NEWPORT SEAFOOD: HOW LONG WILL YOU WAIT IN LINE FOR LOBSTER?

So, here is a question for the house.

How long would you wait in line to get a meal?

Until I moved to Los Angeles, my answer would have been a loud and clear NEVER. I would have screamed my negative response in your face and probably would have added a slap for good measure just for you having the temerity to ask such a stupid question.

In my nigh on thirty years living in London, I can count the times I have queued to get my dinner on less digits than Dave Allen’s right hand (and may your God go with you).

Each of those occasions occurred when someone else was paying and at one, a non event of a meal with Jay Rayner at Barrafina, we left in dismay after an hour of waiting, with dinner still no more than a hazy promise from the ruddy faced Brothers Hart and my hatred of "No Reservations" places cemented in my psyche.

Moving to Los Angeles, however, with its delight in concepts and love of style over substance, I have found myself forced to stand in line more times in a year than I had previously done in a lifetime to date.

In part, it is down to Sybil’s fearsome powers of persuasion

SYBIL: “Honey, I want you to stand in line for ninety minutes so we can buy a mediocre grilled cheese sandwich from a truck”

ME: “Er, OK”

In part it is because Los Angeles seems to be the spiritual home of the “No Reservations” restaurant, where milling about on the pavement for an hour before the host deigns to call you in for your meal appears to be considered an enjoyable part of the process. I tend to avoid these places like the plague, having discovered that the food delivered at the end of the endurance test will rarely, if ever be worth the time spent in line.

Where I can’t avoid it however is when I want to avail myself of LA’s excellent ethnic dining scene. Many of the Korean, Chinese, Japanese etc places simply don’t take reservations and, while this still sticks in my craw, I am prepared to put up with it for the simple fact that the resulting meals are always decent and often memorable.

I do have my limits however and a recent wait of nearly one hour at Shanghai Dumpling restaurant, Din Tai Fung pushed me to my very limit and my friends were only rescued from the resulting hissy fit by the fact that I had been before and knew that the baskets of steaming soup dumplings would be worth the wait.

There is a point to this, just in case you were wondering. Yesterday, as Sybil and I returned from a friend’s wedding in Palm Springs, she suggested we stop for “Linner” (a word she appears to have created to insert an extra meal into her day between lunch and dinner) at Newport Seafood Restaurant in San Gabriel. It had been a while since my morning muffin (ahem) so I agreed and we plugged the directions into our GPS system.

As we pulled up to the lot, I could see that it was already full and that there were about two dozen assorted Chinese folk milling about in front of the restaurant. My heart sank, it was, I recalled, Mothers Day here in the US and being a Sunday, the restaurant was operating its standard policy of not taking bookings.

I was ready to turn tail and head for home. But, as you know by now, Sybil is made of much sterner stuff and insisted that we find street parking and go and check how long the wait might be. She emerged from the restaurant clutching a ticket with the number 86 on it and told me it would be a thirty minute wait. I made a loud dramatic audible sigh and tried to persuade her that we should just pop across to the Carl’s Jr. burger joint over the road and get the hell out of there.

She was having none of it. Newport Seafood is, apparently, famous for its preparation of shellfish and one glimpse of an enormous place of lobster being transported head high by a waiter, from kitchen to table, meant I had less chance of getting her out of there than I did of being commissioned to produce my own kids show using belly buttons as puppets.

While I sat and sulked, Sybil put the waiting time to a better use. She grabbed a menu and, by the time we were finally called to our table, she had placed our order and we were told it was already on its way. They were not lying and, within the space of about five minutes our large table almost disappeared under the plates that the waiters dropped on it with a clatter, in rapid succession.

Courses of Salt & Pepper Squid, Seafood Noodles and Crispy Pork Chop were all excellent, but standard enough for me to think that we could have got them without so much fuss and certainly without making me wait in line. It was not until a huge plate of lobster arrived, red and steaming, that I suddenly had to admit that waiting for thirty minutes might be a very, very good thing indeed.

The 5lb beast had been boiled then cracked open and stir fried in a mixture of ginger, chilli, garlic, spring onions and soy sauce. The lobster flesh was still juicy and we sucked it from the carcass using the remaining shells to build an impressive pile of waste on our side plates. Best of all, it appeared that our lobster had been filled with roe and huge pink blobs of it had been used to thicken the sauce allowing us to play “hunt the egg” as duelled for the choicest bits of lobster with our chopsticks.

At $15 a lb, the lobster was not a cheap option and, in fact cost more than the rest of our meal combined. However, it was one of the best dishes I have eaten in 2011 so far and filled us up so much that supper became an impossibility and dinner the next day would be supplemented by boxes of leftover noodles, squid and pork chop.

Was it worth the wait? Well, for the lobster alone, I have to say a resounding yes indeedy. Sybil asked the obvious question as we staggered back to our car. “Would it have been worth an hour wait for the same meal?” I am not sure it would and I am pretty certain that I would not be fun to be around while we found out.

However, I am certain of one thing, the lobster at Newport Seafood in San Gabriel is worth thirty minutes of anybody’s time.

MORTON'S: MEAT & A MARTINI ON DATE NIGHT

I have a soft spot for Morton’s Steakhouses. I know they are a chain and, the good lord knows I have railed against chains often enough on the blog. But, having a steak at a Morton’s Steakhouse always feels like going to visit a favourite old relative, a relative who takes $200+ out of your wallet before letting you leave, but a relative never the less.

Morton’s in Chicago was one of the first steakhouses I ever visited on a business trip to the US. I immediately fell in love with the themes that are now so familiar to me at steakhouses across America. The waiters in their long, starched aprons displaying trays of raw beef while explaining the house cuts to bemused customers. The bathtub sized martinis that may not be very good but are so strong they get you drunk enough not to care. The wine lists as thick as a phone directory and the sides dishes that you really don’t need, but order anyway to later take home in doggy bags where they will sit in the fridge until you throw them away after a week.

I was going to be dining alone last Friday night and, with Sybil being no great fan of the cow, it struck me as the perfect time to snaffle a leather booth and indulge myself in a good steak and a large cocktail without the sight of her rolling her eyes at me across the table. My good chum, John Haskell, who is a long time regular at Morton’s in Beverly Hills, offered to make the reservation for me when I shared lunch with him at Langer’s and I spent the rest of the week planning which one of their signature steaks would have the pleasure of gracing my plate when Friday finally came around.

Then Sybil cancelled her planned trip and Friday went from being solo night to date night. When we arrived at Morton’s, there was no real thought involved for me and I just sipped on my first powerful martini of the night as our server waved various bits of raw cow flesh us at us and tried to persuade Sybil to take the waggling tail portion off a still live lobster.

I have said it many times before, but starters in steakhouses serve little other purpose than to fill the time between ordering and when your steak arrives. Those we chose at Morton’s, for the record Lump Crab meat Cocktail and Tuna Tartare, were decent enough and served their purpose of distraction until the main courses were presented.

If a place like this couldn’t get a steak right, then there really would have been a major Majumdar hissy fit. I am pleased to report that my “Chicago Style Bone in Rib-Eye” was a great piece of Nebraskan USDA Prime and cooked perfectly. They say you are never too old to learn and, in recent years, I have gone from demanding all my steaks rare, whatever the cut, to understanding that a rib-eye with its network of marbling, needs a longer cooking time to melt down the extra fat. I may now put up with people telling me how to have my steak cooked, but I still demand that it is given a decent char while it is on the grill. Mine had. It bloody well should have done of course. Morton’s have cooked thousands of the things over the years. But, when you eat as many steaks as I do, you know how often such a seemingly simple task can be botched.

If the steak was good, the lobster that had given up its tail for Sybil’s benefit had not done so in vain. Meaty and rich, barely needing the drawn butter that came with it. Sybil struggled to finish the huge portion of seafood despite my constant reminders that she was attending against my wishes and was as much an added financial burden as a welcome companion (it was the martini talking, I swear) Although we managed to polish off a few thick spears of asparagus, the other side dish of Mac & Cheese remained almost untouched and was decanted into a take away container, placed on the table as we shared a dessert of rich chocolate cake with a molten centre.

Added to a few glasses of wine and a well deserved service charge, this brought the total cost to.…. Well, I really don’t want to think about it, because the other thing I remembered, as the bill was deposited, was that another theme of all good steakhouses is that they are murderously expensive. When my credit card bill arrives, the wailing and gnashing of teeth will probably be heard in space.

Still, Sybil had a good time and seems to understand that next time we have a date night it will probably be at a place where the condiments are served in sachets and the staff wear hair nets.

QUO VADIS REDUXING THE REDUX

It's a total biosphere
The farm in the back
(Acapella)

The other day I walked the length of TCR (Tottenham Court Road) without once being accosted by a Street Fundraiser. It was also a Saturday afternoon. This happens to me all the time. Chuggers, as they are uncharitably known, people with clipboards, attractive women handing out free samples of probiotic yoghurt – they all seem to ignore me.

Personal hygene problems ? Nope. Miserable old git ? Hm. Along with all the good characteristics I have inherited from my parents (no tittering at the back) I have unfortunately developed my father’s tendency to walk around with a scowl-like countenance despite feeling pretty happy most of the time.

I’m happy when baby-sitting my nephew and niece (Yes, Boromama* we are allowed to eat as much chocolate as we like and watch unlimited cartoons until midnight as a special treat and no, we are not trying to pull the wool over your eyes). I’m happy when I arrive in Madrid and go into my first bar for my first cold Mahou and smell the heady aroma of coffee, spanish ciggies and fried fish. I’m happy sitting reading the Sports Section on a Sunday sipping an ice cold Dry Martini whilst a big hunk of meat roasts slowly in the overn and The Dan is on the stereogram. Lots of things make me happy, it’s just that I don’t always show it.

Today’s post is about Quo Vadis. I know, I know, I’ve already done two posts about the place but this time I had the Steak and it sort of fits in with all the recent bovine-related posts on Dos Hermanos.

This last visit was on a Friday night after another hard week and by way of a small commiseration. Burn This has not been a success so the run has been cut short with the consequent disbanding of the Steppenwolf Company (South Yorkshire Branch).

It was quite late by the time I ordered and they had run out of a few items so instead of a two starter strategy and went for a surf and turf, as separate courses.

I know people like to go on about how they prefer shellfish like Crab blah blah and indeed blah but you just can’t beat a good Lobster. This Scottish example was a big bugger which had been simply grilled then dressed with a rough tomato concasse. I started eating it with a knife and fork but discarded them pretty quickly in favour of my bare hands, some lobster crackers and one of those pick things for retrieving the last morsel of rich white flesh from the shell. The juices from the lobster had amalgamated with those from the tomatoes to make a nice little sauce which I mopped up with the good bread.

Turf was a thick Sirloin Steak. Cooked rare and with the fat still on this was one of the best steaks I’ve had. I knew it was going to be good because I could smell it as it was brought to the table. Chips were fantastic – they’re probably the best you can get in London at the moment (in my very humble opinion). There was also a very fine béarnaise and some peas from Secrett’s which were a revelation. They were large, very redolent of pea (very pea-y if you will) with a creamy taste, even though there was no cream. With a big glass of Rioja I was very happy indeed.
I was so full so I toyed with the idea of un trou normand but decided some sorbets and a glass of recciotto would work as well.

After a double espresso manager Nikki Barltrop kindly took me though to the kitchen to meet Head Chef Jean Philippe Patruno and show me the meat locker where the big hunks of Lincolnshire Beef are hung (they’re all butchered on site too).

So now I’ve got a new thing to make me happy - eating at Quo Vadis. I’m pretty sure I had a smile on my face when I left. At least I hope so.

*Bengali for eldest maternal uncle