MBFBY? - restaurant & pub reviews in That London

10 Greek Street, Soho, London

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:24:00 +0100

We got off on the wrong foot, 10 Greek Street and I. A few weeks ago I foolishly attempted to get a table there at about 9.30 on a Saturday evening only to be greeted by spectacularly stressed-looking staff who basically laughed at our request for a table for 2. Fine, we’ll take our business elsewhere, then. Ended up in the perfectly lovely (but expensive) Duck Soup down the road.

Two weeks later and we find ourselves in Soho on a gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon. For anyone who is into restaurants, this is a great time. A sunny Saturday in Soho (sorry) means you can usually get a table at one of the dead cool places you’d have an hours wait for in the evening. Soho is now so well-stocked with great, affordable places to eat that you can walk from street to street browsing each place until you come across something you fancy. On a Saturday lunchtime, you can simply walk in and get a table, just the way it should be. On this particular Saturday the only place with a small queue was Honest Burgers, and that’s because it’s so tiny.

We ambled around trying to make our choice. We even started to walk into Quo Vadis until I remembered we hadn’t checked out 10 Greek Street yet. Despite being given short shrift last time, I’d heard so many good things about it I was pretty keen to try it out. On arriving, everything fell in to place. The menu looked great, the sun was out and there was a perfect table right by the window for us. Done.

Inside was the polar opposite of our brief visit on that Saturday evening. The atmosphere was one of sun-drenched calm. The staff fluttered about efficiently, people quietly enjoying their lunches over low chatter. The interior is a perfect example of how to do an interesting, simple design asthetic. 1950s Danish-style chairs, formica table-tops with clever little sunken troughs for cutlery/menus etc and lots of white. Uncluttered and attractive.

Lunch began with a pair of excellently made cocktails: a Bramble and a blood-orange Aperol Spritz. TRENDWATCH - pretty much every menu we browsed that day in Soho had at least one dish featuring blood-orange. Yes, I know it’s in season, but still. They brought over some tap water and a small bowl of delicious bread. I particularly loved the focaccia.

The menu at 10 Greek Strete is mainly Italian with a few Spanish influences. It’s fairly short with maybe 5 starters, 5 mains and a selection of small plates. We were in a small-plate mood (a risky proposition in Soho theses days - pay a lot, leave hungry) so we dived in. First to arrive was a huge plate of padron peppers, salted and baked in oil. Simple and delicious. Mrs MBFBY? said “these are the most pepper-tasting peppers I’ve ever had”. Spot on, my love.

Next was the bruschetta with wild mushroom, buratta and rocket. Feel free to leave abusive comments for my use of the following term - it was ‘gloriously rustic’. A union of well-chosen ingredients and again, a generous portion. Alongside this we had an excellent (and plentiful) charcuterie of outrageously good quality meats.

Just as we’d polished off all this, the next dishes arrived. Mackerel with beetroot and horseradish - again an wonderfully unfussy combination of great ingredients. Prawns, watercress and saffron mayonnaise - huge juicy prawns cooked in a rich, spicy oil with a rather wonderful mayo on the side.

The whole experience was just blissful. Every mouthful of food was amazingly tasty, and the sun busting through the windows onto the white walls gave the room a lazy glow. The best bit? The bill came to 58 quid for 5 generous dishes and 2 cocktails each, and we left satisfied. When we went to Duck Soup the bill was about 90 quid and I was still hungry. Same last time I went to Polpo.

Apart from the misfire on my first attempt to eat there I cant fault 10 Greek St on any level. Wonderful service in an attractive environment and a simple menu comprised of carefully chosen ingredients prepared with deft skill. All this for a fair price. It doesn’t really get any better, does it?

9.5/10

10 Greek Street
erm… 10 Greek St
London
W1D 4DH

http://www.10greekstreet.com/

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Bone Daddies, Soho, London

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:26:00 +0100

‘GUSH’, they all went. ‘WOW’, they cried. ‘OMG NOM’ said the Internet. All of a sudden everyone was an expert on Japanese noodle soup. RAMANIA. What do the hep cats eat in between bouts of anorexia? Ramen, apparently. Spearheading RAMANIA is Bone Daddies, in a corner of Soho that only a few years ago was know as ‘that dirty bit near Somerfield’, but has now become so outrageously hip there’s a comic shop, a fixed-gear bike shop and (through an act of abject heresy) legendary metal pub the Intrepid Fox is now a branch of Byron.

It doesn’t take much to get a queue forming outside a Soho restaurant these days. A few blog posts overusing the word ‘dirty’, a chef from Nobu and boom - 50 minute queue for a 20 minute meal. For this reason I’ve only just got round to to trying Bone Daddies. I’ve tried to go a few times, each time the wait was around an hour. This time however I was alone, and it was 10pm on a Wednesday night so I walked right in.

Inside is looks a bit like a downmaket version of Wagamamas. Large prints of Japanese rockabilly dancers adorn the walls, it’s dark, rock music is blasting and the seating is high stools on communal tables. It’s not a place to linger. Service was friendly and efficient but they seemed stretched - my table was pretty greasy.

I ordered the fried chicken and a bowl of the tonkotsu I’ve heard so much about. The fried chicken was mediocre. Small chunks of chicken, under-seasoned batter and served with nothing but a lemon on the side, it was lacking in flavour. Could really do with some kind of dipping sauce. That it’s become acceptable to charge £5 for a small cup of fried chicken suggests somewhere in the last few years we’ve lost some perspective. Compare that for what you get when you order £5 worth of chicken from Meatliquor or Patty & Bun and the Bone Daddies offering seems pretty weak.

Still, it’s really all about the ramen here. Mine arrived and it looked impressive, complete with a boiled egg which had a wonderful orange yolk. You can probably guess what coming next though - I was underwhelmed. With all the ridiculous hype, maybe there was no way the tonkotsu could live up to expectations. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty tasty noodle soup but I thought it would be richer and more complex. The bones are boiled for 20 hours, I was expecting my mind to be blown. There was a bit of pork in there too but to be it seemed like there should be more meat in there. The noodles were fine. Again, for 11 quid it didn’t seem like great value. I’ve never been to Japan so can’t comment on authenticity. However, I am going there later this month so stay tuned for tedious comments along the lines of ’well of course it’s never going to be as good as the red lantern places in Tokyo, yah?’

I think Bone Daddies is a victim of it’s own success - it maybe could never meet my absurdly high expectations (though some places manage to), maybe visiting so late the kitchen was overstretched (the staff certainly seemed to be). In need of a quick meal after a gig it was perfect as I was in and out in 20 mins, but I’m damned if I’m queuing for 45 mins for it. I’ll return as there’s some interesting things on the menu (especially the cocktails and the Japanese whiskies) but take my advice - go off peak or risk being disappointed.

6/10

Bone Daddies
31 Peter Street
London
W1F 0AR

http://bonedaddiesramen.com/

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PREVIEW - Surbiton Food Festival, May 4th-19th 2013

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:55:00 +0000

Here at MBFBY? I don’t usually use the blog to plug stuff, but I’ll make an exception in this case as the thing I’m plugging is a food festival on my doorstep in Surbiton. Also, the food festival has been organised in my beloved local boozer The Lamb, so this is not exactly a cynical product endorsement written in exchange for some free cheese. However if anyone does want to send me some free cheese for any reason, that’s fine. I won’t write about it, though. Unless it’s Comté or Snowdonia. Or smoked Lancashire. Or Cornish Quartz. Or Epoisses. OK, enough waffle, i’ll get on with it.

The inaugural Surbiton Food Festival has come about because a group of local volunteers from a variety of backgrounds have gotten together down the pub and decided that Surbiton’s food culture is worthy of celebration.

The festival isn’t about celebrity chefs and big-name restaurants (though one is involved, step forward The French Table ), it’s about bringing together the community and opening up a dialog about what we eat and where it’s from, whilst also reminding people of what wonderful foodie businesses exist on our doorstep. It’s also about touting the culinary wonders of Surbiton to people further afield (we’re only 15 mins out of Waterloo, you know).

There will be a special Surbiton Food Festival passport available containing offers, deals and freebies from local retailers and restaurants, and a slew of events, competitions and general food-related stupidity. I believe there’s even an ‘oldest product you have in your store cupboard’ contest. Also being produced alongside the festival is a recipe book and an illustrated story book telling the well-known folk tale of the mythical Seething pasty.

Key events include:

- 4th May: The Big Food Fight - a rotton tomato fight to highlight issues surrounding food waste

- 5th May: The Seething Freshwater Sardine Festival - A celebration of the history of freshwater sardine fishing on the Thames which is DEFINITELY not made up.

- 11th/12th May: The Village Fete and Night Market

- 18th May: Surbiton Sports Day and Picnic

- 19th May: Food Festival Brunch

You can follow developments here:

http://www.surbitonfoodfestival.org/

Hope to see you there. I’ll be the drunk bloke eating all the cheese, clutching a jar of Chinese Five Spice from 1997. Oh, and anyone caught mentioning the Good Life at Surbiton Food Festival will be strung up, cured and served on a charcuterie platter with delicious home-made pickles.

The Delaunay, Aldwych, London

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:27:00 +0000

If there’s one thing I like, it’s going out for dinner and not having to pay the bill. Not in a ‘I was invited to review this restaurant because I’m a freeloading blogger of low moral fibre’ kind of way, in a ‘someone nice taking you out for dinner’ sort of way. When my opera-loving mother-in-law said she was going to be in town and suggested dinner somewhere near the Royal Opera House, Mishkins wasn’t going to cut it. The staff all look like pirates. The Delaunay sprang to mind as the sort of classy joint appropriate for distinguished professor of musicology. Not that I’m trying to score brownie points here, you understand. Did I mention how the process of ageing has been so kind to my mother-in-law?

The Delaunay is the sort of place that oozes with grandeur and class. I could see it being quite an intimidating place to turn up - there’s a doorman, a front desk and a glittering dining room beyond. The sort of place where a man of my calibre might expect to be thrown out at any time. Thankfully, they didn’t manage to suss me out this time. I was told my table would be ready shortly, and shown to the bar.

Fully slipping into the atmosphere I leant at the bar and ordered a Manhattan. The barman asked if I preferred it on the rocks and whether I’d like it dry or slightly sweet. The chap knew what he was doing - it was a great Manhattan. As I stood at the bar with my cocktail I imagined I looked like the very vision of class. I actually looked like a slightly oafish Northerner stood at a bar on his own, playing Letterpress on his iPhone.

In between turns of Letterpress I did a spot of people watching. As with all Corbin and King establishments, it attracts a certain type of person. The Wolseley, for example, is the first place I’ve seen a middle-aged women wearing sunglasses indoors since I went to La Caprice in about 2005. The beautiful people. Well, they were beautiful once, I’m sure, behind the layers of make-up and the plastic surgery. I’m being slightly unfair of course, but you’ll definitely see what I mean if you visit.

Before mum-in-law arrived a charming lady told me my table was ready and led me through the atmospherically-lit dining room, the diffused glows no-doubt designed to hide the wrinkles of the clientele. Once I was seated she asked if I wanted a paper to read whilst I waited. ‘Yes, very kind of you’, I said, and eagerly awaited a gigantic right-leaning broadsheet on one of those wooden poles. To my disappointment she brought over the Evening Standard, which you can find discarded on any tube train. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts. Great touch, though. A man sat alone lost in a paper looks far classier than a man sat alone playing Letterpress on his iPhone.

Mum-in-law arrived and was suitably impressed with the grandeur of the dining room. Time to look at the menu. Again, it’s familiar territory if you’ve ever eaten at the Wolseley. An all-day affair, with German/Austrian leanings (there’s a variety of wursts and schnitzels), you could eat here for not that much money, which surprised me. Ignoring in the good-value options I went for the most expensive sandwich on the menu, the lobster roll. Sorry, mum-in-law. I do like a lobster roll. It was 17 quid, not including any sides, so I ordered a portion of pomme frites.

It was with some trepidation I ordered as I did, as I’ve been very disappointed with lobster rolls in the past. Hawksmoor, for example, charge 15 quid for theirs and it’s TINY. I needn’t have worried. When it turned up It was massive, and delicious. The poshest prawn mayo sarnie ever. A delicate white roll stuffed with the best bits of everyone’s favourite crustacean. The pomme frites were excellent, too (though indistinguishable to those served at Brasserie Zedel).

The wine list isn’t too scary either - it’s short, and everything is available as a 500ml carafe. I had one containing a Bordeaux sauvignon blanc for 13 quid.

For dessert, in the grand café tradition I went for something sticky - in this case a coffee eclair, which was a little thing of fine beauty, full of subtly coffee-flavored goo. This was washed down with a glass of the house calvados.

I went to the cloakroom to collect my things (including Yellow Peril, my beloved Brompton folding bike - I always award extra points if a restaurant keeps her safe for me with no fuss) and off I went into the cold London night. Buzzing from the glow of the Calvados, I said goodbye to mum-in-law and walked to the station over Waterloo bridge, reflecting on what a wonderful evening was had. It felt like a proper ‘London’ experience - I almost felt like a tourist (though I feel like a tourist in this city quite often - I live in Surbiton). Basically, I loved the Delaunay. It’s glamourous, fun and a bit ridiculous. It feels like an indulgence to go there, but you could pop in for a well-priced breakfast if you wanted. They do the best Lobster roll I’ve had, and the floor looks a bit like the one from the Red Room in Twin Peaks. Go there. It’s a blast.

8.5/10

The Delaunay
55 Aldwych
London
WC2B 4BB

http://www.thedelaunay.com

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BBQ Whisky Beer

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 11:14:00 +0000

Hello! How are you? Oh, I’m fine. Work? Busy. Really busy. The blog has suffered, unfortunately. Yes, I know no-one cares. What? Yes, I know the haiku post was shit. Well, there’s no need to be nasty. Fine. No really, fine. Yeah, whatever. Not if I see you first.

For the first new post in a while I’m going to do things a little differently - there’s going to be no photos. A lack of shaky iPhone snaps hasn’t done Jay Rayner any harm. This is part of an experimental manifesto here at MBFBY? where I reject the popular concept of food blogging and take things to the next level. I know - totally maverick. That, and my phone ran out off batteries on the way there, and I’d left my Hasselblad H4D-60 at home.

My first reaction on hearing about BBQ Whisky Beer last year was one of indifference. It sounded like another trend-driven pop-up.

Residency in pub - check
Name of food served in title - check
US junk food - check
hashtag - check

Therefore, I ignored it. However on Saturday evening tasked with finding a venue to meet a friend in that part of town (which incidentally is more ‘Edgware Road’ than ‘Marylebone’) I thought it would be worth checking out as my friend and I, funnily enough, are both lovers of bbq, whisky and beer.

The pub itself is beautiful. Low-lit, lots of copper and a small open kitchen. Now, I was expecting the ‘whisky’ part of the title to be a short list of bourbons, but it turns out to be a truly mind-blowing collection of Scotch, Japanese, English, Irish and American. One entire wall of the pub is painted with blackboard paint and used to present the whisky list. It has to be the biggest whisky selection in London. It’s staggering - and all grouped into Highlands/Islands etc, presented with price, age and ABV.

In order to line our stomachs for this onslaught of heartburn-inducing goodness we thought it wise to have some food. The menu is very inviting. BBQ, burgers, chicken and sandwiches. We ordered a load of chicken wings and some fried chicken livers to kick things off. We ordered 6 wings for 6 quid. They arrive in a little bucket and there’s actually 12 pieces because they count 1 wing as being both halves of it, as it should be. They came covered in a sweet, mellow buffalo-style sauce with celery and blue cheese dressing, and were very enjoyable indeed. Slightly crispy and so moist on the inside that a chicken bone slid out of my fingers as I was eating and on to my wife’s blouse. I wasn’t really a fan of the chicken livers. Liver is a bit of a ‘dank’ flavour, teamed with the seasoning of the batter I thought they didn’t really work. They could have done with a dipping sauce on the side, really.

Already starting to feel full after the wings and the liver, the sandwiches we ordered for main came over, and mightily impressive they looked, too. My fried chicken sandwich was delicious. Served on a light brioche bun (naturally), it was comprised of a great big chunk of fried chicken with in delicious crispy batter, jalapeño cheese and a tomato relish. It was a fantastically tasty experience. The jalapeño provided a bit of a kick, and the relish gave a bolt of sweetness. The light bun soaked everything up leaving me with a melded, saucy mess about 2/3rd through. Good job there’s kitchen roll on all the tables.

Because I’m a greedy, gluttonous waste of skin, I ate a fair bit of my friend’s pulled pork sandwich after he was defeated by it. This was also excellent - a load of moist pulled pork with a sticky BBQ sauce, with crunchy slaw, in the same brioche bun. The triple cooked chips on the side were very, very crispy. Maybe too crispy for me. To be honest I didn’t eat many chips as by this stage I was very, very full. BBQ Whisky Beer is the only US-style place I’ve been in London that actually does US-sized portions. Our table at the end of the meal looked like 15 truck drivers had just lunched there. You can’t argue with the prices either - the sandwiches were around the 10 quid mark, including chips. I got a takeaway pulled pork sarnie from Pitt Cue once for £6.50 and it was essentially a slider. The one here was literally 4 times the size.

So, I’ve talked about the BBQ and the whisky, what about the beer? This is the weak point, unfortunately. The Wargrave Arms is a Youngs pub, so they are limited to selling beers on Young’s roster. I have nothing against Youngs selection of ales, but celler-tempreature ale just doesn’t cut it when dealing with this sort of food - you need ice-coldUS-style microbrews, high on hops. There was nothing at all here like that. One of the guys I was with was reduced to drinking Stella. I only hope he made it home without starting a fight with a policeman or something. I understand that this is something they aren’t happy with themselves and are working on a solution, so don’t let this put you off.

In an over-saturated (fat) London food scene where peddlers of BBQ, burger and fried chicken are ten-a-penny, BBQ Whisky Beer stands out as they are serving up spot-on executions of modern junk food classics, and you get a hell of lot for you money. It’s in a beautiful old pub and the whisky collection has to be seen to be believed. Shame about the beer but hopefully this will be sorted out soon.

If you managed to get this far without the need to look at a picture then congratulations - your attention span is in fine fettle. Do let me know what you think in the comments below - if people feel the blog doesn’t need pictures then I may reduced them, or even cut them down entirely for future posts - it certainly made my own dining experience (and that of my companions) far more enjoyable by not have to worry about taking a snap of every element of the meal, and forces me to work a bit harder with the descriptions of the dishes. All feedback welcome, especially insults and death threats. Ciao, yah?

8/10

BBQ Whisky Beer at the Wargrave Arms
40-42 Brendon St
London
W1H 5HE

https://twitter.com/BBQWhiskyBeer

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Patty & Bun, London W1

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:56:00 +0000

Yes, another review of a burger restaurant. However, you’re in for a treat today. For this review, I’m going to harness the power of HAIKU.

WARNING - Quality of poetry not guaranteed.

We joined the queue
A hipster hamburger joint
Cold Saturday night

“Only half an hour”
Said the chipper clipboard bloke
“It better be good”

Inside it’s makeshift
The water in milk bottles
Very bloody ‘now’

I ordered some wings
And a Smokey Robinson
Which is a burger

The place, very small
The hungry hordes looking in
“Got here just in time…”

The wings were lovely
Kind of asian influenced
Light, crispy batter

Tender, moist chicken
Finger licking sticky sauce
I burned my fingers

A burger done rare
The brioche, fluffy and light
Like geisha’s tears

Flavoursome patty
A huge stack of onions
Some tasty bacon

Dessert, a choc-ice
A bloody decent choc-ice
Still, just a choc-ice

Overall, was great
When you think you’ve had ‘em all
Up there with the best

It is deserving
Of far grander prose than *this*
I’m very sorry

A bad idea
so poorly executed
thus ends my haiku

9/10

Patty & Bun
54 James St
London
W1U 1EU

No reservations, obviously

http://www.pattyandbun.co.uk

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Stein's, Kingston-Upon-Thames, Surrey

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 23:35:00 +0000

KINGSTON: LAND OF CHAINS. That’s what they call it. ‘They’ meaning me. Don’t get me wrong, unlike many food bloggers I have nothing against chains. MBFBY? is a blog of the people. It’s just that there are an awful lot of chains in Kingston. Off the top of my head there’s a Pizza Express, Zizzi, Strava, Byron, Nandos, Las Iguanas, Jamie’s Italian, Carluccios, Pizza Hut, GBK, Wagamamma, Browns, La Tasca, Frankie and Bennies and a TGI Fridays. It’s not surprising. Kingston town centre is high street central, complete with John Lewis and the huge cathedral to capitalism that is the Bentalls Center. It’s a very handy resource to have if you live locally (as I do) and you find yourself in need of some egyptian cotton duvet covers or something.

The thing about Kingston is that for a large town full of people with money to spend, there are hardly any decent independent restaurants. New openings are rare - I can’t remember the last time someone excitedly told me about a great new place in Kingston. There’s the wonderful French Table which isn’t even in Kingston, and there’s the Canbury Arms gastro-pub which is great but often completely overrun with children. Honestly, go in there on a weekend lunch and its like Lord of The Flies Jr.

The reason for this that people who live in Kingston work in London, and tend to do most of their eating out in London too. Can’t imagine why they’d want to do that. London is totally overrated for eating out. Especially Soho.

When I heard that a new independently-run Bavarian place had opened by the river I was very, very excited. So excited I went twice in 3 days, so you can rest assured that this review is accurate as it is an amalgamation of both visits. I didn’t drink any steins of Paulaner on the second visit either, in the interests of fair representation. The first visit involved serious and thorough evaluation of multiple steins of Paulaner.

EDIT - commenter Mr. M. Steer pointed out that there’s another branch of Steins in Richmond, technically making it a chain. However, the other one is little more than a shed with a beer garden, and does 2 locations a few miles away from each other really make a chain? More importantly, MBFBY? is not about to let silly things like “facts” get in the way.

Steins itself is a cosy little place. They’ve done the interior up like the inside of a log cabin, not in a ‘theme pub’ kind of way but in a modern Scandinavian style with a nod to current trends (can’t open a new restaurant without factory lighting pendants). It’s grown-up, attractive and welcoming. For the summer months it has an outside terrace overlooking the river. Prime real estate in Kingston. A glance over the river from inside the snug, wooden interior on a cold January afternoon makes you almost feel as if you are in some far-flung corner of deepest Bavaria. Not that I’d know. I’ve never been to Bavaria.

However cool the interior is however, they’re not above making the staff dress up in traditional Bavarian garb. I’m not really sure about this. One the one hand it’s a bit of fun but on the other you really are verging in to ‘theme pub’ territory here. Plus, it can’t be much fun for the staff. “WENCH - HAND ME MY STEIN” brays Darren from Marketing. They also lose points for using the term ‘expanding your Bavarian experience’ on the menu. I’ll show you ‘Bavarian experience’, mate. Just let me finish my 5th stein and give me a few minutes to get undressed.

The food - on my first visit I had the currywurst. For £9.50 you get a rather large pork wurst of very high quality (up there with Big Apple Hot Dogs in my opinion) with some salad and crispy outside/fluffy inside fried potatoes. The currywurst sauce is perfectly fine but it was too posh - it lacked the aggressive fake curry flavour of the real thing (the best currywurst is dirt cheap and best purchased at 3AM from a shed under a railway line in Berlin).

On the second visit I had roasted pork shoulder (£12.90) with potato dumplings and red cabbage. It looks a bit like a one of Stein’s customers after too many litre glasses of Paulaner in my photo. The dumplings were great - springy and delicately textured, soaking up the gravy like little Bavarian sponges; the red cabbage had a wonderful sweetness to it. Unfortunately the pork meat was a bit on the dry side and rather bland but the cracking was ace.

Beer-wise as you may have guessed Paulaner is the order of the day, ideally served in MASSIVE BAVARIAN GLASSES. (They also have a reasonable selection of other Bavarian beers and they do cocktails), A stein will set you back £9.30 though (and get you rather more plastered than you thought) so watch out.

Steins is a welcome addition to Kingston’s utterly underwhelming dining ‘scene’, if there is such a thing. It’s fun, it’s relatively inexpensive (unless you go mad on the steins) and the food is decent (though I’d advise sticking with the wursts). It’s a very comfortable place to sit with your fashionable group of 30-something friends, slowly chugging litre glasses of strong beer until someone tries to do a wee into the river and falls in and gets their arm broken by a mob of angry swans. Remember to drink responsibly, dear readers…

7/10

Steins
56 High St
Kingston-Upon-Thames, Surrey
KT1 1HN

020 8546 2411

http://www.stein-s.com/kingston/index.php

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MEATmission, Hoxton Market, N1

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 13:37:00 +0000

In a stunning return to form, MBFBY? has not only managed to write a post only 3 weeks after the last one, but I’ve managed to review a brand-new hot trendy restaurant that’s only been open for 2 days. Unfortunately, this is another review of another burger restaurant, like all the reviews these days. I am fully aware of how bored some people are of reading about burgers, hearing about burgers, arguing about burgers and in some cases a few people are even bored of eating burgers. Oh well, tough luck. Check back in a few weeks and there will be a review of the latest hot new trend (probably a converted hearse serving prawn cocktails with a selection of Special Brew-based cocktails).

The reason this particular establishment is worth writing about is the simple fact that the MEATliquor team have done more to get Londoners eating decent burgers that pretty much anyone else. It scarcely seems like it but in just over a year MEATliquor has attracted widespread praise, a few detractors and scores of imitators. It’s fair to say they are doing something right.

I knew they had a Hoxton restaurant in the pipeline but knew nothing about it apart from the fact they were going to take bookings (which they will, but not until the new year). All of a sudden, it was open! As I’m based in London’s fashionable East End at the moment (I’m paid to stand outside the Griffin with rolled-up trouser legs and a Where’s Wally hat) it was easy to pop down.

It’s located on Hoxton Market, which is probably one of the most picturesque streets in the area, not that there’s much competition. That’s one of the many reasons this whole Silicon Roundabout thing is so utterly ridiculous. Imagine the first impressions of a powerful investor from the USA going to meet up with some exciting new start-up in London’s fabled Silicon Roundabout. He exits the tube at Old Street (after dodging all the crackheads in the tunnels), goes up the steps and is greeted by chicken shops, rotting buildings and whatever the hell that thing is in the middle of Old St roundabout. California this ain’t. The whole area so desperately wants to be something it’s not, New York, San Francisco, whatever. It’s good that Hoxton Market has retained the original character of the area amongst all the street art and digital agencies.

A quick peek through the window confirmed I was in the right place as I spotted the trademark kitchen rolls on the tables. The interior is genuinely striking, with great attention to detail. They’ve made a proper effort: it’s a high quality finish and it should be appreciated. Gone is the industrial feel of MEATLiquor, this is something with a lot more elegance. The building was previously Hoxton Market Christian Mission and they’ve retained plenty of original features like carved plaques on the walls, the flooring and ceiling dome. You could call it sympathetic if it wasn’t for the amazing Gilbert and George-esque ceiling panels depicting a kind of pagan take on the Last Supper. Not sure the missionaries would approve.

It’s a large space with two separate rooms (one of which will be bookable) so hopefully they should be able to keep the inevitable queues to a minimum.

The menu has lots of new stuff alongside the MEATliquor classics - They do currywurst, monkey fingers, a Peckham dip (french dip to you and I) and several new burgers including a red chill burger and a green chill burger.

I went for some monkey fingers, which are chicken strips in a substantial (but light) batter, served with buffalo sauce and blue cheese dressing on the side. Theses were superb, juicy chicken sealed in a batter which was slighty chewy, but not greasy at all . Very addictive. They’re 7 quid for a starter portion but I shared them with my mate Mike and there was more than enough for us both.

As I was in the new outpost of London’s premier burger restaurant I was obliged to have the, er, burger. It was a red chill burger, and it was classic MEATliqour style, cooked rare, well seasoned with a nice bit of kick from the chill. The bun didn’t seem quite as moist as the usual MEATliqour style (maybe it hadn’t been steamed for long) but it was still a cracking burger.

There’s a decent cocktail list by SoulShakers and a good selection of beers (I was drinking Budvar Dark on tap which was lovely. Only thing I’m not sure about is their practice of serving beer in US-style 2/3rd ‘pints’. I’m willing to buy in to the whole US junk food experience but think that might be a step too far. plus, 4 quid for 2/3s of a pint seems a little steep. However, the bill came in at 45 quid for 2 of us with quite a few beers so overall, it’s still great value.

To conclude - I love it. It’s the best thing they’ve done yet. I could quite happily spend an afternoon, evening or both hanging out in there eating meat and drinking beer. It feels a touch more ‘grown up’ than the Titty Twister vibes of MEATLiquor (the distinguished surroundings of Hoxton Market Christian Mission adding a rather refined air to the carnivorous proceedings). That they are going to take bookings is welcome news too. I think I’m going to spend a lot of time in MEATmission. To end I should probably do a joke about worshipping at the altar of meat or something, and I should have used the term ‘dude food’ at least twice, but I’ll leave that sort of thing to the professionals.

MEATmission
14-15 Hoxton Market
London
N1 6HG

https://twitter.com/MEATmission

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The Modern Pantry, Clerkenwell EC1

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:39:00 +0000

Hello. How are you? It’s been a while. Time to get back on the blogging horse. Truth be told, I’d become rather bored and irritated with food blogging. The blogger/chef/PR cliques, the arse kissing, the frequent foodie smugness of my Twitter feed (inevitable when you follow so many food-related people), seeing dozens of reviews of the same places within days of opening and the fact that bloggers can take themselves so ridiculously, embarrassingly seriously was beginning to grind me down. I wanted no part of it. And the whole ‘XXXX was invited to review XXXX’ thing. I’m sorry, but if you aren’t paying for your meal, and the restaurant know you are there, your review isn’t as worthy as an anonymous review you’ve paid for yourself. You can’t have it both ways. In my naivety I’ve done 2 reviews on MBFBY? that were comped by the restaurant and that’s going to be it. I don’t have much to offer so I might as well make sure I’m getting the same experience you are.

This is what I don’t understand about Jay Rayner. How is he getting the same service as the average punter? There surely can be very few people in food who don’t know who he is. I know he doesn’t take freebies, and that’s great, but come on. It’s Jay Fucking Rayner, sat in your restaurant like a dour, chubby musketeer eating all YOUR food. You are going to try and impress. Having said that, if Jay Fucking Rayner is sat in your restaurant and you still manage to mess it up and he slates you, then you probably deserve it.

Reviewing restaurants is an inherently daft activity. Sure, it’s moderately useful if someone is choosing where to dine, and blogs can be entertaining to read, but that’s pretty much it. I still get some nice positive comments about the blog and I do enjoy doing it so I’m going to carry on as before, chucking out a few reviews every month, hopefully unswayed by hype and offers of free meals. Now, has anyone seen that horse I’m getting back on? It’s easy to spot, it’s really, really high…

Which brings me to my visit to The Modern Pantry. I’d noticed it whilst visiting the Zetter Townhouse. It’s a very smart building sitting in the elegant charm of St John’s Square. A peek at the menu revealed dishes with great ingredients paired with interesting flavors: tea-smoked salmon, miso marinaded steak, coconut rabbit.

Mrs MBFBY? seemed especially excited about The Modern Pantry so I noted it down in my ‘stuff to impress the wife’ book. When Mrs MBFBY?’s birthday rolled around, I pulled out the book and found ‘Modern Pantry’ underlined 3 times in red pen, so I booked it.

We rocked up on a freezing Wednesday night. First impressions? Very smart, VERY Clerkenwell. We were at the younger end of the clientele. The room was filled with people who looked like architects, creative directors, gallerists. Lots of black, lots of statement eyewear. These are people who own original Eames chairs and probably have a flat at the Barbican.

The Modern Pantry has a cafe downstairs and a restaurant upstairs. The room is simple, with bold typography screen prints on the wall, and huge white lampshades that you’d expect to see in the Guardian magazine for £3000 each. The perfect back drop for a Clerkenwell product designer.

The menu was genuinely difficult to choose from, in a good way. No highfalutin descriptions of dishes, just the ingredients listed in their intriguing combinations. A crueler man than I would label this ‘fusion’ food but I’ll choose to believe chef Anna Hansen when she says “everyday cooking with with modern ingredients and global inspiration”. Sounds fair enough to me. No ‘chicken tikka ramen in a pasty’ here. Actually, maybe they are missing a trick with that idea. They could call it ‘The Modern Pasty’.

As this is a supposedly a food blog, I should probably talk about the food. To begin I ordered potted duck with red onion, fennel and caper salad, mustard cumquat marmalade and toasted sourdough. It was basically a take on duck and orange terrine, a very successful one. The potted duck had a great gamey texture, the cumquat marmalade adding the necessary citrus zing. It was plentiful, and they gave you a little spoon so you could scrape the rest out when you inevitably run out of (lovely) sourdough bread. Why is it that you never get quite enough bread with pates, terrines etc? You’d think it would be the other way round. The same applies for biscuits on cheeseboards, there’s never enough and they are the cheapest element.

For my main I went for the roasted monkfish with cavolo nero (kale, to you and I), red wine braised octopus, sesame, curry leaf and shallot. It was a great big hunk of tender monkfish fillet in a sauce with a flavour I just couldn’t put my finger on. It was a little bit sweet, tinged with the spice of curry leaves. It tasted familiar yet completely new. Chewy, springy bits of octopus lurked in the dark stock. A very satisfying dish, quite unusual.

For dessert we shared some truffles, and as it was Mrs MBFBY?s birthday (which I’d mentioned at the time of booking), they’d kindly gave us some birthday petits fours with the traditional birthday greeting iced onto the plate. Bless.

We then hoovered up a cheeseboard, which was served with some amazing freshly baked biscuits. There wasn’t enough for the amount of cheese though, obviously.

Service was ‘OK’, dishes came out fast but it was a bit of a struggle to get the attention of the waiter. The dining room has a few different sections, it seemed that if one section was busy then the staff couldn’t see what was going on in the other sections. One member of staff in particular was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the excellent (and well priced) wine list. As we chatted she mentioned they do off-sales too, at very reasonable prices so if you try a wine you like, you can take a bottle home, a lovely idea.

The Modern Pantry serves great ingredients in interesting ways. It’s the sort of restaurant that I can see still operating in 15 years, quietly serving inventive food (a bit like St. John, maybe). You can’t say that about a lot of places these days. Some recent openings won’t last next year, let alone next decade. Prices are fair for this standard of cooking - starters are £6-9, mains £15-22. You can get a decent bottle of wine for the low 30s. If I was to sum it up in a soundbite, I’d say The Modern Pantry is ‘quietly exciting’. Don’t quote me on that, though. I’ll sound like one of those bloody food bloggers, yah? Oh crap, hang on…

8/10

The Modern Pantry
47-48 St John’s Square
London
EC1V 4JJ

020 7553 9210

http://www.themodernpantry.co.uk/

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A jaunt around the Pacific North West of the USA

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:18:00 +0100

MBFBY? has been ‘away’. You know, just like AA Gill when he goes ‘away’. However, unlike Mr Gill I wasn’t ‘away’ shooting endangered species with a blunderbuss like a pseudo-colonial arse. Aside from spending hours in branches of 7-11 marvelling at the gallon-sized cups of root beer and creative point-of-sale techniques (see above photo), I was driving around Washington and Oregon in search of BBQ, burgers, doughnuts and whatever else I could find. You know, the sort of food you can get in London these days, but you have to queue for it in the rain.

You will find a brief overview of some MBFBY? Stateside culinary discoveries below. The Northwest is a wonderful destination for anyone interested in a food-based holiday - amazing seafood, heavy bias towards local produce (verging on aggressive in some places, mainly Portland) and brewpubs. Lots of brewpubs. Brewpubs EVERYWHERE.

The photos are of varying quality as unbelievably I don’t spend all my time thinking about food blogging, so I wasn’t really keeping too close an eye on documenting meals as, you know, I was on ‘vacation’. Onwards…

SEATTLE

First stop on our trip. A city of coffee shops, brewpubs, Sub Pop, seafood and the famous Pike’s Place Market (more of a tourist attraction these days but show me a famous market that isn’t?) Also home of the SPACE NEEDLE.

Had a great posh burger from Seattle’s answer to a gastropub, Quinns. Made with Painted Hills beef, brioche bun and ‘artisan bacon’. Fancy. Great cocktails too. Ageing hipster vibe.

We had to have some super fresh seafood within sight of the Puget Sound at some point, and when we found out about the oyster happy hour at Elliott’s Oyster House it was a ‘no-brainer’ to get down there ‘stat’. The earlier you get there, the cheaper the oysters. We paid 75 cents each, and we ate 22 between us. Hardcore protein at bargain prices. Served with champagne sorbet too!

We needed a ‘proper burger’ so after extensive research settled on Zippy’s Giant Burgers. This place was a bit of a trek, and in a very sketchy area. As we’re from London though, a slog to a shit-hole area on the off chance of a half decent burger is water off a duck’s back. See the whole In N’ Out Burger Hendon hilarity for evidence of this. The burger was indeed very good, and they had an EPIC fridge of every kind of crazy soft drink imaginable. Very quirky inside, too. Staffed by some kind of camp hip-hop hipster with really long fingernails. You should go.

On our way out of Seattle we went to North Bend, which is where David Lynch filmed Twin Peaks. We stopped at the actual Double R Diner hoping for cherry pie and a ‘damn fine cup of Joe’, as Agent Cooper would say. We only got mediocre coffee, the pie was ‘OK’ and the original interior was ruined by a fire but it was still cool. Cruising round the douglas fir-lined locations listening to the soundtrack on a sunny Autumn day is a great way to spend a morning if you are a Twin Peaks fan. Just don’t rely on the map from the diner that was apparently drawn by a child.

ASTORIA

Astoria is where they filmed the Goonies. This makes it AWESOME. It’s also a very nice town on the coast of Oregon. Don’t go when the cruise ships are in, the locals said the population of the town effectively doubles and it’s octogenarian tourist-zombie apocalypse.

On the drive from Seattle to Astoria we drove past a shack with a home-made smoker outside in a tiny town called South Bend, WA (another Bend!). I slammed on the brakes, did a power-U turn and sped back. This is what road trips are all about, right?

It couldn’t have been better in my wildest dreams. River View Dining: a slightly odd room, a slightly odd man serving, we were the only people in there, but AMAZING pulled pork. $6! The pork had been marinaded in a thin BBQ sauce and the bun was dipped in it too. So good. Apparently the pit-master is famed for his smoked oysters but he’d run out on our visit.

We stayed 1 night in Astoria and spent a large portion of that time drinking microbrew out of jam jars at the excellent Fort George brewpub. You can get a lid for the jars and take them away with you too, which is a very clever idea.

Breakfast the next day was taken care of by the Blue Scorcher bakery next door to the brewpub, a workers co-op with serious organic baking skills. Had one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had - Huevos Scorcheros. 2 poached eggs, brown rice, black beans, cheese and salsa. Sounds heavy, but it somehow wasn’t. ‘Go figure’.

For lunch that day we had more excellent BBQ at the awesomely named Rollin’ Thunder BBQ. Just look at that pulled pork sandwich. $5 for the lot. Great interior, too. The dude likes his motorbikes. Why can’t we have plentiful, cheap BBQ over here? It’s either mediocre (Bodeans, Red Dog Saloon) or overpriced with stingy portions (Pitt Cue). Someone sort it out, please.

PORTLAND

You’ve seen Portlandia, right? Well, Portland is basically exactly as depicted in the show. Never say that to anyone who lives there, though. Everything is organic, everything is local, everyone is trying to be alternative. It’s like Brighton but much, much better. NEVER forget to take your own shopping bag to the ‘store’ in Portland. You’ll be run out of town by a gang in a Toyota Prius, pelting you with micro-baked organic baguettes.

As you might guess, it’s a fantastic place for food. There’s so much choice I actually found it stressful choosing. Here’s the highlights:

Little Big Burger is a small chain dealing in delicious burgers which aren’t ridiculously huge. They’re just the right size to have for lunch, they do AMAZING truffle fries, they have a massive selection of canned beer and it’s dirt cheap. Most of the ingredients are local. The burger costs $3.75. The restaurants are simple, clean, modern fast-food style. Someone open one in London!

Laurelhurst Market is a butchers shop by day, and a modern American steakhouse (and general meat emporium) by night. It’s very cool, we ate at the bar and had great cocktails (one named after Frank Black) and ‘shot the shit’ with the bearded barmen. It’s a bit like a more casual Hawksmoor. Had a huge chunk of bone marrow served with a pretzel and a MASSIVE juicy rib-eye steak which I couldn’t finish. No problem, this is America, land of the doggie bag. Made a steak salad from the remains the next night. I wish we had more of a ‘doggie bag culture’ over here. To be fair we’re a bit more on top of portion control than our cousins ‘across the pond’, so there’s less chance of large amounts of leftovers.

You can’t go to Portland without visiting Voodoo Doughnut. They’ve been on Man Vs Food. The queues are infamous. They used to do a ‘hangover doughnut’ containing Aspirin and Pepto-Bismol until that shit got SHUT DOWN by the MAN. Have the bacon maple bar (a massive doughnut with maple syrup frosting and crispy bacon) and the classic Voodoo Doll Doughnut.

Last but certainly not least is Le Pigeon, a restaurant run by chef Gabriel Rucker, a rising star of modern American cooking. Le Pigeon is very cool, with an open kitchen and the man himself cooking away, covered in tattoos and rocking a baseball cap at a jaunty angle. It reminded me a little of how David Chang’s restaurant is depicted in HBO’s Treme,

Despite the casual atmosphere, Rucker is serving some seriously fine food. Lobster and crab and noodles to start; these had an amazing texture and plenty of room to let the individual flavours of the ingredients do the work.

Main course was scallops with short rib and succotash. This was one of the best things I ate in the whole trip. The scallops were huge, perfectly cooked and the short rib tender, falling apart. All in a dark, rich meaty sauce. I had no idea what succotash was either, don’t worry.

We are rather full at this point so elected to skip dessert but the chef said we couldn’t leave without trying his foie gras profiteroles so he gave us some on the house. They were every bit as good/wrong as you can imagine.

MOUNT HOOD

With Portland done, we headed into the mountains and spent the last few days in a cabin in Zig Zag, Mt. Hood. There’s little of note here food-wise apart from an awesome Road House type place that did great, cheap BBQ - the Skyway Bar and Grill. It was open-mic night on our visit so we also had the dubious pleasure of hearing a white guy from the mountains of Oregon rapping ‘100% original rhymes’.

That just about wraps up my round-up of places to look up if you’re ever in the area. It’s a beautiful part of the world and the food culture is phenomenal. People really, really care about good food out there; this was true pretty much everywhere we went.

I’ll leave you with one last tip - 1 hour’s drive out of Portland is possibly one of the best places I’ve ever been too. It’s an AIR MUSEUM (the main exhibit being Howard Hugh’s giant seaplane the Spruce Goose) which is fantastic enough, but it’s also a WATER PARK with a REAL 747 ON THE ROOF that has WATER SLIDES coming out of the DOORS. My delicate English mind was BLOWN.

Hope you enjoyed the post, I haven’t done a ‘travel’ post before for fear of boring people to tears. It’s sure taken a lot longer to put together than any post so far. It’s also made me realise that I ate FAR too much red meat. Let me know if you’d like to see more or less of this kind of thing, or if I should stick to reviewing trendy restaurants 6 months after all the other food bloggers have been there.

I’ll sign out with the below picture which sums up the whole trip rather succinctly Thanks for reading.

The French Table, Surbiton

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 13:44:00 +0100

Fine dining. Remember that? Once upon a time if you wanted to treat yourself you’d find the fanciest restaurant you could afford, ideally one where waiters remove crumbs from the tables with little silver scrapers and every dish has artful drips of sauce painstakingly painted on the square, semi-opaque glass plate.

Then recession happened and the restaurant industry changed beyond all recognition. No bookings, utilitarian furniture, all-day casual dining. These days people get more excited about deep fried hot dogs than fine dining. Tell someone you went to the Gilbert Scott and you get a shrug. Tell them you went to Spuntino and they’re all like “OMG I went there last week it was totes nomtastic and it’s staffed by rockabillies they have a secret burger and there’s crack dealers outside”.

One sunday Mrs MBFBY? and I decided we wanted a bit of a fancy meal. No factory lighting, mismatched cutlery or enamel mugs of popcorn. Shocking news - MBFBY? is a resident of Surbiton. I know, food blogger law states you must live in South East London, but I’m a maverick. Lovely place that it is, culinary pickings in the Surb aren’t too rich (aside from the excellent Sarab and a smattering of chains and curry houses). There is diamond in the well-manicured suburban rough, however - The French Table. It’s been serving high-end modern French/Mediterranean cuisine in a neighbourhood setting for over 10 years now, and has even been on the telly with that chef who likes to say ‘FUCK’ a lot. It’s certainly not ‘this little place I know’ - they’ve been doing serious food to serious acclaim in recent years.

They had a table for us so we ambled down there (it was Sunday - one ‘ambles’ on a Sunday. Maybe you even ‘promenade’ if you’re feeling chipper). It’s a tasteful, if somewhat neutral room. Mirrors on the walls, comfy seats, plenty of natural light. They’ve made good use of a small room. The place is crammed with exactly the sort of people you’d expect to see in a fancy restaurant in Surbiton. I’d even put on my terracotta chinos and brogues for the occasion. Imagine that! Dressing up for a meal in 2012! You feel like you need to get a facial tattoo to feel comfortable eating in some places these days.

We started with some decent cocktails and decided we were going for 3 courses on the set menu at a very reasonable £26.50. To start I had the fancy-pants sounding ‘grilled cuttle fish with potato and raclette cheese salad, lobster froth’. It was an impressive looking dish. I do like a bit of froth. The cuttlefish was tender and bouncy, the lobster flavour binding everything together without overpowering any individual ingredient. The cheese cut through it all occasionally adding a bit of chewiness. Overall, a rich, tasty starter. Very enjoyable indeed.

Mrs MBFBY? had the ‘chicken liver parfait rolled in four spice with toasted brioche’ which she described as “delightful.” I had a nibble too and can confirm it is indeed delightful.

For main I had the ‘Panaché of fish and scallops with potato gnocchi, crispy samphire and basil sauce’. You know you’re in fine-dining territory when the word ‘panaché’ is being employed. This was, as we say in the north, ‘reet proper good, like’. Juicy fish (cod I think) with scallops, tempura-style samphire and some very, very good gnocci. All swimming in a delicious, buttery basil sauce.

Mrs MBFBY? had the ‘Mille-feuille of sea bream with grilled vegetables, tapenade and beurre blanc’ Look at that. That’s fine-dining turned up to 11. It even comes on a slate. Mrs MBFBY? said it was ‘marvellous’. I tried some. It was.

Dessert was a nutty chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream. Sounds simple and it was, but it was executed incredibly well. A dirty great brownie with some creamy home-made ice cream made by people who know what they are doing (they have a bakery next door called The French Tarte).

Mrs MBFBY? had the impressive-looking ‘rhubarb soup with île flottante, crispy nuts and peach sorbet’. More fine-dining stacking. Lovely. She said it was ‘bloody good’. Indeed it was.

The only thing I’d mark The French Table down on was the service. It was slow, drinks took a while and annoyingly when the sommelier told us they were out of the wine we wanted he recommended one which was more than double the price of the original bottle, which meant us awkwardly having to point out we didn’t want to spend that much. A good sommelier should never make you feel awkward for not wanting to spend 70 quid on a bottle of wine.

Overall though we had a grand old time at the French Table on that Sunday afternoon. It was a proper high-calorie fine-dining workout, hop on the train to the ‘burbs and check it out (we’re only 17 mins from Waterloo, you know). The kitchen kept surprising us with inventive dishes that were always more than the sum of their parts - but maintaining a level of simplicity that kept their feet on the ground. It’s impossible to talk about this kind of food without sounding like a wanker, I hope I haven’t disappointed you. It’s also impossible to write an article about Surbiton without predictably mentioning ‘The Good Life’. DAMN. See? Impossible.

8.5/10

MBFBY? was NOT invited to review this restaurant.

The French Table
85 Maple Rd
Surbiton, Surrey
KT6 4AW

http://www.thefrenchtable.co.uk/

Google Map

Tommi's Burger Joint, Marylebone, London

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 10:11:00 +0100

When I first heard that “some Icelandic burger bar” is opening around the corner from possibly the finest burger restaurant in London I was instantly intrigued, and 99% certain I knew who would be behind it. Not because I have an obsessive interest in Icelandic fast food (though I sort of do), but because there’s only one proper burger chain in the whole of Iceland. McDonalds didn’t even want to slog it out in the Icelandic burger market for the long-term, they pulled out when the Icelandic economy went tits-up in 2008.

The man behind this burger joint is Tommi Tómasson. He’s a bit of an icon in Iceland (not just because he looks like the leader of a suicide cult, with his big white beard - there’s a massive picture of him in the restaurant). Tommi opened the first burger joint in Iceland in 1981. Imagine that! Being the first person to introduce hamburgers to an entire country! Ok, Iceland’s population is about the same as somewhere like Burnley (a place where hamburgers weren’t available until 1997, incidentally) but it’s still very impressive.

The reason I’d heard of Tommi and his beard is because I’ve been to a few of his Icelandic restaurants whilst visiting Reykjavik. Over there, they go by the name of Hamborgarabúllan and they serve decent, straight-up burger and chips in a fun, cool, family-friendly sort of environment. On hearing about Tommi’s plans for a London opening, at the height of BURGER MANIA, round the corner from one of the most popular BURGER MANIA restaurants in London I was surprised, to say the least. I enjoyed the burgers I’d had in Iceland but they weren’t mind-blowing.

I headed down there on a Monday night, a week into the Burger Joint’s life. It’s pretty tiny (maybe 25 stools) but cosy and welcoming. It’s got the start of the huge collections of drawings, posters and Americana on the walls like his Icelandic restaurants, and there’s no table service, you get your food Maccy D-style from a small counter at the back, staffed by some very friendly Icelandic dudes (I LOVE the fact his London staff are Icelandic). They played ‘November Rain’ by Guns N’ Roses in all its 9 minute glory. This fact alone is worth a point. The place was buzzing and alive with chatter but not too busy. There was even a young family in there. I know! How outragous. How dare someone be able to eat a hamburger with their family in W1? Shocking.

The menu is small and simple - a few burgers, some meal deals, some sides. No booze, just soft drinks. I am told you can BYO, but you’d have to check with them as I forgot to ask. Thorough professionalism is always at the vanguard on MBFBY?

I went for the steak burger with bernaise, fries and a can of Coke. My name was called out 5 mins later, I collected the burger from the counter and was pleased to note that it’s served with the fries in a basket, and it’s wrapped in paper just like when I was in Iceland. Did I mention I’ve been to Iceland? No? Oh, you must go, it’s AMAZING.

The burger was very good indeed, certainly with better quality meat than its Icelandic equivalent but otherwise sticking to Tommi’s formula. Cooked nice and pink with a slice of classic melted cheapo cheese, a light, soft bun and a decent size. Not too greasy. Lots of flavour from the steak. Nice and simple. Tommi’s burgers are definitely influenced by the Golden Arches, and that’s no bad thing. The bernaise sauce in a little pot on the side was delicious and thick, and the fries were skinny, crispy and as good as I’ve had.

We were in and out in half an hour (and there was no stupid queuing) and the bill came to £24 quid. Bargain. In a town awash with try-too-hard burger pop-ups and blokes deep-frying pizzas in old iMacs under railway arches in Hackney, Tommi’s Burger Joint is a welcome addition to the scene. Simple, friendly, cheap, unpretentious and the guy behind it has been cooking burgers since before your man deep-frying his pop-up pizzas was even born. Plus, he introduced burgers to an entire country. AN ENTIRE COUNTRY. He’s bascially the burger equivalent of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier.

So, I wish Tommi the best of luck. I’ll certainly be back as often as I can for a cheeky burger. The only thing that would improve it - BEERS. As long as they aren’t Icelandic beers. They taste like piss. Did I mention I’ve been to Iceland?

8/10

MBFBY? was NOT invited to review this restaurant.

Tommi’s Burger Joint
58 Marlybone Lane
London
W1U 2NX

http://www.burgerjoint.co.uk/

Google Map

RECIPE - BBQ Pulled Pork

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 19:15:00 +0100

Radical stuff going on at MBFBY? in this post. Not a lazy restaurant review like usual but a recipe, like a proper food blogger would post. Pulled pork. Some of you are probably sick of hearing about pulled pork. Well, you can ‘do one’ as they say in Manchester. The reason people are all over it is because it’s so bloody good. Plus, if you’ve let yourself get annoyed by a flash-in-the-pit food trend like pulled pork you should probably read less food blogs and stop eating out at trendy restaurants so often. It’s not important in the grand scheme of things. If people want to pull their pork, let them. They don’t raise the subject of pulled pork at PMQs, though when this recipe goes live it may get a mention when the government notice the spike in cases of gastroenteritis.

A bit of background - In what I can only assume was a drunken stupor, earlier in the year I foolishly offered to host a party for Mrs MBFBY’s family (her gran was from the States so they have a big get-together each year on or around the 4th of July). We needed to feed 20-odd people. We needed something American, and something relatively simple to cook.

Pulled pork sprang to mind as it’s slow-cooked overnight and it’s bloody delicious, yah? After much googling I was struggling to find a definitive recipe (especially one with temps, weights and ingredients translated from American), so I turned to the mighty Twitter and sent out a request for tips. There was a very helpful response, most notably from @jmdale01 who provided me with an excellent recipe for the meat rub (FNAR FNAR) and BBQ heros @PittCueCo who gave spot-on technical advice.

First of all you can’t pull anything without meat. As we were feeding over 20 people we needed a lot, so I utilised the very handy services of Marky Market, who will get you whatever you want from Smithfield Market at a very good price. For pulled pork you need bone-in pork shoulder, we got 9KG of Old Spot for £7.50 a kilo, which is a total bargain for meat of that quality. Mark even dropped it off at my office. I had to transport all the meat home on my little Brompton which was slightly worrying as it would have looked very grisly indeed if i’d have had an accident but all went well.

Ok, LET’S COOK. First off, you need to prepare the rub as follows:

- 4 tsp sweet smoked paprika

- 2 tsp salt

- 2 tsp sugar

- 2 tsp mustard powder

- 1 tsp pepper

- 4 tsp dried garlic (or garlic powder)

- 4 tsp toasted fennel seed

- 2 tsp cayenne

- 2 tsp toasted cumin seed

Mix the ingredients together in a Tupperware or something with a lid so you can shake it all together. Shake it all together. Voilà! You have rub.

Now, onto the meat preperation: the skin needs to come off. We were planning on making pork scratchings out of it but we forgot we had it and it went off. Real professional. Removing the skin is very easy with a sharp knife, try and leave a little bit of the fat on there to aid the cooking.

Next up, apply the rub, working it in to every crevice until it is completely covered. Your hands should look like you’ve just crawled through a forest (see pic). If they don’t, you are doing it wrong. This forms the ‘bark’ which gives pulled pork most of its lovely BBQ flavour. We only left it marinading for a couple of hours due to time constraints, but next time I cook this I’ll leave it to soak in overnight in the fridge.

In the meantime I got the BBQ ready for smoking. I used a 3 burner gas BBQ with 4 smoke pouches on the grill above the heat (indirect heat, so only the back burner is turned on). The smoke pouches are BBQ woodchips like these soaked in water for 30 mins then wrapped in foil, then the foil is perforated with a skewer. I closed the lid on the ‘cue and left the pouches to heat up and start producing a good amount of smoke, (took about 30 mins). When it’s nice and smokey, go and get the meat and sling it on there, making sure it’s not going to start cooking too quickly. We kept the temperature of the BBQ about 90 degrees. Leave it to smoke for about 2 hours. Maybe drink a US craft beer or 2 in the meantime whilst listening to Drive-By Truckers.

When the 2 hours are up, it’s time to transfer the meat to the oven, which should be pre-heated to 110 degrees. The aim is to get the internal temperature of the meat to 90 degrees. With the weight of meat we were using (2 pieces of 4.5KG each, one in each oven of an electric range-type cooker) this was going to take around 12 hours. The one key thing that removed a lot of pain and potential FAIL from this recipe was the use of an instant-read digital probe thermometer. I picked one up for about 12 quid, and it’s very handy indeed. If any paranoia starts to set in, prod the thermometer in there and adjust the heat accordingly.

I went to bed, and when I checked the temp 10 hours later it read 78 degrees, so we were roughly on track to be serving it at 1pm.

1pm came and went and it finally reached 90 at 2pm. That last 12 degrees took it’s sweet time, apparently this is due to the meat ‘sweating’ moisture which sits on the surface, cooling it down slightly. Without the probe meat thermometer we probably would have misjudged it and took it out too early so get one. NOW! Those old-school ovenproof ones are rubbish and never seem to give an accurate reading in my experience.

OK, serving time! Remove the meat from the oven and marvel at the huge hunks of well-seasoned pig. It should smell incredible. Leave it to rest for 15 mins or so, then get a couple of forks and pull that bastard pork apart. For maximum hipster points you can use vintage bake-wear and do it in a psudo-vintage kitchen like I did. Whilst chugging on Goose Island IPA, naturally.

You should now have a crowd of salivating guests crowded round your worktop - when it’s all pulled apart in the tray it looks utterly, magnificently alluring, like a delicate meaty landscape. Serve it with BBQ sauce, soft rolls, coleslaw and BBQ beans. I can strongly recommend this BBQ bacon beans recipe from BBC Good Food; it’s easy, delicious and compliments the pork perfectly. Mrs MBFBY? made her own coleslaw recipe which I will share here in due course, as I think this post has gone on for long enough now. Feel free to point out omissions, errors and individual cases of food poisoning in the comments area below. If it goes really well, let me know about that too, obviously. Happy bloody pork pulling, yah?

Hawksmoor Bar, Spitalfields

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:37:00 +0100

I was going to the opening of an exhibition at the Whitechapel (I’m SO painfully bloody cultured, yah?) and was in need of somewhere to eat afterwards that wasn’t a curry on Brick Lane. I tweeted for recommendations and hilariously the Brick Lane curry touts (never ones to miss a trick) have taken things firmly into the 21st century, trawling Twitter for anyone mentioning Brick Lane and offering them a 30% discount. No thanks, mate. Already eaten. After weighing up the options (St. John Bread and Wine, Needo Grill etc) I remembered that Hawksmoor now have a bar in the basement of the Spitalfields restaurant. I love Hawksmoor but can’t afford to eat there as often as I’d like so the idea of Hawksmoor-quality food at bar prices sounded very good indeed.

We headed over there not sure we’d be able to get a table, but luckily there was plenty of room and we were seated immediately by one of Hawksmoor’s trademark friendly hipster staff. Inside is also trademark Hawksmoor - vintage industrial brass, leather and wood, low-lit and atmospheric.

It’s rude to come to a Hawksmoor establishment and not have a cocktail so I went for a Shakey Pete (gin, ginger syrup, lemon juice and London Pride all mixed up in a Slush Puppy machine - sweet and refreshing) . Mrs MBFBY? had the Marmalade Cocktail (Gin, Campari, bitters, lemon juice and marmalade - sharp and sophisticated. Just like her.) The food menu is short, and very tricky to choose from as it all sounds bloody lovely. There’s burgers, hot dogs, lobster roll and various sides - we went for chicken wings, ‘smashed’ cucumbers and chips.

The chips were perfect as you’d expect. The smashed cucumbers were an interesting dish - large crunchy chunks of peeled cucumber ‘smashed’ together with garlic and vinegar. It’s certainly the most filling cucumber dish I’ve ever had, and provides a nice bit of green to offset all the brown food we’ve ordered.

Chicken wings were superb. They’re covered in a sweet, sticky sauce which I’m guessing has some kind of booze in it (Southern Comfort maybe?) Added points for serving blue cheese dressing on-the-side. You should definitely order these.

So far, so Hawksmoor. Continuing the trend, the burger topped with extra short rib beef was more than worthy of all the praise heaped upon it. Lighter-than-air bun and the best quality beef I’ve found in any burger, anywhere. It’s a manageable size too, and at £8.50 (plus an extra quid for the short rib) a total bargain.

The only thing I wasn’t keen on was the lobster roll. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed when it turned up. It’s just too small. I know lobster is expensive and all that but 15 quid for a tiny finger roll (especially when compared to the impressive looking burger) felt like poor value. It was tasty enough and the bun was lovely, but I kept finding bits of shell in there. Also I had to send the first one back as the bun was burnt (you can’t send out a 15 quid sandwich with a burnt bun!) but this was dealt with efficiently and politely, again as you’d expect from Hawksmoor.

Overall it’s a great place to pop in for a few drinks and a bite to eat. Definitely get the chicken wings and the burger. Don’t get the lobster roll. Stick with the burger, some Kernel IPA and a few sides and you have yourself the Hawksmoor experience at a very reasonable price.

7/10

Hawksmoor Spitalfields Bar
157 Commercial St
London
E1 6BJ

020 7426 4856

http://www.thehawksmoor.com/

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BBQ Shack at the World's End, Brighton

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 10:03:00 +0100

I’ve heard lots of praise about a dive pub in Brighton, where an expert BBQ pitmaster by the name of John Hargate has set up shop. Mr. Hargate is reputed to be knocking out high quality authentic US BBQ to the unwashed masses of London-On-Sea. Some of this praise is notable for coming from the mighty Jay Rayner, certainly the UKs most visible food critic. Mention food to someone in Brighton and they’ll put down their juggling balls and say ‘Yeah, Jay Rayner reviewed the World’s End and he like totally loved it, man?’ it’s understandable. When it comes to must-visit restaurants, Brighton falls pretty short.

On a perplexingly changeable June day, I find myself heading to the seaside town. A quick shout to Twitter for recommendations brings up a few more mentions of the Worlds End so it’s decided - we’ll go there for lunch.

The World’s End is in the arse end of Brighton. The London Rd area is all closed-down shops, 99p stores and run-down pubs. One of these run-down pubs is the World’s End. It’s rather grotty. The pub is mostly empty, there’s a huge TV blaring and a mobility scooter parked inside. None of this is a problem - the 5th Musketeer came here and he loved it, so the food must be incredible, right? It even says ‘as reviewed by Jay Rayner’ on a massive sign outside. Plus, who am I to judge people who want to arrive at the pub on their mobility scooter and spend the day getting battered? (This raises an interesting point - is it illegal to be drunk in charge of a mobility scooter?)

We had a look through the menu - the meat is available in various denominations with a choice of sides. We went for beef brisket, pulled pork, chips, onion rings, rice and beans. This cost 12 quid a head. Service is non-existent as you’d expect: You give your order to the young student-looking chap behind the bar.

When the food turned up there was certainly a lot of it. Unfortunately, incredible it wasn’t. First, the good stuff. The pulled pork was delicious, moist and tender as it should be. The home-made BBQ sauce was great too, sticky and rich.The rice was, erm, competently cooked. The onion rings were OK.

Now the bad stuff - the brisket was awful. It was dry and grey, almost like cuts of cold meat. What the hell happened here? BBQ brisket is meant to be wet and falling apart, not look like leftovers from Grandma’s 87th birthday party. The chips were sub-par pub fayre - undercooked, too thick, not crispy. The beans were oddly tasteless apart from a slight dank, earth-like flavour. Overall, very underwhelming indeed.

Now, I don’t know what happened between Rayner’s visit and mine, but the food we were served at the Worlds End was nothing like the meal described in his review. Also, he describes the pub as a ‘local boozer exactly as it should be’. It’s not, it’s a down-at-heel pub in a rough part of town. It not a particularly nice place to spend time. We overheard the table behind us paraphrasing Mr. Rayner’s review ‘BBQ food is meant to be served in dives’. That may be so, but the World’s End isn’t even a dive - its just a rubbish pub.

I suspect that the BBQ food is brought in by the famed Pitmaster (it’s no secret that the smoker is off-premises), but left to the mercy of the World’s End kitchen staff and their microwave, who set about it with heavy hands before it reaches the customer.

If I was Jay Rayner I’d be wary of the use of his name to bring in business if standards have slipped this low. Funnily enough after I wrote most of this post I read Sunday’s Observer Food Monthly and the World’s End gets another positive mention (though for some reason the chef seems to have changed his surname). Basically, when I go to a restaurant and a critic of Rayner’s caliber has bigger it up so much, I want what he’s having. He clearly isn’t being served bone-dry brisket and soggy chips. It’s a great shame as on paper it sounds great, and the chef undoubtably knows great BBQ. Put it this way - Pitt Cue Co can rest easy…

4/10

BBQ Shack @ The World’s End
60-61 London Rd
Brighton
BN1 4NE

01273 692 311

https://www.facebook.com/pages/BBQ-SHACK/

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Anna-Mae's @ Eat St, King's Cross, London

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 10:34:00 +0100

STREET FOOD! All you need is an idea, a gazebo and a Twitter account. Leave your job at the ad agency, go on a long holiday for inspiration, come back and start selling authentic Nebraskan pulled veal sliders to your old colleagues at one of Central London’s many STREET FOOD markets.

I’m all for it, personally. I like the fact that people can start something interesting with next to no money behind them, and anything that adds a bit of variety to the lunch hour is fine by me. The US pretensions of ‘food trucks’ are slightly annoying but hey, this is 2012. Everything is slightly annoying.

Today I’m heading to Eat St in Kings Cross. It’s a curious beast. It’s basically a few stalls (around 6) tucked away on a brand-new street born out of the huge development of the area round the stations. It’s not a very pleasant place to hang out, especially on a hot day. The sun reflecting off the light coloured gravel and total lack of greenery and shade make it feel oddly post-apocalyptic. Also, up until very recently there was literally nowhere to sit and eat apart from aforementioned gravel pavement. Thankfully someone has dotted some tables and chairs around now.

Unless you are at St Martins College or you work for the Grauniad, Eat St is a bit out of the way (though the hilarious parade of hipster art students makes for excellent lunchtime entertainment). I cycled up there from Holborn specifically craving the Rib Man’s excellent rib roll but unfortunately I snoozed and I losed as he’d ran out by the time I got there. The exact same thing happened a few weeks ago when I biked there from Soho in search of meat.

Thankfully a solution was at hand. Anna-Mae’s stall next door sells mac n’ cheese (That’s macaroni and cheese for those in the provinces) with a range of toppings. One of the toppings was pulled pork and pickled red onion. What better way to console myself from the disappointment of the Rib Man’s empty tray than a load of cheese-smothered pasta covered in meat?

You get a fairly sizeable cup, and it looks like its going to be good. You know what? It was good. Really good. Deliciously moist pulled pork and a sea of lovely macaroni and cheese. The texture of the mac was great, not overlooked at all. The cheese was tasty and plentiful without being too rich. It filled me right up. Also, the guys at the stall were really nice and friendly, which is always a bonus.

I’ve had it twice now, both times after failing to secure Rib Man and it was great both times. In fact, the first time I had it I was riding from Soho to Surbiton that evening on my road bike and I smashed my best average speed by a full mile-per-hour. If Lance Armstrong had access to Anna-Mae’s instead of EPO, maybe he wouldn’t be in so much trouble now.

My minor gripe is the price - 6 quid for the pulled pork. This seems to be one of the first rules of STREET FOOD (aside from having a Twitter account and a gazebo) - everything seems to be 6 quid. 6 quid is erring on the expensive side for a workday lunch, especially one comprised mainly of pasta. Though to be fair the quality is fantastic and you get plenty of pulled pork. If it was a fiver I’d have no complaints at all. However they do have cheaper options as illustrated above, but you don’t get pulled pork in those. (The Rib Man manages to keep his huge rib rolls at the all-important £5 threshold).

Next time I cycle to Eat Street I suspect I’ll be heading there craving mac n’ cheese rather than ribs, especially taking into account it’s performance-enhancing qualities. No offence to the Rib Man, he still rules, but he needs to bring more meat with him as he’s lost out twice now to the wonderful stall next door.

8/10

Anna-Mae’s
Various locations, check website for details

http://anna-maes.com/

Pho, Wardour St, Soho

Mon, 28 May 2012 10:54:00 +0100

I usually start my reviews with a little story of how I came to be eating at the restaurant in question or maybe even a small rant about some annoying new culinary fad, but in this case I was asked if I’d like to review Pho by their PR, so I’ll get straight to it. Tally ho!

It’s busy. It’s Wednesday. You can’t book. It’s Soho, what are you expecting? Of course. Silly me. Pho is part of a small Vietnamese ‘street food’ chain. I’ve had their take-away for lunch a few times, thought it was pretty decent so was looking forward to seeing what else they had to offer.

The room and the bar area are full, we’re left hanging round the crowded bar wondering what’s going on and how we get our name down for a table. A member of staff steps in, gets us some drinks and after a short wait we are perched on some stools at a bench-type table. Prepare to get close to your neighbours - Pho is a perfectly cosy, low-lit space but they cram you into every nook, cranny and crevice. I realise there was no need to use the word ‘crevice’ there but come on, it’s a pretty fantastic word.

Perversely, the waiter recommended a beer from Laos rather than Vietnam (BeerLao) and very good it was too. Crisp but with a slightly more malty flavour than something like Chang or Tsing Tao.

To kick things off I had Ban Xeo Tom Ga - these are thick fried crepes filled with prawns, chicken and bean sprouts. At first I though it was a bit fiddly to eat as the crepe is kind of like a giant crisp so you can’t wrap anything it in but then it was pointed out it that it comes with loads of large salad leaves in which to wrap the filling. I liked this dish, the crepes had a nice slightly chewy texture, and the leaf parcels were zingy and perfect for dipping in the little bowl of fish sauce-type stuff.

Mrs MBFBY? had prawn summer rolls. These were light and refreshing but we found them rather bland - until we smothered them in various potent sauces. They had a great texture but could have done with an additional element rather than sauce on the side.

For main it would have been rude not to have the pho, so I had the pho. It was a wonderful, huge aromatic spicy soup with rice noodles and beef meatballs floating around in it. It came with some tiny slices of chilli on the side which I was warned about but being a REAL MAN, obviously I chucked the lot in and spent the next 20 mins feeling quite light headed. I should have probably had a sit down and some sugary tea to bring me round but I just killed it with more beer instead. WARNING - DO NOT PUT THOSE CHILLIS DIRECTLY ONTO YOUR TONGUE. It will leave an intense, focused burning on you taste buds that will not go away for 45 mins. I would absolutely recommend this dish to blast out a cold.

Mrs MBFBY? went for lemongrass beef bun noodles, which was tasty (though not as full-on as the pho). Plenty of moist beef with a spring roll on the side, covered in crunchy peanuts. It’s an easy-going dish - the noodles are served at room temperature and you mix it all together to get the best out of it. Go for this if you want to play it safe.

Dessert was a winner - we shared an utterly filthy deep fried banana fritter with honey and ginger ice cream. There’s not much else to say about it apart from the fact that deep-fried desserts are usually awesome, simply because they mix sugar and batter.

To finish us off (literally) we had a couple of shots of super-strength rice wine. The Nep Fu Loc (the lighter one) was mellow and a decent palate-cleanser but the Nhat Da (the dark one) was HARDCORE. It certainly aided with digestion but I can’t say I liked it very much. It had an intense, sour taste.

So, I liked Pho. It’s informal, it’s good value (especially for me on this occasion, thanks to the PR company) and the snappy service means you could be in and out pretty quickly, making it a great place to grab some interesting food before going on somewhere else. It’s not a place to linger, but then this isn’t what they are trying to encorage. To borrow a phrase which I used on Twitter last week when contributing to the #smalltownrestaurantreviews hashtag japes, “I’ve never been to Vietnam, but it tasted pretty authentic to me”.

Pho
163-165 Wardour St
London
W1F 8WN

020 7434 3938

http://www.phocafe.co.uk/

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Brunswick House Cafe, Vauxhall

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:49:37 +0100

When reviewing somewhere that isn’t in Soho or Mayfair, it’s customary to write as if you’ve been forced to travel to the end of the earth in search of you artisan brunch. “In the vast wastelands of Vauxhall a beacon doth shine from the smog” etc.

I’m not going to do that as there’s actually quite a lot going on in Vauxhall (the cricket, the epicentre of London’s gay scene, Mi6 and Jeffery Archer’s flat to name but a few) and Vauxhall is actually ridiculously easy to get to as it’s got a main-line station one stop from Waterloo and is on the Victoria line.

So if someone invites you to brunch in Vauxhall then shut up with your whinging and get down there as you’ll be missing out on a treat if you don’t. I’d been wanting to go to Brunswick House for ages so when Mrs MBFBY? and I arranged to meet our friend Julene for a leisurely Saturday lunch I booked up a table. Booking is certainly advisable.

Brunswick House Cafe is located inside Lassco architectural salvage yard, perched on the roundabout just across from Vauxhall station. It’s a genuinely amazing location; Lassco is full of old roadsigns, statues, doors, antique furniture and an incredible collection of reclaimed lights. Everything is for sale, including the tables and chairs your are are dining on. I’ve got my eye on the giant bug sprayer, personally. The dining room is in what used to be a theatre complete with stage. If this was in Shoreditch, it would be absolutely rammed with a queue out of the door. Thankfully it’s not, and it’s nicely full. Refreshingly, the tables are actually spaced out sensibly giving everyone plenty of room (these days in London so many tables are usually crammed into a room you might as well be on a table for 18). Not sure if it’s like this all the time, maybe they had a busy morning at the salvage yard and someone bought half the tables…

The Brunswick House Cafe normally has a full lunch and dinner menu but on weekends they have a brunch menu which is decidedly more breakfast-y. As I’m bang on-trend I went for the Reuben. This is done completely differently to a regular Ruben and all the better for it: it’s served open-faced on bread fried in beef dripping. BREAD FRIED IN BEEF DRIPPING. The meat iself was salt beef, and what a great example of salt beef it was too. Juicy, falling apart, smothered in mustard and the fat was delicious and melt-in-the-mouth. Sorry Mishkins, you’ve been pipped.

As I obviously hadn’t had enough of food which had been fried, I went for the rhubarb and cream doughnut for dessert. This is a simple dish comprising of rhubarb, cream and, erm, a doughnut. It was very enjoyable, the doughnut was spot-on and the rhubarb tart with a little bit of sweetness. More doughnuts in desserts, please.

Service was smiley, efficient and wonderful in every way. The whole experience was very English; civilised, surrounded by antiquities, faded grandeur and unexpected treats. I highly recommend Brunswick House, it’s was perfect for our slightly boozy Saturday brunch (they do Meantime beer and a short, good value wine list). I can’t wait to go back at night and try the dinner menu and maybe pick up that giant bug sprayer and a church pew or two…

9/10

Brunswick House Cafe
30 Wandsworth Rd
London
SW8 2LG

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MEATmarket - Jubilee Market, Covent Garden

Thu, 03 May 2012 10:23:00 +0100

MEAT. IN A MARKET. MEATmarket. No messing around here. For their second venture in 6 months, the MEATLiquor team have gone back to basics. Utilitarian, stripped-down, situated on the mezzanine floor above Covent Garden’s less salubrious market. Judging by the old menus on the stairwell, the space was previously occupied by a particularly low-end Chinese restaurant. Jubilee Market, it’s called, and I can only assume they picked this location as their way of showing respect to Brenda in her Diamond year. Crowns off to you, chaps.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I found out about their plans for a second location but this wasn’t it. This is proper fast food. There’s a few high tables and stools, no table service: you place your order at the till and they shout out your name when it’s done, which was bloody quick when we were there, even though it was press night and they’d only done one previous full service. The kitchen is huge, like McDonalds. Obviously having learned a lesson from the ridiculous queues at the mothership they are clearly aiming to shift high volumes with a quick turnover. Nowt wrong with that. This is a burger joint, after all.

At MEATmarket they have a pared-down food and booze menu with a few new surprises. First up - the Black Palace burger. This slab of pure filth takes two beef patties, some American cheese and a mixture of onions and gherkins all steamed together into a glorious gooey mess. This is the most full-on burger they’ve done (there’s no way you could do two), and like most palaces it’s a glorious thing of majestic beauty. Apparantly it’s an homage to the US chain White Castle Burger. See what they did there?

They’ve also introduced a brand new menu of hot dogs. I went for the RIPPER, which is a bacon-wrapped ‘dawg covered in crunchy bacon bits and onions (on a base of ketchup and French’s mustard, obviously). This is a superior quality wurst. Thick, juicy and a good amount of pop. I think it might actually pip Big Apple Hot Dogs, though I’ll have to do a side-by-side comparison to make my mind up properly. Answers on a postcard if anyone can suggest the best way to achieve this. The bun is basically the hot dog equivalent to the burger bun - light but chewy. Great stuff.

On the side we had the fries (same as MEATLiqour) and yet another new addition - deep fried jalapeño and cheese poppers. Yep, you guessed it, these were bloody good too.

Booze-wise they’ve got cans of Vedett and Hard Shakes - thick shakes with booze in. They are certainly tasty but one is enough - any more and you might be chucking your Black Palace on to the head of an unsuspecting market trader below. At current exchange rates a Hard Shake is more expensive than Mia Wallace’s Five Dollar Shake. Judging by the ones I tried (Vanilla with rum, Chocolate with Mozart liqueur) I think Mrs Wallace would approve.

So, sorry to write such a predictable glowing review but they’ve taken what they’ve learned at MEATLiquor, developed it, trimmed the fat (from the operation at least, certainly not from the food) and opened up an establishment dedicated to getting you high quality premium US ‘junk’ food as quickly as possible. Proper fast food. This is a place to hit late at night after a few drinks, gorge yourself on a sloppy burger, knock back a Hard Shake then fall asleep on the bus.

I have two reservations (not that anywhere takes them nowadays) :

1. Will they be able to keep up the quality with such a quick turnover?

2. Will there still be epic queues, such is the rabid desire for quality burgers at the moment?

Time will tell. On the strength of this preview I think they are going to do very well indeed. Having seen the setup first hand, I can’t help but think they’re going to roll it out to quite a few more sites at some point soon. I’m not going to give it a score as it was a freebie and they ain’t even open yet (they open tomorrow I believe) but you can probably tell that I think it’s pretty damn good. Go out, get drunk, stagger to Covent Garden and get yourself some MEAT.

MEATmarket
Tavistok St
London
WC2E 8BD

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Goodman, Maddox St, London

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 12:44:00 +0100

“Heifer whines could be human cries, closer comes the screaming knife, this beautiful creature must die, this beautiful creature must die”, sang Morrissey in the mid-80s. Unfortunately Mozza wasn’t demanding the beautiful creature be slaughtered to make quality dry-aged steaks, he was making a passionate plea to the trenchcoat-wearing hoards of 1985 to reject the carnivorous ways that are the norm in this country, as it’s murder, no, no, no it’s murder.

Thankfully few people listened to the be-quiffed one and in London these days you can enjoy some of the finest quality steak in the world from numerous purveyors of high-end beef. The ‘big two’ are the amazing Hawksmoor and today’s review, Goodman. They are both talked about in the same breath, they are both similarly priced and they both have legions of fans convinced one is better than the other. I thought it was only fair to you, dear reader, that I find out for myself if Goodman could out-steak Hawksmoor (no mean feat considering I gave Hawksmoor a perfect 10/10). It’s a tough task but professionalism comes first on this blog.

First impressions - the room was buzzing (it was Friday night after all) and it’s a rather pleasant space. It’s more of a traditional room than Hawksmoor’s vintage industrial vibe, and the feel is ‘upmarket’ rather than ‘trendy’. We had a kind of booth. Everyone likes a booth.

Unfortunately for us on our visit we had to endure the frequent London phenomenon of a large group of loud, lairy pissed-up City bankers. SWEARING and GOING ON ABOUT MASSIVE DEALS, YAH? Thankfully they buggered off before the mains came. Most upmarket restaurant suffer from the expense account brigade’s ill behaviour from time to time but the problem is particularly bad in posh steakhouses, purely because steak is BIG and MACHO and is for REAL MEN with LOTS OF MONEY.

Anyway, onto the food. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Not to listen to my grumpy ranting. Keen to find out about Goodman’s Russian angle (they are Russian-owned), I chose the sweet pickled herring to start. Served, ‘Russian style’ in a Kilner jar with mustard and some sort of delicious rye bread. It was fantastic. Juicy, thick slices of herring with a touch of mustard, a gherkin and a wee bit of bread make for a very tasty (and oddly refreshing) mouthful of food. The combined sweet/vinegar flavours are a great palette cleanser ahead of all that meat.

The main event is obviously STEAK, and lots of it. There were 4 of us so we got 2 900g Porterhouses, cooked medium-rare. I think the photos speak for themselves here - this was a VERY good steak indeed. It was cooked perfectly medium-rare and the char was spot-on. My favourite bit was the fat which had developed an amazing rich smokey flavour.

Just look at the colour of it! Better than Hawksmoor? Well, it’s a bit different. I’d say they are as good as each other, in their own special way. Unfortunately Mrs MBFBY? said that the other steak had been cooked to medium rather than med-rare so wasn’t quite as juicy as my one, though she still enjoyed it immensely.

Obviously it’s not a trip to the steakhouse unless you cover your table in sides so we went for truffle chips (brilliant - cooked in truffle oil), normal chips (brilliant - not cooked in truffle oil) green beans (brilliant - but what else can you say about competently cooked green beans?) and carrots (lovely honey and ginger glaze). No marks lost for the sides.

The staff were friendly, helpfully knowledgeable and efficient. Our waitress took a lot of time to make sure we were all happy and everything was fully explained to us.

So, food-and-service-wise, it’s very hard to say Goodman beats Hawksmoor. They are both serving steak to an absurdly high standard. I do have to dock them a point for overcooking Mrs MBFBY?’s porterhouse a tad, though.

They also lose a point for the annoyance of having a TV film crew walking around getting in the way, at one point the cameraman set up a light which was shining into my mum’s face and I had to go an tell them to turn it off. Though to be fair I emailed them afterwards about this and received a prompt apology so top marks for customer service.

When it comes down to it though, I have to say I personally prefer Hawksmoor. I love Hawksmoor’s aesthetic, I love their cocktails and I love their hipster staff. This has nothing to do with the food, Goodman is a fine establishment, but one with a more traditional feel. If you want to savour the flavour of murder properly then I urge you to try both. Don’t listen to Morrissey. The flesh they so fancifully fry IS succulent, tasty AND kind. Well, kind on the taste-buds at least. It’s not kind to the cow, or to your wallet.

8/10

Goodman
24-26 Maddox St
London
W1S 1QH

020 7499 3776

http://www.goodmanrestaurants.com/

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