BISTROTHEQUE: AN EVENING ON NIGHT,MARE ST

It may surprise some people, considering the name of the blog and the fact that many people think we live in each other’s pockets in a Niles and Frasier Stylee, that it has been well over a month since DH actually sat down and broke bread together.

What with me being in NYC and Frankfurt and HP being in Spain, we have barely set eyes on each other let alone had chance to argue about the provenance of a piece of beef, the lack of chill on a Martini or the risibility of newspaper critics.

So, we have decided to make up for it and booked four meals together in the next few days.

Tonight, at HP’s suggestion Bistrotheque, way out East in London’s always and quite rightly unfashionable Hackney. I have said it many times before and I shall say it again. If they ever give the world an enema, they will shove the tube right up Mare st. Still, HP assured me that Bistrotheque would provide a decent meal so I endured the 35 minute walk from the civilisation of home and we arrived 15mins early for our 7.30pm table.

They had, apparently, called earlier in the day to inform HP that the night’s Transvestite Lipsync caberet was cancelled. Shame that. I could have used the extra £50 and I had my Shirley Temple costume all ready. Still, it did not affect our table and we settled in The Napoleon Bar for a drink.

It screeched of a place predicated on delivering booze to twenty somethings with no discernment. Crappy, gassy beers and lousy service. Quite horrible and I was almost ready to forgo supper and head home.

Fortunately, HP prevailed and persuaded me to stay. I am glad I did as this is a very passable restaurant. Competent, able cooking with decent service and with a price that, for London, can almost be considered as barely scratching the wallet.

It is part of the same spirit that has spawned The Rivington, Wapping Food, Canteen and Sam’s Brasserie. But, it is none the worse for that. As HP says, you can tell in the first few mouthfuls if the place has worthwhile intentions or not and Bistrotheque definitely has.

They do however need someone to make their cocktails for them. HP was not so critical, but I thought my Martini was actively rank and too warm. For £7.00 they should look at the ground and tell me how sorry they were.

Still, things rapidly got better. We, as ever shared three starters. My crab cake with saffron hollandaise looked like a parsimonious portion until I took my first bite at which point it zinged with flavour and richness which made me pleased it was no bigger. HP’s salad of beets with a “crispy” poached egg was no better than the sum of its parts and the egg while perfectly cooked was declared “like a scotch egg without the meat’ there can be no bigger damnation. It was, however, my sort of dish.

Best of all, though, was a plate of perfectly cooked chicken livers on top of a crunchy fried piece of bread with ample amounts of sauce in which to dunk it. Very worthwhile.

HP’s main course was a Navarin of Lamb. Excellent meat, what there was of it. Not much as it happens. Fortunately, supplemented by excellent Foie dumplings. But, for £17.00 a plate, I still think they got the best end of the deal even if we got the best end of the sheep.

Better was my roasted guinea fowl with salsify and braised shallots. The bird had been taken off the bone so as not to offend the stupid. I hate that, but it was perfectly cooked, moist through and through and with very definite taste. The sauce also had a definite taste, subject as it was to too fierce a reduction. A minor quibble. It was a very good dish.

Both were ably served by a £19 Duoro ( £5 at Waitrose, I think) on what was a short but well chosen wine list.

We shared a pudding of a flourless orange and almond cake with ginger ice cream and candied orange zest. I liked it a great deal. HP did not. We both, however, enjoyed a large glass of PX and he downed a “passable” Illy expresso.

The bill for two of us each having three courses ( bearing in mind we had three starters and one pudding ) came to £117 including 12.5% for service which was efficient if entirely anonymous. At £58 a pop given our propensity to test our livers and eat an extra portion of livers, this was very acceptable value.

You should, I think, always judge any restaurant by asking if you would go back. I probably would. I would just ask them if I could mix my own Martini

GINNAN: ANOTHER ONE TO ADD TO THE SUSHI LIST
While we are waiting for HP to find his muse and add some words to the pictures of AdJR, I am pleased to report a very decent little supper at this long established Japanese restaurant on Roseberry Court.

Ginnan has been open for at least ten years ( the staff must be exhausted by now. Boom, Boom ) and I must have walked past it nearly 1000 times but never thought about going in.

However, tonight, prompted by one of my regular sushi cravings and by a post on Chowhound asking if it was any good, I decided to pop by and give it a go.

The décor is very old school and, judging by the other clientele, designed to appeal almost entirely to an expat crowd. The service is just as old school and none the worse for that. Charming from start to finish.

I know that once a week ( Monday? ) they have a very popular buffet. Tonight though, just the standard menu with its standard offerings which was fine by me as my sushi pangs always lead me in the same direction. Deep fried followed by raw.

After a little comped dish of cabbage with tofu, I started, as ever, with assorted tempura which was very well done indeed with greaseless frying and light airy batter.

To follow a selection of sushi and sashimi from the a la carte menu. I plumped for Fatty Tuna and Sea Bass for the sashimi. Not quite as sparkling as that provided at Saki, but fresh enough and well presented. The nigiri were a pretty samey choice of eel, crab and bream, but well done and, as they should be, on pleasingly warm rice. Natto futomaki felt worryingly healthy but, I could have easily downed more than the six portions per roll. Best of all, though, was the temaki ( hand roll ) of salmon skin which had the crunch of the fried skin with the fatty layer underneath as a counterpart. I only ordered one, but could have eaten half a dozen.

With some tea and water, the bill came to £37 which reflects my ability to over order and the cost of decent sushi in London. A much wiser man that me once said you should beware of cheap sushi and how right he was.

Although it is slightly silly to describe a place that has been around for ten years as a ‘find” I am glad I gave it a try and will certainly do so again next time my I get a serious sushi jones

WHERE RENTS ARE HIGH
AND SEABIRDS CRY

After two weeks of kicking it in the Costas – think sun, good books, big steaks and large quantities of orujo - I reluctantly returned to England. After paying someone to punish me for my lack of recent physical activity (I believe they’re called Personal Trainers) I thought I deserved something tasty for lunch so I wandered into town not really knowing where to go.

On the way I passed what used to be West then East@West and what now is the latest branch of L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Unusually for a restaurant there was a bouncer outside but they needn’t have bothered, a copy of the menu with the prices in large print would be enough to frighten most people off.

Inside I found myself in a Spanish disco circa 1986. All it needed was Nu Shoozs I Can’t Wait blasting out of the PA. Instead there was some muzak of the Jazz noodling sort. There were also vases filled with shredded paper, peppers and bowls of what looked like Red Delicious apples. Those wacky French.

I was seated at a long bar and got a good view of the goings-on in the kitchen. Men clad in black quietly moving around preparing the dishes. The quiet only broken by a junior member of staff inexpertly opening a bottle of champagne at which point all his colleagues turned to stare at him. Hope he kept his Eurostar return ticket.

At lunchtime three menus are offered: one specifically for lunch, the tasting and a carte made up of tapas, starters and main courses. It was all a bit bewildering for a numbskull like me so I decided to go with the tapas menu. The waiter said three or four plates would be sufficient so I ordered seven just to be on the safe side.

Even though I made a valiant attempt over the past few days to consume most of Spain’s jamon production I was intrigued to see how the French would handle such a delicacy. Not too well. The serving size was about what I would expect but it wasn’t cut thinly enough so completely missing the point of the best ham in the world. The toasted bread which accompanied looked nice but was a pointless addition.

A little mackerel tart followed which would have been better if it wasn’t covered in dry parmesan shavings. The little bundle of herbs that came with it just annoyed me.
The Crispy Langoustine fritter with basil pistou showed someone knew how to deep fry but I couldn’t taste the langoustine. I dissected the batter casing but the langoustine inside was mushy. Not good.

The downhill trend continued with Pig Trotter on Parmesan toast. The chopped up bits of trotter were pleasingly piggy but the toast was an overly chewy piece of bread with a soggy centre and hard circumference. More of that dry Parmesan made an unwelcome appearance along with some rocket.

Things picked up considerably with Le Burger. Two little beef burgers topped with foie gras in a sesame seed bun. Served with fantastic crinkle-cut chips which I haven’t had since I was young ‘un. This was more like it. As you bit into the thing you got the taste of the yeasty bun followed by the richness of the foie and then a beefy hit from the burger combined with a little sweetness from the peppers. Que rico ! One of those dishes that looks good, tastes good and makes dining out fun.

The free-range quail stuffed with foie gras and accompanied by a truffled mash consisted of excellent quality Bresse quail cooked perfectly. The foie gras stuffing didn’t really work though and the mash was gluey and not redolent of truffles. Even the truffles weren’t redolent of truffles.

To finish up the savoury part of the meal I tried the Lamb chops with thyme. Again the quality and the cooking were spot on although the chops were nowhere near as good as Spanish chuletillas. The chops came with “our famous mashed potatoes” as the waiter described it setting himself for the biggest fall since the decline of the Roman empire. Luckily for him they were pretty good and extremely moreish but in the end they are just pommes puree with extra butter. Please note annoying bundle of thyme as an(other) extraneous extra.

I was pretty full after this lot so I took five and pondered on a possible cheese course.
Pondering over, I went against more protein and headed for pudding. I lucked out with a Coffee Dessert. There were layers of Coffee Mousse, Coffee Ice Cream and Coffee Jelly. It was light and not oversweet and no, I didn’t try to eat the silver coffee beans.

Wines by the glass were dull and overpriced. Coffee was shit. PF was a toffee. An Eau-de-vie de Mirabelle did its job.

Mixed emotions about this one. It’s expensive and you are just sitting at a bar not at a table with a nice tablecloth, lots of waiters in attendance and a sommelier and all the other frills. On the other hand there is some good cooking here and for the most part I think they had tried to source the best ingredients which doesn’t always happen in London high-end restaurants. I shall return.

Looking round my fellow lunchers were a 50:50 mix of suits and a couple of ab-fab types who actually used the word “fabulous” several times. But never in relation to the food as in “that was really good” or even “I didn’t like that”. I sensed that this might be the amount of interest shown in the food by the majority of the clientele. You know, sometimes I think we get the restaurants we deserve in London.

OXTAIL: A SATURDAY STEW

Much maligned, your Oxtail but dirt cheap and one of the tastiest bits of the cow you are ever likely to find.

On Wednesday, while standing with my nose pressed against the window of James Elliott, Master Butcher, as I am want to do during my lunch break, I saw a huge tray of both big and small bones and was transported back to the days when my welsh granny used to make thick unctuous stews using these offcuts.

So, I wandered in and bought three large and three small pieces ( enough, the butcher told me for three people – silly, silly man ) and put them by for tonight’s supper.

Last night, after my blow out at Locanda Locatelli, I could not face eating, but could certainly face cooking. The chunks were dredged in flour and fried off in butter until golden brown and then placed in a casserole. I did the same with some onions, garlic and carrots and added them to the pot with a half bottle of white wine, lots of sage, oregano and thyme and then cooked the stew for nearly two hours on a low heat. After it cooled I left it in the fridge over night.

This evening, I scooped off the fat and then cooked the stew again for a further two hours before removing the meat to rest, straining the sauce and reducing with red wine and a flour and butter mix.

Even though I say so myself, one of the tastiest things I have cooked in a long, long time and well served by a baked sweet potato, some puree cauliflower with lots of nutmeg and a dense fruity Italian red.

A classic British dish that seems to have been all but forgotten, probably because it is time consuming to prepare. I suspect, however, that, put it on a menu and give it a fancy name, it would go down a storm.

I also suspect I shall be making it again very soon.

LOCANDA LOCATELLI: NOBODY KNOWS THE TRUFFLES I’VE SEEN

Life, ah Life. When I am in one of my more self pitying moods, I often think that is what other people have when I am at trade fairs. Bless, eh?

Still, after a few weeks of constant travel and nary a weekend at home, I decided to take a Friday off and treat myself to a "life day" a lay in ( all of 9am ) and a decent lunch.

I had two thoughts in mind, J Sheekey’s and Locanda Locatelli. I asked Amex to make the booking and the first one they came back with was London’s foremost Italian eatery.

I have not been to LL for years. I am, however, predisposed to like Giorgio Locatelli a great deal for two reasons.

The first comes from our first visit. HP had, I am sure you will not be surprised, booked a table for its opening week and we enjoyed a very agreeable supper ( mine noticeably better than his ) I particularly enjoyed a dish of Buccleuch beef which was still a year away from its ubiquity on London menus and mentioned how great it was to the waiter at the end of our meal. At the end of service, GL exploded from the kitchen brandishing a brochure and spent a good 15 minutes with us explaining why he thought this was the best beef in the world. His passion was tangible and genuine and showed he gave a damn when many chefs truly don’t.

The second, comes from a meal at Reffetorio in Blackfriars where I had a perfectly passable meal with a friend about two years ago. Locatelli, who consulted with the restaurant on its menu, was seated in a booth with his family and his young daughter ( who I believe is unfortunately allergic to everything in Christendom ) was scampering around as young kids do. My friend spent a few moments playing with her and she then ran back to the bosom of her family. We thought nothing of it until the end of our meal when we found that our sizable drinks bill had been dealt with. Part of me suspects it was PR and he knew nothing about it, but the other bit of me puts it down to a decent bloke doing a decent thing.

Anyway. I arrived at LL at noon and was settled quickly into a lovely table in a cosy corner.

A glass of Prosecco came with some of the best grissini I have tried and I was hard pressed not to finish of the whole lot.

Just as well as the bread, usually treated with disdain by this hater of carbs, was even better and I mopped up half a bottle of Sicilian olive oil with some exemplary aubergine bread.

It’s white truffle season but at first, I was unswayed by the waiter’s offer of specials and went for one of the most expensive starters, a plate of linguine with Cornish lobster for a mere £17.50. However, my first taste was so good, I just gave in and allowed myself the pleasure of a “ who cares what the bill is” lunch. The sauce was light, the lobster fresh and clean and the pasta retained a perfect bite. I normally avoid pasta, but this reminded me of how good it can be.

I asked the waiter if I could slot in a truffle course. This time an almost perfect tagilatelle with a sauce of clarified butter and aged parmesan. Then the truffles were brought out in all their fungal splendour. £4.50 a gram, they were weighed before and after shaving. My waiter, shaved for a few moments, about 4grms when re-weighed and then said ‘ what the hell” and shaved a few more bits for me.

For those who have not tried white truffles, it is hard to describe how good it is. Like amazing sex after scoring the winning goal in a World Cup final while having the Heavyweight Championship belt placed around your waist. It is that good and this dish really was that good. In my top five dishes of the year. But, it is hard for any truffle dish to be bad.

Not so the first attempt at my main course. The Calf’s liver I asked for on the medium side of rare came well done. As soon as I mentioned it, the plate was cleared along with the Zucchine fritte I had ordered to accompany it. When it came back it was perfect, delicious and in big meaty chunks. The balsamic and raisin reduction offered little but it was an accomplished dish.

Normally, I think puddings are for girls, but they persuaded me to a selection of gelati, the best of which was a tangy liquorice. They came served on a bed of candied star fruit which was as pointless as a conversation with a £20 prostitute. Harmless enough but, in reality, just adding £7 to the bill.

As always with solo dining, wines by the glass underwhelmed. A Jacopo from Venezia was fine with the linguine and truffle dishes. Better, a Sassabruna from Tuscany was strong enough to work with the reduction of the main course. Best of all was a Passito from Pantellaria. A new one on me but perfect with ice cream.

That was it. I staggered out with a lighter heart and wallet ( by £130 inc very very good service ) but it was worth it and, for the time being at least, I feel just that little bit more human.

Oh, yes, That's a copy of Boxing News in one of the pictures. So, nobody try messin with me. Ok?

THE GUINEA GRILL: THE PIES HAVE IT

I think it is illegal for anyone in publishing not to have a Foyles story. I certainly have one which happened to me when I worked as a rep for Penguin way back when Martin Amis had his own teeth.

I was busy stock checking in the now defunct Penguin bookshop in this most famous of stores when a customer came up to the desk and asked the young man serving

“where can I find Oscar Wilde?”

To which the young man replied

“ I am sorry, he is not working today”

Such was Foyles. Every book in the world under one roof and not one of them possible to find.

I mention this because I was back in Foyles tonight for the first time in an aeon. A launch event for our FIDEL CASTRO HANDBOOK by the polarizing, George Galloway.

My, how Foyles has changed. Permanent staff, computer systems and even proper cash tills. Poor old Christina must be revolving slowly in her grave.

A great success and we sold enough books for me to imagine I had deserved a decent supper

If you are at one long established institution during the evening, it makes sense for you to predicate the rest of your night on the same. So, I headed for The Guinea Grill where they were kind enough to squeeze me in to a solo table in the otherwise packed dining room.

A Young’s pub with delusions of grandeur, The Guinea is most well known for its pies. How could I resist?

But first, to begin, a crayfish and avocado salad for £8.50. The shellfish were fresh and meaty but swamped with an industrial marie rose. The avocado slightly browning at the edges which shrieks of pre-prep. Not bad, but for the price….?

A glass of South Island NZ Sauvignon worked very well with the cat’s pissy taste cutting though the sauce.

Then to the main event, the pie. Consistently voted “ Pie of the Year” The Steak & Kidney was as good as it gets. A thick, dense, pastry was toothsome and lardy. Those are both good things by the way.

The filling, rich with gravy and thick with big chunks of beef and offal. Almost a perfect plate and worth every penny of the £12.50 they squeezed out of me.

A side order of chips was flaccid and unworthy of the name although, given my 18 miler this morning, I did scoff a lot of them. Fuel, don’t you know?

A £5.00 glass of Rioja was adequate but little more and brought the bill with some mint tea, some choccy and service to a not inconsequential £44.

That’s £44 for a couple of glasses of wine, a prawn cocktail ( by any other name ) and pie & chips.

And, they say authors get paid too much money

FAIR’S FAIR: PORK & PEAR

I am definitely feeling my age.

Mainly, it’s the physical signs like being barely able to move the urinal cakes around the bowl by using only the force of my stream. I used to, in case anyone is interested, be a world champeen at this highly complex sport and could create all sorts of interesting shapes and patterns as water flowed from me as freely as glossalalia

Also, and there is a point to all of this, there is the fact that I have now attended well over fifty book trade fairs man and boy.

I am just back from yet another Frankfurt Book Fair and the sight of the same old faces trudging the aisles year after year looking increasingly decrepit makes an interesting marker of time. I felt like I needed a trainee sales person and a set of jump leads to get me started in the morning.

Anyway, I am home now, shattered in that “weary to my bones” kind of way that Willie Nelson sings about so well and determined never to eat another schnitzel again as long as I live. Well, at least, until next year.

However, I do need to reacquaint myself with my own kitchen so a bit of comfort food is in order. One of my favourite autumnal dishes.

A four chop loin of pork with sage, lemon and garlic stuffed under the skin, a spicy poached pear and some green beans. Suitably served by a glass or two of Petit Chablis, it may not make me feel any younger, but damn, it’s good to be home.

Oh, I had some black pudding too. But, I think that counts as an extra vegetable

PEARL OF THE QUARTER

Fuengirola was always a sleepy little Andalusian town – the shy retiring one to Marbella’s brasher big sister – but as a consequence of the input of mucho dinero courtesey of the EU it has grown enormously in the last ten years. Or rather it has been caught up in the sprawl along the Costa Del Sol and now boasts all manner of malls, hypermarkets, retail parks, cinemas, conference hotels and of course the inevitable El Corte Ingles.

The dining options although varied have proved pretty resistant to change over the twenty-five or so years I've been visiting. So there are International syle restaurants (think Parma Ham and Melon, Pastas, Steak Diane, Lobster Thermidor), Indian, Chinese, Moroccan, Spanish and of course English pubs for the homesick. No sign of say Gastropubs or Heston Blumenthal style experiments. The upside to this is that you know exactly what you are going to get and the food is generally of a good quality and reasonably priced.

An early flight from Heathrow, thankfully not on red alert, and a short ride from Malaga airport found me sitting overlooking the Med in a small restaurant near my father's apparment just outside Fuengirola. The waiter told us there was Lubina (Sea Bass), Pargo (Sea Bream), Lenguado (Sole) and whole Calamar (Squid) caught that morning. I decided to go with the Sole although all looked fantastic.

First a few starters of Jamon, Calamaritos and Boquerones fritos which I believe you are required by law to include in every meal in the Malaga province. The lenguado was just brilliant: sparkingly fresh and cooked perfectly on the plancha. I'm not sure I can think of too many places in London that would: a) be able to get such fresh fish and b) cook it so well - the tendency for non-Spanish chefs is to overcook fish. This being Spain there was the obviously non-necessary chips and salad on the plate but hey, that's part of the charm.

Comped Pacharan and Cafe Solo were enough to send me to the balcony with a copy of William Darymple's latest and a tub of factor 15 (apologies if that puts you off your pain au chocolat).

I like Spain.

STREETS STILL UNSEEN WE'LL FIND SOMEHOW
NO TIME IS BETTER THAN NOW

In my day they used to call it boil-in-the-bag. Cod was my favourite as I recall. Now it’s sous-vide. Well not really as they’re two different techniques and both have been around for a while – I remember the Roux Brothers had a place in the City which was totally based on vacuum-packed meals prepped at Le Gavroche. The reason for all this preamble was to talk about a new restaurant that’s opened near DH on Hoxton Street called Bacchus which according to the publicity was offering up sous-vide dishes.

I haven’t walked along Hoxton Street for a while. There used to be a regular market, several dodgy boozers and er..that’s it. Walking up the street to the restaurant it appears about the same. Bacchus is in one of aforementioned dodgy boozers called funnily enough The Bacchus. And it’s no longer dodgy.

It’s obviously a labour of love for the young entrepreneur owner who’s putting his own dosh into the venture. The original walls have been kept and polished up, tables built, Scandinavian chairs sourced. It’s pleasing mixture between old and new and should bed in nicely as time goes on although they may want to rethink the lighting which was a bit on the bright side. To take care of the food a chef with El Bulli and Jean Georges on his CV has been recruited and given a small open kitchen with plenty of toys to play with.

I went for the tasting menu of five courses to which I added an extra starter and pudding from the pre-fixe.

To give an idea of the style of cooking, I had:

Warm Scallop “gelee” with green-apple air cauliflower puree and tender pine-nuts.

Rabbit Mousse in potato leaves with a fluid centre. Fresh Cherries marinated in cassis syrup, reduced milk.

Pork Jowl cooked in cinnamon scented oil, langoustine, leek and rosewater puree, nashi pear and soy paint.

Salmon cooked at 50 degrees for 13 minutes with English Strawberries, marinated fennel, black almonds and almond froth.

Lamb loin cooked at low temperature with vanilla onion soubise, figs brulee, bitter cocoa and garden herbs.

Green apple pannacotta, green apple sorbet, ginger bread grounds, lemongrass bubblebath and Thai basil oil.

Roasted pear financier, dolce latte ice cream, pear syrup, black pepper oil and lemon compote.

So does it deliver ? Mostly. With the exception of an overcooked langoustine and some hardened cocoa, the execution of of the dishes was good: the Salmon, Pork and the Lamb were cooked perfectly. I liked individual constituents like the cauliflower puree, marinated fennel, ice cream and lemon compote. It was also a relief to get away from those awful unsubtle reductions that restaurants feel they need to do when offering ‘fine-dining’. Here everything was light and clean-tasting.

Some things didn’t work as a combination for me though. In the Rabbit dish for instance, the individual parts were fine but I just didn’t gel as a whole. In the scallop dish there was a large sprinkling of cinnamon. I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be eaten with the dish or was there as decoration for a large expanse of empty plate Similarly, the large smudge of soy dotted with mangosteen didn’t bring anything to the Pork dish for me.

The combo where everything worked was that of the Salmon, Strawberries and Fennel and where it hadn’t completely hardened the cocoa added an interesting note to the Lamb. Also, the Puddings worked, although I’m not a huge fan of this part of a meal.

The other aspect I wasn’t completely happy with was the quality of the scallop and langoustine. They just didn’t have that sweetness that the best shellfish has although maybe these were the best at the price point of the Tasting Menu (£36).

The service, for a first night, and given they had a large party to serve was good: friendly and efficient. Especially helpful was the MD who came up on the spot with a wine pairing that went very well with my meal.

Overall then a very enjoyable evening with interesting food and wine which found me weaving my way southwards at about 1:30am slightly the worse for wear.

It’s early days yet and Bacchus is still a work in progress but I think they’re heading in an interesting direction and look forward to repeat visits to try some of the other dishes. It’s also worth pointing out that I can’t think of anywhere else in London doing similar food and that in itself makes the place laudable and well worth a punt.