THE CURLEW: FOOD STAR

The kerfuffles over M*chel*n becomes ever more insignificant as the years roll by. Let’s face it, if you work in or own a restaurant it’s nice to get recognition for your travails during the year but as a guide on to where to eat out: not so much.

Having said that where once the stars would guide you towards food that was overwrought and tasted nothing of itself (Canon of Lamb anyone?) now it does at least cover a few more styles than the essentially poncified. Amen to that.

The Curlew in Bodiam, East Sussex is the very antithesis of that ornate style: by that I mean the sort of place where simultaneous cloche-lifting has been raised to fine art and where it takes a few seconds to focus in on the small assemblage in the middle of a very large plate and realise it was your main course.

Certainly there is a good level of technique and refinement to the food at The Curlew but the whole experience still came over as relaxed and unaffected and very enjoyable.

The kitchen is obviously a big follower of ace businessman and all-round good guy Tom Aikens as everything is served on boards. I know of few foods which are improved by being served on planks of wood and in some cases it’s a downright hindrance to eating one’s grub.

Take my first starter of Herring. Big meaty fillets of lightly soused Herring were served in a min-kilner jar with some grated horseradish, a little cream of that root and some Rye bread. Beautiful to taste, but a bugger to try and eat.

A second starter of Yorkshire Black Pudding was a clever assembly of Watercress, little balls of crisp sweet apple and interspersed with cubes of rich Foie Gras. The turnover had lovely, buttery, flaky pastry but I found the Black Pudding slightly claggy and its rich taste didn’t come through like it should have. Still, an enjoyable dish.

The signature Chop and Chips turned out to be more than the sum of its parts. Jacob’s Ladder (short rib) had been cooked sous-vide for, oh, ages and ages. I’m not a fan of this method of cooking. Sure, it’s convenient for the kitchen and the results are very consistent: even colouring; moistness. But like all meat that has been cooked this way you end up something that is not terribly interesting. Beef needs to be cooked so that it has a wider range of tastes and textures. Chips cooked in Beef Dripping were verging on the fat but just rescued from that chip graveyard.

Surprisingly, the most impressive element was the zippy, mayo-free coleslaw, something that Barbecoa tried to do but failed quite miserably. It may sound like I didn’t enjoy the dish but despite the small individual weaknesses as a whole it was well balanced and just worked.

The kitchen has a pretty sure hand with puds as well – a Chestnut honey tart was light and soft and refined although serving the equally delicious Green Walnut ice cream on a board just seemed weird. At least my Mince Pie ice cream (which actually did taste of mince pies) was served in a bowl.

The service from a handful of young women was relaxed and friendly yet utterly professional: when I mentioned a mini-Bakewell pudding I had seen wafting passed me earlier in the meal they rustled one up to go with my (excellent) coffee. The owners even arranged for a taxi to take come and pick me up from the nearest station – recommended as The Curlew is in the middle of nowhere – and to deposit me less steadily back on the London bound train.

Oh, and The Curlew has just got recognition from the Fat Tyre Man - but I doubt it will change them. Amen (again) to that.

THE REAL EATING COMPANY

Nothin' here but history
Can you see what has been done

I read somewhere that the county town of Lewes had aspirations as another foodie enclave much like Ludlow. A very bold aim to be sure as, until recently, Ludlow was awash with Michelin Stars (at least two of them are now on their to London). My interest was piqued however so I got myself a return ticket to see what’s what.

Lewes is a very picturesque bustling small town nestling in the South Downs. It has a castle, a river, a white cliff and was home to that perpetual troublemaker Thomas Paine. On the food side there was a farmer’s market, somewhere called Bill’s which looked like fun and er..some other restaurants. All nice enough but hardly the basis for a foodie revolution.

Best of all though Lewes has Harvey’s Brewery. I would have liked to visit the brewery but was told that the waiting list is so long it would be easier to put myself down for membership of the MCC. Luckily in London we have a Harvey’s Pub, the Royal Oak, where we can enjoy Harvey’s fine beer but there’s nothing like drinking it near to the mother lode which in my case meant sitting at the bar of The Gardener’s Arms.

It’s a cosy little pub and despite being situated right on the main drag it’s not too busy and the staff are very welcoming. In fact, I could have easily stayed there for a few hours supping the seasonal Old Ale, munching their fine looking pies with the sweet strains of Patsy Cline playing quietly in the background (a bit of a Madeleine moment taking me back five years to an evening at Jo’s Coffee in Austin, oddly enough). As it turned out I only had time for a couple of pints before I had to walk across the road for lunch.

You’ve got to have a certain amount of chutzpah to call a place The Real Eating Company. What are they trying to say ? Until you eat here you’re not really eating ? Well I don’t know about the other restaurants in Lewes but where I come from we have plenty of places where you can really eat real, so with that name you had better be good. Unfortunately, TREC isn’t up to it. It’s not that it’s really lousy it’s just really mundane. I was hoping for something that spoke of our location, a few specials maybe. Maybe you get this in the evening – I don’t know. All I got was something that looked very like a brunch menu that you’d get in any number of gastropubs. This in itself wouldn’t be so bad if the quality was top-notch and there was a sense of generosity about the whole operation but instead I got a sense that there was an eye very much focussed on the bottom line. Much like you’d find in a chain (oh, it is).

The uneasiness started with the drinks menu. A glass of La Guita manzanilla – that’s right, the stuff you buy in the supermarket for about £7 – was a whopping £6 a glass (glass size not stated so expect the worse). That’s more than in Fino, a restaurant not exactly famous for its modest mark-ups.

None of the starters appealed so I went for the Mixed Charcuterie plate. When it came I thought they’d maybe given me a starter portion by mistake, but no, £9 quid got you three small bits of parma ham, six wafer thin slices of salami and a whole bunch of pickles. There was some consolation in the bread which was very good but, you know…

The rib eye steak at least looked the part and was properly cooked but tasted of nothing. It’s one of life’s more dismal moments when you take the first bite of a large piece of tasteless protein and realise you’ll still be eating it thirty minutes later. This inert bit of cow came with the loathsome fat chips (billed as ‘hand cut chips’) which were soft and seemed to serve no purpose other than for the kitchen to have a game of Jenga. I won’t even waste space mentioning the salad which turned out to be a few sprigs of watercress.

The puds also showed an enthusiastic hand with the calculator: £6 is pretty good going even compared to London (hey - maybe Lewes is the new Mayfair). This seemed to be justified mainly by having a fancy plate and sprinkling icing sugar over the dish. This surely couldn’t be down to the slightly dry ginger cake with a sugar overload in the form of honeycomb ice cream and sugared almonds. And just in case I hadn’t suffered enough the coffee was undrinkable.

Lewes seems like a pleasant place (although who can tell what dark heart beats underneath) and I’m sure it’s got loads of other restaurant that are much better than TREC but really you’re probably better off just stopping to have a look around the castle, downing a pint of the local brew and continuing your journey on to London-on-Sea (aka Brighton). And as for Lewes becoming the new Ludlow, I think there's more chance of England winning the World Cup in my lifetime (I'm taking about the football).

LA PETITE MAISON

MMM, NICE

Despite the best prejudices of both me and my blowsy Glaswegian host, we both came away really having enjoyed our meal at La Petite Maison and, Lord knows it had all the cards stacked against it.

First, neither of us was in the best fooling. She had just come from the dentist where five or so jabs, enough to drop a charging Glaswegian, had left her unscathed save a frozen mouth which meant she fetchingly dribbled water and wine from her mouth until about half way through the meal. Me? I was, and am, still in the grips of a chill accompanied by a , not annoying at all, hacking cough. As I write this, I am trying to deal with it by spending nearly a whole day in bed sleeping.

Next, is the location. In the heart of Mayfair. It’s bound to be an expensive rip off then, right? A thought added to when you hear that it is owned by the people who brought us Zuma and Roka, hardly known as budget option.

Finally, for me at least, it is in the site which used to be Teca ( now relocated to Marylebone) where I had a “ final straw” meal ten years ago with a self absorbed woman of the “oh, I haven’t brought my wallet, I didn’t think I would need it” type. £150 later ( bear in mind this was 1998) I realised she had never had her wallet with her in the two years I had known her, and I went home with a heart just as empty.

So, for different reasons, neither of us was inclined to think we would like La Petite Maison.

But we were wrong. La Petite Maison turned out to be very enjoyable indeed and, while certainly never going to appear in Time Out Cheap Eats, the bill at the end did not make either of us cry. Particularly not me, anyway, as she was paying.

The people here have gone into partnership with the owners of a well liked restaurant of the same name in Nice. The aim is to bring their regarded brand of cuisine Nicoise to ( a hybrid of southern French and Ligurian) to London.

This begins as soon as you sit down and huge chunks of fresh bread are dropped on the pristine linen for you to dip in superb Ligurian oil from frosted glass bottles left on each table. I arrived early and worked by way through the best part of half a loaf, a glass of Rose and took in what was a very comfortable, light and agreeable dining room.

By the time my frozen mouthed friend arrived with drool coming out of one side of her mouth and expletives out of the other, I had already had time to give the menu a good going over.

It will take time to get it right. Not in the cooking, which is excellent ( more of that later, of course) but in the explanation as the nature of sharing any number of small starter plates and then of main courses seemed to be confusing the chinless at tables all around the restaurant.

It was only their second day and the poor staff were having to give more explanations that a man in A&E at 4am with a traffic cone stuck up his arse.

Still, more than luck than judgement, we battled our way through it and were soon presented with a rather dainty version of a Pissaladiere, topped with micro slivers of olive and anchovy which we both adored.

Next, of course, a Salad Nicoise which had everything it was supposed to and, thank heavens, was made with jarred tuna.

Finally, small fillets of fresh sardines topped with chopped tomatoes, grapes and capers. I am not sure my friend likes this so I finished off two of the three pieces. Beautifully fresh fish with the clean, crisp tastes of the grapes cutting through the oiliness of the flesh.

The main courses are not cheap with a veal chop for £40 to share and, our own choice of, a whole roasted Poulet Noir with foie gras coming in at £35. When, however, one sees the quality of the ingredients and the skill with which they have been prepared, it does move from “ouch” to acceptable.

A slight complaint is that the chicken takes a hour from ordering to come to table. Well, of course it does. It’s a chicken, that’s how long a small one takes. But, I am uncertain how many people are prepared to sit around and wait for the end result how ever good it is. We were perfectly happy, the sun had begun to try and break through the windows into the room, there was some great people watching to be had ( particularly when the owner of the place with his fabulous shock of grey hair walked in) and we were happily sipping on something white and Italian. And, let’s face it, we were unlikely to get any better offers in our current less than decorous state.

When the chicken arrived, it was worth every hacking, dribbling moment we had spent waiting for it. It is hard to ruin an ingredient this good, but man, this was fabulous. A whole moist chicken carved into decent chunks served in a cast iron bowl to catch the juices. Juice in which meltingly good foie gras had been allowed to poach slightly as the chicken rested.

Crisp skin, succulent flesh, bones to gnaw on and juices to be sopped up with a big slab of fried bread which had been placed in the bowl.

We, and by we, I mean she, had gone all out of the expense front and we ordered a macaroni with summer truffles to accompany the chicken. The chef, the owner and the manager all came over to apologise when it appeared that their delivery from Italy had not arrived. So, we substituted the dish for gratinated potatoes topped with the same truffles. I am glad we did. This is one of “ those” that happen all too rarely. Creamy, buttery potatoes that, on their own would make someone swoon were topped by a liberal shaving of truffly goodness. Let’s say, when it came to clean the bowl, words were spoken.

We could not finish the chicken and half of it sits now, wrapped in tin foil in the DH fridge. I am very happy at the thought of getting to try it again.

We split a bowl of mixed sorbets and gelato from a standard looking list of deserts and skipped coffee.

Which, brought us to a bill of £120 for two. Now, that is not cheap by any stretch, but for a meal of this quality with this quality of ingredients, two glasses of rose, two glasses of red and a bottle of white, I think it is well within the acceptable level.

Not one for an everyday visit, but well worth a try for that chicken and potato combo alone

805 OLD KENT ROAD: YOU GOT ANY AFRICAN IN YOU? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME?

I am told that, I was unkind about my annoying Aussie friend, Chelsea last time I posted about her. So, I will resist my first urge to refer today, to her as “approaching thirty” and concentrate on the fact that she donated to the “Simon goes freelance fund” and bought me dinner last night.

Of course, I organised it, such things being beyond a person who has the attention span of a gadfly and, as is my want picked somewhere a little out of the way and a little out of the ordinary. Chelsea is the one person I know who is, in that regard, fearless and will go anywhere when there is good food on offer.

So tonight? Well, we were not quite sure. I had the address. In fact it is the name of the restaurant, 805 Old Kent Road. But, I had no clue which end of that slightly dubious street it was. Not indeed did the cab driver and there followed a long drive that took us from in front of Liverpool St station to the edges of New Cross where I only normally go to visit my hubcaps.

Still, we arrived safe and sound and found the restaurant without any trouble. 805 was, according to most descriptions I found during a little bit of research, the best Nigerian restaurant in London. The Old Kent Rd is, for some reason, littered with them. I have no idea why, but 805 is the one everyone said to head for.

Eating out as often as I do, I am usually pretty good with menus. Here? Not clue number one. I can’t recall a time when I have had to ask so many questions of a server as I did here. Fortunately, the waitress was patience itself and delighted to help guide us through what was otherwise daunting task.

To begin, I was disappointed to find out that they were out of Santana. Apparently a dish made of fried gizzards. So, instead, we chose to share medium size plates of Beer mate and Goat Pepper soup.

In as many years as I have been eating out, I cannot recall a dish as hot as the beer mate. Imagine eating the hottest chilli you can find, in Hades on a 100o day in July. Well, it was hotter than that. Chelsea mailed me this morning that she felt like someone was rubbing chilli into her buttocks. While that thought made me slightly queasy, she is correct. The aftermath was inevitable and I have not cried so much since I last watched Brief Encounter. I quite liked it.

The Goat pepper soup was a lot more benign with a sauce with the depth of long cooking and big chunks of chewy goat with a slab of tripe to add texture.

We had barely begun to get to grips with these two dishes, washed down with some local beers, before the main courses arrived. Dainty, they weren’t. This is not food for the squeamish or the fussy. This is full on food for people who need refuelling after a hard days work.

Jollof rice was not that much fun. The rice cooked with tomatoes and spices and topped with dodo (a fried plantain) would have served four people but it was so dry and unappealing that I could only take a few mouthfuls. It came with a bowl of “assorted meats” which contained more tripe and tough chunks of beef and goat.

Much better was a dish of tilapia topped with a layer of steamed ewedu (like a slightly slippery spinach) in a spicy but not overpowering sauce. It came with a dish of gari, which is made from ground cassava. The texture reminded me of wet polenta and it serves the same purpose to mop up juices. As required, we downed cutlery and used our hands to good effect and, although we made a valiant effort, we barely made a dent in our plates much to the concern of our waitress who kindly doggie bagged the remains for Chelsea.

We shared something cold made with coconut for pudding to douse some of the flames and asked for the bill which was about £60 including service and the drinks.

Amusing though it would have been to leave Chelsea to find her own way back from New Cross in the middle of the night, I thought better of it and we got a cab back to home turf by which time she was looking a little tired and emotional as the picture shows. That may have had something to do with the Guinness night cap she insisted I buy her before we parted. I guess it is the least she deserves for putting up with all the grief I give her.

Next time I am trying to think of something even further away both in terms of travel in London and in the world. Anyone know a good Peruvian in Purley?