DOS HERMANOS: GO EVERYWHERE, EAT EVERYTHING

"It's not much but it's ours"

Saturday, May 31, 2008

THE BEST OF EAT MY GLOBE: PART II

Just before Christmas I posted a “ Best Tastes of 2007” list which was, for the most part, images from the initial six months of the EAT MY GLOBE tour.

I have had a few e-mails asking about the best of the last six months. So, now the trip is officially over and I am taking a short break from writing, here is a selection from the last part of the trip.

As before, if you ask me to do this list tomorrow, it would probably be entirely different.

1) SCHWEINHAXN - MUNICH.


2) “VILLAGE LOBSTER” - ICELAND


3) BANANAN FLOWER SALAD - BANGKOK



4) KHA SOI – CHIANG MA



5) RESTAURANT REBUNG – KUALA LUMPUR


6) ROTI CANAI - PENANG



7) BLACK TURNIP CAKE – SINGAPORE



8) PHO – HANOI


9) AREBUNG (CRICKETS) – MANILA


10) ADOBO – MANILA


11) TANDOOR CHICKEN – BUKHARA DELHI


12) BHEL PURI – MUMBAI


13) MUTTON ROLL – BADEMIYA MUMBAI


14) SEAFOOD THALI – GOA


15) TIKKA – GOA


16) BIRYANI – BANGALORE


17) MISTI DOI – KC DAS KOLKATA


18) BREAKFAST – KOLKATA


19) FIRST FLUSH TEA – GOOMTEE ESTATE – DARJEELING


20) MOMO – DARJEELING


21) BRAI – DE TOREN ESTATE STELLENBOSCH



22) PRAWNS – MAPUTO



23) THIEBOU DJENE – DAKAR SENEGAL


24) SPIT ROAST CHICKEN – CASABLANCA


25) LAMB & PRUNE TAGINE – MARRAKECH


26) GONZALEZ BYASS SHERRY TASTING – JEREZ


27) CHULETILLA - RIOJA


28) BALIK EKMEK – ISTANBUL


29) PANI CA MEUSA – PALERMO


30) BUCATINI AMATRICRIANA – ROME


31) JAMON - HARO


Thanks again to all the amazing people I met along the way whose generosity made this trip possible

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

L'ANIMA














Flash ahead to a yummy playback
Just you and me in a room



It seems like most of the recent major London restaurant openings have been delayed for one reason or another, usually planning problems. The opening of L’Anima, a new Italian eatery in a little snicket near Spitalfields, has been imminent for almost five months - all because of a dispute over an extension of not much more than a metre. Who’d open a restaurant eh ?

The area between, City Road and Spitafields, where L’Anima is located is a bit of a culinary wasteland and there’s not a great deal of choice if you want a relaxing beverage (there’s plenty of grim watering holes like All Bar One though, if you like to drink pissy lager) so I think L’Anima will be welcomed by all the City boys and girls in the hood.

I really like the interior of L’Anima which was designed by architect Claudio Silvestrin: all clean lines, plenty of light. I’m just wondering though how quickly those nice white chairs are going to last if they have slobs like me visiting. I hope they’re wipe clean.

The menu is not huge but I was told that they’ll gradually add to it as time goes by and various bit of kitchen kit like the Josper Grill eventually come online. It’s nice though that they at least make their own bread and some great fennel grissini which I kept eating and eating… There was plenty of good Tuscan Olive Oil to dip bread in and big fat juicy olives to go with my glass of Prosecco.

A good test of a kitchen is their deep-frying. The Fritto Misto I had showed that the kitchen has this mastered. Very fresh shellfish: Baby Squid, Soft-shell crab and Prawns had been fried so that they were light, crisp and greaseless. They were topped with some deep fried herbs and shreds of fried zucchini. After finishing the dish there was none of the oily aftertaste you sometimes get with inexpertly fried food.

Slow Roasted Pork Belly wasn’t quite as successful. The pork had a great flavour but the crackling wasn’t crisp enough – a major sin with belly pork. The deep-fried zucchini however were a winner - there was nary a grease stain on the paper they came on.

Chef and part-owner Francesco Mazzei was popping out now and again to check on things so when he found out my favourite sweet was ice cream he very kindly sent out a procession of sorbetti and gelati for me to try. Top of a trio of sorbetti was watermelon which, like that fruit, was very refreshing. There was also one of sharp lemon and one of fragrant peach.

Whilst I was waiting for the Chocolate ice cream to be made I had a tasty Pistachio and some Vanilla that came with splinters of Caramel aka Croccantino. The Chocolate variety was also excellent and was sprinkled with little caramelised hazelnuts.

I was obviously making the right sort of noises (most people usually tell me to be quiet) because another pud was sent out for me. This was possibly the best of the lot, a light moist amaretto tart encasing some rhubarb with a palette cleansing rhubarb sorbet on top, all sitting in a puddle of crème anglaise. A double espresso and grappa was never so well earned.

I had a good time here. The dishes are not cheap but the quality of the ingredients is excellent and the preparation sympathetic to those ingredients. And even without the extra desserts I would have felt nicely replete. Service was on the ball and everyone seemed very enthusiastic about the opening (as they should be) but best of all there was a sense of soul about the whole operation which funnily enough is just what L’Anima means.

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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

THE PANTECHNICON ROOMS









Now all the angles have been played in three's
There isn't much that I can say



Apropos of nothing in particular (although I have just come back from Spain) Spanish TV chefs are hopeless. They really are. Every time I watch them – although there only seem to be three in total – they’re always making the same thing, usually gazpacho, sometimes empanada, occasionally pork fillets fried with green peppers. The Spanish do however eat very well in restaurants at just about every level: from the humble comedor to the Michelin starred.

We, in Britain have a lot of TV chefs. We have shedloads of them. Some of them are even good. You see their faces on the merchandise they’re pushing. Unlike Spain though we eat well in very few places in the UK. A meal here is going to be expensive and average or (most likely) shit. Our fascination with celebrity and novelty blinds us to how awful some of our food is. In Spain you can go into any asador and experience cooking as craft and be pretty sure of a decently cooked and tasty steak every time. I couldn’t get that in the much hyped and lauded Maze Grill at over forty quid. Just for the poor cow.

Similarly, professional critics have been wetting their pants over Hix Oyster and Chop House where I found the ingredients to be average and the execution amateurish. I can only assume the praise for this joint is down to Mark Hix having a lot of friends. That, or it takes a lot of brown-nosing to get membership of the soon-come Ivy private members club (it’s probably safe to say that Hix and AAGill already have theirs).

The point is (I think) why am I getting so many duff meals and paying through the nose for them.

Ok rant over,

I’d visited Thomas Cubitt a year or so ago and had a decent meal. If you avoid the downstairs which is full of young, annoying, braying toffs and eat in the upstairs restaurant where the slightly-less annoying parents hang then you’d have a reasonable time. From memory the meat cooking was pretty good but generally it all tended to heavy-handedness: over-reduced sauces and the like. The owners have obviously done well enough though to open up a sibling venue a bit deeper into Belgravia.

This is consulate country: big flags, big limos, big men in suits. Using the word gastropub to describe The Pantechnicon Rooms is as inappropriate as the sounds emanating from HS when he’s asleep. There’s a downstairs bar and a plush dining room which although oddly bereft of tablecloths (Thomas Cubitt has them) had thick brass-edged tables and big chairs with enough cowhide to accommodate my big butt.

Looking around a full dining room I got the impression that most of those eating here didn’t lose any sleep over keeping up with their mortgage repayments. This was especially true of the American at the next table who seemed very keen to let his dining companion, and the rest of the room, know that him and his “buddies” all had very large wine cellars. I later looked up the definition of knobhead and whaddya know there was a picture of his fat stupid face gurning back at me.

If the food at Thomas Cubitt was more meaty in bias then The Pantechnicon Rooms was of the fishy persuasion. Most of the first half of the menu and a chunk of the second is given over to seafood in one form or another but the separate section for Caviar probably gives the game away re who their intended audience really is. The prices for Shellfish are no less scary - twelve quid for a prawn cocktail anyone ?

Deciding on the cheaper option of Oysters I was disappointed with the flavour six Fin de Clair Rocks. They looked the business but lacked the brininess and length of taste of good natives. Not even close and there wasn’t even the compensating factor of plenty of flesh that you usually get with rocks.

Barbequed Quail with Baked Ricotta and Date Chutney sounded a lot more interesting than it actually looked. You’d have thought that at £8.50 for a Quail they could have spatchcocked the whole thing but instead and with breathtaking parsimony they’d jointed and skewered two small joints. The Barbeque must have been still heating up (I told you to start it earlier) given the lack of colour on the skin. The accompanying cheese was a small dried out, chalky tasting lump, topped off with half a grapefruit segment for reasons that only the chef would know. There was a soft wafer of bacon and some unnecessary leaves. The only thing not screwed up on this dish was the date chutney but then I’m guessing it wasn’t made ici.

The mysterious Rose Veal was in fact a poor attempt at a Wiener Schnitzel. Any qualities the meat possessed were more or less totalled by the oily breadcrumb coating. It came with some unbilled and dull pommes puree. The chips were prosaic and not worthy of further comment.

Going to new restaurants is a lot like going out on a first date. You get the initial thrill of making contact with the target of your amorous endeavours and arrange a date and time. Then there’s the excitement of the build up to the actual event and the counting down of the days. On the day itself, you reconfirm that it’s all going ahead. You spruce yourself up a bit. Maybe there’s a little, shall we say, stiffener, beforehand. You meet up and there’s the first impressions and all that getting to know one another stuff.

Then it all starts going downhill. It’s not what you expected at all. You’re disappointed, upset even. And it’s expensive. Finally, you decide to bail out before pudding and mutter something about everything being “ok” when prompted (or if you’ve overdone the stiffener throw a right wobbler and put the world to rights in a frighteningly coherent and yet nutzoid manner). There isn’t a second time.

Sound familiar ? I don’t have much luck with restaurants either.

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