Hitting the Top 50 – Hakkasan: Soho, Saturday 12th December, 2009

I don’t eat enough Asian food. It’s a problem I’m trying to rectify, but it’s set to be a long process of rehabilitation. As an interim, what’s the best way to get a snob like me to a Chinese? Put it in the top 100 UK restaurants.

I’d heard of Alan Yau’s Hakkasan before the other half mooted that we try the food there, and I was relatively interested. After all, good Chinese food is still cuisine that holds its own with anywhere else in the world. Especially good dim sum, which is what we went for, given that it was a Saturday lunch time.

Around £80 later (which included two pricey non-alcoholic cocktails and some water), we were full as could be and pretty satisfied. The short story is come to Hakkasan if you want to eat just about the trendiest Chinese food in London. It’s occasionally spectacular, at times a little lacklustre but more often than not, they’ve got it right. I am speaking from the experience of one meal here, but after the money we spent and the number of courses we got, I now feel like a Hakkasan veteran.

I will provide some pictorial evidence of the very good side of things, because my layman knowledge of Chinese food just isn’t going to be able to describe how good some of this stuff was. Here are some quite excellent barbecue pork puffs:


These are brilliant for two reasons: 1) The tender chopped barbecued pork inside the puffs; 2) The flaky, buttery and tremendously sweet pastry that makes the puff. When you bite into these, you almost expect to be eating dessert, but there’s something better afoot. Maybe it’s my unsophisticated western taste buds, but these always taste great to me.

On the right is something I’ve eaten before, but not really. Um… That is to say I’ve eaten dim sum roast buns before, but not venison ones. This really is my kind of Chinese. Needless to say, they were superb.

Some Taiwan-style dumplings (left) were also as liquid-filled and correctly fleshy as tradition requires. The method of eating these always entertains and challenges me: you have to slit the side of the dumpling and then drink the thin soupy sauce out of it before eating the pork and/or seafood filling.

You now have a luncheon top three from Hakkasan. Leading me to a final verdict, I’d have to say that the food wasn’t as stellar as the £80 price tag suggests it should’ve been. Other bits and pieces we got through were at times delicious, and at others just misleading. (How can duck and pumpkin puffs look and sound amazing and taste so banal?) Still, I did enjoy myself and I didn’t feel cheated, so make of that what you will.

There are a few reasons to go to Hakkasan. It’s very hip and popular and the décor is exceptional: think like a kind of spotlit dojo. It’s also worth visiting just to walk down Hanway Place with its utterly decrepit surroundings and wander into a sliding-door warehouse of luxury: think private members’ club. Lastly and most importantly, the food is rather good. It’s also exceptionally fresh. However, it can be a bit of an either-way affair, as our lunch was, and as various associates have mentioned to me. Check it out if you can, but if budget restrains, try this.

Hakkasan

The Farm: Fulham, Sunday 6th December, 2009

I’m not in the habit of reviewing places I’ve been before… Unless of course I went there before I was writing this blog, when it’s fine. The Farm falls into this category. I ate there for the second time in my life recently and for the second time I was moderately satisfied.

The Farm take rather overcompensated pride in telling you just how local and fresh their produce is. Admirable, naturally, but we’re seriously expecting this out of our top restaurants as it is. I did feel a spark of local community pride as I realised they sourced their meat from my local butcher, but that aside it was a late Sunday night and I was ravenous and keen to eat. Therefore I didn’t really have time for the page of the menu that was telling me all about their heroics in food freshness.

And yet… They do raise a good point. It is important to maintain vibrant local relationships with suppliers of local foodstuffs. It does matter that you support home grown (pardon the pun) businesses and traditionally-marketed produce. Perhaps there is something to their patter after all. Food for though it certainly proved to be. Well, it proved to be after I’d dismissed it given how hungry I was on this late Sunday night.

The food was pretty good. Some foie gras to start was typically British (so, not as good as French then) and did a job. Some mushrooms on toast was very appetising-looking if a little relentless and overbearing by the end. The bread was overcooked, the red pesto on the bread was unnecessary and the mushrooms were over-seasoned. Still, some of them went down well. The egg that came with was nice, but was drowned in the fungi somewhat

A steak that didn’t come close to Athenaeum’s which we’d started the weekend with still didn’t disappoint (although the chips were too dry and too numerous to be worthy), and the duck confit shepherds’ pie was a treat. It was an exotic-looking dish on the menu, sparkling of mystique mixed with tradition, yet when you tried it, you wondered ‘why don’t we see this everywhere?’

Desserts came and went without any fuss. I think there was some sort of chocolate fondant in there and maybe some cheesecake. By this point I was very tired and had made up my mind that The Farm is a good restaurant (and a pub in front) and it’s worth checking out if you’re near Fulham Broadway. They’re quite nice in there too, and the contemporary dining room mixes excellently with the hearty fare they produce.

The Farm

An Unexpected Winner - Athenaeum: Mayfair, Friday 4th December, 2009

One can get bored of it all. The relentless perusal of hotel restaurant menus, the over-fawning yet somehow disinterested service, the consistent themes running through the menus around London… In this ‘business’ (I don’t feel qualified or rich enough to use this term with total authenticity just yet), you need to be discerning and hard-lined. And if you’re going to try hotel food across the capital in a variety of places, you need to be able to make distinctions and judgements enough to separate the multitude of establishments vying for your custom.

Athenaeum, let me begin by saying, was lovely. Not perhaps Indigo great, but it verged between decent and excellent throughout. The starters weren’t bad: some roast goose liver with cherries and some field mushrooms stuffed with stilton. These admittedly sound quite fantastic, but they weren’t entirely what they were cracked up to be based on the descriptions. Liver – underwhelming and…cherries?! Mushrooms – too insubstantial and uneven. On the plus side, neither was unpleasant so we moved to main courses.

Now, I’m not one to baulk at spending a bit of cash on food, but sometimes you end up spending serious money on a dish purely out of curiosity. A £34 steak at a hotel restaurant is something I was keen to try. It was worth it. Superbly cooked (rare), served with some delicious béarnaise plus dressing. However, bizarrely the most important part of this dish turned out to be the chips. Thick cut, fluffy in the middle, not quite crisp but dry enough on the outside, perfect measurements and tasting quite as you always hope chips will taste. The suckling pig was also very good, though they seemed a little too proud of the pumpkin (another current craze) that came with it. Not content with merely dressing the dish, they gave us a roasted wedge of it, plus some stuffing. We ordered some decent vegetables and some exquisite red cabbage with apple on the side of these, so by dessert we were already very happy.

Desserts hit the right spots because, well, they just were the right desserts. A chocolate fondant (yawn) with Bailey’s ice cream (hmm) was very pleasant. Had they had taken the alcohol out of the ice cream, it might’ve been better. Some sticky toffee pudding was thick, filling, saucy and served with some stunning vanilla ice cream and it nearly stopped me in my tracks. It was really, really good. More or less everything you need from your classic English dessert.

I suggest you give Athenaeum a try at some point if you’re able. The food is generally enjoyable and the dining room is just lovely with bright lights, mirrors and booths all around. The staff were friendly and attentive as they should be, and we didn’t have any complaints at the end of the evening.

Athenaeum

Thoughts on Pub Eating

I recently joined some friends for a pub dinner in a tiny but stunningly charismatic pub down in Cobham, called The Cricketers. Low ceilings, open fire, wooden beams, real ales made for just about the archetypal country pub. We retired for some food after a busy evening, and as I was scouring the place for its paper menus with scampi, chicken in a basket, chips and garlic bread, I noticed what was written on the chalk board…

It was during this evening that I realised the great shift that is slowly enveloping the gastropub world. It’s no longer good enough to re-heat some pre-cooked cod ‘n chips at lunch. Consumers want more than a £5 burger for dinner. There are simply no excuses for getting lousy food in pubs any more.

This is an area we’ve touched on before. Tom mentions it in his food gripes, and my day of pub food furthered the observations I’m putting across now. Perhaps it’s the downward spiral that the economy finds itself in that has caused pubs to slowly re-think their moneymaking strategies. Of course, spending money on redevelopment and the improved quality of food might oppose this idea, but for now I’m going to assume that profit maximisation in pubs now needs to include food.

Another massive factor in improved pub eating is the fact that we as consumers expect more these days. It’s simply not enough to throw scraps at pissed punters any more. Food and eating out in general is becoming a highly profitable industry where standards are rising across the board.

The first thing I would stress to any aspiring landlord hoping to own a gastropub is obvious: get the food right. If that means cutting an expansive menu in half, then so be it. Don’t overstretch a kitchen that is likely to have less than restaurant standards in terms of staff, equipment and space. It’s remarkable that some places try to get away with the cheapest, nastiest stuff you’ll see served to you. There is no get-out here: if you’re providing food in a service industry, you have to do it properly.

Another thing to bear in mind is the target audience has to be catered for. Much as I’d like to see pates, steak tartare, venison and beef Wellington on most pub menus, it just isn’t going to fly everywhere. However, consistent with my first pub food directive, you still have to get simple, old-fashioned food right. If a pub serves sarnies, chips and salads, they’d better be good. Because I’ll tell you now, there are fewer unsatisfying dishes than a rubbish sandwich.

A feature that is also important is making enough satisfactory space for people to eat their food. The Cricketers had a large restaurant room adjacent to the bar area of the pub that made the eating experience (whilst a little desolate) exactly as it should be: the surroundings complemented the food. The food in this case was lovely. Some (slightly dry) foie gras to start, followed by pheasant with mash, then an apple crumble to finish. A mixture of classics, homely food, old-fashioned pub grub and a sparkle of continental zest… I think that’s about as good as you’d ever want from a pub meal.

I guess the point of this piece is to firstly inspire any pub-goers out there to demand a little more from your pub grub. Don’t accept some lukewarm chips and a burnt burger for a fiver; expect and pay for more. If you want to get plastered and eat some filth, stop by a kebab place on the way home.

Secondly, it’s to highlight just how important food is to pubs that choose to provide it now. We may be moving away from the days where people would go to the pub then head to a restaurant. Now we just want to do it all under one roof. So pick your food pubs carefully and enjoy.

One more off the list – La Trompette: Chiswick, Monday 1st December 2009

It’s always good to fulfil an ambition, no matter how simple it might be. I’d been hearing about La Trompette even before I started working in west London, and a colleague and I had been speculating about eating there for a good few years. Unfortunately, since the restaurant was awarded a Michelin star back in 2008, reservations became markedly more exclusive, and the prices shot up. And then the current economic crisis happened.

I assume it was in light of this that La Trompette's prices dropped as steeply as they did. Suddenly, a la carte dining was downright cheap, for the reputation of the place at least, so my friend and I decided we had to take the plunge and book a table.

There’s something about uber-modern restaurants that makes you feel like you’re dining in a scene from The Matrix. The sharp and polished edges of the place are intimidating yet elegant. I suppose that’s what makes high-end eating the edgy experience that it can sometimes be. Now, that sounds kind of uncomfortable, and sometimes it can be so, but La Trompette have nicely bridged the gap by lighting the restaurant impeccably. Small differences are often what set a restaurant apart from its competitors.

However, the most important difference is always going to be the food. For as much as experience counts, it doesn’t really matter how nice a place is if you’re struggling through average fare. Knowing that this place had a Michelin star, I went in dead against simply fawning over the food because it was reputedly great. I refused to think it was good just because it was supposed to be…

When I looked down the starters list, I was convinced they knew I was coming. I ate foie gras and chicken liver parfait (so that’s the two ultimate pate-style starters in one) to start with a slab of brioche. It was heavenly. My companion ate a very flavoursome quail pastry crescent with dressing inside. Okay, La Trompette, you win this round…

If things started well, they remained at more or less the same level for the remainder of the meal. Main courses were great, beginning with a very hearty and stunningly rich daube of beef (traditionally a casserole, though this was less stewy and more pronounced) with all the right dressings. Even parsnip puree couldn’t dampen this one. I went for the venison, which – although it incurred a supplementary cost – was a fine, fine piece of meat. Cooked rare enough, sliced thickly and laid atop a bed of creamed mash with black pudding and truffled jus… I want another one of these, right now. The small problem with this dish was that the artichokes the menu promised did not arrive. They replaced these with spinach, which to me is like trading in a Rolls Royce for a Skoda when it comes to garnishes. However, I ate and enjoyed it. Damn, they’re good…

Having thoroughly proved they deserve their Michelin star at this point (even their mistakes were delicious!), La Trompette dished up a couple of feisty desserts to see us off. A black forest ice cream concoction was well-received across the table from me, and I went for a pear and almond tart with crème fraiche and some butterscotch sauce. I was apprehensive about this, since I don’t really care for almonds and I’m not a huge fan of pears. The tart was delicious: rich, spongy, buttery and ultimately a very satisfying way to commemorate the first day of advent.

In conclusion, La Trompette is worth checking out for three reasons. And they can be broken down in terms of the courses too, which fits nicely… They do classics well (starter). They can pull it out of the hat when it doesn’t quite go right (main). They can impress with unknown quantities (dessert). If you fancy some excellent modern French food; don’t think, just go.

La Trompette

Quaglino’s: Mayfair, Monday 23rd November, 2009

If you’ve spent any time drifting in and out of London restaurants, you will certainly have heard of Quaglino’s. Well, actually, you might not have if you weren’t doing this in the Eighties.

2009 is Quaglino’s 80^th year, and it looks the part of a Mayfair institution every step of the way. Stunning long ceilings and beautiful decorations (it was the first day of the Christmas frills) make you feel as if you’re rightly living in a better, prettier world. It’s also managed to distance itself from the D&D group it now finds itself owned by; you certainly still feel like you’re in an independent and stylish restaurant.

I must once again sing the praises of Toptable here, because they had kindly reminded me some weeks ago I had a lot of points on my account with them through my excessive commitment to eating out. And these were expiring. So, without further ado, I got on the case and took advantage of a free meal with Quaglino’s.

The inevitable downside is the freebie menu being a very limited set affair. The plus point was the menu being pretty tolerable. We ate our way through a decent enough French onion soup (but really, you have to eat this sort of thing in France) and some ham hock terrine for a starter. Considering terrine is the rough country cousin of pate, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of this one.

Main courses were better still. An impressive salmon fishcake with rich and pleasant dill beurre blanc finished very nicely indeed. And the dill didn’t ruin it either, which is a good thing. A chicken pie with porcini mushrooms was exactly as it sounds – filling and satisfying.

The tarte tatin and pavlova for dessert were also as they should be: sweet richness and fresh vibrancy respectively. So, all things considered, I was fairly chuffed with this particular free meal.

Do give Quaglino’s a try. Especially recommended during the upcoming festive season, where the appearance alone is worth a drink at the bar. If you decide you want a bit more of an experience though, stay for dinner.

Quaglino's

PJ’s Bar & Grill: Fulham, Friday November 6th, 2009

The best thing about PJ’s is its excellent ambience. It is like the classiest TGI Friday’s you’ve ever set foot in. Now approaching its twentieth year on the Fulham Road, a few friends and I traipsed in through a curtain of rain very wet and hungry. The foyer (if you can call it that) is far too small, and if there’s a group bigger than two arriving, you instantly feel like you’re in the way.

Once we had de-coated and moved to our table (where on a night as foul as this, you tended to get hit with a blast of freezing air every time the door opened), we perused the menu and ordered what turned out to be some pretty okay food. Decent pate to start (I’ve eaten so much in the last year or two that I can’t get excited about it much these days) was followed by the most over-decorated steak I’ve seen. There’s nothing wrong with that – I like my plate to be pretty and vibrant – but I have a feeling it was compensating for an underwhelming and dry piece of meat.

Having put away the onion rings, sauces, chips, mushrooms and other detritus that topped the steak, I was pretty full, but tried to find room for a chocolate fondant. This too was acceptable if not great, so it had some merit. Various other highlights from around the table included some fair lamb chops, a nice piece of chicken and an average cheesecake for dessert.

I came to three conclusions after I had dined at PJ’s, and these are as follows:

1 – The restaurant looks great but would probably be even nicer in good weather

2 – If you’re going to go there, do it to have a few drinks and bar snacks

3 – If you do go there for dinner, do so using a Taste London card

I think my tone might sum this up best: I’m neither exuberant nor vitriolic. PJ’s Bar & Grill is a lovely place, but it hasn’t provoked many reactions from me. If you decide to go, let me know if it hits you any better.

PJ's Bar & Grill