FISH CENTRAL

To make you feel all warm and cozy
Like you heard a good joke

It's been a while since Dos Hermanos have visited Fish Central, our local Fish and Chips outlet. I think we had a duff meal there that wasn't that cheap and decided to go and try the other fine chippies that the capital has to offer. So on a fine Bank Holiday, nursing a nagging hangover caused by too much strange-coloured grappa the previous evening, I dragged my sorry ass down to King Square EC1 for some restorative carbs.

Not much has changed in the two years since our last visit. The room is still large and functional and was sparsely populated by the usual punters: a smattering of local families, weekenders who had wandered in from the nearby Thistle Hotel, some OAPs and moi.

First, a little fish cake, a gift from the kitchen (if you will) that was actually very good. I didn't bother with a menu but went straight for one of the specials, Deep Fried Hake, a fish I haven't seen in a F&C shop for over thirty years. And I think I now know why.

The frying was very good: clean oil, right temperature and so on but I don't think this method of cooking suits Hake. The fish was disappointingly bland, Hake has a subtle taste, and the texture wasn't right - too soft. The latter down to the fish again, I think, rather than any failure of technique or the quality of the raw ingredient. Still, it wasn't bad and the batter was crisp and the chips were ace, so another visit might be in order to try their haddock. And yet again I found that the perfect accompaniment to fish and chips isn't beer, or wine, or champagne, but tea – builder's preferably – perfection in a mug.

MISSOURI ANGEL: STEAK IN THE CITY

It was hard to believe there is a credit crunch going on as I squeezed myself into a tiny corner table at Missouri Angel near Tower Bridge. The room was filled to heaving and my host pointed gleefully at four florid faced city businessmen sitting at a table already covered in empty bottles of wine. She thought they looked like something out of an 18th Century painting, I thought they came straight from the Alex cartoon strip, in either case, to them recession was something that happened to other people and Missouri Angel was just the place to avoid it.

Missouri offers itself up as an American steakhouse. It is nothing of the sort of course, the steaks are too small for a start with 10oz being the biggest on offer. Appetizers too, in the US, are usually edible, ours were barely that with stale croutons topping off as uninspired a Caesar salad as you will ever find. It still compared favourably to a misshapen lump of a crab cake better suited to hand to hand combat than eating.

Steaks, however were where it was at and, thankfully, they were spot on, the Buccleuch beef coming exactly as ordered, in both cases medium rare so we could share. The all too rare cross hatching on my New York Strip showed someone in the kitchen who does not run whimpering from a hot grill and, although I can't find it in myself to forgive someone who thinks rubbing cajun seasoning over beef this good to be acceptable, my companion loved her blackened steak.

Sides were as good as I have tried in any London steakhouse, suitably rich creamed spinach, crunchy shoestring fries and, best of all, a bowl of tobacco onions which had us fighting silently over the last little bits at the bottom of the dish.

I was being treated, so did not see the bill, but suspect it came to £100+ for two courses, a bottle of Albarino, a good glug of calvados and service, which was sweet and efficient. Hardly a cheap lunchtime option, but I suspect the people eating here didn’t care about that and probably never will.

BACCHUS: WE HOPE YOU LIKE OUR NEW DIRECTION

BACCHUS: WE HOPE YOU LIKE OUR NEW DIRECTION
I have a gripe. If your special opening offer of two courses for £10 has ended, don’t leave flyers on every table advertising it. At best, it is confusing, at worst well……….

I am getting ahead of myself.

I have a confession to make. This was my first visit to Bacchus. HP had been of course, many times. He was, I think one of the first through the door when they opened and one of the last before they began the refurbishment. But, I had never set foot in the place. In part because of my travel schedule but more that, quite frankly the thought of molecular gastronomy in Shoreditch scared the living bejesus out of me. When I heard they were giving up frippery and foams in favour of something more simple I thought it was the perfect time to pop my Bacchus cherry without fear of being suffocated by a waft of parmesan air.

I can’t tell you how much the room has changed from its previous incarnation, but can confirm that it now pushes all the necessary gastro pub buttons, with plump sofas, wooden floors and uncomfortable dining chairs. Unfortunately, it also has push button beer for those who are scared of taste and there is only one real ale pump, which the young German (?) server thought would have a barrel of Adnams attached to it one day. That day was not today.

The menu reads beautifully and is St John simple. That’s a double-edged sword because there is nowhere to hide as both ingredients and cooking have to be exemplary. Bacchus certainly has the first bit taped as, with the exception of some very ordinary bread, all the ingredients are obviously from the top drawer. It is a shame then that the cooking let it all down so badly.

A starter of duck livers on toast came not “seared” as advertised but cooked through until grey and, although the taste of the livers did its best to shine and worked well with excellent toast, it was swamped with too free a hand given to a vinegar dressing.
More liver for the main course and a simple sounding dish of “Calf’s Liver, bacon & onions” showed that while they know their grammar, they still need to do some homework in the kitchen. Again, the main ingredient was cooked through to school dinner toughness with none of the melting luxury of the best versions. The bacon was a large slab of excellent smoked pork, which would normally be a reason to do a little dance, but when it lacks any crunch, it is reduced to no more than a source of added fat.

If they were being unkind to their liver, I was being kind to mine and drank only mineral water and, skipping pudding, was presented with a bill of £22.75 + tip for service which was friendly and efficient if unhampered by other diners. It’s a fair price to pay, but as I read the flyer still trumpeting the special “two courses for £10” offer, I couldn’t help feeling that one of us had been had. I raised the question but was just told that the offer had finished. So there.

It’s a brave move to change a restaurant that amassed such affection for its food and its owners, particularly amongst the food blogging community. But, on this showing, I am afraid Bacchus has gone from being a quirky East London restaurant that people would cross the city to visit to being AN OTHER gastro pub that I would be hard pressed to find a reason to cross Hoxton Square for.

Ho Hum.

THE FISHERY FISH BAR

I'm not one to look behind I know that times must change
But over there in Barrytown they do things very strange

Dos Hermanos always get (over)excited when a new Chippy opens. Doubly so when the Chippy in question is but a short hop away in Stoke Newington.

The Fishery Fish Bar is as the name suggests a Fish Bar from The Fishery Fishmongers who have been selling Fish to the good people of N16 for many years. Ok, got that ? Now they’ve gone and got a bunch of twelve year olds to run the restaurant side of the operation. Well, they did look very young to an old fart like me.

It’s all nice and shiny and bright inside probably down to most of the staff gainfully employed in making it so. Reflecting the fact they probably want to attract the crowd from around the corner in Church Street and at the same time not alienate the locals the menu bravely covers all the bases with saveloys, pies and battered sausages for riff-raff like me and Lobster, Crab and Sea Bass for the lah-di-dahs. I was tempted by a Pukka Pie but instead took the middle ground and went for the usual Haddock and Chips - a good dish by which to judge the skill of the fryer.

My starter of Grilled Squid was fresh but came unscored and didn’t have much evidence of the grill which meant it was tough and rather dull to eat. The Haddock was much better. It was slightly overcooked but not disastrously so. You could taste the fish and the batter was light and crisp and had a good clean taste. Chips could have done with a bit more cooking but I still finished them all – which probably says more about me than the quality of the chips.

I was going to leave after my main course as the bottom-heavy aural background to my meal was getting on my nerves. It had been turned down on request but mysteriously the volume had crept up again. To make things worse the staff started singing along with the sounds of the Sixties. If you are of the opinion that anyone under the age of thirty should be seen and not heard then you will empathise.

However the nice young woman serving me persuaded me to stay and try the only pudding on offer. I’m glad I did, a Lemon Posset though a little fridge fresh was everything you’d want a Lemon Posset to be and could only have been improved by the addition of sack.

When the PA started blasting out Surfin’ USA with backing harmonies from the Fish Bar Crew I knew it was time to go. Still, if it’s ever busier than it was on my visit the staff might be distracted enough to keep quiet for five minutes and you’ll be able to enjoy some very decent Fish and Chips.

I GOTTA SAY IT WAS A GOOD DAY

She saved her nickels — it sure adds up
Now she’s got ‘em in a paper cup

It was HS who suggested that some Roast Pork for Sunday lunch might be nice. I dutifully made my way down to Borough Market on Saturday before the hordes had arrived to see what looked good.

Our Pork joint of choice is Loin but today day they all looked a bit lean. Then I spotted a Rolled Shoulder. It looked to have plenty of fat and enough skin to make some good crackling.

The night before I cooked it I dried the skin and rubbed in plenty of salt. I chopped up some sage, lemon zest and a little garlic and stuffed this into the joint at various points. In the morning I dried the skin off again – the salt having drawn out some moisture – and rubbed some oil in and more table salt. I finished off with some coarser sea salt. After coming to room temperature the joint went into a hot oven for about thirty minutes then I turned the over down to medium and basically left it alone for about four hours. In the meantime we drank a rather fine chilled Manzanilla with Almonds and Anchovy Olives.

After the joint was cooked I let it rest for a bit while I made a little gravy with some decent Cider. There was an Apple Sauce and some veggies on the side and a bottle of St Aubin to help it all down.

I haven’t had a Shoulder of Pork for a long, long time and it was a revelation. The meat was very dark, quite unlike the usual pale colour of Roast Pork. It came more in chunks than slices which is fine by me. The flavour, somewhat predictably, was fantastic. The fat had had kept the meat moist but had rendered off so that the taste was quite clean. We had no trouble in finishing off all but a small bowlful of the two and half kilo behemoth. HS declared the crackling some of the best he had eaten which if you know him is high praise indeed. Some sort of success then.

CZECHOSLOVAK NATIONAL HOUSE CLUB RESTAURANT: THE DUMPLINGS THAT TIME FORGOT

It may be fifteen years since Czechoslovakia dissolved itself into two nation states, but walking inside The Czech and Slovak House in West Hampstead you would be hard pressed to find much sign that the two were not still one. Maps of the combined nation line the wall and pictures of the last president, Vaclav Havel still have pride of place (although admittedly, he was also president of the Czech republic for ten years)

The food too is stuck in the past with a menu scarcely changed since Czechs and Slovaks arrived in numbers during and after WWII. It is enough to make a cardiologist quiver in their boots with deep fried bread, cheese, bacon and goose liver on offer for starters followed by hefty portions of roast duck, goose breast, wild boar and schnitzel for the main course, all coming with challenging portions of potato or bread dumplings. This is the food that time forgot, just like The India Club and The Polish Hearth Club, giving ex-pats a taste of a their homeland and us a glimpse of why they probably left in the first place.

I opted to eschew appetizers tempted by the list of desserts and was presented with a main course of goulas, which I was told was less spicy that its Hungarian counterpart and came with meaty chunks of tender beef, rather than pork (also on offer). The sauce was rich and dark and I cleaned the plate with a surprisingly light bread dumpling.

While I waited the twenty minutes it took to prepare my dessert, I read my Boxing News and sipped on a powerful, black Bernard beer before having a plate of apricot dumplings put in front of me. The whole fruit was surrounded by a dense, sweet steamed dough and topped with cinnamon sugar and melted butter before being spread with whipped cream. It resembled a badly performed breast implant operation, but was lighter and tastier than it appeared. I polished it off in short order much to the approval of the young Czech waitress.

A bill of £14 including a 10% tip for two hefty courses showed that their pricing has also failed to keep up with modern times. There is nothing subtle about food like this, but it is tasty enough and decent value, particularly when you consider that, as the beef and dumpling combination sits uneasily in my stomach, supper may be unecessary. But, if I had to eat like this every day, I suspect I would probably go and live in another country too.

DINE WITH DOS HERMANOS

A hugely enjoyable DINE WITH DOS HERMANOS supper last night at Tayyabs with eighteen of us being very well looked after despite it being as busy as I can ever recall.

Even though few of us had ever met before everyone seemed to get on splendidly and, even though it was the blessed internet which brought us together, me and HP were delighted to see that none of you seemed to be axe wielding crazies.

The food was as great as ever, thanks to Fahro Malik for ordering with her usual aplomb. If I seemed less enthusiastic about the lamb chops, limiting myself to the four, it is not because they were in any way under par, more that I had indulged myself with an unfeasibly large Barnsley Chop from Hawksmoor at lunchtime. Lamb on lamb action, it's a winning combination.

Next time it will be a suckling pig at St John, where I hope those of you lucky enough to have won DOS HERMANOS T-shirts will have the decency to wear them with pride.

Watch this space

THE MODERN PANTRY

The wind was driving in my face
The smell of prickly pear

Restaurant openings have been a bit thin on the ground recently. In Manhattan, somewhere London sees as a pretender to its title of World's Greatest City, you'll get any number of new gaffs in a given week - it must be good to be a reviewer over there. Here in Blighty, you usually have to work a bit harder.

One place you couldn't miss if you were passing by was The Modern Pantry whose gestation appeared quite protracted and probably painful. The restaurant, or as it will eventually be: deli, cafe and restaurant, has been opened by Anna Hansen who was chef at Providores in Marylebone. And like that restaurant the sort of food served up has been informed by fellow Kiwi Peter Gordon.

I'll fess up now and admit I don't really get Mr Gordon's cooking which always seemed to me like throwing together disparate ingredients and hoping something stuck, so to speak. The menu at The Modern Pantry isn't as out there as at say the Sugar Club but there's still the sense that no country is safe from being plundered for its ingredients. That's probably the Modern bit.

This was the opening evening so all food was half-price and they did give advance warning of potential hiccups. As it turned out the service was pretty good: friendly and attentive with only a bit of a delay at the beginning making us feel unwanted and unloved, but then we are so needy. The food though was a bit more problematical.

After some decent spiced nuts and some decidedly average bread HS went for the Chorizo, Date and Feta fritters. He though these were good but hated the accompanying Tamarind Yoghurt which he thought was much too sour. I couldn't detect any Chorizo in the fritters. Come to think of it I couldn't taste any Date or Feta either, the little balls coming on more like a sort of Falafel.

I wasn't really wowed by my Grilled Ox Tongue. The meat tasted ok but needed the application of a hotter grill (the idiosyncrancies of a new kitchen ?). The salad component lacked the expected pizazz and the Manouri was tasty but was one ingredient too many in the dish.

HS described his main course as a 'school dinner' curry and I must admit it didn't look that appetising: the poussin was supermodel wan and in desperate need of some colour. We considered sending it on an all-expenses paid holiday to Florida.

Happily, my Onglet was much better. Cooked rare, it had that beefy, offally taste that good Onglet has. The Miso marinade wasn't overdone and the quality of the meat was allowed to come through. I thought the cassava chips were interesting and well made but no substitute for the real thing.

That Steak showed that maybe the kitchen was beginning to get the hang of things, it also showed that there are the seeds of some decent cooking here. If you would pardon the rather clunky simile, it's like successfully packing a suitcase which is all down to having the courage to leave things out. And as we know less is always more (and all that shit).

But the above was just our take on The Modern Pantry. It's new, there's a soft opening offer, so get down there and come back and tell us what you thought. I promise I won't set HS on you if you disagree with us

VATIKA

I am holding the mystical sphere
It's direct from Lhasa

To be honest I'm not particularly enamoured of the food in Indian Restaurants. It always pales in comparison with the Indian food I get in the homes of friends and relatives and of course my Mum who used to make the best Maccher Jhol going. However, when I learned that Atul Kochhar, owner of Michelin starred Benares, had opened a new restaurant in Wickham Vineyard in Hampshire my interest was piqued. It also offered an opportunity to get out of the city and commune with nature for a few hours.

And so on a typical English Summers day – wet, windy and pretty cold – I alighted at Botley, a small deserted station 90 minutes from Waterloo. Of course this being the countryside there were no cabs around so dodging the juggernauts and careering horse-carriers I tramped the two miles to the vineyard and Vatika (“Orchard” in Hindi) restaurant.

I had a couple of hours to kill so I took the audio tour which like many audio tours is never quite as interesting as having a real live person to guide you around. My 'experience' suitably enhanced I squelched my way to the restaurant which overlooks the Vineyard for some grub.

Very good grub it was too. Chef Jitin Joshi's food is characterised by accurate cooking, a light touch and vibrant flavours that really make the old tastebuds sing. There's a sense of playfulness and experimentation that holds one interest throughout the whole meal.

Bread was some of the best I have had: subtly spiced, very light with a thin crisp crust, it was served with some unsalted butter and a number of different salts to sprinkle over the top.

Amuses were some brilliant spiced, deep-fried whitebait – I could have done with a big bowl of these – a little croquette of black dahl and rice and a pate of chicken tikka. All served with a moreish roasted mango drink.

Although the menu is fixed price for two or three courses I'd inserted another starter. SCALLOP_ARTICHOKE (I know, I know but I did say it was a bit experimental) was excellent and very fresh pan-fried scallop with a little cerviche of the same. The best bit though was a small fritter of artichoke which was light and crispy with a delicious artichoke centre.

The other starter, PIGEON_BEETROOT was the weakest of the dishes. The Tandoored Squab was a little overcooked in places. Where it was rarer the flavour was excellent with a slight gaminess. The Beets and Jellied Consomme with a Tamarind Cream that came with the Squab didn't really do anything for me.

Things were back on track with the LAMB_SPINACH. The Indian tinged theme of the preceding dishes gave way to a more Middle Eastern influence. An unctuous lump of meltingly soft Lamb came with a tasty little Lamb Burger topped by some lavender cream. There were some good though incongruous spinach gnocchi. The small tagine of couscous on the side was exemplary.

There was a palate-cleansing granita before a textbook chocolate dish, but as anyone who reads this blog will know that apart from good ice cream, puddings never gets my pulse racing. Nice, though.

None of this comes cheap of course, there are plenty of signs around indicating that this is 'fine dining' – but judging by the size of the houses around these parts I don't think it will overly concern the locals.

In any case I think the prices are fair though given the quality of the cooking and the fact that I left Vaika with a spring in my step and a smile on my face always counts for something (who said one too many glasses of wine).