DINE WITH DOS HERMANOS: THE FULL HORROR IN PICTURES

Yes, that’s two middle aged men in specially ordered “ DOS HERMANOS” T-shirts. Let’s just call it sad to the power of Dos.

Yes, that’s a special DOS HERMANOS punch created by Nick, Jorge and Lukas at Hawksmoor just for the occasion.

Yes, that some spectacularly meaty prawns and some ribs with a rub of Allspice, fennel and Cayenne which were so good we begged them to bring out some more.

Yes, that’s some of the five or six side dishes that came out. The chips remain the best in London. Oh and there was something that, while I am sure was as well made as it should be was a vile, noxious concoction called “mac & cheese” that only an American could love

Yes, that’s one of two enormous sirloins cooked perfectly and with a thick ribbon of fat around the edge that had been crisped to crunchy goodness.

Yes, that’s a slow roasted leg of lamb from The Ginger Pig which I hacked at to removed all the meat and then served with a thick meaty jus.

Yes, that’s a Chateaubriand which we sliced into nine rare portions which disappeared quicker than a rat up a drainpipe.

Yes, that is one of nine Sundaes which were plopped on the table at the end of the meal. Including, a truly memorable Banana Split topped with ice cream from Marine Ices.


Yes, that’s eight very satisfied people ( well someone had to take the picture ) including two who had come all the way from Cornwall to be part of the DH experience, a couple of far more successful bloggers than us, a woman who sells chocolate for a living, a wine writer, a man who has bought enough books from me over the years to fill The Albert Hall. Oh and HP.

Yes, someone did get their meal bought and paid for. We are men of our word.

And, Yes. It was a great way to celebrate one whole year of Dos Hermanos. We’ve been there, eaten it and, as you can see, even bought the T-Shirt.

And, Yes, I am now officially on the wagon for a month. So, it may be a little bit quiet on here for a while

THE INDIA CLUB: A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

Think about your favourite restaurant. How many times have you been there? Five times? Ten Times? Even, if it is a real treasure, over twenty times?

Well, I have been to The India Club over a thousand times. Yep, do the maths if you want to but, it still adds up. Over a thousand times.

I was a student at King’s College way back when in the early 1980’s and used to come to The India Club for lunch and supper most every night for my years of college as it was a good deal cheaper than the canteen next door. Then, after I graduated, I still used to come at least four times a week for my usual meal of Chicken curry, rice and a puri ( all of £1.50 ) Even more recently, I would come a couple of times a month for my fix. Of late, though I have not been more than a couple of times a year.

The India Club is immutable. While other restaurants just come and go, The India Club just is. Situated on the South side of The Aldwych, it has been there for over seventy years since it was founded as a bolt hole for workers at The Indian Embassy across the road. Over that time the menu has scarcely changed, nor indeed has the décor with an assortment of mix matched chairs and formica topped tables in a small dining room close to the open kitchen churning out canteen style food for hungry Londoners from all walks of life. It is not uncommon to see professors next to cabbies next to tube workers next to city slickers. It really is the modern equivalent of the London dining hall. Egon Ronay ( I thnk ) once described it as looking like the porters lounge at Bangalore railway station. But, even he liked the food.

Tonight, I was meeting up with my best chum Paul. He had not been to The India Club for years and I, to my shame, had not been for months. So, as is our want, we decided on our usual few pints and a curry.

I had worried how it might hold up if I viewed it under the spotlight of a critical reviewing and had myself all ready to say “ well, the food is not much good but, I love it because……….” However, the moment I walked in and the waft of spices whisked me off on a Proustian moment, I realised that I like The India Club not because I have been there a lot. Rather I have been there a lot because I like it and, I really do like it a lot.

Sitting down at table 10 in the far spot around the corner where I have probably dined about 200 times, I scarcely bothered to glance at the menu and just ordered the same thing as I have for the last few hundred times. The India Club does some thiings well, some things OK and somethings very badly. By now, I know which is which.

To begin, some papadums with a fiery lime pickle and two portions of onion bhajia with a chutney of coconut and onion seed.

While we waited for these to arrive, I wandered down to the “club” below and bought two unfeasibly large bottles of imported Cobra beer. In the old days, you had to pay 70p to be a member to buy booze here or you could bring your own. Now, you don’t have to be a member but, you still have to come and collect your own beer. Which, given the size of the bottles is a job for two men.

Starters over, I ordered a chicken Do piazza ( literally, two onions ) and a bhuna prawn along side some thin dhal, some dry vegetable and a couple of puri.

Even Paul, who had not been here for ten years, said “ it tastes like I remember, but even better” And, you know what, it really did. Not just for memory’s sake but because it was really very tasty. Just doing what they have always done and doing it well.

We got the bill, a massive £30 for two. I left a bit extra, of course, for the waiters and got chatting to them as I handed over our cash. One of them knew me and I introduced him as “the new gentleman” to Paul and he smiled obligingly. It was not until I was putting my coat on and leaving that he sidled up and said “ Actually sir, I have been here since 1988, but not to worry, everyone still thinks of me as the new boy”

The India Club means the world to me. It is not to everybody’s taste and I know a few people who think of it as “dirty” or “grubby” I am well disposed towards it and would be nice about it in any event. I am delighted to say, however, that on tonight’s showing, I don’t need to be and I can justify not only having been there a thousand times before but, I am sure, many times in the future

MANGO TREE: LET”S CALL IT A THAI

It’s not easy trying to find a decent place to eat around Victoria. Il Convivio has always failed to convince, Noura is not what it used to be and there is precious little towards Westminster.

So, tonight when Dawn was working in town and suggested meeting near the station I had to do a bit of thinking.

Pre dinner drinks was the easy bit. The Goring of course. Quite the best of the remaining “old school” hotels in town. A splendid bar with good cocktails and excellent canapés. A perfect place for a post work wind down before supper.

But what for supper? I tried to persuade Dawn to some F&C’s but she was having none of it.

In the end, I remembered Mango Tree, that Thai place that sits on the corner of Grosvenor Place which always looks like it is full of the people you would want to avoid.

Well, it is. It is also full of attitude. In the front of house at least. We arrived sans reservation and expected to be told that we could only have the table for a limited time. That’s fair enough. But, this was 6.30pm and they wanted the table back by 7.30pm. Unless both us and the wait staff were to re enact the end of an episode of Benny Hill, that was never going to work. So, I said, “not to worry, we’ll see if Noura (next door) has a table” Suddenly, the table that was only going to be free for an hour was free for an hour an a half. Perhaps, Derren Brown was working the front desk.

All a bit snotty and off putting and I was pre disposed to hate the place. A bonus then that it actually turned out to be rather good.

Once we had left the dipsticks at FOH, the service was charm itself if a little keen on the “pour the wine and water upsell” which I despise.

I don’t even register on the scale when it comes to knowledge of Thai food. I did once go to Nahm with a real expert who described it as “execrable” but that is about it as far as my expertise goes.

That being said, this all seemed pretty echt and the cooking was clean and precise and the flavours discernable.

We began with three starters. Som Tum , a lime dressed green papaya salad which was fresh and crisp. Satay Nuer Luam Mid which was a mix of lamb, beef and chicken all of which were better than the rubbery versions I have tried before and Tod Mun Goong, small crisp shrimp cakes which came with a fiery plum sauce. Not bad at all.

Three main courses were standard but well prepared. A Gang Ped Ped Yang was as good an example of a red duck curry as I have tried in a long time if served rather shamefully in a scooped out pineapple. I kept expecting Alison Steadman to turn up and ask me if I wanted a Bacardi & Coke.

Pad Thai Gai, a Thai restaurant staple was also better than I recalled. But, best of all was Pad Ka Pow Moo. A new one on me which was a fiery pork fillet with plenty of chilli and basil

I wasn’t cheap. In fact, with a bottle of passable NZ Chardonnay and some sparkling water it came to about the same as last night. Around £100. That is, rather depressingly, becoming the norm now in London.

However, it was, despite the bad start, better than last night. Clean flavours, and real tastes. Things I might actually want to eat again.

Well, by now, our magical hour and a half was up. So we left. To be fair, the place was heaving and the room had a real buzz about it so I can understand why a reservation is needed. But, why the snotty attitude?

But, I guess it worked out even.

So, as I said, let’s call it a Thai

MOCOTO : A PAINFUL BRAZILIAN

I hear tell from my female friends that a Brazilian is a process that, while quick, is excruciatingly painful. A good description of our night’s work.

Our meal tonight at Mocoto lasted exactly seventy five minutes from arrival to departure by which time they had shorn us of £100 and most of our dignity.

Mocoto is situated in the location which formerly housed Isola. I went there once nearly eight years ago and £250 for two later emerged with my view of Oliver Peyton firmly reinforced. His sole contribution to London restaurants is to look at what Conran is doing and then set the bar just that little bit lower.

He once made the mistake of walking a room ( in Mash I think ) where HP was eating and asking him what he thought of the meal. Poor sod. After ten minutes of detailed reasoning from HP as to why he was a worthless scab magnet he gurgled “ you just don’t understand what we are trying to do here” which, I understand from HP ,who was well in his cups by then, provoked the response “ trust me, I understand exactly what you are trying to do here” Bravo my brother.

As always, he opened well with Bruno Loubet at the helm and got good crit before letting it slide inevitably and unchecked into a machine for extracting money from people who would not know a good meal if it slapped them in the face.

Now the site is owned ( I believe ) by the people who own MOMO. That is a different schtick. Their idea of success is to persuade ageing rock stars to have birthday parties in their places. On that basis, I suspect this will be a huge success.

I arrived a few moments before HP and settled at the bar for a badly made Caipirinha which was overly sweet and £8 to boot. HP arrived and downed one of the same before we descended downstairs to a room that seemed little changed from its days as the Isola wine bar apart from a few frighteningly hairy hide covered seats.

Given the nature of the restaurant, there is precious little that shrieks “ Brazilllll” on the menu. Indeed, most of it seems fairly bland euro nosh with a translation into Portugese to make you think you are within whistling distance of a girl in a dental floss bikini.

The limitations of the menu meant that we only ordered one starter each rather than three between us as there was nothing else we wanted. When they arrived, we didn’t really want this and certainly not for the price. My Crab gratinee was the single most parsimonious dish I can recall in recent memory. A truly tiny portion of sludgy brown crab meat served in the shell of a queenie scallop, bulked out with nondescript cheese and breadcrumbs. Yours for a paltry £9.50. When I later mentioned to the waiter that this was a shameful price for such, well, crap, he offered up the following explanation

“well, it is fresh crab”

That has to rate right up there with “chef’s just opened the tin” as the lamest response in restaurant history and at least the latter is fictional. Shame on them.

Shame on them too for a steak tartar that, while at £8.50 was not such a shameless rip off as my crab, still offered little of any value at all. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that the quail’s egg that was announced came with it hard boiled and ice cold from the fridge. HP did not hate it. I think hate is an empty emotion but this could make me change my mind.

So far, so dreadful. But, main courses were better. We both plumped for the Feijoada, a peasant stew of pork, beef and sausage filled out with black beans. Traditionally made by slaves from all the bits, hooves and lips that no one else wanted, this version was a higher end take but not badly made at all. Served with farofa ( fried cassava flour ) to mix in and some decent crisp kale, the dish was filling and well prepared. However, for what is essentially a stew, however well made, £18 a pop is pretty steep. As was £4 fro a side order of Cassava fries which, while hot and crisp were too floury.

Perhaps the best thing about the meal was an £18 bottle of Brazilian cabernet. I know, I know it sounds like the sort of stuff that should be used as a weapon in a bank raid, but it stood up well to the strong flavours of the stew far better than, I suspect, would the over priced poincy woincy offerings that littered the rest of the menu.

Talking of over priced, we could not face dessert, so asked for the bill.

Including our cocktails and service it came to £98. For a meal where the main course was made up of all the bits no one else wanted and all served in just over an hour.

Of course, we were in Knightsbridge where the cost of a meal matters no more than the absence of chin. So, to worry about such things as value for money is dreadfully common. That's us then.

Quite frankly, I would rather have all my pubic hairs waxed off than go for this kind of Brazilian again. Er..................?

COQ AU VIN: IT’S A THRILLER

I don’t think it is too big a leap to compare good cooking to good writing. There is the same need for preparation, the same need to find the right blend of ingredients and the same need to make sure that none of those ingredients dominates to the detriment of the whole. All being well, you finish with an end result which is well balanced and, while not pleasing everyone, appeals to a great many.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I have been working my way through a proof copy of Jay Rayner’s new novel, THE OYSTER HOUSE SIEGE, a quite complex thriller with an interesting denouement set in the kitchen of an old school restaurant c1981.

Alongside a smattering of violence (would that some restaurant critics suffer the same fate as their fictional colleague, Grey Thomas ) and much attention to well observed period detail, the main story features the relationship of three characters, Nathan, the armed robber, Bobby, the female chef and Willy, the police negotiator and the connection they find through the preparation of classic dishes.

As I am sure was the intention, reading affectionate descriptions of the making of dishes you have not seen on a menu for years makes you hungry to taste them and eager to cook them.

Last week, while in Berlin, I craved a schnitzel such as one mentioned early on in the book and this week, as I read on, I found myself engaged by a description of a “proper” Coq Au Vin, cockscomb and all. Damn, I wanted one and I was damn well going to have one.

So, this weekend, despite the fact I was full of cold, saw me wandering around the market in search of “an old boiler” None to be found, unfortunately and I did not have time to pop up to Ridley Rd where I know they have them aplenty before I had to catch a train down to Three Bridges where my ever patient girlfriend, Dawn was going to pick me up. So, I settled on a large bird from Furness, by far the best chickens in Borough Market.

After a few more stops to pick up the other necessary bits & bobs, I headed off down South and soon found myself in Dawn’s kitchen, dosed up on Dayquil, fortifying glass of white Burgundy in hand and with my mis very much en place.

There is a reason so many of these dishes have dropped from sight. It is not because they don’t taste good. Quite the opposite, last week’s schnitzel was the stuff of dreams. It is because they require effort and patience which are commodities in short supply these days both in cooking and in writing (to go back to my original comparison) Coq Au Vin is no different. The finished dish should, if prepared properly, have layers of flavour that comes from the stage by stage construction of the dish.

I began by frying off some chunks of pancetta until they had surrendered lots of fatty goodness and taken on a deep dark hue before being scooped out to drain. I then browned pieces of the chicken in the fat until they were the golden colour of honey before removing them too. Dawn had obligingly slaved over a chopping board to prepare the mire poix of celery, onions and carrots which I sweated with some thin slices of garlic until the onions began to soften.

I had made a decent amount of stock out of the carcass and once I had replaced the chicken and pancetta in the pan, I added enough of this to half cover the bird before pouring in a whole bottle of inky Gamay and a good glug of Cognac to make up the rest if the liquid to which I added the further flavour of thyme and fresh bay leaves.

As the pot bubbled and gurgled rather pleasingly on the hob, Dawn was nose down on the same chopping board obligingly preparing some button mushrooms and shallots ( those proper,small round onions proving devilishly hard to find ) which I then sauted in a bit of butter until golden brown.

After a couple of hours the chicken was cooked but still on the bone and I removed it from the pot to the oven to keep warm while I turned up the heat and let the juices bubble away more energetically until reduced to the right consistency to which I then whisked in a good knob of butter to add a sheen. Finally, I returned the chicken and added the mushrooms and onions to warm through before ladling the end result into a shallow serving bowl.

Quite a task, particularly for Dawn who shouldered all the dirty work. But, with a large glass of St Emilion and a chunk of granary bread, it was well worth it.

Definitely worth the effort, as indeed is reading THE OYSTER HOUSE SIEGE from which the inspiration was drawn.

Not sure I am up to the Rum Baba’s on pp143 though.

BACK TO BASICS: BLOODY EXPENSIVE THESE BASICS

We’ve been eating a lot of meat recently. Well, we’ve been in Germany so of course we have. They are not exactly known for their vegetarian wurst now are they?

So, when we decided it had been four days since our last meal out and that this was a shameful thing, we opted for fish.

HP suggested Fish Bone in Fitzrovia which has had some good crit for its F&C’s. That made me think of Back To Basics, a Fitzrovia stalwart which I have walked past any number of times but have never actually got round to visiting. I won.

HP had a gym session which, I suspect, involves a lot of him sweating (and not in a good way and, I am certain, with with no one ever moaning “you’re the best”) so I had to wait for him to get home and shower before we could head out. That meant a late-ish table at around 9pm.

Normally, that’s not a bad thing. But, in a fish restaurant which is predicated on serving only it’s daily menu it does mean your choices are limited if you turn up later in the evening. So it was when we arrived bang on time to see more lines on the “daily catch” blackboard than on a supermodel's dining room table.

Still, there were enough things left for us to choose from and, after a Bittburger beer, we chose our usual three starters.

For HP, half a dozen oysters for a paltry £7.95. I can’t eat them but, he declared them very good although he disliked the fact they had already been dressed with chopped chive.

I dipped into a slightly old school Crab Thermidore which, heavy with brown meat, was very good indeed.

Best of all, however, was a plate of house made Gravadlax served with plenty of capers and a perfectly decent dill mayonnaise.

HP, of course, demanded something deep fried for his main course and the only offering was Dover Sole which came perfectly prepared, piping hot in a crisp bread crumb. He was right, though. Such a fish gains little from such a preparation and it could well have been any fish, lemon sole for example would have been just as suitable. Very good tartare sauce though, thick with capers.

My main course was better. A good slab of smoked haddock with a salad of spinach and bacon in a mustard dressing all topped with a poached egg. Able cooking and all cooked just to point.

We were not in the mood for the puddings which looked very uninteresting so just got our bill. A whacking great £99 including 12.5% service.

Yep, we had three starters and yep, we had a beer beforehand. But, we had two courses, no pudding and a cheap ( £16.95 ) bottle of nondescript Picpoul, We were hardly pushing the boat out. So, this was an extraordinarily expensive meal for cooking that while more than acceptable was no more than neighbourhood level.

Location is everything, I guess and, if I could afford to live in Fitzrovia, it might be worth popping into of an evening. Those of us who have to rough it in the more bohemian district of SOSHO, however, will just have to make do with Fish Central.

DOS HERMANOS DO BERLIN: DAY THREE,THE EVENING EDITION

I think you will agree that we had been a picture of almost biblical absteem up to this point of our trip. Sure, a few growlingly dark beers here and a couple of glasses of addictive sekt there, but nothing to match the capacity we show on a trip to Madrid. Hell, we could probably be poster boys for Betty Ford.

Well, we had to change all that, didn’t we?

So, HP had done his obligatory research and decided that we would head the two short U-Bahn stops to Shoeneberg, another area which has left behind its roots as a district of squats for punk rockers and anarchists to become Berlin’s primary gay enclave.

Unsurprisingly, it now houses any number of restaurants and bars and proved the perfect place to spend an evening.

First, a couple of splendid cocktails in Mr Hu, a small but welcoming cocktail bar on Geltstrasse before heading to our choice for supper.

Storch (Stork, I believe) has been open over twenty years and its owner, Volker, hovers over the dining room like the most genial of dinner party hosts. Tables are communal and the food, primarily Alsatian.

As we tried our best to decipher the menu, Volker came and hunkered down and gave us a run through in English all the while watching the room in case anyone else needed his attention.

Although portions were huge, there was a real lightness of touch and we suffered none of the challenges of the night before. HP’s starter was a perfectly cooked chunk of cod on top of braised beets which easily outshone my own more workaday plate of charcuterie.

I got my own back on the main courses though. HP felt almost obliged to order the Choucroute which was as good an example as you are likely to find with excellent wurst and dense smokey pork to compliment the cabbage. This left me free to order my second stellar dish of the trip, beef cheeks braised until falling apart and served in a dark, rich reduction which showed none of the fierceness of a rush job as is so often the case. It came with some equally dark, braised shallots and some more cabbage, this time fresh mixed with a brunoise of vegetables. The whole was quite lovely and worked superbly with the bottle of Dort Pinot Noir which is Volker’s own little pet winery from whom he buys over 25% of the entire production.

Volker came to join us again before dessert and we discovered mutual past indiscretions as punk and Industrial fans in the late 70’s including an unlikely devotion for Sheffield bands of the period including Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA. Who were big in Berlin. Not surprising for a city which gave us D.A.F.

Puddings were fine if not up to the previous courses. A rice puddingy thing with pistachio ice cream and a crème bruleey thing without. Volker poured us a glass of a young gewurtztraminner to wash them down and then gave us a further run down of his chequered history which has included owning eight restaurants, bars and clubs in the city.

Quite a past and I am sure we only just scratched the surface even though we talked all the way through our tea, coffee and Quetch.

The bill came to less than EU100 for all of that which is excellent value for cooking that, if it were to appear in London, would have the critics tripping all over themselves to hurl compliments at it. Well worth a visit.

Back to the hotel and ready for an uneventful journey back home the next day.

So that was Berlin. My first visit to this city found me taking my time to warm up both literally and to its charms. There is no way that it can be described as a pretty city but then no city which has undergone so much in such a short amount of recent history is ever likely to win any “City in Bloom” awards. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, architecturally, it is a downright ugly city destroyed, divided and rebuilt with scant thought for the charms of its former incarnation.

Berliners too, despite their friendliness and politeness still seem to be struggling with their past. The plethora of memorials which serve as acts of atonement for their cruelty to others and to themselves seem to be ill received , in some cases, ill judged and in many cases, just ignored.

Despite that. I did find myself beginning to get the rhythm of the place, typically just as we had to leave. I am, however, certain I shall return. I mean, apart from anything else, I never did get back to have me some more of that schitzel.