SANTO

She said oh no
Guadalajara won't do

I’ve developed a bit of a penchant for Burritos. For a lunchtime snack they seem to hit the spot very precisely with good tastes and a healthy carb/protein ratio.

Currently my favourites are from Freebird which can be found in Exmouth Market and on Goodge Street. Their carnitas are great, their fillings are very generous and they’re easy to eat as you stroll along because they wrap them well. I like their salsa picante as well.

Mucho Mas on Upper Street have got meaner and meaner with their fillings especially their guac. Nearby Tortilla is pretty blah. I did try Daddy Donkey on Leather Lane but they were a bit stingy with their carnitas and they allowed too much liquid into the burritos so the whole thing had fallen apart before I got to Chancery Lane. Not good.

This lunchtime I thought I’d have a little trip out West to try new joint Santo on the Portobello Road, just under the flyover.

Things didn’t look good when I arrived. Although all the other neighbouring restaurants were packed, Santo had just one customer, a woman sipping a coffee and smoking a fag at an outside table. Inside the place was deserted except for a waiter slowly wiping some the cutlery. Somewhere a dog barked and tumbleweed drifted lazily across the road.

There’s been quite a few Mexican joints opening in town over the past couple of years so there was nothing out of the ordinary on the menu except that you get a bigger choice of starters and mains in the evening.

Unfortunately, my Steak burrito wasn’t good. The first problem was actually tasting the steak, there was so much claggy-textured refried beans I couldn't taste anything else. Black beans would have been so much better. Supposedly, there was some guacamole in the mix but I couldn’t detect any. There was also some unadvertised broad beans which really should have been skinned or left out all together.

Together with a fruit juice the bill was about £15 including service which is waaay too much. The manager did knock 10% off because I wasn'thappy but that didn’t account for all of the 12.5% I paid for unsmiling service.

Things may be better in the evening, but really, if Feeebird can produce something so much better and cheaper out of a van the size of my shower cubicle then it doesn’t augur well for the rest of their menu.

I have, in previous posts, had a bit of a dig at the good people of West London, insinuating that they were nothing but a bunch of coke-sniffing, inbred poshos and trustafarian layabouts who occupy their evenings annoying the good people of areas like London’s trendy Hoxton and who happily spend their dosh on any old crud. It seems I was wrong – they’re remarkably astute with their money. Way to go W10 !

QUO VADIS

It's a total biosphere
The farm in the back

Everything I know is wrong.

My culinary adventures or rather expectations have been rather overturned over the past couple of months. I had Gordon Ramsay down as never putting a foot wrong with his restaurants and then going to two in a row (The Warrington and Maze Grill) which although not bad hardly set my pulses racing – more just a big shrug of the shoulders really. Mark Hix does great british food ? Not at the Oyster and Chop House he doesn’t. The Martin Bros are purveyors of blah gastropubs. Right ? Wrong. They’ve just come up with a corker in The Botanist in Sloane Square.

In a similar vein although I thought Barrafina was ok - mainly because Nieves Barragan keeps it more Spanish than it would otherwise be – I found it expensive and didn’t like the self-congratulatory meeja babble and OTT reactions to the place. But then the Hart Brothers go and open Quo Vadis on Dean Street and blow me down if it wasn’t a real gem of a restaurant.

The place has only been open a day but apart from the smell of newly upholstered leather banquettes I felt like I’ve been coming here for years so assured were the cooking and service. The latter in no small part due to restaurant manager Nikki Barltrop, previously with GRH, who was keeping an eagle eye on everything. Boy, could they do with someone like her at Hix Oyster and Chop House.

The interior’s great as well. Those stained glass windows are still there (I’d only been on this side of them once, about twenty years ago), there’s plenty of wood and napery, Riedel glasses, a bit of art on the walls. But everything is nicely restrained, it doesn’t shout at you but just feels like the sort of place you’d want to spend some several hours in. Which is what I did.

The chef, Jean Philippe Patruno, has been brought in from the Hart’s other restaurant Fino and having someone you know and who knows what they’re doing in the kitchen has paid dividends as the food is terrific.

A word first about the butter. It’s from Lincolnshire and has that slight cheesiness and saltiness of the best stuff. The homemade bread is good too but you’ll want to order more just to get your choppers round some more of that butter.

Razor Clams were four big meaty buggers who’d must have put up a hell of a struggle until quite recently. They were cooked in the Spanish style, a la plancha, with lots of parsley, oil and garlic. As good, if not better than I’ve had in Spain.

There was a similar Iberian treatment of Baby Dover Sole which was accurately cooked and simply served with some lemon. The latter swaddled in muslin which always earns bonus points from HS.

I wanted to try the Beef Rib but I’m a bit of a lightweight these days and when I found out its fighting weight was over a kilo I wimped out and chose some Veal Sweetbreads. In no way the lesser option however, the two big glands were the best sweetbreads I’d had for ages – probably since being treated to a birthday meal at Foliage seven years ago. I’m guessing but I think they’d just been cooked in plenty of butter and herbs until just done. They were had a crisp but not oily covering and were creamy and melting within. There was a fresh creamy Tartar sauce on the side which came on more like a tart béarnaise, which was lucky because it went very well with the chips.

To call them chips is really doing the kitchen a bit of a disservice because these were uber-chips. Very crisp on the outside but light and fluffy on the inside these triple-cooked beauties are the sort of chip that would kick sand in the faces of lesser chips. They were, as we say in East London, very “tasty”.

Ice Cream (what else) for dessert wasn’t up to the standards of the stuff I’d had at L’Anima last week but then they are Italians so it’s in their, er, blood.

As is usual these days with upmarket new openings this experience doesn’t come cheap but to be frank I don’t mind so long as I have a good time and the combination of excellent raw materials, careful cooking, spot-on service and overall attention to detail all contributed to one very contented Hermano rolling out the door.

Everything I know is wrong but, you know what, I don’t care.

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

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.