seconds

The Jolly Giant, Pikmin and The Lensman helped me sample a wider swathe of the menu for my second and final visit to El Pastor, putting up with the cramped corner table (as detailed above) with more good humour than the squeezed situation deserved. Chunky, creamy and lightly zesty guacamole distracted us from the enforced platonic knee nuzzling, although the crispy pork scratchings used for scooping were so inconsequentially light that they were more like vaguely pig-flavoured Quavers.

Try not to get too much of it in your beards.

I’m pretty sure I ate these last year at the office Christmas party.

The tame aguachile dressing in the prawn ceviche allowed the firm and lightly springy prawns to stand out, a tactic that would’ve worked even better if the prawns themselves had a little more zingy fresh pep to them. All of this was understated enough to make the nutty and crisp totopos, a sort of toasted tortilla from Oaxaca, the best thing on this plate.

The radishes look nice, but I don’t remember them at all. I must’ve had a radish blackout.

Prawn tacos proved to be a more convincing prawn dish, due in large part to the garlicky, zesty sauce. The tortillas were thicker, fluffier, nuttier and a tad bigger than before, but no less sturdy compared to the ones from my first meal at El Pastor.

The moment where I curse myself for not adjusting my camera settings a little more.

Chorizo and potato tacos were more starchy and sprightly than meaty. This, along with an odd texture akin to finely ground mince, made for an unmemorable bite.

Objects in the photo are not as greasy as they appear in real life.

The chicken tacos were just as good as they were before. The signature Al Pastor tacos, on the other hand, had regressed. The chorizo-esque, chipotle-ish chilli smokiness was significantly more subdued – a mere ebb and flow, rather than the intense rush of before. While the pork was still moist and meaty, it wasn’t as outstandingly tender as it had been before. This level and type of inconsistency on a restaurant’s signature dish is a very worrying sign.

If there’s a delay in the waiters taking your order, it’s probably because they have to continuously turn their router off and back on again before their iPads will work.

Pork barrel.

Confit pork tacos were far more satisfying. The meat is served in a pot with the tortillas and garnishes on the side – you assemble each taco yourself. The unctuously moist, tender and fatty qualities of the pork were emphasised by the quivering and equally rich bone marrow – a garnish which, quite inexplicably given how essential it turned out to be, is an optional extra. Small pork scratching crumbs was the best of the garnishes. Not because it added any extra porkiness (which it didn’t and none was needed anyway), but because it provided a neat contrast in texture between dry crispness on the one hand and tender fleshiness and gelatinous wobble on the other. It was, in other words, a success even if I did find myself looking back longingly at the Al Pastor tacos from my first meal.

The smallest pot size is for two, although I reckon I could’ve polished it off solo.

Given the dip in quality of the Al Pastor pork, it was no surprise that the gringa quesadilla wasn’t as satisfying as before. The Al Pastor pork was a tad more moist and unctuous than it was in the tacos, but it was still not a patch on its first incarnation. The melted, gooey Oaxaca-style cheese was a bit saltier too, but it was still a tame effort compared to the addictively stringy goo I tried in Oaxaca City.

If ‘El Pastor’ literally translates as ‘The Shepherd’, then who/where is the sheep?

Oddly, the roast squash quesadilla was off with a mushroom substitute taking its place. The supple and tart mushrooms were joined by the same Oaxacan-style cheese from the gringa, but the attention-grabber here was the dollop of sharp, sour and tangy sauce served on the side. Probably a tamarind sauce of some kind, it tasted somewhat similar to Japanese umeboshi (pickled apricot) and just as much of an acquired taste. Given the relatively timid cheese in the quesadilla itself, more of the sauce, as well as a more potent version of it, would’ve been welcome.

Partially devoured.

My dining companions passed on dessert, leaving me to sample the pineapple with chilli and mint alone. The surprisingly generous helping of pineapple was sweet with a subdued sharpness and a hint of mint. The latter, combined with a gentle tickle of chilli in the crushed granita spooned on top of the pineapple, made for a dessert that was refreshingly cool without being overly brisk or bracing. It’d be great in a sweltering London summer, but felt a little out of place in the depths of winter. I couldn’t help but hanker after a heartier tres leches cake or churros. Or perhaps even some tart and musky fruit from the Yucatan. One can dream.

Summer dreaming.

The Verdict

Distinctive architecture specific to its address aside, El Pastor feels like a template for a potential chain or mini-chain. From the branded tee-wearing, iPad-wielding staff and the odd seating to the short, easy to understand and undemanding menu full of dishes that are largely straightforward to replicate at scale, El Pastor feels like more than just a solo destination restaurant.

This wouldn’t be a surprise from the minds behind Barrafina, but I could be wrong. In any case, El Pastor is already better than many of the other Mexican restaurants in town which is enough by itself to squeak in a Four Star rating. More work is still needed though – some dishes need a little refinement and the dramatic wobble in the consistency of the signature Al Pastor pork is deeply concerning. Overall, it’s not a patch on Breddos Tacos which is simply better from the ambition of its menu to the level of its culinary execution and flair. Still, more competition is good and if El Pastor doesn’t up its game in the face of it then I’d be very surprised indeed.

What to order: Prawn tacos; Chicken tacos; Confit pork tacos

What to skip: Nothing is truly bad enough to be worth avoiding entirely

Name: El Pastor

Address: 7a Stoney Street, Borough, London SE1 9AA

Phone: 020 3879 3834

Web: https://www.tacoselpastor.co.uk

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-15.00 and 18.00-23.00; closed Sunday. 

Reservations: not taken. 

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £30-37 approx.

Rating: ★★★★☆

2016: I love you and I hate you

2016 may have a stomach churning, gut punching year in the realm of politics and celebrity deaths, but at least it’s also been a rip-roaring thrill ride for Londoners who like to eat out. Some truly wondrous restaurants have opened in the capital over the past year – and London already has more than its fair share of belly-bulging beauties.

In previous end-of-year special articles, I’ve examined the most popular restaurants of the past 12 months based on what you like – or more specifically my website stats indicating which restaurants you, collectively, have most likely visited. I abandoned this approach at the end of 2015 as the same old patterns were repeating themselves which doesn’t tell you, or me, anything new or interesting.

Instead, I scanned my beady eyes over the best dishes of the year. I’ve done the same again for 2016, rounding up the very best dishes which are still available so you can enjoy them (hopefully as much as I did). As with 2015, this was a little more difficult than it initially sounds. The renewed focus on seasonal ingredients and dishes as well as the ever evolving, experimental ambitions of the best restaurant kitchens means that some blockbuster dishes aren’t available all year round – or at least not in the exact forms in which I first encountered them. I’ve therefore stretched and bent my rule, in places, on only including dishes that are still available.

Choucroute à l’Alsacienne at Bellanger

Bellanger is a delightfully tranquil and grown-up Alsace-Lorraine restaurant in Islington. Although getting a table on and around the weekend can be hard, it’s still one of my preferred cubby-holes after a stressful day thanks to the well-oiled service, soothing surroundings and comforting Alsatian classics such as the Choucroute à l’Alsacienne. A collection of pork products, potatoes and sauerkraut may not sound like much, but it is when it involves well-chosen comfort cuts of pig that hit the spot both in terms of texture and taste from speck-like pork belly to ham hock and sausages good enough to rival their Germanic counterparts.

A meat-ing of minds.

Rasam ke bomb and lamb chops at Gunpowder

London is seeing a new wave of casual Indian restaurants that eschew the curry house staples in favour of more eclectic, esoteric and lighter fare. New batches of such eateries seem to come and go every few years, but I hope that Gunpowder doesn’t go anywhere, anytime soon.

The rasam ke bomb, a sort of puchka crossed with a mini dosa, was filled with light and fluffy lentils and made even better by a dipping consommé of uncommon depth and sophistication. A superb pairing.

Bob-omb.

Globular goodness.

Whitechapel stalwart Tayyabs is located a short distance away from Gunpowder and is famed for its lamb chops. But Gunpowder’s chops are even better with a crisp crust and a mutli-layered, multi-spiced wet rub that elevated the meat to new heights.

Rub my chops.

Biang biang noodles at Xi’an Impression

Xi’an Impression has been around for a while now, but this small Chinese restaurant near the Emirates stadium was still one of my highlights of the year despite its cramped, unglamorous surroundings as it’s one of the very few Chinese restaurants in London specialising in Shaanxi cuisine. The biang biang noodles tower above almost every other dry (i.e. not served in soup) noodle dish in the capital – thick, wide, supple and taut ribbons tingling with spice and interspersed with crisp bok choy. It’s sublime in its deceptive simplicity.

It’s worth mentioning that a deliberately profane and crass poetic flourish in my original review pissed off a commenter from Temper (another restaurant featured in this retrospective) which delights my inner juvenile delinquent. Always a plus.

Biang biang noodles with bok choy.

The desserts at Som Saa

Som Saa was undoubtedly one of the most intensely pleasurable restaurants I visited all year, but its ever-changing menu makes it tricky to include in this dish-based guide. It’s unlikely any of the firecracker curries, salads or soups will leave you disappointed, but for our purposes I’m highlighting their equally splendid desserts. Both the palm sugar ice cream with grilled banana and the poached jackfruit with coconut milk and grilled rice are subject to tweaks and changes, but I’m including them here anyway. Not only are they delicious enough to impress The Euro Hedgie, my vicious dessert snob of a dining companion, but they show just how mind-expandingly good a dessert can be when pastry chefs stop depending on spiralling levels of mediocre chocolate and heart-stopping amounts of butter.

kanon waan dtom gati

This food a-peels to me.

A meaty threesome at Kiln

Like Som Saa, Kiln is a Thai restaurant that blows away the fusty cobwebs that have built up over the cuisine’s undeservedly tired and staid image in London with startlingly bright, vibrant and hot flavours that are also nuanced and precise. Sumptuously soft slices of beef short rib served in a musky sweet sauce tingling with a cumulative heat will make you forget that drab green chicken curry ever existed.

Go wild.

Kiln’s brill dish is subject to change, with other fish sometimes taking its place. Light, yet meaty and glossy sheaves of brill proved to be an ideal conveyor for a thin sauce bursting with the classic Thai flavours of lemongrass and galangal, but have rarely been shown off to better effect.

This brill was brill.

I could include almost everything on the menu at Kiln in this guide, but I’ll finish this entry with the pork belly served with brown crab and glass noodles. On paper, this is nothing more than a few cheap cuts of meat and seafood with weedy-looking noodles. In practice, the porcine fattiness meshed beautifully with the grainy, evocative tang of the sea and supple, umami noodles. Class.

What lies beneath.

Brisket and ribs at Texas Joe’s Smoked Meats

Smokestak in Shoreditch has been lauded by some other reviewers as the best American-style barbecue in London, or at least has been garlanded with uncritical praise. While Smokestak is indeed very good, it’s a decidedly second-best option next to Texas Joe’s Smoked Meats. I can only speculate as to why Texas Joe’s has been overlooked by others, especially when Joe’s truly superlative beef brisket, beef short rib and pork spare ribs set the standard by which all other London US-style barbecue restaurants are now judged. You should rush down there right now. Don’t make a liar out of me, Joe.

One of my visits coincided with the press dinner. I wonder how many of the subsequent reviews declared their freebie.

Jacob’s sadder at all the awful/mediocre beef ribs out there. Come to Texas Joe’s instead.

Pork. The other white meat.

Smoked lamb neck at Pitt Cue (Liverpool Street)

Pitt Cue is now mentioned in the same breath as Texas Joe’s when it comes to London barbecue, but the two aren’t really the same thing anymore with Pitt Cue moving away from the Southern canon and embracing meats, cuts and techniques that make it a British barbecue joint in a class all its own. Almost any dish made using Pitt Cue’s iconic mangalitsa pigs is enough to make me audibly lustful, but including a whole class of meat would be stretching the bounds of this dish-based guide one sinew too far.

Instead, I’ll highlight a fairly frequent special dish that’s almost as wonderful as the mangalitsa-derived pork – smoked lamb neck. Its combination of visceral sensuality and sophisticated nuance was more than enough to tickle my tongue and warm my gonads in various indecent ways.

Utterly delightful.

Darling, your vertebrae are showing.

Lamb and the cheeseburger tacos at Temper

Neil Rankin, the head chef at Soho’s Temper, is even more cantankerous than I am on social media so it’s no surprise that I’ve managed to piss him off on Twitter at least once a year for several years going now. He’s a lovely chap in person though (and I’m fairly certain he didn’t, errr, penetrate my anonymity cloak), but it would be still be worth eating at Temper even if he wasn’t.

Various smoked and grilled meats are served by weight in 100g portions so you can have as little or as much as you like (a fact hilariously missed by some other reviewers). Although this means your serving of meat won’t line up exactly with what I had, I’d be astonished if your lamb isn’t as well-crafted as mine was – tender and pink with a gently earthiness, beautifully rendered fat and a chewy, fruity bark.

A revelation.

Temper’s selection of tacos can be hit and miss with some so-so quality tortillas involved, but the cheeseburger tacos is definitely one of Rankin’s best. Minced beef good enough to put most full-size burgers to shame was beautifully complimented with umami-crusted potato and a thigh-slapping sauce. Sorry Killer Tomato, but you’ve been decisively one-upped in the burger-taco stakes.

Better than Killer Tomato’s burger tacos by a country mile. Or a country kilometre.

Tacos and tostadas at Breddos Tacos

Breddos Tacos hasn’t been getting as much critical love and attention as El Pastor and, once again, I can only speculate as to why. Although this Clerkenwell restaurant isn’t as steadfastly traditional as its Borough rival in its choice of tortilla fillings and toppings, it’s nonetheless consistently better in almost everything it does.

Despite the so-so tortillas, I could wax lyrical about almost all of Breddos’ tacos. I’ll highlight just two though. Battered, deep-fried sweetbreads combined sumptuously rich and squidgy offal with a batter that was somehow both crisp and lightly chewy.

Sweetbread sweetheart.

I’ve frequently voiced my unpopular opinion that chicken is a dull, uninteresting meat fit only for children and the elderly. One of the few exceptions to this rule is the expertly fried chicken used here as a taco filling. Exceptionally crisp and light batter enveloped a chunk of chicken that managed to do what chicken rarely does – it surprised me with a range of sensual textures.

Penging munch.

An honourary mention and 2017

The majority of my best dishes of 2016 are meat-based. While not intentional, it does reveal a latent bias in both my mind and in where a lot of kitchens tend to focus their efforts. I’m not a total meathead however and you shouldn’t be either. Having said that, some of the best non-meat dishes I had this year were found not in London, but in Kyoto. This shouldn’t be a surprise given that ancient city’s centuries long tradition of vegetarian food.

Although of little practical benefit to most Londoners reading this right now, Sagatoufine’s yuba ankake, kumiage yuba and chawanmushi tofu dishes nonetheless showed just how exceptionally delicious and texturally varied tofu dishes can be. Plus, they highlight just how lazy and deeply inadequate a lot of vegetarian food in London and Brighton (London’s plant-eating suburb-on-sea in all but name) really is. If there’s one area in London’s restaurant market ripe for improvement, then it’s this one.

Attempting to decipher Hiragana and Kanji characters when you have a negligible grasp of the language is bloody hard.

Yes, I’d like a bath tub’s worth of tofu please.

Deciding on how to Romanise Japanese names is also a minefield.

Finally, it’s only fitting to pay tribute to the excellent restaurants that have closed in the past year such as Piquet, Yumi Izakaya and Santo Remedio to name just a few. Some of those restaurants may be reborn in one form or another, others may not. The London restaurant business has always been a harsh one with culinary quality far from the only factor in determining success, so tears shouldn’t be shed lightly.

But it’s hard not to feel indignation, especially when drearily mediocre, head-shakingly bad and nauseatingly faddy eateries continue to thrive, while their betters do not. I’m even worse at predicting the future than an election pollster, but I’d be surprised if 2017 doesn’t see more restaurant closures with London’s property crisis and the possible effects of a certain referendum, among other factors, taking their toll.

We live, and eat, in interesting times.

-The Picky Glutton

But it’s not the giant leap that London needs

Santo Remedio was a startling breath fresh of air. Coming seemingly out of nowhere, that Shoreditch restaurant single-handedly revitalised the state of Mexican food in London with a deftness and depth to its cooking that was true to the mother country and a shining example to the capital’s other Mexican restaurants. That made its sudden closure after only a few months of operation all the more crushing.

Corazon, a new and unrelated restaurant in Soho, has already been breathlessly hailed by some as a successor to Santo Remedio. While service was friendly and the diner-like décor soothingly subdued, such overreaching enthusiasm is thus far premature at best.

First things first

One of the most impressive things about Corazon is the quality of the tortillas they use in their tacos. Thin yet flexible and sturdy, they’re also soft and fluffy with a gentle nuttiness that makes its presence felt without detracting from the fillings. Although all of Corazon’s tacos are somewhat overstuffed, leading to some messy drippage, most people probably won’t see this as a drawback.

I don’t usually approve of cheating with bacon, especially as the moist and meaty chicken in the BLT Chicken tacos were perfectly respectable in their own right. The smoky, salty and fatty bacon was almost like pancetta and arguably better than the actual pork belly tacos themselves.

Oink and cluck.

That’s not to say that the pork belly tacos were bad – the swine flesh was dense with a good sense of earthiness and mild milkiness. The porcine shreds were also interspersed with crunchy crackling bits, but the meat was also somewhat dry and lacking in fat too.

The taco business has been on the trot recently.

A similar problem afflicted the carne asada tacos. The medium rare medallions of steak were lightly chewy with hints of umami, but the beef wasn’t nearly as moist as it should’ve been. This made the creamy avocado and sharp pickled onions very welcome, not only for cutting through the relative umami richness of the beef, but also in counteracting its lack of succulence.

The black colour of the tortillas was entirely inconsequential.

A hunk of beef short rib, served still attached to the bone, was unsurprisingly quite similar to the beef used in the carne asada tacos. It was juicier and more chewy though with a supple rind of gelatinous connective tissue attached for some textural variety. It was a tad small for short rib, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing after a hefty trio of tacos.

The beef-to-bone ratio is out of whack.

Served with a pair of tortillas.

Tres leches cake appeared to be topped with a cream cheese frosting, but it was apparently melted marshmallow instead which would explain its whipped, airy texture. The cake itself was tightly crumbed and very moist, no doubt helped along by the thin yet still intensely sweet condensed milk. It’s the perfect dessert for lifting your spirits.

If you think this photo is a bit too yellow, you should’ve seen what it was like before I adjusted it in Photoshop.

Going back for seconds

A surprisingly large number of taco restaurants insist on a mandatory battered fish option. Corazon has wisely avoided this Baja-ish cliché for its pescatarian taco option, opting instead for firm, lightly charred prawns which outshone the unremarkable squid paired with them. Sweet and fleshy sautéed bell peppers and a gooey, lightly salty Oaxacan-style cheese were apt finishing touches on a surprisingly pleasurable pair of tacos.

These seafood tacos are called the ‘Guv’nor tacos’ on the menu. If it’d been the ‘Governator tacos’, then I guess it would have been a giant slab of veal schnitzel delivered in a Humvee.

Although Corazon’s lamb tacos weren’t quite as viscerally sensual as the ones I savoured in Mexico’s Chiapas region a year ago, the gently seasoned and lightly gamey shreds of baby sheep were still worth having. The lamb was also more succulent than the somewhat arid taco meats from my first meal.

If you want truly exceptional lamb in Soho, then you need to visit Temper just around the corner.

A seafood campachena cocktail starter was like a Virgin Mary cocktail in meal form – the thin and mildly umami tomato sauce had a light piquancy and was judiciously seasoned too. The tame mussels and shrimp left much to be desired though. Cockles and whelks might have been less authentic, but it would’ve made for cheaper and more flavoursome seafood for this starter. The tortilla chips served alongside this seafood cocktail were several steps above most tortilla chips – light and crisp, avoiding a heavy sense of stale stodginess.

If you’re averse to seafood, then you need to reconsider your life choices. We live on an island, for Pete’s sake.

Corazon’s pork shoulder stew is available both small and large portions, with the former more than enough for one person if you’ve already had plenty of tacos beforehand. Although moist and meaty, the star of the show wasn’t the strands of otherwise so-so pork. It was instead the moreish, lightly seasoned broth as well as the big, yielding and nut-like corn kernels bobbing alongside the pork. The crunchy and moreish fried tortilla provided for scooping up loose bits of pig and corn shouldn’t be ignored either.

Lid flipper.

A small burden to shoulder.

Although the puddle of aniseed-ish syrup was an odd fit for the coconut flan that won’t suit everyone, the flan itself was a joy. A firm and milky crème caramel-style affair topped with crisp coconut shavings showed off the kitchen’s surprising flair for desserts.

It’s always a good idea to have a backup flan.

Wash it all down with a milky, chocolatey tasting glass of horchata. The somewhat sour, tangy and cloying taste of the hibiscus iced tea wasn’t to my liking though.

Horchata halo.

Making your own horchata is surprisingly time consuming.

The Verdict 

Corazon isn’t the new Santo Remedio. Although that Shoreditch restaurant wasn’t perfect, Corazon’s cooking still isn’t as accomplished and full of nuanced depth as Santo Remedio was at its height. There’s little attempt to tackle demanding dishes rarely seen in the UK, such as moles or Veracruzan fish dishes, or tricksy ingredients such as octopus. Even so, Corazon is still one of the better Mexican restaurants in Soho and is worth your time and money if you happen to be in the area. But if you want a far accomplished taste of Mexico, with panache and intensity to spare, then you owe it to yourself to visit Breddos Tacos instead.

What to order: Seafood tacos; Pork shoulder stew; Desserts

What to skip: Nothing is truly bad enough to be worth avoiding

Name: Corazon

Address: 29 Poland Street, London W1F 8QR

Phone: 0203 813 1430

Web: http://www.corazonlondon.co.uk

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-14.30 and 17.30-23.00; closed Sunday.

Reservations: highly recommended the closer you get to the weekend

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £35 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This Japan-focussed article is a break from The Picky Glutton’s usual London-based coverage

For many the archetypal image of Japan is the buzzing, sprawling megacity exemplified by Tokyo. But, to state the trite and obvious, there’s another side to the country which is just as compelling – the countryside. One sliver of Japan’s expansive rural hinterland is the Kumano Kodo, a centuries-old pilgrimage trail valued by both Shinto and syncretic Shino-Buddhist adherents. It’s a terrific way to soak in serene and bucolic scenes of rural and coastal Japan while also eating well for modest sums of money.

The Kumano Kodo consists of numerous hiking routes running from West to East through Wakayama Prefecture’s Kii Peninsula, roughly three hours south of Kyoto by train. The very idea of hauling my bloviating, globular arse through forests and mountains will probably seem counterintuitive to most of you, but few things work up a ravenous appetite better than a boot-scuffing 20km a day trek over four days taking in breath-taking scenes of rural tranquility.

Forest shrine.

There are hiking itineraries of varying durations for all skill levels with the surprisingly detailed municipal reservations website handling everything from accommodation to luggage transfers and packed lunches. It’s this kind of attention to detail that can make holidaying in Japan elegant and integrated.

Takahara hilltop village.

Staying at a traditional Japanese inn (either a minshuku or a ryokan – although the differences between the two can be very fluid) isn’t just about having room and board. At their best, they provide a warm and charming welcome, a multicourse meal of dishes made with seasonal ingredients, before or after which you can take a steaming hot communal bath (a sento or ofuro) or a geothermally heated mineral spa (an onsen) to soothe your bones.

Tanabe izakaya – Kanteki

Tanabe is the rather non-descript city which many foreign tourists use a jumping-off point for their trek along the Kumano Kodo. Despite allegedly having 80,000 inhabitants, the downtown core can seem all but deserted. That all changes once you step through the door at Kanteki, an izakaya located on an out-of-the-way side street.

While the stoic cliques at the Sakagurakomachuu izakaya in Tokyo was a rather sedate crowd, Kanteki’s clientele revelled in their warm and friendly boisterousness. Although you could just chug beer and sake at Kanteki, it would be a crime to skip the food. Scabbardfish sashimi was simultaneously meaty and delicate with a crisp skin and subtly citrusy flesh. It was irrestibly addictive.

Apparently a different fish from the Iberian black scabbard fish.

Light, inoffensive and somewhat crumbly prawn patties had a Dim Sum-like moreish quality to them, while grilled squid was firm and lightly chewy.

These patties were kinda Dim Sum-ish, but larger.

White stripe.

Legs that just don’t stop.

The light crunch of the chicken cartilage will put some people off. If you can get past that though, then you’ll be rewarded with a firm and moist bite, a gentle level of caramelisation and a dash of sweet and sharp lemon juice.

Cartilage, not Carthage.

Meaty, salty fresh and lightly chewy clams would’ve been more than delectable enough on their own, but a thin yet punchy sauce brought the rich taste of butter and chives into the mix.

Shell game.

Tender fillets of grilled eel came lacquered in a rich, dark glaze that balanced both umami and sweetness to great effect.

If it’s possible for a fish to have an onomatopoeic name, then eel would be it.

Mackerel on sushi rice sounds quite prosaic and ordinary on paper, but these nigiri-esque rolls didn’t just look unusual. The fish was a delightful surprise, tasting very different from the mackerel any of us were familiar with. Light yet meaty, the mackerel had a delicate citrus-like flavour rather than the usual punchy tang. As expected, the small-grained rice was suitably soft and fluffy.

The locals really were a convivial and friendly bunch.

Kanteki’s tempura wasn’t in the same league as Shinjuku’s Tempura Tsunahachi. While free of excess oil, the batter wasn’t anywhere as soft and fluffy. Still, most of our deep-fried, battered seafood choices still managed to shine through. Octopus was firm and meaty, while plump scallops were springy and moist with a zingy edge. Only the scabbardfish, so delightful in sashimi form, let the side down with their light inoffensiveness.

You can linger over a drink and watch Japanese baseball on the telly, if you so desire.

We eventually managed to communicate our desire for more sashimi using our broken Japanese, so it was somehow apt that the selection that arrived was a mixed bag. Scallops made a repeat appearance, a light searing on the outside emphasising their chunky meatiness. Mackerel, of the more traditional variety, was suitably visceral. Yellowtail and tuna were unremarkable though, while flying fish was far too subtle for its own good. At least the barramundi was dense in its fleshiness.

Four pieces of silver.

A lot of old-school Japanese restaurants are nothing if not well-lit.

Waka, Waka!

The only truly duff dish of the evening was the deep-fried aubergine. Stodgy on the outside and filled with soft, flaky and bland meat on the inside. Unworthy.

Eggplant on my face.

You can feast like a king at Kanteki for very reasonable sums of money – our bevy of dishes, including a small flight of sake for Vicious Alabaster, came to around £30 each. It’s not just the food that makes Kanteki special though – this izakaya wouldn’t be quite as enjoyable without its warm, welcoming atmosphere.

Minshuku Tsugizakura

There would be little reason to visit this inn if it wasn’t situated on the Kumano Kodo’s Nakahechi route as it’s located on a ridge overlooking a non-descript village. That’s something of a shame as the hospitality at Minshuku Tsugizakura puts many bigger, better-located accommodations to shame. From the charming warmth of the proprietors to the cosy yet spick and span interior as well as neat extras from free makeup and a free-to-use washing machine to surprisingly fast WiFi, it has almost everything you could need (¥10,300 per night person, including all three meals, approx. £71 at the time of writing).

Multi-course kasieki ryori meals have a reputation for being expensive, stiff and haute affairs, but they’re almost always included in the price of your stay at a ryokan and some minshukus. That makes a minshuku or ryokan stay an accessible way of trying out this stylised, multi-course form of eating.

Dinner

Dinner kicked off with cubes of meaty, firm and glossy tuna sashimi dressed in sesame seeds and a lightly sweet mirin-based glaze. It wasn’t the finest tuna we’d end up having on our trek through Wakayama’s Kii Peninsula (that honour goes to the Hotel Nakanoshima in Kii-Katsuura), but it was pleasing enough – especially when taken with the gently sweet wasabi and crisp radish slice.

Sashimi hat.

Meaty prawn nigiri, a meaty nugget of neatly fried fish and starchy gingko nuts were a well-formed trio bound together by fresh gingko fruit which had some of the nuttiness of the more familiar gingko nut, but with a cleaner, fresher aftertaste.

Stick man.

Small bits of mushroom were bound together by a light application of batter. It was a surprisingly transient, unmemorable affair for a deep-fried dish.

This article’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by pissing about on Instagram.

Far more interesting was the moreishly sticky broth dotted with salty and umami fish sticks and sharp, fleshy aubergine. An unusual concoction that tickled my fancy.

Goo tickles.

A moist and meaty selection of thinly sliced beef, pork belly and sausage along with some cabbage were bound together with a reasonably umami miso sauce. Although I’ll never say no to a meaty sausage tip, this dish was an ultimately prosaic and by-the-numbers if warming affair.

Meat pot, not potted meat.

The thin slice of lightly smoked salmon seemed like an unnecessary concession to our Western sensibilities. Its very subtle smokiness and lack of grease allowed the crisp fruit and lightly sharp and brined cucumbers to take centre stage. It was by no means bad – it was just underwhelming compared to the world of both smoked and brined salmon dishes out there.

Fetch me my smoking jacket, Jenkins.

A Japanese-style curry came topped with crutons and a thin filmy skin on top. Aside from these oddities, it sat well within the confines of most Japanese curries – sweet and warming, but not particularly interesting. I found its best use was as a topping for the gently-stewed salmon, vegetables and tofu fried rice which were otherwise lacking in flavor.

Sensibly sized portions of curry would never catch on anywhere else in the world.

Fried rice I can get on board with.

A lightly umami miso soup acted as an effective palate cleanser, paving the way of the blood orange sorbet. Although true to the fruit in taste, its grainy texture and startlingly uncomfortable coldness were unwelcome intruders.

Black hole.

Crunch time.

The warabimochi wasn’t quite as accomplished the version of this dessert at Kyoto’s Sagatoufuine, but its squidgy texture and nuttiness, emphasized by the dusting of roasted soybean flour, still made for a fine finishing dish.

Someone out there is making mini wooden spatulas just for Japan.

Breakfast

Dinner at Minshuku Tsugizakura was a mixed bag with some sterling dishes sitting cheek by jowl with other, far more mundane ones. Breakfast was a more consistently well-executed meal, stemming perhaps from the simpler nature of some of the dishes here.

Julienned strips of squid were firm with a clean after taste, paving the way for crisp and equally fresh kiwi fruit, grape and Nashi pear.

It’s no weirder than having kedgeree for breakfast.

Minshuku Tsugizakura has, amusingly and quite prosaically, swivelled chairs at its dining table.

Creamy and distinctively flavoured lychee yoghurt was a light and sweet pleasure. A different kind of sweetness was on display in the squidgy tofu. Bouncy and soft in texture, but soaked in mirin for a gentle, almost boozy sweetness. I could’ve done with a little more mangetout and yuba, but less is usually more with Japanese food – especially when you’re faced with just one dish of many.

Ly-yo.

This article’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by Sigur Ros.

Earthy root vegetables had a hint of zingy tartness and came dusted with sesame seeds. All that might sound heavy or dull, but it proved to be light and surprisingly energising.

The selection of Japanese crockery back home is a bit crap.

Templeton Peck remarked, both seriously and sarcastically in the understated way that only he can manage, that Japanese breakfasts seem to be much like any other meal. His groggy-eyed desire for something a little more familiar was met with a creamy omelette, almost akin to a Spanish tortilla with its thin, folded gossamer layers. Served alongside it were a pair of nigiri rice rolls topped with more egg and then bound with ham – a playful and surprisingly light way of enjoying hearty, salty meat.

Green, eggs and ham.

Vicious Alabaster had a different hankering – one for bread. She got it in the form a buttery, creamy brioche-style roll filled with a whipped egg-cream filling that was not only viscerally enjoyable but also reminded me of Hong Kong-style baked breakfast goods. Disappointingly, the onsen egg was a non-event with a surprising lack of yolky richness.

Way too many of my dining companions have been putting buns into ovens.

More bowls need to have spouts.

One of my personal highlights of this breakfast had to be the oden – squidgy, umami fish cakes with the latter quality emphasised by the broth it was served in. Hearty and warming, it felt more like winter lunch or dinner sleep-inducing fodder rather than an energising breakfast dish. Still, I couldn’t fault it for taste.

Oden, the all-father of stews.

My other highlight had to be the Japanese pickles. Whether sweet, sharp and tangy or earthy and beetroot-like, they never failed to impress. It sounds silly, but it shows that even the simple things in life can benefit from attention to detail.

The Japanese really do have pickling licked.

Lunch

Of all the pre-ordered boxed lunches on our trek, Minshuku Tsugizakura’s had to be the best and most varied. Generously sized onigiri with a nutty crust had fillings ranging from surprisingly sweet umeboshi to salty and meaty grilled salmon.

If Itsu ever do onigiri, they’d probably screw it up.

The firm squid from breakfast made a welcome repeat appearance in a miniature bento box alongside creamy tamago, earthy vegetables and a moreish hot dog. The jewels in this lunchtime crown had to be the sweet, tangy and dense candied pork cubes and the juicy blood orange that was so intensely sweet, it almost reminded me of an Opal Fruit.

Always with the mini hot dogs.

Ryokan Adumaya

While the sento at Minshuku Tsugizakura is soothingly steamy and relaxing, it’s a consolation prize compared to having a proper onsen such as the one at Ryokan Adumaya. A surprisingly large place and essentially a hotel in all but name, Adumaya draws its stress-easing hot spring waters from the same source as the public Yunomine Onsen just outside its doors.

The large communal baths and the much smaller outdoor bath are well-maintained and picturesque, helped along by their stone cladding, but the rest of Ryokan Adumaya is much more worn around the edges. While comfortable and cosy if you don’t look too closely, peeling paint on the odd door, musty wardrobes and the buzzing of ill-fitted/misbehaving fluorescent lights gave this ryokan a sense of faded grandeur.

The staff were surprisingly lackadaisical in our experience, with the notable exception of our chirpy, warm, easy going and rosy-cheeked waitress who served us both breakfast and dinner in our private dining room (starting at ¥17,800 per night per person, including breakfast and dinner, approx. £124 at the time of writing).

Dinner

Although Ryokan Adumaya served up a mackerel sushi roll that looked a lot like the one at Kanteki back in Tanabe, it wasn’t as well-formed. Reasonably punchy mackerel lay arched on top of a large serving of rice. While the latter was spot-on, the mackerel wasn’t as distinctive as Kanteki’s yet nor did it have the same level of bold intensity as the best mackerel back home.

The one annoying thing about our private dining room – the buzz of one malfunctioning fluorescent light.

While the rice porridge had a creamy and eggy mouthfeel, the dominant taste here was of the sweet goji berries. Although a tad unbalanced, I’m starting to come over to the idea of congee and other jook-like dishes if it can be as polished as this.

I would never proxy buy booze or cigs for minors. Lottery tickets and porn are up for negotiation though.

Ryokan Adumaya’s kitchen can clearly compare and contrast textures to great effect. Firm octopus was served alongside a crisp yet yielding and sweet turnip, as well as soft and squidgy seitan. All three had a clean aftertaste, allowing the focus to rest on the mouthfeel.

Don’t make any sudden moves.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the randomly meaty and garlicky morsels served alongside some crisps. Another baffling oddity was the firm prawn served with a small, whole but unimpressive saury and an odd nut that resembled coconut, but with less sweetness and milkiness. The only accompaniment to the prawn that wasn’t a let-down was the sweet and starchy little potato puff, even though it didn’t really gel with the prawn.

Ready salted, I guess.

Nut grab.

The kitchen’s selection of sashimi may have been small, but it was perfectly formed. A firm and lightly citrusy coil of a difficult-to-identify white fish was delightful, as was the mouthfeel of the meaty yet tender and yielding tuna. Although the prawn head didn’t have as much suckable head goo as I would’ve liked, the body flesh was sweet and quivering.

Suckable head goo. Pfnarr.

A bowl of what appeared to be Japanese curry was actually a thick pumpkin soup dotted with various additions including prawns and mussels. It was a rather random selection of stuff in a bowl that seemed remarkably clumsy compared to the precision of the sashimi or the the octopus.

Not a curry.

Salt-baked aju was satisfyingly well-seasoned, even if it did lack the odd but deliciously grainy texture that I’d come to expect from aju following my encounter with it at Nara’s Hirasō.

Whatever happened to the other members of Destiny’s Child?

One of the few culinary regrets of this trip was that I didn’t have the chance to savour more shabu shabu hot pot. Exquisitely tender and well-marbled beef, simmered at your table, more than made up for the lackluster mushrooms and greens.

Purple haze.

A gently umami soup flavoured with scallop and crisp, fresh vegetables was refreshing, while the pickles, similar in range and delectability to those served at Minshuku Tsugizakura, helped cleanse the palate.

All this paved the way for sweet and crisp Nashi pear and syrupy sweet cantaloupe. This choice pair of fruit made up for the anticlimactic chestnut miniroll.

Crystal.

I forgot to take photos of the desserts. Sorry folks.

Breakfast

Eating breakfast in your own tatami-lined private dining room is an imminently civilised way to start the day, but I’d trade it all for more flexibility in timing. To be fair, almost all ryokan and minshuku have immutably fixed meal times, but the option to have an earlier breakfast is especially welcome when you’re trekking and need to make the most of the dwindling autumn daylight hours.

Having said that, there are few better ways to gird yourself for a hard day’s hike then meaty and lightly oily grilled fish or crisp, earthy greens topped with quivering and lightly umami bonito flakes.

Today’s fish dish is… I’m not sure what this is.

Green day.

The superlative pickles made a repeat appearance, joined this time by potently bitter, sour and somewhat astringent umeboshi. It’s very much an acquired taste (even The Lensman, a sectioned Japanophile, can’t stand it), but I lapped it up and I would’ve snapped up my dining companions’ discarded umeboshi if I could’ve done so.

Umeboshi is often translated as pickled plum, but the original fruit is apparently more akin to an apricot.

A runny onsen egg somehow managed to be both delicate and rich in equal measure, no doubt helped by a carefully chosen soy sauce on the side which wasn’t too overpowering.

Gudetama.

Vicious Alabaster was more than welcome to my helping of the watery, loose-grained rice porridge. I was much more taken with the fluffy and lightly earthy fish cake served with tart pickled vegetables.

Divisive.

Why is it that the breaded fishcakes so common in the UK are usually manky as hell?

Silky, squidgy tofu paired with crisp, lightly sweet greens was fortifying despite its lightness. A delicately sweet and umami miso soup dotted with curled bits of potato made for a refreshing end.

Green party.

No, those potato rings didn’t come from a packet of Hula Hoops.

Ryokan Adumaya can be surprisingly variable in everything from its interiors and service to various individual dishes, but it’s worth putting up with for the onsite onsen. If you want a more cohesive all-round experience though, there are other minshukus and ryokans surrounding the Yunomine Onsen that might be worth considering – some that also have their own onsens in addition to the public onsen.

Koguchi Shizen-no-Ie

Although much of Wakayama prefecture is suffering from a declining population as more people choose to move to the cities – a problem facing much of rural Japan – nowhere is this demographic shift more evident than the village of Koguchi. Abandoned houses dot the riverbank, while the junior high school has long since been converted into one of the village’s few accommodation options for transient tourist trekkers – Koguchi Shizen-no-Ie (¥9,300 per night per person, including all three meals, approx. £65 at the time of writing).

Although the tatami-lined rooms and shared sento bathing facilities at Koguchi Shizen-no-Ie were all perfectly modern and comfortable, it still felt like an austere place from the severe headmasterish figure at the reception desk to the harsh fluorescent lighting. It still feels very much like a school in places too, from the municipal public service posters lining the walls to the austere dining room converted from the former cafeteria.

It’s the echoing hallways that really give it away though. Wide and tall enough to take cars never mind people, they once saw thronging hoards of babbling schoolchildren that have long since departed and will never return – an odd and unexpected hit of pastoral melancholia.

Dinner

Following our pair of meals at Ryokan Adumaya, which were gutbustingly fortifying despite the strains of traversing the Kumano Kodo’s verdant valleys, forests and hills, the lighter fare at Koguchi Shizen-no-Ie was a blessing rather than a curse.

The limp and faded tuna sashimi couldn’t compare to the Ryokan Adumaya’s superlative selection, but the meaty and lightly oily grilled white fish was a winner.

Pale rider.

Hypnotic colouring.

Gently pickled and earthy vegetables were topped with crisp lotus root and was neatly complimented by a refreshing noodle salad served lightly chilled.

The healthy kind of brown.

Spiral.

Tempura vegetables and prawns were underwhelming. While free of chin-staining oil and grease, the batter wasn’t crisp or fluffy enough, while the ingredients underneath lacked character. Even the seasoning salt on the side was tepid.

Apparently, ‘shizen no ie’ literally translates as ‘do not worry’. Which is more or less apt I guess.

The best dish here had to be to the tofu – squidgy, hearty and served with taut and supple shimeiji in a satisfyingly warming broth. While both tofu and broth were satiating, they still managed to have a sparklingly clean aftertaste.

Just serve me a whole cauldron of this.

Breakfast

One of the best things about breakfast at Koguchi Shizen-no-Ie is that you can opt to have it as early as 06.00 or 06.30 – an important option given that the final stretch of the Kumano Kodo’s Nakahechi route from here on out is one of the toughest and potentially most time-consuming.

Although not quite good enough to match the best tamago, the omelette here was still a light, creamy and fluffy affair. Grilled salmon was meaty and stayed on the right side of stodge, even though it was a tad overcooked.

Faded imperial yellow.

What’s the Pantone number for salmon orange?

Despite British government drives to increase vegetable consumption, Anglo breakfasts remain steadfastly green-free zones. That’s an oddity and something of a shame, as Japanese breakfasts show that greens can work well first thing in the morning. Whether they were sweet or lightly bitter, the pleasing greens here were crisp rather than soft and floppy.

The dark side

The light side

Earthy and tart pickled veg made a welcome repeat appearance, before a mildly umami miso soup finished things off.

Pickley split.

A cloudy forecast.

Lunch

While Koguchi Shizen-no-Ie’s selection of onigiri for lunch felt somewhat sparse compared to Minshuku Tsugizakura’s more luxuriant collection, they were still sufficient for a midday refuelling after a 900m ascent up the side of a mountain. Fillings of umami kelp, tart and bitter umeboshi as well as reasonably meaty and salty salmon were all satisfying enough despite their somewhat meagre size.

Triforce.

Probably brought in from elsewhere.

Hiking could be regarded as a form of self-kelp therapy.

Hotel Nakanoshima

Although Hotel Nakanoshima doesn’t lie on any of the Kumano Kodo’s routes, it was a logical and fitting place to end our trek. It lies just off the coast of Kii-Katsuura town on the Kii Peninsula’s southern tip, which itself is a 20 minute bus ride from Nachi which is we triumphantly ended the Kumano Kodo’s Nakahechi route.

Built into the side of an island, the sprawling complex not only resembles a Bond villain lair but smacks of 80s era swagger and confidence. Hallways are tunnels cut through rock, while there’s space enough to spare for indoor rock gardens, cavernous restaurants, a mini arcade and a surprisingly large and well-stocked gift shop.

The hotel’s hilltop view.

Even if this sounds laughably over the top, it’s definitely worth staying at Hotel Nakanoshima if you’re ever in this part of Japan, even if only for a single night as in our case (¥24,000 per person per night, including dinner and a subpar breakfast buffet, approx. £167 at the time of writing – cheaper options are available). Both room and hilltop views over the other islands in Kii-Katsuura’s bay were serenely beautiful enough – but with the addition of birds of prey skimming the waters for fish, it was nothing short of timeless. Soaking my bones in a skin-tinglingly steamy outdoor onsen under twinkling stars, while the waves audibly crashed upon the island’s rocky shore, was an experience that salved my aching body and hushed my racing mind.

Rotenburo.

Although you can take your multicourse kasieki dinner at Hotel Nakanoshima in one of the cafeteria-like restaurants, it’s worth upgrading to a private dining room if you can. Not for the sake of cocooning yourself away, although there’s nothing wrong with that, but because it’ll be located closer to your room – walking any distance in flippy-floppy indoor slippers is a strain if you’ve been going up and down hills and mountains all day.

An acceptable use of a slate.

Lobster sashimi was served with part of the carapace for dramatic effect, but it wasn’t just a delight for the eyes. Its bouncy, squidgy mouthfeel and delicate sweetness were both enhanced by the deep nuance of the sweet, creamy, warming wasabi.

The tail end of this trip.

The other cuts of sashimi didn’t play second fiddle and were more than capable of holding their own. Almost transparent slices of pink-skinned white fish were subtly citrusy, while cuts of silvery-skinned white fish were meaty and subtly moreish. Squid was tender with a clean after taste. The exquisite tuna was all about its sumptuous mouthfeel – gently chewy then tender, it was truly a sensuous bite.

Sea through.

Thankfully, there’s no need to eat the spiralised carrots out of despair.

The kraken awakes!

Waiter, there’s a flower in my tuna.

Another serving of tuna was lightly seared on the outside, but still had the royal purple hue of the raw fish on the inside. The cut of tuna was tender, despite its denseness, which served as the perfect vehicle for its delicate then bold and immensely satisfying depths of umami.

A damn sight better than some of the tuna you can get in Tokyo.

A tender and fatty coil of roast beef would’ve been perfectly delectable on its own, but it was joined by a choice selection of accompaniments that helped elevate it further. The creamy custard-like taste of the light tortilla-esque tamago was a masterclass in the eggy arts, while the gingko nut, as expected, had its usual addictive potato- and cashew-like taste. It was the gently elastic mochi with the distinctive, unexpected but entirely complimentary taste of sweet potato that was the star accompaniment here though.

Gilded box.

A squidgy, creamy and lightly sweet tofu had all of these mouth pleasing qualities enhanced by toppings of goji berry and wasabi. I could easily have eaten a whole cauldron of this.

Nothing is real.

The salty and richly umami qualities of a cloudy broth were no doubt helped along by the prawns, fishballs and shimeiji mushrooms bobbing about in it like savoury, tender buoys.

Slurp.

Tokyo’s Tempura Tsunahachi really has spoiled me when it comes to tempura. While the tempura here was far from bad, it just couldn’t compare in terms of crispness and fluffiness to the tempura back in Shinjuku.

Oddly, our private dining room was merely another guest room repurposed. What happens if the hotel is fully occupied?

Glossy triangles of beef were presented raw for dramatic effect before being cooked rare at our tableside. Chewy then tender, the lean cuts were deliciously moreish and finished with a surprisingly clean aftertaste. A selection of carefully simmered vegetables proved to be excellent accompaniments.

Bovine beauty.

When we think of fish in Japanese cuisine, we inevitably think of the sliced swimmers used in sushi and sashimi with their generally sparkling clean aftertastes. More accessibly flavoured fish dishes can be had of course, such as these potently earthy medallions of fish served in a sticky, gooey sauce that started out subtle and finished with a powerful, cumulative level of umami. It proved to be a delightfully mouth-pleasing combination.

It kinda looks like a small brain. Hmmmm brains.

Carefully grilled slices of what I’m pretty sure was yellowtail were initially chewy, then tender. This fish didn’t just rely on texture to please though – it had a sophisticated, layered sweetness emphasized by accompaniments of grated and whole crisp greens. Rarely has a grill been put to a more delightful use.

Frankly, I’m surprised there is a cooking-themed arcade game in Japan.

I haven’t liked congee in the past, but this Japanese sojourn has been slowly changing my mind and opening it up to the myriad forms of rice porridge/jook that are available. Although loose and somewhat watery, the bowlful here was dotted with leaves of umami kelp, a soothing flavour profile followed up by another bowlful of refreshing and palate-cleansing kelp-based broth.

I’m not jooking.

Dive in.

As much as I love sugary, rich and heavy desserts, anything like that would’ve felt inappropriate after such a decisively clarion pair of kelp-based dishes. This made the refreshing pairing of fruit all the more apt – richly sweet and juicy cantaloupe alongside crisp, tart apple.

Surprised at the absence of oranges given that Kii-Katsuura is allegedly famed for it.

Parting words

Everyone’s experience of Japan and its food culture will be different, but what has never been clearer is the deceptive simplicity, understated artistry and timeless sophistication that makes so many Japanese dishes so utterly compelling.

Whether it’s misrepresented classics, such as tonkatsu or gyoza, little known seasonal seafood specialties, head-turning oddities, heartwarming comfort food or even just pickles, there really is something in Japan for everyone. And none of it has to be eye-wateringly expensive. Heck, even the konbini convenience store and vending machine food has me charmed. That only makes me more determined to return some day.

– The Picky Glutton

The Kii Peninsula petering out into a chain of islands in the Pacific, including the Hotel Nakanoshima, as seen from a 900m high mountain viewpoint on the Kumano Kodo’s Nakahechi trail.

What’s old is new again.

Indian restaurants in London have tended to go through periodic and repeated rebirths over the past few years, with numerous attempts at moving the cuisine on from the curry house clichés that it’s fallen into with varying degrees of success. The most recent wave in the capital have tended to concentrate on little-known regional cuisines and more geographically generic small plates designed to be taken with booze.

Kricket Soho falls into the latter category and is a bigger, glossier incarnation of the Brixton original. The ground floor counter surrounding the open kitchen is for walk-ins; the basement dining room takes reservations for groups of four or more. I can’t tell you what the latter is like, but the counter was a surprisingly pleasant perch with comfy stools (actual lower back support!) and an enveloping warmth that managed to effectively cosset me against the cold, despite being seated near the front door, as long as other diners were around to lend their collective bodily warmth too.

Kricket’s decidedly non-traditional dishes might seem like a cop-out at first, but its menu definitely shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

First things first

Bone marrow kulcha usually comes with ceps as well, but the mushrooms were off on the night of my first visit. The thin, light and elastically soft bread was still texturally pleasing though, while the bone-marrow manifested itself as an occasional slick of meaty run-off. This bovine ghee, if you will, could’ve been bolder and more consistent in its application, but this was still a winsome start.

This review’s procrastination was brought to you, in part, by Motley Crue.

Small but firm and sweet slices of pumpkin came bathed in a creamy, occasionally tart sauce dotted with crunchy, distinctly flavoured hazelnuts. Although the wispy paneer didn’t leave much of an impression, everything else about this vegetable curry was elegantly done.

The small gaggle of trad curry houses that used to cluster on this small stretch near Piccadilly appear to be dying out. Slowly.

Occasional hits of smoky, flesh haddock dotted the kedgeree. But what really stuck out were the intense hits of saffron in the squidgy medium-grained rice, punctuated by sharp, thin shavings of cauliflower. With such a dynamic pairing, I could easily overlook the ineffectual raw egg on top.

The artichoke crisps and pickled blackberries accompanying the venison rump left me unmoved, but the deer meat itself was impressive. The firm yet yielding chunks of venison tore apart under the pressure of my teeth with just the right amount of resistance, providing a neat conveyor for the coconut-infused wet rub. Burnt onion raita on the side had a sharp earthiness to it, but this tended to overwhelm the rump. While seductive in its own right, it neither complimented the venison or served as an effective palate cleanser which made it somewhat redundant.

Sorry folks, I forgot to take a photo of the kedgeree.

After a superb savoury trio, the dessert of jaggery treacle tart was especially disappointing. The filling wasn’t as distinctively fluffy and sweet as I would expect from something made with jaggery. The thin pastry, sitting somewhere in between puff and filo, was a bit too chewy for my liking. The milk ice cream had a clean aftertaste, but the crunchy ice crystals was yet another misstep.

Fade to black.

Going back for seconds

Kricket’s samphire pakoras were a world away from the stodgy clodden patties that pass for pakoras in most Indian restaurants. The clearly extant samphire spears appeared to have merely grazed the deep fat fryer as they were only lightly dotted with patches of batter. The level and consistency of crispiness was top-notch though, with the crunch of the green and brown interspersed with blobs of lightly fruity date and tamarind chutney. The tamarind taste could’ve been a bit stronger, but the lightly citrusy and salty tickle of the samphire and the garlicky mayo on the side helped pick up the slack.

I do like a salty tickle.

The meatiness of langoustines is obviously dependent on the catch, but even when it’s meagre, as it was here, the kitchen more than makes up for it in other ways. The smoky, mustardy, woody tingle of the spices slathered all over the langoustines was not only nuanced but deeply addictive too.

Clawback.

The paratha was an exemplar of this type of bread – thin, soft, flaky and gently buttery. It also forms an integral part of the kathi roll, where it’s wrapped around a plump, moist and lightly earthy seekh kebab made from duck. It looks like a mildly exotic sausage roll and its seeming simplicity belies its deliciousness. The somewhat overpowering peanut chutney on the side isn’t really needed and sticks out like a sore thumb, especially as the slices of pickled cucumber aren’t really sharp enough to cut through the chutney’s wollop. Still, these blemishes can ultimately be overlooked given the kathi roll’s general excellence.

Paratha the wrapper.

Seekh and ye shall be rewarded.

Misti doi sounds like the title of a Sigur Ros song, but was actually a superlatively creamy and modestly thick panna cotta-esque pistachio-flavoured dessert. The crunch of extant pistachio pieces and sharp pomegranate added textural contrast to the smooth custardy cream, while refreshing mint and a tint of rosewater brought some variation in flavour without being overpowering or cloying. This superlative dessert only makes the jaggery treacle tart look all the more mundane.

Think of it as a thick, almost spreadable yoghurt.

Three is the magic number

While the masala kulcha looks like nothing than an embellished version of the bone marrow kulcha, it was a much better beast. The bread was still thin and soft, but had a more pronounced gentle chewiness compared to its stablemate. That would’ve been more than enough on its own, but it was made even better with umami and fruity tones as well as a hint of tartness. A truly superlative bread in every way.

A green-and-black worth caring about.

Kricket’s bhel puri wasn’t stodgy, crunchy hard or oddly bland like other renditions of this classic Indian snack elsewhere. Puffed rice was crisp, yet somehow also fluffy, with hints of fruitiness and came layered with creamy, refreshing yoghurt for a light yet flavoursome start that still managed to take the edge off my hunger.

Let the bhels ring out.

Plump and fleshy mussels didn’t have the salty zing I would’ve preferred, but the thin yet sharp and lightly zesty sauce more than made up for it. It wasn’t as viscerally sensuous as the mussels sometimes available at Breddos Tacos, but it’s still a fine bowl of molluscs nonetheless.

Mussel tussle.

This may be controversial, but I reckon that Kricket’s lamb haleem is better than the version of the dish I’ve had at Tooting’s various South Asian restaurants, such as Spice Village. Rather than a formless, charmless meat puree that tasted far too subdued, the haleem here had sinewy, tender chunks of lamb that I could sink my teeth into. The crunch of fried onions provided textural variation and contrast. The unctuous sauce/meat puree, meanwhile, had the zing of ginger and a cumulative heat that crested to a tingly finish. There’s bog-standard curry and then there’s stuff like this that makes you feel glad to be alive.

Kickstart my heart.

The misti doi was just as good as it was before.

Svo Hljótt.

The Verdict

Some might lament Kricket’s lack of strict adherence to the subcontinent’s gastronomic canon, much of which remains unexplored unless you venture outside of zone 1, but that shouldn’t deter you from eating at this splendid restaurant. Old-school curry houses hybridised Indian food due to a lack of expertise in their kitchens, culinary conservatism among their clientele, difficulties in sourcing ingredients or some combination of all of the above. None of these limitations apply to Kricket, where the primary motivation appears to be a desire to innovate with delicate, layered spicing and quality produce. If that isn’t something to applaud and reward with repeated custom, then I don’t know what is.

What to order: Masala kulcha; Kedgeree; Venison rump; Samphire pakoras; Langoustines; Duck kathi roll; Haleem; Bhel puri; Misti doi

What to skip: Jaggery treacle tart

Name: Kricket (Soho)

Address: 12 Denman Street, Soho, London W1D 7HH

Phone: none listed

Web: http://www.kricket.co.uk/

Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday noon-14.30 and 17.30-22.30; closed Sunday. 

Reservations: only taken for groups of four or more in the downstairs dining room – highly recommended 

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £37 approx. (£50 if you push the boat out)

Rating: ★★★★☆

New Malden it ain’t

The immediate area around Centre Point used to be a small hub of Korean restaurants until the Crossrail building works put the kibosh on that serendipitous gaggle of eateries. That’s left the banner for cheap Korean food in Soho-Fitzrovia-Bloomsbury (ish) to be picked up by Bibimbap, a mini chain of Korean restaurants that’s seemingly appeared out of nowhere. I say ‘seemingly’ quite deliberately, as this three branch operation seems to be run by the same people behind Asadal and SuperStar. That actually makes sense – an already successful and moneyed restaurant fiefdom is more likely to afford the high Soho rents than a plucky upstart.

All of the Bibimbap restaurants are fast, very casual and cheap restaurants with counter seating for lone eagles as well as takeaway service for most of their dishes.

Starters and side dishes at Bibimbap Soho and Charlotte Street

The unimaginatively named Bibimbap may concentrate on, well, bibimbaps, but no Korean meal worth its name would be complete with kimchi. Disappointingly then, Bibimbap’s version was excessively chilled and only mildly tart, sour and spicy. It’s not inedible, but I expected better.

A second helping of kimchi on another visit was thankfully served at room temperature, but it was still a mediocre affair with muted tartness and spiciness.

Wicket isn’t a fan of kimchi. For a freshly minted vegetarian, he’s needlessly picky.

The tame kimchi explained the underwhelming nature of the kimchi pancake. Although fluffy and free of excess oil, the kimchi was barely detectable.

The seafood-filled pancake was a bit too oily and not as fluffy and elastically tearable as the kimchi-filled version. It did at least have a reasonably evocative tang of the sea from the scraps of squid, mussels and cockles stuffed inside.

Falling flat.

Kimchijeon.

Flat in the pan.

Pancake suit.

Chive mandoo dumplings were a punchier starter – chewy, thick and doughy skins with a pleasantly herby filling.

Dough re me.

Jap chae noodles tasted heavily of sesame seed oil, although I think that’s a good thing as I’m a fan of that seasoning. The sweet potato noodles themselves were not only a bit too heavy, but also so piping hot that they needed more resting time. The assorted vegetables were crisp, but ultimately forgettable. This wasn’t a bad jap chae, but it wasn’t a very impressive one either.

Sweet nothings.

My favourite starter/side dish had to the rice cakes though. The soft, delicate and gelatinous texture won’t be to everyone’s liking, but it’s really a matter of context – think of them as mildly exotic gnocchi and you’ll likely get along with them just fine. The thickened kimchi-esque sweet and sour sauce was a predictable accompaniment, but decent enough.

Tteok.

Although you can have a large tottering pile of fried chicken as a main, I preferred to have it as a starter/side. Although the coating didn’t come anywhere close to the crispiness and unctuousness of the best chicken karaage (the best examples of which have easily outclassed the Korean-labelled competitors I’ve had to date), the oddly taut and slippery batter was pleasing enough on its own terms. The tender and unctuous chunks of chook underneath could’ve done with less chin-staining grease, but were otherwise satisfying.

Yes, it came in a metal bucket.

Bibimbaps

A bibimbap is a bowl of rice topped with various vegetables along with perhaps meat and/or egg. The entire thing is then mixed together and eaten. The versions at Bibimbap are all dol sot bibimbaps, which means the food is served in a blazing hot stone bowl which cooks everything inside it. Almost all use the same basic selection of vegetables – cucumber, mooli, daikon radish, bean sprouts, carrots, spinach and an optional fried egg. It’s a crisp and light selection that’s already filling in of itself when combined with the fluffy rice. There’s not much mooli though with the bitter spinach and rich, runny egg the dominant components.

Stone age.

There are several embellishments you can add to the dol sot bibimbap, many of them vegetarian. Sweet and briny tofu strips was one of my personal favourites. The mushroom variant was a bit scanty, consisting mostly of sweet and earthy shiitake as well as a meagre amount of black fungus.

Stone mage.

There’s not mush room inside my baps.

One of the few bibimbaps to strike out on its own with a unique base was the oddly named Nutritious. Wicket found the selection of dates, goji berries, chestnut and ginko to be neither too crunchy nor too soft. A hint of pickling didn’t upset the gentle, undemanding balance of clean flavours.

What an odd name – does it imply that everything else isn’t nutritious?

If you’re in the mood for a meaty bibimbap, then you shouldn’t be surprised to see that cheap and rather dour, uncheerful bits of meat are the order of the day. The barely marinated bovine slices sitting atop the beef bulogogi bibimbap were lightly earthy at best; at worst they tasted as grey as the stone bowls they’re served in. At least the assorted vegetables were tart and crisp.

Bulogogery.

The steak bibimbap was little better, with a few strips of anonymous beef thrown in. At least stirring and watching the raw strips of beef cook inside the hot dol sot stone bowl was amusing. With the steak taking the day off, it was left to the taut and earthy mushrooms and sauerkraut-esque preserved cabbage to prevent this bibimbap from becoming a total loss.

No actual bibs were harmed in the making of this review.

Noodles at Bibimbap Soho and Charlotte Street

The stir-fried soupless noodles aren’t really worth bothering with – lifeless and dull chow mein-style wheat flour noodles did at least have a mild hint of seaside saltiness from its seafood toppings, but this faded quickly. A muted selection of small octopi, shrimp, mussels and squid along with a medley of firm vegetables failed to leave much of an impression. I’ve always thought that cheap seafood dishes should embrace their low cost nature, rather than pretend to be a more expensive dish – cockles, whelks and herring (for example) may not be very Korean, but I’d bet they’d make for a more satisfying eat.

C food.

London’s recent ramen revolution appears to have passed Bibimbap by, with the chicken ramen resembling a by-the-numbers bowl of instant noodles rather than a dish crafted and honed through care and practice. The one-note spiciness of the bright red soup didn’t impress, but the wrinkly, malty noodles and small flecks of surprisingly dense and almost gamey dark chicken meat were surprisingly pleasing – as long as you keep any ramen-ya inspired expectations in check.

Tantamount to a tepid tantanmen.

The Verdict

Bibimbap is one of those rare restaurants where you’re generally better off as a vegetarian rather than as a meat eater. Even then, Bibimbap is remarkable more for its low prices, handy locations and late-ish hours rather than its cooking where it’s merely okay. That sounds like I’m damning this mini-chain with faint praise, but all Londoners need a place for a filling feed that’s cheap and reliable at the end of a long, hard day. For me, that’s Bibimbap. If what you really want is Korean food that actually tickles your senses, then New Malden and its choice of eateries is still the place to head to.

What to order: Chive mandoo dumplings; Dol sot bibimbap; Mushroom bibimbap; Rice cake

What to skip: Fried noodles

Name: Bibimbap

Branches tried: 11 Greek Street, Soho, London W1D 4DJ and 10 Charlotte Street, Fitzrovia, London W1T 2LT

Phone:  020 7287 3434 (Soho) and 020 7323 6890 (Charlotte Street)

Web: http://bibimbapsoho.co.uk/contact

Opening Hours: Monday-Friday noon-15.00 and 18.00-23.00; Saturday noon-23.00. Sunday noon-23.00 (Soho-only).

Reservations: only accepted for groups of five or more at the Charlotte Street branch

Average cost for one person including soft drinks: £20-25 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Quack, quack, honk

If there’s one thing that London isn’t short of, it’s Cantonese restaurants. For years it was the only kind of Chinese food widely available in the capital, with other cuisines from the continent-sized country only becoming prevalent in the past decade or so. This increased regional representation makes Duck Duck Goose even more of an oddity.

This Brixton restaurant focuses on Cantonese roasted meats, a staple already well covered by multiple Chinatown restaurants. Duck Duck Goose is located in Brixton though, a part of town hardly known for Chinese cuisine (with perhaps one exception). This, along with the approachability of roasted meat, the difficulties in recruiting and keeping trained chefs and the limitations imposed by Duck Duck Goose’s tiny kitchen, almost certainly explain the proprietor’s decision to stick with roast poultry and pork.

If nothing else, Duck Duck Goose is a far more welcoming place than most Chinatown restaurants. The bright and cosy décor feels more like an Ikea showpiece, while staff were friendly and patient – if not quite as efficient as their more brusque Chinatown counterparts. Although less than half the size of an average Tube carriage due to its location inside a repurposed Pop Brixton shipping container, there are still 20 covers – some tables even have power sockets and USB ports for recharging your phone.

The window sill lined with mahjong tiles is just out of frame.

First things first

Duck Duck Goose bears a very faint resemblance to Holborn’s Cha Chaan Teng in having a handful of Hong Kong and postmodernist dishes on its short menu. The prawn toast here inexplicably comes with a heap of okonomiyaki-style toppings – quivering bonito flakes, kewpie mayo, radish slices and brown sauce as well as a large heap of endive sprigs.

None of that could disguise the fact that the toast wasn’t quite crisp or crunchy enough, while the minced prawn loaf layer was oddly light and inconsequential. It wasn’t bad, but it was far from memorable and not a patch on Cha Chaan Teng’s admittedly more expensive and luxurious version.

I keep typing ‘Duck Duck Go’, but that’s the name of a search engine.

Eating here was, if nothing else, a reminder that most people still don’t know what bonito flakes are.

The turnip cake (or turnip loaf if you prefer) was almost certainly made from scratch rather than merely retrieved from a catering pack as it had a loose, large grained texture to it, rather than a consistent smoothness. The muted caramelisation and lack of the distinctive sweet starchiness common to most versions of turnip cake was disappointing and explained the generous amount of chilli dipping sauce on the side. Ceps were taut and slippery, but their uncharacteristic blandness meant they brought little to an already underwhelming starter.

‘Turnip’ + ‘cake’ in the name of a single dish = recipe for perturbing total Chinese cuisine novices.

Roast duck is available in quarter, half and whole bird portions and is also a part of the three-meat selection platter. While lightly earthy and moist, there wasn’t enough extant fat while the skin wasn’t especially supple and lacked both umami and sweetness. It’s far from bad, but the choice of bird and the quality of cooking isn’t quite good enough to justify prices almost double those of Chinatown’s Four Seasons for an equivalent portion.

If you think this looks excessively red and orange, you should’ve seen these photos *before* I colour-corrected them in Photoshop.

Pork was more sure-footed. Slices of char siu were moist, lightly sweet, smoky and umami with none of the artificially luminous colouring often seen in Chinatown. Hearty pork belly wasn’t quite milky enough, but it was still enjoyable with its moistness and crunchy golden crust of a skin.

Char siu, chashu.

Crunch time.

Hong Kong-style peanut butter French toast was an oddly restrained and underwhelming dessert, especially when compared to its outrageously over-the-top counterpart at Cha Chaan Teng. The toast wasn’t caramelised enough, while the modest amount of peanut butter wasn’t especially viscous or powerfully flavoured. The accompanying ice cream, surprisingly, was far better. Apparently soy and caramel flavoured, the resulting salted caramel effect was exemplary with its balance of sweetness, saltiness and tanginess. It not only made up for the French toast’s meekness, it was also far better than many other ice creams which explicitly claim to be salted caramel flavoured.

Midnight munchies.

Going back for seconds

Although the mild spicy heat of the cumin chilli lamb won’t impress any chilli aficionados, this did at least allow the distinctive herby astringency of the cumin to shine through. This won’t suit everyone, especially as it overshadowed any character the lamb may once have had, but the meat was at least tender.

More cumin than chilli.

The initial gamey funk of the roast goose passed quickly, so this bird ended up resembling the duck quite closely. While still quite lean, the goose slices had a little more fat than the duck – both rendered and extant – providing a somewhat richer mouth feel. The skin was moderately more taut and slippery too, with a more pronounced but still somewhat sedate sense of sweetness and umami.

This goose needed a little more goosing.

The peanut butter French toast was much the same as it was before. Minor differences included a little more caramelisation in the toast and a modestly more generous helping of peanut butter. Although this provided a tad more viscous nuttiness, this dessert still wasn’t as visceral as Cha Chaan Teng’s version.

Hong Kongers shouldn’t be surprised by the uptick in popularity of this dessert in the West – it’s easy to make at scale, odd-yet-familiar, accessible and non-threatening.

Three-leaf clover

Duck Duck Goose is, quite obviously, aimed primarily at red meat carnivores. Pescatarians can eat well though – steamed fish is a Cantonese classic, with your choice of whole bream or bass.

Flaky pearlescent bits of bream came easily off the bone, garnished with sprightly ginger and coriander, while the light, sweet and umami soy sauce was good enough to drink. The dorsal finlets should’ve been trimmed off for a tidier eat, but it shouldn’t pose too much of a problem if you’re adult enough to look a fish head in the eye while deboning its carcass.

Some of the ginger etc pushed to the side for your viewing pleasure.

Full bream a-head.

Leafy choi sum was cooked just so in a lightly umami sauce. Battered salt and pepper salsify was undemanding and underwhelming, perhaps unsurprising given that it’s a variant of the take-away squid classic. The deep-fried coating was light and oil-free, but the soft tube of salsify inside required a lot of imagination to discern its very mild sweetness. The garnish of tame chilli and spring onion was more interesting. The salsify may, perhaps, come into its own when taken with the richer, more strident roast duck or goose instead of the steamed bream, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

There are a surprising number of other businesses out there also called Duck Duck Goose.

Salsify that doesn’t satisfy.

Peanut butter French toast with soy and caramel ice cream remained unchanged.

Not quite the toast of the town.

The Verdict

The Euro Hedgie, my loud-mouthed dining companion who accompanied me on my first meal at Duck Duck Goose, constantly texted me during the writing of this review to remind me of the duck’s priciness compared to Chinatown’s Four Seasons. While true, that centrally located stalwart benefits from greater economies of scale and almost certainly thinner margins which helps keep its roast duck prices lower.

The taste and texture of the duck here really should be of a higher standard to justify its higher pricing, but Duck Duck Goose is still far from a total loss. The duck and goose were only respectable, rather than remarkable, but the pork dishes were fine testaments to the porcine arts.

Plus, your money does get you slicker décor, a more comfortable, welcoming atmosphere and a generally friendlier level of service compared to the Chinatown standard. The appeal of such qualities shouldn’t be underestimated – they’re good enough to keep afloat restaurants that are otherwise moderately or critically flawed in the culinary arts.

Duck Duck Go’s primary appeal will be to Brixton locals eager for a closer-to-home Chinatown alternative. Even so, I still wish a restaurant serving lesser-known Chinese dishes, ones that deserve just as much appreciation as Cantonese roasts, had the opportunity afforded by its real estate. Still, Duck Duck Go is good enough – fortunes and restaurant chain empires have been built on less.

What to order: Char siu pork; Roast pork belly; Steamed fish

What to skip: Prawn toast

Name: Duck Duck Goose

Branches tried: Pop Brixton, Ground floor, 49 Brixton Station Road, London SW9 8PQ

Phone: none listed

Web: http://www.duckduckgooselondon.com

Opening Hours: Tuesday-Thursday noon-15.30 and 18.30-22.30; Friday-Saturday noon-16.00 and 18.30-23.00. Closed Monday.

Reservations: not taken

Average cost including soft drinks when shared between two but excluding tip: £30 approx. 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

‘Little’ is the operative word and not in a good way

I’ve been reviewing restaurants for long enough now to see multiple restaurants rise and fall, often at the same address. The small space at the edge of City Point near Moorgate is a case in point. Six years ago it was a forgettable and now long-forgotten Korean restaurant. It was then taken over by Bad Egg, an egg-focussed venture from chef Neil Rankin and gastropub operators Noble Inns. Although Rankin has since moved on to bigger and better things, Noble Inns remain in place and have turned Bad Egg into a spin-off of Rankin’s Smokehouse – the aptly named Little Smoke.

To the untrained eye, or the wearily cynical, Little Smoke appears to be a cash-in on the justifiable popularity of the nearby Pitt Cue with blackboards advertising various cuts of meat sold by weight. The difference, however, is evident once the meat passes between your lips – and Little Smoke does not come out well.

The chopped brisket roll from Smokehouse is also available at Little Smoke. I’d forgotten that it’s not a meat-filled bread roll, but a croquette. It’s a competently done croquette with a crispy crumb shell that’s not at all oily, but the reasonably moist and meaty strands of beef inside were merely satisfactory. Which is more than can be said for the tame Korean-inspired dipping mayo served on the side.

If that feeble mayo was Korean, then that President has unimpeachable judgement. Y’know, Park Geun-hye.

Smokehouse redux.

Similarly so-so strands of beef made an appearance in the beef tacos dressed with a chipotle aioli that may, at some point, have been in the same room as some chipotle and garlic. The tortillas weren’t inedibly bad, but this impersonation of proper maize tortillas was unimpressive in its grey and flaccid lack of taste and fluffiness.

Happy Buddha, Templeton Peck, Vicious Alabaster and the Lensman joined me for this meal.

Mushy, modestly creamy corn kernels, served off the cob, came with a generic cheese and other odds and sods mixed in. It was an inoffensive and undemanding goop which, if I’m lucky, will be fed to me intravenously in my decrepit old age when I’m soiling myself with such regularity that I’ll need such glorified baby food. The less said about the stodgy, hard and past-their-prime tortilla chips the better.

Good tortilla chips are hard, but average and piss-poor tortilla chips are easy.

Aside from the brisket rolls, the least disastrous of our starters, and also the most surprising, had to be the reasonably crisp wafer bread pieces topped with a creamy, crumbly and lightly salted feta. It didn’t bowl over my inner cheese snob, but it went down surprisingly well with the lightly sour and tart sauce.

Surprisingly not fetid.

If you’re easily impressed, the type that’s bowled over by huge portions and automatically associate good looks with high culinary standards, then you’ll unabashedly love Little Smoke’s cuts of meat. The reality was far less impressive. Lamb rump was a plain affair with no earthiness or funkiness, but the slices of baby sheep were at least moist.

Plain sailing.

While not rock hard, the unyielding slab of pale pork t-bone was far from the tender joy it should’ve been. It was a dowdy, frumpy and third-rate option compared to the immensely characterful swine flesh available at Pitt Cue. The geological strata of dull, unrendered fat certainly didn’t help.

Third-rate.

The best of our meats, by far, had to be the cote de boeuf. Cooked medium rare, the caramelised crust was sensibly seasoned, while the moist pink flesh underneath had a mildly beef tang. It couldn’t touch Temper’s varied beef cuts in terms of visceral character, but it was still perfectly enjoyable on its own terms.

Cote tails.

For some reason the kitchen insisted on topping creamy mash with excessively soft and generically seasoned burnt ends. There’s butchering beef and then there’s making a mockery of it.

Monster mash.

Burnt chilli greens were worse – uncomfortably bitter leaves dressed in a bright red sauce that somehow managed to be completely unspicy.

Partially devoured.

Thin yet creamy and nutty polenta was the best of our sides. Although a tad too over-processed in its smoothness, it was pleasing enough. The mushrooms and truffle oil only managed to add a modest amount of earthiness and little in the way of aroma. But at this rate, we’d take what we could get. Sorry folks I forgot to take a photo of the polenta.

The Verdict

Despite being a spin-off of Smokehouse, Little Smoke lacks the character that its parent had when it first opened. Instead, it oddly feels like a cheap and hasty attempt to capitalise on the popularity of other chophouses in general and the nearby Pitt Cue in particular. Although there is joy to be had from choosing carefully from the blackboards of meats sold by weight, it’s hard work. Combined with the lacklustre quality of many of the other dishes and it seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

Not even the cosy surroundings are enough for me to even tentatively recommend this restaurant as a fall back option, not when there are so many other fine meat palaces in this city to choose from. If Little Smoke is a reflection of the current state of Smokehouse, then I can only send Rankin my commiserations.

What to order: Cote de boeuf; perhaps the feta flatbread

What to skip: Just about everything else

Name: Little Smoke

Branch tried: City Point, 1 Ropemaker Street (off Moor Lane), London EC2Y 9AW

Phone: 020 3006 6222

Web: http://www.littlesmoke.london

Opening Hours: Monday-Friday 11.30-15.00 and 17.30-23.00 (serves Bad Egg menu on weekends)

Reservations: essential

Total cost for one person including soft drinks (when shared between five) but excluding tip: £54 approx.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆