EATING FOR BRITAIN: CLOTTED CREAM & PASTIES IN CORNWALL.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have written entries for The Guardian’s Word of Mouth Blog supporting the attempts of Glasgow and Birmingham to gain PDO status for the Chicken Tikka Masala and the Balti respectively.

Inevitably, this being The Guardian, I received plenty of comments both in support and telling me not to be so bleeding stupid. I could certainly sympathise with the latter group, but think that in the end their slightly pooterish argument that these two dishes are just imports from the sub-continent that we have fannied around with fails to take into account the fact that without immigration we would not have had so many of our national dishes including Lancashire Hot Pot, Kippers and of course, Fish & Chips.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of that debate, I am sure there can be little doubt from about the claims to protected status of the two dishes I went in search of this week, both in Cornwall and both, quite frankly, bloody delicious.

On Wednesday, I found my way to Scorrier a short distance from Redruth and the home of the big name in Clotted Cream, Rodda's. The large plant still stands on the site of the original farm and many of the old buildings remain in place as indeed does the ownership of the Rodda family.

I met with Philip Rodda, who is a grandson of Fanny, the woman who first started cooking cream in glass jars to preserve it so it could be sold further afield than just the surrounding villages. It kept well in the jars, but did not form a crust, so, over the years, the family tweaked the system so it could be cooked in the plastic containers in which it is now sold, which allowed for the formation of that glorious yellow topping.

There is not much to see in the factory, which is much like many of the other facilities I have visited, but Philip explained that, although they now get through more than 200,000 litres of milk a week, the cream is still made in exactly the same batch method as it always has been, which is simply to separate the cream from the milk and then to bake it gently until the crust forms before allowing to cool.

This tradition and attention to detail is probably why it has remained so popular, not just with the likes of you and me but also with the late Queen Mother who used to have it delivered to Clarence House every week when she was in residence.

Well, the proof of the cream is in the eating and Philip explained the Cornish way of eating it. His own preference is to have it on a ‘split” a bread roll which is dolloped with cream and then drizzled with syrup to make a “Thunder & Lightning” or on a scone where the cream MUST go one after the jam unlike the way the heathens in Devon serve it. Me? I just like it straight out of the pot with a spoon.

Rodda’s Clotted Cream is easily one of the greatest tastes I have encountered in the whole of the UK

If Rodda’s cream is made a large facility, then Chough’s Award winning Cornish Pasties could not have a more humble home. Close to the harbour in Padstein, sorry, Padstow The Chough Bakery has been around for well over twenty-five years but has only been making pasties for about seventeen of those. Robert Ead and his wife began to sell them in competition to the mass produced efforts on sale in the rest of the town.

The recipe comes from Robert’s mother and, although they have had to change it a little to deal with the demands of making thousands a week, they are still made by hand fresh every day less than ten feet from the sales counter in the shop.

The recipe for a proper Cornish Pastie is a simple one. Shortcrust pastry surrounding a mix of beef, potatoes and turnip, seasoned with salt and pepper. Given this simplicity, you would imagine that it is not too hard to make a good pastie but, as Robert explained too may bakers use the humble status of the pastie to use poor ingredients including something rather unpleasant called “pastie meat” which involves bits I would rather not contemplate.

At Chough’s on the other hand, they only use prime ingredients. Chunks of lean skirt steak, from Cornish cattle, of course, freshly peeled and chopped potatoes and turnips, plenty of salt and both black and white pepper, hand mixed shortcrust pastry and their own special ingredient, a blob of the Rodda’s clotted cream I had seen being made the day before.

The real skill comes in the crimping of the pastry, which in the days of the tin mining industry allowed workers to eat the filling and discard the crust of twisted dough which was left on the mining floor for the “knockers” the fairies that people believed inhabited the mines and guided the miners to the rich veins of tin with their knocking.

After being brushed with a wash of whole egg, the pasties are baked for forty minutes and allowed to cool a little before they are served up as fast as Robert and his small team can make them.

Like so many “peasant” dishes the end result is hearty and delicious. The pepper makes sure the filling is never bland and the pastry breaks to allow a gloriously meaty steam to escape from the insides. Perfect with a good slug of HP sauce or English mustard.

If you want to try for yourself, they run an efficient online mail order service where you can of course buy pasties but also an entire Cornish cream tea by post which includes, you guessed it, Rodda's clotted cream. www.thechoughbakery.co.uk

Two more dishes ticked off my EATING FOR BRITAIN list and I don’t think even some of the readers of The Guardian could argue with their inclusion.

EATING FOR BRITAIN: RIVER FARM, SMOKIN'

Ah, the joys of being on Twitter.

Well for me, not for poor old Dan Woodford whose unwise decision to follow me on said social networking site and to give a link to the website of the smokery where he was working led to an interchange of mails and an invitation for me to come up and spend a morning at The River Farm Smokery a short distance from Cambridge.

Dan was in his last few weeks of work at the smokery before moving to Italy, lucky bugger, but still seemed terribly enthusiastic as he showed me around the buildings that had been converted from old RAF sheds. The company has been going for nearly twenty-five years and for the last five, co-owner Chris Swailes has been building up an enviable business for their smoked fish and meat with clients including The Ivy and The Harwood Arms.

Dan has been there for three years and watching him at work, it is little wonder that the product is developing such a great reputation. He was working on smoked mackerel when I arrived and soon had me helping him with the gutting and cleaning of the beautifully fresh fish before he brined them for six hours before taking them to the kiln.

In the smoke room itself, things were already well under way for the day with trout, eel, duck breasts, plump cod’s roe and salmon sitting in the smoke of the smoldering ashes from German oak and dripping glistening oils down to the floor.

Because of other commitments, my stay was a short one. But, before I left, I watched Dan prepare the raw ingredients for their biggest seller, smoked salmon as he layered large fillets of superb looking farmed salmon from Scotland in a tray between layers of salt to draw the moisture out and add to the final flavour. He was extraordinarily passionate about his work and I suspect he will be a hard man to replace.

Before I left, of course, I had to taste the end result and nicked a few tastes as a fillet was being sliced and packed in the processing room. Unlike many smoked salmon I have tasted, that at The River Farm has a definite tinge of salt. Dan explained that some people found that a little too pronounced, but I have to say, I am a fan and the slight taste complimented the fattiness of the fish perfectly.

From their small on-site shop, I bought a selection of other smoked goodies to try including bacon, chicken and of course more of that salmon. It is well worth ordering some from their website, er so here it is www.riverfarmsmokery.co.uk

KONSTAM: GOOD SOURCING, BAD SAUCING

For nearly three years, Konstam at The Prince Albert has been offering meals from ingredients primarily sourced within the M25. For almost as long DH have avoided it, not because there is anything wrong with the philosophy but mainly because, whenever we have considered going, there was never anything on the menu we would want to eat.

Come a rainy Saturday evening in July and we ducked inside Konstam after lousy beer and tables full of squeaking girlies at neighbouring gastropub, The Fellow persuaded us that it was not going to be the right a place for a quiet supper. The welcome was lukewarm as if to say “we get all our stuff from within the M25, how dare you not have a reservation?” and it continued as we were shown to one table and then asked to move to another even though the room remained half filled for the duration of our stay. Customers, eh? Who needs em?

When they finally settled us at a table where we would be the least inconvenience, there was a sharp intake of breath from HP. I thought it was the effect of all the walking on his middle-aged bones until I too looked down at the menu and whispered “fuck me” in rather too loud a stage whisper.

The prices at Konstam are audaciously set with starters topping off at the £7.50 mark, main courses coming in at £17.50 and puddings knocking at the door of £8. Shortening the distance your carrots have to travel is obviously an expensive business.

The pain of the pricing could have been alleviated somewhat if the food was any good and served with a modicum of generosity, the arrival of our starters soon told us that neither of these things were likely to be a theme through the meal, where ever the ingredients came from.

My own, broad bean tart with a turnip and shallot salad was a decent beginning, with the crisp vegetables complimenting the soft, creamy insides of the tart and the excellent short pastry. I offered a piece to HP, but he was too busy staring down with disgust at his own choice, a plate of “seared” Ox tongue with beetroot remoulade and cabbage salad involving two Lilliputian slices of tongue. They had been pan fried in too much oil and slid greasily around the plate as he tried to cut into them. The quality of the meat was spot on, but the parsimony of the dish made it almost unpalatable. The accompanying sides lacked zing and the whole dish, what there was of it, would have benefited from a good squeeze of lemon.

The theme for the evening continued with the arrival of our main courses, two small, messy plates of ugly food in tiny portions. My own main dish involved chicken that was announced as coming from Waltham Abbey. Good for it, but I suspect the rest of the bird is still waddling around Essex as the piece I received was barely a whole breast, cut on the bias in that all too familiar cheffy attempt to make small portions look more generous.

The main ingredient tasted fine, but more heavy handedness with the oil did its best to disguise the fact it was taken from a decent source. The side dishes of courgettes, cabbage and a tarragon cream added little and the addition of five, yes count ‘em, five little squares of unpeeled fried potato was the restaurant equivalent of giving the customer a raised middle finger.

Across the table HP was in his own private Hell, pushing together the thin slices of meat on his plate to see if they could possible constitute the advertised pork chop. His culinary CSI carried on for a few minutes before he called over the waiter and asked the question they had obviously heard before “is this supposed to be a pork chop?” His plate was something that should never ever have been sent out of a professional kitchen. Four small slices, again cut on the bias (no one’s fooled by this anymore, guys) and covered in a grainy sauce of mustard and honey.

The waiter delegated responsibility to a young chef with the words “show him the meat” and he nervously approached HP with the tiniest pork chop I have ever seen with the slightly redundant explanation “they are not very big” to which HP replied “for £17.50 you should bring some bigger ones in from outside the M25”

They offered to cook him an extra one, and when it arrived, it just about brought the portion up to acceptable level, but again any benefit was lost in poor execution used in the cooking that rendered using decent ingredients pointless.

With desserts priced as aggressively as the rest of the meal, we decided to split a Summer pudding at £8, which turned out to be the highlight of the meal. Filled with sharp berries and served with a lovely house made yoghurt, it showed that the kitchen could knock out passable food if they turned their minds to it. Unfortunately, at £85 for two including a bottle of wine, they chances of us ever going back to find out lean towards the highly unlikely.

Konstam’s declaration of the provenance of its ingredients means nothing if it is served with such lack of skill and absence of generosity. The sourcing of ingredients from within the M25 may be a laudable concept, but if you don’t carry it through to the simple ending of providing a good meal it becomes mere schtick and makes Konstam no more than a theme restaurant for the foodie set, where people can console themselves about a bad meal by discussing the low levels of their carbon footprint.

It is the green equivalent of Planet Hollywood and I wont be eating there again anytime soon, either.

KOBA: A KOREAN DEFEAT

Well, it had to happen sometime. It had to happen that, beaten by the sheer volume of food, I sat across a table as someone else polished off the meal and I stared down at the floor in shameful defeat.

I always expected, when it did happen, it would be HP across from me and it would involve a steak of considerable magnitude. I did not expect it to happen with Korean food, nor did I expect to be vanquished in the appetite stakes by a woman.

I am getting ahead of myself.

One of the real bonuses of the whole EAT MY GLOBE journey/book/publicity is that I have been receiving mails from people around the world telling me they enjoyed reading about my exploits. I always answer every mail, which seems to surprise them, but it does mean that I have built up fascinating correspondences with some remarkable people who, when they are in town, seem keen to meet up, if only to see if the ears are real.

On Monday I found myself in Quilon having supper with respected Indian author, Nandita Puri as she requested that the restaurant made a special Prawn Gassi for me and kept the hot appams arriving until I had to beg them to stop. A remarkable woman with whom I am sure I shall stay in touch.

On Wednesday, it was the turn of Sonia Lo to draw the short straw and watch me eat. She too is an author and had contacted me after reading my own effort horrified that I had not made it to Korea on my journey. She was right, of course, it was one of the great omissions for all sorts of reasons and is high on my future lists of “must visits”

By way of atonement she insisted I join her for supper on Wednesday and chose as our location Koba, a restaurant on Rathbone St that she considers one of London few worthwhile Korean options.

I am not sure about other food bloggers, but one of the downsides of doing this writing lark is that my friends always assume I know more about food than they do and thrust the menu at me to order for the table. Usually I don’t mind as it means I can order all the dishes I want to try, but once in a while it is nice to sit back and let someone else give it a go. When Sonia bundled in a few minutes after me, it was soon pretty clear who was in charge.

“The biggest shame in Korea” she explained “is that someone might leave the table hungry” and with that she began a long and earnest discussion with the waiter as he struggled to keep up with the list of food she was ordering.

It began to arrive soon afterwards and before long our table was covered with dishes. There was kimchi, well of course there was, there always is “but theirs is house made” Sonia told me “a lot of other places buy it in from Germany” Who knew?

There was namool, plates of seasoned beansprouts, spinach and raddish, there was Panjeon, the seafood pancake I first encountered on a visit to LA’s “K-town” There was Kim Goi, strips of toasted seaweed, which Sonia showed me how to wrap around rice to make a salty one bite snack. Best of all, there was Bindae Duk (I think) a mung bean pancake spiked with a powerful hit of chilli.

So much food and more than plenty for a light meal. Then Sonia pointed behind me to where a waiter was pushing a trolley of meat in our direction. It was BBQ time and what was already in front of us was just Sonia’s idea of a Korean amuse bouche. She had ordered four different types of beef for us to sample; rib eye, marbled through with fat, ox-tongue, short rib and marinated sliced beef. The cover was removed from our table grill and in turn each cut of beef was cooked for a few seconds before being plopped on our plate to be dipped in its own sauce.

All sensational stuff, but by now rivulets of meat sweat were already beginning to run from my bald head and down the back of my neck as I struggled to keep up with Sonia who was happily wrapping beef in lettuce with the addition of sliced spring onion marinated in chilli and vinegar and popping the meaty parcels deftly into her mouth in one bite.

When we had finished all of the meat I relaxed, but my relief was short lived as Sonia announced

“Now, we have rice to make sure we are full” as one waiter cleared our meat plates and another appeared carrying a bowl of bibimbap and one more of miso soup with tofu. Sonia instructed our server to stir the contents of the hot stone bowl so they were all combined and then to leave it so the bottom layer of rice developed the pre-requisite crunch. I will never be quite sure how, but we finished it and I sat back in my chair and, in a Homer Simpson moment, loosened my belt with an audible sigh.

“Time for dessert” Sonia announced and about thirty seconds later she was cleaning the last mouthfuls of a bowl of fresh raspberry frozen yoghurt as I watched on in admiration, before finally announcing that the meal had come to an end with the redundant question

“Have you eaten enough?”

Normally my answer to that would have been polite but dishonest not wanting the host to think they had come short in sating my appetite. On this occasion all I could do was nod for fear of the consequences should I open my mouth.

I was defeated. However, if I was defeated, I am glad it was by someone as delightful as Sonia Lo and, in any event, I am already planning a return match at Masters Superfish in the near future. I am looking forward to reaching over as she struggles with the gargantuan “Master Special haddock” and saying

“More mushy peas, love?”

Revenge will be mine and it will be sweet.

COAST: COASTING

British people don't like seafood.  Fact.
Sure they like their Fish and Chips and there's nothing wrong with that - for at least one Hermano this would be their last meal of choice - but put, say, a whole fish in front of someone and there would be two possible reactions:  "What's that ?" or "Take it away, take it away - it's looking at me !"  The reaction in Spain or France or Italy would be "yum".

Coast is a newish restaurant which promises to bring a taste of the seaside, Cornwall in this case to the grotty environs of NW1. It has an all-white interior which is not a good sign - I can't remember a good meal in a white restaurant - and has some suitably sea-related doodlings on the walls.  There's a big chiller cabinet running the length of the room which makes it look something  like an Estate Agents.  Not unusual given that Estate Agents nowadays look something  like bar/restaurants.

For a fish restaurant the menu didn't really convince and had us desperately searching for something which appealed.  "FROM THE GRILL" was mostly meat.  The one whole fish option, Bream, was in fact fried which didn't sound very appetising.  Maybe this is why things are described as pan-fried.  So much less prosaic.

Prosaic was also the password of the day when it came to our starters.  Fishcake came looking like a Scotch Egg and had been deep fried.  The crust was thin and crisp and not bad but the filling was underseasoned and all, er, filler. The Cucumber and Fennel salad was a bit limp and if there was any sorrel in the sauce, well, you can call me Uncle Jaap.

Fish Soup tasted mostly of Fennel and very little of fish.  The accompanying Rouille was underpowered and too polite.  Like the Fish Cake these were dishes that would turn up at your average credit crunch dinner party (Background music: Lady Eleanor.  Topics  of conversation: House Prices, Crime, Swine Flu.  Husband Says: "It really is amazing how far Marjorie can make a little bit of Salmon stretch.")

An odd smell heralded our main courses.  Not from HS's Fish Pie which like his Fish Soup seemed pretty bereft of any piscine components (undemanding,  polite, harmless – take your pick).  
No, the pong seemed to be coming from the chunks of Chorizo which had been mixed with my Mussels.  They were just inappropriate in this context but HS thought something was off.  Any way, I lived.

The Chorizo had leeched its oil making an unpleasant slick on top of  the cider cream liquor.   Not a sauce you wanted to mop up greedily with lots of bread.  The Mussels were fine even if the serving was parsimonious.  Chips were lukewarm and were of the dreaded “skin-on” variety, beloved of lazy kitchens everywhere.  As traduced versions of classic British and Belgium dishes go, these two were well up there.

At this point exit visas were imminent but turning down HS’s suggestion to wander up to Marine Ices – the walk up Camden High Street would have been like heaping  humiliation upon humiliation – I decided to try out Coast’s homemade ice creams. And whaddya know ?  They were great – good texture and great taste especially the Raspberry Ripple.  So good in fact I wondered if they were in fact homemade.  But as the waitress at High Timer so philosophically put it:  “they are homemade – but not made here”

By the time we’d settled up and left  the place was filling up with groups of happy locals.  So obviously Coast is fulfilling some gap in the local restaurant market.  On the way home we wondered what it could be.  Suddenly the lightbulb dangling over HS switched on:  “it’s a Fish Restaurant for people who don’t like fish” he said. Given that British people don't like seafood our meal now made perfect sense.

DOS HERMANOS EN CASA: COSTILLAS DE CORDERO ASADAS Y CERDO

HS was working hard on his new book at the weekend so to make sure he didn’t waste away I offered to cook. Inspired by last week’s recession special of Chicken Wings I thought I’d try that other cheap cut Breast of Lamb. The only restaurant where I’ve regularly seen this cut on the menu was at The Sportsman in Seasalter where Chef Stephen Harris prepares it in the Ste Ménéhould method. Lamb Ribs are fantastically tasty but quite fatty and need a fair bit of cooking (probably why they’re not served too often).

To prep, the Lamb the ribs were thrown into a pot and with some Carrots, Onions and simmered for a couple of hours. I did have fleeting thoughts of doing something more fancy but in the end I just mixed the ribs with chopped Rosemary, thinly sliced Garlic, Carraway seeds to add a little taste contrast, seasoning and some oil. Then into a medium oven for a couple of hours. The ribs still had a lot of fat on by the time they finished cooking but were so crisp and delicious and moreish that it was difficult to stop eating them. Which we didn’t, fuelled by the thought that the other Hermano might be getting more than his fair share. Unsurprisingly, we had horrendous indigestion which should put us off overindulging in this way again but probably won’t.

The next day we went meat-free for all of, oh, four hours before HS said he was hungry and when was dinner. Luckily, I’d bought a joint of Pork – the seldom seen Hand and Spring. Basically, it’s the shoulder of Porky Pig with a bit of the belly. Usually it’s boned and rolled or braised but a straight roast is easier and this joint has so much fat and connective tissue that it’s virtually bomb proof – just shove in the oven and forget it. Apple Sauce, whole roast Garlic cloves and some greens (because we like our meals to be balanced). The meat is all dense and chewy and porky and quite like the meat of say, the Loin.

We like to think we’re doing our bit along with the micro-slebs to help rescue the little fishies by eating as much meat as we can and I think quite a few were rescued at the weekend. Meat Free Mondays ? Bring it on.

POSEIDON: BY THE GODS, GOOD FISH & CHIPS IN NORTH LONDON

After last week’s Fish & Chip catastrophe at Crown Fish & Chip Bar I was down to my last two alternatives within decent range of central London, Something Fishy in Lewisham and Poseidon in East Finchley.

When friend and food writer, Neil Davey suggested that I meet him for a quick bite near his home in North London, it seemed like a good opportunity to tick another one off the list and after spending a morning unsuccessfully trying to extract prose about making haggis from my computer, I hopped on the Northern Line for the short, stuffy journey to East Finchley Tube station.

As I arrived my phone buzzed with a message from Neil informing me that he was going to have to pass. Typical freelance food writers, they always let you down at the last minute. Just because he had work to do, why should my lunch suffer? So, undeterred, I stepped inside.

Poseidon is a standard fish & chip set up with a take-away to one side, already busy with customers lining up for their lunch and a large restaurant to the other, which seemed to have switched on a beacon attracting local cab drivers

There was a set lunch menu for £9.95 for two courses including tea or wine, but concentrating on haddock as always, I ordered from the main menu, a “medium” haddock & chips, mushy peas and a drink, this time taking advantage of the offer to have the fish cooked in matzo meal.

While I waited for my lunch, the waitress brought out a plate for one of the other customers. “Jumbo Haddock” she announced as she handed it over and she was not kidding. It was enormous, its sides jutting proudly over each side of the plate and enough to make me think that I had shown my hand too early by ordering what was obviously going to be the kiddy portion.

I need not have been concerned. My own plate was delivered shortly afterwards, not nearly as impressive as “Mr Jumbo” but enough to stop me feeling like I should be carrying a Transformers sarnie box. The matzo crust glistened and made a pleasing crunch as I broke into it to get to the fish. The insides were spot on, flakes of white flesh that came away from the batter without a struggle. The chips were the perfect example of the chip shop chip, slightly white from the use of Fryer’s Mate and the perfect compromise between fat monstrosity and frites.

Peas looked the part too and, although they needed a helping hand with the addition of salt & vinegar, were as good as you are likely to find in the capital. Even the tartar sauce was a half decent. Not house made I suspect, but a notch above that offered in most London chippys with the exception of Masters Superfish.

The end result was a very pleasant lunch, even if it was tout seul, and fish & chips good enough to justify not only the journey up from town but also the slightly high price of £14 +tip. Enough in fact to bring Poseidon into the top end of the rankings along with Masters, The Golden Hind, Olleys, The Golden Fish Bar and a handful of others.

One more fish & chip shop to go, Something Fishy this way comes, I think.

TANDIS: SPITTING DISTANCE FROM BELSIZE PARK

I am usually slightly uneasy going to restaurants that offer Persian cuisine.

It’s not that I don’t like the food, I really do. In fact I believe that the countries of the Middle East offer up some of the most interesting cuisines of the world. There are two reasons I take pause. One is that whenever I try to pronounce the names of the dishes I invariably end up covering my dining companion in a shower of spittle and one that often incorporates a large amount of flat bread. The other is that no matter how polite and friendly they are being, the owners and waiters in these restaurants always come across as being slightly miffed and, quite frankly I am a bit of a fraidy cat.

So, when the owner of Tandis in Belsize Park announced “I am not taking your order until you say them properly” I did not know if he was joking or not and I was not surprised when my dining companion Petra raised up her menu to protect her from the inevitable drenching of phlegm.

She had been a good sport so far, trudging all the way up to North London after I turned down the kind offer of discount sushi in Clapham and was even more of a good sport as she saved me from further embarrassment by making a rather good stab at pronouncing the names of the dishes herself.

Tandis, halfway up Haverstock Hill, has been open for about five months and its air-conditioned room was a welcome relief from the muggy conditions outside. The service too was welcoming despite the deadpan faced request to try out our Arabic (or is that Persian?). It was also beguilingly honest turning down our request to share three main courses with a stern shake of the head and a declaration that “you wont get close to finishing it”

We took his advice and ordered a starter of Masto Moosir (duck everyone) a refreshing dip of strained yoghurt with shallots that we scooped up with hot flat bread as we caught up.

When the main courses arrived, we could see why he had been so insistent. Baghali Polo Ba Maahicheh (excuse me while I wipe the screen) was a sizable chunk of lamb shank with a large pile of rice mixed with lots of butter, fresh dill and broad beans. Zereshk Polo Ba Morgh (and again with the screen wipe) was another sizable mound of rice, this time flecked with saffron and covered in sour barberries.

Both dishes were delicious. The lamb fell off the bone at the first touch of a fork and the second pile of rice gave way to reveal large amounts of chicken which had been cooked slowly in more saffron. The rice in both dishes was buttery but the dill and broad beans gave an added element to the first dish while the barberries cleared the palette for the second. Even with us reigning back on our ordering, it was too much to finish and Petra requested a doggy bag for the remaining rice.

The bill, with something to drink, came to about £20 a head, standard for a neighbourhood restaurant and good value for one that serves very decent food in pleasant surroundings.

After supper, we decided to walk down to Marine Ices to have an ice cream for pudding forgetting that it was closed on Monday evenings. A great shame, not just because ice cream would have been perfect on a balmy evening like this but, more so because I don’t spit on anyone when I order a strawberry cone. Really I don't

TRE VIET: SO SORRY TO HAVE BOTHERED YOU

Ever been to a restaurant and felt like your presence is a bit of an inconvenience? Ever felt like the staff resented you daring to set foot in the place, as if the very act of crossing the threshold was some insult from which they might never quite recover?

It doesn’t happen very often these days, thank God. The current economic climate means that there are lots of people who could take the job of a surly server and the worst I can say about some restaurants recently is that their wait staff have been friendly but clueless.

However, during a recent lunch at Tre Viet, one of the Vietnamese places that dot the length of Mare St in Hackney, it was hard to escape the thought that our choice of their establishment for a meal was all a bit of a faff and that they were hell bent on doing the best they could to get us out of there as quickly as possible so they could return to their own lunch at the only other table where bottoms were touching seats.

We arrived just as they opened and, as HP rightly observed, the lengthy menu should have given us pause. But, we had walked all the way, braving Columbia Road Flower Market en route and deserved at least a decent meal. So,we navigated the plentiful options and soon placed our order.

Fast food is one thing, but it took less than one minute for our first dish to turn up, a cast iron platter of goat meat sizzling along with lemon grass and chilli. It looked harmless enough but its arrival was slightly disconcerting given that we had also ordered four dishes from the section in the menu marked “starters”

Now, I am no expert of Vietnamese culture, but my understanding of the word “starter” is that it implies something to begin the meal and not, as began to happen, the random appearance of dishes at five-second intervals until everything you ordered was on the table at the same time.

More dishes arrived in rapid succession and in no recognisable pattern, including one we didn’t order.

“Yes you did” argued the waitress, looking over her shoulder at the staff table where her soup had been placed and where she would obviously much rather have been.

“No we didn’t I replied” looking at the plate of sesame prawn toast in almost complete certainty that I had not even eaten such a dish since the mid-80’s and certainly would not have been ordering one in a Vietnamese restaurant in Hackney.

She took it away with a sigh and then joined her colleagues, already enjoying their lunch. A great pity then that they were the only ones in the restaurant to be doing so. The roulette delivery system might not have mattered so much had our food been as good as theirs obviously was, but it was patently prepared with as little care and attention as it had been served.

Summer rolls were tired and lacked freshness, beef in betel leaves the same and even the usual fail safe way of gaining DH approval, deep frying did not manage to persuade us to finish a plate of oily frogs legs in enough turmeric to cause a panic in New Market, Calcutta.

Add to this a droopy green papaya salad and the fact that in her rush our waitress brought us plain rice rather than plain rice noodles and our meal took its place as the most dispiriting Vietnamese we have experienced since we last went to Song Que Café on The Kingsland Road.

Twenty-five minutes after arriving, yep a whole twenty-five minutes, we managed to attract the staff’s attention to get the bill of £44. For once, we both decided that we would not leave any tip for service. We never do that usually believing that a bad meal is rarely the fault of the server, but in this case as we had not received any service at all did not feel obliged to acknowledge it. We just left while they continued enjoying their soup and they paid us as little attention as they had during the meal.

I doubt the owners know or care what a bad experience DH had in Tre Viet , but if they do by any chance happen upon this blog can I just say, I am really terribly sorry we disturbed your staff’s lunch.

Don’t worry, it wont be happening again.

LUTYENS: BLUEPRINT CONRAN

A few weeks ago, HP came home with a bit o’ beef from Jack O’ Shea. He proudly announced that while it was being cut, he had guessed the weight to within an ounce much to the amazement of London’s celebrity meat cutter.

He’s like that HP. I love him, well like a brother, but there is the element of Rain Man about him when it comes to food as he proved last night as we took our seats in the cavernous dining room of new Conran restaurant, Lutyens.

From behind his menu, all I could hear was

“mumblemumblemumble about 120covers mumblemumblemumble”

I asked the waiter and, after checking with a colleague, he came back and said

“A little over 120 covers, sir”

I told you, Rain Man, bless him.

But, I digress.

Lutyens is the latest enterprise in the new direction of Sir Terence, named in honour of Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, one of Britain’s greatest architects and housed in one of his finest and last buildings, the former Reuters building at the bottom end of Fleet St.

It has all the hallmarks of Sir T with vast amounts of money obviously being spent on the restaurant, the bar and a soon to open private members club in the basement. The kitchen is on show and so too is the raw bar with enough seafood on ice to impress even HP, as he was playing “guess the number of clams”

"mummblemummb35and24and7mummblemummble"

The menu too wont come as any surprise to anyone who has ever eaten chez Terence. It’s decorated with waiters in their finest Frenchie livery and, on the inside, along with the seafood offerings, are enough classic French dishes to make you want to hide a picture of “The Madonna with the big boobies” in a fake sausage.

Knowing that oysters are one of the two things that will kill me (the other being accidentally catching an episode of “Supersizers go…….. on T.V”) HP suggested splitting half a dozen cherrystone clams from Essex.

With places owned and operated by Sir T, the one thing you can always count on is the exemplary quality of the ingredients. So it was with the clams, stunningly fresh and perfectly shucked to retain the juices so many places let drain away.

HP’s snail starter was well priced at £7.50 and comprised half a dozen meaty slitherers with, as it should, a hefty amount of garlic and parsley. As I said before about a similar dish at Bouchon Breton, at its best, it is the sort of unapologetic dish that makes you realise why you love food. Here, although there should be some points deducted for allowing excess garlic and parsley on the dish to burn and make the residue oil bitter, the main event, the snails, were spot on and I stole the shells from HP to suck clean.

It was welcome too to see the return of Coquille St Jacques to a British menu, but less welcome to see what they had done to three superb scallops, which although perfectly cooked were done a disservice by a dry and grainy mashed potato surround and not enough sauce to rectify the situation.

Main courses were an equally mixed bag and strengthened our long held opinion with matters Conran that, the execution of the cooking ranks behind design, service and ingredients. My own choice of suckling pig with apple sauce and crackling was as good as you are likely to find in London. Three thick slices helped along with a little bit of sage through the middle sat on a mound of perfect apple sauce, which retained a sharp bite to cut through the fat. On top, a sliver of perfect crackling that split easily so I could share it with HP.

Where more skill in the cooking was required however, things fell apart quite badly. Veal kidneys had tightened to chewy little bullets and HP prodded at them glumly until one of the staff came to check if all was well in DH world. To their credit they offered, twice, to replace the dish but given that I had wolfed down nearly half of my dish already, HP declined and worked his way though the nuggets of offal declaring that despite the poor cooking, they actually tasted pretty decent.

The sauce with the kidneys was announced as the classic Sauce Diable, which should be laced with lemon juice, black pepper and Cayenne. What we got was little more than a standard and not particularly nice veal demi-glaze that formed a pool around a splodge of unannounced mashed potatoes, which had we known they were coming would have made our side order of frites redundant.

As it were, side dishes, while well priced, were poorly executed. Spinach was acceptable, a tomato and shallot salad was struggling to come up for air in a pool of oil and the aforementioned frites were anaemic and in need of another frying.

The dessert list was a cookie cutter offering that allowed HP to order his inevitable selection of ice cream and me to see what they did with the classic Peach Melba. Again, the ingredients were superb. Raspberries in particular had us fighting to scoop the few we were given from the bowl, but a Peach Melba needs to be served in a less apologetic fashion than the little silver bowl with which I was presented and WHERE was my wafer? Damn them, I had to steal one from HP.

Mint tea and napkin tests were bitch slapped to oblivion by the excellent staff and although I don’t particularly like the new trend of “zonal marking” in service that means you get at least ten different servers during your meal, as long as they don’t mess things up, I can live with it. That never seems to be an issue at Sir T’s places and the staff were well deserving of the service charge that was added to the final bill.

As the name of the posts suggests, apart from a bit of a pun, this is an instantly recognisable Conran opening, great room, great service, top ingredients, adequate if hit and miss execution and a bill at the end that gives you a bit of a shiver. You also get the distinct impression that all the effort has gone into the opening and, as proved with a recent follow up meal at Boundary, this is as good as it’s going to get.

“mummblemumbleGoodasitsgoingtogetmummmble”

Come on HP, let’s get you home to bed.